This is an automatically translated article.
In office workers, the rate of musculoskeletal disease is more than 65%. The proportion is increasing as human work increasingly involves computers.The decade 2010 - 2020 was selected by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the "Decade of Bones and Joints". This shows the prevalence and alarming nature of musculoskeletal diseases.
The most common occupational disease in the world
Musculoskeletal disease in office workers is the most common occupational disease in the world. In the US, Scandinavian countries and Japan, this is also the largest group of occupational diseases.
The impact of musculoskeletal disease can range from mild symptoms to severe dysfunction, even disabling sequelae. It indirectly reduces the quality of life, reduces labor productivity, causes lost work days and pushes up medical costs.
Symptoms are sometimes subjective feelings of the patient such as: pain, numbness, spasticity, fatigue; or sometimes there are obvious outward manifestations such as muscle weakness, limited range of motion, deformity or, more severely, loss of function.
Among the symptoms mentioned above, pain is the most important and common symptom. Pain is considered by WHO as a vital sign of humans, as important as heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate.
Pain in osteoarthritis is often dull, but persistent, so it can be considered a chronic pain condition. Musculoskeletal pain accounts for up to 60% of chronic pain causes.
Research in the United States shows that pain greatly affects the ability to work, causing loss of 4.6 hours of work per week, costing more than 61 billion USD/year, 76% of production time lost due to decrease in work performance not due to absence. Chronic pain also affects daily physical activities, emotional levels, ability to enjoy life and even social relationships.
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Common musculoskeletal diseases in office workers and their causes
Statistics show that common problems in office workers include back pain, neck pain, neck pain, and neck pain. hands/hands, vitamin D deficiency
Back pain:
Although you don't have to do heavy work, you sit continuously (on average 6-8 hours/day), sedentary, or sit with incorrect posture (bending forward, placing the weight unevenly on the buttocks, crossing the legs) can all cause back pain.
Mild cases can cause transient back muscle fatigue. More seriously, back pain can be an alarm sign for spinal degeneration or lumbar disc herniation.
Shoulder fatigue, neck pain:
When we sit, our arms are always in an outstretched position, the head often tends to bend forward, causing the muscles of the shoulder and neck area to strain continuously to keep balance, the spine neck loses its physiological position. After sitting and working for a long time, we feel tired in our shoulders and neck. That's because the muscles are overloaded.
Wrist and finger disease:
When working with a computer, the wrist will often rest on the keyboard and computer mouse. At that time, the two wrist joints are often pinched and almost motionless. If the wrist is compressed for a long time, it will cause numbness and pain. The patient also continuously feels pain spreading down the thumb, index finger and middle finger. In severe cases, it can cause atrophy of the thumb muscle, causing reduced grip function of the hand.
Numbness, gait disorders... due to vitamin D deficiency:
Not directly causing local symptoms as mentioned above, but vitamin D deficiency causes indirect effects but at scale Body. Dubbed the "sunshine vitamin", it means that the skin will synthesize vitamin D on its own when exposed to sunlight. However, office workers who leave early and return late, "lock themselves" in closed buildings, so the possibility of vitamin D deficiency in the office world is very high.
We often know vitamin D through its role in the skeleton. Accordingly, a lack of Vitamin D will cause osteoporosis and increase the risk of fractures. Vitamin D deficiency also affects neuromuscular function, causing pain, numbness, gait disturbances and an increased risk of falls.
It has not been more than a century since the discovery of vitamin D, but a series of studies have shown that vitamin D has surpassed the boundaries of a common vitamin and is considered by doctors as a hormone. Vitamin D deficiency is related to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, dyslipidemia, decreased resistance to infections, HIV... Few people know that, without vitamin D, the body can only absorb 10 -15% of the amount of calcium and 60% of the amount of phosphorus that we add. Osteocytes only make bone when there is enough vitamin D and minerals present. Yet we rarely pay attention to vitamin D deficiency, especially office workers.
Do office workers need to be screened for musculoskeletal diseases?
Many symptoms of musculoskeletal disease in the office world take place silently or just a short pain and fatigue. Office work is often busy, so few people pay attention to the symptoms, and have the mentality to ignore. It is this subjectivity that has made many cases more severe and makes treatment difficult.
For a long time, we often think that musculoskeletal disease is only common in the elderly, so there is a subjective indifference mentality. In fact, when the signs of pain are noticed, it is necessary to intervene at an early stage to avoid damage that leads to complications and disability. Early intervention in the working age group contributes to improving the quality of life, limiting the loss of working days, improving work productivity, and reducing the burden of medical expenses.
