Problogger.net recently published a post written by Massage Therapist Lovelyn Bettison from Art of Balanced Living and Message Therapy Benefits. The post covers tips such as posture, preventing carpal tunnel, ergonomics, and self massaging. I’m willing to bet that carpal tunnel is probably a bloggers worst enemy. There have been times when I have worked at my pc for 18 hours straight and boy, have I regretted it. The day after these marathons, my right arm which is used to move and click the mouse was incredibly sore. I couldn’t turn my right hand a certain way and things became hard to grip. I believe this was a mild case of carpal tunnel and it wasn’t fun.
I’d say out of this therapist list of tips, I have failed every one of them. I have a bad habit of slouching in my computer chair, do not have an ergonomic keyboard, and do not take frequent breaks. I think I am a recipe for disaster but I’ll be changing that within the next few days.
If that article doesn’t suit your fancy, check out this list of 23 health tips for bloggers that Ryan Caldwell wrote almost exactly one year ago.
How many of you have had to deal with symptoms of carpal tunnel? How do you continue blogging when these symptoms become unbearable? Do you have a health tip of your own? Share it in the comments.
11 thoughts on “Even More Blogging Health Tips”
Hey Ryan its a great post. I liked it very much
The article is really good and provides insight for folks spending lotsa time on the computers.
@ sarah
I wholeheartedly agree with you! There are some postings that need the extra technical research, which can be a bit tedious(I’m writing in the PDF technology niche).
Sometimes, I have to remind myself that writing and blogging are perhaps one of the most fun and creative jobs around–and I’m grateful for that! So it can be a challenge to make writing NOT a stressful job at times–especially when i LOVE to write!
Best,
rcruz
As a pain management psychiatrist and carpal-tunnel sufferer, I wrote an article on ways to avoid computer pain. This post includes the usual exercises that we should all do (but of course, often don’t). But it also includes a little known technique – looking at your fingers, hands, and arms – that can prevent or treat pain. Read more at this post, Exercises to Prevent Computer Pain.
I developed carpal tunnel, elbow pain, and trigger finger all at one time around 5 years ago. Since that time, I’ve used voice recognition, ergonomic mouses, ergonomic keyboards, the dvorak keyboard layout, and foot pedals. I have read several books, talked to a lot of people, and have read tons of online resources.
Now, I can work 12-15 hours/day 6-7 days a week at times with little or no pain. I wrote about my experiences and my vision of a Computer Athlete in my book called The Computer Athlete’s Handbook : Your Guide to a Healthier, Happier Techy Lifestyle. Check it out. http://www.ComputerAthlete.net
In the book I am reading called Blogging Heroes, the author used Dragon Naturally speaking as a means of getting most of the audio based interviews into a typed word format. Since the interviews were going to be displayed as text, the book author could simply repeat what he heard during the interview and dragon naturally speaking would type it out for him, saving him a ton of time when publishing the book.
I’ve got a couple other tricks up my sleeve (will share shortly) that not only make it safer, but more practical than ever for bloggers.
Raj can likely easily speak to some of the obvious pitfalls associated with blogging with Dragon Naturally Speaking, but I have found some unrelated technologies that make those problems almost a moot point.
You raise a lot of interesting points Brett. I hadn’t thought of how Dragon Naturally Speaking could be applied to really cut the risks of getting carpal tunnel.
In fact, there is a healthy attitude to the blog, Writing should not be a burden on the life?
I just got back from Blogworld. For those of you that were there Saturday, you may have seen me running demonstrations of Dragon Naturally Speaking which I have been writing about for almost 2 years now as an applied blogging tool.
Here’s the thing, Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 makes it ridiculously easy to avoid carpal tunnel. I worked for the postal service for years, training data entry people in proper ergonomics, massage and much more to save them from pain and surgery or worse, but if you use Dragon your hands are saved most of the pain and danger.
That said the big advantage of Dragon is that it also saves you from eye strain! Sitting in front of your laptop, typing and LOOKING at your screen causes a significant amount of eye strain. That makes you tired, gives you headaches and makes computer work FEEL like work.
Put on a headset and start writing by talking and you can pace around, look around, refocus your eyes at more natural settings that are not as taxing as staring at the equivalent of a bright flat flourescent light, and you will find that you have significantly more energy, you will be less likely to burn out your eyes, get head aches, snap at people or rub your eyes after typing too much, bringing germs and grime off your keyboard and into your tear ducts (even if you are religious about cleaning your keyboard with alcohol).
It was a great article and I would definately recommend it to anyone who wanted to be a blogger. Sometimes I have to have a break for a day or two because my hands get so sore
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