Doctor Warns of the Hidden Danger of Touchscreens 242
snydeq writes "Dr. Franklin Tessler discusses the hidden stress-related injuries of touchscreen use, and how best to use smartphones, tablets, and touch PCs to avoid them. 'Touchscreen-oriented health hazards are even more insidious because most people aren't even aware that they exist. The potential for injury from using touchscreens will only go up ... as the rise of the touchscreen means both new kinds of health hazards and more usage in risky scenarios,' Tessler writes, providing tips for properly positioning touchscreens and ways to avoid repetitive stress injuries and eyestrain."
My wrist hurts! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm wearing a wrist brace right now because I held my Nook Color one-handed for too long over the course of a couple of weeks. Obviously I can't say for sure that this was the cause of my pain, but it gets worse when when I hold it in one hand only, and better when I use both hands or support it some other way. I wish I had thought of this before I started using the Nook. Yeah it's not a problem of national concern, and the article uses absurdly alarmist rhetoric, but these are real sources of pain and it's always good to have tips on how to avoid pain.
Because it pertains to nerds (Score:5, Informative)
What are you talking about? Good on you for having great health.
Meanwhile plenty of geeks suffer from computer-related health problems. The most common up to now has been carpal tunnel or repetitive stress syndrome.
The advent of touchscreens means people are bending their necks downward for extended periods. For many/most it may not be a problem.
For others, it can result in cervical spondylosis [google.com], a debilitating condition of the neck.
The reason for such articles is to encourage people to take preventive measures. One of the best is Workrave [workrave.org], a break reminder program for Win and Lin. Click to install [deb]. (Deb/Ub/Mint)
Re:Because it pertains to nerds (Score:3, Informative)
What are you talking about? Good on you for having great health.
Meanwhile plenty of geeks suffer from computer-related health problems. The most common up to now has been carpal tunnel or repetitive stress syndrome.
One trip to a REAL doctor and you'll find that CTS, really doesn't
exist for people that use computers, correctly.
I can give you the number to a real Dr, if you'd like to talk to him.
I'm sure he would have loved to make the money from the surgery
on my ex-wife's wrist. Instead, he said... adjust your chair height
to where your arm, at 45 degree extension, will have your radius/ulna
parallel and about an inch above the desk surface. Buy a gel pad
for the kb and the mouse and you'll be fine in a few months.
And she was.
I had the same thing... absolutely crippling pain from the base of
my palm, all the way thru my shoulder-blade. I raised my seat,
maybe an inch. Gone in months.
If you have your chair at the wrong height... put too much weight
on your wrists when you type and mouse... you will get symptoms
that appear to be CTS and RSD... but aren't. CT scan will prove it.
Myth, busted.
-AI
Re:Because it pertains to nerds (Score:5, Informative)
I doubt that. People have been reporting problems before touch screens. Blackberry users, for example, but also people who text a lot on their non-touchscreen phones.
The medical condition is real, but the cause is not - it's not a recent thing brought on the explosion of touch screens - it's been around for years. Notably brought on because the folks with blackberries (out over a decade) tend to be older businesspeople and thus experienced it years before. Or people texting on their phones for nearly two decades now. And young kids have been glued to their Nintendo portables for nearly 2 1/2 decades.
Re:Why is this crap even on Slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
Touchscreens are awesome, and they are the future of a lot of human-computer interaction. They're simply not a substitute for a real keyboard, or a properly arranged physical workspace.
Re:Why is this crap even on Slashdot? (Score:4, Informative)
They aren't necessarily tiresome. Some people can play games all day without hurting themselves.
Musicians learn to avoid building up muscle tension, both in the muscles they use, and sympathetic tension in the muscles they aren't using. They learn to keep good posture, keep their wrists relatively straight, to breathe properly and so forth, and these skills get passed down to new musicians.
The same skills apply to video games. But there's no "classical video game technique". People tense up, have terrible posture, and generally do things that will hurt themselves if they keep it up long enough. It's totally natural, and takes training for most people to avoid it.
