Me, I have a disease which is kinda wiping out my connective tissue over time, which includes those lovely soft discs in my spine, dammit. Biggest current issue with that is that it’s getting harder and harder to sit at my desk for more than ~15min without lower back pain ratcheting up…
So I was wondering if anyone here with lower back issues has found a chair that helped them sit?
From L-R, T-B, chair #2 is a saddle chair, which looks kinda interesting. Chair #4 is one I used to have, which seemingly tries to keep the spine perfectly straight-up, but it was also hell on my knees.
Now, chair #3 kinda looks like a Star Trek-style bumper-car that I’d want to ride in my very last visit to an amusement park. 😄
(right-click as needed)
Switching to standing desk every once in a while. Motorized desks are very affordable these days.
Exercise balls. After my boss bought a dozen for the workplace, I realized how much less my lower back was hurting. If I make an effort to also move my hip in various ways, it hurts even less. I decides to buy one myself to use when gaming on my PC. Works like a charm. Does my back still hurt? Yes. Has the exercise ball worked better and been more cost-effective than any other option thus far? Yes.
My problem is some kind of hypertension after overdoing cycling about six years ago. At least that’s what they think. After having seen several specialists and doctors, they still don’t know.
I have exercise-induced hypertension too and the docs can’t figure that one either. It started around Covid. So did yours.
That though never occurred to me. What the… Have you seen or heard or read any articles that talk about back pain among those that have been infected by covid or that have been vaccinated?
Dang, I didn’t know about this…
Covid killed everything. Nothing has been the same since.
People are… different too, and not in a good way either. I think we all died and this is purgatory or some shit.
My problem is some kind of hypertension after overdoing cycling about six years ago. At least that’s what they think. After having seen several specialists and doctors, they still don’t know.
Damn, that’s confusing.
So when you scale back with that specific exercise and test your blood pressure with a home kit, does it seem better…?Exercise balls
In the States, we used to have those as “Hobby-Horses” for us little kids to ride. I wouldn’t even know how to choose one nowadays, nor what to do with one of those now, honestly.
A lot of gyms and physical therapists have them, sometimes they’re called “yoga balls” if you want to try one out. Just make sure you have something/someone to hold on to while you’re trying it.
Some are advertised as “anti-burst” meaning if it breaks it’s more likely to slowly deflate rather than pop - iirc bc it’s made of thicker material. I had one of those and used it to sit on sometimes - it was fun but I ended up going with another chair.
i bought an exercise ball as a temporary measure until i could afford a decent chair but found it so comfortable i never bothered replacing it, until after about five years it lost its shape and became a big egg with an arse print in it. the problem with that is when it’s warm you quickly get a sweaty undercarriage. so i bought a less complicated version of the kneeling chair in your fourth image like this one:
you can pay a fortune for a varier one or get one for a song from aliexpress etc. it has most advantages of a ball plus you can switch positions to have your feet on the floor, on the rails, on the pads, or some combination. i was worried i’d roll over my toe but it hasn’t happened yet
I have a rocking kneeling chair from Sleekform, which I found a nice middle ground price and quality wise. I’m hyper mobile and have ADHD, so I appreciate being able to sit in a variety of ways on it. I tend to perch with my feet on the knee rests, tbh (I wear slippers in my office). I also rock in it when I need to fidget.
SteelCase Leap was my favorite chair ever. I currently have a SteelCase Think. But honestly the thing more impactful than the chair, to me, is an adjustable height desk with an adjustable height monitor stand.
I’ve forgotten the name but this thing I found at goodwill has been great for my hips/lower back while working!!
I can only imagine. 🤩
Fun story, there’s a sex shop in Orlando with one of those on the second floor. When you turn it on, the actual entire second floor balcony rumbles
Sybian
That looks like it vibrates.
That would do wonders for an itchy butthole, but I suspect it would wedgie my drawers so far up my asshole they would never be seen again.
I’m pretty sure they sell miniature versions that preclude this issue.
