The Causes of Repetitive Stress Injuries

With the increasing number of information technology and information technology enabled services companies, lots of them are facing this problem of repetitive stress injuries. It is not only faced by people who spend long time in front of the computer to work but, also those who sit and browse or play games for long hours. Sitting in front of the computer for long hours result in injuries in various parts of the body. And the common affected areas are the wrist and neck.

The causes for repetitive stress injuries are wrong postures, minimum rest, prolonged use of body parts and improper ergonomics at the work station. Normally, repetitive stress injuries occur when there is an overuse of the muscle, tendon or joints. When the muscles are overused it leads to chronic inflammation with swelling and micro-tears of the fibers. It is said that these tears will heal over time with rest.

If adequate rest is not taken and if these tears are not healed with rest on time then this leads to repetitive stress injuries. There are some exercises, which will help you decrease this problem and if you continuously do these exercises it can even cure the problem.

Neck Pain
There are so many reasons why one suffers from neck pain; it could be because of slouching of shoulders, continuously looking up at the monitor and even tilting the head.

The exercises which can resolve this problem are:

• Shrug your shoulders at least 3-4 times per day. And hold the shrug for about 5 seconds.
• Stretch your arms and do shoulder circles, this will ease the pressure around the shoulders.
• Sit straight and pull your head backwards, making contraction of the neck muscles. Do this slowly without holding your breath. Hold in that position for a count of three and then relax.

Wrist pain
The common problem in the wrist is the carpal tunnel syndrome. The symptoms of this problem are pain in the hand, tingling and numbness. This problem can be taken care of, by doing the following exercise.

• The exercises for wrist pain usually start with the typing position. So start this exercise in the typing position and then slowly bend the hands back at the wrists with the fingers fully extended, hold for 10 seconds and get back to typing position.
• Make a fist and hold it for about 10 seconds and then return to typing position
• Stretch your hand forward with your fingers fully extended with the wrists straight, hold the position for about 10 seconds and return to typing position.

If you do these exercises properly you can get rid of the pain which is caused by these repetitive stress injuries.