How do you avoid getting repetitive stress injuries?

I don't mean to sound rude at all but I have to ask, as I've never even heard of this before. I mean, unless you type on a keyboard for 8 hours a day straight with speeds of about 500 or 600 or more keystrokes per minute, or unless you are holding your phone non-stop for a whole day, this shouldn't be happening to healthy hands without any motor impairments. I can perhaps only recommend performing the movements with about a tenth of the force you might currently be using, or considering not only a full-size keyboard but one that's also mechanical. Voice Control, when it becomes officially available to the public in iOS 13, might also help you.

This is not an uncommon scenario for many people these days. There are a number of things you can do to mitigate the problem, and it will certainly help to nip this in the bud before it gets worse and might require serious treatment.

First, I am not a medical professional, so you shouldn't rely on my advice as such, but working in the field of computers, I've seen a number of people with such issues over the years.

Here are some hints that people I know have found helpful:

1. Good hand position when typing and/or using your hands with a computer is important. Try not to bend your wrists and keep a straight line from your arms through your hands. As a long time piano player, this comes naturally to me. If you look at many people typing, however, you'll find them resting their wrists on the desk or keyboard and bending their hands upward to type or use their screens. Bad, bad, bad!

2. To facilitate good hand position and relieve stress on the wrists a wrist brace or some sort of wrap could help. If your wrists bother you a lot, wearing such braces at night while sleeping could also help.

3. There are also specific exercises designed to strenghten the wrist and/or strech this area. In many cases the nerve through the wrist can be squeezd by imflamation that occurs in the channel which the nerves go through. If this gets really bad, one often has to have surgery to open up this channel. Not fun.

4. Before the problem gets worse, it is probably a good idea to ask your physician to refer you to physical therapy. This can often help the problem greatly and avoid the need for possible future surgery if the condition gets out of control. They will give you some simple exercises that should help.

5. If this problem is impacting what you do at your job, most companies will set you up with an occupational therapist to assess how you sit, how you use your hands, and try to determine what specific actions are most problematic. Then they can give you recommendations to help avoid making the problem worse and possibly also give you better equipment such as a different chair, keyboard, etc. to minimize stress.

Note: There might be other things you are doing in your daily life that can also be exascerbating the problem. For example, people who sort mail often have such problems from repeatedly pinching thin stacks of paper and envelopes.

Out of all of the above, if it were me, I would probably try to see a physical therapist before the problem gets worse. They can be very helpful.

Hope that helps, and good luck.

--Pete

I would suggest getting a stress ball or something that would strengthen your hand if that's what you're looking for. I use mines a half hour most days and my hand don't hurt as it did before. Also there's this thing called white cross that I massage in to my hands and it helps out really good. Its something like bengay but way stronger and I would wrap my hand up.

I don't know what kind of keyboard you type on each day, but you might try getting an ergonomic keyboard. Also, I would try to get one with mechanical keys that require a light touch as most membrane keyboards really can feel quite mushy and will require you to bottom out on each keystroke. There are tons and tons of mechanical options out there, and while they are certainly more expensive than those boards that come with new computers, you will also get a lot more life span out of them and the feel is so much more satisfying. Also, if you don't have a wrist rest, I recommend you get one for your desk. And if your computer has the little feet that pop up on the back (the side of the keyboard farthest away from you), don't use those. Your typing angle should either be flat or angled away from you instead of towards you, making your wrists constantly bend back towards you and adding additional strain to them while typing. That's it. I'm out of suggestions. Hope this helps.