You say ” there would be an epidemic of wrist pain at typing-heavy workplaces” as if there isn’t a ton of wrist pain at typing-heavy workplaces. And, like, funny how stress is making your wrists hurt rather than your toes or elbows, right?
I think, as one grows old, one gets a better sense that the human body just breaks down sometimes, and doesn’t repair itself perfectly. Those horribly injured solders you bring up probably had aches and pains sometimes for the rest of their life that they never really talked about, because other people wouldn’t understand. My mom has pain in her left foot sometimes from where she broke it 40 years ago. And eventually, our bodies will just accumulate injuries more and more until we die.
If you have pain that you think is due to wrist inflammation, check out the literature and take action to the degree you can. The mind can control pain quite well, and the human body is tough, but if you do manage to injure yourself you’ll regret it.
While doing pain-control directly isn’t a useful long-term strategy that doesn’t mean that the same is true for a mind-body approach that goes over how do deal with stress.
I think, as one grows old, one gets a better sense that the human body just breaks down sometimes, and doesn’t repair itself perfectly.
And it repairs itself a lot worse when it’s highly stressed.
Sure. And my comment is more aimed at the audience than at Richard—I don’t know him, and I agree that reducing stress can help, and can help more the more you’re stressed. Maybe some parts of his story seem like they could also fit with a story of injury and healing (did you know that wrists feeling strange, swollen or painful at night or after other long periods of stillness can be because of reduced flow of lymph fluid through inflamed wrists?), but they could also fit with his story of stress. I think this is one of those posts that has novelty precisely because the common view is actually right most of the time, and my past self probably needed to take the common view into account more.
It’s not either-or. Stress makes the area more tense (both fascia and muscle), and then among other effects lymph fluid doesn’t flow as well which makes it harder with the body to deal with existing inflammation.
In general dualism is not a useful framework for understanding humans.
Just to clarify: My wrists were never swollen. And they felt cold.
The common view – I know that it is right most of the time. In this case it could be part of the problem. I made another note to look into how the occurrence of wrist pain issues and the reporting about them developed in time and space. Probably I won’t get to all of this, but better have a note than not.
If psychological stress slows down healing, that would feed into the vicious cycle as well: small injury → pain → stress → injury doesn’t heal as well and gets worse → more pain.
If you have pain that you think is due to wrist inflammation, check out the literature and take action to the degree you can.
The problem with this is that checking the literature on page 1 of Google makes the problem much worse for people like me. Every article about ergonomics, RSI etc. should have a caveat: If your thoughts follow this pattern xyz, don’t read the horror stories and fix your thoughts instead.
Here’s another proposal (aka Richard Diagnoses Your Chronic Pain): Get yourself some legit strain from heavy physical work, then compare the sensation with your wrist pain. Is the wrist pain similar? Then it might be purely physical. If not, not.
For example, when I swing a kettlebell and pull it by extending my wrists, my forearm muscles have to generate more force than is good for forearm muscles. They get tight and pull on my elbow joint. Now when I flex my elbow, it hurts. This pain is different from my wrist pain. It’s synchronous with the flexing motion. It comes predictably after swinging the kettlebell with bad form. It goes away predictably when I smash my forearms in order to clear the muscle tightness. The wrist pain in contrast comes and goes seemingly randomly. Sometimes it’s the right wrist, sometimes the left, sometimes both. Sometimes it reaches up my forearms, sometimes down my hand. (I’m writing in the present tense. These days I have occasional mild pain. In 2014 it was much worse.)
Oh, and my left wrist is unhappy, because I sometimes get wrist locked during BJJ sparring. This pain is also different.
If there was great productivity loss because of wrist pain, an economically oriented outlet such as the Wall Street Journal should report on it, shouldn’t it? Except in sports, I find it mentioned in a few articles, okay. I made another note to look for statistics.
Here’s a prediction that follows from my proposal. If stress causes wrist pain and people stress out, because they think that typing is bad for them, wrist pain should be “contagious”. Take an office full of workers who are doing fine. Then one starts having wrist pain for whatever reason, finds online warnings about RSI, tells their colleagues, they get worried about their work being harmful for them, and some of them also start having wrist pain.
