Precautions To Take If Standing All Day At Work

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Working on your feet significantly contributes to prolonged lower-limb muscle fatigue and may eventually result in long-term back pain and musculoskeletal disorders. Anyone is likely to experience significant fatigue notwithstanding age or gender or whether you feel the strain. Other regular problems associated with prolonged standing are sore feet, varicose veins, bunions, joint aches, plantar fasciitis, instep pain, bursitis, metatarsalgia and stiffness of the neck and shoulders. So, workplace design should fit the variety of workers’ shapes and sizes and provide support for the completion of different tasks. Other than that, you too need to take some few precautions to reduce the stress on your feet, but before looking at the four habits that you should quit, it is first important to understand how to ensure prolonged standing does not affect your health.

Ensuring Prolonged Standing Does Not Affect Your Health

It can be challenging for you and your employer to control your posture, since your job requires you to stand and that is what you signed for. This is especially common in manufacturing plants or jobs that entail field work, where one is expected to operate machines or supervise people and the task can only be performed while standing. Nevertheless, all is not lost. You can prevent any problems associated with standing the entire day by ensuring your feet are as comfortable as possible. The following are some of the items you can use to supplement your posture and comfort.

Shoes and Insoles Specially Designed for Standing

When purchasing work shoes, you should consider arch support and a little cushioning especially if your job requires you to stand up for hours every day. You can get a perfect shoe fit with custom designed orthotic insoles. These insoles can be worn in almost any type of shoes. They provide shock absorption and in most cases they are adjustable to provide the best support to your feet. Therefore, before you resign to the pain and endless suffering, perhaps you should first avoid standing flat all day. In addition, look for shoes with a slight heel, cushion and proper arch support. The reason for arch support and cushioning is to stabilize and align your feet to prevent pain or fatigue.

Special Anti-Fatigue Mats

They are simply designed to reduce fatigue as a result of standing for long on a hard surface. Usually, they reduce foot stress and any other related back and knee problems. The health and performance boost of anti-fatigue mats becomes evident after some time. They are a great choice for industrial and corporate use. Apart from stimulating blood flow, they also boost oxygen levels. This automatically reduces fatigue in your legs when standing for hours. You maybe daunted by many choices when shopping for an anti-fatigue mat. By and large, they vary in size, material, constructions and many other features. The main two features you should narrow down to are firmness and responsiveness. The firmness is what combats fatigue. If the mat is too hard or too soft it can increase the chances of fatigue. On the other hand, responsiveness is the ability of the mat to return to its original form when you move from it. Unresponsive mats are known to cause more fatigue.

Compression Socks or stocking

Socks or stocking that compress reduce swelling and fatigue. They are made of material that gently squeezes the feet to promote good blood flow. Further, they can protect from venous disease and help relief pain. However, for them to be beneficial, they should be worn properly. This means they should be worn smoothly without any folds. Some health conditions such as peripheral neuropathy may limit people from wearing these socks or stocking. All things considered, if you are tired of achy legs or symptoms such as fatigue and cramping, compression socks can help restore blood flow and relief you from all negative effects associated with prolonged standing.

4 Bad Habits You Should Quit

1. Losing Track of Time

It might sound too far-fetched, but there are grave consequences to losing track of time while in a standing all day at work job. The danger comes in when you do this while standing in an unhealthy position. The result is that you will end up developing a bad posture over time.

2. Not Being in Proper Shoes

You might be tempted to occasionally wear your favorite shoes to job which is not entirely a bad thing but doing this repeatedly could be costly especially if your shoes are not great for standing all day. If your favorite shoes do not distribute your body weight evenly to your feet, there are chances you could be doing more harm than good to your feet.

3. Standing in One Position

Whereas our feet can allow us to stand for long hours in a single position, doing that repetitively over a long period of time would result in complications. You need to move around as much as possible to “reset” your muscles every now and then because exerting a lot of pressure on muscles such as the plantar fascia – a tissue that runs on the bottom of your foot and joins your toes to your heel bone – will result in complications such as plantar fasciitis.

4. Standing in Unnecessary Situations

Despite working while standing all day, there are usually situations where standing does not really count, and you could be better off sitting for a moment or two. For instance, when having lunch, it is often easy to forget that you should be sitting, but because of standing all the time, you may unconsciously be standing.

Conclusion

All in all, working in a job that requires you to stand all day should not be an excuse for you to use to justify complications that you may develop in the future. Instead, you can simply start taking proper care of yourself, and more importantly your feet, by taking frequent breaks when you don’t really need to stand up. In addition, you can further limit the pressure on your feet by considering insoles, compression socks and anti-fatigue mats. These will go a long way in helping your feet remain in perfect condition.

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