If you do a lot of typing, consider purchasing an ergonomic computer keyboard. With it, you will save your hands and wrists from unnecessary pain and discomfort.
Conventional keyboards force you to keep your fingers, arms and hands in unnatural positions for long periods that can cause tension in muscles, tendons and joints. Working in this unnatural position for a long time can lead to physical discomfort that cause various forms of Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI). RSI is caused by repetitive movements and overuse which can affect the whole body.
There are many ergonomic designs available, all with the aim of promoting a healthy posture. Some are curved, V-shaped, or divided in the middle of the keypad with one block for the left hand and another for the right hand.
Working with an ergonomic keyboard in an ergonomic posture while on the computer can help to prevent discomfort in the fingers, wrists, forearms and shoulders.
Benefits of Ergonomic Keyboard
An ergonomic keyboard provides benefits such as:
Comfort
With an ergonomic keyboard, you get more space for your wrists to relax on the middle of the keyboard. Your fingers are closer to the keys, and your hands use smaller effort and movement when typing for long hours.
Efficient Support the Wrist
The design of these keyboards provides comfort to your wrists. It prevents typing with the hands at an angle, which is often why wrist pain occurs after working for some time.
Easy to Use
Ergonomic keyboards are created for people who want to avoid or alleviate wrist or forearm pain. They have been designed to support your fingers, hands and wrists and are user friendly.
Supports Good Posture
As you use an ergonomic keyboard, you can adjust it to adapt to your sitting position because of its flexibility. It also promotes proper sitting posture while typing for long periods of time.
Reduces the Risk of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Ergonomic keyboards allow a more natural positioning for your arms and hands. A smaller sized keyboard reduces reaching and places the mouse in a more ergonomic position, minimizing fatigue, discomfort, and the risk of injuries such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Treatment for this injury can be long and costly and in serious cases, surgery may be required.
For suggestions for an ergonomic keyboard or to achieve an optimal ergonomic workstation, it is important to hire a Specialist to examine your current workplace. At Accredited Rehabilitation Consultants, we can evaluate your current workspace, find ways to make it more ergonomic, and then provide and install the necessary equipment to do so. To learn more, contact us today!
When you think of injuries happening on the job, professions like construction work or heavy equipment operation might come to mind. It may surprise you that you can do a lot of damage to your body by having an office job. Sitting too much during the day in an unsupportive chair, slumping over, constantly typing, and holding your head in strange positions are just a few ways aches, pains, and injuries can occur.
The best way to combat uncomfortable desk life is to invest in quality ergonomic products for your office space. Ergonomics is the science of designing the workplace while having your employees’ health and wellness in mind.
Here are five ergonomic products for your in-office or work-from-home employees that will boost their overall happiness and productivity.
Sit-Stand Desk
The human body isn’t designed to stay seated for long periods. A sit-stand desk can have long-term health benefits for employees. Standing while working will help fight aches, injuries and improve cardiovascular activity around the body.
Mice
Improper mice use can cause many painful injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive strain injury. Ergonomic mice are built around a natural holding position that keeps the wrist in a more comfortable straight line, preventing injury.
Keyboard
Normal keyboards require you to angle your wrists in unnatural positions, resulting in damage to tendons and ligaments over time. An ergonomic keyboard will relieve your fingers and wrists of any discomfort from unnecessary stretching and can increase your overall efficiency.
Footrests
An ergonomic footrest keeps the body upright, preventing the legs from hanging uncomfortably. It can increase blood flow and circulation, lowering the chances of leg pain, stiffness, and developing varicose veins or blood clots.
Office Chair
When we sit down, considerable pressure is put on the spine, leading to long-term back problems. Not everyone can be comfortable in the same chair. Some people need extra lumbar support or a bigger arm rest. Accredited Rehabilitation Consultants can make your employees custom seating to fit their individual needs.
These five ergonomic office products are a great start to adhering to the special needs of your workers, but there is other ergonomic equipment out there too. A professional ergonomic consulting firm has a variety of services to help assess your employees’ specific needs. Call (323)930-6599 to contact an ergonomic consultant and take the first step in bettering the work environment of your office place.
Through the course of workdays, office workers are required to manage and track documents. While this paperwork does not present any challenge, employees can greatly benefit from the use of ergonomic document holders.
A document holder is a tool that allows you to position a physical document that you refer to while working on your monitor screen in a way that allows you to see both the screen and hard copy document well.
Almost everybody who use computers on a daily basis at least occasionally have tasks that involve referring to a hard copy document while typing. In those times and when properly used, a well-designed document holder can be greatly impactful ergonomically.
A document holder helps to avoid ergonomic hazards which include:
1. Neck twisting
When you position the document close to the monitor and in line with your eyesight as it runs from screen to keyboard, you can avoid unnatural twisting of your neck when looking between the hard document to the screen and back.
