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” … by IrishJobs.ie,  Enable Ireland and Assistive Technology Training specialists asked more than 1,000 employees about how comfortable they were as they work.”

OK, this was a smallish survey of 1000 employed individuals in Ireland, but perhaps it provides  a glimpse into how widespread Repetitive Strain Injuries actually are in the workplace. The findings showed that -

“… workers now typically spend from two to more than six hours seated at work, typing at the computer or on the phone. Of the 45pc who have experienced RSI symptoms, the back was the most affected area, followed by the neck, wrist and hand. Arms and shoulders were also seen as problem areas. More than half of survey respondents said they only suffered from mild discomfort, but 44pc said it was painful enough for them to be aware of it. Four per cent described their RSI symptoms as “extremely painful.” “

I have suspected for a long time that a larger percentage of workers than officially register an RSI do actually suffer from mild forms of RSI quite frequently. They are, however, perhaps just trying to deal with the symptoms themselves and are reluctant to appear like they are complaining to their employers about anything that may impact their job security or the perception of their ability to work.

Note: Despite searching for the actual survey results from  Enable Ireland, I can’t find an original source for it. If anyone has a link, please drop me a comment.

I did however come across this very useful looking document titled “A Tool For Everyone” about RSI for employers and managers on Enable Ireland website, which does reference a 45 percent figure, just not the survey I was looking for!

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“Worries about job losses have helped stress become the most common cause of long-term sick leave in Britain, according to a report that underlines the pressures on workers in a deteriorating labour market.

Stress has overtaken other reasons for long-term absence such as repetitive strain injury and medical conditions such as cancer.”

The article continues:

“The report highlights the strong links between job security and stress levels, with employers that are planning redundancies most likely to see a rise in mental health problems among staff.”

This is certainly to be expected given the current challenging economic times that we live in. I think the main disconnect in these articles about stress is that they infer that stress is a condition on its own, when stress in actual fact can lead to people being more susceptible to injuries and illnesses including Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) and many other health related conditions and, as such, we may not really have seen the full impact of stress on the British workforce.

Indeed I said as much in my article (from Dec. 2008) about it in the last major economic downturn in 2008 titled “RSI potential in these stressful economic times“.

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Let me start off by saying that trigger point therapy has been a fantastic tool for finding muscle knots in my arms, relieving and deactivating those knots through massage, and generally helping me understand a large part of what is going on with my arms. In the process of the trigger point therapy, however, I experienced (and still have) some ulnar compression going on in the nerve of the right hand which manifests itself in numbness in the outside edge of the pinkie (I don’t know whether this is related to the therapy or not) and I have currently greatly reduced trigger point massage to focus on the ulnar issue.

Does this put me off trigger point therapy? No! On the contrary it is one of the best methods I have encountered in understanding my RSI condition (and other painful soft tissue conditions), and potentially fixing it long term.

I am a 15 year sufferer so my condition is most likely a bad case, but what I have found with trigger point therapy is that you can deactivate a lot of the larger trigger points (muscle knots). I have also noticed that I still have many sites of smaller, much deeper tissue that still generate a lot of referred pain. As these are deeper down in the forearm, they are harder to access, massage and deactivate. I am also amazed at how many trigger points that I have found in many areas of the forearms. It is apparent that computer use, repetitive injury and continual adjustments to try to ease the pain when using a computer can lead to muscle knots forming in all kinds of places in the forearm. It’s not much wonder that such conditions are hard to diagnose, treat and recover from.

So in summary, I have currently backed off from trigger point massage due to the ulnar nerve numbness, but I am still 100% bought into this therapy for helping RSI.

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Just about every time I eagerly check out a picture of the new super ergonomic mouse, however, I am usually confronted by a picture of – well, a regular two/three buttoned mouse with scroll wheel. So I’m expected to continue clicking and scrolling and reaching out to one side to use these ‘ergonomic’ devices? I take one look at this and automatically think – ouch!

It is my opinion that designers need to start thinking outside the box when developing ergonomic equipment, and not just try to flog to the general public the same old mouse design with perhaps a shinier, rounder, more colourful appearance and expect them to believe it’s a major breakthrough. It is actually amusing to see how many ‘ergonomic’ mice there are available now. Obviously, no-one wants to be responsible for selling ‘un’ergonomic mice, so it has become an over-used label with a view to seeing how many gullible people bite.

If any of these manufacturers were serious about producing an ergonomic product then they should test these with a wider group of RSI sufferers with different types of RSI. Let’s face it, there are enough of us around these days!

One reason I recommend the Contour Rollermouse is that the designers obviously used some lateral thinking when designing this product. I can also attest to the device allowing me to prolong my working life by 2-3 years. I only wish I’d found one earlier so I could have avoided a more permanent injury.

