The Importance of Posture Part 2 – Ergonomics

October 17th, 2008 by Chris Wood Posted in posture | No Comments »

Today, there are more seated workers than standing workers worldwide. This presents a significant challenge to the body, because our bodies are simply not designed to sit! The chair is said to have entered into our life style thousands of years ago through Egyptian heritage. The chair, in Egyptian times, was a symbol of power; only the King was allowed to use a chair. As time passed, the King sat in the largest chair at the head of the table, the Queen in a slightly smaller and less intimidating chair at the opposite end of the table, and finally the underclassmen in smaller chairs around the table.

 

As you are aware, this same “power structure” can be found in households and boardrooms all over the world today. Interestingly, two things have not changed since the advent of the chair, and one thing has; we still apply the persona of power to the “size of ones chair”, the human body has not changed at all since the chair was put into use, and finally, we are more sedentary than ever and WE HAVE MORE BACK PAIN THAN EVER

 

The therapist treating a patient today must look carefully at the patient’s ergo­nomics and fully educate the patient so they can control their environment. The patient wanting full recovery from musculoskeletal injury and/or prevention of postural strain and repetitive stress disorders leading to chronic musculoskeletal disorder must seek assistance with ergonomic education.

 

It is critical to remember that we function in a field of gravity, relentless gravity, twenty-four hours a day. Some of you may say, “you don’t have to worry about gravity when you are sleeping though”. If you ever have a cervical spine injury, you will quickly learn that you may even have to take your ergonomics training to bed!

 

Sitting in a chair for hours at a time, bending over the hood of a car, or working over a work bench for hours at a time can be very taxing to the postural muscles of the body. When the postural muscles are chronically over worked, they tend to tighten and shorten, altering our natural spinal curvatures

 

As the body begins to deteriorate from poor posture and an unrelenting ergonomic environment, it becomes less and less able to handle the stresses of life, often leading to unwanted and unexpected injury. For the patient seeking help from a professional medical practitioner, their failure to educate you as to ideal ergonomics will only serve to progressively drain your finances, time and patience, often leading to unnecessary use of non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and other pain masking medications. Eventually, the whole system begins to deteriorate, leaving you, the patient a bewildered, frustrated and confused mess

 

Chair height

 

When your chair is too high, the space behind your knee (the popliteal fossae) becomes com­pressed. This frequently causes numbness in the lower leg and slows circulation to and from the lower leg, resulting in swollen feet.When your chair is too low, the large nerve structure called the “sciatic” nerve of­ten gets compressed. This leads to pain in the low back and legs and can result in numbness in one or both legs.

When your chair fits correctly, there is a 90° angle at the knee and there is no dis­comfort behind the knee or in the butt region. The feet should always rest flat on the floor unless you are using a footrest.

If you are short, and your work­ing surface is high enough that you can’t keep your feet on the ground without excessive pres­sure on the backs of your legs (Left), it will be necessary to use a footrest.

To determine the height of your footrest, adjust your chair height until your arms are comfortably placed on the table and your elbow is bent to 90°. Once your arms are at the correct height, measure how high your footrest will have to be and then either have a carpenter custom build one for you or purchase an ad­justable footrest form an office supply store.

 

How to Fit a Lumbar Support

 

When using a chair with an adjustable lumbar support, it is important to position it correctly. The apex of your lumbar curve is directly behind your belly button. Adjust your lumbar support so that the most convex point of the lumbar support is directly behind your belly button

 

Arm Rest Adjustment

 

For those of you who must perform data entry tasks for extended periods of time, arm rests are suggested. An armrest, when adjusted to support your arms so they are parallel to the floor and level with your keyboard, will save you from muscle soreness in the upper back, shoulders and neck. A good chair has adjust­able arm supports.

 

Keyboard Height

 

Because the keyboard height is fixed in most desks, it is critical that you adjust your chair to allow your forearms to be parallel to the floor when you hands are in a comfortable typing position and you are sitting in good upright posture

 

Keyboard Set-up

 

After you have determined the correct keyboard height, it is very important to set your body up correctly with respect to the distance from the keyboard and hand placement on the keyboard itself. If your keyboard is positioned such that your wrist flexor tendons touch the edge of your desk or keyboard tray, you are much more likely to inflame your wrist flexor tendons. This is often a partial contributor to carpal tunnel syn­drome. To prevent unwanted repetitive stress injuries, use a protective wrist pad. They can be purchased at most any computer or office supply store

 

Don’t sit too far away from your keyboard

 

When setting yourself up at a keyboard or to do any work task, be it at a coun­ter top in the garage, to cook in the kitchen, it is always best to minimize how much shoulder flexion you must maintain. As seen to the left, holding your arms in a position of shoulder flexion with your hand only five centimetres above the working surface produced severe pain in young men in only twenty minutes!

 

When positioning yourself at a desk or keyboard, it is best to try and keep the upper arm as vertical as possible when sitting with good upright posture. The same principle applies to work environ­ments that require prolonged standing at counter tops.                                

 

Selecting the correct height and distance for your video display unit

 

Once you have set your chair height so that you are properly set-up to your keyboard and you have chosen a footrest if needed, it is time to set your video display (VDU) height. To find the optimal height for your VDU, sit at your ergonomically correct workstation. Have a friend or co-worker measure the distance from the outside corner of your eye to the floor. Use this measurement to deter­mine how high the centre of your VDU screen should be from the floor (see diagram).

