December 15, 2006

mitigating carpal tunnel

So I took some time off to go home at Thanksgiving and I realized on the plane that I have been developing the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome for some time now. I moved to a new office three or four months ago (and a new chair) and the ergonomics have been completely wrong. I swear, these keyboards with the tabs at the back are designed to cripple you - it's totally wrong ergnomically to have the keyboard higher at the back. It really should be higher at the front so that the wrist can be kept straight, rather than cocked, causing stress on the nerves in the carpal tunnel.

It was getting to the point that any pronation or supination at all of my wrists caused quite a bit of pain and I was having to fend off people wanting to shake hands. Obviously something had to be done.

Serendipitously, I found one of these keyboard mounts under my desk (I inherited the office). Ten minutes work with my Sears cordless and I have it mounted under my Apple laptop stand (I use a MacBook Pro at work and let me say that you need a laptop stand with the first generation Pros).

90-95% of my problems have gone away. The situation isn't perfect - I still have some bend in my wrists but it is minimal. Note the keyboard is now a good foot lower than it was before in the old configuration.

Posted by artandscience at December 15, 2006 05:05 AM
Implementation of James Seng's security plugin: