How to Feel Good While Glued to Your Computer 15/7

1st Sep 2025
8 min read
Tags:
opinion

The Cave Dweller's Guide to Health and Wellbeing

I admit it. It's a bit of a trope. But it's one that I fall into quite neatly.

There are days where I would not spend any significant time away from my keyboard if it were not for other obligations. You might have similar experiences. My poor body wasn't built for a world where the most interesting things are all on the computer some days.

We've all done it: You work at a desk for 8 hours, punching buttons for The Man, and what is your reward for being a good little worker? Another 4-8 hours of staring at the computer screen. But this time it's your computer screen, and you're doing what you want to do, so it's fun.

But inevitably you get over 0x1a years old, and your neck, back, and shoulders start to rebel. And to boot, you can't seem to get your body to sleep the amount it actually needs, even if you really want to.

I've learned some things about my body this year that I want to share with you, and maybe it will help you too.

Curing the "Tech Neck"

Oi vey, the tech neck! Who needs it?

A year ago, I was in almost constant pain when sitting at a desk. Didn't matter if it was my desk at home or at work. It just killed me in my shoulders, neck, and head, sometimes giving me headaches and migraines. Yuck.

I tried everything: massages, hot showers, yoga, a more ergonomic chair, actually utilizing my standing desk, you name it. I even tried out a split keyboard layout! (It was a bit comfier, but ultimately did not provide relief for more than a day and a half of use. Thank goodness I don't have to get rid of the mechanical keyboards I'd already invested in!) Nothing was working.

And then I discovered painscience.com. This isn't sponsored (I'm not even cool enough for that, calm down 😉), it just taught me a couple key factors in the kind of pain that was causing my Tech Neck. The site is run by one Paul Ingraham, who, along with his 10 years of experience in massage therapy, extensively researches and the topics he writes about and cites his sources! A rare gem in this post-truth web hellscape.

The first important lesson is that muscles relax better through flexion and extension than by massage alone. Simply working a muscle "open" and "closed" a few times really helps it relax. These mobilizations are my first line of defense when my neck or shoulders start to feel tight.

Then there is the preventative measures. Make sure you're taking breaks throughout the day. Any movement is better than no movement. A study published last year found that any interruption in sitting for a work day showed improvement in blood sugar measurements in overweight and obese men. Anything is better than pure, uninterrupted sitting.

Another preventative measure is STRENGTHENING THE AREA THAT HURTS. I don't have much to say on that because I'm still working on it myself.

I will say that after a while of these stretches and other measures working for me, they ceased to give me adequate relief. The solution has been to buy a fairly comfortable chair with a head rest! I realized the only places I have in my life to sit that have any head support are in the car and when I lie down in bed. That's probably not good. No wonder my neck muscles were getting all tight and tired.

All I can say is the odds are overwhelming that your body is different from mine: you have different aches, different pains, carry yourself differently, sit differently, exercise differently. I only hope that if you suffer from neck, shoulder, or back pain this article might give you some additional solutions to explore.

Getting Enough Sleep

Since I was at least about nine years old I have wished for the power to fall asleep with complete ease and know that I will wake up at a designated time. Sleep has never been easy for me. I combatted it in my youth by "just not worrying" about when I was going to wake up and reading until I passed out, but this was more of a bandaid on gaping wound.

I've often had trouble staying asleep in the mornings. My entire adult life I've described myself as an "early riser, but not by choice." The obvious solution to this is to go to bed earlier so I can get my necessary 7-8 hours of sleep every night, right? Wrong-o, buddy. It is often impossible for me to get to sleep before 10:30 or so. Not so great if my body wakes me up somewhere between 4 and 6 a.m.

But here's the trick I discovered! Sunlight!

Everyone who has spent any amount of time researching sleep hygiene knows you shouldn't have lights on in your sleeping environment. I've been systematically hunting and destroying all sources of light in my bedroom for years (The best way to block them out is with black electrical tape, by the way). I've got blackout curtains in all bedrooms of my house as well. But even if I follow sleep hygiene to a tee and don't look at screens at all after dinner, there are still nights where I just can't stay asleep long enough.

Why? Turns out I wasn't getting enough sunlight!

Who would have thought that this incredibly sophisticated circadian rhythm your body maintains, the one that has evolved over more than 200,000 years to make us diurnal, needs sunlight as an input?

I should note here that I don't mean spending hours and hours baking in the scorching heat. I mean taking off sunglasses.

I often wear sunglasses because I'd long identified bright sunlight as a trigger for migraines for me. But what I never figured on is those sunglasses, combined with my Indoor Cat lifestyle, mean that my eyeballs just don't get enough unfiltered sunlight. When I get enough unfiltered sunlight in a day, sleeping comes easier, and sleeping until I'm actually well-rested becomes not only doable, but a regular occurrance! This has been holding true since about mid-August 2025.

So take your sunglasses off sometimes.

Nutrition

These are not new discoveries for me, but I'll mention them here for the sake of comprehensiveness.

Get enough protein and fruits and veggies in you. You need fiber in your diet or your digestive system will feel like crap (ha).

When you snack (if you snack), go for high-satiety foods. Fats, proteins, and foods with fiber burn slower in your body, leaving you feeling full for longer. These high-satiety foods also flatten out blood sugar spikes, which eases the burden on your pancreas and helps you not get diabetes. You don't want diabetes.

If you can't stand raw veggies, try cooking them. Saute veggetables in a frying pan at medium low heat (about a 4/10 or 5/10 if your stove is like mine) with some olive oil and salt and pepper. Those three ingredients can make a lot of things palatable.

If you don't like apples, don't buy apples. If you only like blueberries, get those instead. Frozen is better than none. When you're making harder health changes like dietary adjustments, you have to trick your brain, which is wired to want high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt foods (especially if you're constantly stressed or in survival mode), into doing things that are actually good for you in this 21st-century life we live, where ultraprocessed carbs far outnumber the potential predators we have to be ready to outrun.

Conclusion