5 tips to Prevent Pain While Driving

We are coming up on spring break and soon enough summer travel, so we want to make sure that your road trips are pain-free. Continue reading for five tips on how to prevent pain when you are going on a road trip.

Our first tip is to make sure that your seat is aligned properly, so that it is most like an armchair. So when you are sitting in an armchair, Your hips and your knees should be at the same height. Your hip should be 90 degrees from your back, and your knee should be 90 degrees from your hip, and everything is in good alignment with your arms out to the side on the armrests.

For your seat alignment in your car, you can use your seat adjusters on the side, which is usually two or three buttons. Use those buttons to align your seat so that you are sitting straight up. We want to make sure you are not tipped forward too much and we also do not want you reclined too much. We want to make sure that everything is aligned as much as we can. Just like when you are sitting in an armchair, you want your legs straight ahead. You do not want to allow your hips to get lazy and go out to the sides. You also want to be mindful of your posture when your hands are on the wheel, making sure that they are even across the wheel. You do not want to be leaning heavily on one armrest or the other.

For our second tip, we are going to talk about the lumbar support. Some cars have built- in lumbar support in the seat. Using an adjuster where you can move the lumbar support back and forth or up and down is ideal. If you are going to use your lumbar support, you want to make sure it is in the right position, which would be right in the small area of your lower back. If the lumbar support is too low, it could cause more lower back pain, and if it is too high, it is going to push you forward and that is going to cause more upper back pain and tension, neck pain, or headaches.

Our third tip is to make sure you are taking frequent breaks. If you happen to be going on a six-hour road trip, we want to make sure that you are stopping about three times during your travels, taking frequent breaks. The breaks do not have to be long, just long enough that you can walk around your car a couple times and stretch out.

For our fourth tip, we want to talk more about the seat adjusters. Again, we want to start in that good armchair position. But if you are in the car for several hours, we would like you to use those seat adjusters a couple of times and move your seat up or back just a half an inch or so. Move your recline up or back just a little bit just to give your muscles and your joints a different angle.

For our last tip, we want to make sure that your headrest is at the right height. If you are a taller person, you want to adjust that headrest up so that the middle of the back of your head is reaching the middle of the headrest.

If you are shorter, you can move it down a little bit. However, the most important thing for your headrest height is to make sure that your head isn't going to go up and over the headrest if you happen to be in an accident. So if you happen to get rear-ended or you happen to hit somebody in front of you and your head comes back and it goes up and over the headrest, that is one of the most dangerous things that can happen when being involved in a car accident.

If you do unfortunately get into an accident, we are here at Kauffman Chiropractic to help you recover from pain associated with your accident. If you have back pain or neck pain from driving in a car too long in a bad position, don’t fret, your Loveland, OH chiropractor is here to help. Just check out our pages on back pain and neck pain.