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COPYRIGHT 2001 Vegetarian Times, Inc. All rights reserved.
How to relieve--and prevent--repititive strain injuries
After Alisa Strauss completed graduate school, a lengthy internship and a two-year stint as a reporter, she was elated to land her dream job as an editor. But almost as soon as it had begun, Strauss' promising career came to a crashing halt. It wasn't a lack of talent, enthusiasm or drive that held her back--it was her wrists.
Strauss was suffering from repetitive strain injury (RSI), the result of endless hours scribbling notes and banging away on the keyboard. The condition caused severe pain in her wrists, arms and neck and eventually left her unable to type or even hold a pencil.
At her doctor's urging, Strauss decided to leave her editor's job and now works as a teacher, freelance writer and human resources professional. She is treating her condition with acupuncture and a body-movement therapy method known as Feldenkrais and hopes one day to return to her chosen field. "I'm one of the lucky ones, because I'm recovering," she says. "I got the right help."
RSI is a modern condition, the flip side to the time- and energy-savings of computers and other machinery. Relatively unheard of 15 years ago, it's the fastest-growing medical complaint of office workers. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), some 600,000 RSIs annually force workers to take time off.
While Strauss' case is severe, millions of journalists, musicians, computer technicians, machinists, athletes and assembly line workers have found themselves in the frustrating situation of being unable to stop the onward march of RSI pain. Part of that frustration comes from the fact that conventional medicine's solution to the problem is often surgery, the results of which can be short-lived. "Conventional medicine just doesn't...
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