Ergonomic Desk Chairs

According to a study, the average person spends a minimum of 8 hours a day sitting, and on the average, spends about 10 hours of everyday on their behinds, either working, watching television, playing videogames, reading a book, and everything else you can do on a chair. Since on the average, we spend roughly half of our day on a chair, which translates to roughly half our lives, more care should be given to our choice of seating.

So now that we’ve established just how important sitting is to our lives, isn’t it about time we got a chair that makes sitting not just more comfortable, but also healthier? Again, studies show that sitting for prolonged hours increases chances of being overweight, developing metabolic disorders (read: diabetes), and various postural pains such as back pain, leg cramps and contractions, which could lead to future spinal deformities such as scoliosis, or postural deformities such as swayback or hunchback. This is especially true for those who spend long, bad posture sitting hours at work. With so many problems with work sitting, is there a solution? Three words: ergonomic desk chairs.

With so many helpful tips on avoiding sitting problems, such as changing positions, using document holders, proper positioning of computers and typewriters or taking the occasional walking break, in the tedious, everyday routine of work, these tips, while quite useful, but are often forgotten. But with ergonomic desk chairs, if you remember to or not, these chairs are hard at work keeping your body and posture healthy. The very design of these chairs prevent the awkward and bad postures that most office workers make do with while working preventing repetitive strain syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome and lumbago.

So just what constitutes an ergonomic desk chair design? Well, healthcare professionals have long come up with a list of guidelines to ensure proper sitting posture. These include arm rests at a certain height, specific seat widths and seat depths, specific back rests widths and angles, as well as seat height, among others. So with everyone being so different, how can one chair suit everyone? The answer is that most ergonomic desk chairs are set to parameters that will suit the average person, and still offer a line of desk chairs that will suit people with appropriate height or weight differences. The most important modifiable factor would probably be seat height, which means that most ergonomic desk chairs come with an adjustable seat height. Pick a height that allows your feet to be planted flat on the floor.

So keep your back, wrists, hips and most importantly, you, pain free for the years to come, it doesn’t get easier than picking out the best ergonomic desk chair and sitting on it.