Repetitive Stress Injury: What To Do When You Can't Stop Doing What Hurts
Posted on: 7 June 2019
Repetitive stress injury presents a lot of people with a very painful catch-22: What they're doing (repetitively) hurts, but because it's related to employment, they can't stop doing it. If that's your predicament, you're not just in pain — you're feeling discouraged and maybe even lacking the motivation to do your job. Even though you can't stop doing what hurts you, you have to do something about it.
What Repetitive Stress Injury Is And Why It's Happening To You
Repetitive stress injury is an unfortunately common affliction that wreaks havoc on muscles, tendons, ligaments, and nerves. It occurs when a person repeats an action over and over, even if that action isn't likely to be injurious when done in moderation. Overuse of any area of your body is likely to cause chronic pain, but repetitive stress injury actually damages the area most over-used, causing a multitude of difficult symptoms:
- Inflammation
- Pain and stiffness
- Numbness, tingling, and even an uncoordinated clumsiness that causes drops and other accidents
- General weakness in the affected area
- An eventual inability to complete simple tasks, even those unrelated to the cause of the injury
Whatever you're doing to aggravate your body, the area doesn't have time to heal because it's being done over and over. If this continues, you're likely to leave yourself with permanent damage or, at the very least, great difficulty engaging in work every day.
Where It Most Likely Strikes
Joints, especially those in the hands, wrists, elbows, and shoulders, are where repetitive stress injury most often strikes; however, it can happen anywhere in your body. Tendinitis, carpal tunnel, rotator cuff, and tennis or golfer's elbow are terms you've probably heard of, all representing the same condition you're dealing with.
Who It Most Often Strikes
Although a repetitive stress injury can befall nearly anyone, they're most common in workers doing the same task over and over with little to no interruptions:
- Anyone working relentlessly on a computer
- Manufacturing professionals
- Construction workers and carpenters
- Cleaners
- Food service employees
- Hairdressers and manicurists
- Artists and musicians
This type of injury doesn't always wait for age to set in, meaning even if you're younger, you may feel like your fingers, wrists, or shoulders are very old and wearing out. An injury caused by a repetitive action might slowly sneak up on you over time, or it could reveal itself within a short period of time. Your employer should have helpful information about how you can help yourself on the job, but once you have a repetitive stress injury, you need to see a professional.
What You Can Do About It
One of the most helpful people you can visit for a repetitive stress injury is a chiropractor. They have different methods of easing your pain and discomfort, such as soft tissue therapy, where they alleviate the tightness of over-worked muscles, and manual therapy, which focuses on joint function and range of motion. They'll also demonstrate simple exercises you may be able to do at home to ease the pain and strengthen the area's muscles, hopefully preventing further injury.
Examine your working conditions, too, making any improvements that will provide your body with more support during strenuous or repetitive activities. A brace or sling may be needed to minimize inflammation and/or movement, and other equipment, like stress balls or hand squeezers, might be in order. However, you should have a doctor's approval before trying any remedy, even something simple, so you don't aggravate or worsen your injury. Also, ask your doctor or chiropractor about making healthy changes to your diet while you're there because that can be a very important component of your healing plan.
It's hard to get up and go to work every day when you know doing so will leave you in pain. While you may have little to no choice about what to do for work, you do have choices about what to do for the pain. Understand your condition and precisely why it's happening to you, and consult with the doctors at an injury rehab clinic. They know exactly what you're going through, along with the best ways of dealing with it. Won't it be such a relief to finally be able to work (and live) with less or even no pain at all?
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