Get a treadmill desk: http://frog.posterous.com/the-treadmill-desk-returns
How feasible is this? Can anyone share their experiences?
Your Office Chair Is Killing You
31–40 of 88 posts
Re: Your Office Chair Is Killing You
#32I don't know why every chair has wheels. I hate chairs with wheels. Every office I've been to, I end up sitting on one leg, the other stretched out. And I can't push my feet against the wall and lean back because of the blasted wheels! But when I go home to my beloved $20 chair with no wheels, no armrests, and only lower back support, I feel great.
Re: Your Office Chair Is Killing You
#33I alternate between sitting on a normal chair and kneeling on the (carpeted) floor and sometimes kneeling on a bean bag chair. Kneeling is also nice because its easier to randomly stretch.
Re: Your Office Chair Is Killing You
#34There was a pertinent discussion about height adjustable desks few days ago, see here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1285775
I highly recommend them, if you can get one for your home office (or if you work in a office that allows desk of your preference). Some people go even further and get a treadmill underneath the desk, but I like to switch between sitting & standing personally. Standing up while working gives me an active feel to it, and I find myself avoiding procrastination since my legs would get tired if I were to spend hours surfing the Web (sure, I could adjust the height so that I can comfortably sit again, but the decision becomes more 'conscious' in a sense).
Re: Your Office Chair Is Killing You
#35Okay, how about sitting down on the floor with legs crossed and a small portable desk for your computer? This is exactly how I'm sitting now, and it's less painful than sitting on the cheap $20 plastic chair I own.
I'm curious about this too. Many Buddhist monks sit cross-legged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting#Cross-legged) for long periods of the day, and I haven't heard of them having any health problems due to this.
Re: Your Office Chair Is Killing You
#36Anyone have a good chair recommendation that doesn't cost $500? The stool concept struck me as a great idea, until I saw the price. (Maybe I should be in chairs?)
Here's the thing. Don't be put off by the expensive price of ergonomic chairs. I bought my Aeron chair in 2002 and have used it every day since. It's made a huge difference in my back and neck.
The chair cost be around $700 at the time, so that's Also the chair came with a 12 year warranty. A couple months ago the pneumatic cylinder went out. I called a local Aeron deal and since I bought the chair from a authorized dealer, they sent somebody to my house and fixed it for free.
Re: Your Office Chair Is Killing You
#37I wish the article had given an explanation for their claim that lumbar support doesn't help anything. They say the spine needs to stay S-shaped, and that's exactly what lumbar support is designed to promote, so what's the problem?
Re: Your Office Chair Is Killing You
#38I can't believe that some ergonomics researchers are actually endorsing my crazy idea of setting up a treadmill and walking while working.
Maybe I have to try that now. It's a pity that treadmills are so pricey.
Incidentally, the ability to move around in different positions while reading is a major reason I bought the iPad.
Re: Your Office Chair Is Killing You
#39Anyone have a good chair recommendation that doesn't cost $500? The stool concept struck me as a great idea, until I saw the price. (Maybe I should be in chairs?)
Here's the thing. Don't be put off by the expensive price of ergonomic chairs. I bought my Aeron chair in 2002 and have used it every day since. It's made a huge difference in my back and neck. The chair cost be around $700 at the time, so that's Also the chair came with a 12 year warranty. A couple months ago the pneumatic cylinder went out. I called a local Aeron deal and since I bought the chair from a authorized…
Yes. If you have the money, and you've already been to the dentist [1], spend the money on a chair. Either you will (god forbid) not live to be forty years old -- in which case you won't miss the money -- or your forty-year-old self will thank you. So will your fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty and ninety-year-old selves.
(This is not to say, by the way, that you might not experience chair-related pain in your thirties, or even earlier. But the odds do seem to go up in middle age.)
My only concern -- highlighted in the article -- is that my Aeron isn't enough. I'm amused to find that experts think the thing is too low -- it is too low. But maybe that was partly because my pneumatic cylinder was about to go out -- mine just went. Fortunately my chair is also under warranty!
I'll look into these wacky standing chairs.
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[1] Slightly off topic, but: I wish, when I was in my twenties, poorly paid, and absent-minded, I'd gotten email every six months saying "the dental checkup you're about to skip will eventually cost you something like $10k or $15k in root canals and crowns. Or, alternatively, you could lose your teeth and spend forty years cursing your bridgework and dentures."
Re: Your Office Chair Is Killing You
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Standing desks and chaise longues are good options. Ball chairs, which bounce your spine into a C-shape, are not."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_Chair A ball chair is not an exercise ball chair. Looking at the illustration on Wikipedia, it's clear that a ball chair forces a C-shaped spine. Your spine will stay in an S-shape if you sit upright on the "chair" I'm referring to.
Seeing as that design is never mentioned in respects to ergonomics and certainly wouldn't "bounce" anything, I strongly suspect the quoted passage was referring to the inflated balls you sit on.