... not that playing video games has been good for my career...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0446675156/

That being said, your comment is spot on.

Several years ago I had a very strong on-and-off hip joint pain for several months. This thing helped overnight, with permanent effect.

http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.htm...

I'm a skeptic myself, trained as a scientist with degrees in physics from Harvard and Caltech. The technique from the book seems like it couldn't possibly work, but it did. As noted before, YMMV.

I highly recommend reading his book "The Mindbody Prescription"

Someone on HN suggested it in a "carpal tunnel" thread. I didn't have carpal tunnel. I had a completely destroyed knee. No more cartilage. Bone on bone with every step I took (confirmed by MRI). Cortisone didn't make a bit of difference. I couldn't walk 20 feet without mind boggling pain.

That book changed my life. I can walk 10 miles (mostly) pain free now. I still don't have any cartilage. I never had surgery or did PT. The book explains it all, but the TLDR is that it's the brain that's causing the issue. You can have incredible structural issues. Herniated discs in the back. Zero cartilage in the knee. And the reason you feel pain isn't the structural issue, but your brain's response to it.

I wager that book would be life changing for 90 percent of chronic pain sufferers if they gave it a chance.

(Yeah, a lot of people are going to chime in and say that their pain is different or an MRI confirmed their structural issue or whatever. Yeah, I get it. I was there too. Frozen shoulder is almost certainly a manifestation of TMS, at least for some large number of people. For those who understand the mechanism, it's clear that 2020 is going to be a bad year for people in terms of chronic pain. It doesn't need to be.)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FOTRPJQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

The central claim of this book (from reading Amazon reviews) seems to be that chronic pain may be caused by mental/emotional distress. To me, this seems like a remarkable claim, and I'm super-skeptical without some kind of evidence.

Out of curiosity, does the author offer any such evidence in the book? Are there other books on the topic?

-Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hosfstadter)

-The Mindbody Prescription (John E. Sarno, completely cured my long-term crippling RSI that kept me from using computers and was ruining my life)

-Feeling Good (Dr. Burns, cognitive therapy mostly centered on depression, but I want to learn about this before I have depression so that I can avoid it and do 'maintenance' on myself)

-The 5 Love Languages (Gary Chapman, made me understand a lot more about how people express and receive love, and the problems that arise from mismatched languages in relationships)

-Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman (you guys probably already know this)

-The Blank Slate (Steven Pinker)

-The Snowball (Warren Buffett biography)

-Influence (Robert B. Cialdini)

-Your Money or Your Life (Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin)

-When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace (Le Ly Hayslip)

-The Halo Effect (Phil Rosenzweig)

-The LessWrong.com sequences on rationality

> I attribute a lot of what was happening to the cognitive dissonance...

I have had significant issues with cognitive dissonance in the past. I was experiencing strong RSI-like sensations, with nothing I tried relieving the pain. I believe someone on HN pointed me towards The Mindbody Prescription by Dr. Sarno, which talks about your brain causing pain in response to cognitive dissonance. It's honestly pretty weird and probably a placebo, but actively being aware of my dissonances and mentally addressing them appeared to help, and I haven't had symptoms since. (I also use an Ergodox keyboard, just in case :P )

It helped me recover 100% from what I thought was "RSI" and I no longer believe that typing can cause injury.

I bought a Unicomp Model M a few years after this recover, not for nostalgia, but to increase my typing speed and accuracy, which it did. The only downside is that it is loud.

I sound like an infomercial pitchman but that book changed my life. I had a massive structural issue that was either going mean a knee replacement or dealing with "you won't walk right ever again". Well, it turns out there was a third option.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FOTRPJQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

It sounds woo, I know. I was so fucking tired of people giving me their quack advice too. This was the one thing that made sense. And it literally changed my life.

I am always recommending The Mindbody Prescription on here and have no idea why you lot refuse to read it. There is no excuse, this topic is too important. And it would stop silly comments like yours dead in the water. Everything the article mentions make perfect sense from the perspective of unconscious emotion, and moreover, this perspective gives you great understanding of psychology and curative and even predictive capabilities.

Folks in the comments seem to be making pretty broad statements about what is good or bad, and I just want to let readers know to take everything with a huge grain of salt.

In my case, fear of making things worse was the biggest obstacle — pushing myself to trust that typing isn’t dangerous, even though it hurt, was critical in my recovery. This is awful advice for many people with RSI, though.

My advice: see a physical therapist first. They can often help, or point you in the right direction. If months pass and nothing seems to help, seek out alternative explanations and keep an open mind. Check out The Mindbody Prescription” by Dr Sarno. It was the missing puzzle piece for me.

I had been suffering from unspecific aches, extreme tiredness, insomnia, sore throats, and other non-specific symptoms for the past 8 months. I had to take months of medical leave and went through 10+ doctors, accumulating negative tests and inconsistent diagnoses as I went along. Then, despairing, I read The Mindbody Prescription by Dr. Sarno and realized that my symptoms were due to repressed unconscious emotions. Since starting a free online recovery program a couple of months ago, I've gotten 80% better and I'm planning to resume work in a couple of weeks.

