Just like most any affiliate marketer, I spend long days pounding on my keyboard. Often times, I’ll go many hours without grazing away from my desk.

In the last few weeks, I started getting an increased tingling and that pins and needles feeling in my hands.

I’ve long had a concern that I’d get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and jeopardize my ability to work at the same level, and after searching around a bunch of medical sites, it sounded like I was getting it.

So, I finally went to the doctor to get checked out yesterday, and she confirmed that I was in the early stages of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Fortunately, I might be able to remedy it by wearing wrist splints when I sleep for a few weeks or so. If you were wondering, yes, the splints are uncomfortable to wear while sleeping.

On the night before I went to the doctor, I whipped myself into a frenzy - wondering if I was going to soon have some broken down hands that would prevent me from working on the computer.

So, I installed a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software that I bought randomly a few months ago.

I figured in the worst case scenario, I could use this software to write blogs, articles, emails, etc.

I was surprised at how well it worked, even for a mumbler like me. But I don’t know about their claim that it is “More than 3 times faster than typing.”

That could be true if it is error free, but I think I recover faster from typos by hand than voice commands.

There is also an option to transcribe audio with the software. The results there were a mess, but it would beat transcribing by ear, so I might start doing that and manually cleaning it up.

Anyhow, just a word of caution that you should definitely get yourself checked out if you are having aches and pains in your hands.