6 ms·

This does look very cool. But my advise for anyone suffering from pain to their arms, hands, backs, and any other body parts that usually hurt for people workin

by maeln 2y ago

This does look very cool. But my advise for anyone suffering from pain to their arms, hands, backs, and any other body parts that usually hurt for people working on computer all day: Do modest, but regular mobility and strength exercises. While having an ergonomic (and cool looking at that) setup is important, it wont save you from muscle atrophy. A physical therapist might help you find the right kind of exercises for you. This is often not obvious, because the muscle you need to reinforce / train are often not actually the one hurting. And you need to do it regularly. But if you stick to it, the payoff is much better than any setup I ever had.

thisissomething 2y ago
> This is often not obvious, because the muscle you need to reinforce / train are often not actually the one hurting. As someone who has done physical therapy for different issues, this is spot on. Lower back issues were actually due to weak hamstrings, and ankle issues due to weak calves. Doing daily mobility and strength exercises as part of my mourning routine improved my health as a whole. A couple months in, and all random aches, pains, and soreness that i'd feel upon waking up or during the day were simply gone. And it only takes me 30 minutes a day. It's a pretty awesome alternative to doom scrolling.
- theshackleford 2y ago
  I wish it only took me 30 minutes a day.
  - loloquwowndueo 2y ago
    I’ll bite. Why does it take longer for you?
    - maeln 2y ago
      Not the commenter, but AFAIK, people with some condition might have to put significantly more effort, at least at the beginning, to get equivalent result. The typical case would be for overweight/obese people. While mobility and strength always help, it won't counter balance all the strain that the extra weight put on your body. It will be more efficient to focus on getting lean first, and then focusing on strength/mobility. Although it is possible to do both (and maybe recommended ? But i am way out of my depth here).
      - nemomarx 2y ago
        a little regular exercise helps with weight loss, at least in anecdotal stuff. not that you can burn away a bad diet with exercise but the cardio and exertion help with the stress of dieting (lots of nice endorphins in a runners high!) and seem to aid metabolism a little. doing a half hour at the gym 5 nights a week was like half of my weight loss routine basically.
        InitialLastName 2y ago
        AIUI there are two other factors that are important with strength training and weight loss: - Increased muscle mass raises your BMR, enabling the same weight loss rate at a higher caloric intake - Strength training combats your body's tendency to burn muscle as well as fat when in a calorie deficit, focusing the weight loss on the body component you want to get rid of (the fat).
      - swiftcoder 2y ago
        I don't think this is accurate. Adjusting for equivalent level of activity, people carrying around a lot of extra weight tend to have commensurately more muscle from carrying that extra weight around (try wearing a 40kg weight vest day and night for a few weeks - you too will have to put on muscle just to get through the day). It's generally considered to be a lot easier for an overweight person to get lean as a side-effect of getting strong, rather than the other way round.
    - theshackleford 2y ago
      I just have a lot of things I have to do in my program, and I have to do them twice a day, every day. I thought it might be better not to do it every day, and asked that, but was told no by two separate physios and my care team and so twice a day every day it remains. I also do in person physio and pilates on top of this three days a week. It's obviously good for me (what kind of exercise isnt I suppose) but id probably feel better if I was getting out of it what I wanted, which i'm not and i've now been told I probably never will. But I cant stop because even though im not getting what I want, if I stop, in the long run, i'm probably even worse off. (Though, isnt everyone really.) Id far prefer to move over to something like a bodyweight fitness program on a three day a week rotation, but I just cant do it physically until I undergo further evaluation and likely surgery, and would not have the energy to fit it in on top of my current physio regieme even outside of that. I didnt mean "I wish it was only 30 minutes" in that I hate doing it, i'm just tired and it takes a lot of my time. I think at 30 minutes a day, it would just feel a whole lot easier to fit into my life, as opposed to building my life around it. I need a minimum now of about 1h30m before work, and after. Which means everything else in my life has to bend to accomodate that. I do miss sessions occasionally, but I try not too because i'm only cheating myself, nobody else. I have a spreadsheet I use to keep myself honest.
      - ishtanbul 2y ago
