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Muscular-skeletal disorders (MSD) affects muscles, tendons and nerves, and most people begin suffering from at the latter part after working in an office for most of their life, where they sit in the same position and repeatedly type all day.

Focusing on our hands, an ergonomic keyboard is the best supplement in terms of trying to protect your fingers from carpel tunnel. For those who don’t necessarily know what an ergonomic keyboard is, it follows the symmetric shape and neutral position of the body to reduce any pains in the wrist, shoulder, neck and back and forces users into a healthier position. The keyboard allows agents to keep the mouse close to the body’s neutral position so they can avoid wrist or shoulder pain from stretching.

However, implementing an ergonomic keyboard might not be an option right now, so to make do with what you already have, pay close attention to the feet that can extend your keyboard up or down. In a recent article Whiston Gordon, a writer from lifehacker, shared his learning experience of this tiny, yet ergonomic-impacting feature for the keyboard.

Image via Lifehacker

After getting a keyboard and doing a little more research to figure out if it is ergonomically better to extend the keyboard of leave it flat, he found a post from keyboard maker BakkerElkhuizen wo explains it well:

“First of all, it is important to distinguish between people who can type ‘blind’ and people who cannot (who use two fingers).The advantage of extended Feet for non-‘blind’ typers is that they can see the keys more easily. There are no disadvantages of extended Feet for them. But things are different for people who can type blind, as they do not look at the keyboard while typing. The Feet do not therefore need to be extended. In fact, extending the Feet can put one’s wrists at risk if they are angled back too far. For this reason, blind typers can best keep the Feet retracted and use a relatively thin keyboard. Various studies even have demonstrated a beneficial effect when angling the keyboard away from the user (with a negative incline).”

The best ergonomically choice: Gordon advises users who have to look at the keyboard while typing to extend it and for those who don’t need to, the keyboard should lie flat.