Health : What do you do to avoid tendinitis and Epicondylite?

Lennart 2017-12-11 08:28:00 UTC #1

Maybe some of you might still not know this, maybe some already had experience with this, but coming from a place where i can spend 10 to 12 hours a day drawing i tend to have sore elbow / wrist, hardened arm and hand.

As i had to go through chronical tendinitis 7 years ago before i change my drawing habits, (changing position, using a stack of tissues under my elbow to draw, using a special glove to limit the movement of the wrist as it forces you to draw "differently" ) and limit the use of in hand / in wrist tendons.

I thought drawing on a graphics tablet would help me relieve some of this, but it's not allways the case, now i adjusted the sensitivity to be very high so i spend less strength on the tablet surface to make lines i really want.

Drinking water as often as you can and eating fibers, fish and replacing animal fat with fish fat or something that has a good measure of omega 3 ( fluidify your movement even when "cold") to help hydrate and maintain your tendons too.

Maybe you have other tricks you're using to maintain your tendons / hand health, i shared some of mine, if you have anything interesting to add with me and prevent the rest of the artist to fall into this medical problem and being forced to stop drawing for 4 to 6 months (it's usually the time it takes for a full recover from this) i'll add this to my routine and see how it goes, and i advise any of you to really take care of your expressive "tools" as soon as possible if you foresee doing this for years to come.

Maybe you have some daily habits for this, maybe you have old baba yaga's grandma's cure or medicine, maybe you plundge your hand in a bucket of puddle or warm mud / water ? What do you do and how effective it is for you ?

Emberguard 2017-12-11 10:10:49 UTC #2

What's your work schedule like? Personally myself I don't keep track of it, but when I was at a 5 day workshop for painting we'd take a break for at least 5 mins every half hour no matter what. I found it frustrating at first because I thought it'd be non-stop work and just wanted to paint. But this was a professional that had been doing this for I think we worked out something like 55 years. What I found during that time is taking those breaks actually made my work far more productive then they otherwise would have been and also made it more enjoyable. If they had any arthritis they certainly didn't show it and although I've had RSI in the past it never gave me any problems during that workshop. I think the breaks really helped.

If you're not breaking your work schedule up already, consider getting into the habit of stopping yourself every 30 mins for a small 5 min break. Get up, walk around, have a cup of tea if you need to. See if it helps at all.

Lennart 2017-12-11 10:28:12 UTC #3

That's actually pretty interesting to know, these 5 mins break every 30 mins.

To answer, no i tend to draw non stop for like 3 / 4 hours, and as i have deep anxiety disorders and a bit of nervous depression with it, drawing allways helped me relax and evade my own health problems and some of my life "problems" too.

As of now, talking about my schedule is... i have no schedule for now, because it's the winter and it became very... what's the word... wonky ? troubled ? Especially when winter depression is getting the best of me for now and with a lot of my health problems, i can only sleep in the day, working a lot at night, or when i wake up, so it's like, i draw for 3 / 4 hours, i take a break, i'm too exhausted to draw, my bed is near my computer so when i feel weak i just sleep, if i try to sleep at night it's too cold for me to breath (it's a social location house, meaning it's a dirt cheap house with a low bill but the isolation is pretty bad and there is a lot of humidity in the walls, also i am very allergic to dust and acarians and i have psoriasis from anxiety on my whole scalp, i try not to scratch anything it makes things worse xD ) and i get exhausted from "forcing" to breath so i kind of draw / live the night and sleep in the morning. (anyway i get dizzy and stunned with anxiety / anti depressive for a part of the day and my lines are... not as good as some other times )

But not to worry too much about that when spring comes most of these health problems kind of dissipate with the weather becoming better, i can go out more often and breathe normally, i get less stressed, it's really, really winter that is pretty bad for me.

I think i should use some alarm or something like this to force me taking breaks because being most of the time on my own, i can't keep track of the time i'm spending drawing just like you so, i need something as a reminder, i really need to get up more often and try to exercise to get more energy in my system, i take multivitamins in the winter, it helps trying to stay awake longer.

