Be kind to your spine at your desk

So many of our patients with ongoing back and neck pain work in an office environment. Although not all spinal aches and pains are originally caused by poor posture habits, it certainly doesn’t help.

Most of us now have an adequate chair at work due to compulsory DSE checks. However, these checks often take the form of a “tick the box” form to check you have all the basics provided. What they often don’t do is help you set the chair up for your height / shape and show you how to sit properly in it. We also often have our work-station set up completely wrong for us.

I spend a lot of time with my patients discussing their work-space and giving advice – I often ask them to take photos to show me and on some occasions employers have commissioned me to attend the work place to do an onsite assessment and advice session. This usually ends up with a shopping list for them, but I try to only suggest the essentials and keep the budget as low as possible.

If you are particularly tall; short; long in your back; have particularly short or long upper legs (between hip & Knee) or lower legs (between knee and ankle), you may need a chair with specialist dimensions to it- ask your employer to have your work station fully assessed (this will involve taking measurements from you) .

Here are my top 5 tips for those working on a PC / Laptop:

1) Check your chair.

There should be a moulded lumbar section which protrudes. This section, which sticks out in a D shape, needs to be supporting your inner curve of your back (you will find this when you sit upright, your back should be in an “s” shape with your ears in line with your hips and your back nicely curved) . Most of us have this protruded section too low and it is supporting your bottom rather than your lumbar spine – this is because the chairs are delivered with a factory setting when the back of the chair is at its lowest and meeting the seat. You need to loosen the controls and lift the back of the chair up, make sure your bottom is right back in the chair and lift until the lumbar support is in your inner curve.

2) Don’t use a laptop for long periods without a separate keyboard or mouse – I would suggest over an hour or so would be classed as a long period. And don’t sit on the sofa working on your laptop all evening!

3) Try not to overuse your mouse – it makes more sense ergonomically to use a combination of mouse clicks and keyboard shortcut keys.

4) You need regular breaks of posture .... and this does not mean a coffee every 20 minutes! You just need to stand up (and maybe walk around your chair and sit down again) – just by moving into an upright position from a seated position is just like releasing the Fizz from a bottle of pop. It allows all the joints and soft tissues to move and it releases all the tension.

5) Make sure your workspace is not biased towards everything being on one side of you - if you have your diary and paperwork on the right, make sure your phone is on the left. Also think about where your colleagues sit – if you always turn to one side to talk to them, try putting your phone etc on the opposite side.

If you have pain and your work aggravates it, please come and see us for help sooner rather than later. Once pain becomes chronic is it so much harder to sort it out. All of our physiotherapists can help you with posture correction and workplace advice. Call us on 01242 673507 or email mail@villageclinic.co.uk