Working from home. Part 1 - Intro

When we work from home, often our job involves using a laptop or computer, this is great for saving money on transport and boosting productivity, However,, there are a number of issues that can arise from too much sitting and working in this way, let's take a look.

Posture - Slouching in the chair or sofa can place our hips and spine into weird and wonderful positions, creating weaknesses and tightness often leading to hip/knee/back pain. Leaning forwards to get closer to the screen, rounding our back or lengthening our neck can cause all manner of problems, as an example, do headaches and tingly hands sound familiar? How much are you twisting to the side for the printer/books/side table? We like to have our particular set up that works for us but it doesn't always work for our body.

Rest - With just our fingertips and eyes working, the muscles that burn the most energy aren't doing so much, there may as well be cartoon ZZZ's oozing from the legs as they switch off and atrophy. With all of this sedentary action (lack of), we still get hungry and eat the same sized portions as we always do, which the body will store for a rainy day, and keep storing. In our efforts to combat this we do 3 workouts in the week, 3 hours of activeness against 40 hours of sitting. Add sitting in front of the TV after a day of work , maybe it is more like 3 hours gym against 55 hours of sitting!

Health - We've heard of the dangers of Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) when flying, but have you made the same connection with sitting at the desk for too long? Believe it or not our veins that carry blood back from the body to the heart to be pumped back round, don't actually contract to push it back. Unlike our digestive system that squeeze the food through the intestine, our body relies on the muscles regular movement to help push the blood around the body. Without movement we rely on the strength and pressure of the heart, a muscle the size of a fist pumping about 7 litres of blood around the body, against the force of gravity! As we move around, the contraction and relaxation of the calf and leg muscles help move the blood back around the body ultimately reducing stress on the heart.

So by now we have jumped up out of our seat and started marching around the room, yes?

We will start to take a more depth look at some more postural problems that can occur in part 2 of this series, and what we can do to prevent as much of these from occurring in part 3,

Here's what you can do in the meantime; Get in touch for a consultation to discuss some of the issues that you may already be experiencing and receive a personal approach to faster results, book a consultation today.

Working from home. Part 2 - Posture

Working from home. Part 3 - Getting active

Working from home. Part 4 - Fixing things