I asked my wife this morning if she has heard of anyone having wrist pain. She works in a company of 200 people, in a typical Japanese open plan office with the same small desks and mediocre chairs for everyone. And they’re typing a lot on bulky laptop computers. She hasn’t heard of anyone having wrist pain.
Why does stress make my wrists hurt rather than my toes or elbows? I don’t know. Speculating and summarizing research about that would be another article. Why do people get psychosomatic chest pain and start worrying about it and that makes it worse? I don’t think it is, but it could be a selection effect: if my toe randomly starts hurting a little, I don’t worry about it, I don’t get more stressed, I don’t get more pain. It’s different with the wrist.
I don’t want to come off as attacking you, but I wonder about the validity of your wife’s evidence. From what I understand Japanese culture strongly discourages any discussion of personal weakness, so it seems likely that the fact that your wife hasn’t heard of anyone experiencing wrist pain doesn’t tell us much about whether they’re experiencing it or not.
I asked my wife about the hiding of personal weakness and whether someone who has wrist pain would talk about it. She said that the hiding thing is more like: ‘You ask me to help you with something. I’m busy or in pain or whatever, but I can’t reject a request, so I have to hide my issue.’ She says that at her workplace people talk openly about pain and if someone had wrist pain, they would wonder about it and ask their colleagues.
Of course, a samurai would never show personal weakness. ;-)
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is the #1 reported medical problem, accounting for about 50% of all work-related injuries
Presently, the costs to businesses that employ workers at high risk to develop Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and other Repetitive Stress Injuries is staggering. It is estimated that RSI “costs employers over $80 billion yearly.”
Thanks for calling me out on that. I added a paragraph about statistics.
By the way, if the cost was $80 billion and suppose the percentage of cases like mine was 10 %, that would be $8 billion caused by the common advice that doesn’t take into account cases like mine. What are the actual numbers and how much does the common advice decrease cost vs increase it?
You say ” there would be an epidemic of wrist pain at typing-heavy workplaces” as if there isn’t a ton of wrist pain at typing-heavy workplaces. And, like, funny how stress is making your wrists hurt rather than your toes or elbows, right?
I think, as one grows old, one gets a better sense that the human body just breaks down sometimes, and doesn’t repair itself perfectly. Those horribly injured solders you bring up probably had aches and pains sometimes for the rest of their life that they never really talked about, because other people wouldn’t understand. My mom has pain in her left foot sometimes from where she broke it 40 years ago. And eventually, our bodies will just accumulate injuries more and more until we die.
If you have pain that you think is due to wrist inflammation, check out the literature and take action to the degree you can. The mind can control pain quite well, and the human body is tough, but if you do manage to injure yourself you’ll regret it.
While doing pain-control directly isn’t a useful long-term strategy that doesn’t mean that the same is true for a mind-body approach that goes over how do deal with stress.
And it repairs itself a lot worse when it’s highly stressed.
Sure. And my comment is more aimed at the audience than at Richard—I don’t know him, and I agree that reducing stress can help, and can help more the more you’re stressed. Maybe some parts of his story seem like they could also fit with a story of injury and healing (did you know that wrists feeling strange, swollen or painful at night or after other long periods of stillness can be because of reduced flow of lymph fluid through inflamed wrists?), but they could also fit with his story of stress. I think this is one of those posts that has novelty precisely because the common view is actually right most of the time, and my past self probably needed to take the common view into account more.
It’s not either-or. Stress makes the area more tense (both fascia and muscle), and then among other effects lymph fluid doesn’t flow as well which makes it harder with the body to deal with existing inflammation.
In general dualism is not a useful framework for understanding humans.
Just to clarify: My wrists were never swollen. And they felt cold.
The common view – I know that it is right most of the time. In this case it could be part of the problem. I made another note to look into how the occurrence of wrist pain issues and the reporting about them developed in time and space. Probably I won’t get to all of this, but better have a note than not.
