You heard it before. Now do it! Three tips to reduce screen fatigue
Posted: February 27, 2021 Filed under: behavior, ergonomics, Exercise/movement, health, Pain/discomfort, posture, relaxation, screen fatigue, Uncategorized, vision, zoom fatigue Leave a commentMonica Almendras and Erik Peper

For almost a year, we have managed to survive this pandemic. As we work in front of screen many people experience screen fatigue (Bailenson, 2021). The tiredness, achiness and depressive feelings have many causes such as sitting disease, reduced social contact, constantly looking at the screen for work, education, socializing, and entertaining, and the increased stress from family illness and economic insecurity. The result is that many people experience low energy, depression, loneliness, anxiety, neck, shoulder, back pain at the end of the day (Son, Hegde, Smith, Wang, & Sasangohar, 2020; Peper & Harvey, 2018).
Yet there is hope to reduce discomfort and increase by implementing simple tips.
Take breaks and take more breaks by getting up from your chair and moving. Taking breaks helps us to clear our minds and it interrupts any ongoing rumination we may have going on. Doing this helps a person be more productive at work or when studying, and at the same time it helps retain more information (Peper, Harvey, & Faass, 2020; Kim, Park, & Headrick, 2018). How many of you reading this actually take a short break at least once during work? We stay in the same sitting position for long periods of time, even holding off to go to the restroom. We tell ourselves ‘one more minute’ or ‘I’ll just finish this and then I’ll go”. Sounds familiar? We know it is not healthy and yet, we continue doing it.
Solution: Set a reminder every twenty minutes to take a short break. Download a program on your computer that will remind you to take a break such as Stretch Break (www.stretchbreak.com). Every twenty minutes a window will pop up on your computer reminding you to stretch. It gives you simple exercises for you to move around and wiggle as shown in figure 1. You can say it breaks the spell from staying frozen in one position in front of your screen. The best part is that yet is free to download on your computer. What more can you ask for?

Figure 1. Stretch break window that pops up on your computer to remind you to stretch.
Stop slouching in front of the screen. We tend to gaze downwards to our device and slouch, which creates tension on our neck and shoulders ((Peper, Lin, Harvey, & Perez, 2017). And yet, we still wonder why people suffer from neck-shoulder pain and headaches. It is time to make a transformation from slouching and feeling aches and pains, to an upright posture to be free of pain.
Solution: Use an UpRight Go 2 device on your upper back or neck is a great way to remind you that you are slouching (Harvey, Peper, Mason, & Joy, 2020). The UpRight is linked via Bluetooth to the App on the mobile phone, and once you calibrate it to an upright posture, you will see and feel a vibrate when you slouch. For people who are on the computer for long hours, this will help you to be aware of your posture.
If wearing a small device on your back is not your cup of tea, or perhaps it is not in your budget at the moment. There is a solution for this, and that means you can download the UpRight Desktop App on your computer or laptop (Chetwynd, Mason, Almendras, Peper, & Harvey, 2020). The desktop version uses the camera from your computer or laptop to monitor your posture; however, at the camera cannot simultaneous be in use with another program such as ZOOM. This version provides immediate feedback through the graphic on the screen as well as, an adjustable auditory signal when you slouch as shown in Figure 2. It is also free to download, and it is available for PC and Mac (https://www.uprightpose.com/desktop-app/).

Figure 2. Posture feedback app. When slouching, the app provides immediate feedback through the graphic on the screen (the posture of figure turns red) and/or an adjustable auditory sound (from: Chetwynd, Mason, Almendras, Peper, & Harvey, 2020)
Relax your eyes and look away from the screen. Many people struggle with dry eyes and eyestrain from looking at the screen for extended time periods. We log out from work, meetings, and class; to staring at the television, tablets, and mobile phones on our free time. It is a nonstop cycle of looking at the screen, while our poor eyes never have a single break. To look at the screen, we tightened our extraocular muscles and ciliary muscles; and the result is near-vision stress (Peper, 2021).
SOLUTION: The solution to relax the eyes and reduce eyestrain will not be to buy new eyeballs online. Instead, here are three easy and free things to reestablish good eyeball health. These were adapted from the superb book, Vision for life: Ten steps for natural eyesight improvement, by Meir Schneider, PhD.
- Look out through a window at a distance tree for a moment after reading an email or clicking a link
- Look up at a distant tree and focus at the details of the branches and leaves each time you have finished a page from a book or eBook.
- Rest and regenerate your eyes with palming (Peper, 2021). To do palming, all you need to do is sit upright, place an object under your elbows (pillow or books) to avoid tensing the neck and shoulders, and cover the eyes with your hands (see figure 3). Cup your hands to avoid pressure on your eyes and with your eyes closed, imagine seeing blackness while breathing slowing from your diaphragm. For five minutes, feel how your shoulders, head, and eyes are relaxing, while doing six breaths per minutes through your nose. Once your five minutes are up, stretch or wiggle around before returning to your work. For detailed instructions, see the YouTube video, Free Webinar by Meir Schneider: May 6, 2019.

Figure 3. Position for palming.
