If you feel stiff, achy, and sore after a long day sitting at your desk, you’re not alone. Sedentary lifestyles, which involve little to no physical activity or movement, are taking a toll on many people’s health.

Rather than sitting hunched over their computers at the office all day, more and more workers are turning to standing desks as a potential solution to combat the negative effects of prolonged sitting. In this blog post, we’ll provide a chiropractic perspective on standing desks, including whether they can improve posture, alleviate back pain, and boost productivity.

The Problem with Sitting for Long Hours

Anyone with a desk job knows the uncomfortable feeling that comes with sitting for long hours each day. Maintaining a seated position all day at work puts pressure on the lower back and spine. Most people tend to slouch at their desks, leading to shoulder and neck pain. Plus, sitting reduces blood flow, which can cause swelling in the legs and feet.

Perhaps most alarmingly, sitting down for long periods of time has been associated with an increased risk of chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. Sedentary lifestyles aren’t just uncomfortable — they can be dangerous.

How Standing Desks Promote Spinal Health

Standing desks are an innovative new solution for people who are tired of sitting down all day. Their adjustable height allows you to use them while standing or sitting, encouraging movement throughout the day and preventing muscle stiffness.

Standing may not be as relaxing as sitting, but it encourages better alignment of the spine and shoulders and helps you maintain good posture. It can reduce lower back pain, especially in those with chronic lower back issues. Furthermore, standing requires mild core and leg muscle activation, helping improve muscle tone and encouraging circulation.

Additional Health and Productivity Benefits

In addition to promoting enhanced spinal health, standing desks can also provide additional health and productivity benefits, including:

Increased energy and focus: Standing eliminates the fatigue often associated with sitting, giving you the energy you need to concentrate on your work and enhancing your productivity.
Burn more calories: Compared to sitting, standing comes with a slight increase in calorie expenditure.
Better circulation: Standing improves blood flow, which can prevent uncomfortable swelling in your legs.

You may have heard that standing desks can help with weight loss. While they might not directly cause you to lose weight, they can be part of a more productive lifestyle that encourages more physical activity each day and improves your overall health.

Tips for Using a Standing Desk Properly

Simply standing all day isn’t enough to reap the benefits of your standing desk. Follow these tips to get the most out of your standing desk:

Alternate Between Sitting and Standing

Standing all day without a break can be just as harmful as sitting. Your feet and legs may get sore, and after a while, muscle fatigue can set in. Find a balance between sitting and standing, doing one for an hour and then the other. Try to stretch or take a short walk every 30 to 60 minutes to keep your joints loose and your muscles active.

By changing your position frequently and staying active, you can avoid the fatigue that spending hours in either position can cause.

Be Mindful of Ergonomics

Most offices have hard concrete subfloors, which are not comfortable to stand on for long periods of time. To reduce strain on your feet and legs, place an anti-fatigue mat on the floor beneath your standing desk. Furthermore, avoid standing in unsupportive footwear, which can cause foot pain after a while.

Ensure your desk and monitor are adjusted to your specific height and body proportions. The monitor should be at eye-level, so you’re not slouching or craning your neck to see it. Your elbows should be at a 90-degree angle, so you can comfortably reach your keyboard and mouse.

Are Standing Desks for Everyone?

Despite the benefits standing desks can provide, they are not for everyone. Those with knee or foot problems, certain physical disabilities, or other limitations may be more comfortable remaining seated. If you’re considering investing in a standing desk, visit a chiropractor for personalized recommendations based on your individual back health, posture, and work routine.

Improve Your Spinal Health at the Health and Wellness Clinic

At the Health and Wellness Clinic, our goal is to improve our patients’ overall health through a combination of chiropractic adjustments, massage therapy, cryotherapy, and lifestyle modifications. We invite you to schedule a consultation with us to evaluate your musculoskeletal health and learn whether a standing desk might be right for you. Contact us today to get started!

Occasional inflammation is a normal and healthy part of your body’s healing process. However, when it becomes a chronic occurrence, inflammation can do more harm than good.

Keep reading to learn more about the role of inflammation in the healing process, how to know when it has crossed the line from helpful to hurtful, and how chiropractic care and cryotherapy can help you find relief.

