Hi,

This is for all the lovely ladies I met this evening in Oxford. There follows some basic facts about our hands and repetitive strain injury (RSI).

• There are 8 bones in your wrist, 5 in your palm and 14 in your digits – 27 in total.  Our hands are articulated by two sets of muscles and tendons.

• Our hands possess the greatest natural positioning capability of any part of our body and they give us the richest source of tactile feedback.

Repetitive Strain Injuries

A healthy muscle is soft and elastic – at each end it tapers forming denser, stiffer tissue called tendon.  The tendons attach muscle to bone.

When a muscle is overused with repetitive movement the muscle fibre shortens.  The greater density of tendon tissue makes it stronger than the major portion of muscle fibre, but the corresponding loss of elasticity makes tendon tissue prone to microscopic tears at the point of attachment resulting  in inflammation and irritation.

Common hand and wrist RSI’s in the workplace are keyboard and computer work related.  Other more outlandish recreational RSIs are gamer’s thumb, rubik’s wrist and raver’s wrist!

Prevention is better than a cure – stretching the muscles with exercise and massage on a regular basis helps to lengthen the muscle fibres and takes pressure off the tendon. Use your massage routine to keep your hands flexible!

Louise x