In the absence of a document holder, you’ll lie your documents often beside the keyboard. To read the document, which in some cases contains smaller print or notes, you’ll have to bend forward with a curved spine, which is a posture that can lead to ergonomic problems.
To achieve an optimal ergonomic workstation, it is important to hire a Specialist to examine your current workplace. At Accredited Rehabilitation Consultants, we can evaluate your current workspace, find ways to make it more ergonomic, and then provide and install the necessary equipment to do so. To learn more, contact us today!
When using a traditional mouse, you will often twist your wrist continuously, which results in stress to the tendons. This can possibly lead to reoccurring injuries due to stress and long-term damage. Your wrist was not meant to handle repetitive stress for the whole day. An ergonomic mouse gives you a handshake position, preventing stress and pain during your workday.
2. Less is more
Unlike the regular mouse, the ergonomic mouse requires less strength for your grip. This helps to release tension from the tendons in your wrist, resulting in less aggravation and less fatigue as you work. A vertical mouse, for example, enables you to transfer the energy from operating the mouse from the wrist to stronger muscles in the upper arms.
3. Prevents aggravation of existing pain
The existing pain you developed in your wrist, such as tendonitis as a result of using the regular traditional mouse, may be alleviated when you switch to an ergonomic mouse. Tendon damage to the wrist may result in long-term problems like arthritis. This is why an ergonomic mouse to help prevent further damages to your wrist that may lead to these life-altering conditions later in life.
4. Prevention of future injury
You don’t need to wait for the pain caused by the long-term use of a regular mouse to switch to an ergonomic model. You can quickly prevent excess stress by making sure to get an ergonomic mouse right away that is tailored to your needs.
Ergonomic mice come in several sizes and shapes to promote a neutral posture in your wrist as well as comfort. Each of these shapes relaxes your wrist by transferring the strain from the wrist to the upper arm muscles. Thus, you prevent future pain to your wrist, which may lead to lasting damage to the tendons.
Most electric staplers are able to fasten more pages together compared to manual ones. There are products that can even staple upwards of 70 sheets instantly, making them great for use with thick documents.
Eliminates Pain
Manual staplers can be painful to use, especially when large documents or many different documents have to be stapled together. Not only do they cause sore hands, but they also contribute to repetitive motion conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome. An electric stapler saves staples documents automatically, helping you to avoid excess pain and preventing work-related injuries.
Saves Time
Electric ergonomic staplers generally save more time compared to manual staplers. Manual staplers are rough on the hand and can take a long time when working with large stacks of papers. An electric stapler can fasten pages together in a split second. This ensures you get more time for more productive activities, rather than spending a large chunk of the day or week stapling papers together.
Improves Accuracy
After you have managed to get your papers together by hand, chances are you will not be accurate with your stapling. For example, staples may be placed too close or too far to the paper edges, or even mangled if your stapler isn’t able to handle the amount of paper being processed. This can be solved with an electric stapler because it is able to staple accurately every time.
There’s a Device for All Kinds of Offices
There are many different types of electric staplers on the market. One of the best names in the market is Swingline, a company that has become popular for their range of high-quality electric stapler products. Swingline has been in the business for years and produce many great products for the office like Optima 70 and 45 (the numbers refer to the sampling capacity of each product) and the Speed Grip, a portable stapling device that runs either that runs on outlet power or on battery. If you want to make your own booklets, you will find some electric stapling machines that are capable of performing center-stitch stapling.
For recommendations for a suitable electric stapler and to achieve an optimal ergonomic workstation, it is important to hire a Specialist to examine your current workplace. At Accredited Rehabilitation Consultants, we can evaluate your current workspace, find ways to make it more ergonomic, and then provide and install the necessary equipment to do so. To learn more, contact us today!
For several years, the significance of ergonomics and good posture has been understated. However, with more and more research and data released, it is apparent that the sitting conditions we practiced in our younger years have notable effects on our health as we get older.
Your upper body weight pushes down on the base of your spine as well as the surrounding ligaments and muscles, causing pain after several years. Normally when you experience back pain, you respond naturally by hunching forward. This stretches the ligaments that hold your disc in place. Over time, your discs begin to push out to the nerves of your spinal column because the stretched ligaments are incapable of keeping the base of your spine any longer. The pressure causes a lot of pain, which may result in needing physical therapy or surgery.
Benefits of an Ergonomic Chair at Home
An ergonomic chair is important for use at home because of the number of hours most people spend in front of their computers. Ergonomic seating at the home has become just as important as in the office. Here are some benefits ergonomic chairs have to offer:
It promotes a neutral seated posture: Many people have developed incorrect posture as a result of the way they sit on traditional chairs. With ergonomic chairs, these problems are well taken care of. It comes with the features essential to sufficiently support your posture while sitting. Moreover, the chair’s height can be adjusted so that your feet sit flat on the floor.
