There’s a lot of interest these days in alternative seating like Ball Chairs.

Ball Chairs are great for improving your sitting posture as they make you sit dynamically, you can’t just slob around on one, as you’ll likely end up on the floor!

Whilst some use them as their main chair, a lot of people find they have difficulty in sitting all day on a Ball Chair. This is highly likely to be the case for those trying to use an exercise ball as a chair.

So, it’s probably best to look on a ball chair as an additional seat that you use for part of the day to give your body relief and variation from your normal seating position.

I’d recommend that you keep your existing chair and see how you get on with your Ball Chair, that way you can either use it full time or occasionally depending on how you find it.

I suggest that you go for a proper Ball Chair rather than an exercise ball, you can find further details on popular ball chairs here.

How you sit in your office chair is very important for your body’s posture, long term health and comfort.

Humans weren’t really designed to be seated for hours on end, but unfortunately we are frequently faced with having to do so.

So, let’s begin with how not to sit.

You should avoid slouching or slumping in your chair as this will cause your spinal joints to open up and be in a state known as kyphosis.

This can cause problems with trapped nerves which can get caught when you return to a more upright posture.

Another thing you should be mindful of is sitting in the same position for extended periods of time. So, always make sure you keep your muscles and body moving frequently. Fortunately, our bodies tend to do this as a natural reaction to discomfort.

Take frequent breaks, use a countdown timer to prompt you. And do some simple exercises, I’ll post some in the Blog in the next couple of weeks.

Try to sit with your back reasonably upright, but make sure not to crane your neck forwards and be sure that your lower back is well supported to emphasize it’s natural ‘S’ curve known as lordosis.

Recent research suggests that sitting at a reclined angle is actually good for your back and posture.

Some of the better quality chairs like the Aeron, Life and Leap allow you to do this easily whilst still keeping your feet on the floor and remaining in touch with your work space.

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.

We are all spending more and more time working sitting at our desks, keying in information and mousing as we surf the net.

And this heavy workload puts our bodies under ever increasing stress and strain.

Our muscles are designed to work harmoniously with each other, generally in pairs - one extends and the other contracts, but when we abuse our bodies with bad posture they have to work a lot harder. And ultimately this leads to RSI related problems causing inflammation and pain if we don’t correct things.

Even when our muscles are inactive they are placed under static loading, so sitting still for extended periods doesn’t help either, instead they need to be engaged in healthy movement.

So what are all these RSI related problems costing and how many people are affected?

Well according to a study some years back from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations and OSHA it’s a big problem.

The average claim varies between $7,000 - $30,000 per injury with an estimated 700,000 claims a year and that all adds up to an annual cost running into billions of dollars. And worse yet the average lost working time is 18 days.

Surely it makes to sense to make every effort to minimize these claims.

I’m not suggesting that everyone rushes out and buys a top of the range Aeron, but equally it makes no sense to buy cheap poorly designed chairs.

A good starting point is to take a look at my recommendations for the minimum features that an ergonomic office chair should have.

Take a look at the reviews of products meeting these standards, it’s a good place to start.

Ball chairs continue to be a popular alternative to conventional office seating, people who have back problems often find relief in this alternative form of seating.

Although, I’ve covered a number of different models in the Stools and Ball Chairs part of the main website, the BalanceBall® is one that I have yet to consider.

It works on the same principle as other models of Ball chair in that it encourages you to sit healthily, that is “active sitting” you won’t doze off in this type of seat it’s designed to keep your back active and healthy.

The chair is available online for Gaiam.com and Amazon.

I’ll be adding a full review of the product to the Ball Chair review section of the site shortly.

Miracle Sciatica cure - not!

Dr Graham Teague a New Zealand based back specialist, points out that there are a lot of sites in the Internet that promise miracle cures for sciatica and back pain that mostly just don’t work - or at best give some relief.

Well, Graham does have the answer to sciatica and back pain problems, I know because I have tried and continue to use his simple methods for these conditions. And they work!

Graham has developed some simple techniques to relieve back related problems which I can highly recommend.

Here’s where you can find more about Dr Graham Teague and his back pain relief methods.