Who else wants to stay healthy, and fit while working in front of a computer day in and day out?
You have been using computers since your childhood. Now, you have a long list of discomforts and ailments to your credit.
Your doctor says that it is the nature of your work that has made you an unhealthy person through the years.
You are getting in worse shape mentally and physically as the years roll on, from the life you have chosen working in front of a computer!
What next? I have heard so many cases like this from people from different walks of life.
Most of them are professionals like software engineers, transcriptionists, medical coders, data entry operators, secretaries, and animators who spend almost the entire day in front of computers.
I myself have been suffering from so many disorders at a very young age due to the simple reason of not taking much care of my health while sitting in front of the computer.
Now, I have learned the hard way from my own experience. I do give advise to my friends and relatives on healthy computing if this topic happens to come across in our conversations.
The first time I had to sit back and think if this machine was giving me more trouble than comfort, is when I had this flinching pain on my neck, which radiated down to my arms.
I realized that I had spent almost 5 hours fully without even partially tilting or turning my head. Complete concentration for once seemed detrimental to my goals.
I had to spend almost a week with physiotherapy, mending the damage I had done to my neck..
I did some research on this subject and realized that there were other people who had similar problems using this electronic medium.
One of the girls I talked to said that her eyes are not as moist as they must be, and that she has trouble keeping them open for a normal period.
Some probing into the nature of her work revealed that she used a very bright monitor, and usually examined her work inches away from it.
Her job involved assessing the color values of graphic designs and had to take a ‘closer’ look on the hues and tones and match it with the pantone shade she had in her hand.
She would assess the pantone shade color with the screen color and then decide if the values are matching. What she did not realize is that color output seen on the screen will not be what she would get in a printed output.
I advised her to change the practice she was following.
I asked her to keep the monitor brightness optimum, and not to match the pantone shade card with the screen output. I asked her to take a sample print output and match the pantone shade with the print in whichever light the artwork were to be displayed.
I also advised her to take breaks often and look at colors and visuals that do not strain or confuse the eye.
I asked her to stand up, walk up to her window and then look at the trees in a distance, and objects in different distances so that the focusing of the eye gets some exercise.
I asked her to go back to work only after she takes a splash or two of cold water on her face, making sure it thoroughly rinsed her eyes.
Six months later, I met her at a party. She wanted to tell me how good she was feeling after she had followed my instructions.
She had her tear glands working well now (of course with some extra medication that her ophthalmologist asked to take).
She had considerable improvement in her work also since her eyes were not bothering her anymore. She even said that looking at the distant green trees worked on her like meditation and that when she went back to work after that, her mind was clear and the energy she had was amazing.
I must confess that I was surprised myself. I had given her a few tips on reducing the strain she had on her eyes, and it was working wonders in many other ways too.
A few other tips I gave my friends, yielded similar results. It sure felt good know I was able to help a few of my close friends with the pain they have been feeling for years!
As my advices started giving positive results, my friends asked me to share my experience through a book so that I can save the trouble of hundreds of thousands of people with my experience, who suffer from such ailments?
Hence, I started thinking from this angle and the result is this book on “Healthy Computing“.
When I was a little younger and was suffering from some computer-related ailments, I had consulted my friends, relatives, and even orthopedic surgeons to get a positive and encouraging reply.
Some of them told me that there is no going back and you have to live with it as long as it took.. Some of them showed me certain exercises to suppress my pain.
Apart from these, I have spent so much on my scans, meds, and even treatments, but with no desired results.
I have always wondered if I had some guide to the healthy usage of computer when I needed it so badly, I wouldn’t have had to suffer as much as I did.
Nevertheless there is no good a teacher as plain old experience.
This book has taken contribution from my personal experience as well as the experience of people from different professions who suffer from related disorders, in-depth research on eyes and related disorders, optometric topics, and many more.
It’s designed to provide you with fast access to all of the information you need to write your speech and to deliver it effectively.
Some valuable information you will learn from this book are:
- Seating Positions
- Selection and Arrangement of the Components for the Workstation
- Probable risks and feasible solutions
- Recipes – the consolidated bunch of best practices on each topic
- Workstation ergonomics
- Workstation accessories usage
- Self assessment questionnaire
- Disorders, Ailments and Cure
- Medical Awareness and Training
- Occu-Bright, can it help your eyes?
- Dangerous GAS from COMPUTERS
- Chemicals From Computers
- Experiences of some computer users from different walks of life.
- 4 Steps to Setting Up Your Computer Workstation
- Some Exercises for Computer Users
- Dragon Naturally Speaking: Speak-in to your computer.
