It's worth looking into other things that significantly affect your health like stress and diet too. It's unlikely the problem actually originates where you think, and focusing on only your shoulders or your wrists or whatever will lead you to learn to live with your problem rather than resolve it. I never hear anything from RSI sufferers to even suggest that they're trying to cure themselves. It's all compensation and coping.

It wasn't until it dawned on me that I was unhealthy in a lot of other ways and that improving overall health is the best way to improve the health of any one part of your body that I started to make progress.

It's worth seeing a doctor to rule out anything easily treatable or serious or to get a diagnosis like Nagareboshi, but I'd run away if he prescribes pain killers or suggests something like carpal tunnel surgery. Deep tissue massage, acupuncture etc will help, but they're just expensive pain killers and won't provide a long-term solution.

Javizy Wrote:I never hear anything from RSI sufferers to even suggest that they're trying to cure themselves. It's all compensation and coping.

This is because a lot of the time the 'real' problem is 'spending that many hours a day doing activity X is not something the human body is designed to do'. Stopping activity X may not be possible or not acceptable, so people try to figure out how do do activity X without permanent damage.

Stretches and deep tissue massage (as well as braces and posture corrective measures) can let a person do more hours per day without permanently damaging themselves, although there is still a limit and reducing activities may be necessary for some people. Anyway, they aren't glorified painkillers, they're actually -treatments- ... or perhaps 'preventive measures' is more accurate. (I don't know about acupuncture... )

Overall good health is, as you say, important as well for a variety of reasons, but in terms of RSI it lets your body recover from continuous damage and strain more quickly possibly avoiding permanent damage.