Is Your Desk Job De-Evolving Your Body?
In
an effort to keep up with the latest “trends” in diagnosis we’d like to
reveal our latest “syndrome”, we call it “Office Worker Syndrome.”
While the names of these syndromes may be new, the symptoms and
underlying causes of the problems go back all the way to when we as
humans, started to spend less time hunting and gathering and more time
being stagnant or stationary at a desk or in front of a computer. So,
what is “Office Worker’s Syndrome you ask? We define it by a group of
common symptoms resulting from the stress and effects of sitting at a
desk for long hours hunched over a computer. These symptoms include
neck pain/tension, headaches, poor posture, upper back pain tension and
muscle spasms and reduced range of motion throughout the spine. More
advanced symptoms include spinal degeneration and/or arthritis, tingling
numbness in the extremities, migraines, fatigue, high blood pressure
and a general feeling of dis-eases-ease or lack of health throughout the body.
Evolutionarily speaking, our
bodies are made to be on the move. Walking from village to village,
running from hungry predators, foraging for food and hunting game for
food that we’d cook over the fire in our cave, sod house, teepee, igloo
or whatever our dwelling of choice may be for that era and geographic
location in time. Notice in the previous sentences it does not say
anything remotely close to “staring a computer screen for 8 hours,
reading our Ipad, sitting at a desk all day, driving in traffic or going
to McDonalds. For what our bodies have evolved to do over the last
tens of thousands of years, none of it includes what most of us actually
“do” in a day.
When we do something other
than what our bodies have evolved for, this creates unusual or an
increased load of stress on our system(s) and symptoms (ie. pain,
degeneration, sickness) will eventually become present. Are bodies
were NOT designed to sit at a desk for 8-10 hours per day, and those of
us who do, usually have many of the symptoms mentioned in the first
paragraph. So why is sitting so detrimental? It’s all about structure
and gravity. Our spines have three curves that help the body absorb
shock (like a spring) and keep the weight of the head and torso centered
over the body (ie. head over shoulder, shoulders over hips, hips over
knees, knees over ankles. The more the head moves forward the heavier
it becomes on the spine thanks to gravity. Gravity is also constant,
therefore, you have a constant load or stress on the spine that the body
has to resist. The muscles that hold up the head start from about the
mid back and go all the way to the base of the skull. Since these
muscles are constantly resisting gravity (which is constants remember),
the results are chronic tension and muscle spasms. This is just the
start of the problem. Chronic tension and muscle spasms lead to
decreased range of motion and arthritis. The discs of the spine stay
healthy by motion, if they are not moving, they are not getting the
nutrients and fluid they need so they degenerate and develop arthritis.
This downward spiral of health continues until eventually you have
chronic pain, tension muscle spasm and arthritis throughout that
compresses vital spinal nerves that carry communication to and from the
brain throughout the body. Chiropractors call this nerve compression
or impingement “subluxations” and they can be very detrimental to our
health. The “De-evolution of the human spine” is a rapid loss of
posture and spinal health due to the forces put on our spine by sitting
at a desk for long hours every day. Our office jobs reverse the tens
of thousands of years of evolution in only a matter of a few years and
that upright posture we have evolved to over millenia to attain is
reduced into that prehistoric neanderthal’s posture of long ago. Isn’t
it ironic that modern technology has actually made our physical posture
and alignment worse over the years and made us more hunched over as our
primal ancestors once were?
De-evolution of the Human Spine
So how do you maintain your
high paying (hopefully) corporate desk job, your evolutionary entitled
upright posture, a pain-free spine and overall structural integrity and
wellness of your body? Once again we go back to structure.
Step One: Make sure all the
bones are aligned and moving properly. Bone adjusting has been around
for thousands of years, but the safest, most effective way of keeping
your bones and posture in alignment is to get regularly adjusted by a
chiropractor. You want healthy teeth? You go to the dentist. You want a
healthy spine, go to a chiropractor. People ask all the time, “How
long will I have to go to a chiropractor?” My response is almost always
the same “Do you go to the dentist? How long do you plan on going to
the dentist for?” Arthritis in the spine is just like cavities in the
teeth, much of it can be prevented with proper care and maintenance.
Chiropractors are the highest trained and most effective professionals
at diagnosing, treating and correcting spinal and postural
misalignments. If you’ve never been to a chiropractor it’s like having a
car that is your age and never taking it to a mechanic. Can you
imagine how horrible the alignment would be on your car if you’ve never
checked it or had it adjusted in 30 years? If your spine is in perfect
health with the proper curvatures and you are actively following the
steps listed on the page, then you should probably be getting your spine
checked and adjusted about 1-2 times per month. If you’ve been sitting
at that desk for years and not taking care of your spine and body, you
probably have a bit of chiropractic “correction” to be done to teach and
retrain you spine how to move again and maintain the correct
alignment. Starting off, it is not uncommon to see a chiropractor 2-3
time per week to get you spine back to as “normal” as possible. Of
course the best type of chiropractic care is prevention. If you’d been
getting adjusted occasionally (1-2 times per month) throughout your
life, then you’d probably not be in the situation your in at the
moment. The longer you put this important step off, the worse it gets
and the more visits you’ll need to get back to “normal.” So make that
first or long overdue chiropractic appointment right away and get in and
get adjusted.
