Are you sitting comfortably: the myth of good posture
Do you slouch over your computer screen? Stand with your hips tilted forward and your stomach sitting out? Do people tell you to “sit up straight or you’ll get backache?” More than 2.5 million people in the UK have back pain each day – costing £22bn annually – so should we all be sitting up a little straighter?
“If you ask most people how to prevent back pain they will say: ‘Sit up straight and mind my back,’ because our parents have instilled this in us,” says Kieran O’ Sullivan, senior lecturer at the University of Limerick and lead physiotherapist at the sports spine centre in Aspetar hospital, Qatar. We are, says O’Sullivan, almost paranoid about posture. Yet the evidence linking posture and backache is surprisingly insubstantial.
Posture is defined by the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic as the position in which you hold your body upright against gravity while standing still or lying down. The word comes from the Latin ponere, which means to put or place. And posture mattered to the Romans – in the reign of Tiberius, when women were finally allowed to abandon their upright posture and recline while eating, commentators warned of moral decline. In fact, stiffening the back only arrived in the 19th century. Before then, aristocratic fashion favoured languid slouching.
So is there really such a thing as good posture? “The general public would say there is,” says O’Sullivan. “It is sitting up straight. At work, this is reinforced by ergonomic programmes to prevent back pain. These usually involve looking at the chair, height of monitor and where the keyboard and mouse are with the idea that if everything is aligned in a certain way – usually straight – you will get less neck and back pain.” The back is naturally curved – from the side it is S-shaped, with the neck slightly concave, the thoracic (chest area) a gentle convex curve before returning to a concave hollow in the low back (lumbar region). A good posture usually refers to gently straightening out some of these curves.
“If you ask most people how to prevent back pain they will say: ‘Sit up straight and mind my back,’ because our parents have instilled this in us,” says Kieran O’ Sullivan, senior lecturer at the University of Limerick and lead physiotherapist at the sports spine centre in Aspetar hospital, Qatar. We are, says O’Sullivan, almost paranoid about posture. Yet the evidence linking posture and backache is surprisingly insubstantial.
Posture is defined by the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic as the position in which you hold your body upright against gravity while standing still or lying down. The word comes from the Latin ponere, which means to put or place. And posture mattered to the Romans – in the reign of Tiberius, when women were finally allowed to abandon their upright posture and recline while eating, commentators warned of moral decline. In fact, stiffening the back only arrived in the 19th century. Before then, aristocratic fashion favoured languid slouching.
So is there really such a thing as good posture? “The general public would say there is,” says O’Sullivan. “It is sitting up straight. At work, this is reinforced by ergonomic programmes to prevent back pain. These usually involve looking at the chair, height of monitor and where the keyboard and mouse are with the idea that if everything is aligned in a certain way – usually straight – you will get less neck and back pain.” The back is naturally curved – from the side it is S-shaped, with the neck slightly concave, the thoracic (chest area) a gentle convex curve before returning to a concave hollow in the low back (lumbar region). A good posture usually refers to gently straightening out some of these curves.
Source: theguardian
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