What Andrew said. It may not hurt the same old place, but it HURTS after the first minute.
And FWIW: while I have seen these chairs -around- offices, I have NEVER seen one actually in use.
Nor those balls. As excercise, they may make sense. As a work platform, they can only be a short break, and distraction.
> Anyone have back problems and found a sitting solution?
Working on it. For the last 20+ years. Made some progress.
For strain/injury-related disc pain:
Try EVERY chair you can borrow or steal. Adjust the height, tilt, stiffness, add cushions. Keep the best two, and rotate them as needed. If the borrowee complains, use pity and bribery, whatever it takes to keep a chair which suits you.
Sometimes chair-swaps work both ways. Lois finally decided her chair hurt. She went to Office Despot, sat every chair, came back with one she loved. I took her old one, it likes me, has become my 2nd-best and is in my regular rotation.
For -my- back, those "lumbar supports" are a Real Bad Idea. Apparently many people curve that way; I don't. I had to rip the "adjustable lumbar" contraption out of my car seat.
Move your monitor! It is surely in the wrong place. If I ever find the right place, I'll let you know.
Don't, at first, fret about seeing your monitor clearly. Get your body happy. Then, wearing your normal (distance, driving) glasses, measure eye-screen distance "D" in inches. Compute 40/D, round down to nearest 0.25, this is your eyeglass "Add" for this specific situation.
Example: I sit up to 28 inches from screen. 40/28= 1.43, round-down to 1.25. I have 1.25 "Add" on my distance prescription for PC work.
Short-term, get $15 reading-glasses with this number and wear them over your regular specs. This will confirm the calculation. Long-term, you want this correction in the MAIN part of cheap specs used only at the PC. You will have to YELL at your eye doc to get this on an Rx form. They assume "Add" is only for books or sewing, tasks normally done closer than a comfy PC monitor. You may indeed want a 2.0 or 3.0 Add in the bottom of PC bifocals, to read keyboard or pain-pill bottles, but your monitor-distance correction should be the -main- part of the lens.
Although the immediate pain is disc on nerve, discs generally give much less trouble when back muscles are well toned.
WALK. WALK. WALK. WALK. Your/my/our problem is that we are made to WALK. Walk here for fruits and berries, walk there for a drink, walk to the other side of the valley to snare rabbits. You should only sit for an hour before sleep. Modern life does not force walking, often frowns upon it. Fug 'em. Walk, walk, walk.
For -my- back, I have found a trivial exercise which makes a huge difference. I tighten my "belt muscles", as if I were inhaling to get myself into a corset. The first time I tried this, while in pain, I nearly passed-out from the pain, but in a good way. I'd clearly found a critical muscle mass which was not getting any use. Going at it easy, a few times a day, a little more each time, really makes a difference in a week.
One thing occurs to me. I was just on vacation, now back in office. I can drive 2 to 6 hours a day, more in the right car, much less in some cars, much-much less in an office. Most car seats are better than most office chairs. But also the lay-back position helps my back. I am now wondering about mocking-up a genuine car seat, feet at floorboard height, monitor at windshield height, keyboard at steering height. I suppose it is different because you hang on the steering, but must hover over the keyboard. Perhaps a split keyboard on side armrests. Of course getting in and out of this affair is as bad as getting in/out a modern sedan. Perhaps it should all be raised like a 1942 Plymouth.
I like 1968 VW and 1979 Tbird seats (in very different ways). If you know a car-seat which works for you, you can probably score one from a wreck for less than the cost of a mid-line office chair. Much further work is needed to adapt it for the office, and yes it is tiresome to drill and saw while your back hurts. But it may be worth the effort.
