Headaches or back pains at work? Help is a step or two away, indeed just down the corridor if you are lucky enough to work for the growing number of employers who invite a chiropractor on to the premises.

Chiropractor Terry Dixon, who trained at the McTimoney College in Abingdon, now specialises in on-site practice, picking up at source, as it were, the victims of high technology.

Mr Dixon said: "Good posture at the work station is so important, as is effective stretching and the right type of exercise.

"As we now spend more time sitting at work, hunched over computer screens, I think this will lead to a new epidemic of neck and shoulder problems, replacing the traditional low-back issues that employees developed".

He studied the way chiropractice is developing in other countries and now reckons he has come up with a UK market opportunity. He has been running his call-out service, Occupational Chiropractic Solutions, for 18 months.

He argues that both employee and employer benefit from a chiropractor on the premises: the first because he or she receives the service in a time-efficient and affordable way; the second because, obviously, a healthy worker is likely to be a happy and productive one.

Also, employers can offer the service, at a discount rate, as a benefit to staff, helping to recruit and retain them. Mr Dixon knows a lot about this subject having made a study of Employers' Attitudes to Chiropractice at college.

Mr Dixon, 45, currently provides chiropractic services to Infineum at Milton Hill (a joint venture between Shell and Exxon-Mobil) and the Oxford Radcliffe NHS Trust. Other clients have included Oxford Instruments and Thames Valley Strategic Health Authority.

He became a chiropractor two years ago in a dramatic career change from being development director at a Witney housing association specialising in housing for people with special needs, which entailed him driving 30,000 miles a year.

He said: "I developed severe back pain to the extent that doctors were talking about surgery. Then a chiropractor sorted it out for me. And that is how I became interested in the subject."

Now he works at the Wantage Natural Health Centre with fellow chiropractor Kate Walder, who also graduated from Abingdon.

The two stress the importance of using chiropractic as a way of maintaining health in the workplace, preventing future problems, rather than simply dealing with aches and pains after they have arisen.

They therefore offer advice on posture and on the positions people adopt for driving, and also carry out spine checks.

He said: "Keep your back touching the car seat as if it were stuck to it. And keep a slight bend in the arm when your hands are resting on the steering wheel."

Mr Dixon reckons employers are becoming increasingly interested in the well-being of their workforce. He says companies often have fewer workers than ten years ago, but that they value them more highly.

He added: "From my point of view as a businessman, it makes sense for me to go out to business premises - or to the John Radcliffe or Churchill hospitals, where I treat staff. It keeps the overheads down.

"I have portable equipment, including a couch, so all I need from a client company is the loan of a medium-sized room."

As for those aches and pains we all get from hunching over computers, Mr Dixon says you should take not only a break but also exercise at least every half hour.

Swimming is not always good exercise as it sometimes forces the neck into an awkward position for some people. But Mr Dixon says that walking is excellent. He recommends we all take a walk in our lunch hour.

He added that laptops are bad for posture, particularly when used on laps.

If you use one outside the office, you should use it on a table or desk, while sitting on an upright chair.

When you return to the office, plug it into a separate keyboard and use the laptop as a monitor screen only.

He added that many office workers these days have little time. At Infineum he treats highly paid people with chronic back problems.

They think nothing of hopping on a plane to Brazil at the drop of a hat, but they would have little time to deal with their pain, were it not for Occupational Chiropractic Solutions.

Apparently, there are people who live with pain, perhaps unnecessarily, more or less permanently, imagining that it is simply a part of life and suffered by everyone.

It must be rewarding to cure someone like that and, of course, a whole business can benefit when just one key person's mood changes for the better.

Contact: Terry Dixon, 01235 771123