February 20, 2021
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Working in sweatpants from the home office is currently a casual reality. But working from the sofa or at the dining table causes orthopedic lifestyle ailments, such as cell phone thumbs, laptop necks and mouse arms, as doctors Ulrike Mühlhofer and Stephanie Arbes-Kohlert from Orthopedics & Traumatology Simmering know.
“It usually starts with the laptop being far too low in terms of height. This can be corrected with a laptop stand, but not the too small screen. In order to see better, the head is stretched forward like a turtle – the result is the so-called laptop or stretch neck, a painful tension in the neck area, “says Mühlhofer:” If you go too high or too low at the same time the screen, there is also tension in the entire shoulder area. Short, active breaks are useful to loosen up the muscles. Getting up, increasing calorie consumption by taking out the rubbish or doing stretching and stretching exercises: Repeatedly standing up, stretching arms up and bending down relieves tension and clears your head for new ideas. Or: You consciously look upwards to bring about a compensatory movement. Put your neck to one side and pull gently with your hand. Now pull your shoulders up and then down and back. One repetition creates relaxation in the shoulder girdle and neck area. “
“Merkel diamond” against WhatsApp disease
Arbes-Kohlert, co-founder of the orthopedic group practice, adds: “In the home office, you quickly notice how important a desk and a height-adjustable swivel chair are. Because in addition to the neck of a laptop, the mobile phone thumb and mouse arm are often added. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp & Co. tempt you to quickly grab your smartphone and answer the messages – often with your thumb, which leads to an unnatural twisting and spreading movement of the thumb and pain in the wrist – to the mobile phone thumb or to WhatsApp disease . Tendonitis can also be an unpleasant result of intensive cell phone use. It mainly affects young people. “
Therefore, the doctor advises either to tap on both sides at the first signs or to put the smartphone aside, spread the fingers and form a ‘Merkel diamond’: She quickly relaxes the tormented thumb.
The mouse arm, on the other hand, is the home office counterpart to the tennis arm: the inflammation of the tendon plates in the elbow joint, which is unnaturally twisted when the mouse is operated: instead of reaching vertically, clicking horizontally. The first symptoms of the mouse arm or RSI syndrome are tingling and pain in the wrist. As a preventive measure, an ergonomically shaped mouse is used for side clicking and the following exercises: Form a fist with the thumb on the outside of the other fingers and hold for 10 seconds, then stretch out the fingers and stay in this position for another 10 seconds.
Repeat this 5 times. Or alternately form a flat hand and spread fingers, touch each individual finger with the thumb, alternately spread the fingers and make a ‘claw’ as well as a ‘like’ thumb and use it to draw circles.
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