Implement these tips as an experiment for a week and note how it affects you. Many people report that after three weeks, they experience less pain and more energy. By taking charge of your own computer work patterns, you have taken a first e first step into transforming your health.
REFERENCES
Bailenson, J. N. (2021). Nonverbal Overload: A Theoretical Argument for the Causes of Zoom Fatigue. Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000030
Chetwynd, J., Mason, L., Almendras, M., Peper, E., & Harvey, R. (2020). “Posture awareness training.” Poster presented at the 51st Annual meeting of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.20194.76485
Harvey, R., Peper, E., Mason, L., & Joy, M. (2020). “Effect of posture feedback training on health”. Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback. 45(3). https://DOI.org/10.1007/s10484-020-09457-0
Kim, S., Park, Y., & Headrick, L. (2018). Daily micro-breaks and job performance: General work engagement as a cross-level moderator. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(7), 772–786. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000308
Peper, E. & Harvey, R. (2018). Digital addiction: increased loneliness, depression, and anxiety. NeuroRegulation. 5(1),3–8. doi:10.15540/nr.5.1.3 https://www.neuroregulation.org/article/view/18189/11842
Peper, E., Lin, I-M., Harvey, R., & Perez, J. (2017). How posture affects memory recall and mood. Biofeedback.45 (2), 36-41. https://doi.org/10.5298/1081-5937-45.2.01
Peper, E. (2021). “Resolve eyestrain and screen fatigue.” Well Being Journal,.30, Winter 2021 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345123096_Resolve_Eyestrain_and_Screen_Fatigue
Schneider, M. (2019. YouTube video Free Webinar by Meir Schneidere: May 6, 2019.
Son. C., Hegde, S., Smith, A., Wang, X., & Sasangohar, F. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 on College Students’ Mental Health in the United States: Interview Survey Study. J Med Internet Res, 22(9):e21279 https://doi.org/10.2196/21279
Tips to Reduce Zoom Fatigue
Posted: November 15, 2020 Filed under: behavior, computer, digital devices, ergonomics, Exercise/movement, health, laptops, Neck and shoulder discomfort, Pain/discomfort, self-healing, stress management, Uncategorized, vision 1 CommentAdapted from the book, TechStress: How Technology
is Hijacking our Lives, Strategies for Coping and Pragmatic Ergonomics, by Erik Peper, Richard Harvey and Nancy Faass.






Peper, E., Harvey, R., & Faass, N. (2020), TechStress-How Technology is Hijacking our Lives, Strategies for Coping and Pragmatic Ergonomics. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Inna Khazan, PhD, interviews the authors of TechStress
Posted: August 18, 2020 Filed under: behavior, computer, digital devices, ergonomics, Evolutionary perspective, Exercise/movement, health, laptops, Neck and shoulder discomfort, Pain/discomfort, posture, stress management, Uncategorized, vision Leave a commentGo behind the screen and watch Inna Khazan, PhD, faculty member at Harvard Medical School and author of Biofeedback and mindfulness in everyday life: Practical solutions for improving your health and performance, interview Erik Peper, PhD and Richard Harvey, PhD. coauthors of the new book, TechStress-How Technology is Hijacking our Lives, Strategies for Coping and Pragmatic Ergonomics.
Dr. Inna Khazan interviews Dr. Erik Peper about his new book Tech Stress. We talk about some of the ways in which technology overuse affects our health and what we can do about it.
Dr. Inna Khazan interviews Dr. Rick Harvey about his new book Tech Stress, the way technology overuse can affect adults and children, and what we can do about it.
Ways to reduce TechStress
Posted: August 13, 2020 Filed under: ADHD, behavior, computer, digital devices, emotions, ergonomics, Evolutionary perspective, Exercise/movement, health, Neck and shoulder discomfort, Nutrition/diet, Pain/discomfort, posture, relaxation, self-healing, stress management, Uncategorized 2 CommentsWe are excited about our upcoming book, TechStress-How Technology is Hijacking our Lives, Strategies for Coping and Pragmatic Ergonomics, that will be published August 25, 2020.
Evolution shapes behavior — and as a species, we’ve evolved to be drawn to the instant gratification, constant connectivity, and the shiny lights, beeps, and chimes of our ever-present devices. In earlier eras, these hardwired evolutionary patterns may have set us up for success, but today they confuse our instincts, leaving us vulnerable and stressed out from fractured attention, missed sleep, skipped meals, aches, pains, and exhaustion and often addicted to our digital devices.
Tech Stress offers real, practical tools to avoid evolutionary pitfalls programmed into modern technology that trip us up. You will find a range of effective strategies and best practices to individualize your workspace, reduce physical strain, prevent sore muscles, combat brain drain, and correct poor posture. The book also provides fresh insights on reducing psychological stress on the job, including ways to improve communication with coworkers and family.
Although you will have to wait until August 25th to have the book delivered to your home, you can already begin to implement ways to reduce physical discomfort, zoom/screen fatigue and exhaustion. Have a look the blogs below.
How evolution shapes behavior
How to optimize ergonomics
Cartoon ergonomics for working at the computer and laptop
Hot to prevent and reduce neck and shoulder discomfort
Why do I have neck and shoulder discomfort at the computer?