Your Body’s Healing Mechanism

Inflammation is the body’s naturally occurring response to tissue damage, whether due to illness, injury, or invaders like germs or toxins. When tissue damage occurs, the immune system sends out inflammatory cells, which work to trap germs or toxins and heal injured tissue.

Symptoms may include swelling, heat, localized pain and tenderness, and flushed skin. For example, an infection like strep can cause inflammation in the throat, while a sprained ankle can cause redness and swelling.

While occasional inflammation is normal, it’s not always comfortable. However, these mild symptoms aren’t a reason to worry — they indicate that the body is beginning to heal and shouldn’t persist for longer than a few days.

Acute inflammation doesn’t always require treatment. If needed, treatment may include getting plenty of rest, icing the affected area, practicing proper wound care, and taking over-the-counter NSAID medications.

How Much is Too Much?

Inflammation becomes a problem when it’s chronic, causing the body to send inflammatory cells even when there’s no danger. Causes include:

Chronic stress
Obesity or low levels of physical activity
An unbalanced gut microbiome
Eating certain foods, such as those high in salt or trans fat, fried foods, or refined carbohydrates
Sleep disruptions
Tobacco use and alcohol overindulgence
Exposure to environmental toxins such as air pollution and hazardous waste

Chronic inflammation is also associated with many health conditions, including autoimmune, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, pulmonary, metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases, along with certain types of cancer and mental health conditions.

The symptoms of chronic inflammation are typically more difficult to pinpoint. It can cause belly and chest pain, insomnia, fatigue, joint stiffness, mouth sores, fever, skin rashes, mood disorders, GI issues, weight fluctuations, and frequent infections. These symptoms may come and go, lasting for months or even years.

Finding Relief from Chronic Inflammation

If you have a minor injury that won’t heal or ongoing pain or stiffness in any part of your body, it’s a good indication that you may have chronic inflammation. There are plenty of treatment options out there, from taking supplements like zinc and omega-3 to corticosteroid injections to anti-inflammatory diets.

However, when it comes to supporting the body’s natural healing processes and ensuring proper overall function, there are two treatments you may not have considered: chiropractic care and cryotherapy. These two treatments, whether in combination or by themselves, can be important components of treatment and help you find long-lasting relief.

The Role of Chiropractic Care

The goal of chiropractic care is to correct misalignments in the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine. By ensuring proper alignment and reducing nervous system interference, chiropractic care promotes proper nerve function, allowing effective communication throughout the body and alleviating inflammation.

Many chiropractors also utilize massage therapy, which can reduce muscle tension, improve circulation, and further enhance the healing processes, which can help you find relief from chronic inflammation. Additionally, chiropractors often give lifestyle guidance, provide nutritional support, and present preventative strategies for managing inflammation, contributing to all-around wellness.

The Role of Cryotherapy

You’ve probably held an ice pack to a bruised shin or a sprained wrist to calm the inflamed area. In fact, cold therapy has been used for thousands of years to speed up recovery and enhance healing.

Whole-body cryotherapy takes this principle to the next level and involves using liquid nitrogen to cool the air within a chamber to -200 degrees Fahrenheit, where it quickly cools the skin. While this may seem unpleasant, it’s actually much more comfortable than cold water immersion, as the air is dry. Plus, it only takes between 2.5 and 3.5 minutes — much better than sitting in an ice bath for 15 minutes.

The benefits of cryotherapy go beyond calming inflammation. It can also increase energy levels, boost the immune system, speed up recovery after exercise, and improve metabolism.

Whole-Body Health and Wellness

At the Health and Wellness Clinic, we are dedicated to improving your quality of life and helping you live without pain or discomfort. Whether you’re battling an inflammatory condition, recovering from an injury, or looking to improve your athletic performance, contact us today to schedule an appointment and take the first step toward improving your overall health.

Ice or Heat: Which is Better for Pain Relief?

If you’re struggling with pain — whether it’s due to an injury, an inflammatory condition like arthritis, or sore muscles after a hard workout — you have many options for relief. From over-the-counter medications and topical creams to ice packs and heating pads, there’s an endless list of things you can use to soothe pain and discomfort.

