The Downfall of the Desk Worker

Let me guess…

You roll out of bed, grab a quick something to eat, and are out the door. Into your car, you sit in traffic for a while, make your way into the office and sit there for the next 8 hours of your day with a brief break in the middle where you just have enough time to sit down for food and eat it.

After that you’re back into the car and then immediately onto your couch to de-stress after the long day. Maybe you’ll order food on uber eats tonight since you’re pretty tired. Then you throw something on the T.V or doom-scroll on social media until you fall asleep.

Or maybe it’s even worse. You work from home where you just roll out of bed, take 15 steps, then finish your day in the same place you started it.

With the current state of technology and businesses models in our society this is starting to look more and more like the average persons work day.

We are becoming increasingly sedentary and spending the vast majority of our time sitting down or lounging on couches than ever before.

This is a huge breakaway from what our bodies have been built to be exposed to on a daily basis to function at our healthiest levels.

We are a far step (or lack thereof) away from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of daily cardiovascular exercise in search of food and resources.

This modern sedentary lifestyle comes with many health consequences.

 It comes with things like an increased risk of all-cause mortality, Weakness that predisposes you to injuries and losing your physical freedom, poor heart health, diseases like diabetes, weight gain/obesity, poor mental health, high levels of chronic stress, fatigue/low energy levels, and sleep issues.

In addition, the postures that we are spending so much time in while sitting all day on these chairs/couches is creating poor posture in our bodies. These postural imbalances are commonly happening in our back, hips, shoulders, or neck and are often leading to pain throughout the body. As a result they become very tight and tense in some areas and people begin to lose mobility in their body. In general these postural changes can be aesthetically detrimental and can cause you to give off low energy body language that other people notice.

Areas of Injury

Back- people are developing anterior or posterior pelvic tilts as well as lateral shifts in their hips/low-backs depending on their seating posture. This often leads to back pain, knee pain, as well as other issues in the legs such as sciatica.

Neck- a forward and stooped head posture leading to lots of stress on your neck muscles and upper back often leading to neck, upper back, and shoulder pain. Trouble rotating, kyphotic thoracic spines, and overly tight upper traps is common.

Shoulders- the inwardly rotated and scrunched forward + together position while working on a computer or texting leads to all sorts of potential issues in the shoulders and arms. Shoulder blade protraction, anterior tilting, elevation, winging postures, and shoulder internal rotation are commonly seen. These can cause you to be more likely to injure your shoulders rotator cuff, ligaments, or bicep tendons.

These negative aspects of a sedentary lifestyle are no longer hidden. I’d say they are fairly commonly known.

So what are some things you can do to fight against the health and postural issues?

Fighting against the health Issues

Physical exercise is the best way to combat the effects.

Aerobic exercise to improve your cardiovascular health: The majority of deaths world-wide are related to cardiovascular disease. Exercising at a moderate intensity for 30-60 minutes 5x a week can help reverse and prevent the modifiable causes of these diseases such as high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, and elevated heart rate. Endurance training is also fantastic to help improve your mood and energy levels helping people tremendously with their sleep. Continuous exercise is the best to help you burn as many calories as possible to help maintain a healthy weight.

Strength Training: is incredibly effective to build muscle mass, which will help increase your metabolism, your strength, and help you maintain your ability to stay injury free, your quality of life, and your independence. Muscle Loss (sarcopenia) is part of the “death spiral” in older people as it is devastating and happens quickly once immobile from an injury (such as a broken hip)

Daily Movement Habits: Splitting up periods of sitting with movement throughout the day is a massive help against the negative effects. Prolonged periods of sitting (6-7 hours a day can negate the benefits of an hour of cardio per day). Standing desks, walking treadmills at your standing desk, taking business calls while going for a walk. Walking after eating. Developing a hobby like a sport, the gym, hiking, bird watching etc that is active and that you enjoy doing are all great sustainable ways to continue to get exercise in daily. Get creative with finding ways that work for you.

Nutritional Habits: healthy food selection and calorie tracking will help prevent against weight gain and some of the diseases like diabetes that come with it.

Fighting against the postural issues

Ergonomics: Having a desk, chair, and computer setup at a height that works well for you and your body helps to encourage a healthier and less tense posture throughout your whole body which prevents pain. Setting up your work space so that you are not placing and unknown repetitive strain on certain muscle groups can be a game changer for people experiencing back or neck pain. This is very common in people who are constantly rotating to one side to reach for something throughout the day or who are turning their head or neck consistently in one direction to look at a monitor or something else throughout the day. Make sure you can sit with your feet on the floor, on your hip bones with a firm supporting chair, keeping a neutral pelvis, your keyboard at a level where your shoulders are relaxed, your monitor screen at a height where you can view it from a natural head posture that doesn’t put excess strain on your neck muscles.

Postural understanding: basic education on what a healthier posture constitutes will help you avoid staying in positions of poor posture for prolonged periods of time. Many people develop unknown bad habits that lead to issues but think nothing of them. One such example would be sitting on one ankle crossed under your butt. This can lead to knee pain and issues through your hips and back.

Postural exercises: Knowing your postural tendencies can help guide you to do some short 20s long exercises or stretches throughout the day when you need a break or feel some tension starting to creep in which will help to pull you out of your current posture and into a better position with more movement variability available. A common shoulder position as a result of working at a desk is rounded shoulders. A great exercise you can do to break up that postural tendency is called a “wall angel”. Give it a try.

Movement: Over all getting up and moving and stretching is an incredibly helpful option to reset your posture. Not getting too caught up in trying to maintain a perfect posture 24/7 is important as it is a losing battle. Instead try to prevent yourself from spending too much time in any one posture. Spending too long in one position can lead to ligament creep where your muscles begin to turn off and your ligament start to bear more of your postural weight increasing likelihood of injury. Switching postures often can help you maintain movement variability and being aware of your negative postural tendencies and moving away from them are some of the easiest changes you can make.

Get up, get moving, get healthy, and get yourself into a good posture that is pain free!