Listen to your body, it’s intelligent.
The other night I decided that it would be a great idea to fall asleep on my stomach, with my neck at a ninety degree angle. As I was drifting off to sleep I was thinking, ‘gee, what a comfortable position, I really like this, I’ll have to do this more often’. In the morning I woke up slowly to an unbelievable pain in my neck that got progressively worse as the day wore on. The pain radiated down the side of my neck to my shoulder, underneath my shoulder blade and felt like someone was sticking a hot knife into my back. Not the best use of my time. After several hours of trying to deal with the pain on my own terms, I went to the clinic to see the Doctor.
After a cursory inspection, the Doctor informed me that I had ‘really done a number on my neck’. And that I needed to rest for a few days, apply heat in order to break the spasm, and take some anti-inflammatory medication to control the pain. That little episode reminded me that there are quite a few computer users that suffer pain that comes on over a long period of time because of poor computing habits. Have you ever heard of the ‘frog in the pot’ scenario? If you place a frog in a cool pot of water and slowly increase the temperature, it doesn’t take long for the frog to become so weak because of the heat that it cannot help itself and jump out of the pot. Sound familiar?
When you use a computer you expose yourself to some pretty strange body positions throughout the day. As a rule, we can get into the habit of adjusting and compensating. That’s when we run into trouble. This little neck ordeal taught me that this podcast show, blog and subsequent educational opportunities are very important discussions indeed. Your body continually attempts to tell you if it is in pain, and because of our rushed, harried and pressured lives, we tend to keep our noses to the grindstone and ignore the pain and discomfort. The moral of this story is to just listen to your body and if it sends you danger signals in the form of pain, it means that you need to pay attention. Regards, Rick and Pat
