Products to help your aching back

Your back hurts. Heck, everybody's back hurts it seems. I wonder why? Be that as it may, one cure for an aching back is to have good quality chairs, sofas, beds and ergonomically correct computer work areas. The problem is, where do you find them? And, let me tell you, your local Office Max or whatever does not have much in the way of ergonomically correct anything, and they carry a lot of ergonomically incorrect products.

Ultimate Back Store

This is an online-only store that carries office chairs, massage chairs, beds, pillows, recliner chairs, and various ergonomic accessories.

The office chair brands are Herman Miller, Steelcase, Humanscale, ErgoGenesis, Backsaver, Jobri, and Neutral Posture. I've tried several of these brands and found each to be good and interesting.

The "massage chairs" they carry look like recliners but have embedded vibrational units.

They offer several brands of memory foam mattresses and pillows, including TempurPedic. Last year I switched to the TempurPedic memory foam mattress after several years of sleeping on water beds and air beds. While the water and air beds were nice both were, in practice, very hard. That's because as soon as you get on the mattress, your weight pushes the air or water aside to where the mattress surface becomes stretched like a drum. In the end both air and water beds do not have the comfort you might think they would.

I tried several brands of memory foam mattresses, and settled on TempurPedic. It was TempurPedic that invented this kind of product, and a couple years ago their patents ran out allowing competitors to enter the market. Still, I found the TempurPedic mattress to be the best of the ones I tried. The price, though, offers extreme sticker shock.

Relax the Back

RelaxTheBack is both a mortar-and-brick store, and an online merchant. They offer massage chairs, office chairs, accessories, books and videos, and mattresses and pillows. Their web site contains a wealth of information about ergonomics and back care, and I know from experience the personell in the stores know a lot on these subjects.