Good laptop posture is important to prevent neck and shoulder pain. In this 4-minute video, you will learn:
- What is a good office seated posture verses a good office seating posture
- What is Forward Head Posture and why its so bad for you
- How poor posture at laptop or office desktop can cause neck and shoulder pain
- How to monitor and improve your sitting posture during laptop usage
The muscles of the neck are designed to hold the head comfortably in place when the head is upright. If you watch the Good Posture with Laptop Video, you further understand why the human frame is not designed to support its head in a bent forward position for more than a few minutes at a time. When the head moves forward, the load on the muscles of the neck increases many folds.
It does not take a lot of effort to make a few small changes to make a huge difference in your posture and your overall well-being. BUT it does take a lot of reminders to do so. 🙂
Good Posture with Laptop Can Prevent Neck and Shoulder Pain Syndromes
You also understand better why such poor posture with a laptop causes strain on the neck and upper back muscles, which in turn gives rise to the symptoms such as neck pain, shoulder pain, and even back pain. Nerve compression may occur causing frequent headaches, nausea, blurred vision, and muscle weakness. It is this nerve compression that chiropractors are often sought out to correct termed spinal subluxation, or ‘pinched nerves’. So what are the long-term effects of poor laptop posture? One of the ugly side effects includes the upper thoracic or ‘dowagers’ hump which used to be seen only in elderly ladies with osteoporosis but is now increasingly seen in younger people. For some more serious cases, the symptoms may include numbness and tingling in the hands or fingers.
Hey very nice website!! Man .. Beautiful .. Wonderful .. I will bookmark your website …I’m happy to find numerous useful information right here about posture but did not realized how I have been doing wrong with my posture…until now. I like to visit your office if possible for a consult soon..:)
Dear Dr Tim,
Thank you for taking the time and effort to produce this very useful video clip. I found it informative, to the point, excellently illustrated, succinctly annotated with crystal clear voice-over narration.
I have one thought lingering in my mind. The advice on sitting posture and the placement of the screen assumes that the person has excellent touch-typing/ keyboarding skills. What happens to a person like me who has to constantly look at the keyboard to get the correct letters?
Thank you for watching and your nice comments. You brought up a good point regarding those who need to keep a “look down” to type and then look at the screen. Obviously it is best to learn to type which should not take one too long to learn and will save you hours from typing faster. Another possibility is to use a voice recognition software like Dragon Naturally Speaking. For now, you could position yourself such that you are about a meter or so away from your monitor with your chin tucked in a little. This posture will do 2 things: it will help you to keep your neck it a neutral position and prevent your neck from sticking out leading to forward head posture. Secondly, with a slight increase in distance, you should be able to maintain this posture with your eyes looked down while maintaining good neck posture position. Essentially, you will be able to look up and down as frequently as you need normally, instead of flexing you head down to look at the keyboard and up again to look at the monitor. Let me know if this helps! Dr Tim
Hi Dr Tim,
Thank you for always looking for possibilities and suggesting better ways to help your patients improve posture, thereby reducing strain/ pain. I appreciate the explanation that came along with your advice.
I am thrilled to read about Dragon Naturally Speaking and can already imagine what a breeze life would be using it. Will definitely check it out tomorrow!
I have Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home, Version 11
You can see the reviews there and buy at Funan IT Mall or computer superstores.
It takes 2 things for it to work. You need to have your thoughts in a sentence as you compose it, otherwise it waits for you can if you have noise in the background it guesses some words to “fill in”. But Dragon Naturally really cool because it types your words for you at the speed of thought! Secondly, if your accent is very Singaporean, the software may have trouble understanding you. MI find I have to enunciate my words and it learns your style the more you use it. My accent is semi-American when I speak into my mic.
Clear explanation and useful tip. Was doing my work in wrong posture just before I saw video. Thanks.
Glad it helped. Once you know your posture, the next step is to make small changes. What we do in the office will help change it even further.
Thanks in support of sharing such a nice article,
thats why i am bookmarking it
Welcome thanks for reading
My spouse and I stumbled over here different website and thought I may as well check things out.
I like the article so now i’m following you. Look forward to exploring your web page again.
Dear Dr Lim
Thank you for sharing your articles and videos. I like it all and is very informative, will bookmark it for further reading when free.
Daisy
You are most welcome!