Causes of Computer Related Injuries

Most people expect that the injuries and pain they are experiencing are as a result of a major accident or injury, commonly called macrotrauma. More often though, people cannot remember any significant event and report that they were simply, “cleaning their teeth”, or “doing what they do every day”. They forget that the same repetitive activities performed over and over will slowly wear away at the body until the point of failure and finally something minor simply pushes them over the edge and an injury occurs. This is called repetitive micro-trauma. A simple analogy, consider chopping a tree with an axe, the first hit does very little, but by chopping again and again, finally the tree falls down. The final chop made the tree fall but it was all the chops before that did the damage.

Unfortunately modern society has moved us towards more and more sedentary lifestyles. Particularly sitting postures where we start to develop poor habits in our school years. By the time we are desk-bound in our career our poor postural habits are firmly entrenched and our body’s ability to adapt has started to decrease. Prolonged sitting, and other static postures, may contribute to pain in the; neck, back, shoulders, arms, leg, jaw as well as headaches and numbness or tingling in the arms or hands. Not to mention that lack of regular physical activity is a major contributing factor to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity and cancer.

By the time we start to experience symptoms, a pattern of dysfunction and compensation is normally well established. To correct this dysfunction, and therefore your pain, a program including postural advice, activity modification, re-education, manual treatment (chiropractic and soft tissue), and self-treatment exercises are needed to help us re-establish a flexible and strong posture. Some simple solutions are described below to help you begin to restore more upright posture.

It is generally perceived that the injuries that people suffer from as a result of using computers are repetitive strain injuries (RSI). This is true providing that it is clearly understood that the word "repetitive" does not just refer to a continuous action of some particular body part. RSI means damage to muscles, tendons, nerves and other soft tissue caused by repetitive work over a period of time, involving some type of force, such as keyboard work.

Continuous action of one particular body part is only one cause of soft tissue strain injuries, and often when an individual has been diagnosed with having RSI they will be at a loss as to how it occurred because they don't fully understand the causes of RSI. This doesn't really matter with regard to the medical treatment of the injury, but it does greatly affect correcting the problem at the workstation level. Often there are several distinct causes of RSI and sometimes it is a combination of these that cause an injury, and these are:

1. Repetition or Dynamic Muscle Loading
When your body is required to continuously perform the same movements day after day with the same body part, it doesn't get the opportunity to repair, and the damage builds up till the point where it affects your ability to do your job. Unfortunately most people don't do anything about it until they get to the stage where they can't do their job at all. This is a case where RSI can develop.

2. Static Muscle Loading
This where you hold your body in the one position for prolonged periods. When you use a computer, or stand in a factory, you actually hold your body in position by contracting your muscles, particularly your shoulders, neck, arms, wrists and hands. Tight flexed muscles greatly restrict the blood flow, starving the muscles of essential oxygen and nutrients. The stresses placed on the body by static muscle loading increases when the body is required to twist or reach out

3. Contact Stress
Caused by direct pressure on muscles, nerves and tendons against a hard object, possibly with an angled surface such as the edge of a desk or workbench. This affects the blood circulation and bruises the soft tissues.

4. Posture
The way you approach your work will greatly affect the probability of being injured by the above 3 mentioned causes. Factors such as twisting of the neck, reaching out to objects and assuming inappropriate positions will place more strain on your body and injury is more likely to occur. To prevent injuries from occurring the principles of ergonomics are applied.

Understanding the nature of these injuries arms us with the information to allow us to modify or eliminate behaviours and postures that may contribute to chronic injuries.

Applying basic changes to your workstation or work environment can greatly reduce the potential of developing RSI.