Health Tips and Tricks

Question:

I'm violinist and get tremendous pains in my wrist and arms. At night, these sometimes run through my arm like an electric current. Painkilllers don't help. I sometimes bandage my arm, which does give some relief from the pain. Can you help?

Answer:

You are suffering from what is commonly called repetitive strain injury (RSl). When you play, you hold the bow with your fingers and move the arm repeatedly. These repetitive movements use one group of muscles over and over again. The muscles get strained and then injured because they rarely get a chance to recover properly. Musicians are not the only ones affected. There are many cases of this problem occurring in sportsmen (RSl was often referred to as tennis elbow), writers, typists and other manual workers such as decorators. RSI is also a major problem in offices where computers are used. Many employees have sued their companies for compensation for work-related injury.

If you cause muscles to contract repeatedly, they will do so rhythmically until they reach a point of extreme fatigue. Then they have to rest in order to replenish their energy before starting to work - that is, to contract - again. In order to work, muscles need oxygen, which burns the glucose in the muscles, producing the waste products carbon dioxide and water. In your case, your work demands that they contract all the time with no time to rest and replenish. That means the demand for oxygen is continuous and excessive. The result is that some glucose molecules are only partially burnt off and this leads to the formation of the waste product lactic acid. It is the lactic acid that causes cramps and pain in the muscles.

The extremities of the muscles form cordlike tendons that attach the muscles to the bones. The tendons are usually white in colour because the blood supply to them is poor. (Muscles with an abundance of blood are red.) When muscles contract repeatedly with no recovery time, the tendons get traumatized and inflamed, a condition called tendinitis. While overworked muscles can recover well with rest massage and sleep, overworked tendons often don't recover fully because of their poor blood supply, so they become hard and stringy.