Avoid Back Pain, Keep Your Spine Healthy While Working
April 11th, 2007 (6:00am) Mike Gunderloy 9 Comments
We’ve written before about the importance of an ergonomic office environment and taking micro-breaks for web workers. But we also know that such good advice is easy to ignore. Most of us can get away with bad habits for a few years, but at some point, your body may tell you to slow down. In my case, the key tip-off that something was wrong turned out to be excruciating back pain.
If you’d like to avoid getting to this point yourself (or if you’re already there and want to get out of it) head over to Spine-health.com and spend some time perusing their excellent selection of resources. They have spent the last several years collecting an immense amount of information, all of which is peer-reviewed by their medical advisory board before posting.
Try starting with their Spine Topics section, which contains categorized information on everything from picking the right ergonomic chair and mattress to avoid back pain to travel tips and notes on types of pain, exercise, surgical and other treatments. Their short article on office chair set up covers four points for proper ergonomics at your desk: office chair back support, keyboard in easy reach, computer screen at eye level, and arm support.
Back pain, sadly, is an occupational hazard for those of us who are too frequently chairbound. It’s also one of those hazards that you can largely avoid by having the sense to take care of yourself before you’re laid out in bed. Spine-health.com has plenty of words of advice if you can take the time to read them.
9 Comments Post your own comment
Seth says: April 11th, 2007 8:44am
I recommend YogaToday to everyone.
Dr. Eben Davis says: April 11th, 2007 9:36am
I agree. When you consider what we put our bodies through on a daily basis, it’s amazing they can handle what they can. Late last year I started using a wider angle at my workstation chair after reading the results of a European ergonomics study. The study revealed that wider seat position angles actually result in much lower intradiscal pressures than the conventional 90 degrees. I have really noticed a difference in my low back pain, and so have my patients. The link to the article is:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6187080.stm#sitting
Willa Olivier says: April 11th, 2007 10:05am
You are right, we tend to overdo it in one position.We should remember to take a break and move around. Mayo clinic gives 4 main reasons for back pain, force, repetition,posture and stress.It’s good to have the support of other home workers too, isn’t it?
To link to the article is:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/back-pain/HQ00955
GigaOM » What’s on GigaNET says: April 11th, 2007 12:25pm
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ryneobi says: April 11th, 2007 8:32pm
Hi, nice BLOG, I Like your articles…
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Bilguun says: April 2nd, 2008 3:16pm
Great Post!
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Thank you.
derose says: April 23rd, 2008 1:57pm
nice article, thanks a lot to me