Yoga helps alleviate work-related pain
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MONTEREY, Calif. — Camille Palma, MD, a vitreoretinal surgeon and trained yoga instructor, knows how to use one talent to work out the kinks caused by the other.
“We don’t think of ourselves as athletes, but we are sitting and standing and moving around and contorting our bodies around all of the equipment, and that’s why we hurt at the end of the day,” Palma said at the Women in Ophthalmology Summer Symposium.
Ergonomics has increasingly become a relevant topic, she said.
“What we’ve learned over the years is that everything we do is bad for our bodies professionally — we sit, we do repeated movements all the time — and every single study that has been done has shown that the more that we do these repetitive movements, the higher our risk,” Palma said.
Vitreoretinal surgeons and women are at the highest risk, she said.
“One of the reasons that women are at the highest risk is because our equipment was not designed with our bodies in mind. When the bodies were taken into consideration, the average man was taken into consideration. Have you ever struggled to rest your elbow at the slit lamp and still reach the eyeball? I have a short forearm. That just doesn’t work for me,” she said.
In one study of Indian ophthalmologists, up to 70% reported back pain. Risk factors included age younger than 50 years, female gender, prolonged work hours, awkward positions, and use of indirect ophthalmoscopy and lasers, Palma said in the presentation.
“This idea that the studies show that women are more vulnerable, it’s because our bodies are different, and we’re interacting with equipment that was never designed for the human body to begin with,” she said.
The same study reported that yoga and exercise alleviated the pain.
“This is where we pull in yoga,” Palma said. “Yoga is one of the few activities that you can do that combines strength, flexibility and balance. We need all of these things and more in the clinic.”
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Keynote session: How did I stay here? Mindfulness mentality. Presented at: Women in Ophthalmology Summer Symposium; Aug. 25-28, 2022; Monterey, California (hybrid meeting).
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