Physiotherapy for Office Workers in Adelaide

Sitting is not bad for you. Sitting in the same position for hours, every day, without moving, is. Muscles that hold the head forward and the shoulders rounded get tight and sore; the muscles that should be doing the holding (the deep neck and the mid-back) switch off; the lower back loses the movement it needs and starts to complain when asked for it. The wrist and forearm tendons that do the same small movement thousands of times a day get irritated.

The result is the familiar list: neck pain and stiffness, headaches that start at the base of the skull, pain between the shoulder blades, lower back pain that is worst on standing, and tendon pain at the elbow or wrist. Occasionally pins and needles into the hand, which is worth having checked.

First we work out which of those it is, because "neck pain" from a desk can be a stiff joint, a tight muscle, an irritated nerve or a headache coming from the neck, and they are treated differently. Then hands-on treatment to settle the pain and get the stiff segments moving, and a small number of exercises that take a few minutes at your desk, not a gym program you will never do.

Then the part that matters most: the setup. We go through how your desk, chair, screen and keyboard are arranged, at work and at home, and what to change. Usually it is two or three things. Standing desks help some people and not others; we will tell you honestly which you are.

A large share of the headaches office workers get are cervicogenic: they come from the upper neck, not the head. The giveaways are pain on one side that starts at the back and moves forward, a stiff upper neck, and a headache that comes on after time at a screen. These respond well to treatment of the neck itself, and poorly to painkillers alone. If your headaches are new, severe, or come with visual changes or numbness, see a doctor first; we will say the same thing when we see you.

• Neck or back pain that is there most days, not just after a bad week.
• Headaches more than once a week that start at the back of the head.
• Pins and needles, numbness or weakness into an arm or hand.
• Pain that wakes you, or that painkillers are quietly managing every day.
• You have changed your chair, your desk and your pillow and nothing has changed.

None of these is an emergency. All of them get easier to fix the earlier they are looked at.

Evening appointments run to 7pm, so most people come after work. The clinic is at Seaton with free parking at the door, about fifteen minutes from the city along Grange Road, and five to ten minutes from Findon, Woodville, West Lakes and Henley Beach. If you have private health extras we claim on the spot. If your GP puts you on a care plan for a persistent problem, those sessions are bulk billed with no gap. For workplaces that want to get ahead of this, our corporate health page explains what we do on site.