The story of your spine

The story of your spine

Your spine is busy.

All day, every day, your spine works and works and works with one goal: supporting you. It can be a thankless job, really – and sometimes you don’t make it easy for your poor backbone!

You may plop down in bad chairs that offer little support for your back. You might not stretch enough. You could spend hours hunched around your phone or laptop. Even if you have an ergonomic chair, you might sit in unergonomic positions like some sort of collapsed human pretzel.

(Let’s pause for a moment as everyone sits up and adjusts their postures.)

In honour of the often unappreciated wonder that is the human backbone, today we’ll discuss the Story of Your Spine.

What your spine is made of

Your spine is a marvellous stack of bones and pillows.

The bones are your vertebrae; you were born with thirty-three of them, though some have fused by now (unless you have found this article as a remarkably early reader).

The pillows are your discs. These are squishy little cushions that absorb shock and prevent your powerful vertebrae from grinding against each other.

It gets even more marvellous. The inside of your spine is hollow. Through that tunnel, your spinal cord travels, like a silver string looped through a necklace of seashells. Protected by the spine’s armour, the spinal cord carries precious information between your brain and the rest of your body.

The magical S-curve

Your spine is organised into 4 regions: the cervical, the thoracic, the lumbar, and the sacrum. Your spine is a marvellous stack of bones and pillows, but from the side that stack does look a little wonky (think of a tower in a Hayao Miyazaki movie).

The spinal regions gently curve in different directions – the cervical inward, the thoracic outward, and the lumbar inward – making an S-shape.

That S-shaped curve is the magic that gives your spine its strength! According to Cedars-Sinai, the S-shape ‘allows for an even distribution of weight and flexibility of movement’.

Now you know what your spine is made of and how it looks. What does it do?

What your spine does (and how the workplace affects it)

Your spine is sturdy, supporting your whole body and allowing you to stand and walk. Your spine is flexible, enabling you to bend, jump and twist. And your spine is strong, guarding your precious spinal cord. Your spine is an eager contributor – it participates in almost everything you do!

Unfortunately, if you’re like most office workers, your spine doesn’t have the most dynamic lifestyle. From time to time, you may even be guilty of Sedentary Sitting – staying seated in an inactive way or in bad postures for long stretches of time.

The stakes for your spine are high! ‘Sedentary behaviour’ is correlated with low back pain in office workers. And the World Health Organization describes low back pain as the leading cause of disability worldwide.

It might seem impossible to avoid sedentary sitting at work – but your workday doesn’t have to be an obstacle to a healthy spine.

Here’s how to make your workday your ally.

How to look after your spine during the workday

Your spine does so much for you – time to give a little back! In addition to regular exercise, here’s what you can do for your spine during the workday:

1. Move more
Here’s something you may not expect to hear from Haworth:
Even an ergonomic chair can’t save you from yourself!
The best equipment won’t help if it’s used improperly. To get the most out of your ergonomic chair, sometimes the best thing you can do is not sit in it.

Sitting for too long at a time isn’t good for you, no matter how fantastic your chair is (and, if you’re sitting in a Haworth chair, it’s pretty fantastic).

A healthy workday depends on regular movement. Stand up and move regularly throughout the day, switching between sitting, standing, and walking (or bouncing, dancing, leaping – you do you!).

Some chairs – like our upcoming Zody II and Zody LX – offer dual-posture functionality, allowing you to perch in addition to sitting or standing.

2. Work well: use ergonomic furniture
While it is crucial to move more, your seating should also be supportive. Make sure you’ve adjusted your chair to fit your personal requirements. (Adjustment videos for most Haworth task chairs are available on our product pages.)

A height-adjustable workstation is also recommended. Height-adjustable workstations allow you to change up your posture as you work, switching regularly between work positions. (Our HAT Elements is a great height-adjustable option.)

Even in a wonderful chair, don’t stay seated for too long at a time. The workday posture breakdown we recommend is below.  

Break up your workday with regular movement

This is the Move More workday: