This Is What Happens To Your Body When You Work From Home
Over the past month, many Americans who can do their jobs remotely made the abrupt transition to working from home to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
If you’re one of them, you may have a less-than-ideal office setup without ergonomic chairs, keyboards or computer monitors, and are experiencing new body aches and pains. Slouching, sitting too long, extending your wrists and relying upon a laptop screen put physical stress on your body that you may not notice but will definitely feel later.
If you are currently holding your neck from the pain of staring down at your laptop, you need to pay attention to what your body is telling you.
“If people wait till things start to hurt, already they’ve waited a little bit too long,” said Alan Hedge, director of the human factors and ergonomics research group at Cornell University.
Keeping your body in a neutral, relaxed position while working is key to avoiding pain, Hedge said. If your work-from-home setup isn’t ergonomic, you will “accelerate the onset of musculoskeletal problems ranging from neck, shoulder, back problems, to hand-wrist problems, to leg problems, all because of working in poor postures,” he said.
Here are some body aches to watch out for and ways to address them:
1. Your neck and shoulders hurt.
If your neck and shoulders are sending you warning pangs, your posture and the way you are looking at your work may be the culprit.
“If you are looking at a low monitor, you are going to be flexing your neck and your head forward and down, which is going to change your posture,” said Karen Loesing, owner of California-based The Ergonomic Expert, which evaluates ergonomics for businesses. “If your monitor is at the correct height, it’s naturally going to pick you up and put you in the back of the chair.”
Solution: Evaluate your work station to isolate what is causing your neck and shoulders to feel off. Cornell University compiled a...
