Computer Ergonomics

A mouse pad simply isn’t enough. Not even if it has a little gel support pad for your wrist. A mouse pad enhances the operation of the mouse but doesn’t do anything for your ergonomic situation.

I am a practicing chiropractor in San Diego California. Years ago I began to notice that most of my patients who were being treated for either Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, neck pain, shoulder pain or any of the other symptoms that are specific to stress imposed by long days at the computer had one common complaint.

That complaint was that extending their arm to reach for the mouse was one of their primary aggravating factors.

One of things that I have learned by treating injured people is that when they are in pain, activities that they perform without concern of postural stress when they are “healthy” suddenly become painful.

Reaching for the mouse is one of these activities. Reaching for your mouse in a way that forces your arm to assume any position other than hanging at your side while supported on your chairs armrest exposes your wrist, arm, shoulder, neck and upper back to postural stress.

With time, this ongoing postural stress will either cause a repetitive stress injury on its own or it will help contribute to one.

This mechanism of injury was the basis for the development of the Ergo Nav mouse platform. The Ergo Nav attaches to your chairs armrest in a way that places your mouse right at your finger tips allowing for stress free mouse operation.

Independently performed EMG studies show significantly less muscular activity in the neck, back and shoulder girdle with use of the Ergo Nav as compared to reaching to the desk for the mouse. These same results were shown regardless of whether or not the desk placed mouse pad had a gel pad wrist rest or not.

While there were mouse platforms already available, they were either non-adjustable (read not ergonomic) or they were adjustable and very expensive with bulky, impractical chair attachments.

The Ergo Nav allows for adjustment of the platform in several planes for true ergonomic adaptability while maintaining exceptionally low pricing compared to other mouse platforms.

Here’s To Your Health

Dr. Jones

Economical Adjustable Mouse Platform
San Diego Chiropractic
Pain Relief San Diego Chiropractor

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 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 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

Dr. Jones

Economical Adjustable Mouse Platform
San Diego Chiropractic
Pain Relief San Diego Chiropractor

Have you ever hurt your back and scratched your head wondering - how did this happen when my back has felt fine until now?

Patients present to my San Diego Chiropractic clinic on a regular basis with neck pain, back pain and other related symptoms that not only lack a history of pain in that area but have no recent injury or accident to explain their current painful symptoms.

This is frustrating for the patient yet a typical presentation for me.

When patients come in for care with this type of history recent injury, my inquiries usually lead to a situation that involves excessive postural stress for that patient.

Ongoing postural stress affects our body much like the old analogy of the straws on the camels back. Our bodies are capable of compensating for quite a bit of stress before symptoms appear. This is good and bad.

The good part of this situation is that if we didn’t compensate for all the little stresses that we are subjected to, we would be uncomfortable all the time. The bad part about compensation is that we often are not keen enough to recognize when our bodies are being exposed to ongoing low levels of stress.

Once the stress levels build to a certain point, the body part in question reacts with irritation, inflammation and muscle spasm. This combination produces pain and tightness and usually is the reason that patients call my office.

Postural stress can place an amazing amount of stress on your spine. One of my reference books has a chart that describes how different body positions affect the amount of pressure on your discs in the low back. The differences are amazing.

When standing straight up with ideal posture, the pressure in the discs of the low back is 100%. When lying flat on your back the pressure is at 24%. While sitting straight with good posture, the pressure is at 140% but when slouching forward with poor posture the disc pressure goes to a staggering 190%.

Considering that most of us sit for a good portion of the day, simply sitting becomes a significant source of stress for the lower back.

This kind of ongoing stress combined with an awkward twist or bend can generate a crisis for the low back leading the patient to wonder exactly how turning to pick that cup of coffee off the desk behind him / her lead to such a severe back spasm.

Here’s To Your Health

Dr. Jones

Economical Adjustable Mouse Platform
San Diego Chiropractic
Pain Relief San Diego Chiropractor

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, 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

Dr. Jones

Dr. JonesEconomical Adjustable Mouse Platform
San Diego Chiropractic
Pain Relief San Diego Chiropractor

One of the more common stress related conditions that we see in my Chiropractic / Wellness center is headaches. As with many injuries that I see in my office, poor ergonomics is a major contributing factor with headaches. While there are many different work related factors that contribute to the development of headaches, I will address the four most common instigators in this post.

The most obvious type of stress that contributes to the onset of headaches is postural stress. A poorly designed computer work station causes the PC operator to keep their neck in flexion, extension or rotation for extended periods of time.

These prolonged fixed positions are due in part to the computer monitor sitting too low, too high or un-centered relative the level of the operator’s eyes. Prolonged fixed positions of the neck causes muscle tension in the neck and can easily trigger the development of a muscle tension headache.

In order to relieve this stress, make sure that your monitor sits directly in front of you and that the top 1/3 of your monitors viewing area is level with your eyes when you are gazing straight forward.

Another important contributing factor in the development of headaches is dehydration. Statistics indicate that upwards of 75% of us suffer some level of dehydration. Statistics also indicate that we tend to consume less water while we are at work. This is a straight forward problem.

Considering that dehydration causes headaches and as a population we tend to run on the dehydrated side and we tend to drink less water while at work, you can see how this is a perfect formula for the development of a headache.

Improper positioning of either your keyboard or mouse can also cause muscular strain leading to the formation of a headache. If your keyboard or mouse is positioned in a way that causes your elbows to be extended beyond 99 degrees, you are over-stressing your shoulders and neck. On-going stress of the muscles in the shoulders and neck will result in muscle tension headaches.

One last headache instigator that we will discuss here is related to lighting of your work space. Ideally, lighting should come directly from your left and right sides and overhead. This lighting set-up prevents shadows in your work space and reflections off of your monitor. Eye strain and fatigue are major contributors to headaches and must be addressed. Proper lighting can reduce eye strain which often leads to muscle tension headaches.

More Coming Soon

Dr. Jones

Economical Adjustable Mouse Platform
San Diego Chiropractic
Pain Relief San Diego Chiropractor