Are your best office chairs good for solving your back pain?

Sitting in office chair for prolonged time period will definitely bring about health problems such as lower back pain or shoulder ache. The main reason about any possible type of discomfort is that sitting, whether you choose to sit in a common office chair or an expensive executive ergonomic office chair, is a static posture which causes pressure to our back, arm or leg. For no pain, no long time of sitting. But sitting is inevitable, and office life always requires us to sit for an average of 8 hours a day. Then how to avoid pain to our body? Most of us tend to choose the chairs with tag line like ‘We got your back’. Is that really so?

Perhaps that is the tag of chairs from most chair manufacturers. Those chairs with ergonomic design are anyway better than the chairs of poor quality that do not offer us flexible movement. Ergonomic chairs are better in that they offer us more support to lower back or make our sitting experience more comfortable, though they are not the absolute solutions of back pain. So how should we do about avoiding the back pain? Or we just return the chair to the store and go back to choose those cheap office chairs because the ergonomic chair can never solve our problem? We still need the chair that is good for back!And still never forget about avoiding prolonged sitting.

Never get the chair home just because others say they are good to back. It is not about trust. It is about the fact that chairs which fit them may not fit you. Chairs may be suited for big sized guys, but may be poor for petite ones. A certain chair is good for their back and sometimes it is not good for yours. Here are what you need to do about checking whether your chairs is good for your back pain.

Take a look at whether the office chair you are using has lumbar support. Now most chair manufacturers take the need of lessening back pain into consideration and make ergonomic chairs with lumbar chair. Get a chair with the lumbar support that can offer certain support to the back, and best hug the natural curves of the back. If your chair has no such support, and you do not mind, just add a cushion between the back and chair.

Is your chair with armrest where you can rest your arms. Armrest can help support the weight of the upper body when we sit in front of computer and also can reduce the risk of injuring our neck, shoulder or arm muscles.

If you have limited budget and still need ergonomic chairs for your back, the two aspects are the basic ones.

Have you ever noticed what office chairs do to our health?

When you are reading this article, you might be just sitting in the chair in front of the computer, the common practice we do every day, which on average lasts 8.9 hours. Then stop and see how does your body feel? Is there any ache in your back or light numbness in the thigh? Such symptoms are normal yet bad. They are just caused by sitting.

Just think further about it. At 20s, we could sit on a sand bag all day long and that would not matter. Ten years later, we may feel a few pains in our back, shoulder or arm. We do not care much about it. But then another ten years later, we may start to think about changing the poor office chair. By that time, it might all become so late because those years of poor sitting has already taken its toll, and we may suffer from various health issues such as posture problems, weight problems, heart disease, etc. Sitting is a public health risk actually.

Sometimes we may think about taking more exercise in order to offset the risk caused by sitting. But sitting too much is different from exercising too little. Sitting does different things to our body. We may hardly associate obesity with sitting in the chair. But it is said that obese people tend to be attracted to the chair. Too much sitting just relaxes our muscles, which may cause a decrease of about 90% of enzyme activity. We know, enzyme grabs fat and cholesterol from the blood, burning the fat into energy while shifting the cholesterol to the healthy kind.

Besides, frequent sitting for online surfing or watching TV might solicit higher rate of high blood triglycerides, hypertension, etc. When we sit, our lower lumbar curve just collapses. Over time, that might make our natural S shaped spine into C shaped one, and eventually our body may easily slouch.

If we choose poor quality office chairs, problems may get even worse. Those poor chairs do not offer us movement we need to keep our body comfortable. Thus, we may get locked in a fixed position for too many hours. Over time, our core muscles may gradually seize up from lack of use. This requires us to get up frequently when we work in the office or try some simple exercise.

Chairs can do more things to our body than we might expect. Anyway, for less harm, we need to choose ergonomic chair with great movement. We need more movement when we sit in the chair and when we move in the chair, the chair needs to support us and avoid any discomfort of our muscles or even keep our blood circulation moving.

Easy Tips for Extending Life of Our Office Chairs

Do you still remember when it is the last time that you do any maintenance on your office chair? Or have you ever had such idea of regular maintenance to your chairs, just as what you do to your car? It may sound a bit queer, but if we want to get the most of our our office chair, especially very expensive ergonomic office chair, it is necessary to give it tender care.

