Your neck is your lifeline. Without a healthy neck and spine, your quality of life will suffer tremendously. One of the easiest ways to hurt your neck, however, is not be getting into an accident but simply by sitting the wrong way. It’s not a secret that people sit more now today than ever, but there is a right way and wrong way to sit if you want to preserve your health. Read below to find out more.
Adjust Your Monitor’s Height
This is very important for those of us who work office jobs and sit at desks all day. One of the best ways to keep your neck healthy is to make sure that your monitor is sitting at eye level. This is so you don’t have to extend your neck up or down. This is not only more comfortable but ultimately having your neck in a neutral position will make sure that your back stays healthy. If you’re experiencing back pain, consider checking out our blog post.
Use The Right Pillow
You spend a ton of time sleeping, so it’s important to make sure that you sleep with the proper posture. I won’t get too deep into how you should sleep but when it comes to sleeping with neck health in mind you need to make sure that your pillow helps. Sure, huge, fluffy pillows are awesome and feel great but they might not actually be best for your neck. In fact, a flatter pillow is probably just the thing you need if you find your neck hurting while sleeping.
Take Breaks
If you’re sitting down in front of a computer all day, you should get up every 15-20 minutes and stretch. you can do some basic neck stretches like the basic side-to-side exercise where you look side to side or the up-and-down exercise where you look up and down. Don’t make it complicated. get up, walk around, stretch your neck and move on with your life.
Stay Hydrated
This is important because of hydration effects on the spinal disks and the fluid between them. If you don’t stay hydrated enough, then the disks aren’t protected and experience friction. We don’t think we need to tell you why friction on your spinal disks is bad, but just in case we do: friction between spinal disks essentially means they’re being ground down. Sounds awful right? it is. avoid this by staying hydrated.
Consider Getting A Standing Desk
This probably won’t be allowed unless you work in a very liberal office or work from home, but having a standing desk will do wonders for your neck health. At the end of the day, humans were not meant to sit down for 8 hours a day. This has many ramifications when it comes to our spinal health. If you can arrange a scenario where you’re not sitting all day your spine will be truly grateful.
Stop Staring At Your Phone
Unless you bring your phone up to your face when you text (which no one ever does), you’re bending over at the neck to look at it. This puts all sorts of undue stress on the upper back and spine.
So there you have it. Those were some simple tips for keeping your neck healthy. At the end of the day, our societies are not built to help us optimize our health, but it’s important to see where you can make things better for yourself. Your spinal system is one of the most important parts of your body so it pays to know how to keep it healthy. We hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. If you’re looking to bring together all the habits listed here, you should check out our blog post on building better habits.