I don’t understand the first sentence. Typo?
Do you mean psychological or physical stress?
I corrected the first sentence.
The sentence is true for both.
I still don’t understand the first sentence.
If psychological stress slows down healing, that would feed into the vicious cycle as well: small injury → pain → stress → injury doesn’t heal as well and gets worse → more pain.
It can happen in that direction, but it’s a very simplified model.
The problem with this is that checking the literature on page 1 of Google makes the problem much worse for people like me. Every article about ergonomics, RSI etc. should have a caveat: If your thoughts follow this pattern xyz, don’t read the horror stories and fix your thoughts instead.
Here’s another proposal (aka Richard Diagnoses Your Chronic Pain): Get yourself some legit strain from heavy physical work, then compare the sensation with your wrist pain. Is the wrist pain similar? Then it might be purely physical. If not, not.
For example, when I swing a kettlebell and pull it by extending my wrists, my forearm muscles have to generate more force than is good for forearm muscles. They get tight and pull on my elbow joint. Now when I flex my elbow, it hurts. This pain is different from my wrist pain. It’s synchronous with the flexing motion. It comes predictably after swinging the kettlebell with bad form. It goes away predictably when I smash my forearms in order to clear the muscle tightness. The wrist pain in contrast comes and goes seemingly randomly. Sometimes it’s the right wrist, sometimes the left, sometimes both. Sometimes it reaches up my forearms, sometimes down my hand. (I’m writing in the present tense. These days I have occasional mild pain. In 2014 it was much worse.)
Oh, and my left wrist is unhappy, because I sometimes get wrist locked during BJJ sparring. This pain is also different.
Charlie Steiner, your comment misquotes me.
If there was great productivity loss because of wrist pain, an economically oriented outlet such as the Wall Street Journal should report on it, shouldn’t it? Except in sports, I find it mentioned in a few articles, okay. I made another note to look for statistics.
Here’s a prediction that follows from my proposal. If stress causes wrist pain and people stress out, because they think that typing is bad for them, wrist pain should be “contagious”. Take an office full of workers who are doing fine. Then one starts having wrist pain for whatever reason, finds online warnings about RSI, tells their colleagues, they get worried about their work being harmful for them, and some of them also start having wrist pain.
I asked my wife this morning if she has heard of anyone having wrist pain. She works in a company of 200 people, in a typical Japanese open plan office with the same small desks and mediocre chairs for everyone. And they’re typing a lot on bulky laptop computers. She hasn’t heard of anyone having wrist pain.
Why does stress make my wrists hurt rather than my toes or elbows? I don’t know. Speculating and summarizing research about that would be another article. Why do people get psychosomatic chest pain and start worrying about it and that makes it worse? I don’t think it is, but it could be a selection effect: if my toe randomly starts hurting a little, I don’t worry about it, I don’t get more stressed, I don’t get more pain. It’s different with the wrist.
I don’t want to come off as attacking you, but I wonder about the validity of your wife’s evidence. From what I understand Japanese culture strongly discourages any discussion of personal weakness, so it seems likely that the fact that your wife hasn’t heard of anyone experiencing wrist pain doesn’t tell us much about whether they’re experiencing it or not.
You’re welcome to attack my reasoning.
I asked my wife about the hiding of personal weakness and whether someone who has wrist pain would talk about it. She said that the hiding thing is more like: ‘You ask me to help you with something. I’m busy or in pain or whatever, but I can’t reject a request, so I have to hide my issue.’ She says that at her workplace people talk openly about pain and if someone had wrist pain, they would wonder about it and ask their colleagues.
Of course, a samurai would never show personal weakness. ;-)
Quick Googling suggests:
Thanks for calling me out on that. I added a paragraph about statistics.
By the way, if the cost was $80 billion and suppose the percentage of cases like mine was 10 %, that would be $8 billion caused by the common advice that doesn’t take into account cases like mine. What are the actual numbers and how much does the common advice decrease cost vs increase it?