(HealthDayNews) -- If you work in an office, choosing the right chair could be vital to your health.
A bad chair can lead to muscle and nerve problems and could also affect your circulatory system, according to a report in the Ergonomics journal.
If you sit in one place too long, your muscles don't pump enough blood back to your heart, which will cause your ankles to swell.
You can prevent that by taking frequent breaks and walking around, or by having a foot rest that tilts and lets you move your feet.
Or, says a Norwegian study, you can get a chair with a seat that has a backwards tilt.
As long as the seat leans back, even a little, it will help your blood flow to the heart and keep your ankles from swelling. It doesn't matter if the seat is in a permanent tilt, or if it rocks back and forth.
In one study done at Aker University Hospital in Oslo, when workers were moved from non-tilting chairs to chairs that had a backwards angle, the swelling in their calves and ankles went down in less than 30 minutes.
