"I was doing a lot of work on my laptop for a few weeks before the pain started," he says. "I was referred for physiotherapy after seeing an orthopaedic specialist."
Dr Cheong conducted a thorough assessment of Mr Teo's neck and shoulder and performed spinal manipulation on his upper back, which helped reduce the pain.
Mr Teo says: "He said it was to give me temporary relief so that I could start prescribed exercises at home to alleviate the pain."
These included exercises to promote movement and blood circulation as well as stretches to help loosen taut muscles.
"Dr Cheong taught me how to set up my laptop properly at home and said there is no such thing as 'perfect posture', and to take frequent breaks while working," he adds.
Inactivity, especially in confined spaces like the home, is a cause for concern, says Dr Gan Wee Hoe, head and senior consultant of the department of occupational and environmental medicine at SGH.
"Working from home reduces an individual's overall physical activity level if there is little motivation to incorporate a regular exercise routine," says Dr Gan.
"With no requirement for commuting and workplace activities, working from home has the propensity to encourage sedentary behaviour, which places an individual at a higher risk for ischaemic heart disease, diabetes mellitus and stroke."
Although there are no statistics from SGH to show that more people are seeking help for body aches and pains, Dr Gan says anecdotally, those seeking treatment for neck and back aches and pains tend to be from the middle to older age groups.
"Younger individuals, due to their functional reserves, have a higher threshold before symptoms arise," he adds. "But some studies show that extended use of mobile devices may lead to 'text neck' in young adults."
"Text neck" is one of a range of repetitive stress injuries (RSI) that cause pain resulting from repeating a certain activity for long periods.
"Excessive 'keyboarding' (long periods at the keyboard) is well known to cause RSI of the wrists," says Dr Gan. "The slope of a computer keyboard may have a compounding effect on the risk of RSI over prolonged use.
"A larger slope angle of the keyboard forces an individual to extend his wrists more when typing. If this non-neutral posture is sustained over long periods of time, it not only causes aches over the forearm muscles, but may also increase the pressure on the median nerve in the carpal tunnel, predisposing the individual to the development of carpal tunnel syndrome."
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the result of the compression of the median nerve as it travels through the carpal tunnel at the wrist, which can cause numbness, tingling or weakness in the hand.