Wrist pain from using a mouse: two minutes and your wrist can breathe.

Wrist pain from using a mouse is almost always overload: hours of small, repeated movements, with the wrist bent back on the edge of the desk. It eases when you change your desk setup, loosen the wrist every day and strengthen the muscles on top of your forearm. If your fingers tingle at night, your doctor decides.

It's 7 pm. You close the laptop and feel that burning line along the edge of your wrist, the one that has been waking you for two weeks with numb fingers. I see it often: ten hours between the mouse and the phone, and people blame their age.

Wrist pain from a mouse: how do you recognise it?

By the way it arrives. Nothing injured it: it builds over weeks, gets worse on long days at the computer, and calms down at the weekend.

• A burning line. Where your wrist rests on the desk edge.
• A hand that goes numb. Tingling in the thumb and the first fingers, at night.
• A grip that gives way. The glass slips, turning a key takes effort.
• One side only. The hand that uses the mouse, while the other one is fine.

Why does a mouse hurt your wrist?

Because it is the most complicated joint you have, and the least protected. Ten bones move inside it, and the damage comes from repetition: the same spot loaded badly for months.

The extensors are weak and nobody trains them. The muscles on top of your forearm, the ones that open your hand, are the real stabilisers of the wrist: they stay active in every movement it makes. They are also much weaker than the flexors. In the gym and at the desk, the flexors do almost all the work. That is where wrist and elbow trouble begins.

There is very little space inside the wrist. In the narrow channel of the median nerve, a little extra fluid is enough to press on it: tingling, numb fingers on waking, cramps.

Wrist pain: what can you do?

Your desk, in two minutes. Rest your forearm flat on the table, elbow close to your body, wrist straight and lifted off the edge. Put the mouse next to the keyboard: the further you reach out, the less support your forearm has. Screen at eye level. And loosen your grip: the muscles that close your hand only really switch on once you are using about seventy per cent of your strength.

Three movements, each time you stand up. Slow circles with the wrist, thirty seconds each side: the fluid that lubricates the joint is produced by movement, and there is little of it if the joint stays still. Palm against palm in front of your chest, elbows wide, for thirty to sixty seconds, only to a light stretch and never into pain. Then the back of your hand on the table, fingers pointing towards you, for another thirty seconds.

The extensors, twice a week. Forearm on your thigh, palm down, hand beyond your knee, a light dumbbell: lift the back of your hand, then lower it slowly. Keep the weight light.

Your phone matters as much as the mouse. Your thumb keeps the wrist bent and pulls on the same tendons: rest your elbows and lift the phone towards your eyes. The mistake nearly everyone makes is spending the break scrolling. When you stand up for those two minutes, keep your hands free.

Start with the change that costs you least. You use your wrist to write, to drive and to shake a client's hand: it deserves two minutes.