Several years ago we only had the conventional mouse.
With this standard mouse, the hand has no other option but to grip and pinch the body in order to move the mouse, often from the wrist. Hand and fingers hover above the mouse buttons to prevent inadvertent clicking.

Then, there was the vertical mouse which was meant to be an alternative to the standard mouse, creating a better mobility. New university research showed, however, that any vertical position forces your hand in a handshake position. This results in significant stresses on the interosseous membrane in your forearm, which connects ulna and radius. It also affects your thumb and finger muscles. Due to the vertical, handshake position, gripping and pinching is still required, to handle the mouse.

The truly ergonomic HandShoe Mouse is the next step in the evolution of the mouse.
It was designed by a medical university and created to counter all the negative effects.
It supports your fingers, hand palm and wrist under an ideal slanted angle.

In this position the interosseous membrane is fully relaxed and there’s no more gripping and pinching!

In this one mintue video we show you the details of the evolution of the mouse:

Stop Reaching!

Reaching for your mouse or using a mouse that not fully supports your hand, forces your wrist in an awkward bent position which may lead to serious neural effects.

Let’s explain:

Excessive pressure on the median and ulnar nerves, which control your hand and fingers, will first be noticed by a feeling of pins and needles in the fingers, followed by loss of sensation and even burning pain.

This is generally called carpal tunnel syndrome.

Two separate parts of the hand can be affected:
pinky plus ring finger and the remaining part of the hand. Special attention should be paid to support the pinky side of the hand which is served by the more exposed ulnar nerve which runs through a separate tunnel. A minute bone, the pisiform, acts like a protecting shield. So if you push your hand on the desk and force it in a gripping, claw-like position you stand a good chance to experience pins and needles and the burning pain.

Working from the wrist and pressing down on the desktop can increase this risk.

The special shape of the HandShoe mouse provides full support of the hand and fingers to prevent these carpal tunnel complaints.

To make it even more clear, we made a special one minute video to show you why it is important to use a proper ergonomic mouse. It won’t be a surprise to you that the HandShoe Mouse helps to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome.

Fundamental research by a Dutch university has shown that extending your hand and continous hovering of your fingers above the buttons of a conventional computer mouse causes an un-interrupted excessive load of your hand and fingers. The same study shows that this is also the case when using most, so called, ergonomic mice.  Professor Han-Ming-Chen of national Taiwan university proved that the use of any non-slanted mouse will cause discomfort in your forearms and shoulders while using a mouse with a suitable slanted angle provides a more neutral hand position. It reduces forearm and shoulder muscle activity and thus the risk of RSI and carpal tunnel syndrome.

A too large slanted angle will again result in higher muscle activity and thus increase risk. On top of this it has been shown that continuous low intensity muscle activity may damage the finer muscle tissue, also known as the cinderella effect.

Field research has shown that the ideal, slanted HandShoe Mouse fulfills all ergonomic requirements as concluded from the world wide, extensive, university based research.

Watch the one minute ergonomic mouse video:

When we designed the wireless HandShoe Mouse we wanted to provide as much freedom as possible. First of all you should be able to work with the mouse for several weeks before re-charging the battery and secondly you may want sufficient distance between the mouse and the communication antenna.

So we fitted a large lithium ion battery and made sure the battery life is such, that you can use the HandShoe Mouse for many hours a day, seven days a week. Normally the battery is still not empty after four weeks. We advise you, however, to charge at regular intervals, for example once a week on the same day during lunch, as long as you keep your computer switched on. If you forget it and your battery is almost fully run down, you will be warned by a flashing light under the translucent scroll wheel. You then have to connect the mouse cable to charge the battery. You can continue using the mouse, as long as you leave the antenna in place for communication. When the battery is totally flat, you may have to wait a couple of minutes as the mouse needs at least some power to work.

Watch the one minute video showing you how to charge the HandShoe Mouse battery:

More information about how to use the HandSoe Mouse is available on our HandShoe Mouse FAQ page.

Repetitive Strain Injuries – The Same Old Story

By: Guest author Izzy Woods

Your grandparents must have told you dozens of stories about how they used to write with a pen before the great upgrade arrived – the typewriter. What they will never tell you is the problems typewriters caused for users even before electric models came in.

