Views: 1 Author: https://www.fully.com/office-causing-back-pain-5-ways-fix Publish Time: 2021-08-10 Origin: https://www.fully.com/office-causing-back-pain-5-ways-fix
In the course of researching and writing my book, Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery, I met scores of people who told me that they liked—or even loved—their jobs and their colleagues. Still, they dreaded going to work, because it was hard to think about anything except how much their backs hurt.
More than once they’d ordered expensive new equipment, hoping to find a way to get out of pain. They’d raised their desktops to standing height, only to realize that being stuck on their feet all day made for cranky knees, hips and ankles. Many jumped on “the medical merry-go-round,” seeing chiropractors, physical therapists, pain management doctors and surgeons, desperate to find someone who could fix them.
They could have saved themselves a lot of time, trouble and money by changing their work habits.
New research in the field of sedentary behavior science makes it clear that humans were not designed to remain in a static position for hours at a time. I like to compare it to keeping a sexy sports car idling, when what it really needs is the chance to rev its engine.
Movement stimulates the circulatory system, delivering oxygen and other nutrients that muscles and ligaments need to stay strong, lean and flexible. Many chronic back pain symptoms emerge from muscles that are severely deconditioned; quite literally, sitting in a chair for hours leaves them starved for oxygen. Do it day after day and you’ll wind up with muscles that are flabby, lax and likely to fail when you need them the most.
And because moving is essential to maintaining metabolic health, those of us who are primarily sedentary (and that's everyone who sits at a desk for eight or more hours a day without working in at least 150 minutes of vigorous exercise per week) are primed to develop metabolic diseases, including diabetes and cardiovascular disorders. Moving frequently during the workday, in conjunction with periodic vigorous exercise, has been shown to substantially reduce these risks.
I hear what you’re thinking: Because you work out regularly, you don’t have to worry about deconditioning. Unfortunately, that’s wrong: studies have shown that even people in excellent shape (think astronauts, athletes and buff young men) quickly lose cardiovascular fitness and muscle strength if they don’t move for extended periods.
Leading pain doctors are now prescribing movement as medicine
Physician Heidi Prather is the director of the Orthopaedic Spine Center at Washington University Hospital in St. Louis, MO, and the founder of a new program called The Living Well Center, which focuses on providing true interdisciplinary care for people with chronic conditions, including back and joint pain.
Prather notes that for many years, employees seeking workers’ compensation related to an on-the-job injury would be reassigned to sedentary jobs, on doctor’s orders. This was standard operating procedure, and instead of leading to recovery, it often led to more disability. She'll no longer write such orders, Prather says, because these "work-related" injuries, especially those that result in back pain, are more frequently the result of deconditioning than they are of any specific trauma. There are accidents, of course—a box could fall on you or a front-loader could run you down—but typically, weak, degenerated muscles are the culprit, rather than a skeletal failure.
“So many ailments could be avoided if people moved consistently,” Prather said.
Prather now asks the employer to allow the “injured” patient to wear sneakers to work, and to leave her desk every fifteen minutes to take a spin around the building or a trip up and down the stairs. Prescribing movement instead of medicine or surgery reflects a major shift in how we understand health and fitness, says Prather, who expects to offer continuing medical education at the Living Well Center to other providers who are interested in changing the status quo.
