What Exactly is Wrist Deviation?
Blame wrist deviation
Wrist deviation, what the heck does this really mean? Wrist deviation is a common word used by many hand therapist, ergonomist, chiropractors and basically anyone who is treating someone with wrist pain. Wrist deviation is not a term used to explain a pain in your wrist or a condition, it’s basically a body posture. Knowing what this body posture looks like can help you determine what kind of mouse or keyboard you should buy. It helps you determine just exactly how far apart your split keyboard should be placed and it ultimately lets you protect your own health.
Wrist deviation is the range of movement a person has when moving their hand to the right or left while the hand is flat on a table. Normal degree of wrist deviation is 15–25 when moving the wrist towards the thumb side and 25–40 degrees when moving the wrist towards the pinky side. I urge you to try it! Place your hand on the table and move your hand right to left, what do you feel? I don’t know about you but when I try it it’s uncomfortable. This type of movement is not as fluid as bending your elbow, so why should we have to move our wrist in this manner when using or keyboard or mouse? Well we shouldn’t.
When I get called for reported wrist pain one of the first things I do is take a look at mouse usage. Usual, but not always, presentation is a person who uses a ton of spreadsheets and is required to mouse like crazy! They bend their wrist right and left because it helps them move through the page faster. I quickly recommend they not bend their wrist but keep their wrist straight and hover their arm instead. It’s not an easy habit to implement but once you are aware of what you are doing you can attempt to change.
If changing your mousing habits is simply not working out and you find yourself in annoying pain and discomfort then I finally recommend a more neutral mouse. A mouse which forces your wrist to remain straight and keeps your thumb pointing up. A popular mouse of this kind is Evoluent vertical mouse, there are other types out on the market and they all force your to keep your thumb up. However, there is a learning curve and unless the person is in real pain some people decide to ditch it, so I suggest starting with the habit change first and adding more frequent 2 minutes stretch breaks to your day.
The second item I look at is keyboard usage. Its common to see people using keyboards made for someone much smaller than them. I quickly spot wrist deviation however even after explaining what it is and what it looks like not everyone always gets it, so I start by asking, “Does your keyboard feel crammed?” Most people will quickly respond with “yes, like the letters are too close together.” This problem unfortunately can’t be changed by habit alone but usually does need a different type of keyboard. The keyboard I use is the goldtouch go, it was a sample given to me by a vendor and until I began to experience pain on my wrists really it just sat in a box. What I like about this keyboard is that it’s small enough to move in my tiny office, it can connect via USB and bluetooth and I can charge it while I use it but most importantly it gives me the angle I need to achieve straight wrists.
So what is the main takeaway here? Try to keep your wrist straight while mousing and while using your keyboard. There are a few more tips that can be implemented but I like to keep these post short and sweet, so keep checking in for more.
Next post: I will be interviewing an Occupational Hand Therapist working in Manhattan NYC. He will give us the scoop on what conditions he sees more of and how they could have been prevented.