I would take walking breaks every 2 / 3 hours or so, but you suggest doing this more often than that, i'm writting everything down and try new routines based on other people experience with this.

Edit : Also it's pretty interesting to know that he has been doing this for 55 years, so it comes from a very long experience and might hold very serious roots on how to manage your health / time and actually allow the brain to step out of the work and step in with, maybe, a different perspective

Chopythes 2017-12-11 12:27:25 UTC #4

I've got tendinitis in both my arms, upper and lower parts of the elbow 8D
(I was 13 when I first headed to the doctor's office for it but apparently you can't have that at such a young age and dismissed me)

It's not fun at all tho. What I've done to prevent my arms/wrists from hurting is to angle my work area, so it's a 40% angle.
I also tend to lean on my left arm/hand when I draw, so my chin has a support and I'm able to move my right side of the body more freely.

(I too, have anxiety and drawing relaxes me, tho, I have the attention span of a godfish, so I almost always end up taking breaks every 10 minutes xD)
But when my arm starts to hurt, I take a break and lift it up into the air a couple of times while clenching it to a fist.

Right before I'm going off to sleep, I massage both muscles on both arms. I've noticed that the pain is almost always gone the day after <3

Edit: Also, try to do things more with the non-dominant hand too, like having the mouse on the other side. (Mine's placed on left and I'm right handed, only to save my wrists xD)

Lennart 2017-12-11 17:28:19 UTC #5

I'm right handed too, what you describe with leaning to your left arm / hand to free the weight on the opposite side of the body is an interesting take on it, i don't know about the 40% angle, so, if you are drawing on a graphics tablet, you would use something under it to angle it 40% in front of you right ?

I was already doing what you are doing with the mouse, using it with my left hand to at least limit the already overusage of the right hand that draws all the time ^^

I will add the 40% angle, the frequent pauses, and extending both arm in the air and clenching multiple times, this i felt by doing it relieve some stress in my arm.

Thank you both for adding your personnal experience with this !

Of course it's a bit selfish, as it helps me, but i also hope it can help others reading this in the future if they ask themselves the same kind of question.

Chopythes 2017-12-11 17:52:08 UTC #6

I have the built in stand on my Wacom, but the other parts are an IKEA laptop stand and a cut off closet door 8D
It doesn't look like much, but it has improved my posture as well as not straining my wrist too much.

I actually came to this thread to look and see if there's any more tips I could add to my already pretty full stretching schedule, but you can't have enough when it comes to the health

So nah, I don't think of it as selfish!
These threads pop up once in a while, but I think it should be talked about more often as the hands are after all the tools and they're kind of important!

keii4ii 2017-12-11 18:25:12 UTC #7

I'm saving up for a Cintiq, myself. I was out of town for nearly 3 weeks recently, and did not have access to my digital drawing tools (Intuos & Photoshop) during that time. My shoulder enjoyed a nice break... Even when I was sketching on paper, it didn't bother my shoulder at all.

Then I used a computer (actually an iPad, but same posture) and BAM, the pain came back.

Conclusion: when drawing on paper, my posture does not hurt my shoulder. It's only when I draw on my Intuos that I assume a bad posture. I'm saving up to get that Cintiq Pro 24 after it comes out. It's expensive, but it will be cheaper than the hospital bills I would pay down the road to repair a horribly damaged shoulder.

My wrist has not been affected negatively from all the drawing I've done all these years. It's just my shoulder. I think it's because I've been working on big tablets. Larger surface = bigger motions = stress skips the wrist and goes to the shoulder.

indagold 2017-12-11 22:07:47 UTC #8

I've used the computer to draw since I was 6 and so far never really got anything besides a sore back, legs and sore hand once in a blue moon. No eye strain, headaches or anything else. Either I became immune or have a secret blood cot the size of texas in my legs and i'm gonna drop dead in a week. ( ◔ ʖ̯ ◔ )

beta1042 2017-12-11 22:54:20 UTC #9

Not exactly what you're asking for, but I had a post about stretches for this and got some great links and suggestions, so you may want to check the answers in there out: