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How Can the Perfect Posture Chair help me?

How Can the Perfect Posture Chair help me?

The Perfect Posture Chair’s unique design will force the user to sit with a straight back while the back seat support nestles just below the shoulder blades, causing the muscles from the lower back right up to the neck to be not as stiff and fatigued as if you were sitting for prolonged periods in a poorly designed office chair

To receive the full biomechanical benefits from the Perfect Posture Chair, the persons heels should just be touching the floor with their feet flat on the floor and the angle between the feet and the shin bone should be 90 degrees. 

The seat base's angled design will prevent the hips from tilting backwards while at the same time will assist in creating the ideal angle behind the knee which should be no less the 120 degrees. 

Why is this angle so important? Less than 120 degrees will automatically cause the hip bones to rotate backwards, causing the low back to flatten out putting undue pressure on the low back muscles and all lower backbones. So, over the course of a long day sitting, these forces and pressures will only create low back discomfort, muscle tightness and fatigue.

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Posture in the Workplace & Monitor Position

Have you ever considered the strain that your head and neck may be under from something as simple as your screen height? With your head weighing a good few kilos it's no wonder that your neck may start to ache or that pesky headache returns after a long day at work. 

Studies are now showing that when your head is tilted downward by 15°, this increases the forces on the neck muscles by 12kgs also accompanied by the internal rotation of the shoulders. More significantly if your head is tilted down and forward by 60°, this will increase the forces on the neck muscles by 27kgs and cause even greater internal rotation of the shoulders.

The next step is to address is the height positioning of the monitor.

There is an easy way of finding out the correct height for the monitor. Place and balance either your mobile phone or a book on top of your head. Then, looking straight ahead, point to an imaginary spot in front of the eye line. This is where the center of the monitor screen should be placed. In fact, it is better to have the center of the screen slightly higher - NOT lower - because the neck curvature will start to flatten out.

Once the neck curvature starts to flatten out, this will over time lead to increased pressures and stress to the neck muscles, the joints of the spinal bones in the neck, the discs of the neck, kinks in vertebral artery and inevitably the nerves in the neck. Over time this could lead to referred pain down the arm('s) if the nerves become to compromised. 

What happens if you are using a Laptop and NOT a Computer Monitor?

The principles of where to place your laptop in front of your eyes are fundamentally the same as with your computer monitor.

Once sitting correctly at the workstation, the center of the laptop screen should be at eye level or even slightly higher. To negate the keyboard of the laptop, there are bluetooth/WiFi keyboards that sit on top of the workstation and can be synced with the laptop.

However, when the laptop is used on the workstation, the angle at which the head is tilted downwards is roughly 60° which as mentioned in a previous post, 60° head tilt will generate 27kgs of force in the neck, upper back and shoulder muscles.

The other significant postural change is the internal rotation forward and down of both shoulders. The pain and muscle tightness when working the laptop as mentioned can cause a various range of symptoms ranging from headaches, referred pain down the back and arms, lifting the head up or the turning of the head and neck while there may be some eye acuity changes too.

Finally, if you are working dual side by side screens at the workstation and the laptop is one of them, again the principles again are the same with the center of both screens being at least at eye level or slightly higher height with the bluetooth/WiFi keyboard on the workstation.

Failing to address the monitor height is a natural progression for the person's posture to start to deteriorate. For examples head dropping down, craning of the chin, the rounding of the shoulders, and slouching in the chair.

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Sitting or Standing at the Workstation?

Sitting or Standing at the Workstation?

People often ask me “Are stand up desks better than sitting at the desks” and my reply is often “yes they are if the person has been getting a sore back and neck at their workstation in poorly designed chairs”.

However, the change from sitting to standing is NOT entirely a positive scenario because standing for long periods at a time is shifting the stresses and forces from one anatomic structural area to another.

For instance, sitting flattens out the lower back spinal curvature, increasing the stress and forces on the low back spine while standing will have a dramatic impact on the feet, knees, hip joint and sacroiliac junctions overtime.

When standing the anatomical positioning of the ball (femoral head) and socket (acetabulum) are forward of the spine, as is the center of gravity (head). So when standing the posture changes to bending slightly forward, causing the muscles in the back to become tighter which overtime in front of the workstation will become fatigued and sore.

Once these muscles become fatigued and sore, the person starts to shift their weight from one leg to the other or leaning forward resting their arms or elbows on the workstation itself.

Therefore, to reiterate, moving from a poorly designed chair to a standing desk has only shifted the forces from the lower back structures to the hip joints and the lower extremity joints.

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