The body is a very sensitive and prolonged sitting can do a great deal of damage that people do not even realize. Luckily there are innovative exercises that you can do throughout the day to change things for you, even if you’re desk-bound in a chair.

Taking care of your body is important to keeping healthy and motivated throughout the day at the workplace. I am going to go over why sitting comfortable in your chair can actually be detrimental to you and your health. First of all, it is very easy to be obese while sitting comfortable in a chair all day and not moving. The risk of heart disease dramatically increases the longer you spend time in your chair.

Your body responds to the sitting by cramping up. Your lower back is constantly in tension while leaning back into a chair. The iliopsoas muscles are in compression causing the disks in your spine to shift, and little shift can lead to hernias. The shift causes pain in your sciatic nerves and that constant pressure on your vertebra crushes your nerves and causes swelling.

Despite the pain that can be caused by sitting down too long, it can easily be fixed by some office stretches.

The easiest way to stretch your lower back is place your hands on your lower back and create an arc lean back. This will stretch your lower back taking the tension off of it so the nerves are not crushed by the back of your chair.

You can also bend over and touch your feet while sitting in your chair to stretch your back the other way as well.