15/10/2025
When your body starts whispering, listen early 👂
Last week I had a great reminder of why early ergonomic intervention can make such a difference.
A client found me online and reached out because they were getting neurological symptoms in their right arm - tingling, swelling, and discomfort that they suspected were related to their work setup.
They’d already been through a pretty extensive medical journey: a hospital visit, MRI, ultrasound, and were waiting on nerve conduction studies. Nothing major was showing up, but something clearly wasn’t right.
When I went out to assess their workstation, a few key things jumped out straight away:
The chair was too low, forcing the shoulders to stay elevated all day.
The backrest wasn’t supporting the lower back properly.
The monitors were too close and too low.
All of that combined to create a perfect storm for shoulder and neck tension, and likely irritation around the thoracic outlet area (where nerves and blood vessels travel down the arm).
After adjusting the workstation, I encouraged them to see a physiotherapist to address the symptoms directly, but now they could do so knowing their setup wasn’t working against them.
This is exactly why early ergonomic assessment matters. By the time symptoms become severe, you’re often chasing two problems: the injury and the environment that caused it. Fix the setup early, and you give your body a much better chance to recover.
If your body’s starting to whisper during the workday (tight shoulders, tingling fingers, aching neck) don’t wait until it’s shouting. That’s the perfect time to bring in an ergonomic professional and get ahead of it.