Step Two: Make sure your
ergonomics are correct at your work station. Are you using a laptop
all day that causes you to be leaning forward, looking down and hunched
forward for 8-10 hours a day? The middle of your monitor should be no
less than eye level. The keyboard should be in a comfortable position
where you don’t have to reach to touch the keys. Your chair should have
proper back support where it encourages you to sit more on your
sit-bones with your spine straight. Your feet should be firmly on the
floor with your knees bent at a 90 degree angle. Have a coworker take a
picture of you at your work station and bring it to your chiropractor
for an evaluation.
Step Three: Make sure you
are doing activities to counter act what sitting as a desk for 8-10
hours per day does to your body. One of my favorites is yoga. My
patients ask me all the time what type of exercises they can do at home
to help prevent their spine from going out of alignment. Nine times out
of ten I answer with “yoga.” Maintaining health and balance in the
body is not as simple as going home and performing a few exercises or
stretches. You can’t just bend forward a few times and stretch out your
hamstrings and low back and expect your core to stabilize. Stretching
is not two dimensional, proper stretching is actually 3-D. Two
dimensional stretching, for example, would be stretching out the major
muscle groups quadriceps (front of legs) and hamstrings (back of legs).
Although this would be slightly beneficial, in this example it is even
more important and effective to stretch out the major AND minor
stabilizing muscles of the legs (adductors, abductors, rotators). This
would require flexion, extension, internal and external rotation,
adduction and abduction and everything in between. In my experience,
about the only activity that I have found that does this actively
(without paying high dollars for a profession trainer to stretch you
out) is a good intense yoga class. In regards to the spine, yoga also
puts the entire body and spinal column through a 3 dimensional
stretching routine which not only reverses the effects of a desk job,
but also lubricates and decompresses the discs of the spine to maintain
and promote health. As much as I’m a proponent of yoga, I still find
it hard to conjure up the discipline to find the time and make the
effort to do a session of yoga at home that is even close to the
benefits I get by attending a class with an instructor. I personally
bounce between sessions at Core Power Yoga and Bikram’s Yoga.
I like how the heat helps my tight muscles stretch and helps my body
detoxify by sweating out toxins. If you’ve never done yoga, remember
that there are a lot of different types of yoga. The trick is finding a
class that works for you. What I like about the two studios I
mentioned before is that they have franchised yoga so no matter where
you go, as long as it’s one of their studios you know the type of class
you are getting. That saves me from accidentally choosing a “yoga”
class that only does meditating and breathing when I’m there for a full
body workout. How much should you go? I recommend at least 2-3 days
per week to see and get continual changes and benefits. At one session a
week I feel good that I did the class but also sore most of the week
from that one session. Two days a week keeps me feeling pretty good
and I see progressive changes in my strength, agility and flexibility.
At three days week and I feel like Superman and 10 years younger by the
end of the week. For starters, make a commitment to attend at least 2
classes per week for at least a month and you will see huge changes in
your health and flexibility by the end of the month. Remember the
saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day?” You’re not going to stretch out and
change years or even decades worth of rigidity, fixation, tight muscles
and poor posture with one or two yoga classes (or chiropractic visits
for that matter). Chances are, after your first class you’ll walk out
feeling like Superman and wake up the next day feeling like an old man.
Very sore. This is common and the best thing you can do is drink
plenty of water and get back into another class within 48 hours.
There are 3 types of stress
that we have; Emotional, such as job or family matters; Chemical, such
as too much coffee, toxins on food or drugs; and Physical, sitting at a
desk for 8-10 hours. All of these “stressors” result in physical stress
on the body that creates everything from spinal misalignments to muscle
tension and pain, to postural distortions. It is essential for overall
long term health of the body that you are managing all the different
types of stress effectively and proactively doing things like getting
adjusted by a chiropractor, maintaining proper ergonomics and staying
involved in an flexibility activity like yoga, to prevent stress and
deterioration of the body.
Dr. Sam Vella at Heavenly Chiropractic and Wellness Center in South Lake Tahoe, CA is a postural specialist. His chiropractic
technique not only focuses on restoring alignment to individual
vertebrae but also restoring postural alignment to the entire body.
Mention this article and receive a detailed postural evaluation. Heavenly Chiropractic and Wellness Center is conveniently
located off Ski Run Blvd. at 3637 Larch Ave. South Lake Tahoe, CA 96150. Appointments can be made by calling (530) 600-3669.
