By Christina Hernandez Sherwood‍‍

Jennifer DeMoss threw her back out for the first time at age 19. Feeling “paralyzed” with pain, DeMoss rolled off her bed and crawled until she could lift herself up with her arms. “Crippling isn’t even the word for it,” she said. “Your body just stops you from moving.”

Not long after, when DeMoss worked at an auto parts store, she tried to push through the pain by using a cart to transport heavy items. “I was hobbling, taking teeny, tiny little steps. I could barely bend over, and I’m trying to lift these auto parts,” she said. “I’m trying so hard to stay employed.”

Throughout two decades of enduring at least yearly episodes that caused weeks of debilitating pain, DeMoss sought answers from general practitioners and physical therapists. She visited chiropractors for years when she lived without health insurance because they charged a lower price. Providers told DeMoss she was just stressed or prescribed muscle relaxers that left her unable to work. “If you don’t have a lot of benefits or time,” she said, “you don’t have very good options for how to take care of yourself.”

Finally, after magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed there was no injury to her body, DeMoss was diagnosed with sacroiliac (SI) joint dysfunction. As her doctor explained it, her back was injury-free, but her brain caused painful “protective spasms” anyway.

Now, when DeMoss experiences back spasms, she uses mindfulness and short walks to work through the pain. “I tell my body, ‘You’re not injured. You’re OK,’” she said. “‘I’ll give you a couple of days to freak out. After that, we’re going to start moving normally.’”‍

The Most Common Workplace Injury‍

DeMoss is among the one in two American adults with a musculoskeletal condition — injuries or disorders of the muscles, nerves, tenders, joints, cartilage, and spinal discs. Musculoskeletal disorders, such as back strain, carpal tunnel, and pinched nerve, are sometimes called “ergonomic injuries.” They can happen when repetitive tasks or overexertion cause pain and injury, and can present as undiagnosed aches and pains or more severe, diagnosed conditions.

Commonly occurring as a result of workplace injuries, musculoskeletal disorders cost employers billions of dollars annually due to factors including lost productivity, absenteeism, and disability. In 2018, some 272,000 days away from work in the U.S. private sector were attributable to musculoskeletal disorders, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Discomfort is a distraction,” said Kristine Kohn, an ergonomist for a major utility company. “It pulls your attention away. That can be really challenging, because workers want to give their best. They want to do a good job.”

How To Take Action

How can workplaces help their employees avoid ergonomic injury and support those with musculoskeletal conditions? First, Kohn said, employers should think about fitting the workplace to the worker — and not the other way around. “Often we walk into a place that doesn’t fit us, and our body has to compensate in order to do our job,” she said. “But if we can adjust the work setting to fit us, our bodies will have less strain.”‍

In an office setting, for instance, this means ensuring an employee’s desk and chair are a good fit for them. This doesn’t necessarily require a big budget, Kohn said. She recalled working with a nonprofit whose employees were using donated office chairs. Kohn lined up the three employees, then redistributed the chairs to give everyone a better fit. “That group saw a decrease in back and neck discomfort just by getting people in the right chair,” she said.

If hiring an ergonomics consultant isn’t in your budget, Kohn recommended tapping into free educational resources provided by groups like the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the MSD Solutions Lab of the National Safety Council. 

A snapshot of how to get started based on those resources:

• Create a culture that values worker health and safety: Rather than focusing on metrics, like “number of days since a workplace injury” (which can have the effect of discouraging employees from reporting and breaking the streak), reward your workers for identifying workplace hazards or proposing innovative solutions.
• Mobilize leadership at all levels inside the organization: Training to identify risks, creating incentives for documenting hazards, and investing in resources are all key to achieving buy-in from company leadership. 
• Engage workers to recognize MSD risks and identify possible solutions: Workers who are involved in identifying solutions are more satisfied with and motivated to participate in changes to workplace operations.

Another simple improvement: Give workers breaks and other opportunities for movement. “For office-based workers, the lack of movement, the static posture, is very real,” Kohn said. “We get focused on the monitor or in a meeting and don’t think about the fact that we’re not moving all day. Then we wonder why we’re stiff or sore. Our bodies are made to move.”

It’s something DeMoss understands well. In part because of the “mental burden” of explaining her back problems to employers, DeMoss decided to become a self-employed freelance writer in 2022. She now sets her own schedule and takes plenty of breaks for movement. “When I was in an office, it was weird for me to get up,” she said. “I’m much more productive now as a freelancer because I have the freedom of movement.”

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‍This article is the third installment in the Health Action Alliance’s six-part series on the Great Disrupters — a group of costly and “hidden” disorders and diseases that are both chronic and chronically under-diagnosed. Each week, we delve into one of these Great Disrupters, sharing personal stories and expert interviews.

‍Keep up with the full series here.