Relieve and prevent neck stiffness and pain
How to prevent screen fatigue and eye discomfort
Resolve Eyestrain and Screen Fatigue
How to improve posture and prevent slouching
“Don’t slouch!” Improve health with posture feedback
How to improve breathing and reduce stress
Anxiety, lightheadedness, palpitations, prodromal migraine symptoms? Breathing to the rescue!
How to protect yourself from EMF
Cell phone radio frequency radiation increases cancer risk
Available from: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/232119/tech-stress-by-erik-peper-phd/
Why do I have neck and shoulder discomfort at the computer?
Posted: July 23, 2020 Filed under: behavior, computer, digital devices, ergonomics, Exercise/movement, laptops, Neck and shoulder discomfort, Pain/discomfort, posture, Uncategorized 7 CommentsAdapted from the upcoming book, TechStress: How Technology is Hijacking Our Lives, Strategies for Coping, and Pragmatic Ergonomics, by Erik Peper, Richard Harvey and Nancy Faass.
While working in front of screens, many of us suffer from Zoom/screen fatigue, iNeck, shoulder and back discomfort, tired eyes, exhaustion and screen addiction (Peper, 2020; Fosslien & Duffy, 2020; So, Cheng & Szeto, 2017; Peper & Harvey, 2018). As we work, our shoulders and forearms tense and we are often not aware of this until someone mentions it. Many accept the discomfort and pain as the cost of doing work–not realizing that it may be possible to work without pain.
Observe how you and coworkers work at the computer, laptop or cellphone. Often we bring our noses close to the screen in order to the text more clearly and raise our shoulders when we perform data entry and use the mouse. This unaware muscle tension can be identified with physiological recording of the muscles electrical activity when they contract (electromyography) (Peper & Gibney, 2006; Peper, Harvey & Tylova, 2006). In most cases, when we rest our hands on our laps the muscle tension is low but the moment we even rest our hands on the keyboard or when we begin to type or mouse, our muscles may tighten, as shown in Figure 1. The muscle activity will also depend on the person’s stress level, ergonomic arrangement and posture.
Figure 1. Muscle tension from the shoulder and forearm increased without any awareness when the person rested their hands on the keyboard (Rest Keyboard) and during typing and mousing. The muscles only relaxed when the hands were resting on their lap (Rest Lap) (reproduced by permission from Peper, Harvey, and Faass, 2020).
Stop reading from your screen and relax your shoulders. Did you feel them slightly drop and relax?
If you experienced this release of tension and relaxation in the shoulders, then you were tightening your shoulders muscles without awareness. It is usually by the end of the day that we experience stiffness and discomfort. Do the following exercise as guided by the video or described in the text below to experience how discomfort and pain develop by maintaining low-level muscle tension.
While sitting, lift your right knee two inches up so that the foot is about two inches away from the floor. Keep holding the knee up in this position. Did you notice your breathing stopped when you lifted your knee? Are you noticing increasing tension and discomfort or even pain? How much longer can you lift the knee up?
Let go, relax and observe how the discomfort dissipates.
Reasons for the discomfort
The discomfort occurred because your muscles were contracted, which inhibited the blood and lymph flow through the tissue. When your muscles contracted to lift your knee, the blood flow in those muscles was reduced. Only when your muscles relaxed could enough blood flow occur to deliver nutrients and oxygen as well as remove the waste products of metabolism (Wan et al, 2017). From a physiological perspective, muscles work most efficiently when they alternately contract and relax. For example, most people can walk without discomfort since their muscles contract and relax with each step. However, you could hold your knee up for a few minutes before experiencing discomfort in those same muscles.
How to prevent discomfort.
To prevent discomfort and optimize health, apply the same concept of alternating tensing and relaxing to your neck, shoulder, back and arm muscles while working. Every few minutes move your arms and shoulders and let them relax. Interrupt the static sitting position with movement. If you need reminders to get up and move your body during the workday or long periods sitting in front of a device, you can download and install the free app, StretchBreak.
