

Ask HN: How to avoid sore wrists - daleharvey

A while ago I switched to coding entirely on a laptop, along with that I started learning emacs  + keyboard shortcuts and got rid of my mouse.<p>This was all good, I work a lot faster now and think about using the desktop ui a lot less. However I have noticed its beginning to affect my wrists, I dont have much pain yet but I can feel it coming.<p>The main culrit is my right wrist, while my left one sits in the same place over its keys all the time my right wrist needs to arch back to press the arrow keys / pgup / pgdn constantly.<p>Anyone else hit the same problem, have a good solution?
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cperciva
Two things seemed to help me: 1. Wearing a wrist brace (a cheap one from the
local supermarket) made me notice when I was bending my wrist too much, and
allowed me to train myself to not do that (i.e., to move my entire arm when I
needed to reach other keys); 2. using an external USB keyboard allowed me to
keep my wrists straighter while typing.

I haven't used the USB keyboard for many months, but I still bring out the
wrist brace whenever my wrists start to twinge, and they rarely get beyond
that point.

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awwx
Are you using your laptop in your lap or on a desk?

I've found for myself that it's essential not to have the keyboard too high...
my elbows should be comfortably at 90 degrees and my wrists comfortably
straight. This means for me with a keyboard using a keyboard tray to bring the
keyboard below desk height, and when using a laptop having it in my lap.

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daleharvey
Yeh I think this is one of the problems, most of the other comments mentioned
it as well, I do sit down quite low which means I probably dont move my arms
enough.

Cheers everyone for the suggestions.

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jeffvroom
Fifteen years ago I had numbness in my fingers from lots of hacking. I ended
up talking to the dr who invented the "pilosplint":
<http://www.painreliever.com/IMAK_IMAKPilo.html> who suggested the problem may
be in how my wrists are positioned when I sleep. You need 6 hours a day in a
neutral "at rest" position for swelling to subside. I was often sleeping with
my hands curled up. Eventually, I retrained myself to sleep with my hands in a
more relaxed position and all symptoms have gone away.

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JayM
I'm working through some wrist/hand issues now, and I've found that the
biggest key in prevention/healing is taking breaks.

Find some free software that will time your computer usage (I use Time Out for
Mac) and force you take 10-minute breaks every 30-45 minutes or so. I also
take 15-second breaks every 10 minutes, which may sound pointless, but more
than anything it's just a safety net to keep me from tensing up for too long a
period of time.

As for external keyboards, if you can afford it, I suggest investing in a
Kinesis Advantage (~$300).

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njl
Don't screw around. Carpal tunnel surgery seriously sucks. I got both of my
wrists fixed a couple of days before my 21st birthday.

Things that have helped me... Make yourself aware of your posture and wrist
location. Don't type with your wrist bent at funny angles. Run something like
workrave or xwrits and force yourself to take breaks. Exercise. I switched
from emacs to vim because I couldn't train myself to use opposite hands for
the ctrl key and the letter key. Stretch. Try out different keyboards. Try out
different keyboard heights.

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nomoresecrets
The solution is to get a decent external keyboard. A laptop keyboard is never
going to be good. Stop dancing around the issue - get a decent keyboard.

I started to get wrist pain about 10 years ago, which worried me. This was
right around the time MS first released their ergonomic keyboard. It was
100ukp, but I figured that was a small price to pay if it fixed my problem. It
did - the pains went away in about 2 weeks. They've never come back (I've used
various models of the MS ergo keyboard since then).

Get a decent keyboard.

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Kliment
The way I solve this on my Eee is to actually move the hand when going for the
arrow keys instead of twisting it. Bending the fingers is also much less evil
than twisting them. Beyond that, regular joint massage helps, try and find
someone around you who knows how to do it, and get them to teach you. The
biggest amount of stress on my wrist comes from sports/martial arts rather
than computer use, so I need to massage my wrists regularly anyway, but it
definitely does help with the issues caused by computer use as well.

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yungchin
In my own experience, wrist pains didn't actually come from wrist action, but
from wrist action with my arm in an unnaturally high position: on a high desk,
with your shoulder kind of "locked", you bend your wrist to reach for the
arrows. At the right height, you'd instead move your elbow backwards and not
bend your wrist.

Also, people often point out that vim-controls are wrist-friendlier than
emacs-controls. I use vim more often than emacs, but when in emacs, I user
viper-mode to have vim key-bindings.

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wglb
I had a friend who was an actor and playwright. He used a laptop sitting in
his lap to churn out lots of plays, but he ended up with carpal tunnel and
wrist braces. Be sure that the laptop is at the correct height. This is when
the tops of your hands are level with the tops of your arms. And there are
many other good suggestions in the threads here.

I also would get an external keyboard, as very few laptops have good enough
keyboards for high-throughput, long hours work.

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UrLicht
I owe my lack of wrist problems to playing piano. I learned to keep my wrists
straight and NOT rest on the desk or the keyboard. And I second the comments
about getting an external keyboard for that reason - laptop keyboards pretty
much force you to bend your wrist downward to rest on the laptop. I also have
my chair set to a height where I can rest my forearms on the desk but keep my
wrists floating. I've never had a problem with pain.

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jimfl
Our office has a foosball table. Playing a game of foos every couple of hours
is a great way to avoid wrist pain. Of course you end up with calloused hands
instead.

Other remedies: learn to juggle and take juggle breaks every so often. Get
some silly putty and play knead it while you're thinking.

The basic thing to do is get your hands away from the keyboard and use them in
a graspy way.

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izak30
I had the same problem. I bought a wrist brace ($17 @ target), and I have a
larger desk that my arms can rest on. Once I fixed my wrist issues with the
wrist brace, my shoulder started hurting from keeping my arm/wrist in the same
spot hovered over my keyboard all the time. The two together have largely
gotten rid of any pain.

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nemoniac
Don't use arrow keys or pgup/pgdown. They're totally unthematic with the emacs
way. Anything that requires you to stretch your hands from the standard rest
position is bad.

Unfortunately some emacs modes, most notably orgmode, use keychords such as
shifted or ctrled arrows. This is very unemacs and needs to be corrected.

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gte910h
Wear wrist splints for awhile, learn to move your arm instead of bending your
wrist. I got used to it by doing an ergo keyboard.

Additionally, be careful how you support your weight during sex and pushups,
it also is a potentially damaging instance.

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mutex
Guys... www.softflex.com is a life saver. No fancy keyboards just pads that
you wear like gloves to cushion your wrist.

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humbledrone
Does the write glove thing work better than one of those gel wrist pads that
sits on the desk in front of the keyboard/mouse?

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blackdog
a typematrix keyboard and dvorak helped me.

