The Most Dangerous Piece of Workplace Equipment
November 27, 2015 1:19 am
What’s the most dangerous piece of workplace equipment?
Matthew Hoffmann, a highly respected Chiropractor with over 22 years of experience, said he’s sitting right on it!
An employee spends an average of 8 hours a day on a chair, and it is not helpful to our body posture, our spine and to our overall health.
Sitting is one of the worst positions for our body to be doing over a long period. After 20 minutes of sitting on a chair, blood pools in the legs and pressure is then built in the spine, particularly on the vertebral discs in your lower back or lumbar spine. Eight hours a day, 40 hours a week or 160 hours a month. It may not affect you now, but the long term effect is not something you can easily undo.
Prolonged sitting can cause discomfort, numbness and cause the spine to misalign. Ultimately, this will affect the cardiovascular and nervous system.
Recent studies also found out about the possibility of an early death regardless of how much of a gym buff you are. Your hips, your spine and everything from head to toe will be affected in the long run.
Chiropractic care can help treat body pain, but if you want to prevent it from happening, then we suggest you’d better make some changes.
What to do? Matthew Hoffmann strongly suggests not slouching while sitting.
“There’s so much compression on the spine and on your disc if you’re sitting all day”, he added.
He also recommends using a chair with Lumbar support to sit in a more upright posture or investing in a standing desk.
“The key is to get out of the chair. Get up, get walking, get moving,” he added.
The main point is to avoid slouching, putting a small pillow that will support your lower back while sitting and making the small choices to move out of your chair every 20 minutes. Simple stretching, twisting your legs, arms and neck, even tilting your chin upward and downward can help improve your posture.
“Stand up desks are the way of the future” he noted.
A quick way to examine if you are sitting correctly is standing up with the same position you were when you were sitting down. Now try to assess if that should be the right posture while standing. If you are slouching while sitting down, would you want to slouch while standing? Probably not.
If you’re reading this, then chances are, you are on a chair. Have you sat there for nearly an hour?
Get out of that chair. Your future self will thank you for it.
