What are some common repetitive stress injury symptoms?
- While there are exceptions, a rule-of-thumb is that pain generally indicates damage to muscles, tendons or ligaments.
- Numbness, tingling and a loss of strength and/or coordination may indicate nerve damage.
- Cold hands may indicate nerve and/or circulatory problems.
What kinds of things can put you at risk for developing Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSIs)?
- Repetitive exertions include things such as assembly line work, typing, manual materials handling and some laboratory procedures.
- In itself, repetition is not particularly risky, but when combined with other risk factors such as high force and poor posture, repetition takes on increased significance.
- Posture stresses include things such as awkward wrist bending, stooping and holding the phone between the ear and shoulder.If you experience posture stresses, habit modification (e.g., holding the phone with your hand or switching sides) and new equipment (e.g., telephone headsets) are things to consider.
- Contact stresses typically involve the upper extremities and a hard surface. A classic case involves a person mousing at a square-edged desk, especially when the desk is too high for mousing. The nerves on the fleshy underside of the arm are at risk of compression injury where the arm makes contact with the “sharp” desk edge.
- Static exertions can take a toll on our soft tissues, primarily by reducing blood flow.
- The familiar road construction flag-person will experience pooling of blood in the legs from standing for long periods.
- While keying, a typist will find some muscles in the forearm experience constant loading (contraction) even though the fingers are moving rapidly.
- Lab technicians who pipette many samples typically experience forearm static muscle loading.
- Forceful exertions may lead to soft tissue injury.
The risk of repetitive stress injury (RSI) due to force increases as other risk factors (posture, repetition, etc.) come into play. RSIs typically take months or years to develop and months or years to resolve. However, when moving heavy objects - especially with poor physical conditioning - tissue damage can occur immediately. It’s important, for example, to plan out high-demand tasks, and to make gradual increases in strength-training routines.