I know this sounds just like more quackery, but I promise you it isn't. There's more and more peer-reviewed research supporting the theory behind PPD, and the track record of long-term recovered patients speaks for itself. Feel free to email me at me [at] bobmichael [dot] io if you or your wife would like to chat more about this.

For 1.5 years I was not able to type without pain. I was able to rid myself of this pain in weeks through a psychological approach. It's been over 7 years since then and I haven't had problems.

I also play guitar, bass guitar, and drums. It can be painful sometimes to play a lot if I haven't been practicing, but that pain goes away immediately, and I don't believe it contributes to a permanent or long-standing problem.

Ergonomics is good for being comfortable and pain-free. And exercise is good for general health. But I don't think not doing so is going to give you chronic pain.

Of course you should see a doctor to rule out diseases like multiple sclerosis.

Here is a document that explains Sarno's ideas: http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc
Google cache of it for HTML: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&v...

Keep in mind that this does not mean "it is all in your head"... The problem does cause a physical condition in your body, but the cause of it is psychological.

That said, despite the utter silliness, somehow I believed his premise that "there's no actual physical problem there, it's just in your head" and _magically_ I stopped having RSI issues. I can type curled up on a chair on my ThinkPad with no pain - before, I needed all sorts of fancy tables with nice ergo keyboards.

So, it's worth starting to read his book (Mindbody Prescription), even though you'll toss it in disgust after an hour, just on the off-chance that you, too, end up tricking yourself into not having pain.

The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain

It's the only thing that could cure my constant RSI/chronic pain after years of trying everything, and in the book he talks about fibromyalgia.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing-Body...

The idea of psychogenic disorders would have normally have sounded like esoteric BS to me, but I ended up picking up the book at the recommendation of an ex-Google coder who went through all the same things that I did. I'm glad I did; for 15$, I completely cured myself after years of trying everything else (physiotherapy, standing desk, stretching exercises, working out, various books on RSI, ergonomic chairs, keyboards, mouses, trackpads, switching hands, etc, etc), and it turns out the book takes a very scientific approach to these conditions, even if it admits that there's a lot we still don't understand about exactly how our minds work and how they can affect our bodies (it's kind of an engineering approach -- we figured out something that works, now we need to figure out why).

Highly recommended to all those of you suffering from constant back pain, neck pain, RSI, etc.

http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.htm...

That's when I stumbled upon John Sarno and his book "The mindbody prescription". I thought it's pseudoscience and I read it with very low expectations. And It's been almost four months since I have trouble using my computer.

In a nutshell, most of RSI injuries are not just physical problems and they are tightly coupled with your mind. The most important step is to acknowledge that subconscious thoughts related to pain and work along with it. Whenever I feel a tingling sensation, I yell at myself ( In my head ) that it's all in my mind and I have started to feel normal. Of course, this might not work for everyone but definitely worth a try.

And I also do lot of strength training and climbing which really helped strengthening my hands

At risk of going off-topic: I, too, suffer from RSI. As a programmer and musician, it is a double whammy for me. I have found many short-term solutions, but have recently experienced some astonishing relief from reading The Mindbody Prescription by Dr. Sarno (I believe someone here on HN mentioned it). If you think you would be open to the idea of RSI as a disorder originating in the brain as a result of buried emotional tension, you should check it out.

    1. Don't follow the conventional wisdom on RSI

    2. Don't wear a brace of any kind.

I don't warm up, don't wear braces, and have switched back to a Qwerty layout. I stay strong and healthy other ways, but I now ignore all RSI-related advice that doesn't acknowledge the "mindbody" nature of the problem. I've been symptom-free for more than a year. (This is an anecdote, so take it for what it's worth. The book's like $12, though, so you don't have much to lose.)

Yeah, I had multiple EMGs done on both hands. Nerve damage in both. You know when you're doing an EMG and it is supposed to raise up super fast and then drop down super fast in a very thin inverted V? Well mine was a plateau of a couple inches wide, that's how much nerve damage I had.

It's been over 8 years since I've had a symptom of carpal tunnel syndrome though. I type 130 words per minute and probably type the equivalent of a novel per week (I do a lot of SEO stuff in my side gigs) and never have a problem.

If you really want to learn what's causing your problems - get Healing Back Pain by John Sarno or The Mindbody Prescription (same author). Check this 20/20 segment out from several years ago - I can't find the original Google Video version that I watched, this seems to be a substitute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsR4wydiIBI

It's not "in your head". It's real physical problems. It's not "not applicable" to you because you have real physical issues that show up on tests.

Or, just ignore what I've said and carry on.

Occasionally I get flare ups where I'll feel a little discomfort in my arms, but reminding me of the lessons within Sarno's books makes it go away within a day at most, and ever since I read Sarno I have never felt that I was in too much pain to work on a computer.

I don't know if Sarno got everything right, but typing this comment without pain proves to me that he is on to something.