It is inevitable for us to sit in the office chair for many hours a day. Even sometimes, the time spent in sitting in an office chair in front of computer may be longer than that spent in sleeping in a bed. So many hours of use can add up and over time wear down our chair. A good chair is an investment. If our chair receives no proper care, it may fail to work sooner than expected, even though it is an expensive ergonomic chair. Maintaining an office chair does not just involve a wipe down with a rag to keep our chair look clean. If we want to prolong the life of our chair, we need to do more.

Office chair is never free from any maintenance, though it needs no engine oil like our car. But most of our modern ergonomically designed chairs have a lot of components that require certain care for normal operation, especially those swivel chairs with moving components. Besides, some of the parts of our office chairs, such as upholstery, need regular care because no one wants to sit on a dirty or poor upholstery.

Have you ever noticed how much grime harbored by the fabric of our chairs? Try to pat the dust on the seat of your chair in the sunshine and you will find too much dust in the unseen part. It is nice idea to give the upholstery a clean on weekly basis or clean it with some spray foam over long time. Most of our chairs have leather upholstery. You may hardly know dust does harm to leather. Try to vacuum the dust off the surface with clean damp cloth or some leather cream, which can keep the leather well even we use the chair for long time.

Have you ever found that the wheels do not roll as smoothly as they do when you bought them? Over time, dust will also get accumulated in the casters of the chair. Some dirt from our shoes, hair or fuzz in the carpet of office may easily get in contact with our chair. All of them, once built up in the casters, just clogs the wheel spindles. Try to give the wheel a clean.

Besides, pay attention to any missing screws or fixings of the office chairs. Just have a regular check of any possible loose parts, especially the screws that hold arms and back. Besides, make sure no screw or bolt get overly tightened. If the screws get tightened, the chair may hardly stay in place and then we need to replace the cylinder. Our office chair is most often made from plywood or injection molded plastic base, so take a check of the screws there. Apply some oil to the gas lift for smooth movement.   .

Generally, take some regular maintenance to the office chair, though not too often. Proper care of the chairs can make them work for us for longer time.

Have you ever noticed these poor ergonomics in life?

You must know 'ergonomics'. Now there are a lot of talk about this word. You may have never talked about it, but objects such as keyboard, office chair or even light that you want to buy or you are now using are now associated with this word and we tend to buy ergonomic office chairs, ergonomic shoes, etc.

Ergonomics is important to health and safety. It is a concept meaning environment fits us persons. In office, our office chairs or tasks are designed to fit individuals so that we can do the jobs without getting injured or with better efficiency. We may feel pain or stain when tasks or tools have poor ergonomic design.

Poor ergonomics result in quite a number of serious physical problems or poor ergonomics bring us unpleasant experience such as pain, numbness, stiffness, swelling or weakness. Poor ergonomics can also injure the back.

We are actually faced with ergonomic problems every day. Ergonomically, if the office chair or computer desk in our office is poor, with the height of the worktop not matching the height of chair, we might have very uncomfortable working experience. When we choose the best ergonomic chair to sit in comfortably, bad sitting posture over the time also causes back pain. If we keep a right sitting posture and sit in ergonomically designed chair, we sit in a workplace with not enough space for better body stretch or movement, our productivity will also be affected. All those problems would just affect our efficiency and satisfaction to jobs, or even bring injuries.



We can also feel bad ergonomics during plane journey or long travel. The chairs of plane or trains are sometimes designed with just single standards. That means, they can hardly fit both tall people and petite people, wide people or slim people. We may easily develop poor sitting posture because of the non-ergonomic seats. We have to keep such poor posture for rather long hours and our knees have to be compressed by the back of chair in front. As a result back pains occur.

Lighting also has something to do with ergonomics. Bad lighting in workplace will lead to eye fatigue and over time, it just cause drowsiness to work staff. Besides, strong lighting brings about dizziness and that might also affect our mental health. It is really necessary to maintain a right level of light and still keep a proper distance between our eyes and the screen of digital gadgets.

There are too many aspects of our life that may be linked with ergonomics. Try to know more and live a life ergonomically healthy.

Pain in the Neck? Change for Correct Sitting Posture!

Do you suffer from neck pain? Most possibly, it is related to poor sitting posture. Neck pain seems very common problem among office staff and those who undertake sedentary jobs. Sitting in the office chairs or even in the car seat for a rather long time is bad to our body. But we can hardly choose not to sit. Then how to avoid pain in the neck?

