The Health Benefits of Ergonomic Chairs

Sitting down isn’t good for your health — that’s the unmistakable message that scientific research is has been giving us for the past few years. Excessive sitting can increase the risk of various illnesses, but even if you get up and exercise regularly, bad posture or lack of support can contribute to back problems.

That’s bad news for anyone whose job involves sitting in front of a computer, but you can minimise the problems. Though no single measure is a cure-all, an essential first step is to make sure you have the right chair.

Ergonomic Chairs

Ergonomics as a science has been around since the mid 20th century, and is based on studying how people use objects — from a TV remote control to an airliner — and feeding that into the design, to produce people-oriented objects instead of object-oriented people.

As evidence has mounted of how much damage traditional chairs are doing to our health, ergonomics has been applied to chair design, and you can find a comprehensive ergonomic chair at back2.co.uk, a leading online and London ergonomic chair supplier.

The Importance of Ergonomic Chairs

It’s clear why we should each look after our own health, but the effect of poor posture at work has broader importance. The UK charity BackCare estimates that back pain costs the NHS, business and the economy more than £5 billion a year, noting that Ergonomic chairs can’t take the stress out of the office, but they can alleviate the symptoms.

It isn’t just in workplaces that this is important, either. The Guardian highlights a scheme to bring ergonomic chairs into schools to improve children’s posture.

What Ergonomic Chairs Do

Any kind of chair can be ergonomic, from an armchair to a stool, but perhaps most crucially those used to sit up at a desk for long periods. A chair like the Sayl Office Chair by top designer Herman Miller and available at Back2.co.uk, works by a combination of giving maximum support to crucial areas like neck, back and lumbar region, while being adjustable to fit each individual.

Other types of ergonomic chair that can improve your posture and so help to prevent back pain include kneeling stools, designed to be used for short periods to train your body into the correct posture, and boardroom chairs that allow you to adjust your position through long meetings without seeming to fidget.

You only have one spine, and if that goes wrong very little of your body will work properly. You owe it to yourself to keep it healthy by improving your posture with an ergonomic chair.