Last Updated: 2008-05-22 15:58:11 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Office workers may be able to soothe their head, neck and shoulder pain with the help of simple exercises and greater awareness of their muscle tension, a new study suggests.
Italian researchers found that a combination of simple exercises and education helped reduce complaints of headaches and neck and shoulder pain among 192 government office workers.
Over 8 months, headache frequency fell by 41 percent, while neck and shoulder pain frequency dropped by 43 percent, the researchers report in the medical journal Cephalgia.
The findings suggest that simple, inexpensive measures can help relieve office workers' daily aches and pains -- and possibly boost their productivity, according to the researchers.
"Headache and neck and shoulder pain are both a clinical challenge and a major health problem," lead researcher Dr. Franco Mongini, of the University of Turin, said in a statement. "Our study," he added, "clearly shows that workplace interventions can reduce headaches and neck and shoulder pain."
The intervention had two main components. In one, workers were taught a series of exercises to perform every few hours during the workday.
They would, for example, stand against a wall with their heels, hips and nape of the neck touching the wall, then repeatedly roll their shoulders back to the touch the wall, then release them forward again. In another exercise, they stood at the wall and slowly turned their heads side-to-side.
Employees were also given a basic relaxation exercise to do at home, once or twice a day -- sitting in a comfortable chair in a quiet room for 10 to 15 minutes, with warm pads on the shoulders and cheeks.
The other main component of the program was education. Employees were taught to be aware of when they were contracting the muscles of the face, neck and shoulders, and written reminders were placed at their work areas to encourage them to let go of muscle tension.
After 8 months, the workers in the program were reporting substantially fewer headaches and less shoulder and neck pain, versus minimal change among workers at another city government office who were not in the program.
According to Mongini, workers in the intervention group had positive responses to the program. "We also believe that employers would support this low-cost initiative," he said, "as it would improve productivity in the workplace."
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SOURCE: Cephalgia, May 2008.