Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
Currently suffering from RSI, more specifically numbness and tinging on the ulnar side of both hands and wrists. After countless doctor's visits and imaging (x-ray, MRI) along with occupational hand therapy, nothing seems to work. It's gotten a bit better over the course of 18 months, but I'm still unable to comfortably type, use a smartphone, or perform many other daily chores. If anyone else has been in the same boat, any help? Thank you!
123 comments
[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 78.4 ms ] threadPlus I lost weight and had to buy new pants because they started filling off. And my shirts became too tight because I suddenly got some shoulders. Best problem I have ever had.
These two things worked for me.
1) stop using mice and track pads (wacom pen and tablet for the win), It was the incessant clicking that did me in I think
2) focused physio, then followed up with regular (3x week minimum) yoga-ish stretching, and weight training.
Additionally it crept into my shoulders as tendinitis, solved the same way.
One more thing is getting up and walking around for 5 minutes every 30min. We basically sit ourselves into these problems, and getting up is a helpful solution. I even knock out a bunch of 5-minute chores in a day thanks to this.
Finally, find some 10min yoga sessions to do in the morning. Do 'em a few times a week. They'll stretch your hands out in ways you wouldn't expect.
Oh, and smartphones suck to hold, find the tiniest one possible. iPhone SE is killer for this
Additionally I use Dvorak which I find to put less strain on my hands.
And paired with your advice to walk is this: wear a hoodie or any long-sleeved garment. I think increasing blood flow to my hands has helped a lot.
I took a couple of weeks off to design and build a custom ergonomic desk.
Within a week or two all pain was gone. I could work almost as long as I wanted to and be comfortable.
I also stopped using mice and moved to a thumb-operated trackball.
Look for ergonomic desks and chairs.
It's not rocket science - if your back is stuff and hurts, generally working out your back would have been a good preventative measure (but obv be careful with injuries etc!)
squat
Hits everything from the legs to the core to the upper back.
deadlift
alos hits everything as well as the pulling muscles so it really builds your back
pullup
works your upper back muscles and arms
pushups/dips
works your arms and chest
plank
the ultimate ab excercise.
Honestly, the best advice I can give is to hire a personal trainer for the first few sessions. Get one that knows strength training specifically to watch yoru form and make sure you have that mastered BEFORE you start lifting any serious weight
BACKSTORY:
so a few years ago I sheared my knee. I could not walk more than a few yards before my knee started grinding. I had resigned myself to eventually need a knee replacement. a few months of working with a personal trainer on the squat fixed that. Its like the injure never happened at this point.
On a positive note it's just insanely effective at getting me to exercise. I just have _no choice_ so I know I'll be regularly exercising so long as I'm still using computers.
A small improvement without exercise can be had by always wearing warm long sleeve shirts, which improves the blood flow or similar
I did, after going through the months of therapy and various treatments. He told me that he sees this all the time - that some people (~10%) just have variations in how their tendon sheaths form in their wrists. For most people, it never matters. For people who use their hands a lot, it does. If you hit that Venn diagram of being in the 10% of the population with this problem and also heavily use your hands... therapy isn't going to help. You need surgery.
Now, does this apply to you? Maybe not - it is not the typical problem. But if you have tried everything else, ask a wrist/hand surgeon.
I started exercising (very very infrequently) and trained myself to use the Mouse with the left hand.
It has been 15 years since then. I suck at a counterstrike now but avoided giving up on a career with computers.
"I had 10 years of 24 hour a day, 7 days a week chronic pain in my fingers, wrists, forearms, arms, elbows from typing, mousing, and using a computer up until 12/12/2008 as a computer science student and as a software engineer."
source: http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5301 (interview is at bottom, soundcloud)
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Also see the "Seattle Repetitive Injury Support Team" site > http://www.satori.org/rist/, who claim:
"After many years of meeting to discuss treatment and coping approaches, share stories and ideas, listen to invited speakers and discuss good ergonomics, we are excited to announce that we think we have finally found a cure for most RSI cases! We know that sounds too good to be true, but please read on."
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Lastly, read these RSI success stories on the same technique: https://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Repetitive_Strain_Injuries_-_RSI
This is a crazy journey, and it is worth knowing about.
