As many have shifted from working in an office to working from home, there has been an increase in patients experiencing pain. Ergonomics are important as work from home. Here are some tips to prevent back pain while working from home.

Keep Your Neck Straight

Sit at a comfortable height. If your screen is at too much of an angle, you’ll have to twist your neck and will end up with neck pain from the swiveling. While you may not have the same setup as in the office, all it takes is a stack of books or paper to get your screen up to eye level.  Keep your papers flat on the table and your head will be moving up and down. Try a vertical document holder or stand and keep it next to your screen for easy viewing.

Put Your Mouse and Keyboard at a Comfortable Height 

If your laptop is raised to get your screen eye level, try using a separate mouse and keyboard. Your hands and forearms should be level and straight and your arm should be close to the side of your body when you use your mouse. The nerves in your hand leave your neck and run down through your shoulder, elbow, and then wrist. When your arm is by your side, it prevents the nerves from being compressed. When you stretch it out to the side, you increase the risk of straining your shoulder or neck.

Take Advantage of Voice Input 

Most phones, computers, and laptops come with voice recognition software. This is a useful tool that is good for most emails and text. This gives your hands, wrists, and arms time to rest.

Sit with Your Feet Flat  

Sitting with your feet flat on the floor is a great way to protect your body and have good posture. Letting your feet dangle if they don’t reach the floor or pulling them underneath your chair puts added pressure under your thighs and restricts blood flow to your feet and lower legs thus increasing your risk of a deep vein thrombosis.

Avoid Too Much Sitting or Standing 

To avoid sitting too long, it’s important to get up and get moving at least once an hour. This helps physically and mentally.  Your brain gets a break, but your legs and back will too. Sitting too much is dangerous but this doesn’t mean you should spend the whole day standing. It’s not healthy to remain sedentary all day, but you can put a strain on your legs, feet, and circulatory system by standing too much. Rotating between standing and sitting is a safe bet. Too much standing or too much sitting can be bad for your health.

Get Adjusted 

At Atlas Total Health, our goal is to help you achieve true health and wellness. Whether it’s relieving your body of new pain from working at home, getting your spine back in proper alignment, or helping you improve your health and wellness, chiropractic care comes with many benefits. To learn more about how your local chiropractor can help, contact us.

People who have been in a car accident might tell you they feel fine, but is their body truly fine after it’s been involved in a car collision? In a car accident, there’s a lot of force exerted on the body, and even small fender benders can cause injury. Time and again, we treat  people that believe they’re fine and walk away from a car crash without any treatment afterward.

If you’re in a car accident, Atlas Total Health Chiropractic recommends you seek immediate medical care. Protecting your health and legal rights is important going forward after a wreck and  you’re going to get the best results from Atlas Total Health Chiropractic.

 After an accident, your heart races, and the body’s excitement elevates levels of endorphins and adrenaline, which can make you pain-free. This is a tool we’ve used to great success; not being able to feel pain allows us to get up, ignoring injuries. Your pain may be masked right away after a collision.

When soft tissues are damaged, they can be hard to pinpoint and treat. Soft tissue injuries are common after auto crashes. Even small ones at low speeds can generate a lot of force. The most common soft tissue injury after a car crash is whiplash. The forceful back and forth motion of the head damages muscles, which can cause swelling and pain and can restrict mobility. Whiplash often doesn’t show up immediately and can sometimes take a few days before you feel the effects.

Concussions are also a common post-accident condition. It can be serious and life-threatening if it’s not addressed. The symptoms of a concussion aren’t always apparent. Some symptoms are obvious like losing consciousness and disorientation, but other signs are much more subtle, like dizziness, blurred vision, headaches, mental fogginess, short term memory loss, and fatigue.

It’s important to seek medical pain management for post-accident care in addition to chiropractic care you can receive at Atlas Total Health Chiropractic to get you back up on your feet and living a healthy life.

Sciatica is a condition that is often misdiagnosed. Any pain in the lower back that limits your movement or stops you from enjoying life requires attention, but not all lower back pain is sciatic pain. At Atlas Total Health Chiropractic we treat sciatica every day.

Your sciatic nerve runs from your lower back, downward through your buttocks, and into the back of each leg. It is the longest nerve in your body and controls the muscles in your lower legs. It also provides sensation to your legs and soles of your feet. If you have sciatica you may feel persistent pain along your sciatic nerve.

Besides sharp pain, you may experience dull aches, tingling, numbness, or even a burning sensation on one side of your body. People between 30 and 50 are most likely to suffer from sciatica. The symptoms are usually attributed to basic wear and tear rather than injury. Sciatic pain usually gets worse after prolonged sitting, physical activity, sneezing, coughing, or other sudden movements.

CHIROPRACTIC GETS TO THE CAUSE

People who suffer from intense pain often try just about anything to make it go away. The problem with most conventional treatments is that they mask the symptoms with pain medication or muscle relaxants. At Atlas Total Health we work to find the cause of your pain and chiropractic treatment will begin to relieve some of the pressure on the nerve.