Ergonomically Yours

Archive for the ‘Ergonomic Advice’ Category

Anyone who has gone to an Office Depot or Staples or any of the other countless office supply stores has seen how many different office chairs that are available.

The question is, which one should you choose? One thing is for certain, as far as your back and neck goes, the color doesn’t matter. However, plenty of other features do matter and can determine how your back feels at the end of your work day.

There are specific brand names that manufacture high end chairs that cost in the thousands of dollars. If you decide that a chair like that fits your needs by all means buy it.

On a regular basis I hear patients comment in a negative way about the expense of ergonomic office products. My response usually draws a correlation between the costs of their vehicle versus the cost of a good office chair. Very few of us spend more than 8 hours per week in our cars that we spends tens of thousands of dollars on yet we often scoff at spending more than a few hundred bucks on a good office chair that we sit in for 8 hours per day. That is some backwards logic isn’t it?

That being said, you don’t have to spend a small fortune on a good office chair. My chair fits all of my needs and I found it at Costco for about $100.

What features does a $100 chair need to have in order for it be the right chair for you?

This is a short list of general features that should be present in a good ergonomic chair.

1. It should have a high back
2. It should have arm rests
3. The backrest should recline and be slightly concave and include a 5 cm lumbar support
4. The seating surface should be able to tilt from front to back
5. The height of the chair should be adjustable
6. The armrest height should be able to adjust
7. You must be comfortable in it. A chair with all these features is worthless if you don’t find it comfortable.

Here’s To Your Health

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Yours Ergonomically,
Steve Jones

Ergonomic Office Supplies

San Diego Chiropractor

(619) 280-0554

Have you ever noticed how tight your neck, upper back and shoulders are after a long day of sitting at the computer?

There are a number of factors that contribute to this tightness. Simply the stress of deadlines, an overbearing boss or an annoying co-worker can make your shoulders rise up and your head push forward. And this stress is the result of just the emotional stress of work. When you add the real physical strains of a poorly designed work station on top of the emotional stresses that already exist you have a perfect recipe for a repetitive stress injury.

A large part of designing an ergonomically friendly workstation revolves around limiting the “reach” for items that are frequently

The distance that you have to reach for any object in your workspace can have major implications on your health. In general, workers should have the items that they use on a regular basis through the day such as the mouse and keyboard for computer users or the telephone for a receptionist or a sales person, positioned close to their bodies so as to avoid awkward or overreaching.

As a general rule, the best positioning for your keyboard and mouse allows you to operate them while your shoulders hang straight down at your sides and elbows are slightly extended. This position reduces the stress of overreaching and allows for completion of your tasks with less muscular effort.

There are many ergonomic apparatus that allow for proper placement of your computer input devices. Pull out keyboard trays, split keyboards, ergonomic mouse platforms and even foot controls help reduce the ongoing stresses of computer input.

Even with these devices, it takes awareness to maintain an ergonomically friendly work environment.

For a nice selection of ergonomic office products you can visit www.comfortkeyboard.com.

Here’s To Your Health

———————————————————————————–

Yours Ergonomically,
Steve Jones

Ergonomic Office Supplies

San Diego Chiropractor

(619) 280-0554