Lifestyle

Don’t Let RSI Slow You Down

Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) can affect any of your joints and muscles. RSI is often associated with upper limb disorders and is a potentially debilitating condition. Due to prolonged repetitive, forceful or awkward movements of the joints.

Common causes include sports, computer work, manual jobs and heavy lifting etc. The result of RSI includes damage to muscles, tendons, nerves of the neck, shoulder, forearm, and hand. This can cause pain, weakness, numbness, or impairment of motor control.

Not only can joint problems in the spine cause neck pain and headaches. Muscle spasm in these areas can cause referred pain into the arms. If the nerves that exit the spine get irritated, muscles in the arm and hand can weaken increasing the likelihood of RSI.

If your job involves sitting at a desk for prolonged periods of time, there are a simple exercises you can introduce. Make sure you set up your equipment properly, take regular breaks and of course get treatment and advise early on. However, it is important to mention that even if you sit correctly at your ‘perfect’ workstation you can still get problems with RSI if you do the wrong things, especially if you have an underlying neck problem. So, make sure you have a checkup with a chiropractor if you suffer any pain or discomfort.

Exercise decreases the risk of developing RSI. Make sure you stop at regular intervals and do exercises to increase the circulation:

Pulling fingers back to stretch your forearm
Shaking hands out
Massaging forearms
Squeezing shoulder blades together
Squeezing a squidgy ball
Shoulder rolling
General stretching of your neck can be counter-productive, especially if you have pre existing neck problem. Make sure your chiropractor checks your neck first.