Column Things You Can do During Work from Home to Prevent Intervertebral Disc Herniation
When you’re working at a desk all day, it’s easy to have back pain or have symptoms of an intervertebral disc herniation.
This time, we will give you some tips and advice to avoid herniation while working form home.
The cause of backpain when Working from Home
One of the main reasons is the work environment in your home may not be up to snuff. You may not be sitting correctly and sitting for a long time may cause pain in your muscles.
An Uncomfortable Working Environment
Working from home means you’ll be sitting for a long time at a desk.
There are cases where the working environment at your office may not be as comfortable as it can be, but in the increasing popular work from home movement, this is even more common. Working at a dining table or a kotatsu (low table) for a long time will negatively affect your posture and make it easy to experience backpain.
Sitting for a long time has a effect on muscles as well
Sitting down actually has more of an effect on your lower back than standing.
Sitting in the same position and posture continuously will cause fatigue to the muscles around your lower back and cause lower back pain.
＊1 Source：Nachemson, A. L. The Lumbar Spine: An Orthopaedic Challenge. Spine, 1(1), 1976.
Things to be cautious about when working from home
When working from a desk for a long time, it’s important to reduce the load on your lower back and spend time feeling comfortable.
Be aware of the correct sitting posture
One of the causes of back pain is your sitting posture, and to avoid pain and intervertebral disc herniation, it’s important to pay attention to how you are sitting.
The correct posture will depend on your height and weight, but we will introduce the basics here.
- Adjust the height of the chair after sitting deep on the chair with both of your legs on the ground
- Sit with your knees and hip at a 90 degree angle
- Adjust the height of your monitor or screen to be around eye level or slightly below
- When using a laptop, use a stand to increase the height of the monitor and adjust the angle of your keyboard
Choosing the right chair for working from home
It’s important to choose the right chair when working from home.
First, choose a chair that matches your size. When you sit down deep into the chair, your knees and hip should be at 90 degree angles and your feet should touch the floor, this is the correct height for the chair. To avoid back pain, you need to also choose a desk height that matches the chair.
The back support of the chair’s height is also important. If you feel tired in your neck as well, it’s recommended to buy a chair that also has a headrest.
If the chair has arm rests, you can also take a break easily, so it’s best to pick a chair that has them. However, if the arm rests aren’t at the correct height, you will just end up putting stress on your arms and shoulders. Pick a chair that lets you adjust the height of the arm rests, or at least pick one that has arm rests at the right height.
A chair that is a little firm will help in reducing back pain, so pick one that uses pocket coils or Urethane foam. Also, a cushion that supports your lower back is also recommended.
Occasionally reset your posture.
When working from home for a long time, you should stand up an walk around to rest your posture every 1-2 hours.
It’s also recommended to stretch your lower back. There are simple stretches you can do while sitting, so even moving your body by a little bit is important.
After working, take a bath
After a hard day’s worth of work, you should take a nice long bath. There, your blood flow will increase and the load on your body will decrease.
It will help you relax even further and will also help you fall asleep, improving your sleep condition.
After the bath, if you combine it with stretching, it will help you even further in helping your back recover from pain and prevent pain in the future.
It’s important to take care when working at a desk, but if you already show signs of an intervertebral disc hernia, it’s important to not just treat the symptoms but repair the cause of the pain, the damaged discs.
Our clinic performs the Cellgel method, a treatment to repair damaged intervertebral discs. With our clinic’s Cellgel method, we inject a drug that fills the cracked part of the intervertebral disc, and it turns into a gel to repair the crack, making it possible to perform fundamental treatment. The disc volume does not decrease, and the drug remains in the disc as a gel-like implant after treatment, so the disc is preserved.
If you are suffering from lower back pain or have been diagnosed with a herniated disc, please consider visiting our clinic.