        I am in the same situation. Disc herniation, post surgery, doing pt every day and no material improvement in 3 years. Ive tried many pt programs. My time is under extreme pressure. I need to stop sitting, and revert to a hunter gatherer movement pattern of walking, running and crouching. Unfortunately i live in nyc and my desk job may kill me. If we can use AI+VR/AR to put an end to desk work, it will dramatically benefit billions of souls.
        theshackleford 2y ago
        > I am in the same situation. Disc herniation, post surgery, doing pt every day and no material improvement in 3 years. Ive tried many pt programs. My time is under extreme pressure. Ah, we’re in very similar situations. I’m sorry to hear of your struggles. I unfortunately know too well what you’re enduring. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. I had severe cervical myelopathy where my spine severely compressed my spinal cord, causing permanent damage. I underwent a cervical decompression and ACDF, but I’ll live with an incomplete spinal cord injury and its consequences for life. On top of that, I have a herniated disc and Tarlov cysts in my lower lumbar spine. As if the cervical issues weren’t enough, I now fall randomly, making staying upright a constant challenge. The pain from both issues is so severe and relentless, I struggle to even explain it other than to note that it is "life altering." I’m a few years out, and we’ve now discovered that my cervical spine is compressed again, along with nerves on the right side of my body. I started another physio program through my pain management team, but its not helping, more surgery is the only real solution. Still, I have to stick with physio because, as my medical team says, I need to be fitter than most people to manage my condition. Things are difficult enough that I don’t have the energy to question their guidance. What little energy I do have goes toward trying to stay employed. > I need to stop sitting, and revert to a hunter gatherer movement pattern of walking, running and crouching. I have a sit-stand desk and alternate between standing and sitting throughout the day for pain management. I’ll stand and pace for an hour, then sit for a while. It helps with pain in the moment, but I’m not sure it does much more than that.
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  > mourning routine What doesn't kill you makes you stronger /i
  - thisissomething 2y ago
    ahahahahh, good catch. small oopsie from a non-native speaker.
ntietz 2y ago
This is great advice! It took me 2 years and many doctors before I wound up at a physical therapist who figured out my nerve issue in 10 minutes. It was wild how they could move my shoulder and reproduce it. Now I’m working on strengthening stuff to make it better—and keeping the setup for a defense in depth against other issues
toasterlovin 2y ago
Just jumping on this to say: I had chronic lower back and wrist pain for a long time. Had the whole ergonomic setup. Adjustable desk, Kinesis keyboard, vertical mice, etc. What fixed me was starting to squat. Took like 3 weeks of squatting and I haven't had back or wrist pain since (it's been 10+ years). Now I just use the standard (and very nonergonomic) Apple keyboard and mouse.
- jdreaver 2y ago
  Huge +1 to this, but I would also add walking _at least_ 8000 steps per day. I still had some minor, nagging pain until I started walking more. Turns out humans are not meant to sit all day! I can highly recommend a book called _Built to Move_ [0]. It tells you to do a lot of things that many people consider common sense, like walk every day, eat vegetables, sleep 8 hours, etc. However, it also explains _why_ to do these things pretty concisely. The most impactful argument it made to me was you can't counteract sitting for 12 hours a day with any amount of exercise. You have to sit less and move around more. [0] https://thereadystate.com/built-to-move/ https://thereadystate.com/built-to-move/
  - supersrdjan 2y ago
    It appears that the problem is not in sitting too much, but rather in sitting in chairs specifically. Apparently, hunter-gatherer people also spend about 10 hours a day sitting. But they sit on the ground. Or kneel or squat. And they don't have the issues we get from sitting too much: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1911868117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1911868117 So... the end-game of ergonomic chairs might be no chair at all.
    - vladvasiliu 2y ago
      Given the tables in the results section, it would seem that the people in the study don't have long periods where they don't move. "average sedentary bout lengths" hover between 15 and 20 minutes. So the problem with "sitting in chairs specifically" is probably not the chair, but the fact that the chair facilitates longer "sedentary bout lengths". If this is correct, then the commenter suggesting to get up and move every so often is probably on point.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Yup, can confirm. Had forearm pain for years (started in the wrists when I started using a laptop at school), did the whole round of ergonomic keyboards, joystick-mouse, etc. Eventually went to a personal trainer who had me try pushups, couldn't do them because of wrist pain. He then made me do deadlifts, which were tricky at first because my grip strength wasn't great, but after just a few sessions it improved markedly, and with it, my wrist/forearm pain. Long-term relief, too. I'm only now (seven, eight years later?) starting to feel it again.
