What are the physical effects of regular computer usage?

March 31, 2013 11:59 AM

What are the physical effects of regular computer usage? I'm looking for good, recent, resources that answer this question, preferably that are empirical/science-based and understandable to someone who has a basic, non-professional understanding of anatomy.

Articles, websites, etc. are all good. Overviews, rather than very in-depth tomes, are ideal. Something like a demo of what happens to bones and muscles when X action is repeated over several years would be great. Open to resources form various fields. Taking "computer usage" here to mean 9-to-5 on a computer in the office, plus recreational use in other places (i.e. not hardcore gamers or professional coders).

posted by scribbler to Health & Fitness (2 answers total)

I'm not sure how helpful this is in terms of "basic, non-professional" understanding of anatomy, but short of reading ergonomics textbooks, your best bet for empirical and science-based information is to go directly to the source: the scientific articles themselves.

A quick search of PubMed for the terms "ergonomics computer use" yielded some interesting hits. Of course, no single article (unless it's a review article) can summarize all physical effects on all parts of the body of all types of computer use. And, due to the fact that medical/science articles are what they are, there is no way of concretely saying "X will do Y;" many of these papers use the terms risk and potential.

Anyway, there seem to be a lot of articles in the Scandinavian Journal of Work and Environmental Health. For example:

1. Computer users' risk factors for developing shoulder, elbow and back symptoms
2. Risk factors for persistent elbow, forearm and hand pain among computer workers

If you go to either of those links, PubMed can also find similar articles.

Good luck!
posted by ArgyleGargoyle at 1:24 PM on March 31, 2013

Computer Vision Syndrome
posted by Thorzdad at 5:43 AM on April 1, 2013