When it comes to temperature-based therapy, both ice and heat can be effective; however, it can be difficult to determine which should be used when. Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of these therapies, situations in which each is ideal, and the advantages of cryotherapy.

Understanding Pain and Inflammation

Before we get into pain relief, let’s discuss what pain and inflammation are and why they occur. Inflammation is your body’s normal response to injury or invader (such as bacteria, viruses, or toxic chemicals). When you get injured or sick, your immune system sends inflammatory cells to trap toxins or germs and begin to heal injured tissue.

Normal, acute inflammation can cause swelling and pain, but it should be relatively mild and short-term. Chronic inflammation, on the other hand, can continue for months or years. It occurs when the body sends inflammatory cells even when there’s no danger, damaging tissues instead of healing them.

Inflammation doesn’t always require treatment, but if it’s severe or chronic, there are plenty of ways to find relief.

The Benefits of Ice for Pain Relief

Ice is an excellent tool for pain relief. It works by constricting blood vessels in a process called vasodilation, inhibiting the body’s ability to send inflammatory cells to the area. In addition to decreasing swelling, it can also relieve pain by numbing aggravated nerves.

Applying ice to the affected area is ideal in the first few days after an injury occurs. It’s especially effective for sprains, strains, and bruises, as well as preventing soreness after a workout.

Don’t overdo it, though; icing for extended periods of time can cause reactive vasodilation, which is when the body switches gears and dilates the blood vessels to make sure the tissues get adequate blood supply — the opposite of what you want. To avoid this, only ice for 15 to 20 minutes, then wait 30 to 40 minutes before reapplying.

Cryotherapy

Cryotherapy is an advanced form of cold treatment that can target larger areas and provide deeper pain relief. It involves exposing the body to extremely cold temperatures — 200 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit below zero — for a short amount of time.

Like applying an ice back to an injury, cryotherapy causes vasoconstriction, which reduces blood flow to the extremities and numbs nerve endings. After a whole-body cryotherapy session, the blood vessels open up, delivering a surge of oxygen and nutrients throughout the body and promoting greater healing.

To learn more about this innovative treatment, check out these previous blog posts: “How Does Whole-Body Cryotherapy Work?” and “5 Benefits Of Cold Water Immersion And Cryotherapy.”

The Benefits of Heat for Pain Relief

While ice constricts blood vessels, hot temperatures open them up. If you’re not careful, applying heat can actually stimulate inflammation rather than reduce it, which makes it unsuitable for acute injuries. However, in the right situations, such as chronic conditions, heat therapy can relax muscles and alleviate stiffness.

Heat is effective for chronic pain, including muscle tightness and arthritis. It can also help heal injuries after the initial inflammation resolves, easing lingering stiffness. Heating pads, infrared saunas, and warm baths and showers are all common methods of heat therapy.

Choosing the Right Treatment

As you consider which temperature-based therapy is right for you, ensure you take into account the type of injury or pain and whether it’s acute or chronic. Determine what stage of recovery you’re in — is it immediately post-injury, or are you seeking ongoing pain management? Finally, consider your personal tolerance to hot and cold temperatures and whether they’ll cause more discomfort than they relieve. Whichever therapy you choose, make sure you use it in moderation. Excessive use of heat or cold can cause burns.

Whole-Body Cryotherapy in Layton, Utah

At the Health and Wellness Clinic, chiropractic care isn’t our only specialty. We’re proud to offer whole-body cryotherapy as well, whether as a complement to chiropractic care or on its own. This innovative therapy has helped countless patients find relief from all kinds of pain and inflammation.

If you’re ready to embrace the transformative power of cryotherapy, contact us today to schedule an appointment. With our holistic approach to pain relief, you can live a healthier, more comfortable life.

Monday	9 AM - 12 PM, 1:30 - 6 PM
Tuesday	9 AM - 12 PM, 1:30 - 6 PM
Wednesday	9 AM - 12 PM, 1:30 - 6 PM
Thursday	9 AM - 12 PM, 1:30 - 6 PM
Friday	9 AM - 1 PM
Saturday	CLOSED
Sunday	CLOSED

The Problem with Sitting for Long Hours

How Standing Desks Promote Spinal Health

Additional Health and Productivity Benefits