- worthless-trash 2y ago
  Are you lifting at the moment ?
- 243423443 2y ago
  I had a similar experience. Until I started exercising, I had very bad pain in my shoulders and neck from too much desk work. Every couple of weeks I would develop a "stiff neck". I also had pain in my wrists occasionally. Lifting weights for one hour twice a week has alleviated my problems completely. I feel healthier than ever!
  - nothrabannosir 2y ago
    Word for word the same for me. Ergonomic interfaces helped a bit but their effectiveness was eclipsed by strength training. Lifting weights outperforms any ergonomic setup, no contest.
- brokenmachine 2y ago
  My theory is that because your muscles are a little bit tensed for a long period of time, there's not enough movement to move the blood and lactic acid around, and eventually it builds up and becomes painful. So even just doing a little bit of mobility exercises with light weights helps a lot.
  - bowsamic 2y ago
    No it's literally just atrophy and weakness. Supporting muscles not being strong enough, etc. The increased strength relieves a lot of misplaced physical stress
nicholasjarnold 2y ago
Full agree. My wife is a physical therapist (DPT, Northwestern) and the owner of a PT practice. I say this with some (very limited) authority, repeating things she has said to me: 1) Absolutely seek the advice of a good PT. It's not like going to a chiropractor where you'll get signed up for the "forever plan". You go, pay for a few visits or even just 1 and they will evaluate and give you things to do on your own. You're empowered directly to change your trajectory vs being reliant upon them week after week. In many states PTs have what is called "direct access" meaning they can see and treat you without any MD referrals being required. Also if you can afford it (HSA/FSA accounts are fine here), try to go to a "cash pay" PT that isn't burdened by death grip of our insurance system. You'll get better 1:1 attention and probably a much less overburdened PT. 2) Stand up and walk around at least a couple times an hour (I know, not practical for many of us) for 5 mins or so. 3) Sit on an exercise ball while at your desk and simultaneously think about your posture on a background thread. This will help you with core strength quite a bit over time. This is something most of us with desk jobs (and even most of us period) could use improvement on. She sees serious athletes who even have weak <random latin word> muscles hidden in spots they'd never think about. 4) Sometimes, like when it comes to pain in hands/wrists, you would want to seek out an occupational therapist (OT) instead of or in addition to a PT, who don't specialize in treating those types of dysfunctions. Good luck getting/staying well! disclaimer: This is not medical advice and I have zero formal training in any physical or medical science. Consult a professional. :)
- theshrike79 2y ago
  > 2) Stand up and walk around at least a couple times an hour (I know, not practical for many of us) for 5 mins or so. This is the easy bit. Just drink A LOT. Pick a drink, any drink. Caffeinated or not, carbonated or not. Whatever you like drinking and fits your diet. Keep drinking it at the appropriate temperature. You can geek out on the drinkware, I got a Stanley Stein, which will keep an iced beverage cool for 8 hours easily. Nature will make sure you have to get up more than once during the day =)
- xarope 2y ago
  For those of you who don't have 2 minutes for some balance and proprioception work, I practise putting on pants and other stuff in the morning with one hand, usally my non-dominant, whilst brushing my teeth. It is hard at first, don't kill yourself with your toothbrush in case you fall over, but it gets easier after a few weeks. Come to think of it, I should start practising brushing my teeth with my non-dominant hand, but it might take 30 mins instead of 2, and waste a lot of toothpaste.
therealdrag0 2y ago
I’ve had wrist pain from mouse use for about 15 years now. The first big win was a vertical mouse, but I still had pain when working excess hours or playing video games. I tried various workouts and hand exercises and they usually left me in pain What I discovered this year is hitting golf balls is the right amount of gentle strengthening and accidental PT. I started going to the driving range regularly like 4 months ago and my wrist pain is almost entirely gone. So mostly this is to say everyone should keep trying and not give up. Every body and injury is different. You just have to experiment and stay active.
wooque 2y ago
This should be top comment. The lengths people will go to avoid exercising.
bowsamic 2y ago
Yes, all my issues with pain are fixed by regular exercise at the gym doing exercises prescribed by physiotherapists