Yeah the vibrations relieve tension.
Yeah, I’ve never had such a good massage chair. Super lucky find!
Cornhole tension?
The worst kind of tension!
Not for my laundry!
That device actually exacerbates low back pain because it causes you to arch your back & scream.
I gave up trying to sit for 15+ minute sessions. I have a standing desk and two barstool-height chairs of very different designs, cycling between the three options throughout my workday.
Great that I can work from home. In the office I would look like a fidgety child.
Aeron was helpful for my bulging disc. Headrest is a big plus. Typically, in a desk work ergonomic scenario, you do not want any tension (which rules out exercise balls, saddle chairs, etc.) It also rules out “perfectly upright” chairs. Yes, it’s bad to sit that long, but holding a position for 4 hours is worse.
I’ll have to circle back to this one, as there are some things I don’t understand, at present. Later…
do you have a headrest attachment for the Aeron you’d recommend? I’m not sure if i need a headrest but maybe I don’t know what I’m missing out on?
There’s only one I’ve come across and it’s too expensive for my taste, but maybe one day. My back is healed so I don’t need it. Atlas Headrest
So I was wondering if anyone here with lower back issues has found a chair that helped them sit?
Yes and no.
Sitting is the/my enemy. So, I use an adjustable standing desk with the best standing mat I could afford.
When I can/wan to sit, I sit, while the rest of the time I have the desk at my usual standing height and use the standing mat instead of the chair. The standing mat is key to help reduce fatigue & stress (feet, legs and back). I may also put it at different heights from time to time, depending how… tired my back is.
At least as important, I try to never sit longer than an hour.
I will get up and walk (either going out for a real long walk) or just be standing and walking in my home office. I may even dictate draft notes to a pocket recorder while I’m doing that.As you can imagine, the chair is not the most important for me in that configuration but I do have one. It is one of those gaming chairs. Just a model for people that are well over my weight (so it’s rather firm). It’s ugly as hell (and quite large) but it offers all the adjustments I need : height and the ability to lean back as much as I wish (it can almost lay flat). I removed the arm rests that are rather… useless and cumbersome. When I sit, I also use a little cushiony stand thingy, on which I rest my feet at a slight angle. This seem to quite help my back too.
Imho, your doctor should be able to suggest you some better chairs than any random stranger online could… even if it’s me ;)
Still, I hope this can help you a little bit: I know too well how our back can be a bitch.
Interesting, thank you!
Do you also do specific exercises for your lower back?
Strengthening your core is there key to reducing lower back pain typically.
I do some exercises along those lines. Recommend anything?
Also, me old roommate was a huge Residents fan, if you want to recommend a workout song.
Walk is my main kind of exercise. Daily walks. But I also wear orthopedic soles. As for real exercises I do some my osteopath taught me… The guy I was sent to by another doctor who I told when I sat in front of him: what I know of your practice makes me very doubtful you can achieve anything serious. I was wrong. So wrong.
I do like walking all around!
Unfortunately, people with CFS/ME commonly suffer a severe-payback upon walking ‘too much,’ so it’s like I must carefully walk ‘just the right amount each day, and nothing more.’ (we commonly get “post-exertional malaise” or P.E.M.)
It’s so weird… I can walk around happily, with the best intentions, but then lay myself up for many days in bed afterwards, with some of my worst depression ever… just by walking around too dang much. &^@#$
Right there with you on the chronic fatigue syndrome. I had a big collapse about two years ago and have been rebuilding slowly since then.
Maybe it will be helpful to you if I share my experiences?
I find it’s absolutely key to avoid outdoor walking for exercise, and do it instead on a treadmill with a timer and digital speed control. That way I can precisely track and control how long, how intensely, and in what environmental conditions I exercise. Little things like temperature, wind, air quality, social interactions positive and negative, waiting times at intersections, route changes due to obstructions, and sound levels add up fast as variables that change true time spent and overall energy expenditure.