For more information, read and apply the concepts described in our upcoming book, TechStress: How Technology is Hijacking Our Lives, Strategies for Coping, and Pragmatic Ergonomics. The book explains why TechStress develops, why digital addiction occurs, and what you can do to prevent discomfort, improve health and enhance performance. Order the book from Amazon and receive it August 25th. Alternatively, sign up with the publisher and receive a 30% discount when the book is published August 25th. https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/tech-stress/
References
Peper, E. & Gibney, K. H. (2006). Muscle Biofeedback at the Computer: A Manual to Prevent Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) by Taking the Guesswork out of Assessment, Monitoring and Training. Amersfoort: The Netherlands: Biofeedback Foundation of Europe. ISBN 0-9781927-0-2. Free download of the the book: http://bfe.org/helping-clients-who-are-working-from-home/
Wan, J. J., Qin, Z., Wang, P. Y., Sun, Y., & Liu, X. (2017). Muscle fatigue: general understanding and treatment. Experimental & molecular medicine, 49(10), e384. https://doi.org/10.1038/emm.2017.194
Resolve Eyestrain and Screen Fatigue
Posted: June 29, 2020 Filed under: Breathing/respiration, computer, digital devices, ergonomics, Exercise/movement, health, laptops, Neck and shoulder discomfort, Pain/discomfort, relaxation, stress management, Uncategorized, vision | Tags: blurry vision, computer vision syndrome, dry eyes, eyestrain, near vision stress, zoom fatigue 9 CommentsAdapted from: Peper, E., Harvey, R. & Faass, N. (2020). TechStress: How Technology is Hijacking Our Lives, Strategies for Coping, and Pragmatic Ergonomics. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Forty percent of adults and eighty percent of teenagers report experiencing significant visual symptoms (eyestrain, blurry vision, dry eyes, headaches, and exhaustion) during and immediately after viewing electronic displays. These ‘technology-associated overuse’ symptoms are often labeled as digital eyestrain or computer vision syndrome (Rosenfield, 2016; Randolph & Cohn, 2017). Even our distant vision may be affected— after working in front of a screen for hours, the world looks blurry. At the same time, we may experience an increase in neck, shoulders and back discomfort. These symptoms increase as we spend more hours looking at computer screens, laptops, tablets, e-readers, gaming consoles, and cellphones for work, taking online classes, watching streaming videos for entertainment, and keeping connected with friends and family (Borhany et al, 2018; Turgut, 2018; Jensen et al, 2002).
Eye, head, neck, shoulder and back discomfort are partly the result of sitting too long in the same position and attending to the screen without taking short physical and vision breaks, moving our bodies and looking at far objects every 20 minutes or so. The obvious question is, “Why do we stare at and are captured by, the screen?” Two answers are typical: (1) we like the content of what is on the screen; and, (2) we feel compelled to watch the rapidly changing visual scenes.
From an evolutionary perspective, our sense of vision (and hearing) evolved to identify predators who were hunting us, or to search for prey so we could have a nice meal. Attending to fast moving visual changes is linked to our survival. We are unaware that our adaptive behaviors of attending to a visual or auditory signals activate the same physiological response patterns that were once successful for humans to survive–evading predictors, identifying food, and discriminating between friend or foe. The large and small screen (and speakers) with their attention grabbing content and notifications have become an evolutionary trap that may lead to a reduction in health and fitness (Peper, Harvey & Faass, 2020).
Near vision stress
To be able to see the screen, the eyes need to converge and accommodate. To converge, the extraocular muscles of the eyes tighten; to focus (accomodation), the ciliary muscle around the lens tighten to increase the curvature of the lens. This muscle tension is held constant as long as we look at the screen. Overuse of these muscles results is near vision stress that contributes to computer vision syndrome, development of myopia in younger people, and other technology-associated overuse syndromes (Sherwin et al, 2012; Enthoven et al, 2020).
Continually overworking the visual muscles related to convergences increases tension and contributes to eyestrain. While looking at the screen, the eye muscles seldom have the chance to relax. To function effectively, muscles need to relax /regenerate after momentary tightening. For the eye muscles to relax, they need to look at the far distance– preferably objects green in color. As stated earlier, the process of distant vision occurs by relaxing the extraocular muscles to allow the eyes to diverge along with relaxing the ciliary muscle to allow the lens to flatten. In our digital age, where screen of all sizes are ubiquitous, distant vision is often limited to the nearby walls behind a screen or desk which results in keeping the focus on nearby objects and maintaining muscular tension in the eyes.
As we evolved, we continuously alternated between between looking at the far distance and nearby areas for food sources as well as signals indicating danger. If we did not look close and far, we would not know if a predator was ready to attack us. Today we tend to be captured by the screens. Arguably, all media content is designed to capture our attention such as data entry tasks required for employment, streaming videos for entertainment, reading and answering emails, playing e-games, responding to text notifications, looking at Instagram and Snapchat photos and Tiktok videos, scanning Tweets and using social media accounts such as Facebook. We are unaware of the symptoms of visual stress until we experience symptoms. To illustrate the physiological process that covertly occurs during convergence and accommodation, do the following exercise.
Sit comfortably and lift your right knee a few inches up so that the foot is an inch above the floor. Keep holding it in this position for a minute…. Now let go and relax your leg.
A minute might have seemed like a very long time and you may have started to feel some discomfort in the muscles of your hip. Most likely, you observed that when you held your knee up, you most likely held your breath and tightened your neck and back. Moreover, to do this for more than a few minutes would be very challenging.
Lift your knee up again and notice the automatic patterns that are happening in your body.
For muscles to regenerate they need momentary relaxation which allows blood flow and lymph flow to occur. By alternately tensing and relaxing muscles, they can work more easily for longer periods of time without experiencing fatigue and discomfort (e.g., we can hike for hours but can only lift our knee for a few minutes).
Solutions to relax the eyes and reduce eye strain
- Reestablish the healthy evolutionary pattern of alternately looking at far and near distances to reduce eyestrain, such as:
- Look out through a window at a distant tree for a moment after reading an email or clicking link.
- Look up and at the far distance each time you have finished reading a page or turn the page over.
