Pain Relief from Neck and Shoulder Pain My Top 5 Favorite Ways

Copyright 2006 Wendy Young When you are experiencing neck and shoulder pain at your computer, there are simple actions you can take to help you feel better. It is very important to understand how your body reacts with the design of your computer work area. Of equal concern is choosing products to help you rather than create additional pain. It can be just as simple as adjusting or rearranging your equipment and furniture. Monitor Height Placement If you bend your neck back to see the monitor, it is too high. If you bend your neck down, your monitor is too low. Let your head rest naturally and it will tilt slightly forward. You have left the office too many times with sore muscles! When looking straight ahead, your line of sight is the imaginary horizontal line from your eyes to the screen. Your eyes naturally gaze down 15 - 20 degrees below your line of sight. Adjust the height to easily view the information on the screen where your eyes naturally gaze. Center Keyboard with Monitor If your keyboard is placed directly in front of your body and your monitor is situated to the right or left you will be forced to twist your neck to view the screen. Ouch! This twist will tense the muscles in your neck. The longer you work with your muscles tensed the higher risk of developing neck and shoulder pain. Adjust Your Chair Armrest Height How often do you feel as if your neck is almost touching your shoulder? Too often, right! Let's not make it easy to tense your shoulders. If your armrests are too high, you will be raising (and tensing!) your shoulders up and creating pain. Due to the tendency to lean to the side with armrests too low you may also create pain in the elbows and ulnar nerve. The ulnar nerve is the one you feel all the way down into your pinkie finger when hitting your elbow. Watch this one! Adjust your armrests so that your shoulders are completely relaxed and elbows rest comfortably on armrests. Eliminate Your Chair Armrests Altogether Do your armrests prevent you from getting close to your keyboard because they hit the edge of your desk? This is a source of mental stress many of us have experienced. You will also create tense neck and shoulder muscles due to the straight arm reach to the keyboard and mouse. So in this case, remove the armrests. Move Mouse Closer To Your Body Moving and clicking your mouse frequently when it is too far away can create shoulder pain - use a shorter footprint, ergonomic keyboard without the right hand numeric keypad or a mouse that is placed at the center of the body. You may also try a keyboard with the numeric keypad on the left, your keyboard and monitor will be balanced more easily. As always, REST, REST and MORE REST every 10 minutes for 10 seconds and every hour for five (5) minutes. Stand up and stretch often as this will relax your mind and body, improve circulation and create more productivity. Go Live in Comfort!