How to Avoid The Most Common Workplace Injury In America
Prolonged static posture is the enemy. Or, if you’d like to de-fancify a bit, you could just call it not moving.
Not moving is terrible for your body. Why? Well, your body was designed to do things like catch its own food and find its own water. Thanks to the beauty of teamwork and an agricultural revolution, followed by an industrial revolution, we don’t have to do any most of that stuff any more. This is great for our artistic and philosophical sides and bad for our backs.
The healthy body can only tolerate staying in one position for about 20 minutes. That is why sitting on an airplane, at a desk in an office chair, or at a movie theatre becomes uncomfortable after a short time. Standing in one place, such as standing on a concrete floor at an assembly line for extended periods of time tends to cause back pain. Holding the same position slowly diminishes elasticity in the soft tissues (muscles ligaments and tendons in the back). Then, stress builds up and causes back discomfort and/or leg discomfort. -Spine Health.com
This is a problem that is devilishly simple to avoid.
Move it! And move it often.
Go walk down to the water fountain. Deliver a message personally instead of using the company email. There are all kinds of little solutions to this problem. The trick is finding the one that works for you, but it’s totally worth it down the road when you’re 5 inches taller than everyone else at BINGO night.
Here are some links to get you going.
- You’ve got 5 Minutes, Make the Most of It
- Sit Up Crooked
- 5 (Quiet) Things That You Can Do In Your Cubicle to Improve Your Health
not everybody works in an office.Some people work on production lines and can’t even go to the restroom until they get their break and you better hope your relief comes back on time!