How Can You Prevent Back Pain in the Office?

In many professions, especially office jobs, employees have to sit at their desks for several hours at a time. If you don’t take regular exercise and other measures while doing so, you may well get back pain sooner or later. However, with a few simple tips, you can prevent this from happening and thus go about your work in the office pain-free.

Why does one often get back pain in the office?

The fact that you often get back pain in the office is simply due to the nature of the human body. It is simply not designed to sit for such long periods of time. If you sit for an entire workday and don’t get enough exercise, your intervertebral discs, among other things, are put under a lot of strain, which results in unpleasant back pain.

Compensate for long periods of sitting with exercise

Incorporating enough movement into your daily routine is one of the best ways to prevent back pain in the office. This can also be done while at work: many tasks can be accomplished while standing. You don’t always have to contact colleagues by phone – it’s much better to get up and see them in person. Even meetings can sometimes be held well while standing. This brings the added benefit of feeling more active, which can have a positive effect on motivation and efficiency.

Ergonomic office furniture

Naturally, care must be taken to ensure ergonomic equipment in the workplace. This includes, for example, an office chair that can be individually adjusted so that you can sit on it optimally. The desk should also be adjustable. Desks at which you can work while standing have become particularly popular. Such a desk is also called a standing desk. The adjustment of these desks is usually electric. Working while standing is a welcome change, which relieves the strain on the back.

In addition, care should be taken to ensure that the remaining factors at the workstation itself are also correct. For example, it is particularly important that the monitor is not too high, but also not too low. The height should be adjusted to the height of the body, for example, to avoid unnecessary strain on the neck. If you work with a laptop, you should either use an external monitor or a stand on which you can place the laptop. Of course, you should not do without an external mouse and keyboard.

The right posture

The best furniture is useless if you don’t have the right posture. Therefore, you should actively ensure that you adopt a good posture throughout the working day. At some point, you get used to it, which makes the posture a routine. It is important, for example, not to lean too far forward or backward. This is because you unnecessarily increase the pressure on your spine and back muscles. This can lead quite quickly to unpleasant tension and back pain.

It is better to sit as upright as possible, with the pelvis tilted slightly forward. This puts the back in a natural hollow back position, which prevents back pain. Furthermore, one should change the sitting position from time to time, so that the body is not loaded on one side. These ultimately lead to incorrect postures, which result in further back pain. In this regard, it is a particularly good idea to stand up from time to time, for which the desks already mentioned are very suitable. Even when working standing up, you should always make sure you have good posture and, among other things, relax your shoulders as much as possible.