Self Care
Laptop computers can cause significant pain in the neck, back, hands and wrists. I have seenmany patients who have had severe disc herniations caused by improper use of a laptop. Following is a news article on this issue and my suggestions as to what you can do to prevent these problems.
Danielle Weatherbee knows that her notebook computer is her undoing, but she can't help it.
As a medical supplies saleswoman, she's on the
road constantly, spending much of the day hunched over her keyboard at
coffee shops, on planes, in bed, even in cabs.
The painful result for the 29-year-old from
Seattle is the same as it is for the growing legions of laptop users
across the USA: Her neck and wrists ache. Her doctor warned her she
already has the skeletal health of a 
50-year-old.
"But what can I really do?" wonders Weatherbee
as she looks up from her Compaq laptop to take a sip of latte at
ReJAVAnate Coffee Lounge in Las Vegas. "My laptop is the only way to go
for my work. I couldn't live without it."
Weatherbee's woes are becoming increasingly common.
No nationwide studies document the trend, but
anecdotally, doctors and physical therapists say that as portable
computers become cheaper, more powerful, smaller and lighter, and as
wireless Internet access becomes ubiquitous, thousands are suffering
persistent back, shoulder, wrist and neck aches.
The culprit: The keyboard and screen on laptops are too close to each other.
"When you use a laptop, you can make your head
and neck comfortable, or you can make your hands and arms comfortable,
but it's impossible to do both," says Tom Albin of Human Factors and
Ergonomics Society, a national think tank that has issued a standards
report on ergonomics of computer workstations.
College students, who increasingly are required
to own laptops and use them in lecture halls built for 20th-century
academic life, are having a particularly rough time.
When Duke University ergonomics guru Tamara
James appeared before first-year medical students last month to raise
their awareness of the computer posture problems they can expect to see
in future patients, James was bombarded by ergonomics complaints from
the students themselves.
"They sit in lecture halls with built-in tables,
hunched over their laptops eight hours a day, and you can see it's very
uncomfortable with them," James says. "Even if they could move their
chairs, that would be a help."
Nearly 49 million laptops were sold worldwide in
2004, almost double the number sold in 2000, an increase from 20.3% of
the computer market to 28.5%.
Meanwhile, the cost plummeted to $1,116 per unit
from a U.S. average of $2,126 in 2000, according to IDC, a Framingham,
Mass., technology market research firm.
Analysts predict U.S. laptop sales could overtake desktop sales by 2008.
Few health studies have been conducted, but one
study in 2002 showed that laptop users complain of pain in more and
different body parts than desktop users, says researcher Carolyn
Sommerich of the Institute of Ergonomics at Ohio State University.
That's because desktop users have the ability to
set the top of the screen at eye level and the keyboard about 20 inches
below that for optimum posture.
"People who use desktop computers have a fair
amount of muscle and skeletal complaints, too, but laptops are, in a
way, kind of a step backward in design," Sommerich says.
The answer is to find ways to replicate the
upright and flexible posture of the desktop experience for notebook
computers, ergonomic experts say.
Laptop accessories aimed at improving ergonomic
conditions are a growing niche. Logitech leads the way with wireless
mice and keyboards.
Several manufacturers sell stands to prop up
laptops. TableTote sells a $50 plastic portable stand with telescoping
legs that packs up to the same size as a bulky notebook and weighs
about 3 pounds.
While many of those offerings aren't practical
for laptop users who frequently travel, major computer makers also are
starting to address the problem, says Rob Bernstein, deputy editor of
the gadgets magazine Sync.
Toshiba announced earlier this year that it
would soon sell a laptop that allows screen and keyboard to become two
pieces to allow more flexible positioning.
And, Bernstein noted, some manufacturers are
experimenting with laser keyboards that shine images of a keyboard on
any surface and allow computer users to type on it.
"The technology is finally coming through, so
people are starting to find clever ways to use it to deal with this,"
Bernstein says.
Experts say the sooner, the better. Ergonomists
increasingly are concerned that laptop use among children is causing
what were once considered old-age pains at an ever-younger age.
Worse yet, many fear that those who have learned
poor ergonomics in their youth will find it difficult to learn better
posture later on. "I see a good number of kids come in with lower back
pain," says chiropractor David Schwartz of the Back Care Center in
Dumont, N.J.
"Have you seen pictures of kids using computers? They lie on their stomachs on the floor and work on their elbows.
"That's a prescription for a lifetime of neck pain, back pain and lower back pain."
James, the Duke University ergonomist, is similarly worried.
"I hate the fact that these are the workers of
tomorrow, and they have upper-extremity problems before they even get
to the workplace," she says. "That doesn't bode well at all."
By Steve Friess, Special for
USA TODAY
This is an
