The $15 monitor riser that fixed my neck pain in one week

I was getting these terrible headaches by 2 PM every day for months. Tried adjusting my chair, my monitor angle, even bought a fancy $200 ergonomic chair. Nothing worked. Then a friend who works in physical therapy came over and watched me type for like 2 minutes. He pointed out my monitor was about 4 inches too low. I picked up a simple wooden riser off Amazon for $15 and set it up the next morning. Within 5 days the headaches were gone completely. It's just a block of wood, nothing special, but raising my eye line to the top third of the screen made all the difference. Has anyone else had a weird cheap fix that beat expensive gear?

3 comments

3 Comments

smith.lee3d agoTop Commenter

Wait, was it just the height or did you angle the screen too? I gotta know the exact setup because I keep tilting mine back and forth like an idiot lol.

ray6133d ago

Haha the tilting back and forth thing is real (I did that dance for weeks). One thing nobody talks about is the distance too - like, even if you nail the height, having the screen too far forward or back can wreck your neck just as bad. I have a deep desk so I actually had to push my monitor way closer, like arm's length, and that combined with the riser did the trick. The angle thing is tricky though - I keep mine perfectly flat, not tilted at all, because tilting it back made me lean my head forward to see the top of the screen. Took me buying a cheap tape measure to figure out my exact distance though, which felt stupid at the time lol.

finleym372d ago

Man, I feel this so much. I went through pretty much the same thing with my setup last year. I ended up measuring from my eyes to the screen with a string, which felt ridiculous but actually helped me realize my monitor was like 8 inches too far back. The flat angle thing is interesting too, I never thought about tilting causing that head lean but now that you mention it, that's exactly what I was doing without noticing.