The most common injury suffered by office workers is back pain. The vertebrae of the back are fragile, and they tend to suffer damage when unsupported and when the muscles that support them are weak. The best-known cause of back pain is spending long hours hunched over a desk.
There are other kinds of injuries, too. Your neck can crack or tweak from bad posture, and your elbows and wrists can get sore from holding the keyboard and mouse.
But bad posture isn’t the only problem. Office workers also suffer from backache because their desks are set up wrong.
Your desk should be high enough so your feet are flat on the ground. Your screen should be neither too high nor too low, but at eye level. You should be sitting with your knees at a right angle and not leaning forward. You should be leaning slightly forward, but not too far.
Other ergonomic problems are less well known. Your chair should be neither too high nor too low, but at eye level. You should sit with your knees at a right angle and your pelvis and chest in alignment. Your chair should have armrests so that you can rest your forearms on them. Your keyboard should be low, and the mouse should be placed so that you can rest your wrists on it.
Your chair should be adjustable. It should adjust so that your feet are flat on the ground, and your chair should be tilted so that your head can rest at a 30 degree angle.
These things aren’t as important to your health as straighter posture. But they do help.
The most common and most widespread cause of neck and back pain is sitting at a desk all day. But there are other culprits, too. A bad mattress on a bad bed, for example, can make even the best-designed chair seem like a torture device.
