Back pain does not only stem from manual labor jobs. Sitting at a desk is the real job to watch out for. Sure, sitting there may not seem like hard work, but it is a lot of work for your back, especially if you use poor posture or your office is not set up properly.

Back pain due to your office job can be avoided if you follow these several tips. After that, we will conclude by discussing a safe and natural therapy that is providing back pain relief for many people.

Tips for Avoiding Office Back Pain 

Back pain can be due to your office habits. In order to maintain good posture and give your back the chance it needs to relax, we suggest the following:

Keep Monitors at Eye-Level

The first mistake that is usually made when an office is set up is that monitors are placed directly on the desk. The desk height is designed for optimal typing height to protect you from carpal tunnel syndrome. It is not the right height for a monitor. Keeping monitors at eye level is a must. Otherwise, the head is tilted slightly forward all day long. This leads to hunched shoulders and a person’s overall health can suffer greatly. If you don’t have a way to elevate monitors, try stacking some books under them until they are at the right height.

Use the Right Sitting Position

This is often related to setting up your office chair properly. Hopefully, it has some lumbar support. You will also want to be able to raise or lower the chair so that your feet rest flat on the floor. If you can’t sit that low, you will want to have a footrest. Your hips should not be lower than your knees. They should at least be level (slightly higher is also okay).

Don’t Sit for Hours at a Time

If there is a little room in your office to get up and stretch, that is great. If not, you should take a few minutes to get up and walk every hour or so. Whether you go to the water cooler, the bathroom, or just walk around the office floor once, the activity will help keep your back from stiffening up.

Watch Out for Phone Use

There are a number of ways that misuse of a phone can create back pain. First of all, try not to hold a phone between your shoulder and ear. This is terrible for your neck and the rest of your spine. If you have your own office, use the speakerphone option. If you are in a cubicle, try a Bluetooth headset or even earbuds. You can still have use of your hands but without messing up your neck. The other thing to watch out for is how often you check your smartphone. Looking down at a 60-degree angle quintuples the amount of pressure on the spine. Imagine what repeating that 100 times per day would do. No wonder you will find that articles about avoiding “text neck” are becoming common.

Of course, all of these suggestions are great ways to keep back pain from starting, but what if you are already in pain? While these suggestions may help lessen pain, you need to address the underlying problem properly. Before you decide that daily NSAIDs are the best solution, we would like to introduce you to a natural therapy that doesn’t have all the nasty side effects of over-the-counter pain relievers.

How Upper Cervical Chiropractic Helps Back Pain

Before you say, “I’ve tried chiropractic before, and it only helps for a little while,” we would like to introduce you to a chiropractic subspecialty. Many people don’t even know that those exist, which is why you may have never met one of the 3,500 or so practicing upper cervical chiropractors. This is a very focused, precise, and gentle form of chiropractic. So what makes it so unique?

Focus

The focus is on the top bone in the neck, the atlas. Sure, that may be much higher up on your spine than the pain, but here’s the thing about the atlas. Since it balances the head, everything else shifts to compensate for any misalignments. That means changes can occur throughout your entire back, even if the atlas is only off by fractions of a degree. By the time those changes reach the lower back, they can be significant enough to affect the SI joint or even to irritate the sciatic nerve. Without correcting this underlying issue, adjusting the lower back will only have temporary effects.

Precision

To discover a misalignment that may be just a few hundredths of a millimeter requires precision diagnostic imaging. The practitioner will use measurements taken from these images to design a customized adjustment for you.

Gentle

Because adjustments are precise, there can’t be any rapid twisting or popping of the neck and back. Adjustments are low force, which is less traumatic on the body and so the body doesn’t work against it. Once the soft tissue around the atlas has time to heal and stabilize, adjustments can hold for weeks or even months.

If you are looking for a cost-effective and safe way to deal with chronic back pain, upper cervical chiropractic may be just what you’ve been searching for. Contact a practitioner in your area and schedule a consultation today to learn more.

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