Kept my keyboard but switched it from QWERTY to Colemak. Two weeks cold turkey to get back up to acceptable typing speed.
Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
11–20 of 123 posts
Re: Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
#12I was able to turn it around by cutting back/quitting other activities like weight lifting, bicycling, and piano.
Re: Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
#13I've started wearing fingerless gloves. That solved the pain in my hands completely!
Re: Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
#14I feel like I've conquered mine. I can primarily thank the Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard, it's basically the only reason I can type now. I have no pain using it, and I honestly get a shooting pain every time I switch over to my laptop's keyboard. One more thing is getting up and walking around for 5 minutes every 30min. We basically sit ourselves into these problems, and getting up is a helpful solution. I even knock o…
I agree with everything, I love my Advantage 2. I've been using it for about half a year and almost all pain my hands has gone away.
Additionally I use Dvorak which I find to put less strain on my hands.
And paired with your advice to walk is this: wear a hoodie or any long-sleeved garment. I think increasing blood flow to my hands has helped a lot.
Re: Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
#15My first serious tech startup had me working 18 hour days, 7 days a week. The pain in my wrists became unbearable. I knew people who had surgery for this and it didn’t go so well. I was going to avoid this at all cost.
I took a couple of weeks off to design and build a custom ergonomic desk.
Within a week or two all pain was gone. I could work almost as long as I wanted to and be comfortable.
I also stopped using mice and moved to a thumb-operated trackball.
Look for ergonomic desks and chairs.
Re: Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
#16I started to get some slight wrist pain a while back - switched to a vertical mouse and started releasing my forearms with massage (they were getting tight) and that did the trick. Never had issues since.
Re: Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
#17I started regularly lifting weights a few years ago. After a few weeks, all the muscle and joint pain in my body disappeared completely.
Re: Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
#18Exercise. Also works for back pain. Try gym + running.
A small improvement without exercise can be had by always wearing warm long sleeve shirts, which improves the blood flow or similar
Re: Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
#19Have you talked to a hand surgeon?
I did, after going through the months of therapy and various treatments. He told me that he sees this all the time - that some people (~10%) just have variations in how their tendon sheaths form in their wrists. For most people, it never matters. For people who use their hands a lot, it does. If you hit that Venn diagram of being in the 10% of the population with this problem and also heavily use your hands... therapy isn't going to help. You need surgery.
Now, does this apply to you? Maybe not - it is not the typical problem. But if you have tried everything else, ask a wrist/hand surgeon.
Re: Ask HN: How have you cured your RSI?
#20Yes. I was in the same boat. Tried many things. Eventually,
I started exercising (very very infrequently) and trained myself to use the Mouse with the left hand.
It has been 15 years since then. I suck at a counterstrike now but avoided giving up on a career with computers.