- Rest and regenerate your eyes with palming. While sitting upright, place a pillow or other supports under our elbows so that your hands can cover your closed eyes without tensing the neck and shoulders.
- Cup the hands so that there is no pressure on your eyeballs, allow the base of the hands to touch the cheeks while the fingers are interlaced and resting your forehead.
- Close your eyes, imagine seeing black. Breathe slowly and diaphragmatically while feeling the warmth of the palm soothing the eyes. Feel your shoulders, head and eyes relaxing. Palm for 5 minutes while breathing at about six breaths per minute through your nose. Then stretch and go back to work.
Palming is one of the many practices that improves vision. For a comprehensive perspective and pragmatic exercises to reduce eye strain, maintain and improve vision, see the superb book by Meir Schneider, PhD., L.M.T., Vision for Life, Revised Edition: Ten Steps to Natural Eyesight Improvement.
Increased sympathetic arousal
Seeing the changing stimuli on the screen evokes visual attention and increases sympathetic arousal. In addition, many people automatically hold their breath when they see novel visual or hear auditory signals; since, they trigger a defense or orienting response. At the same time, without awareness, we may tighten our neck and shoulder muscles as we bring our nose literally to the screen. As we attend and concentrate to see what is on the screen, our blinking rate decreases significantly. From an evolutionary perspective, an unexpected movement in the periphery could be a snake, a predator, a friend or foe and the body responds by getting ready: freeze, fight or flight. We still react the same survival responses. Some of the physiological reactions that occur include:
- Breath holding or shallow breathing. These often occur the moment we receive a text notification, begin concentrating and respond to the messages, or start typing or mousing. Without awareness, we activate the freeze, flight and fight response. By breath holding or shallow breathing, we reduce or limit our body movements, effectively becoming a non-moving object that is more difficult to see by many animal predators. In addition, during breath holding, hearing become more acute because breathing noises are effectively reduced or eliminated.
- Inhibition of blinking. When we blink it is another movement signal that in earlier times could give away our position. In addition, the moment we blink we become temporarily blind and cannot see what the predator could be doing next.
- Increased neck, shoulder and back tension. The body is getting ready for a defensive fight or avoidance flight.
Experience some of these automatic physiological responses described above by doing the following two exercises.
Eye movement neck connection: While sitting up and looking at the screen, place your fingers on the back of the neck on either side of the cervical spine just below the junction where the spine meets the skull.
Feel the muscles of neck along the spine where they are attaching to the skull. Now quickly look to the extreme right and then to the extreme left with your eyes. Repeat looking back and forth with the eyes two or three times.
What did you observe? Most likely, when you looked to the extreme right, you could feel the right neck muscles slightly tightening and when you looked the extreme left, the left neck muscles slightly tightening. In addition, you may have held your breath when you looked back and forth.
Focus and neck connection: While sitting up and looking at the screen, place your fingers on the back of the neck as you did before. Now focus intently on the smallest size print or graphic details on the screen. Really focus and concentrate on it and look at all the details.
What did you observe? Most likely, when you focused on the text, you brought your head slightly forward and closer to the screen, felt your neck muscles tighten, and possibly held your breath or started to breathe shallowly.
As you concentrated, the automatic increase in arousal, along with the neck and shoulder tension and reduced blinking contributes to developing discomfort. This can become more pronounced after looking at screens to detailed figures, numerical data, characters and small images for hours (Peper, Harvey & Tylova, 2006; Peper & Harvey, 2008; Waderich et al, 2013).
Staying alert, scanning and reacting to the images on a computer screen or notifications from text messages, can become exhausting. in the past, we scanned the landscape, looking for information that will help us survive (predators, food sources, friend or foe) however today, we react to the changing visual stimuli on the screen. The computer display and notifications have become evolutionary traps since they evoke these previously adaptive response patterns that allowed us to survive.
The response patterns occur mostly without awareness until we experience discomfort. Fortunately, we can become aware of our body’s reactions with physiological monitoring which makes the invisible visible as shown in the figure below (Peper, Harvey & Faass, 2020).
Representative physiological patterns that occur when working at a computer, laptop, tablet or cellphone are unnecessary neck and shoulder tension, shallow rapid breathing, and an increase in heart rate during data entry. Even when the person is resting their hands on the keyboard, forearm muscle tension, breathing and heart rate increased.
Moreover, muscle tension in the neck and shoulder region also increased, even when those muscles were not needed for data entry task. Unfortunately, this unnecessary tension and shallow breathing contributes to exhaustion and discomfort (Peper, Harvey & Faass, 2020).
With biofeedback training, the person can learn to become aware and control these dysfunctional patterns and prevent discomfort (Peper & Gibney, 2006; Peper et, 2003). However, without access to biofeedback monitoring, assume that you respond similarly while working. Thus, to prevent discomfort and improve health and performance, implement the following.
- Practice breathing lower and slower to reduce sympathetic activation. Every few minutes remember to breathe slowly in and out through the nose. See the following blogs for more detailed instructions:
- Blink many times. Blink each time you click on a link, after typing a paragraph or after entering a few numbers.
- Get up, move, stretch and wiggle.
