Seat Support - Sitting Ergonomics Neglected
As impossible as it may seem, sitting ergonomics is still widely ignored as a prevention tool. Even individuals who suffer acute pain neglect it when looking for ways to relieve their painful bodies while at work.
It is rare to find someone who knows how to adjust an office chair, even when they are sitting on a darn good one. Most office chairs have an adjustment mechanism to fit the seat support to your needs and sit you more comfortably.
A chair's design should strive to reduce static exertions in your body; and the common sins are:
- Seat pan angles tilted so far forward that your legs must support you
- Low seat backs that leave the lumbar curve without support and there is no chance for thoracic reinforcement. You will be amazed at the difference this little fact does in sitting comfortably
- Desks or obstacles that do not allow you to move the chair close enough to sit all the way back in it while reaching everything easily
- Tilting chairs that do not lock in a position, transferring all the stabilizing force to the body or making you sit forward to stop the tilting
Tilting chairs are actually multi-purpose. While working on the computer, it must be locked to ensure maximum seat support, however, during breaks it can be loosened enough to rock with the weight of your body and enjoy the feeling while talking on the phone or chatting with a colleague.
The secret is to learn what feels right and know the chair's functioning, so that you are able to “play” with it during the day depending on your activities. In fact, the sole changing of sitting positions throughout the day works to make you more comfortable, less muscle stiffened and less tired, as constant movement is the key to preventing pain.
There are some chairs that definitely do not work for a certain type of person. Seat pans are normally quite deep to be able to sit all the way back in the chair unless you slump; this means more work for the muscles, including neck and shoulders, as these have to pull the head back to compensate for the poor posture. There is also the chance that blood flow into the arms is blocked due to the mediocre seat support. It will certainly cause sore necks and shoulders, which is a common ailment among people who work at a computer. What's incredible is that most of these people think that enduring this pain is part of their job, when there are simple mechanical reasons for it which can be solved through ergonomics. Of course, the harder a person works, the worse the pain gets, leading to an eventual and clearly avoidable disability.
A very usual element that individuals use to try to fit the chairs to their bodies and strengthen their seat support are cushions, and the majority of the time they use the wrong one. Thick and very curved cushions may work to make up for a deep seat pan, but they will just reinforce the pelvis, forgetting the rest of the back. In few words, cushions are patches over the problem, not the real solution. Only the right chair can provide the optimal seat support necessary when spending long hours sitting down.
When you work in an office, it is the company's responsibility to care for its employees' health, and a big part of this care consists in shopping for the right seat support chairs. Instead of focusing on treating the pain after it appears, it is health and money wise to prevent the pain from starting in the first place through efficient ergonomics.
Since the body is designed for movement, no matter how ergonomically right a position is, it will invite pain if sustained for long. It is necessary to find a combination of postures that do not require a lot of muscular effort, and to control that, when you slouch as a relief mechanism from a posture, which is inevitable, you do it for a short while. A poor posture is bad only if you make a habit out of it because your workstation ergonomics do not allow for correct seat support.
Since sitting down is not a neutral posture, you must regularly stand up and stretch to keep a healthy organism. Knowing your body's functioning is vital to understand how an inappropriate seat support will affect you:
- The fact that your chin is dropped or raised causes your muscles to work harder to support a 15 pounds' weight, your head
- Not touching the chair's back makes your trunk work harder to achieve balance, causing you to slump in relief. Also, muscles work more to use your arms
- When feet don't touch the ground, the weight of your legs falls on the spine
Thin armrests require muscular effort to keep the arms on them. Hard ones compress nerves, low ones make you slump or lean to the side, wide ones make you extend the arms out from the shoulders, high ones push up the shoulders
- Last but not least, the body adjusts easily to customary postures and “digests” them as normal. This works both ways, for poor postures or good postures, thus, at first you may need to remind yourself to sit straight, but eventually, your body will learn on its own
As we have pointed out, many companies are not ergonomically-friendly, either by ignorance or negligence, and you may be feeling the negative effects already or may want to prevent them from appearing in your life. This is why TruComfort exists. TruComfort is a seat support system that is ergonomically designed to adapt to any chair and give you the total seat support you require in a compact and lightweight manner.
TruComfort relieves back pain and eventually eliminates it, strengthens the back muscles, reduces fatigue, provides correct seat support by aligning the head, neck and spine to carry the weight down the vertebrae to a firmly supported pelvis and most importantly, teaches the body the habit of good posture by sustaining it while you sit.
Check out our TruComfort Seats out and Contact Us to share your concerns and questions. You are in pain and we have the relief!