Lastly, if you end up going this route, a podcast called "Tell Me About Your Pain" by pain psychologist Alan Gordon and neuroscientist Alon Ziv is a solid entry point on what to do next. It is an educational mini-series that explain what is going on in a build-up kinda way.
It might be worth it to do a consult with Dr. Schubinar who does video consults now (because of COVID) or the Pain Psychology Center (Alan Gordon's center) does sessions too. I am working through the Curable video workshops and found them key too (I am confident they will get me to the last 5%, they really clearly present what is going on).
Wish you the best!
I feel like I have "found it" finally, and it has been at least 3 years since I read my first Sarno book.
What ultimately worked for me was a combination of massage therapy and self-massage.
I found that I had a large number of muscle knots/myofascial trigger points in my hands, forearms, tricep/biceps, shoulder, and back. Working with the massage therapist we slowly worked them out. In particular I found targeting the teres minor, which is a small muscle below the shoulder almost in the armpit, to be one of the breakthrough moments. Normally I have no back or shoulder pain, but when you find these knots and you start poking at them it can be incredibly painful.
I now have a home self-massage routine that I do regularly, especially if the tingling or any pain comes back, and it really helps. I use a combination of tools, including a lacrosse ball which I use against a wall on my forearms, back, and shoulders, and teres minor area, a Theracane massage stick, and a forearm massage tool from Armaid.com. The combination of the Armaid and Lacrosse ball really helped work the knots out of my forearms, and I highly recommend both of them.
A book I found useful was "The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook" by Claire Davies. I coupled this with a muscle anatomy book to help name/identify muscles to search in the Trigger Point book. The location of trigger points and symptoms as described in the Trigger Point book were uncannily accurate, it was literally spot on.
There are some good youtube videos, blogs, and websites of course. A few I found particularly helpful were the "Doug and Brad physiotherapy channel" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzVO9DU-bog), and the Painotopia youtube channel and corresponding website: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCwTpwn8lWZQ_lXfUPL1JZg/fea... https://www.muscle-joint-pain.com/ the Painotopia website is full of info, but I did find that I had to search around to find a bit.
Anyway, that's what worked and is working for me. I believe that stress, posture, and computer use, all contributed to developing these muscle knots, many of them near the ulnar nerve.
Everyone's pain, symptoms, and causes are different. Good luck! If you have any questions or want more info send a comment and you can drop me an email: my HN username @ gmail.com
The keywords I would recommend looking for when looking for a masseuse would be myofascial release, trigger-point therapy, and active release therapy, though, your mileage may vary of course. I found the 30-45 minute appointments too short, and the 1.5 hour too long, but an hour was just right.
At first we just focused on the shoulders and back, but as I learned and researched more, as well as trying to find problem spots myself, we did a couple sessions on calves, buttocks (mainly piriformis), hands, neck/scalenes, forearms/elbow.
A few other things I didn't add in my first comment:
- I now always use a heating pad under my keyboard. The office spaces I've been working in the last decade are cold, industrial spaces, and the desk surface and hence my keyboard are always frigidly cold. I was developing arthritis-like symptoms (joint stiffness, I could feel the tendon 'clicking' in my pinky finger). I now use a generic heating pad under my keyboard and couldn't go back to not using it.
- Really paying attention to my wrist/arm posture when I sleep. I was a side sleeper and would flex my wrist under my chin when I slept which was putting additional stress on my wrist/forearm, I now really try to focus on relaxing my hands/arms when I sleep. This took some time, but I think it's one of those little things that paid off in the long run.
- I also have a Dr. Ho's Tens electro stimulation unit which I will use on my elbow, forearm, shoulders and back as needed. I find it helps. For the cost of ~1 massage appointment it seems worth while, even though reception/reviews/clinical proof of it's effectiveness is mixed.
Same thing with slight shoulder pains. I started using resistance bands and they went away.
I recommend reading "healing back pain" by Sarno which talks about this phenomena. The book is mainly about back pain but it applies to all kinds of psychosomatic pain. There's also a free forum with free guides and support from others who have dealt with the same: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/
In particular the success subforum is very inspirational as it contains posts from peoole who have resolved all kinds of pain syndroms that they originally thought were caused by structural injuries (including rsi).
I feel like a shill writing this and I remember I thought people talking about this theory back in the day were paid shills. But I promised myself after I got rid of this huge burden due to the psychosomatic approach I would let people know about it no matter how many downvotes I get.