Easy Changes To Your Work Space To Ease Neck and Shoulder Pain
For many of our clients, hours in front of a computer are unavoidable and part of their job. Many deal with chronic neck pain, headaches, and shoulder pain that limits their ability to perform their best work and also distracts them from enjoying the activities they lover on the weekend.
Making a few easy changes to our work station can drastically improve outcomes when it comes to neck/shoulder pain. Here are a few things to try and implement in your work station to allow you to work longer, perform better, and enjoy the activities that you love on the weekend.
1) Monitor Position
Monitor Height: One of the easiest changes you can make is altering the height of your monitor. One of the more common things we see is monitors that are too low.This causes us to look down and our heads to draw forward. If a monitors is too high - we’ll be forced to look up (extend our neck) which will,over time, contribute to neck pain
Monitor Position: We’ve found many clients have their monitors positioned to the left or right (think a monitor placed in the corner). This causes us to have to rotate our neck to look at the screen - which over time contributes to neck pain and headaches. Make sure your computer monitor is position in a way to allow you to see without having to rotate your neck.
2) Keyboard and Mouse Positioning
The position of your keyboard (and mouse) will determine where our wrist and shoulder are positioned while we work. Two things to consider:
Height: The height of our keyboard contributes to wrist and shoulder positioning and can have an impact on the pain we experience. Keyboards that are too high cause our wrists to be constantly flexed - contributing to thing like carpal tunnel. Too low and your wrists are chronically extended - further contributing to wrist pain. Position the height of your keyboard and mouse
Position: One of the more common mistakes we see clients make is sitting too far back from their desk/keyboard. They’re almost ‘reaching’ forward to type on the keyboard - which leads to shoulder rounding forward and muscles on back being constantly stretched and weakened (and most commonly where pain is felt). Sit close enough so your arms stay parallel with our body.
3) Sit to Stand Desk
A lot of the neck/shoulder pain we experience at work is sue to inactivity. Which is why it’s important to have a desk that allows you to both sit and stand. The ability to change and alter positions makes sure that we load our joints in better ways to experience less neck and shoulder pain.
Many of our clients deal with neck and shoulder pain that is often worsened through long hours of sitting. This daily annoying hinders their ability to perform their work and also limits their ability to do the activities they love. We recently helped a 45 year old designer who was experiencing chronic neck pain that limited the time she could spend in front of the computer and work for her clients. After completing her care plan that combined chiropractic adjustments, manual therapy, and customized exercise plan to strengthen postural muscles and she is able to work pain free!