Repetitive strain injuries have been around for decades, but many didn’t know what the pain was and what caused it. To give an example; if you typed 60 words per minute and worked just a six hour day – so you still took your lunch break – you’d have typed around 18,000 key strokes each hour. Each movement required 8 ounces of pressure which equates to 54,000 pounds being pressed by fingers attached to sore wrists.

27 Tons of Arm Pressure

This is the equivalent of 27 tons of pressure being applied to your hand muscles each day. And remember, there was no delete button back then so if you made a mistake, you probably had to start all over again.

The addition of electricity reduced the amount of pressure needed to type, but you still had to keep your hands in the same position all day long so you could type faster – more words each minute. Then came the computer and then the mouse.

Instead of moving ten fingers around the keyboard, we now moved to one position on the right of the keyboard, even if you were left handed. (Left handed mice came much later.) Yes, you still typed with one or both hands, but most movements had to fit around the mouse.

Then the mouse evolved. Many different styles, sizes and so called ergonomic options became available, but they still didn’t address the main problem – the need for the wrist to remain in one place for hours at a time and more significantly, at the wrong angle when you need to apply pressure.

Government Reports

The U.S. department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) tells us that repetitive strain injury is the country’s most widespread and expensive health problem. The difficulty affects hundreds of thousands of workers across the U.S. with a price tag estimated at more than $20 billion each year in compensation for workers.

Almost two-thirds of all occupational illnesses relate to the wrist, elbow or shoulder. The most usual injury is carpal tunnel syndrome. The words are so well known these days that the medical term doesn’t need explaining.

OSHA reported that repetitive motions, like gripping tools, scanning groceries and typing, caused the longest nonappearances from occupations. On average the time away could last up to 23 days. There are so many carpal tunnel injuries that surgeons now report that repair is the second most common hospital procedure.

And the problem is likely to get worse as we spend more time at our desks. After a full day at work, you rush to turn your home computer on and either surf or play games for hours on end until it’s time to go back to work again. Most games on computers are played via the mouse. So is there a solution to the problem?

A Change in Style

Perhaps there is. The Handshoe mouse is one of the most advanced solutions to enable you to handle your computer work without strain. Available in both left and right hand versions (because, in case you haven’t noticed, our hands are different) it has a new design that helps people with RSI back to work much quicker.

One of the key aspects of the mouse is a rest for the thumb, which is an alternative to gripping the mouse with the thumb while getting it ready to click for web navigation. Maybe this mouse will help you use the computer more comfortably and will get people out of the reclining chair and back to work.

More information about repetitive strain injuries on this HandShoe Mouse blog.

If you use an ergonomic mouse or not, this information will show you that you should stop reaching while using your ergonomic mouse to prevent shoulder pain.

Do your neck and shoulders ever feel stiff, after a days work behind your PC or laptop?

This is mainly caused by the large muscles, which run along the upper part of your back up to the base of your scull, the so called trapezius or trap muscles. You can feel them when stretching one arm forward and touching the area between your neck and shoulder with your other hand.
Then you will clearly feel that reaching for mouse and keyboard forces these muscles to be unnecessarily active.

Various studies show the importance of a relaxed posture which also means not to reach when using your mouse.
Some people believe that providing support at the wrist is sufficient, but you can feel yourself that this doesn’t reduce the strain on the neck -shoulder area.
Electro myogram measurements have proven the positive effect of supporting your arm.

The handshoe mouse provides support for hand and fingers to allow the forearm to relax.
Make sure you also support your forearm on your desktop or arm rest, which prevents reaching.
Now your neck and shoulders will feel relaxed, even after a hard days work!

Ergonomic Mouse Video – Stop Reaching

The short ergonomic mouse video below shows why you should stop reaching when using an ergonomic mouse.

The truly ergonomic HandShoe Mouse is now offering a brand new ergonomic mouse for the left hand in sizes Small, Medium and Large. This ergonomic mouse also has a reduced click force for the mouse buttons which makes the user experience even better. Available at the end of September 2011.

Ergonomic Mouse in Three Sizes

Hippus, the owner and producer of the patented, truly ergonomic mouse,the HandShoe Mouse, is pleased to introduce the new version for the left hand. This new ergonomic mouse model will be mass produced in sizes Small, Medium, Large and comes with a lighter “click force” to operate the mouse buttons.

