Ask HN: How do you deal with neck and back pain?

Basic idea is to use more your back muscles. This is done by doing exercises aimed at using them. Note that they are gentle exercises.

Basically is a combination of bad posture + overcompensating the lack of strength/flexibility of some muscles. For checking specific exercises, Athlean-X usually gives good explanations while proposing specific exercises https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWmGArQBtFI

Ergonomic seating and table. In Germany there's is a law that forces employers to buy ergonomic stuff.

Proper seating and the proper height of the working table and the height of the monitor. Since that, I don't have backpain not neck pain

I find that general light exercise helps. Also changing to a split keyboard has really helped my posture (moving the two halves of the keyboard apart stops me hunching over the keyboard).

Also look at what you're doing with you legs. If you're crossing them then you'll be affecting the position of you hips, which in turn affects your back.

Reducing shouldn’t be the goal. I don’t think there’s any reason office workers in the richer parts of the world should have neck or back pain.

Get a decent chair and desk setup, and regularly get out of that chair (in my completely unfounded opinion, a bad chair that you frequently get out of is better than a good one hat you sit in for hours at an end)

And get some exercise outside working hours (if you don’t really have ‘outside working hours’, that’s the first thing to fix)

Highly recommend this reading as quite often particularly back pain is a mind body issue with some form of stress such as financial or relationship. https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connectio...

Exercise is key and the more varied the better. If this is lower back pain then I recommend getting a foam roller and rolling the back of the thighs.

Decent experienced massage therapist has made a dramatic difference for me.

Also gravity boots from time to time and basic stretching.

I have empirically observed that talking with friends about problems, meditation, and other things that help me carry less stress in my body significantly reduces or eliminates my back and neck pain. My hypothesis is that my back and neck muscles have nervous tissue in them and the level of muscle tension is influenced by the state of my brain.

The body keeps the score.

I've been dealing with sciatic nerve issues for the last 2-3 years. Currently I'm in my 17th year of being in IT (sitting 10 hours a day).

I had to go to a physiotherapist to heal my sciatic nerves when they blew up for the first time. It was so bad, I needed injections at the hospital just to not be in pain and took rather strong pain killers for a week.

A combination of the following has drastically changed my back health in the last 2 years.

* Basic weight lifting/strength training 2x per week focusing on shoulders/back/chest. Just 20-30 minutes. Nothing extreme.

* Switching from sitting in a chair, sitting on a yoga ball, laying on a yoga mat on the floor, and standing desk every hour. According to my physiotherapist, any one position for long periods of time is bad and present their own issues; the key is not staying in one position for more than 1-2 hours at a time.

* Yoga is good

* Chiropractors are good.

* Firm mattress.

What I have heard from several people is that pushups work like magic. For me, a standing desk and a good chair with neck support did helped me get rid of back pain right as it was starting.

Pilates & healthy diet. Just Works™.

On top of other recommendations, can I suggest lifting heavy weights as per Starting Strength or similar? Strong backs are healthy backs.

You can even get templates to start you off: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/shop/training-templates/low-...

quality bed and chair

time for exercise

Stretching and light calisthenics when I wake up. No need to be fancy or intense, just touch your toes, butterfly, cross arm stretch, along with a set of pushups and squats. It also helps to pay attention to your posture, and adjust chairs/monitors to prevent slouching (maybe visit the optomotrist or increase font if you're leaning a lot).

Squats and deadlifts significantly changed my posture and my feeling of wellness.

Pilates worked for me. Reformer pilates, where you lie on this bed with pulleys and do various different exercises. 1hr a week for two years and I have no issue with my bulging disc injury.

YMMV of course, and most other suggestions here are also worth trying.

Most importantly, if you try something stick to it for 6-12 weeks before changing up. That's enough time for yoga/weights/pilates/whatevs to make a meaningful impact.

I used to have all kinds of back and neck pain, but 48 I started boxing and savate training and all of that pain went away. It's the best thing I've ever done for my health.

Weightlifting. And avoid prolonged inactivity in the office: Get up every 10-20 minutes or so just to stand up and move around a little and take pressure off the eyes and hands.

The one that you're consistent is best, science says...

- A good full body workout routine with some weights to build core strength. I avoid really heavy weights since that can increase my odds of having bad form to compensate and then hurting myself. Just sticking to light and medium weights has been very beneficial.

- Use a standup desk for part of the day.

- Look up some physical therapy moves for the specific part of your back which hurts and do them a few times a week when you wake up or go to bed. My pain is usually in my mid back, and I discovered a couple moves which have helped reduce the occurrences of spasms.

Pain free since lifting weights. Barbell squats. Barbell Medicine.

1-getting a standing desk to stop sitting for 8 hours straight 2-doing excercises that both strengthen and stretch muscles in your core (back and front) and your thighs (e.g squats, planks, to Romanian deadlifts, etc)

1) Attempt exercises gleaned from the internet; 2) Fail. Back pain unchanged or worse; 3) Go to a real M.D. doctor; 4) Doctor orders X-rays of back; 5) Obtain specific diagnoses, and referral to Physical Therapist; 6) Physical Therapist reviews chart, assigns specific exercises for problem; 7) Back pain gets better.

Sometimes, there's no substitute for finding out what is actually going on.

In addition to working out and generally improving my health, I had an ergonomic review done of my workspace. The biggest win was moving to a split keyboard, since I was hunching up my shoulders with a "normal" keyboard.

It also helped to raise up my monitors to a consistent height that removed the need to tilt my head down, but the split keyboard completely solved some neck and shoulder pain issues.