by maeln 2y ago

thisissomething 2y ago

> This is often not obvious, because the muscle you need to reinforce / train are often not actually the one hurting. As someone who has done physical therapy for different issues, this is spot on. Lower back issues were actually due to weak hamstrings, and ankle issues due to weak calves. Doing daily mobility and strength exercises as part of my mourning routine improved my health as a whole. A couple months in, and all random aches, pains, and soreness that i'd feel upon waking up or during the day were simply gone. And it only takes me 30 minutes a day. It's a pretty awesome alternative to doom scrolling.

theshackleford 2y ago
I wish it only took me 30 minutes a day.
- loloquwowndueo 2y ago
  I’ll bite. Why does it take longer for you?
  - maeln 2y ago
    Not the commenter, but AFAIK, people with some condition might have to put significantly more effort, at least at the beginning, to get equivalent result. The typical case would be for overweight/obese people. While mobility and strength always help, it won't counter balance all the strain that the extra weight put on your body. It will be more efficient to focus on getting lean first, and then focusing on strength/mobility. Although it is possible to do both (and maybe recommended ? But i am way out of my depth here).
    - nemomarx 2y ago
      a little regular exercise helps with weight loss, at least in anecdotal stuff. not that you can burn away a bad diet with exercise but the cardio and exertion help with the stress of dieting (lots of nice endorphins in a runners high!) and seem to aid metabolism a little. doing a half hour at the gym 5 nights a week was like half of my weight loss routine basically.
      - InitialLastName 2y ago
        AIUI there are two other factors that are important with strength training and weight loss: - Increased muscle mass raises your BMR, enabling the same weight loss rate at a higher caloric intake - Strength training combats your body's tendency to burn muscle as well as fat when in a calorie deficit, focusing the weight loss on the body component you want to get rid of (the fat).
    - swiftcoder 2y ago
      I don't think this is accurate. Adjusting for equivalent level of activity, people carrying around a lot of extra weight tend to have commensurately more muscle from carrying that extra weight around (try wearing a 40kg weight vest day and night for a few weeks - you too will have to put on muscle just to get through the day). It's generally considered to be a lot easier for an overweight person to get lean as a side-effect of getting strong, rather than the other way round.
  - theshackleford 2y ago
    I just have a lot of things I have to do in my program, and I have to do them twice a day, every day. I thought it might be better not to do it every day, and asked that, but was told no by two separate physios and my care team and so twice a day every day it remains. I also do in person physio and pilates on top of this three days a week. It's obviously good for me (what kind of exercise isnt I suppose) but id probably feel better if I was getting out of it what I wanted, which i'm not and i've now been told I probably never will. But I cant stop because even though im not getting what I want, if I stop, in the long run, i'm probably even worse off. (Though, isnt everyone really.) Id far prefer to move over to something like a bodyweight fitness program on a three day a week rotation, but I just cant do it physically until I undergo further evaluation and likely surgery, and would not have the energy to fit it in on top of my current physio regieme even outside of that. I didnt mean "I wish it was only 30 minutes" in that I hate doing it, i'm just tired and it takes a lot of my time. I think at 30 minutes a day, it would just feel a whole lot easier to fit into my life, as opposed to building my life around it. I need a minimum now of about 1h30m before work, and after. Which means everything else in my life has to bend to accomodate that. I do miss sessions occasionally, but I try not too because i'm only cheating myself, nobody else. I have a spreadsheet I use to keep myself honest.
    - ishtanbul 2y ago
      I am in the same situation. Disc herniation, post surgery, doing pt every day and no material improvement in 3 years. Ive tried many pt programs. My time is under extreme pressure. I need to stop sitting, and revert to a hunter gatherer movement pattern of walking, running and crouching. Unfortunately i live in nyc and my desk job may kill me. If we can use AI+VR/AR to put an end to desk work, it will dramatically benefit billions of souls.
      - theshackleford 2y ago
        > I am in the same situation. Disc herniation, post surgery, doing pt every day and no material improvement in 3 years. Ive tried many pt programs. My time is under extreme pressure. Ah, we’re in very similar situations. I’m sorry to hear of your struggles. I unfortunately know too well what you’re enduring. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. I had severe cervical myelopathy where my spine severely compressed my spinal cord, causing permanent damage. I underwent a cervical decompression and ACDF, but I’ll live with an incomplete spinal cord injury and its consequences for life. On top of that, I have a herniated disc and Tarlov cysts in my lower lumbar spine. As if the cervical issues weren’t enough, I now fall randomly, making staying upright a constant challenge. The pain from both issues is so severe and relentless, I struggle to even explain it other than to note that it is "life altering." I’m a few years out, and we’ve now discovered that my cervical spine is compressed again, along with nerves on the right side of my body. I started another physio program through my pain management team, but its not helping, more surgery is the only real solution. Still, I have to stick with physio because, as my medical team says, I need to be fitter than most people to manage my condition. Things are difficult enough that I don’t have the energy to question their guidance. What little energy I do have goes toward trying to stay employed. > I need to stop sitting, and revert to a hunter gatherer movement pattern of walking, running and crouching. I have a sit-stand desk and alternate between standing and sitting throughout the day for pain management. I’ll stand and pace for an hour, then sit for a while. It helps with pain in the moment, but I’m not sure it does much more than that.
nuancebydefault 2y ago
> mourning routine What doesn't kill you makes you stronger /i
- thisissomething 2y ago
  ahahahahh, good catch. small oopsie from a non-native speaker.

