Sometimes working for prolonged hours in a lab is inevitable, especially with the micro pipette. Ergonomics help but don't totally cease the issue of wrist/elbow injury.
So are there any elbow/wrist strengthening exercises designed especially for this kind of RSI or use of support material such as wrist bands that can be recommended?
How do professional researchers really cope up with it.?
thank you
Dear Abhinay,
from a prevention point of view, strengthening exercises should be the last and complementary intervention.
An effective intervention may involve changes in the workplace, in the work organizarion and in the used devices, between others.
But the first step should be to assess the risk using an analytical method.
You can use the criteria in the ISO standard 11228-3 or OCRA method.
Best regards,
Enrique
thanks to Enrique, i came across this very good journal, Applied Ergonomics by SD
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00036870
RSI is the result of what could be described as "unlimited" muscle contraction which seems to result in hyper activity of muscle spindle cells.
While muscles are able to " do work " by contraction, different muscle groups can remain engaged in work ( in partial or full contraction ) at different levels of force/time.
As a simple illustrative if you were to raise your arm to horizontal with the palm down - then place a small paperback on top of the hand, and then try and hold the book there for a few minutes. In the case of most people the unlimited contraction of the Deltoid will fatigue out the muscle in a very short period.
In the case of using a micro pipette the muscles involved will benefit from ergonomics only if you can shift position as to reduce time of contraction of the involved muscles or shift some of the positional load to a larger muscle group.
If you test by thumb pressure to find the sore muscles/tendon you can try to shift that load or reduce the contraction duration.
One strategy I would suggest is to consider the differential of muscle tissue in the forearm. Visualize the muscle mass in the flexors of the hand/fingers as opposed to the mass of the extensors of the hand/fingers. The greater mass of muscle in the flexors will enable longer contraction at greater force than the extensors, - you could as a caveman/woman grab and carry an object for an extended period, the extensors smaller mass is a reflection of their ability to only momentarily open the hand, not to maintain an open hand. Maintaining the open hand and extended fingers ( as in typing at a computer ) results in overuse ( avoiding hitting the wrong key ) that is mistaken as CARPAL TUNNEL - but is simply overuse of the extensors of the wrist/hand.
Brief periodic massage of the overused extensors or flexors can keep repetitive movements from becoming problematic.
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