Tips for Maintaining Spine and Postural Health in Computer and Office Work

Reduce Back and Neck Pain from Desk Work
Next to wrist pain, back pain is the second most common complaint experienced by computer users. If you have a history of spinal or neck issues, desk work exacerbates the problem. Healthy posture when working at a computer is essential.
Curvature of the spine, scoliosis, sciatica, spinal disc problems, cervical arthritis, all of these become more severe for those who spend a significant portion of their time working at a keyboard and computer.

A physical therapist explained to me that people with back issues adjust to them in one of two ways. They either over extend or arch their back muscles or they flex or round their back muscles. Both conditions create back pain especially when sitting for long periods of time. Both postures are not balanced. To counteract theses postural problems, there are several healthy posture tips to practice.

First, it's important to sit squarely on your bottom and thighs. Your weight should be evenly distributed on your entire sitting surface. With feet flat on the floor. For back 'rounders' like myself, we actually sit out of balance with weight resting on our rounded lower spine. This is very unhealthy posture for the spine.

Next, concentrate on sitting up straight, with shoulders back and head and neck erect. Imagine that a string is being pulled taut, up through your spine, like a marionette. Visualizing this will help you to keep your shoulders and neck straight.

Another postural concern is that when we put our chest out and shoulders back, we tend to lift our shoulders. This causes tremendous cramps and pain. While the shoulders are back they should be dropped and relaxed. I found instant relief from pain and discomfort just by pulling my shoulders back and dropping them, rather than rounding my back and hunching my shoulders.

The neck and head are major sources of postural problems. Pain in the neck is often a sign of postural problems. While you are visualizing the taut cord holding your neck erect, keep your head back and centered squarely
on your neck. It's very common for computer users to thrust their head forward and off balance on the neck. This bird-like posture causes the weight of the head to actually hang from the neck. The neck is designed to support the weight of the head centered on the neck. Focus on keeping your chin up and head in line with that imaginary taut cord through your spine and up through the top of your head.

If you have lower back pain, another strategy you can employ is to keep one foot flat on the floor and slightly elevate the other foot, keeping that foot flat, also. I use the shelf that my hard drive is placed on. This is about four inches off from the floor. I don't advise elevating the foot any farther than six or eight inches off from the floor (and the level of your other foot).

The last coping strategy is to stretch your arms, legs, back, shoulders, neck, hands and feet every fifteen minutes to half hour. Gently shake the tension accumulated in your muscles. If you practice these healthy posture tips, you should experience far fewer back and neck problems while working at the computer.