ntietz 2y ago

This is great advice! It took me 2 years and many doctors before I wound up at a physical therapist who figured out my nerve issue in 10 minutes. It was wild how they could move my shoulder and reproduce it. Now I’m working on strengthening stuff to make it better—and keeping the setup for a defense in depth against other issues

toasterlovin 2y ago

Just jumping on this to say: I had chronic lower back and wrist pain for a long time. Had the whole ergonomic setup. Adjustable desk, Kinesis keyboard, vertical mice, etc. What fixed me was starting to squat. Took like 3 weeks of squatting and I haven't had back or wrist pain since (it's been 10+ years). Now I just use the standard (and very nonergonomic) Apple keyboard and mouse.

jdreaver 2y ago
Huge +1 to this, but I would also add walking _at least_ 8000 steps per day. I still had some minor, nagging pain until I started walking more. Turns out humans are not meant to sit all day! I can highly recommend a book called _Built to Move_ [0]. It tells you to do a lot of things that many people consider common sense, like walk every day, eat vegetables, sleep 8 hours, etc. However, it also explains _why_ to do these things pretty concisely. The most impactful argument it made to me was you can't counteract sitting for 12 hours a day with any amount of exercise. You have to sit less and move around more. [0] https://thereadystate.com/built-to-move/ https://thereadystate.com/built-to-move/
- supersrdjan 2y ago
  It appears that the problem is not in sitting too much, but rather in sitting in chairs specifically. Apparently, hunter-gatherer people also spend about 10 hours a day sitting. But they sit on the ground. Or kneel or squat. And they don't have the issues we get from sitting too much: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1911868117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1911868117 So... the end-game of ergonomic chairs might be no chair at all.
  - vladvasiliu 2y ago
    Given the tables in the results section, it would seem that the people in the study don't have long periods where they don't move. "average sedentary bout lengths" hover between 15 and 20 minutes. So the problem with "sitting in chairs specifically" is probably not the chair, but the fact that the chair facilitates longer "sedentary bout lengths". If this is correct, then the commenter suggesting to get up and move every so often is probably on point.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

Yup, can confirm. Had forearm pain for years (started in the wrists when I started using a laptop at school), did the whole round of ergonomic keyboards, joystick-mouse, etc. Eventually went to a personal trainer who had me try pushups, couldn't do them because of wrist pain. He then made me do deadlifts, which were tricky at first because my grip strength wasn't great, but after just a few sessions it improved markedly, and with it, my wrist/forearm pain. Long-term relief, too. I'm only now (seven, eight years later?) starting to feel it again.

