Searching the medical databases Medline/PubMed for research done of beneficial effects of knitting gave me tons of hits on neural knits, a branch of neuroscience which has little to do with knitting with yarn… However, I found a very nice text in Academic Science about knitting. Potential benefits of knitting discussed were protection against heart disease and dementia. Not bad! However, the author also wrote about potential risk factors – such as injuries after sitting on needles left on the sofa and carpal tunnel syndrome (“squeezed nerves with subsequent pain somewhere in the lower arm”). To keep the carpal tunnel syndrome away I work on several projects in parallel, so that I change between different needle sizes, crochet hooks and the sewing machine not to wear out. Yes, sometimes it gets really messy at home. :) If the pain comes anyway, my advice would be to meet Dr Chiropractic and/or a physiotherapist. If you also keep the needles out of sitting areas, knitting will reduce your stress without side effects! ;) And a little quotation from the article:
In a world whose technological advances—food processors, bread machines, online books—have deprived us of many of life's tactile pleasures, the feeling of wool or cotton yarn and the steady repetition of stitch after stitch is a restorative tonic, producing “not a virtual something that can be altered with a single click, but a real and tangible something….”
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