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Healthy tips to avoid RSI

Elena Santos

Elena Santos

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Avoid RSIIn this very moment, as you’re reading these lines, you’re probably increasing your possibilities to suffer from RSI. Don’t panic, it’s not a fatal disease: RSI stands for Repetitive Strain Injury and is the kind of physical condition you get from spending too much time working in front of a computer without taking the appropriate measures. And while working is a good habit – it dignifies the human being, at least that’s what they say –, if you go beyond certain limits it’ll begin to seriously affect your health.

There are a few quick tips you can follow to prevent RSI and work with your computer in a healthier way. They can be summed up in the following points:

  • First, have all the elements in your working space – monitor, keyboard and mouse – properly arranged. They should easily reachable and comfortable to use. Make sure the monitor is at a proper height (with the screen’s top edge aligned with your eyes) and use a wrist rest to type.
  • Second, your desk and chair should be carefully chosen, so as to enable you to sit straight in a natural way. Try to maintain posture alignment, without slouching, and keep arms on your chair armrests as often as possible.
  • Third, take frequent, short breaks rather than scarcer, longer ones. The ideal rate is a five-minute break every working hour. Look away from the computer, do some stretching exercises or even better, go get some water in the water cooler downstairs.
    Avoid RSIAs you can see, taking care of your health while working with a PC is not that difficult. What’s more, there are software tools, like Workrave, that can help you get in the habit of work pauses and stretches.Workrave can be scheduled to warn you with message window every time you have to take a break. The program also includes a series of highly detailed exercises to prevent RSI, as well as some funny statistics about your mouse activity, number of keystrokes and other useless data.

Elena Santos

Elena Santos

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