Back Pain From Your Office Chair

From time to time nearly everyone will suffer some back discomfort from working long hours in their office chair.

This is not very surprising as we weren’t designed to spend hours in a sedentary position.

It’s always advisable to invest in a good quality ergonomic office chair, but that alone is not enough.

You need to sit correctly in your chair, avoiding slouching and craning forwards. Make sure that the chair back is properly supporting your back, particularly your lower back as this tends to align your back better.

However, sitting rigidly at 90 degrees isn’t necessarily a good thing either. Research by Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen Scotland found that an angle of 135 degrees body to thigh seating position reduced the strain on the spine and its ligaments.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always practical in most office chairs as they aren’t designed to work at this kind of angle, at least not without tipping the user up in the air and so making it impossible to work normally.

Fortunately, some of the better quality chairs like the Miller Aeron and Steelcase Leap will allow the user to work in this more open angled position.

So, if you are troubled with back pain it’s well worth looking at this type of chair.