For many years, repeated strain disorders have been the fastest growing category of occupational illness reported in surveys published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You may think that sitting at a keyboard all day is easy work, but it's not. If you were to stand up and do knee bends for eight hours every Monday through Friday, you can imagine how your leg muscles and joints would feel. It is no different for your arms, wrists, and hands.
Repetitive strain injuries, or RSIs, occur from repeated physical movements that do damage to tendons, nerves, muscles, and other soft body tissues. There are a number of RSIs associated with the hand and wrist. Tendonitis, bursitis, and carpal tunnel syndrome are the most notorious RSIs among those who overuse the small muscles in the wrist and forearm.
The long thin muscles in the forearm are called the flexor and extensor muscles, and they actually originate at the elbow. Together with the median nerve, the tendons in our arms run down through the carpal tunnel at the wrist and out into the fingers.
With overuse of the small muscles in the hand and arm, the tendons in the wrist may become inflamed and swell. This is called tendonitis. If the tendons are swollen in the carpal tunnel, they can push against the median nerve, which can lead to carpal tunnel syndrome.