worthless-trash 2y ago
Are you lifting at the moment ?
243423443 2y ago
I had a similar experience. Until I started exercising, I had very bad pain in my shoulders and neck from too much desk work. Every couple of weeks I would develop a "stiff neck". I also had pain in my wrists occasionally. Lifting weights for one hour twice a week has alleviated my problems completely. I feel healthier than ever!
- nothrabannosir 2y ago
  Word for word the same for me. Ergonomic interfaces helped a bit but their effectiveness was eclipsed by strength training. Lifting weights outperforms any ergonomic setup, no contest.
brokenmachine 2y ago
My theory is that because your muscles are a little bit tensed for a long period of time, there's not enough movement to move the blood and lactic acid around, and eventually it builds up and becomes painful. So even just doing a little bit of mobility exercises with light weights helps a lot.
- bowsamic 2y ago
  No it's literally just atrophy and weakness. Supporting muscles not being strong enough, etc. The increased strength relieves a lot of misplaced physical stress

nicholasjarnold 2y ago

Full agree. My wife is a physical therapist (DPT, Northwestern) and the owner of a PT practice. I say this with some (very limited) authority, repeating things she has said to me: 1) Absolutely seek the advice of a good PT. It's not like going to a chiropractor where you'll get signed up for the "forever plan". You go, pay for a few visits or even just 1 and they will evaluate and give you things to do on your own. You're empowered directly to change your trajectory vs being reliant upon them week after week. In many states PTs have what is called "direct access" meaning they can see and treat you without any MD referrals being required. Also if you can afford it (HSA/FSA accounts are fine here), try to go to a "cash pay" PT that isn't burdened by death grip of our insurance system. You'll get better 1:1 attention and probably a much less overburdened PT. 2) Stand up and walk around at least a couple times an hour (I know, not practical for many of us) for 5 mins or so. 3) Sit on an exercise ball while at your desk and simultaneously think about your posture on a background thread. This will help you with core strength quite a bit over time. This is something most of us with desk jobs (and even most of us period) could use improvement on. She sees serious athletes who even have weak <random latin word> muscles hidden in spots they'd never think about. 4) Sometimes, like when it comes to pain in hands/wrists, you would want to seek out an occupational therapist (OT) instead of or in addition to a PT, who don't specialize in treating those types of dysfunctions. Good luck getting/staying well! disclaimer: This is not medical advice and I have zero formal training in any physical or medical science. Consult a professional. :)

theshrike79 2y ago
> 2) Stand up and walk around at least a couple times an hour (I know, not practical for many of us) for 5 mins or so. This is the easy bit. Just drink A LOT. Pick a drink, any drink. Caffeinated or not, carbonated or not. Whatever you like drinking and fits your diet. Keep drinking it at the appropriate temperature. You can geek out on the drinkware, I got a Stanley Stein, which will keep an iced beverage cool for 8 hours easily. Nature will make sure you have to get up more than once during the day =)
xarope 2y ago
For those of you who don't have 2 minutes for some balance and proprioception work, I practise putting on pants and other stuff in the morning with one hand, usally my non-dominant, whilst brushing my teeth. It is hard at first, don't kill yourself with your toothbrush in case you fall over, but it gets easier after a few weeks. Come to think of it, I should start practising brushing my teeth with my non-dominant hand, but it might take 30 mins instead of 2, and waste a lot of toothpaste.

therealdrag0 2y ago

I’ve had wrist pain from mouse use for about 15 years now. The first big win was a vertical mouse, but I still had pain when working excess hours or playing video games. I tried various workouts and hand exercises and they usually left me in pain What I discovered this year is hitting golf balls is the right amount of gentle strengthening and accidental PT. I started going to the driving range regularly like 4 months ago and my wrist pain is almost entirely gone. So mostly this is to say everyone should keep trying and not give up. Every body and injury is different. You just have to experiment and stay active.

wooque 2y ago

This should be top comment. The lengths people will go to avoid exercising.

bowsamic 2y ago

Yes, all my issues with pain are fixed by regular exercise at the gym doing exercises prescribed by physiotherapists