3 Tips For Staying Healthy While Working From Home
It’s been a rough few months! We’re thinking of you all and hope you’ve found our Feel Right, Move Right campaign helpful. We share tips and tricks to keep your body healthy during isolation.
This month, we’re hopping on board the Australian Chiropractors Association’s ‘Working from Home’ campaign, promoting spinal health and wellbeing while working at home.
Working from home during isolation
Are you one of the lucky ones still working during coronavirus? How do you feel working from home? It can be quite an adjustment, especially if you have kids!
Maintaining health is more difficult without the structure of an office. We tend to get a little lazy. We start working from the couch, spending our lunchtime watching Netflix and wearing out a path to the fridge. These habits do our spine and health no favours.
So, to help us (even chiros need a reminder) live a healthy working-from-home life, we’re giving you some tips on staying healthy when your office is your home.
3 tips for working from home
1. Maintain a healthy workstation
We’re hearing about a lot of people working from their couch or worse, their bed! Working on an unstable surface is terrible for your spine.
If you don't have a home office, working at your kitchen table is a great alternative. Just remember to sit, slide and lean. Sit on the edge of the chair, slide your bum to the corner, and lean back until you are seated against the back support. We give you some healthy sitting tips here.
Working off a laptop? We recommend a wireless keyboard and mouse to help you place your arms in a more balanced position. Feel like you’re peering down at your computer? Buy a computer stand to elevate the screen so you’re not looking down and straining your neck.
2. Get moving, stay active
As we’ve said before, sedentary lives are no good for our spines or our overall health. We know the gyms are closed but try to incorporate some movement in your day regardless. Even if it’s just a walk around the block after lunchtime, it will get the blood moving, loosen up your muscles and lift your mood. You’ll be way more productive.
The Australian Chiropractors Association suggests two brilliant apps to keep us moving - Straighten Up app gives you three-minute stretching programs to improve spinal health, posture and overall wellbeing. It’s also free! The Just Start Walking app reminds you to take a daily walk and even tracks it.
3. Connect with family and friends
Restrictions are lifting, and this is good news for our mental health because isolation can be, well, isolating. If you’re working from home, you’re not only missing your social life but also the incidental interactions you get at a normal workplace. We find we have to make more of an effort to socialise when we’re working from home.
Even if you can’t do all the things you normally do e.g. play sport, go out for dinner etc., you can still connect with friends and family in other ways. Now restrictions are lifting, you can meet at the park for a picnic with up to 10 people, or take a stroll with a buddy.
We hope these tips help you feel happy and balanced while working from home. We look forward to seeing you soon.