This will give the user a very comfortable ergonomic experience. Later this year the lighter”click force” will also be made available for the right hand version.

Until recently the left hander was only available as a handmade mouse at considerable higher costs but with the larger production volume the left hand version is now available at a price comparable to the right hand version of the HandShoe Mouse.

The unique patented shape of the HandShoe Mouse is based on many years of research and testing by several medical universities.

Ergonomic Mouse Features

The most important features of the HandShoe Mouse are:

1. full support of you hand and fingers at the proven ideal angle of 25-30 degrees
2. no possibility for “gripping and pinching”, a major cause for RSI and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
3. no friction between the skin of your hand and the desk top

You can now check it out on the new website of the HandShoe Mouse.

HandShoe Mouse: The Only Mouse That Fits Like A Glove!

We would like to explain why size matters when you select an ergonomic mouse.

First of all, we are not telling you any news if we say that different people have different hand sizes.
Secondly, several universities have found, through extensive functional and anatomical research, that an ergonomic mouse should support your hand at an angle of twenty five to thirty degrees.
That is proven to be the ideal angle for your hand to be fully relaxed.

Ergonomic Mouse Research Shows How To Relax Your Hand

Forget about a conventional, horizontal mouse or a vertical mouse.
With those mice your hand is not fully relaxed because you still need to grip and pinch the mouse in order to hold on to it.

The truly ergonomic HandShoe Mouse comes in three different sizes, small, medium and large, to make sure that your fingers can easily click the mouse buttons without lifting them. This is the difference between “one size fits all” and “an ergonomic mouse that fully supports your hand”.

Anatomical university research has also shown the importance of finger support in such a natural relaxed position, because otherwise it may lead to complaints. The handshoe mouse fulfills all ergonomic requirements and is your most ideal, truly ergonomic mouse.

So just get your hand on a HandShoe Mouse and feel the difference!

Ergonomic Mouse Video Shows It All:

Bio Design of the HandShoe Mouse

The bio design of the HandShoe mouse is based on the inside contour of your hand.
Just put your hand on this mouse and experience how natural and comfortable it feels.
Your hand is supported under an angle that allows easy movement, also from the wrist.
You don’t have to hold on to the handshoe mouse.

Ergonomic Mouse Relaxes Your Hand

The shape of this ergonomic mouse enables you to work with it, while your hand is fully relaxed.
Your hand, fingers and thumb are draped on the HandShoe Mouse, that’s why it feels so good.
To create full relaxation of your hand and wrist, you must support your forearm on the armrest of your chair or on your desktop.
Otherwise your deep neck muscles will get strained. You probably know what it feels like.

Prevent Mouse Pain

All you have to do now is slide the mouse over your desktop and of course select, click and scroll.
Finally, be aware that some muscles in your forearm are used extensively when you move your hand sideways which can become painful. These muscles will then start to protest while certain nerves get compressed.

This may lead to pain in your wrist but, when used correctly, your HandShoe Mouse prevents the mouse pain.

Get a good impression of the truly ergonomic HandShoe Mouse in this short video:

Mouse Pain?

Do you ever have tired or painful muscles in your hand, wrist or forearm after working with a computer mouse? The most common reason is that a conventional mouse forces the muscles in your forearm to continuous activity. You may end up with pain in your arm unless you take precautions.

In this video we will give you the technical explanation which is based on university research.
The anatomy of forearm and hand explains the sources of your complaints: hovering of your hand and fingers over the mouse requires action of the so called extensor digitorum muscle.
To hold onto your mouse another set of muscles is continuously active. You need the extensor carpi ulnaris to work from the wrist.

Best Ergonomic Mouse

In order to prevent the pains caused by a conventional computer mouse, we developed the best ergonomic solution:  the HandShoe Mouse. This mouse is taking all aspects into consideration. Now your muscles will stay relaxed as your hand is fully supported so there is no more hovering of your fingers. And you don’t have to grip it to move it. Last but not least, the support angle allows for easy movement from the wrist.

This video gives a clear view of the muscles in your arm and how they are affected when using a computer mouse:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBlAN0khmos