Negative Effects on Your Body 

For the most part your body is exposed to static loading of the muscles with little opportunity to move around.  These static postures impair circulation and cause strain on the operator's muscles, tendons and ligaments.  The body parts with the most opportunity for movement are the hands and wrists; however, this dynamic activity can be too dynamic with potential for these body parts to suffer a WMSD.  An improperly designed office is associated with many risk factors including:

•  highly repetitive wrist motions with little recovery time
• non-neutral hand posture 
• non-neutral wrist, neck, back, and shoulder postures
• static muscle loading especially to the back and neck
• visual and mental demands
• contact stress to the thighs and wrists  

There is also a lot of new research that shows sedentary behavior can aggravate complications from cardiovascular disease and/or diabetes , as well as lead to injury of your back and other musculoskeletal soft tissues. 

Negative Effects on Your Brain

From a technical standpoint, you are interfacing with your computer through the mouse, keyboard, screen(s), and even the computer's speakers.  By remaining too sedentary while using a computer you are putting the interface between you and your computer at risk for failure.  Remaining at the computer for too long lowers your cognitive vigilance ; pain or discomfort from a bodily injury or not moving could distract you from your computer task.  These can easily cause you to make an error and decrease your mission readiness.

What You Can Do About It

When you move your body during computer work you are doing a number of good things: you are increasing the blood flow throughout your body so your cells can bring in more oxygen and carry out more waste (by the way, not all blood flows because of your heart and blood vessels.  Some blood is circulated by moving your muscles).  You are also doing what's called "attentional switching," meaning your mind is getting a break from your computer task so you can return to it shortly with renewed vigilance. 

This page will show you the ergonomic way to adjust your chair while you do sit, how to arrange your desk so you can sit in an ergonomic posture, and give you a checklist created by OSHA on how to do your own office evaluation .  But none of these solutions can help relieve these problems unless you varying your body's position while seated (and/or standing) at the workstation and by taking breaks from repetitive and static postures . 

 Office Ergonomic Checklist 

This simple, printable checklist from the OSHA website  will take you step-by-step assessing if you are sitting in an ergonomic position, is your monitor adjusted correctly, and is your office set up correct for you.

 Step by Step Ergonomic Set-Up of Your Office Chair    

This PowerPoint presentation is on how to set up your office chair and workstation in an ergonomically correct and safe manner.

Fact Sheets

These printable one- or two-page Fact Sheets cover everything you need to know about setting up your office workstation,  where to place your monitors and keyboard, and to how to evaluate products when you are shopping for ergonomic equipment.