There are many causes of neck pain, stiffness and discomfort. We will focus on things that cause this that you can change in your daily life in order to help reduce the occurrence and severity of this type of pain. The first is your work-station set-up. I will not go into all of the specifics of proper work-station ergonomics, I will talk only about the part that causes neck pain. This is the position of the monitor. The monitor should be up at eye level so that while working you are able to keep your head back over your shoulders.
Yours ears should be directly over your shoulders while working. Lap-top computers make this virtually impossible unless you by a detached keyboard and mouse while placing the lap-top on something that raises it up to eye level. Remember that our phones do the same thing to our necks because we are always looking down at these devices. There is even an official diagnosis for neck pain related to this: “Text Neck”.
When your head is stuck in the position of looking down, with the head pushed forward in front of the shoulders it will cause pain and discomfort because it is so repetitious and we do it for hours a day. This position stretches and continually weakens the posterior neck muscles, puts excess pressure on the discs of the neck and distorts the proper structure of the neck. Over time this will cause lasting structural change, degenerative changes and pain. This will lead to larger issues and symptoms as time goes along. Just keeping your head over your shoulders while you interact with these technologies will greatly reduce the stress and pain that this abnormal posture creates.
At VITAL-BALANCE we offer a postural evaluation at no cost throughout the month of August which includes a digital report, so that you can prevent any injury caused by the bad position when doing the home office, the use of the cell phone or simply bad postures from day to day.
