Your Office Gives You a Livelihood, But Takes Your Health
Now, we all know that there’s many a person in society who has a complicated relationship with their job. It pays well and gives you a livelihood, but…it also stops you from lying on the grass on sunny days, and that sucks pretty hard. Still, at least your job isn’t actively harming you. Or is it? You might want to stand up (sitting too long is bad for you…) for this, because we’re afraid that your office is harming your health, probably in more ways than you think. But at least if you know about them, you can fight back.
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Gaining Weight
If you want to succeed in this hypercompetitive working world, you better be ready to put in some long hours. Unfortunately, this means that there’s little time for anything else in our life, including exercise. Large sections of society are spending their days driving to work, sitting for long periods, driving home, and then crashing in front of the TV because they’re tired. The result? A rise of conditions such as obesity, which is becoming so bad that it’s being called an epidemic. If you’re working in an office, then you need to make sure you’re as active as your working day will allow. This could mean parking further away from your desk and walking a section of the way to walk, going for the stairs instead of the elevator, and making sure you fit in an evening walk each night.
Moving too Fast
Unfortunately, work isn’t one of those things where you can do a good act and sit back to bask in the glory. It’s not like that at all. You have to keep on improving, always stay ahead. The result is high levels of stress among workers, which can be good for business (people work harder), but is positively awful for the worker, who is at a much higher risk of acquiring a whole host of troublesome illnesses and conditions, such as headaches, mental health issues, muscle tension, and more. If this sounds like you, it might be time to head for a long, much needed break away from the office. If you can’t get away, then exercise and meditation can help.
Back Issues
Office workers are spending so much of the time sitting down that they’re acquiring problems that only a spine surgeon can help fix. While everyone can get back pain in their lifetime, the problem disproportionately affects people who spend their working days sitting down, and once it’s developed it’s a problem that keeps on getting worse if it’s not resolved. The very act of sitting – especially with an incorrect posture – puts more pressure on your back that standing, and if you’re sitting for 8 hours a day then it’s no surprise that back problems are becoming increasingly common. Perhaps that’s why more and more people are switching to standing desks….
And Weaker Muscles
Back in the olden days, humans would use their bodies out in the wild as they constructed their own homes, find their own food, and generally provided for themselves. Today, everything is more or less provided for. We spend our time working, like a busy bee. But we’re really only working our minds if we work in an office; our bodies don’t really come into it. Your muscles will be weaker as a result, and you’ll also suffer from reduced mobility.
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More Productive, More Heart Risk
If you work at a desk, then there’s bad news: while you’re being paid more than the cleaner, you’re also at a much greater risk of getting heart disease. In fact, you’re more than doubling your chances of getting heart disease, and that’s not all either. You’re also more likely to develop diabetes and have a heart attack. It’s important to remember that these conditions aren’t an inevitable side effect of your job; they can be avoided, but you need to make a more conscious effort to stay active. It might mean changing how you work, or speak to human resources to see if you can switch to a standing desk.
In the Eyes
It’s all good well having a long day of productive work, but if you work on a computer then you’ve probably been staring at a computer screen all day, and causing your eyes severe trouble in the process. Eye strain affects millions of office workers, who spend their day concentrating on one screen that’s right in front of their face. And the worrying thing? Because the widespread use of computers is relatively new, no one’s quite sure how it’ll affect people in the future. You can reduce the effects of eye strain by implementing a simple rule into your day. For every twenty minutes you spend staring at a computer screen, you should spend twenty seconds staring at a fixed point that’s twenty feet away from you. Also, in the evening, put the screen away – you’ve had enough during the day!
Day to Day Wheezing
You might think that your office is a clean space, but we’re afraid it isn’t. It’s absolutely full of germs. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to get any illness that will cause you any long term damage, but it does mean you’re at a greater chance of having a lowered immune system and picking up the odd illnesses that go around. It’s best to have a hand sanitizer bottle on your desk, is basically what we’re saying.
Limp Wrist, Painful Hands
Earlier, when we said that office workers don’t use their body, that wasn’t really true. They do. The problem is that they only use one part of the job – their hands. If you spend all day at the computer, you might have noticed that your hands are in more pain than they should be, and that your wrist isn’t quite as strong as it once was. If this sounds like you, it’s worth checking to see if you’re typing properly, and also investing in a wrist rest to ensure you’re always typing at the right angle.