I  don’t know about you, but I have a knack for looking at an ‘ergonomic’ mouse and saying ‘ouch’ without having to try it. Maybe I’m just an old timer at this….

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It doesn’t help that RSI isn’t a terribly visible condition. Even so, when I was wearing 2 arm braces pretty much on a permanent basis, initially they attracted some comment along the lines of, “What have you done to your arm(s)?”. After some time, however, my colleagues became accustomed to seeing me wearing them and I simply became the guy with the arm braces. It also doesn’t help that an RSI such as mine can preclude the movements that caused it, ie working at a computer, but does not necessarily (and thankfully) mean that other activities can’t be undertaken, ie ones that do not employ the same worn-out muscles. When the activities that can still be engaged in happen to be recreational in nature, this only serves to feed suspicion that the RSI somehow isn’t genuine.

I am fortunate in that I can participate in an outdoor activity that involves the use of my arms, and that is kayaking. To the uninformed, that might seem like a contradiction. How is someone who gave up their career because of forearm pain able to paddle? Some brief consideration of the movements involved should answer that question. There is a substantial difference between clicking a computer mouse and a keyboard all day every day and lifting a paddle in and out of the water over a period of a few hours per week. Indeed, the latter could be deemed as a healthy movement involving mainly the upper arm muscle groups including biceps/triceps and shoulders, with minimal forearm motion, and only a light grip. Regardless, I do still have to be mindful of my paddling technique as, for example, incorrect paddle grip could lead to exacerbation of my RSI, especially in the right hand wrist. Indeed, I have invested in a “neutral bent shaft” paddle that is ergonomically designed to lessen the impact of paddle stroke upon the wrists. It is also exceptionally lightweight.

It is easy to form immediate judgements about others’ conditions, but I would encourage anyone who is suffering from an RSI, or who knows someone who is, to educate themselves on the subject thoroughly before jumping to conclusions concerning capabilities.

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Repetitive activities, including computer use, can adversely affect more than just the wrist, hands and arms, but also the neck and shoulders. Some years ago, my wife developed a constant and debilitating shoulder problem on her right side. At the end of each day in the office, her shoulder would ache such that the muscles would feel as if they were exhausted. Being right-handed, the most obvious association was with her computer mouse, yet it was apparent that this type of large-muscle ache would most probably not be addressed by using a different, more ergonomic mouse. It wasn’t until she moved jobs and her new desk included a drop down keyboard and mouse tray that the shoulder injury disappeared. Simply lowering the mouse pad had solved the problem. Even today, should she momentarily use a laptop and external mouse on a table top, for example, the shoulder issue will recur.

In addition, the range of occupations potentially affected by RSIs is wide. On several occasions now, I have encountered checkout cashiers wearing tell-tale arm braces which I instantly recognise  as probably indicating an RSI. I have chatted to such individuals and, indeed, they inform me that the repetitive motion of swiping products in front of the barcode scanner has caused their injury. I have recently heard of a tree surgeon having to scale back workload due to pain in his arms from the constant overhead operation of a chainsaw.

Examples of occupations at high risk of RSIs include:

• Journalists, programmers, software engineers – anyone using a computer to do their job
• Construction workers
• Checkout cashiers
• Production assembly line workers
• Machine operators
• Postal sorting workers

Sometimes it is not necessarily repetitive motion that is at fault, but holding the same position for hours on end. For example, many neck problems develop after possibly years of bad posture and/or inadequate breaks whilst staring at a computer screen, or performing any occupation that involves looking downwards (eg a jeweller). Even sleeping is not without hazard, if you are in the habit of lying on your front with your head to one side for example.

Of course, the key words here include “repetitive”, “overuse” and “habit”. The same principles apply in addressing these conditions:

• Awareness
• Good ergonomics
• Adaptive software or hardware (this can include anything from computer mice to chairs to running shoes!)
• Adequate breaks
• Improvement of posture
• Therapeutic exercise such as yoga, pilates etc
• Avoidance, if necessary

So, regardless of whether you are at work or play, upon experiencing the first twinges of pain, it is time to become aware of the cause and to address them accordingly. The choice is yours – you can make the necessary adjustments to your work or leisure habits now, or be forced to give them up entirely later.

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Usually RSI sneaks up on you and hits you when you are most under pressure and least able to cope with or, indeed, rest from its causes. Often it seems RSI hits conscientious hard workers. In my case, I went from being a top performer to a problem employee in the space of  less than 10 years. This steady decline was not something that I wished for, wanted or felt happy about, but there was very little option, later at least, to change course. I could make management happy by working harder and thus continue to hurt my arms and hands, and I knew that backing off work would mean less throughput, less visibility and fewer financial rewards. It’s a vicious cycle.