Don't suffer for years like I did! If you are interested, I would recommend watching this 20/20 segment with Dr. Sarno: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsR4wydiIBI (13m35s). If you search for "RSI" on Hacker News, there are some great threads in which Sarno's theory is discussed.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tension_myositis_syndrome

Sarno's argument is essentially that emotional distress (mainly, rage) manifests itself in the body through TMS (tension myositis syndrome), and that depending on the person this expresses itself as a number of different ailments (sciatica, back and neck pain, migraines) with the same underlying cause (stress that results in decreased blood flow and oxygen deprivation which cause pain in the related area).

The ideas it presents are definitely not mainstream. But it is fairly logical and scientific. There are plenty of other sources that talk about the connection between the mind and the body, but I've never seen anything present it in such a way that makes sense to me and gives ideas of how to directly apply it.

I'm not that great at explaining it in a nutshell. The wikipedia page seems to have some decent info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tension_myositis_syndrome

But the best summary I've read is this word doc:
http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc
(hit the Google cache for HTML version)

This book really turned my head around and made me realize how there are people (especially ones in the Sales & Marketing realm) out there waiting to sneak one past you. Don't be surprised (not if you can help it), if while reading the book you go "Oh my, someone actually used that trick on me!".

2. The Mindbody Prescription

I understand that some people are skeptical about the theory (TMS) that Dr John Sarno proposes (I was too at first). I'm no neuro-scientist to attest anything in the book, but empirical evidence (experiences of mine and a few others even on HN) seems to suggest the possibility of Dr Sarno getting it right. Anyway, it seemed to help me overcome a problem I had with my wrists and I'm thankful.

However, despite me thinking the book was rubbish and tossing it shortly, my RSI problems disappeared. I guess the suggestion that pain wasn't actually physical in source was enough for the pain to stop.

I've gone from being dominated by RSI problems to not giving it much thought at all.

The placebo effect is real, sometimes even when the patient is aware that it's a placebo.

Note: I don't think the book is correct. There are plenty of phenomenon that we don't understand, and not having a real explanation is not reason to just make one up and assert its correctness without evidence.

I suggest reading "The Mindbody Prescription" by Dr John E Sarno. Here is one of the better summary of the ideas (in Word doc format): http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc

Personally, I have been pain free for over 10 years thanks to this.

Here is the story of someone else who cured his RSI pain using this method, it is very similar to what I experienced: http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.htm...

I would very strongly recommend reading that book (which will set you back a whopping $10) before undergoing any back surgery.

(I'm not a doctor, this is not medical advice, YMMV and all that. Still. If you suffer from chronic back pain, or carpal syndrome, read the book.)

This cured me of 3 years of horrible RSI pain. I did go to Doctors, physiotherapists, chiropractors and acupuncturists and had anti-inflammatory creams, you name it. Nothing worked for more than a couple days... and this was a last resort. I wish I would have tried it sooner, but I doubt I would have given it a shot if I wasn't desperate.

Read this for a well written account from a hacker: http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.htm...

Then buy the book and read it. It'll cost you less than an MS Natural Keyboard, not to mention all the other crap (wrist braces, heating pads, etc etc).

+1. Several people at work have reported that "The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain" helped their wrist pain go away.

YMMV. But just as doctors shouldn't dismiss the idea symptoms are due to a "real" (read: physical) condition, folks suffering shouldn't dismiss the idea they can be cured (or greatly improved) through non-physical means, even if there is some physical origin.

I haven't tried this book myself. I've had wrist/forearm/hand problems (weakness, tingling/numbness, pain, loss of flexibility, diagnosed as carpal tunnel and tendonitis), but they largely went away before I'd heard of the book. I think a bunch of things helped me, including wrist exercises suggested by a physical therapist, TENS (administered by the physical therapist), time, Qi Gong, meditation/relaxation techniques (I'd always had a lot of muscle tension, including tension headaches), and (later on) resuming rock climbing and weight lifting. So some combination of physical and mental changes.

http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.htm...

My experience has been virtually identical to Aaron's: after years of struggling with RSI, my symptoms disappeared within a few weeks of starting the treatment in The Mindbody Prescription, and they haven't returned in over two years. To quote Aaron: "Now I can type for as long as I want, on any keyboard, in any position, without stretching or taking breaks, all without any pain."

[0] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindbody-Prescription-Healing-Body-P...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269951

That's a Word doc, you can view the Google cache for HTML:
http://74.125.93.104/search?q=cache:6ZpktcdKS0kJ:www.rsi.dea...

That's just a short overview of the ideas, but reading the book "The Mindbody Prescription" by Dr John E Sarno is what "cured" me of what I thought was RSI. I recommend that anyone who thinks they have carpel tunnel syndrome or "RSI" read that book.

The Mindbody Prescription [1] and The Divided Mind [2] are two of his books.

My interest in this started with the motivation to get some relief for the RSI-like symptoms and it's been part of my recovery for a few weeks together with the improved ergonomics.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing-Body...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Divided-Mind-Epidemic-Disorders/dp...

Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
http://www.amazon.com/Existentialism-Dostoevsky-Sartre-Revis...

A Kierkegaard Anthology
http://www.amazon.com/Kierkegaard-Anthology-Soren/dp/0691019...

Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto by Anneli Rufus
http://www.annelirufus.com/partyofone/

The Mindbody Prescription by John E. Sarno
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing-Body...