Whatever happened to the crippling RSI epidemic?
Have RSI problems been reduced or are we calling it something different? ...
"I announce to you today the birth of a new medical condition: Strauss's Non-Mousing Elbow.
It arises because several weeks ago a sac of fluid in my elbow called a bursa swelled and started to pain me. For our purposes here the treatment was less important than the cause. It was in a general way ascribed by my doctor to either an accidental bang or a persistent pressure on the elbow, but when I looked further I chanced upon a longstanding condition known as "student's elbow."
What happens is that students rest their elbows on their tables while reading and after a while their bursas become inflamed. Only I didn't read like that. Hmm, what did I do? And suddenly I realized it was sitting at the computer and all that relentless mousing — think scrolling through some large Google search or continuously playing solitaire.
When I did things like that, I rested my non-mousing arm on the chair in a manner akin to that of the over-studious. Thus, my name for the condition — and thus again my inspiration for a column that might be entitled: Where has all the RSI gone?
The numbers don't add up
While researching my pained elbow I came across an anomaly. There have been a burgeoning number of arm and hand conditions associated with either computers or computer games. There's iPod finger, BlackBerry and PlayStation thumb. There is the newly-hatched Wii elbow, and the slightly older but still colorful Nintendonitis.
At the same time there has been an all-but-disappearance of what was supposed to have been (according to a 1995 prediction) a "silent crippler … epidemic in [the] workplace" — Repetitive Strain Injury." (Continued via CBS News) [Ergonomics Resources]
"I announce to you today the birth of a new medical condition: Strauss's Non-Mousing Elbow.
It arises because several weeks ago a sac of fluid in my elbow called a bursa swelled and started to pain me. For our purposes here the treatment was less important than the cause. It was in a general way ascribed by my doctor to either an accidental bang or a persistent pressure on the elbow, but when I looked further I chanced upon a longstanding condition known as "student's elbow."
What happens is that students rest their elbows on their tables while reading and after a while their bursas become inflamed. Only I didn't read like that. Hmm, what did I do? And suddenly I realized it was sitting at the computer and all that relentless mousing — think scrolling through some large Google search or continuously playing solitaire.
When I did things like that, I rested my non-mousing arm on the chair in a manner akin to that of the over-studious. Thus, my name for the condition — and thus again my inspiration for a column that might be entitled: Where has all the RSI gone?
The numbers don't add up
While researching my pained elbow I came across an anomaly. There have been a burgeoning number of arm and hand conditions associated with either computers or computer games. There's iPod finger, BlackBerry and PlayStation thumb. There is the newly-hatched Wii elbow, and the slightly older but still colorful Nintendonitis.
At the same time there has been an all-but-disappearance of what was supposed to have been (according to a 1995 prediction) a "silent crippler … epidemic in [the] workplace" — Repetitive Strain Injury." (Continued via CBS News) [Ergonomics Resources]
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