One of the most common injuries at the workplace is a repetitive stress injury, sometimes called a repetitive motion injury. They've both been called overuse injuries, and they've both been reduced to RSI or RMI, respectively. What are these injuries, and what causes them?
Hi and welcome to the Les Perras podcast episode number 340. today we're talking about repetitive motion injuries There are basically six kinds of groups that we can put these injuries into, and I'll talk about them right now.
This is when the tendon becomes inflamed. Basically, that means the tendon that connects muscle to bone becomes painful and swells, along with sometimes bruising or redness. The big thing here is pain, and it's because your body is trying to react to the problem and make it better.
Bersa are small sacks or pouches that happen close to the bone where friction could occur; usually, it's where the tendon touches the bone. Bursitis happens when the bursa, that small sack, becomes inflamed.
There's a carpal tunnel on your hand that's surrounded by bones and ligaments, and the nerves go through it. when there's pressure pushing on the carpal tunnel, the nerve starts to feel tingling Numbness and weakness. This is carpal tunnel syndrome.
This is when the elbow starts to feel pain caused by inflammation and sometimes swelling. it's usually caused by playing tennis too much but other motions can do it too
When the hand turns white due to a lack of blood flow, it's very sensitive to the cold, becomes cold easily, and is also not sensitive to heat, so you have trouble feeling heat. It's often caused by a lot of vibration in the hand. Usually, holding some object that's vibrating for a long time causes it.
When you stretch or bend your finger, there's a kind of locking feeling, so it's difficult to move past that point. You have a trigger finger. The tendon has to pass through a small tube or tunnel as it goes along the finger and if the tendon becomes swollen, it has difficulty moving through that tunnel because it's too wide and that's trigger finger
The main causes of all these repetitive stress injuries are several.
It could be because you're using a bad posture
or because you're using the same static posture
for a prolonged period of time,
much longer than is natural for the body.
It could be because you're doing some forceful motion
and the forces are greater than your body can exert many times.
It could also be a less forceful motion,
but you've done it many times repetitively,
like hundreds or thousands of times.
And another cause could just be taking no breaks when you're doing your work.
The breaks are when you're giving your body a chance to rest,
recuperate and prepare for the next phase of work.
without these breaks you can get this repetitive stress injury.
If you think you have a RSI,
your best thing is to visit a doctor and get it checked out.
There could be a very simple solution to it that a professional can find.
thanks for listening