Various New Gadgets Cause Repetitive Strain Injuries

Christmas is coming and those that await iPods, cell phones or Nintendo Wii under their tree must be careful what they wish for. These presents can become a "painful" reality. The doctors from the Osteopathic Pain Relief Center located in Singapore stated that today, because of excessive use of some popular gadgets, people get musco-skeletal injuries like: sore thumbs, stiff shoulders as well as inflamed elbows.

As more people use gadgets like iPod and play computer games, the number of musco-skeletal injury cases will grow. It is very difficult to cure this and when people get repetitive strain injuries (RSI), these could be very detrimental not only to particular muscles but to the whole human body. This, however, could only happen in the long run and the main thing to do in order to prevent these injuries is to understand when it is necessary to stop playing computer games and using different modern and fancy gadgets.

Before the appearance of various gadgets that are highly used today, repetitive strain injuries used to strike mainly two categories of people: computer operators and jackhammer operators. This is because they were doing the same movements every day, over and over again.

Although most IT users are not affected with RSI, everyday more and more young people and children already get the symptoms of RSI. The British RSI Action group outlined that mainly seven year old children are vulnerable to the musco-skeletal injuries.

The group mentioned that RSI is becoming very "popular" because people use computers more actively and as stress on the workplace increases, the mobile communication becomes very popular. As a result the more advanced some gadgets become the more danger they will bring. For example: the producers of cell phones try to make their products more compact and thus the keypads shrink which in the end leads to joints' aggravation because the finger movements become thinner.

Another example is the iPods music players. To use these gadgets one must make intensive movements with the thumb. The representative of the Singapore's Physiotherapy Associates outlined the fact that RSI is a contemporary disease. Doctor Er Beng Siong also mentioned that the number of RSI of the thumb cases from gadget and cell phones usage has increased.

The official site of Wii recommends that all users should make a small break every 15 minutes. People working at their computers for eight or more hours, are highly damaging their body and they should do some exercises to prevent RSI.

Things that can lead to RSI:
Video game consolers
Joystick clutching for hours
Small gadgets and more.

Prevention and cure:
Stop playing video games (at least make some breaks)
Moderation, muscle stretching as well as proper posture.

Source: Reuters

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