By setting your VDU height so that you are looking directly into the centre of the screen, you are more likely to maintain optimal posture throughout the day because your eyes dictate posture. If your eyes are focused below the centre point most of the day, the tendency is to be drawn into flexion or forward. When you VDU is set-up correctly, your eyes will wonder above and below the mid-point, which will encourage better postural alignment, improve blood flow to the head and improve productivity.

 

Selecting the correct work station:

 

Writing tables are generally 5-8 centimetres higher than is recommended for data entry . To prevent unwanted repetitive stress injury, it is always best to invest in a table or desk designed to suit the primary need of the workstation.

 

If your work requires a combination of both handwriting and data entry, a com­bination desk is highly recommended. These desks are readily available and inexpensive today. In fact, for the price of one visit to an orthopedic surgeon to find out what is wrong with your neck, you could probably pay for a combination desk at most office supply stores

 

Hopefully now you have a better understanding of the importance of ergonomics and how to set up your desk and control your environment.

Do You Microwave Your Food?

October 17th, 2008 by Chris Wood Posted in Nutriton | No Comments »

 

Sure, the microwave is convenient; what other device allows you to heat your food up in a matter of seconds? And they’re so widely used that you’d be hard-pressed to find a gas station or office building without one. This is something that you likely already intrinsically suspect but don’t want to acknowledge due to the convenience factor–microwaves are bad for your food, and they’re even worse for you.

There are many concerns with microwave ovens, among them:

• Carcinogenic toxins could be leached from plastic or paper plates or covers and mix with your food.
• The food temperature may become extremely hot, at temperatures high enough to cause burns or steam buildup that could explode–this is especially problematic for baby bottles, and is one of the reasons why baby bottles should never be heated in the microwave (microwaving can also break down the disease-fighting ability of breast milk).
• Vegetables and other food lose valuable, cancer-fighting nutrients when cooked in the microwave.
• The chemical structure of foods changes when microwaved, with unknown consequences.

There have been very few studies done to determine what kinds of changes occur in foods that are microwaved, but rest assured the changes are significant.

Consider the 1991 lawsuit involving a woman who had hip surgery and died because the blood used in her blood transfusion was warmed in a microwave. Blood is routinely warmed before transfusions, but not by microwave. The microwave altered the blood and it killed the woman.

Microwaves also destruct and deform food molecules. A study published in the November 2003 issue of The Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture found that broccoli “zapped” in the microwave with a little water lost up to 97 percent of the beneficial antioxidant chemicals it contains. By comparison, steamed broccoli lost 11 percent or fewer of its antioxidants.

Besides the loss of nutrients, microwaving forms new compounds (radiolytic compounds) that are unknown to humans and nature. It’s not yet known exactly what these compounds do in the human body. It will likely be a difficult thing to sort out, especially when there are previously unknown compounds being introduced to humans from a variety of sources such as new food products and genetically modified foods.

Perhaps the most concrete evidence of the dangers of microwaves comes from Dr. Hans Hertel, a Swiss food scientist, who carried out a small but high-quality study on the effects of microwaved food on humans. His conclusions were clear and alarming: microwave cooking significantly altered the food’s nutrients enough so that changes occurred in the participants blood–changes that suggested deterioration. The changes included:

• Increased cholesterol levels
• More leukocytes, or white blood cells, which can suggest poisoning
• Decreased numbers of red blood cells
• Production of radiolytic compounds (compounds unknown in nature)
• Decreased hemoglobin levels, which could indicate anemic tendencies

Stemming from Hertel’s important research the top 10 reasons to avoid the use - and even ownership - of microwave ovens:

1. Continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes long term or permanent brain damage by “shorting out” electrical impulses in the brain (de-polarizing or de-magnetizing the brain tissue).

2. The human body cannot metabolize (break down) the unknown by-products created in microwaved food.

3. Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating

microwaved foods.             ‘

4. The effects of microwaved food by-products are residual (long term or permanent) within   the    human body.

5. Minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of all microwaved food is reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit, or the human body absorbs altered compounds that cannot be broken down.

6. The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens.

7. Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal cancerous growths (tumors). This may explain the rapidly increased rate of colon cancer in America.

8. The prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes cancerous cells to increase in human blood.

9. Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes immune system deficiencies through lymph gland and blood serum alterations.

10. Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory, concentration, emotional instability and a decrease of intelligence.

 

So what can you do to avoid microwaves? Well, the first thing to do is get rid of it in your home so you won’t be tempted to use it. If it’s not there, then you can’t use it! Then, try consuming a lot of your food raw. Ideally, at least one-third of the food in your diet should be raw, since this is the form that will give you the maximum amount of nutrients.

Of course, you can opt to use your regular oven or stove. This may seem time-consuming at first, but you’ll soon adjust and may actually start to enjoy the natural time it takes to heat up or prepare your food. During this time, you can relax with your family, read, write, listen to music or do anything that will help you to slow down and prepare for the meal you’re about to enjoy.

You may notice that taking more time to prepare your food will transcend to other aspects of your life as well, and you’ll enjoy a slower, more relaxed lifestyle than the majority of those around you.