I can remember how it ultimately felt when I quit. In one respect, there was the relief of being free from the cause of pain but, on the other hand, there was the bitter feeling of how the injury had made me fall from being a top rated performer to simply a problem employee in the space of 10 years. In truth, the injury had led me from loving my job to becoming almost disillusioned with it when I realised that I just couldn’t perform my role any more due to the pain. It’s a nightmare journey with a lot of frustration along the way.

It was also a sad day to finally say goodbye to my engineering position, in which I was qualified and had spent the best part of 20 years doing, in a career that I really had enjoyed. And, of course, the future lay before me with a very large question mark over it. There were a lot of mixed emotions.

The one thing that still rankles me is how the transition from a star employee to a problem one can happen. An injured worker isn’t very useful to a company and there is a breakdown in relationship between employer and employee when you get injured, which I guess relates to the business ethos. It’s a fact of life that, if you are limited in learning new things because you are injured, then you are becoming less and less useful. The only contribution for a long term employee is knowledge of the job. This can be tapped into in an advisory role for a while, but once that knowledge is imparted or becomes dated, your usefulness rapidly diminishes and you become a problem that needs to be addressed. Should I have done more? Should my employer have done more?  There are many open ended questions that linger with me to this day, ones that I know will never have an answer.

If I could change one thing, I’d have taken the injury more seriously a lot earlier. I can’t over-stress this point to anyone reading this who has just developed an RSI. It is very important to break free from the underlying causes before you too end up going from star employee to company problem.

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Civil liberty infringements aside, this example shows how ignorant some employers are to RSI and how it manifests itself. RSI is pain induced by micro movements of a repetitive nature, which ‘flares up’ and produces painful symptoms when doing many small micro movements over long periods of time eg typing on a keyboard or clicking a mouse. In bad cases, it can cause pain and weakness, for example in wrists, which may affect other activities, or other repetitive everyday tasks. The condition does not, however, generally affect the muscles groups associated with doing many tasks requiring larger motion, including most motions involved in working out at the gym.

The irony is that with RSI, activity that is based on large non-repetitive motions and especially cardio based activity should be encouraged since movement of the larger muscular groups will enhance blood flow to injured areas and promote natural healing. It should not be criticised and brought up as evidence against an RSI claim. To do so just shows the complete ignorance of the individuals and organisations involved.

It is a travesty that the perception is that someone with an RSI condition should be effectively seen to be in a wheelchair and/or doing nothing before they look like they have RSI to an employer. If they were observed continually texting on their phone or playing video games all day that would be a different story! However, being criticised for living a normal macro movement life whilst trying to keep fit and healthy is an outrage.

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One question they asked that has stuck in my mind to this day was, “When was the last time you listened to music?”, to which I replied well, “In the car driving here”. Their response was, “No, when was the last time you listened to music just to enjoy the music, not as part of something else?”. I really had to rack my brain to think that one through. I couldn’t remember. Not for many years and probably when I was a lot younger, had a lot more time on my hands and a lot less to worry about – probably in my teens! I had to be honest and say, “I really don’t remember”.

The lesson she was trying to impart was that we rarely take the time in life any more to just enjoy simple things that once were a source of relaxation. Music should have been there to enjoy and relax to on its own. By then my life was so busy that music had been demoted to something less.

It may be a part of the reason we hanker after music during our childhood to teen years. Back then, we had more time to listen to music with fewer worries and distractions in our lives. Not only that, but we spent time listening to whole albums from start to finish (which back in my day were on vinyl) and playing them to death whilst memorising the lyrics. This changed in my busier twenties, demoting music to be something listened to when I was driving about, at my desk whilst working or when I went for a workout at the gym. It just wasn’t something I had time for any more on it’s own, yet it was still an important part of my life, just not for relaxing to. In other words I always added something else into the mix with music without obtaining any of the mental relaxation that could be found from listening to an entire album and doing nothing else.

Move forward a couple of decades, and we find ourselves in a completely different situation. The invention of home computers, MP3 files and players have completely revolutionised music and the way we listen to it. We now have thousands of files on our players that are very easily mixed and are frequently listened to in random order, which can be great, and really allows you to find stuff in  your collection that you’d forgotten about. However it has led to being spoiled for choice, and we tend to flick through music tracks at the push of a button, not listening to albums in the way they were intended to be appreciated. Many artists spend a lot of time sequencing an album into a specific order which ‘flows’ or tells a story, and is really part of the overall experience of that music. This sequencing is more often than not completely wasted with shuffle plays of MP3 players, and really adds to the sense that music is just a cheap commodity in our already over commoditised life.

If we spent a dedicated hour a day to do nothing but listen to a favourite album the way it was intended to be listened to and for no other reason but to enjoy that album, we’d find that the music does a wonderful thing and takes us to a different place, where we can lose our worries and stresses for an hour and start to relax again, just as we did when we were younger. It may also help us to de-stress and unwind from tension induced conditions such as RSI.

So when was the last time that you really listened to music?

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