Wellness First physiotherapy+

Hi! I am Saroj Rustgi, Physical Therapist, having 42 years of experience. I was working with Northern Railway Central Hospital. Now in Gurgaon, I am working from 3.5 years.

I am going to talk on postures and ergonomics which is very important throughout our life to maintain our physical health. To explain about the posture, is nothing like good posture and bad posture. The posture which is good we call, when they say minimum stress to ligaments and muscles while you are sitting for a long time or you are moving around. We all are very different from each other. And when we talk about the posture, we see the position of the spine from the side. We see that the ear, shoulder and hip should be in same position.

Ergonomics is all about the station where you were that is a furniture, which you are using through-out the day or in the office. So, the design of the furniture is very important. As we are talking about the office working, so there are 3 main important things, one is chair, other is table and 3rd is the monitor. Let’s talk about office furniture. First, we choose the work-station with the height of the table. Accordingly, we change the height of the table and then adjust the monitor. Let’s discuss about the chair. Chair is the most important part in the office that we have to work for 8-10 hours. This is the requirement of the office nowadays. And when we think of the chair. The chair has to be with adjustable back and height. The chair we have to see, the height of the chair should be such that feet should rest on the floor on 90 degrees. Knees should be parallel to the chair but one fist away from the seat of the chair. Hips should be back and nicely fitted. And use the back of the chair the way I am using the lumbar support.

The way we have to see the position of the legs of the chair, upper limbs are equally important. Both shoulders should be nicely relaxed. The position of the elbow and the arms should be near to the body. And the position of the wrist and arm should be even rest of the table. Position of the wrist is very important. There should be any pressure on the wrist. We should rest the wrist or the palm on the heels of the palm so the important blood vessels and nerves should not get pinched. Sitting in the office for 8-10 hours, it is important if we can stand and work. When we are working in the concrete surface or the floor, important is the type of shoes we are wearing. Standing and working, we should change the standing position also.

Take a break after every one hour and you should not lock the knees. So, shifting weight from the one knee to the other knee. Monitor which we use is equally important. The screen should be at the arm’s length. The brightness on the screen and in the room should be same. And distance should be maintained where you can see properly. Table is also important when we work for 8-10 hours. I am going to give you some tip on how to avoid eye strain. It is very common. So, the formula 20-20 is very important. After working at about 20 mins, we have to give a gap of 20 secs, See at the distance of around 20 feet through the window.

To avoid neck and low back pain. Stretches and exercise breaks are important. We call it macro-breaks and micro-breaks. To know about the breaks, we have smart phones nowadays. You should avoid using of phone continuously on the neck and you should have some alternatives like we can use handset free. We can use 2 monitors in place of one. And we should avoid rotatory movements from one side to other side. So, these things are to be taken care of. So, we have to change our position as earlier I mentioned, when they are working in sitting position, we can go to standing position. We can adjust the height of the table when we are standing.

And in between we can do some exercises. We can use some swiss ball, treadmill or walk around. The position should be like this, back supported nicely. Eyes can see the system nicely without bending too much forward or going back. Position of the arms and shoulder should be relaxed. And palm should rest on the table. So, that we can work for a longer time. My clinic Wellness First physiotherapy+, I would recommend everyone at any age that we should do half an hour exercises 5-7 days a week which is very important and having good well-balanced diet. Thank you!