
Ask HN: How many of you are suffering from RSI or similar? - kevinsimper
I have been battling RSI for the last 7 months and have tried all kinds of things. I&#x27;m currently looking into other ways to program like with voice or alternative ways to input, but not without problems.<p>I&#x27;m interested to hear about other who  in the same situation. I have searched a lot here on hacker news, but most of them are very old.<p>I think my issues could have been prevented if I had the knowledge before. My story is that I have had for long time a bad posture, but that was not the problem why I got RSI. I began slowly lifting weights because I knew strength training could help my hands, but I didn&#x27;t know that tendons took more than 200 days to activate and combining with that I started a startup, my hands recovery simply could not keep up.<p>I am thinking about creating a community around those of us suffering from RSI, maybe mostly as a support group as I feel RSI can be a lonely injury.<p>What do you think and are you suffering from RSI?
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pedalpete
I started having issues a few months ago when I moved desks at work to one
which was not as ergonomically well adjusted as my previous desk. I was
surprised how quickly my wrists began to hurt.

After doing a bit of research, and going back to my old desk, things have
gotten much better.

The changes I made are 1) don't wrest your wrists on the desk when typing.
Apparently we're supposed to have our wrists raised...who knew?

2) I use more keyboard shortcuts. I've taken to using virtual desktops in
windows to switch between screens rather than mouse between windows. Works
great.

3) reduce mousing activity when you can (learn keyboard shortcuts if you
haven't. When you do mouse, don't use your wrist. I used to place my wrist on
the desk and my fingers on the mouse. Now I place my palm on the mouse. This
causes you to use your arm to mouse around and is less stressful on your
wrist.

That's what I've tried so far. Still not 100%, but definitely getting better.

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OutlawStar
I've dealt with RSI for many years and at one point it was so bad I could
barely move my hands. Like others I had seen many different doctors, message
therapist, acupuncture, etc... One of my doctors then suggested taking up Hot
Yoga. I did this an it GREATLY helped me out. My RSI isn't totally gone, but
its much more manageable, to the point that I don't normally notice it.
Though, I will warn you that you don't see immediate results and when you see
results will probably be determined on how bad your case is. I was in a really
bad state so I ended up doing 5-6 sessions a week at first for 2-3 months.
During this time though my issues greatly diminished.

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PaulHoule
I had terrible tendonitis in my hands 15 years ago, enough that I thought I'd
have to stop coding.

I started doing push-ups and felt a lot better in 2 weeks. I haven't had it
since.

SNRI antidepressants are often good for chronic pain, you might want to try
Effexor.

I have found online support groups for chronic conditions are not productive
because they tend to bring in people whose identities are centered around a
disability. For instance, I was looking for help for knee pain and found a
forum run by a guy who saw the best orthopedic surgeon in the U.S. and was
told he had the most screwed up knees the surgeon had ever seen, he was so
inspired that he wants to become an orthopedic surgeon when he grows up...

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saltyoutburst
I get RSI in my wrists/hands from typing/coding. But three small changes to my
desk set up keep it almost entirely at bay:

1 - Use a vertical mouse. I like Evoluent best but they are expensive. Anker
is much cheaper but not quite vertical enough for my liking.

2 - Set up my keyboard so that it tilts -away- from me. Meaning the back
(F-key side) is about 1-2cm lower than the front (space bar side).

3 - Type with my wrists/palms raised up a bit and -not- resting on the desk or
keyboard.

All of these things help keep my wrists and hands in a straight line with my
forearms which seems to be the key for me.

It doesn't hurt to occasionally do some wrist stretches too.

~~~
pedalpete
I started getting issues about a month ago. I was surprised when I first read
that we are supposed to keep wrists above the keyboard. takes a bit of getting
used to but I think that is key.

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brotchie
I used to get terrible RSI in my right-hand and right-forearm. At the time I
was using a MBP at home and a desktop with keyboard + mouse at work.

I eventually narrowed down my RSI to mouse-wheel and track-pad use.

Since switching from MBP to ThinkPads with TrackPoints I've had zero issues.
The TrackPoint contains two strain gauges, so you're not really doing a
"dynamic" movement while scrolling around, rather you're just altering the
applied force.

Just pretending to scroll a mouse wheel by doing the movement with my hand
still hurts!

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auganov
Ever looked into TMS?
[http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/mb_what_is.html](http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/mb_what_is.html)

I don't have RSI but had a brief RSI-scare after some intensive typing and
came across it. Seems like it helped a lot of people. Including Etherpad's
founder [http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-
pain.htm...](http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.html)

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noir_lord
I had major problems a couple of years ago, I switched desk to one that was
standing/much higher in the down position and swapped out my mechanical
keyboard for an Ergo 4000, it took a couple of months but the problems all
went away.

I keep a tennis ball on my desk which is I squeeze when I'm reading or
thinking and I've found that helps as well.

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lastofus
I have been suffering from RSI in both arms for a decade now. It started after
coding 10+ hour days working at a game company. The pain ebbs and flows with
usage, but the inflammation and tightness has never disappeared completely.

Over the years, I've met a number of people who also also suffer from RSI in
various forms. Fortunately, the majority of people I talk to suffer for some
period of time, but do eventually recover, and are able to continue on with
their lives having to be carful to avoid future flareups. A handful though,
including myself, seem to fall into the "for life" category.

I've tried everything you can think of to varying results:

    
    
      * 15+ doctors in various specialties
      * Physical therapy
      * Massage therapists
      * Chiropractors
      * Acupuncture
      * Most every ergonomic keyboard and pointing device on the market
      * Various desk/chair/keyboard tray ergonomic adjustments
      * Addressing TMS (See books by Dr. Sarno)
      * Taking a year off of work (multiple times)
      * NSAIDs
    

This is resulting in me spending a lot of time looking into other career
potabilities, but I keep ending up back writing code to some extent.

Voice coding is literally the first thing that comes to everyone's mind when
you tell them you have arm pain, but it's a dead end in my mind. I tried to
follow in the footsteps of Tavis Rudd, but I just ended up with voice strain
from talking too much. You might have better luck though:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI)

At one point in my life, I had an intern who knew how to code type for me. No
voice rec system will ever be as good as a human who knows how to code... and
even dictating this way was slow and frustrating, though at least my voice
wasn't strained.

Someone else here mentioned TMS. A good friend of mine who was suffering for
months with arm pain was greatly helped by looking into and addressing it. I
recommend Dr Sarno's book "The Mindbody Prescription". Even though it wasn't a
cure for me personally, I did find it helpful to mitigate some of the pain.

As far as creating a community goes, I've never found reading about others
suffering to be any help or comfort. If anything I've found it better to not
dwell on it and just move on with life.

OTOH, a resource that offered suggestions and opportunities on how to make the
most of the capabilities that are still available might be nice. Knowing
there's still a lot that one can accomplished, even if you can't code for 8+
hours a day, 5 days a week.

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possiblymaybe1
That might be imprudent to disclose from an account is easily linked to your
real name, right?

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xyzzy4
You need to be very self-conscious about how much stress you're putting on
various parts of your body. All your muscles should be as relaxed as possible
throughout the day. Always seemed common sense to me.

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olegious
Have you tried wrist strengthening exercises? These exercises from gmb work
well for me: [https://gmb.io/wrists/](https://gmb.io/wrists/)

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ishbits
I get RSI flare ups every so often. Just over a week ago most recently and
read that stressful work just makes it worse.

Now I'm to be in the position that I was able to drop the stressful work. It's
helped a lot.

~~~
girvo
That makes a lot of sense. Massive crunch time recently has caused an RSI
flare up, that has settled down now that it's over.