- Every few minutes do a small movement such as rotating your shoulders, dropping your hands to your lap.
- Every twenty minutes get up, stretch and walk around to reduce the chronic muscle tension.
- Install the free Stretch Break software on your computer or laptop to remind you to stretch… and then shows you how. Download free version from: https://stretchbreak.com/.
- Use small portable muscle biofeedback devices to learn awareness of the covert muscle tension and how to work without unnecessary muscle tension. For detailed training procedures see the free downloadable book by Erik Peper and Katherine Gibney, Muscle Biofeedback at the Computer- A Manual to Prevent Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) by Taking the Guesswork out of Assessment, Monitoring and Training.
Finally, for a comprehensive overview based on an evolutionary perspective that explains why TechStress develops, why digital addiction occurs. and what can be done to prevent discomfort and improve health and performance, see our new book by Erik Peper, Richard Harvey and Nancy Faass, Tech Stress-How Technology is Hijack our Lives, Strategies for Coping and Pragmatic Ergonomics.
References
Peper, E. & Gibney, K. (2006). Muscle Biofeedback at the Computer- A Manual to Prevent Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) by Taking the Guesswork out of Assessment, Monitoring and Training. The Biofeedback Federation of Europe. Download free PDF version of the book: http://bfe.org/helping-clients-who-are-working-from-home/
Schneider, M. (2016). Vision for Life, Revised Edition: Ten Steps to Natural Eyesight Improvement. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. https://self-healing.org/shop/books/vision-for-life-2nd-ed
Turgut, B. (2018). Ocular Ergonomics for the Computer Vision Syndrome. Journal Eye and Vision, 1(2).
Reduce TechStress at Home
Posted: March 19, 2020 Filed under: behavior, computer, digital devices, ergonomics, health, laptops, Neck and shoulder discomfort, Pain/discomfort, Uncategorized 5 CommentsAdapted from the book, Peper, E., Harvey, R., & Faass, (2020). Tech Stress: How Technology Is Hijacking Our Lives, Strategies for Coping, and Pragmatic Ergonomics. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Numerous people report that working at the computer at home is more tiring than working in the office. Although there are obvious advantages to working at home, there are also disadvantages (e.g., no space to work, challenging ergonomics, no escape from the family, lack of nonverbal cues used to communicate, less informal sharing at the water cooler, increased multitasking by working and having to take care of the children).
A major challenge is having a comfortable work space in your home. This may mean finding a place to put the computer, keyboard and screen. For some it is the kitchen table, desk in the corner of the bedroom, or coffee table while other it is in a totally separate room.
Incorrect ergonomic arrangement and stressed work style often increases neck, shoulder discomfort and aggravates eye strain and tiredness. Regardless how your digital work space is organized, implement the following life and work style suggestions and ergonomics recommendations to promote health.
LIFE AND WORK STYLE SUGGESTIONS
Take many, many, many breaks. Movement breaks will reduce the covert static tension that builds up as we sit in static positions and work at the computer.
- Every few minutes take a small break such as stand up and wiggle or role your shoulders. When performing the movements, stop looking at the screen and look around the room or out the window.
- Every 30 minutes get up walk around for and move your body. Use timers to notify you every 30 minutes to take a break (e.g., cellphone alarms or personal digital assistants such as Hey Google, Siri, or Alexa).
Improve vision.
- Take vision breaks to reduce eye fatigue.
- Every few minutes look away from the screen and into the far distance and blink. If at all possible look outside at green plants which relaxes the near vision induced tension.
- Blink and blink again. When working at the computer we reduce our blinking rate. Thus, blink each time you click on a new link, finishing entering a column of numbers, etc.
- Close your eyes by letting the eye lids drop down as you also relax your jaw. Imagine a hook on top of your head which is pulling your head upward and at the same time drop your shoulders.
- Reduce glare and bright backgrounds
- Arrange your computer screen at 90 degrees to the brightest light source.
- Have a darker background behind you when participating in video conferencing (e.g., Zoom, Skype, GoToMeeting, WhatsApp, FaceTime). Your face will be visible.
Regenerate
- When stressed remember to breathe. As you inhale let your stomach expand as you exhale let the air flow out slowly.
- Stop watching and listening to the negative news (check the news no more than once a day). Watch positive and humorous movies.
- Get fresh air, go for a walk, and be in the sun
- Reconnect with friends and share positive experiences.
- Remind yourself, that this too shall pass.
ERGONOMIC RECOMMENDATIONS: MAKE THE WORLD YOURS
Good ergonomics means adapting the equipment and environment to you and not the other way around. Optimizes the arrangement of the chair, desk, keyboard, mouse, camera, screen and yourself as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Recommended arrangement for working at the computer.
Arrange the laptop
The laptop is challenging because if your hands are at the right height for data entry on the keyboard, then you must look down to see the screen. If the screen at the right height, then you have to raise your hands to reach the keyboard. There are two solutions for this challenge.
- Use an external keyboard and mouse, then raise the laptop so that the top of the screen is at eye level. Use a laptop stand or a stack of books to raise the lap top.
- Use an external monitor for display, then use the laptop as your keyboard.