Comfortability: Unlike normal chairs, you can sit in ergonomic chairs and feel comfortable throughout. If the features don’t make you comfortable, you can adjust them individually till they fit your needs.
It reduces the risk of back pain: Since ergonomic chairs come with a backrest that supports the spine’s natural curve, they help to keep the back relaxed and free of pain. They are higher than traditional chairs and support the entire back. They also come with a reclining function that make it easy to rest at an angle beyond 90 degrees.
Reduces pressure on the hips: The hard surface of normal chairs makes sitting uncomfortable and cause unnecessary contact pressure on your hips. An ergonomic chair has a good seat depth that helps to support the hips and buttocks.
An ergonomic chair is worth the investment to prevent future issues concerning posture and overall physical health.
If you’ve been dealing with any sort of lower back pain, one thing that doctors will usually suggest is to start using lumbar support. But what exactly is lumbar support, and how does it help treat and prevent lower back pain? Read on to learn more:
What is lumbar support?
Lumbar support, put simply, is any kind of support for your lower back found in office chairs, recliners, and other types of ergonomically friendlyfurniture. Not all types of furniture have it, however,and such poor ergonomics can lead to a lot of pain later on down the road.
Why is it important?
When you’re sitting in an office chair all day, your lumbosacral joint (a region of your lower spine) is dealing with three times more stress as it would when you’re standing. Not only that, but sitting all day also leads to poor posture, which can further injure your muscles and your vertebra in the lumbar region of your back.Without proper support, these stresses and injuries can add up, leading to musculoskeletal disorders, back injuries, and other health issues later on in life. Lumbar support, meanwhile, provides support to your lower back and spine by keeping the spine aligned and preventing your muscles from overworking themselves just to keep you upright.This can not only help heal current injuries but prevent future ones from arising later on.
Here at Accredited Rehabilitation Consultants, we provide plenty of ergonomic furnitureto help you live a more ergonomic lifestyle. So, contact us today to have us evaluate your workspace today!
A great way to support employees at their desk is with an ergonomic footrest. This kind of footrest is essential to any style of desk and can significantly improve the comfort and overall well-being of workers.
The Benefits Associated with Ergonomic Footrests
A footrest at first glance might not make sense in terms of the day-to-day business operation, but it can be an addition that makes the difference in terms of the impact it on your overall seated posture.
Use of an ergonomic footrest can provide the following benefits:
1. Boosts circulation
Sitting for many hours has been found to impede the circulation of blood around the body. With an ergonomic footrest, the chances of developing circulatory problems diminishes. Poor circulation can lead to health complications, so it is important to notice if you feel increased fatigue.
2. Promotes a neutral seated posture
Considering how much time (30min to 1 hr) the average American spends slouching, this can negatively impact posture, resulting in back pain and limiting productivity. Back pain brought on by poor posture is said to cost American employers more than $7 billion per year. It is also responsible for major disabilities among employees under 45 years of age. Ergonomic footrests help to maintain a good sitting posture and improve the health of your spine.
A good ergonomic footrest should elevate your feet at a height perfect for your body. There are different types for movements, such as tilting, swinging, swaying, or rocking. The most basic products can give you a comfortable place to set your feet and stretch it out.
Even with those the use of a standing desk, a footrest can provide much-needed relief. Ergonomic footrests can improve standing time on a standing desk by up to 30 percent.
To achieve an optimal ergonomic workstation, it is important to hire a Specialist to examine your current workplace. At Accredited Rehabilitation Consultants, we can evaluate your current workspace, find ways to make it more ergonomic, and then provide and install the necessary equipment to do so. To learn more, contact us today!
Due to the recent coronavirus pandemic, more and more companies are requesting their employees work from home. It is estimated that one-half to two-thirds of the existing labor force is performing their job duties from the comfort of their own living space. However, as telecommuting becomes the new normal and telework increases in popularity, a new issue now arises: creating an ergonomic workspace at home. It is imperative to create a space that allows a worker’s body to maintain a neutral posture, especially for a work at home employee. Cumulative damage on susceptible body parts such as the back and wrists can occur when working on non-stationary equipment, including laptops, cell phones, and tablets.
An ergonomic work environment is often overlooked in telework. It is not uncommon for telecommuting employees to report soreness and pain, as they are not provided proper instruction on how to set up their space ergonomically to decrease discomfort. In fact, the importance for remote workers to have an ergonomic workstation at home is not emphasized enough. An employee who frequently works on their bed is more likely to suffer from repetitive stress injuries than an employee who has been given guidance on the importance of utilizing ergonomic equipment and having an ergonomic set-up.
