Freed from my desk

Dear Dr Abby, 

I’m on a new schedule like so many and NOT missing my desk life. How can I undo what desk life did to me (so much sitting!) and make it possible to go back?? 

-Freed from my Desk in Seattle

Dear Freed From Desk,

This “Great Pause” has changed a lot for our professional lives. I think it’s great that you’re noticing what you are liking better with all the changes this pandemic has brought.  

Your question left me with more questions. Here are some of them:

• What did desk-life do to you? 

• Are you dreading returning to sitting at your desk or the tasks you were doing at your desk? 

• Are you active during the times you aren’t at your desk or able to be during your work day?

• Is it possible to be productive without sitting at your desk?

While you ruminate on those, let’s talk about making your desk life as comfy as possible!

What did all that sitting do to you?

The Journal of Lifestyle Medicine published an article in 2017 that showed that greater than **48% of the subjects who sat for an average of 6.29 hours of their 8-hour work day reported feeling discomfort at their workstation, and over 73% reported feeling exhausted at the end of their work day**.

UM, WHAT?! Half of us are physically uncomfortable at our desks and do it all day anyway. Wow, we must love our jobs. Sitting for this long in your day is also associated with poor job satisfaction, high blood pressure, and pain or injury in the low back, thighs/knees, shoulders, and neck. When you’re uncomfortable at your desk, your brain is spending time and energy attending to your pain rather than doing your thing.

Get help from an expert.

**Ask your physical therapist to assess a photo or video of you at your workstation** and get advice on how to minimize the amount of work your body has to do to sit for hours at a time.

There is no one perfect posture for working. The key is to have variability in how and where you work. But there are some set-up recommendations that allow for the most variability and the least physical effort:

• Make sure your feet can be flat on the floor in front of you when you are sitting all the way back in your chair.

• Ease your neck and shoulders by keeping your keyboard and mouse close enough so that your arms hang at your sides and your hands are just about at elbow height.

• Keep your head, eyes, and neck happy by placing the middle of your computer screen at eye level and 18-24” from your face.

Make the chair work for you.

Sitting for 6+ hours is an endurance activity. **Let the chair do the work for you**. I’m sorry to report that you will need to spend money on your chair. Everything else you can fix on the cheap (I’m all for reams of paper under the monitor!). If you sit for 6 hours per day, 5 days per week, 50 weeks of the year, you are spending over 62 FULL DAYS PER YEAR IN THIS CHAIR. Get a chair you can sit in comfortably for 62 days. I call my office chair my throne because it costs so much money, but it makes me all powerful at Forte and my back doesn’t hurt, so I love it.

--BREAK TIME: GOTTA GO WALK FOR 10 MINUTES--

Ok, I’m back.

Ease up on your eyes.

Consider how your environment may be unnecessarily taxing your nervous system. This includes light, noise, colors, managing interruptions, having space to do your work, and more. Get rid of anything that overwhelms your system while trying to work.

If you are working on a computer or anything with a screen, consult with your optometrist about computer glasses. **Computer glasses can include glare-reduction, blue light blockers, and corrective lenses specifically for the distance of your computer screen.** Distance prescriptions are to help with long-distance tasks like driving. Unless you are in New Jersey, the computer screen is closer than the car in front of you (sarcasm font, sorry NJ). Reading glasses are meant to help you see objects 12-14” away. Bifocals or multi-focal lenses allow our brain accept information from different distances at once. **By using a prescription for the wrong distance,  you are using excessive energy to “translate” what you see into something you can understand. Don’t do this to yourself. Go to your eye doctor.** If you need recommendations in Seattle, let me know. 

Summary:

• TREAT YO’ SELF with a chair you can sit in for 62 days straight. 

• Send your PT a photo of you at your workstation and ask about what changes to make. 

• Take note of your surroundings-- bring in more of what helps you work and get rid of anything that is overwhelming the system. 

• See your optometrist to ease the work on your eyeballs and therefore your nervous system. 

  **Reduce the workload on your body, let your brain out of the pain meeting, and get back to work.** Your brain waves are better suited to saving the world, becoming the best, serving your community, providing for your family, and conquering the universe. 

  Let me know what changes you end up making and how it works out!

  I appreciate you!

  Dr. Abby

  Disclaimer: Advice given in the Dear Dr. Abby column is intended for educational purposes only. Always seek care from your medical provider with any questions you have regarding your medical condition.