Prolonged sitting itself is not good to our health. We can take more rest during our work hours. We need to get better office chairs or the chairs with ergonomic design for more comfortable sitting. But most often, we may ignore the right sitting posture. Poor sitting posture may just overly stretch our spinal muscles or soft tissues. Prolonged overstretching of these structures will finally result in pain. Besides,when we feel uncomfortable after prolonged sitting, we may change our posture subconsciously, and sometimes the seemingly comfortable sitting posture is wrong and the potential pain may be even worse.

If we pay attention to right posture, changing position may take the stretch off our soft tissues and then the pain stops. This can just avoid lasting damage. Such pain purely caused by poor sitting posture may stop as long as we change how we sit. We can never ignore any sign of pain in the neck. In that way, we may continue the state of overstretching our soft tissues. Over the time, other structures may be affected and later we may feel pain in arms or legs.

People with sedentary jobs tend to develop lower back or neck pain and this has much to do with the fact that we sit with a rounded back for hours. It is time for correcting the poor sitting posture so as to avoid the progressively worsening pain.

The point in correct sitting posture lies in the curve in our lower back. To develop a right curve in the lower back or lordosis while sitting on a stool or slouch, we need to sitting up as much as possible to keep the curve inwards. We need to relax the lordosis strain and then our upper part of the spine will get improved. Make sure our head is not poking forwards. Tuck our chin in and pull back our shoulders.

It is sometimes not easy thing to keep a correct sitting posture for a long time without lower back support. We need some tools. We need ergonomic chairs when we sit in the office for working. We need car seats of ergonomic design for adequate support to our lower back.

Try Some Easy Workout With Office Chairs

Most of us have to sit in the office, working 9 to 5 each day. Such long time of sitting and working is harmful, which may easily cause health problems like backache, shoulder pain or poor circulation. Working that long does not necessarily mean sacrificing our health. There are some workout we can actually do in the office with the help of our office chair. For better physical health and higher efficiency, try out the chair exercises.

Prolonged Sitting Kills Us

Have you ever calculated the time you are seated in the office chair or home chair every day? Sitting for long periods of time leads to risk of problems such as heart attack, metabolic syndrome, stroke risk, etc. The prolonged sitting contributes to slower metabolism and shorten our life expectancy. Sitting is actually killing us. It sounds terrible. But our human body is actually not built to sit all day for hours in the chair. Whether at home or in the office, most of us spend too many hours sitting.

Popular Ways to Keep Healthy in the Office

Given the nature of our work environment, we can hardly choose to not to sit in the chair. We have to work. Then how to avoid the prolonged sitting and keep us fit in the office? Is it possible to stand while working in the office for keeping healthy? It is worth noting that standing is actually not very good solution. Standing for a long time can also lead to some disorders to our legs, back or knees. Here are some ways for keeping healthy in the office.

Sitting on Ball Chair

Now there are a lot of ergonomic chairs designed for alleviating the pain caused by sitting in the chair. Yoga ball chair is one of such ergonomic chairs. If sitting is inevitable, choose to sit on something wobbly, ball chair or backless stool. Sitting on the wobbly object will force our muscle to work and help improve balance. We have to sit with back being straight, feet kept flat on the floor. This is much about active sitting and we are actually doing some movement on the ball chairs.

Active Meetings

If you can choose the form of work, choose to add a bit more activities to your work day. Try to move meetings from the conference room to the concourse and this can actually help you reduce the time of sitting as well as offer you more opportunity of walking. You may miss the important information that even a snail like pace of 1 mph can help you burn the calories twice more than sitting. When you are moving from one meeting to another, you will get outside for a doze of Vitamin D and experience different environment.

Standing Desk

Standing desk is one of the most popular office furniture now. The use of standing desk shows people realize the harm of sitting too long time in the office. They choose to work from an upright position. The upright position is better for metabolism. For better effect, the office staff now also choose the soft mat for added support.

Chair Exercise

Stretching at your desk or trying out some easy chair exercise may be one simple way to keep healthy actually. There are actually some easy exercises we can do while sitting down or we can turn to some workout with the help of chair. The chair exercise can help tune our muscles and increase flexibility.

Easy Chair Exercise for Keeping Healthy in Office

Chair exercise seems much practical for sedentary office staff even though there is no fitness equipment in the office. It is such a type of aerobic exercise in a low-impact and low-intensity way. Several minute chair exercises a day is enough, much easier than a mile run. We just do the exercise with the help of our chairs during a short break day by day. Doing exercise in the chair is also beneficial to the elderly and those with health issues or physical limitations. If you have any goal of losing belly fat, the chair exercise can actually help burn the calories. When we stretch our body by the chair, our blood will be kept moving. Just grab a chair and a few minutes of easy movement can do us a lot of benefit.

