Tool Box
Issue No. 49 - October/November 2009
Back pain hits workflow
Productivity suffers and stress is greater in office environments because poor posture is giving us a regular pain in the neck. Of more than 150 new patients in 2009, SA-based chiropractic practice Health Zone reports, more than 50% are office workers.
“This is because the human spine was never designed for sitting in a chair and working on a computer, talking on the phone or driving a car,” says Health Zone Chiropractor, Dr Rob Hutchings.
“When the spine is out of alignment, it places pressure on the nerves disrupting their function. The spine has evolved over thousands of years, and was designed for a hunter-gather lifestyle which included frequent exercise and squatting in work positions rather than sitting.”
Stresses such as deadlines, financial worries, irritating colleagues, difficult client relations and home stresses make existing problems worse.
“Forward head posture is by far the most common pattern observed in office workers,” Dr Hutchings says. “When viewed from the side, a person’s ear lobe should line up with the middle of the shoulder, but this is not the case in forward head posture as the name suggests.
“The head can represent 10% of the total body mass in a person of average weight, so for every centimetre the head is forward, the neck muscles must work about 30% harder just to hold the weight of the head.”
Forward head posture contributes significantly to a wide range of conditions including neck...
