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Ergonomics & Posture – The Key To Lower Back Pain Reduction

Author: Eric Normand

If you happen to look at a large majority of people sitting on chairs, you are going to see that they are either slouching, lounging or just leaning back, relaxing in a manner which does no good to their spinal cord.

Back pain can be credited to a lot of different things, such as picking something up thats to heavy or bend the wrong way. However, most back pain comes from the posture at which you sit in a chair or sleep at night, and most do even realize they are doing it wrong. Slouching can put so much strain on the spinal cord that the nerves and can get pinched just by sitting there. When this happens the only way to correct it, is to correct your posture.

Posture is something that is not a priority to most people through out their work day. With that said most people will focus on their work and then go home and deal with life and forget that the posture they have is hurting their body. Dealing with pain from bad posture is hard, and can sometimes be overwhelming, and will cause your focus to go elsewhere.

To make sure that we never find ourselves in such a state — when our once firm stomach muscles have reached the consistency of watery jelly, our shoulders show the body language state of “dejected, disheartened and dismayed” — we have to look at the ergonomics — the best way — of sitting in chairs or a sofa.

Most chairs that you sit in, will seem comfortable while sitting there, but that is because the body is so used to that slouching position. If are reading this in your favorite chair at home look at how you are sitting now and determine if you’re posture is good or bad.

Laying back in a chair and kicking you’re feet up, can also be bad for posture, as you will be putting a lot of strain your tailbone by doing this. Keeping your feet on the ground, and on a solid surface will allow them to support your body in a way to correct your posture.

Posture is something that most people who slouch have to think about to correct it. Its a mental thing when trying to correct it, because you body will just naturally go to the position you have been putting it in. You need to train the mind to sit in that position all the time in order to correct it.

Office jobs are the worse for these things because you do not realize that if you computer isnt eye level then you are putting strain on your body. Having a computer screen that is set up above, or below eye level will cause you to have to look up or down for long periods of time. Doing this puts strain on your spinal cord and causes you to have a tremendous amount of back pain because of it. So look at how your computer screen is set up and if you are putting strain on yourself doing it, and if you are, adjust it so that its at eye level.

One of the best things you can do to start the transformation of your posture is to do exercises to strengthen your neck and back muscles. This will make it easier to support your corrected posture making it easier to do.

Many of us are going to find it extremely difficult to get into the habit of sitting up straight on a chair, especially as our back muscles and stomach muscles fall into slouch position the moment we sit down. Continuous practice is going to help us here.

Tags: Back pain, employment, ergonomics, fitness, Health, life management, office, pain management, posture, safety, stress, Stress Management

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 2:17 AM and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.