And it gives me a true barometer of how I’m doing – I can sometimes detect incoming flareups before they start just by realizing I’m reaching my “stop now” level sooner than usual. I stop right away (never push past that feeling).
Then I can adjust my schedule (including skipping the next exercise day) and my commitments, to head it off before it gets worse, to plan for extra rest, and to just not feel so blindsided, guilty, and useless.
Going outside for fun is different – should still do that – I’ve just found that it’s too uncontrolled for the critical survival exercise I need to conduct.
This has made a major difference in my quality of life!
Thanks for sharing!
I have a bike trainer at home, and do something roughly along the lines you state, but less in terms of notes and quantifiables, and more in terms of interoception, which seems to work pretty well. Oddly, higher-exertion activities, such as riding that way, or dancing on my wooden floors, seem to be much better for me than walking, maybe because I get more of a heart workout that way.I had a big collapse about two years ago and have been rebuilding slowly since then.
Damn, that sucks. Mine has pretty much been a constant all my life, in which it distinctly doesn’t pay to get older.
Btw, in terms of CFS/ME, this chart kind of gives an idea of possible causes and research paths:
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1568997226000571-gr1.jpgFrom this study:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568997226000571Thank you for the links and for sharing, also! I’ve always had it too, but have had a few critical episodes in my life where it suddenly became a bigger factor. Once in my early teens, once in my mid twenties, and then now in my forties. But life is again improving so no complaints here 😆
My best to you, and I hope you have smooth sailing ahead!
The last one in your image is terrible. I have one and it just made my knees and lower back hurt worse. HermanMiller is really the only way to go. My wife and I both have the embody. I can sit for an entire day and my back feels the same as it did at the start. There’s a reason people gush about those chairs.
I have one of those chairs as well. I like to tell people that it’s not the most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat in but I’m never uncomfortable no matter how long.
I don’t personally run into it, but I’d imagine that you’d be better-off in a more-reclined position, since that’d put less pressure on said discs.
I’d probably try sitting in a reclined position for an extended period of time and see if that’s less of a problem.
If mitigates it, I’d probably try to find something that can recline a long ways. Probably armless, like a sunlounger.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=sunlounger
If you use a computer and can’t sit at a desk while reclined that far, maybe get:
-
A split keyboard. You can put each half on one side, each on some flat platform like two adjustable-height small, low tables or similar.
-
Something to hold your laptop or monitor up in front of your face. For monitors, you’re looking for something with a VESA mount that supports tilting downwards; this will screw into the back of most monitors.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=vesa+mount+arm
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=vesa+bed+mount
Note that these will have weight limits, so you’ll need to know what the monitor will weigh.
Worth noting, a decline of like 20 degrees is a lot worse for me. Puts all the pressure on my SI joints. So like you mentioned with the sun chair, you do in fact need to have a significant recline to take the pressure off. And the mouse is really the hard one to handle for that. Trackball mice can be the solution if it doesn’t bother your thumb too much.
I don’t personally run into it, but I’d imagine that you’d be better-off in a more-reclined position
Indeed. I typically have to rest on my back for ~90% of my waking hours due to late-stage CFS/ME.
Something to hold your laptop or monitor up in front of your face.
I do happen to be pretty handy, and have designed all that stuff out of scrap and screws, many years ago. It’s helped enormously over time, and maybe I should have put that in the post?
I appreciate your advice and concern, and taking your time upon all that, in any case. *fist-bump*
Depends on the back problem. For my situation, reclining was the worst thing to do.
-
how are you with standing? I say this because my wifes issue is more about one position over time than any particular one. Anything but laying down is limited in time and even if she mixes it up she will eventually need to lay down. That being said mixing it up is what works the best. If you have a standing desk and a barstool kind of office chair that you can sit at ergonomically at the standing height that is ergonomic. Well then you can switch between standing and sitting pretty easy because the chair is so high. So you don’t have to fall into the chair or rise up as much out of it. I find the height of the chair ends up being about but height so easy to get into. I don’t know if it would be better for you but food for thought.