I'm not proposing any particular solution to this, but I think some basic training might help with the sort of people who injure themselves playing video games. Certainly the ways to avoid RSI are non-obvious, whether you're playing Street Fighter or sitting in an office typing all day.
Re:Because it pertains to nerds (Score:4, Informative)
Adjusting your seat is a good advice, but you should also change your position.
When your body starts to hurt, just listen to it, and change your position by straightening your back, it's very simple and effective.
Also, I recommend using a Trackball, because it's the horizontal movements when using a mouse that hurt your wrist.
I personally use a Microsoft trackball, mine is at least 6 years old, and still working nicely.
Re:Not this again..... (Score:3, Informative)
There is nothing new in the article, simply attributing the same (largely imaginary) "diseases" to a different activity.
I don't know anything about other diseases and I admit that the "testicular heating" you mentioned sounds made up (although, I don't know anything about that one either), but are you saying that the carpal tunnel syndrome (which is one of those "repeated motion injuries") is also one of those imaginary diseases? If you do, please provide one link from anyone who believes carpal tunnel syndrome is made up. I'm not asking you for multiple sources, or even a reliable source, I'm asking you to provide a single link to someone that even questions this (aside from yourself). It can even be a non-doctor if you like. I just did a quick search on google and didn't find anyone myself.
Fifteen years ago, I also started experiencing the beginning symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand, and no I didn't even have insurance or worker's comp at the time (I had just gotten out of school and I was working as a temporary admin employee), but luckily I was able to reverse the symptoms completely by changing all my habits and all my computer accessories (both at work and at home, plus I also switched to using the left hand for a few months). I've also had known several people that had been in excruciating pain because of carpal tunnel syndrome and that had to have surgery (so the fact that I saw them go through this process made me very cautious not to be caught in the same thing). And I'm not a doctor, but perhaps the inflammation created in the wrist could be verifiable by a third party through X-ray or something (may be a Doctor or a nurse on slashdot could chime in???).
In any case, right now fifteen years later, I'm an independent mobile developer, I own several phones and several tablets, and I also started getting cramps in my hands and fatigue in some of my joints because of all the touchscreens I've repeatedly been using (it didn't get as bad as fifteen years ago and it did not affect my wrist, but I could easily see how something like this could worsen). Thankfully, this was just the result of all the games I've been playing and all the manga I've been reading, not of the actual work I've been doing, so it was fairly easy for me to just quit doing those things, and all of it just went away. But please do not take my own examples the wrong way. As someone as cautious as I am and as free as I am to customize my environment the way I want (even when I was a temp), my circumstances are going to be vastly different from someone who works in a factory setting, or a low level worker who works constantly with a touchscreen for data input (with a proprietary device that can not really be changed), or even someone who doesn't know any better about modifying his/her habits as soon as potential symptoms show up.
So for me, I wholeheartedly believe that some of those diseases are not made up, and that those articles repeating the same thing can be just plain good old preventative medicine. And if you still don't believe me, try to ask a doctor, or try to speak with actual people that have been affected by this. I'll bet you anything that you'll be able to find some people that didn't have insurance or workers comp, or anything else that would help, and that really couldn't benefit from having such a condition in the first place.
Re:Why is this crap even on Slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
They're only good when you're doing very basic operations which don't require much control.
Which covers surprisingly many activities (time-wise). You listed one yourself - book reading. Now also think newspapers, and everything else online that's "consume only" - i.e. where you don't rush to post a witty comment as soon as you read it, as is the case on Slashdot.
The perfect device would have both touchscreen and keyboard+mouse/trackpad/trackpoint, and will adjust to whatever controls you're using at the moment. We're already seeing this emerge with Asus Transformer, Lenovo Thinkpad tablet, and other similar devices on hardware side, and Win8 (and, to some extent, Android) on software side.
Re:Why is this crap even on Slashdot? (Score:3, Informative)
Um, those aren't musicians. They're noise-makers.