Have you found that the shoulder of the arm you mouse with is often tight, painful or sore? A few years ago I starting noticing this. The muscles in my right shoulder blade would be constantly tight and sore. One night it got to the point where I woke up with an extremely sharp pain in my upper back. It seriously felt like someone had stuck a knife in my back. Certain movements would cause the pain to shoot up one side of my back, all the way to my neck. I could scarely move. I couldn't turn my head in one direction. It was really bad.
So I started mousing with my left hand. I'm not exactly ambidextrous, but mousing is pretty easy. Pretty soon my left shoulder started to hurt too, so I started switching hands periodically over the course of a day. This would prolong the time I had before the pain started again, but inevitably it would come back.
The problem lay in the fact that I had to lift my arm up to use the mouse. Lowering the height of the mousing surface did help since I didn't have to lift my arm as much, but that didn't help a much as changing the equipment I was using. I found an ergonomic keyboard that also had a touchpad in the center. This eliminated the need for lifting my arm up to use the mouse. I just need to shift my hand a little and I could move the cursor around no problem.
The keyboard I use at work is by Adesso. It's sloped like Microsoft's ergonomic keyboard and has a sensitive touchpad that's easy to use. Since switching to using this my shoulder blade pains have eased quite a bit. I still get stiff muscles a lot, but it's not as bad as it used to be. I still have a mouse for when I need to do intricate mousing, like with images and stuff, but the majority of my mousing is done with the touchpad. The keyboard is a lot more expensive than your standard one, but it's totally worth it. Pain will eventually lead to injury, and you want to avoid that whenever possible.
4 comments:
i get that pain, but it's not in my mouse shoulder, it's my left shoulder. I hate it -- not because it hurts -- but because I can't turn my neck far enough to do a head check when driving. The only way I get it out is if I get a massage. And let me tell you what a hardship it is to get a massage at least once a month... :o)
Could be a number of things causing that. I think mine might have been a combination of mousing and sleeping in not-ideal positions. Any other activity that wears down the muscle would also cause it.
Ooh massage... I'm lucky if I get one once a year! I should look into splurging a bit more on massages... I mean, it's for my health, right? ;)
I have to be very, very careful in what I do because of my surgeries on my spine. Nothing yet has been that good in helping, but switching equipment has prevented further injuries and pain.
I can't use a touchpad. They hurt my hand.
What we really need is a device where we can connect the computer to our brains and not need any kind of input device to ruin our hands with.
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