Ergonomics Tips Tol Help You Prevent Many Serious Health Conditions
Ergonomics is a scientific discipline that deals with interaction of the users and the equipments related to work or otherwise. It aims at providing solutions that will prevent repetitive strains injuries and hence prevent long term physical discomfort or disability.
What are Repetitive Strain Injuries?
Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) are both physical as well as physiological in nature. Also known as Occupational Overuse Syndrome and Repetitive Motion Disorder, RSI is often categorized as injury to nervous and musculoskeletal system. The common symptoms of RSI are bursts of severe pain in wrists, arms, back, hands, shoulder or thumb. The pain can spread over several of these areas and usually worsens with activity. An example of such disorder is Carpel Tunnel Syndrome which causes pain in the wrists, arms, and hands of computer users.
List of ergonomic tips for computer users you can follow:
- The correct placement of the keyboard and monitor of your computer helps in reducing arm, back, eye, shoulder, and wrist fatigue.
- The most appropriate placement of the computer monitor is such that the top of the monitor is straight at your eye level. Therefore, when you are looking at the monitor, your eye would travel slightly downwards to look at the center of the monitor.
- The monitor should be ideally 20 inches away from you. An easy way to determine is to keep it at one arm's length. If you have a large screen, you should keep it a little further. This will help prevent eye fatigue.
- The keyboard should be ideally placed at your elbow level. The same goes for your mouse. Any higher or lower will require you to bend your wrists which may cause fatigue to both your wrists as well as your overall arm.
- There are many adaptive hardware and software available in the market which helps you to have better ergonomics. Some such examples are special keyboards, pen tablets instead of mouse, speech recognizers, and micro pause alerts. You can select the products that you think will suit you the most from the complete range.
- There are many brands of special chairs available which are ergonomically designed to offer maximum comfort to the user. A correctly designed chair goes a long way in preventing fatigue to your back, shoulders, and waist.
- It is recommended that you take a break at least once in 20 - 30 minutes of concentrated computer usage. You can do this by resting your eyes at a far away object and a shift in your position.
- Get away from your work desk at least once every 2 hours. Take a short walk to your break area, have some water, and stretch your arms and legs. Some basic shoulder, hands, arms, and feet movement should relax your tired muscles.
- If you are going for a long presentation or training where you need to stand for a long period of time, ensure that you are wearing comfortable footwear. Wearing high heeled or shoes with bad fitting can cause fatigue to your feet as well as your back.