Ich weiß deine Gedanken zu schätzen.
Indeed, I do need to shift around a lot, even as someone who’s mainly bed-bound. Now, one practice that seems to have been very good for me is to walk around my apartment on my tippie-toes, which is something I learned from from training tischtennis. I also like dancing and moving my whole body around as much as I can, before my energy gives out.
if your mainly bed bound your condition sounds a lot like my wife. There is surgeries she could theoretically try but it kinda seems like you might be worse off than before so its a big gamble. Basically it sounds like you don’t really want to try until you are literally in a wheel chair.
I have messed up my back so bad a few years ago that I couldn’t even stand or sit on a couch or normal chair for very long without pain for over a year afterwards. Fortunately I got better after a slow recovery but it never fully went away.
I sit at a desk for most of the day so solutions had to be explored. I’ve tried many things during that time. I’ve found out that what worked best was to be sitting with my legs not fully at 90 degrees with my body and my back held vertically, supported only by my core muscles.
Exercise balls worked fine if you sit more on the front edge of it, but you have to resist the urge of moving around and bouncing on it because that will absolutely wreck your back.
I’ve settled on a kneeling chair without a back support. The one I have you can adjust the angle so you can decide how much of your weight is on your knees and how much is on your butt.
Both of these require an adjustment period to get your core muscles used to be engaged for so long. Stretching your quads and hamstrings to gain more hip mobility so you can sit with your legs at 90 degrees without having to tilt your hip back and stand without tilting it forward helped a lot too.
The saddle chair does look like it would help too I might try it one day.
I messed up my back years ago. Sometimes I work sitting down for hours. Here’s how I’ve managed:
- Physical therapy and Gold Medal Bodies to learn how to move and strengthen what needs to be strong
- Watching and following Olivier Girard videos. His approach requires naturally using certain muscles while sitting, so maybe this won’t work for everyone. His approach also means that breaks are a must. I cannot sit for too long. Every half-an-hour or so I get up and move.
- Getting good enough chairs and desks. I followed Girard’s guide to buying chairs and desks. This means I can sometimes work for more than half-an-hour straight by lifting my desk so that I can work standing.
Hope this helps! And best of luck with your back
I do need more PT, thank you!
Watching and following Olivier Girard videos. His approach requires naturally using certain muscles while sitting
Can you explain a little more upon how that works?
Sure. I’ll tell you what I understand, but I’d suggest checking what I say against Girard’s videos themselves.
Anyway, his approach involves supporting your lower back. In a way, it’s almost as if your chair’s back is exclusively there to support your lower back.
Notice that, in this approach, your upper back is not supported by your chair. That means that you have to engage your core and back muscles to support your upper back and your shoulders and head. That is why sitting for long can get tiring and at some point is simply impossible.
Depending on your chair, you might be able to easily lay back, almost as if your chair was a bed. This is fine if you are not typing or using your desk. But I think Girard generally favors the sitting up straight and using your muscles.
Swapped between normal and kneeling chair for a while as budget solution to back pains. Switched to sit/stand lifting desk + normal chair, stand pad (do not cheap out on the stand pad, get a nice thick one) and balance board when I upgraded my desk.
Kneeling chair was great, but shouldn’t be used for long periods of time (2+ hours) according to lots of easily corroborated medical advice easily found even on the kneeling chair supplier websites.
Sit/stand desk is the best investment I’ve ever made, felt the improvements after 3 weeks of casual use. Balance board is awesome bonus but requires a solid hard surface. Had to buy a wooden panel to put over my plastic carpet protector cuz my place has fairly deep carpet.
In the office, I have a regular office chair, a wobble stool, and a height-adjustable desk riser if I want to stand. Constantly switching between them makes the biggest difference for my back. Sometimes I use one setting all day long, sometimes I switch several times a day, however I feel
wobble stool
Wow… oO
That seems a bit of alright, there!
I use two chairs, a regular office chair and a kneeling chair. I switch between them regularly.
