Select Office Furniture East Anglias Office Furniture Specialists

Your Comfort

We keep abrest of the European and UK regulation when it comes to office furniture which will minimise the risk of RSI and other pains to both the end user and the companies.

We understand there is no single solution to these sort of pains and everyone will enjoy a chair (for example) differently from the next. We use our experience to advise you of the benefits and disadvantages with our product line for use in your environment and budget. We always recommend visiting the show room to try out any furniture before you commit to the purchase... its important to us because we want you BACK!

Below is a quick guide to back pain which you may consider when organising your office.

Things You Should Know About Back Pain

  1. Back pain is as mystifying today as it was decades ago. Despite excellent tests and procedures, modern back specialists admit that up to eighty percent of all cases have no clear physiological cause. In fact, many pain-free people show bulging or herniated discs in x-rays.
  2. Also, despite everything we know about back pain, ninety percent of us are going to have a disabling episode at some point in our lives.
  3. It is difficult to predict which individual person will develop back pain. Strength, fitness, and back x-rays are not good predictors. One major study concluded that the only predictors were 1) whether the person has had back pain before, and 2) whether the person smokes cigarettes.
  4. On the other hand, job characteristics are predictors of back pain. Jobs with heavy or frequent lifting are high risk, as are jobs involving prolonged standing or sitting.
  5. People who sit for long periods are at risk for back disorders. The two greatest problems seem to be 1) sitting upright or forward, and 2) not changing position.
  6. An upright posture with a ninety-degree hip position is actually unhealthy, from the perspective of the intervertebral discs. For a number of reasons, the discs experience more pressure - and the pressure is more lopsided - than while standing.
  7. So it's a good idea to sit with the hip joints somewhat straightened. Yes, this resembles a slouch, with your rear end scootched (a technical term!) forward in the seat. A supported slouch may be healthy in the long run. Forward-tilt chairs support this posture, but so do chairs with level seats and reclined backrests.
  8. Even if the hip joints aren't somewhat straightened, sitting in a reclined posture is more healthy than sitting upright.
  9. This is because reclined sitting puts more of your weight onto the chair's backrest. If the chair backrest holds up more weight, the discs in the lower back hold up less weight. (Well-designed armrests also take some of the upper body weight from the discs.) And reclined sitting lets the back muscles relax.
  10. All sitters should move around. In addition to helping the muscles relax and recover, this alternately squeezes and unsqueezes the intervertebral discs, which results in better filtration of fluids into and out of the cores of the discs. Discs stay plumper and, in the long run, healthier.
  11. One implication: chairs should follow the sitter as he/she changes posture.
  12. The most important chair adjustments are seat height from the floor - the feet should be able to rest flat on the floor. (However, this doesn't mean the feet should always be flat on the floor. Legs should be free to stay in different positions).
  13. depth from the front of the seat to the backrest - sitters should be able to use the backrest without any pressure behind the knees.
  14. The 'proper' chair adjustments and chair posture are greatly influenced by the rest of the work area. In particular, the eyes can affect posture, especially if the work material is too far, low, or high. Hand positions (especially working far from the body) can also affect body position, particularly the posture of the upper back and neck.
  15. Upper back and neck discomfort is often related to upward viewing angles (for example, monitors above eye height) or leaning, twisting, or reaching (for example, looking down and sideways at a document on the desk, or reaching for a mouse).
  16. For people with existing, chronic, difficult back pain: all the above rules are optional, because each back pain case is different. Rules for prevention of back pain or treatment of medium- level cases may be completely inappropriate for individual cases of severe back pain. Before accepting any advice, trust the "advice" of your own body's discomfort reactions.
  17. Our final advice is this - Take regular breaks from your desk (at least every 40 minutes, walk around, stretch, do some filing, change position and posture), Regular gentle exercise such as Yoga keeps your joints and vertebrae supple.

If you suffer from discomfort at work, why not call us and arrange to try a different chair at your workstation?