With many people working from home for most of 2020 and potentially 2021 we have seen an increased number of patients who have pain caused by poor ergonomic workstations. So we will discuss a few of the common injuries and some ways they can be treated and avoided.
Prevent Injuries with Good Desktop Ergonomics
Ergonomic s is “the applied science concerned with designing and arranging things people use so that the people and things interact most efficiently and safely”. What this means for a workstation is having the station set up for you specifically so doing your job doesn’t lead to an injury. Unfortunately, since many people have moved their work environment to the home, the ergonomic workstations didn’t always make the move as well.
Carpel Tunnel Syndrome
One of the more common injuries people think about when they think of workplace injuries is carpel tunnel syndrome (CTS). The formula for CTS is pulling your wrist back (in extension) and repetitively moving your fingers down (into flexion). This puts pressure on a nerve (the median nerve) that goes into the hand and supplies the thumb, index, middle, and half of the ring finger. Common symptoms are pain in the previously mentioned area and numbness and tingling, more severe cases could lead to muscle weakness.
An easy way to adjust your workstation to prevent this is to make sure your wrists are straight (or neutral) position. This can be done by adjusting your keyboard or the angle your hands reach the keyboard at until the wrists are neutral.
Chiropractic Care Can Help With Carple Tunnel
Once the symptoms start they can be treated easily for mild to moderate cases with a combination of myofascial release, exercise, adjusting the wrist and hand, and laser therapy, all of which we provide at Bellevue Chiropractic Associates.
Severe cases could require cortisone injections or surgery to resolve. If this is the case, we’ll make the appropriate referral. These treatments will all accomplish the goal of reducing inflammation which is putting pressure on the median nerve.
Continue reading in our next post ‘Chiropractic and the workplace, Part 2: Upper Cross Syndrome’.
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