Before starting your search for the best chair for lower back pain (LBP), it’s important to understand the relationship between sitting and LBP. The shocking (or maybe not so shocking) reality is that sitting is terrible for your health.
Spending all day with your bum in a chair can cause several complications ranging from weak leg muscles, to weight gain, to depression and according to new research, even cancer! So how does lower back pain come into the picture?
Most chairs are poorly designed for functional use. Most chairs are just there to look pretty – not to be sat on for hours on end. The short answer is that chronic lower back pain is a consequence of combining the human body with furniture that isn’t made for practical use. You might be a little confused about chairs not being great for sitting so here’s a quick explanation.
Desk jobs are something new. They have been around for less than 100 years and yet, our classic chairs have had their design for hundreds of years. Conventional chairs weren’t designed for desk jobs – they were designed for short sitting periods and aesthetics. And thus, they’re a prime cause of lower back pain.
So to the first part of finding the best office chair for lower back pain is to eliminate all the conventional chairs on the market and to get a functional one. These chairs are known as ergonomic chairs and there’s two types.
The Standard Ergonomic Chair
Standard Ergonomic chairs are what you imagine professional gamers and high end offices to have. They’re equipped with adjustable height, adjustable tilt, adjustable headrests, adjustable base, 5 wheels, and a breathable mesh fiber. In essence, they’re designed for the human body and particularly for desk jobs.
The Kneeling Ergonomic Chair
Believe it or not, kneeling ergonomic chairs are just as comfortable as sitting ones and provide the same benefits (covered in the next section) with the additional bonus of strengthening your core muscles.
Health Benefits of Ergonomic Chairs
To kick things off, lower back pain is caused by postural stress. Normal chairs focus your body pressure on your lower spine and over long periods of time this can cause chronic damage. Ergonomic chairs work by re-distributing your “postural stress” in a more balanced way across your whole body.
By relieving postural stress, ergonomic chairs completely prevent chair-related lower back pain. Kneeling ergonomic chairs also correct for a major deficiency with sitting chairs – a weak core.
Sitting down all day doesn’t really help your body develop your abdominal/core muscles in the slightest. On top of that, it also causes bad posture and slumpy shoulders. The kneeling ergonomic chair fixes that issue by forcing you to develop proper posture which in turn, helps you to strengthen and tighten your core.
Admittedly, kneeling chairs are known to have a 2-3 day adjustment period but after that period passes, nearly everyone who tries them falls in love.
If you’re interested in either kneeling or regular ergonomic chairs, then make sure to check out our complete guide by clicking the first link at the top of the article!
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