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 Move
the wastebasket to a different spot every day, never within easy reach. Place the phone
console at the far side of your desk. If you are right-handed, answer the phone with your
left hand. When possible, take calls standing up. Make a point to stand when a colleague
enters your work area to conduct a conversation. Change the height of your desk chair
every day. Raise or lower your keyboard daily. Place frequently used material on the top
shelf of a tall bookshelf or on the floor. Use a restroom that is upstairs, downstairs or
in an inconvenient spot.
-- from "Pain Free at Your PC,"
by Pete Egoscue.
Tell
me, where does it hurt?Most likely you're sitting at your computer right now, and there's a good chance you feel some pain associated with this activity. Is it your back, your wrists, your neck, your elbow? If you ask most people what causes this pain, they'll point to their computer and blame it for the cramps and tingling, the numbness or sharp stabs. In fact, it gets so bad that some people have surgery to relieve pain from carpal-tunnel syndrome. It's been estimated that Americans could spend up to $100 million a year for such surgery, and that all fixes for repetitive stress injuries (RSI) could amount to $100 billion. But Pete Egoscue, author of "Pain Free at Your PC," (Bantam, $10.95) argues that it's not the computer's fault, and that PC use doesn't have to be this way. Our bodies, when properly conditioned, Egoscue says, are designed to handle the movement and the repetition. The problem isn't what we do over and over, he contends. In part, it's caused by how little else we do. "If you can perform an activity, it is not -- from a human-design standpoint -- an inherently harmful activity," says Egoscue. "What's happening is that if you think about the design equipment of the human body, we're a motion machine. We have tremendous design capacity. But right after World War II, we started this gradual slide, or advancement in culture, so ... we do less and less work to live, to eat. And rather than make range-of-motion demands on our body, we make repetitive motions. No matter how active we are, if we think about our lives, we're making the same motions over and over because that's what our culture has become." This limited range of motion, Egoscue explains, is causing our bodies to break down. With their balanced, integrated and complex musculoskeletal systems, our bodies need a variety of stimuli to provide the necessary mechanical and muscular interactions to stay healthy. Without those, he writes, our body disintegrates and deconditions -- "not just because of the PC, but also the TV, the CD, the RV and all the other A to E-Z accoutrements of modern living." Egoscue is not a doctor. He calls himself an "anatomical physiologist," a term coined by the golfer Jack Nicklaus, who Egoscue helped return to the links after Nicklaus was nearly forced into early retirement because of pain from two herniated discs. Now Egoscue is president of a clinic in the San Diego area that treats approximately 50,000 patients a year for problems ranging from hip degeneration to migraines to scoliosis. His ideas are straightforward and common-sensical, and sometimes just a little shocking. He says, for instance, that our rage for all these new ergonomic products will only lead us down the wrong path. "The federal government is getting ready to mandate to all employers to make ergonomic considerations in the workplace. Here's what will happen if we do that: It's not going to work, even if we get an initial lessening of RSI, because we're not addressing the cause of the problem. The symptoms are going to reappear and they are going to re-escalate," he predicts. "All we really need to do is fix the body that's coming to all of this. Ergonomics says to the consumer, 'This motion is good; this motion is bad.' So, now what we're doing is substituting motion for motion. And, if you think about it in the grand scale, we're taking motion away from the worker. If the human body is a motion machine by design, we're taking away the very thing that will keep us healthy, and that bodes very poorly." So as you may have already guessed, Egoscue prescribes motion. Specifically, he's created a graduated series of exercises for the occasional PC user, the moderate PC user and the "power" user. In general, he says, there are many ways to bring more motion into your life: exercise; change your routine; take the stairs; hold the phone with your hands instead of using the headset -- anything that will cause you to move. When you're at the office, follow some of the above tips. And, as a coda, probably for its value as a stretch, he offers this tip, too: "When the boss isn't looking, lean back and put your feet on the desk."
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