If these solutions are not possible, take many, many, many breaks to reduce the neck and shoulder stress.
Arrange the computer workstation
- Adjust the chair so that your forearms can rest on the table without raising your shoulders. This may mean sitting on a pillow. If the chair is then too high and your legs dangle, create a foot stool on which you can rest your feet.
- Adjust the monitor so that the top of the screen is at eye level. If the monitor is too low, raise it by putting some books underneath it.
- If possible, alternate standing and sitting while working.
RESOURCES
Book
Tech Stress: How Technology Is Hijacking Our Lives, Strategies for Coping, and Pragmatic Ergonomics provides insight in how discomfort, symptoms and media addiction develops and what you can do about it. It incorporates the role of evolutionary traps, how biofeedback makes the unaware aware, experiential physical and cognitive practices, and ergonomic recommendations to optimize health and productivity. A must book for anyone using digital devices. Peper, E., Harvey, R., & Faass, (2020). Tech Stress: How Technology Is Hijacking Our Lives, Strategies for Coping, and Pragmatic Ergonomics. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Ergonomic suggestions for working at the computer and laptop.
https://peperperspective.com/2014/09/30/cartoon-ergonomics-for-working-at-the-computer-and-laptop/
11 tips for working at home
How our digital world activates evolutionary response patterns.
https://peperperspective.com/2018/02/10/digital-addiction/
How posture affects health
https://peperperspective.com/2019/07/01/dont-slouch-improves-health-with-posture-feedback/
https://peperperspective.com/2019/05/21/relieve-and-prevent-neck-stiffness-and-pain/
https://peperperspective.com/2019/01/23/head-position-it-matters/
“Don’t slouch!” Improve health with posture feedback
Posted: July 1, 2019 Filed under: behavior, digital devices, ergonomics, health, Neck and shoulder discomfort, posture, self-healing, Uncategorized | Tags: cellphone, eye strain, Laptop 1 Comment“Although I knew I slouched and often corrected myself, I never realized how often and how long I slouched until the vibratory posture feedback from the UpRight Go 2™ cued me to sit up (see Figure 1).” -Erik Peper
Figure 1. Wearing an UpRight Go 2™ to increase awareness of slouching and as a reminder to change position.
For thousands of years we sat and stood erect. In those earlier times, we looked down to identify specific plants or animal track and then looked up and around to search for possible food sources, identify friends, and avoid predators. The upright, not slouched posture body posture, is innate and optimizes body movement as illustrated in Figure 2 (for more information, see Gokhale, 2013).
Figure 2. The normal aligned spine of a toddler and the aligned posture of a man carrying a heavy load.
Being tall and erect allows the head to freely rotate. Head rotation is reduced when we look down at our cell phones, tablets or laptops (Harvey, Peper, Booiman, Heredia Cedillo, & Villagomez, 2018). Our digital world captures us as illustrated in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Captured by the screen with a head forward positions.
Looking down and focusing on the screen for long time periods is the opposite of what supported us to survive and thrive when we lived as hunters and gatherers. When we look down, we become more oblivious to our surroundings and unaware of the possible predators that would have been hunting us for food.
This slouched position increases back, neck, head and eye tension as well as affecting respiration and digestion (Devi, Lakshmi, & Devi, 2018; Peper, Lin, & Harvey, 2017). After looking at the screens for a long time, we may feel tired or exhausted and lack initiative to do something else. Our mood may turn more negative since it is easier to evoke hopeless, helpless and powerless thoughts and memories when looking down than when looking up (Wilson, & Peper, 2004; Peper, Lin, Harvey, & Perez, 2017). In the down position, our brain has to work harder to evoke positive thoughts and memories or perform cognitive tasks as compared to when the head is erect (Tsai, Peper, & Lin, 2016; Peper, Harvey, Mason, & Lin, 2018). By looking down and focusing at the screen, our eyes may begin to strain. To be able to see objects near us, the extraocular muscles of the eyes contract to converge the eyes and the cilia muscles around the lens contract to increase the curvature of the lens so that the reading material is in focus.
Become aware how nearby vision increases eye strain.
Hold your arm straight ahead of you at eye level with your thumb up. While focusing on your thumb, slowly bring your thumb closer and closer to your nose. Observe the increase in eyestrain as you bring your thumb closer to your nose.
Eyestrain tends to develop when we do not relax the eyes by periodically looking away from the screen. When we look at the horizon or trees in the far distance the ciliary muscles and the extraocular muscles relax (Schneider, 2016).
Head forward posture increases neck and back tension
When we look down and concentrate, our head moves significantly forward. The neck and back muscles have to work much harder to hold the head up when the neck is in this flexed position. As Dr. Kenneth Hansraj, Chief of Spine Surgery New York Spine Surgery & Rehabilitation Medicine reported, “The weight seen by the spine dramatically increases when flexing the head forward at varying degrees. An adult head weighs 10-12 pounds in the neutral position. As the head tilts forward the forces seen by the neck surges to 27 pounds at 15 degrees, 40 pounds at 30 degrees, 49 pounds at 45 degrees and 60 pounds at 60 degrees.” (Hansraj, 2014). Our head tends to tilt down when we look at the text, videos, emails, photos, or games and stay in this position for long time periods. We are captured by the digital display and are unaware of our tight overused neck and back muscles. Straightening up so that the back of the head is re-positioned over the spine and looking into the distance may help relax those muscles.