To prevent work-related injuries and discomfort while working from home, it is important to maximize ergonomic safety and utilize ergonomic equipment. When telecommuting equipment such as a laptop riser, an external keyboard, and an external mouse is recommended. An ergonomic office chair is also recommended for use at home to maintain a neutral seated posture and prevent damage to an employee’s upper body.
While it is impossible to completely prevent injuries from happening, it is possible to lessen susceptibility with the proper guidance and the correct ergonomic equipment. If you are experiencing work-related pain while telecommuting, ARC can provide aid and recommend potential solutions. An ergonomic evaluation can be performed via web chat to inspect your home workspace and determine the equipment and adjustments necessary to allow you to work safely and comfortably at home.
To schedule an evaluation or for any additional questions, please contact ARC at 323-930-6599 or info@ergoevaluaiton.com
The design of the laptop computer inherently violates a basic ergonomic design requirement, the keyboard and screen are integrated. In the early days of personal computing, desktop devices integrated the screen and keyboard into a single unit. This resulted in widespread complaints of musculoskeletal discomfort. By the late 1970’s a number of ergonomics design guidelines were written and all called for the separation of screen and keyboard. The reason is simple – with a fixed design, if the keyboard is in an optimal position for the user, the screen isn’t and if the screen is optimal the keyboard isn’t. Consequently, the laptop computer is excluded from current ergonomic design requirements, because none of the designs satisfy this basic need. This means that you need to pay special attention to how you use your laptop computer, because it can cause you problems.
Laptop Computer User Type – the first thing to consider is: how do you use your laptop? Are you an occasional user who works on your laptop for short periods of time or a full-time user with the laptop as your main computer? Using a laptop computer is a trade-off between poor neck posture / head posture and poor hand posture / wrist posture. All users should pay some attention to how they use their laptop. But, occasional users will have fewer risks of problems than full-time users. That is why we provide tips for both part-time and full-time laptop computer users.
Occasional Users – because the neck position / head position is determined by the actions of large muscles, you are better off sacrificing neck posture rather than wrist posture. For occasional use:
Find a chair that is comfortable and in which you can sit back.
Position your laptop computerin your lap for the most neutral wrist posture that you can achieve.
Angle the laptop screen so you can see it with the least amount of neck posture deviation.
Full-time Users – if you use your laptop at work as your main computer you should:
Position the laptop computer on your desk/worksurface in front of you, so that you can see the screen without bending your neck. This may require elevating the laptop off the desk surface using a stable support surface, such as a computer monitor pedestal.
Use a separate keyboard and mouse. You should be able to connect a keyboard and mouse directly to the back of the laptop or to a docking station.
Use the keyboard on a keyboard tray to ensure a wrist neutral posture.
Use the mouse on an adjustable position mouse platform.
Laptop Computer Dimensions – many laptops offer large screens (15″ plus) and can work as desktop replacements (giving the viewing area of a 17″ monitor). However, think about where you will use your laptop most to help you choose the best size. The larger the screen the more difficult it will be to use a laptop computer in mobile locations (e.g., airplane, car, train). There are a number of smaller notebooks and ultraportable laptops on the market. Consider issues of screen size and screen resolution. A small screen (e.g., 12.1″) will be useful in mobile settings. But, if the resolution is high (e.g., XGA – 1024 x 768), make sure that you can read the screen characters and can easily use the input device to point to areas on the screen. The smaller the laptop, the smaller the keyboard, so make sure that you can comfortably type on a keyboard that may be only 75% the size of a regular keyboard.
Laptop Computer Weight – if you are a mobile professional who will be frequently transporting your laptop, think about the weight of the system. By the word ‘system’, I mean the weight of the laptop plus the required accessories (e.g., power supply, spare battery, external disk drive, zip drive, CD-RW, DVD, etc.). Many lightweight portables can become as heavy as regular laptops when the weight of all of the components is added. If your laptop and components weigh 10 lbs or more, you should consider using a carry-on bag that you can pull along. If you want a smaller bag and can comfortably carry your laptop, consider a good shoulder bag design.
Best Ergonomic Solutions for Use of a Laptop Computer
If at all possible, use a laptop docking station, because these devices let you plug in your laptop to a base station that has a monitor, keyboard and mouse already connected. The next best ergonomic solution, if a laptop docking station is either out of your budget or impractical is to have a separate keyboard and mouse at the desk. This allows you to place the laptop at the correct monitor position (to help with head posture / neck posture) and use a comfortable keyboard and mouse that you can put in the best position to prevent injuries that may result from poor wrist posture / hand posture.