Chair Push-up

The push-up is actually not easy workout and most often, ladies seldom choose this exercise. But when you try the push-ups with the help of your office chair, you will find it much easier. This exercise contributes much to blood flow and can help strengthen the upper body. Put the hands on the edge of the chair. Start from an ending push-up position. Keep your hands apart in shoulder and the shoulder blades spread out and back straight.

Chair crunches

This is also a chair exercise for upper body. Sit toward the edge of the chair. Lean backward until you feel the core engaged. Extend both legs out slowly. Bend the knees toward the chest.

Chair Squats

Chair squat seems one of the easiest parts of the chair exercise. It is exercise for lower body. Stretch the arms forward to the heart level. Keep the rear end straight back till all of the weight of the feet falling on the heels instead of the toes. Keep your knees aligned with your ankles. Try to squat until you touch the chair, squeezing your buttocks and the front of your thighs a bit and then return to your original position. Repeat it.

Chair Dips

Try to place the hands on the edge of the chair with a bit of strength. Slowly lower your tailbone until it is two inches off the chair and drop the hips towards the ground. This workout requires some upper body strength to propel the back to the starting position. The exercise will involve most of the muscles of the upper body. Try to do the dips slowly.

Home Office Design Tips: To Make Your Workplace Beautiful, Functional & Ergonomic

Working from home seems popular trend for most of modern people. Home office gives us more opportunity for real comfort, efficiency and little pressure. Whether your home office is designed for daily office life, occasional telecommute, or just a room for organizing your staff, you deserve more than a neat desk and extra chair. Home office to some degree reflects the comfort of the rest of your home and even affect the whole style of your home decor. Once nicely decorated as well as functionally and ergonomically concerned, it can be a charming place that you can burn the midnight oil there without feeling depressed or tired.

There is a need to make our home office different from the office of the company. Here are some tips for designing your home office and making it more nice, functional or ergonomic.

For ideal home office design, first we need to think about some questions as follows. How often will we use the office? What possible activities we will perform in the office? Will we open our home office to our guests? What type of materials will we store in this room? What kind of furniture, equipment or accessories shall we add to the home office? We need to ask us more questions so that the home office design easier.

Generally, comfort is a priority for home office. As for comfort, we may consider the feature of ergonomics of our home office design. We need to choose ergonomic office chairs, ergonomic computer peripherals, etc.

Style comes second because if the home office is designed similar to the corporate office which is characterized by gray, white or such monotonous hues and furniture, it will convey a sense of “forbidden”, depression, dullness. We need to add color and style to our home office by choosing some colored furniture or office items, raising some green plants or flowers in the office, adding more pieces of art and such things to make it full of fun and vigor.

Function is also important, though sometimes ignored by most home office designers. It is home office where we perform some work there. Stylish sofa is attractive, but maybe it is not functional when it is used as seat. Various decorative lights are nice and can make the office vibe casual or inviting, but they may divert our engagement in the work.

Here are some other important parts that we need to consider whatever style of our home office will be.

We need to add some necessary equipment to maximize the function of our home office. We can get some USB hubs for better organization of cables on the desk. Invest in the fastest and newest equipment for higher efficiency. But never pay for the equipment that we will not use every day.

Lighting is essential for good home office. Make the best use of natural light and also well use general and task lighting for enough brightness. The overly low light levels may produce negative psychological effects such as depression. The ideal lighting is supposed to be able to cast a yellow-best. Never make the overhead lighting directly project onto the computer screen because the glare may result in eyestrain.

Make sure the furniture or office items, especially the chair at your home office is ergonomic one. Prolonged sitting is bad to our back, but we still need to do something for lessening the harms to our back. We need ergonomic chairs, ergonomic monitors, or even ergonomic mice.

Finally, color for home office is also a difficult part of office design. Colors may affect us emotionally and physically. Blue, green, and violet are viewed as cool colors, which may evoke feelings of peace and relaxation. Blue, ideal color for bedroom, is not suitable for office because it may lull us to sleep. Green is ideal color for office because it can generate calm and fresh emotions, which is also beneficial for better engagement and vitality. Yellow is a kind of attention-grabbing color, but when it is applied in the office, it may cause anxiety. Red is energetic and stirring, but usually right as accents only. For ideal home office colors, we can also choose white, ivory or gray as accent colors.