TLC Tips of the Week:                          from Helen Olberg

You’re already aware that working at a computer for a long period of time can cause stiffness, numbness, and even pain in your neck, back, arms, and wrists. You’ve already positioned your computer to be ergonomically correct, and still you feel pretty uncomfortable or exhausted at the end of the day. Here are some tips from one who works 12-16 hours a day in front of a computer.

1.  Your forearms and hands represent 5.2% of your body weight (Ergonomics, Vol. 26, No. 11, p 1069). That's 7.8 pounds for a 150 pound person! Okay for a workout, but several hours a day? This weight pulls forward on your upper torso while you’re seated. To keep from falling forward, you constantly tense the muscles in your back and shoulders. After a short time fatigue sets in, and you unconsciously relax your back muscles, resulting in a forward "slouch", transferring the load to your bones and discs.

WHAT CAN YOU DO? 
Try this every half hour to hour:
    Do this whole exercise three times, several times a day.
Roll your head Clockwise, then counter-clockwise. Roll each shoulder five times; lift your arms over your head and stretch them high, then slowly lower them to your shoulder height and rotate your shoulders. Relax.

2.   To eliminate neck twisting, the monitor has been placed at a comfortable height so you don’t need to move your head up or down to see it. Research shows the center of the monitor should be about 17-18 degrees below horizontal for optimal viewing, and this is where it will be if you follow this simple arm extension/finger pointing tip: sit back in your chair at an angle of around 100-110 degrees (i.e. slight recline) and hold your right arm out horizontally, your middle finger should almost touch the center of the screen. From that starting position you can then make minor changes to screen height / angle. If the monitor is too low, you will crane your neck forward; if it's too high, you'll tilt your head backwards and end up with neck/shoulder pain. 

DOES THIS WORK? … up to a point – I still get tired. What do I do? I raise or lower my chair slightly once or twice a day to change my neck position.

3.   Even if you wear granny glasses, bifocals or progressive lens, you should sit back in your chair in a reclined posture (with your back at around 110 degrees for good low back health, rather than sitting erect at 90 degrees. If you slightly tilt the monitor backwards, you should be able to see the screen without tilting your head back or craning your neck forwards. Postural problems with bifocals/trifocals/progressive lenses can occur if you sit erect or even hunched forwards. Low monitors can cause neck flexion and more glare. Recent studies have shown that the best position for a computer monitor is for the center of the screen to be at around 17.5 degrees below eye level. Try to align your eyes with the top of the viewing area of the screen, and this should put the center about right geometrically.

4.   My neck/carpal tunnel problems have been relieved with a special ‘computer’ pair of glasses. After measuring the distance from my monitor to my eyes, I requested that my optometrist prescribe lenses with a 31” focal length. Now I don’t need to raise or lower my head to view the monitor. I do need to take them off for close reading or distance. (Supposedly, the Trifocal/progressive lenses do the same thing, but you need to raise or lower your head to position so you can see through the appropriate part.)