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Re: TOOLS: Seeking "speshul" ergonomic chair

Subject: Re: TOOLS: Seeking "speshul" ergonomic chair
From: Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 09:10:06 -0400




Kate Salm wrote:

I will

inch another year closer to becoming a mature adult
this saturday and have already noticed that small
things, like exercising or typing for extended periods
of time, hurt more and longer than they used to.
Although the good is that you've convinced me to push
my supervisor more about dipping into the budget to
get me a better chair... one with armrests!! There
may be some young pups out there who are saying that
it will never happen to them. But you all have
convinced me that that constant back bain is not
something I want to try to live with.


May I just say one thing here? Folks should be careful about where they place the blame/responsibility and where they seek prevention/cure on this issue (same for "carpal tunnel syndrome," which often turns out to be something entirely different and much easier to fix).

I got a good education in the staring-at-monitor-all-day back problem from a chiropractor who specializes in it. He drums up business by giving free back workshops during "health fair" days at local high-tech companies. What he says he sees all the time, more than chair issues (although he's a big fan of properly adjusted chairs), is the tendency to sit with shoulders hunched and neck stretched forward. He calls it chicken-neck (not a technical diagnosis, just his weird sense of humor) and treats nearly all of his monitor-jockey patients for it.

The solution for a lot of people may not be some high-tech chair, special keyboard, whatever. It may be getting your eyeglasses made with a prescription for the correct focal length. If you are trying to read text on a monitor with reading glasses, you're going to tend to bring your head in to reading-glasses focal length. That pulls your neck forward, which in turn totally discombobulates ('nother technical term) your back. Instead of sitting and standing with your ears over your shoulders (most relaxed position for the back), you end up with a bowling ball constantly cantilevered two inches forward from the top of your spine, putting constant strain on your back muscles and vertebrae, especially when you are walking or running.

Sure, if you get a new chair, the company pays for it; and if you get new glasses, maybe you have to pay part of the cost. In the long term, though, this is a much more effective and therefore more cost-effective solution for a lot of people.

I'm nearsighted enough that I take my glasses off to read. I have distance glasses (can't read route numbers on those big green highway signs without 'em) and I have monitor glasses, which have a 30-inch focal length. I had to specifically ask my ophthalmologist for the prescription and specifically confirm to the optometrist that the prescription was correct, but I can tell you my back is fine now, thanks; and I'm 58. (I had bifocals briefly, but they gave me too small a region in which I could focus on the monitor. I ended up with a very stiff neck all the time.)

All I'm saying is that you should not assume that the first diagnosis of the problem that you read about or that you come up with on your own is necessarily the only possible diagnosis or the correct one. Your best preventive strategy may be something that is not at all obvious to you on first consideration of the situation--just like in tech writing.

Dick

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RE: TOOLS: Seeking "speshul" ergonomic chair: From: Kate Salm

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