To reduce discomfort caused by slouching, we need to reintegrate our prehistoric life style pattern of alternating between looking down to being tall and looking at the distant scenery or across the room. The first step is awareness of knowing when slouching begins. Yet, we tend to be unaware until we experience discomfort or are reminded by others (e.g, “Don’t slouch! Sit up straight!”). If we could have immediate posture feedback when we begin to slouch, our awareness would increase and remind us to change our posture.
Posture feedback with UpRight Go
Simple posture feedback device such as an UpRight Go 2™ can provide vibratory feedback each time slouching starts as the neck as the head goes forward. The wearable feedback device consists of a small sensor that is attached to the back of the neck or back (see Figure 1). After being paired with a cellphone and calibrated for the upright position, the software algorithm detects changes in tilt and provides vibratory feedback each time the neck/back tilts forward.
In our initial exploration, employees, students and clients used the UpRight feedback devices at work, at school, at home, while driving, walking and other activities to identify situations that caused them to slouch. The most common triggers were:
- Ergonomic caused movement such as bring the head closer to the screen or looking down at their cell phone (for suggestions to improve ergonomics see recommendations at the end of the article)
- Tiredness
- Negative self-critical/depressive thoughts
- Crossing the legs protectively, shallow breathing, and other factors
After having identified some of the factors that were associated with slouching, we compared the health outcome of students who used the device for a minimum for 15 minutes a day for four weeks as compared to a control group who did not use the device. The students who received the UpRight feedback were also encouraged to use the feedback to change their posture and behavior and implemented some of the following strategies.
- Head down when looking at their laptop, tablet or cellphone.
- Change the ergonomics such as using a laptop stand and an external keyboard so that they could be upright while looking at the screen.
- Take many movement breaks to interrupt the static tension.
- Feeling tired.
- Take a break or nap to regenerate.
- Do fun physical activity especially activities where you look upward to re-energize.
- Negative self-critical, powerless, self-critical and depressive thoughts and feelings.
- Reframe internal language to empowering thoughts.
- Change posture by wiggling and looking up to have a different point of view.
- Crossing the legs.
- Sit in power position and breathe diaphragmatically.
- Get up and do a few movements such as shoulder rolls, skipping, or arm swings.
- Other causes.
- Identify the trigger and explore strategies so that you can sit erect without effort.
- Wiggle, move and get up to interrupt static muscle tension.
- Stand up and look out of the window and the far distance while breathing slowly
Posture feedback improves health
After four weeks of using the feedback device and changing behavior, the treatment group reported significant improvements in physical and mental health as shown in Figure 4 & 5.
Figure 4. Using the posture feedback significantly improved the Physical Health and Mental Health Composite Scores for the treatment group as compared to the control group (reproduced from Mason, L., Joy, Peper, & Harvey, 2018).
Figure 5. Pre to post changes after using posture feedback (reproduced from Colombo, Joy, Mason, L., Peper, Harvey, & Booiman, 2017).
Summary
Slouched posture and head forward and down position usually occurs without awareness and often results in long-term discomfort. We recommend that practitioners integrate wearable biofeedback devices to facilitate home practice especially for people with neck, shoulder, back and eye discomfort as well as for those with low energy and depression (Mason et al., 2018). We observed that a small wearable posture feedback device helped participants improve posture and decreased symptoms. The vibratory posture feedback provided the person with the opportunity to identify the triggers associated with slouching and the option to change their posture, behavior and environment.
As one participant reported, “I have been using the Upright device for a few weeks now. I mostly use the device while studying at my desk and during class. I have found that it helps me stay focused at my desk for longer time. Knowing there is something monitoring my posture helps to keep me sitting longer because I want to see how long I can keep an upright posture. While studying, I have found whenever I become frustrated, tired, or when my mind begins to wander I slouch. The Upright then vibrates and I become aware of these feelings and thoughts, and can quickly correct them. This device has improved my posture, created awareness, and increased my overall study time.”
Suggestions to reduce slouching and improve ergonomics
How to arrange your computer and laptop: https://peperperspective.com/2014/09/30/cartoon-ergonomics-for-working-at-the-computer-and-laptop/
Relieve neck and shoulder stiffness: https://peperperspective.com/2019/05/21/relieve-and-prevent-neck-stiffness-and-pain/
Cellphone health: https://peperperspective.com/2014/11/20/cellphone-harm-cervical-spine-stress-and-increase-risk-of-brain-cancer/
References
Colombo, S., Joy, M., Mason, L., Peper, E., Harvey, R., & Booiman, A. (2017). Posture Change Feedback Training and its Effect on Health. Poster presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, Chicago, IL March, 2017. Abstract published in Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback.42(2), 147.
Gokhale, E. (2013). 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. Pendo Press.
Schneider, M. (2016). Vision for Life. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic.