Chiropractors are accustomed to making recommendations for their patient’s traditional workspaces, but they also understand that in times of unexpected change you must find ways to adapt quickly. Many of the workers forced to go remote are still working on laptops, according to the experts. Here are their top three suggestions for making a home workstation work with your laptop:

Pick a spot. If you do not have a regular desk at home, working at a kitchen table is generally much better than sitting on a couch with your laptop on your lap.

More work-at-home suggestions to reduce stress on the body:

Use a keyboard tray and pull it out over your lap. If you use a laptop, use it as a screen only, placing it at eye level with a stand or a stack of books. Get a remote keyboard to use with your laptop computer. To avoid neck pain, keep your screen at eye level whether you use a laptop or monitor. Put books underneath your monitor to raise it or use a stand, if necessary.

With so many people still working from home these days to maintain social distancing from their colleagues, many are developing musculoskeletal pain. Improving posture and ergonomics is a proactive way to take care of your body while working remotely.

To reduce stress on the body, follow these work-at-home suggestions:

As we look forward to having our routines return to near-normal, a good attitude is still essential for tackling the ongoing challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and the changes it has created in our day-to-day lives. Taking care of your health by addressing pain and then finding time for physical activity, rest, time in nature, and safe socializing can help lessen stress and anxiety.

Chiropractic is a health care profession that focuses on disorders of the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system, and the effects of these disorders on general health. Chiropractic services are used most often to treat neuromusculoskeletal complaints, including but not limited to back pain, neck pain, pain in the joints of the arms or legs, and headaches.

One of the most common and well known therapeutic procedures performed by doctors of chiropractic is spinal manipulation (sometimes referred to as a “chiropractic adjustment”). The purpose of spinal manipulation is to restore joint mobility by manually applying a controlled force into joints that have become hypomobile—or restricted in their movement—as a result of a tissue injury.

The purpose of chiropractic treatment is to help the body’s potential to heal itself. It is based on the scientific principle that restricted spinal movement leads to pain and reduced function and performance. Chiropractic care is non-invasive, non-surgical and drug-free. The type of chiropractic therapy provided depends on the cause of the patient’s sciatica. A sciatica treatment plan may include several different treatments such as ice/cold therapies, ultrasound, TENS, and spinal adjustments (sometimes called spinal manipulation).

A drug increasingly being prescribed for treating sciatica has been revealed to be no better than placebo, in research recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers also found that people taking the drug pregabalin reported nearly twice as many adverse effects as those receiving the placebo reported.

The American College of Physicians (ACP) recommends that doctors avoid prescribing drugs, especially narcotics, for patients with acute or subacute low back pain. Patients should be treated first with non-pharmaceutical therapies, such as superficial heat, massage, acupuncture, or spinal manipulation.

Patients with improper back position have movement control impairment. They often have difficulties in controlling the position of their back when sitting down, standing or doing back bending. Impaired movement control is often caused by an earlier episode of back pain and may result in chronic lower back pain. The situation is problematic because patients don’t realize that their incorrect back position is provoking pain.