Work, poor posture and pain
Apart from coping with daily worries about paying rent, travelling safely on congested roads, securing a future for your children, managing your time, the fuel price and the cost of groceries, many working individuals also have to deal with chronic pain.

Apart from coping with daily worries about paying rent, travelling safely on congested roads, securing a future for your children, managing your time, the fuel price and the cost of groceries, many working individuals also have to deal with chronic pain.
Nagging head, neck, shoulder back aches are common. “I worked for attorneys for 23 years and suffered daily headaches,” says reader Zelna le Roux. And, according to a male reader who works in the IT industry, he sometimes takes up to six painkillers a day just to manage his.
Local physiotherapist Hyla Moffett of MediHub confirms that they treat a number of patients every week who have pain and/or stiffness due to the posture and position at work or school.
Moffett explains, “The age groups vary but females seek physiotherapy management more often, and they tend to be adults with high-stress jobs, desk jobs, lots of meetings, or a great deal of travelling.”
The most common problems therapists experience here are spinal. Cervical (neck) problems cause headaches, neck pain and stiffness, often radiating down to the upper limb, thoracic (mid-back), bra-strap level pain, and lumbar (lower-back) pain, often extending into the lower limb.
“We also see shoulder pain,” she adds, “I believe that posture is one of the most important aspects of prevention and treatment of any musculoskeletal condition.”
Poor posture
As humans, we are not designed to spend our days seated and therefore our sedentary lives cause our posture to deteriorate. We also have unnatural mental pressures that bear on us all the time. These cause stress, depression and tension which build up the muscle and skeletal system. Causes of pain could also originate from the hard surfaces that we walk on and the excessive use of computers.
According to Posture Pro, a South African company which diagnoses and treats posture and foot deficiencies, 98% of the working population suffers from one of the most common deviations, namely forward head posture (FHP). It can be caused by ascending and descending dysfunctional kinetic patterns which can alternatively influence and contribute to the other problems.

“We can exercise three to five times a week, and stretch just as many times a day, but if we sit or stand incorrectly 90% of the time, what impact does exercise or stretching really have?” Moffet illustrates.
She explains that sustained poor posture leads to the mobiliser muscles being strained and therefore stressing out the ligaments and joints, causing muscle imbalance, pain and stiffness.
Our stabiliser muscles have been designed to keep our joints in a neutral position (not stressing the ligaments) and can sustain correct posture for long periods, whereas the mobilisers are designed for power and joint movement, and only to work for short periods at a time.
“If only everyone knew how important correct posture is. Physiotherapists would have about 20-60% fewer patients, which I’d be happy with because I prefer my clients to be happy, healthy people,” Moffett exclaims.
“I tell them to set an hourly reminder on their cellphone and I often give bright-coloured stickers to put on items that they look at regularly to remind them of the A (pelvis), B (shoulder), C (neck). We are designed to use our stabilisers, so they will take over if we only remember to retrain them often.This gets our ligaments and joints into neutral alignment again, preventing unnecessary pain, injury and degeneration.”
The importance of workplace ergonomics
Lesley-Anne Lange says, “After years of suffering from back pain and headaches I was referred to Neil Salter Chiropractor in Nelspruit and after three sessions, and a gym ball as a chair, it’s gone.”
Laurika Holler’s back and neck pain, she says, is due to the wrong chair at work, “Most offices do not have the right furniture for their employees. This wrong posture causes neck and back pains, as well as sore eyes because of problems focusing on screen. It’s all about costs.”
Ergonomics is the study of the interface between the individual and his or her immediate environment, and includes the implementation of healthy workplace practices, postures and habits to enhance wellness and prevent injuries, musculoskeletal and other health problems.
It includes physical factors such as working postures, material handling, repetitive movements, workplace layout, safety and health, but also cognitive factors like work stress and satisfaction, mental workload, decision making, skilled performance, human-computer interaction, and even reliability on colleagues.
The Occupational Health and Safety Act states what the responsibilities of the employer are in terms of ensuring a healthy and safe environment for employees. According to it, the employer must ensure that the workplace is free of hazardous ergonomics. Ergonomics SA states that work-related upper limb disorders are compensational. These are occupation-induced conditions that develop over time to affect the musculoskeletal and peripheral nervous system of the upper limbs.
Stress and pain
The stress of a job is perhaps why le Roux’s chronic headaches dissipated when she retired from the law practice after 23 years. “When I retired and started working with my husband I went for a few physiotherapy sessions, and now I have only an occasional headache. Was it stress or poor posture?” she asks.
Stress is not always related to an office job, as reader Monique Kruger experienced. “I have neck and back pain and my body goes into a spasm and I’m a housewife. I find that stress is the main cause and sometimes my posture. I went on medication and it helped a lot.”
Posture and children
Currently there is no legislation to govern seating ergonomics at schools. “Usually we treat children for posture-related problems during stressful times like exams,” Moffett says.
According to he Chiropractic Association of South Africa, recent research indicates that the spinal health of adolescent students has been declining over a ten-year period. “Teenagers are the lucky ones, as they can often get away with poor posture. Old age ain’t for sissies,” she laughs, but is serious when she says that good posture habits in teenagers, would make life a whole lot easier for them as adults.
Additional tips:
• Workplace layout: This is vital. Computer, keyboard and phone positioning, equipment, seating and using a hands-free headset if you’re on the phone often. Plus regular breaks and a little general stretching of even one minute ever hour, does wonders.
• Stress management: SMART daily goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timed. We all have deadlines, but you should have balance in life therefore having eight hours to work, eight to sleep and eight for leisure. “Yeah right” is what most of you are probably saying but we’d all be happier and more balanced people if we lived by this.
Employers need to realise this for themselves, as well as their employees. Job satisfaction and taking care of one another, are a vital to our work and well-being.