6 ms·

Sitting straight 'bad for backs' (2008)

48 points by linux_devil 13y ago

leokun 13y ago
I'm always putting my feet up so I'm more lying than sitting. I'm probably screwed anyway. I'm way overweight so worrying about my seating or standing position is like worrying about which orientation my deck chairs are facing. Standing vs sitting is for the ultra-healthy.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  If you are fat, you have one extra reason to be carefull about your body positioning, any strain created by bad posture increases with weight.
  - leokun 13y ago
    You look at these standing desk types, they're usually skinny and already healthy. Standing for long hours when you're overweight is not a reasonable, nor probably healthy suggestion.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
delackner 13y ago
This is exactly how I have been sitting this week, on a sofa actually, since my chair was getting too uncomfortable, and now my neck feels alarmingly stiff.
- Sharlin 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's the sofa, not the posture.
collyw 13y ago
The problem is people are in the habit of slouching forward, pulling on the muscles at the front. In order to "sit straight", they will likely tense the opposite muscles and pull both front and back muscles at the same time, making the problem worse. Far better is to reeducate yourself how to release the forward pulling muscles. This however is no easy task. Thommas Hanna has a good book about this with very interesting exercises to practice. http://www.amazon.com/Somatics-Reawakening-Control-Movement-Flexibility/dp/0738209570 http://www.amazon.com/Somatics-Reawakening-Control-Movement-... The Alexander Technique is another discipline that teaches you how to re-educate your mind / body control. Watch professional dancers, how they appear to be both straight and relaxed and fluid with their movements. Not stiff and rigid. Also people who practice Yoga are both flexible, yet have better than average posture.
- epaladin 13y ago
  I've always wondered how dancers do it, even though I'm athletic and more flexible than the average person (hypermobile in some joints actually). So that sounds like potentially useful reading. I've been standing at work for a few years, full time since I got an Ergotron Workfit a couple of years ago. It probably would be healthier to go for a balance of sitting and standing, but I think I do tend to be a little too rigid when sitting up. Additionally, I'm not much more than five feet tall and it seems like chairs and desks just aren't designed for people of that sort of stature. Even ones that are otherwise relatively ergonomic. I wish it were easier to find a healthy balance without having to treat oneself as a longitudinal case study.
lucaspiller 13y ago
Is there any type of sitting that isn't bad for backs?
- Sharlin 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riding-like_sitting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riding-like_sitting might be. I personally use a saddle chair at work these days, although there are fewer serious studies done on the subject than I'd like. One of the evident benefits of sitting higher is that it's less effort to stand up, walk around, and also work standing up (if you have an easily adjustable desk).
bitwize 13y ago
The thing you should be doing is not sitting at all, at least not for hours at a time.
- Sharlin 13y ago
  I'm not sure why you were downvoted - I thought it's pretty well-accepted that prolonged sitting is bad for you.
  - bryanlarsen 13y ago
    It's also fairly well accepted that prolonged standing is bad for you.
    - nialo 13y ago
      In case anyone is curious, an explanation of this from Cornell ergonomics researchers: http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - cylinder 13y ago
      Not a big concern, few people who make an effort to use a standing desk are going to end up standing for too long, as they will take breaks (get a stool). It's far more likely the average person will sit too long since the symptoms of excessive sitting only appear later on; the actual time of sitting will feel comfortable and people go 9 hours a day without taking a break.
- memracom 13y ago
  Few people are in a job where they can't walk around the office every hour or so. Go get some green tea from the coffee room, stand at a window in an empty meeting room and stare into the distance thinking about a better way to solve the problem you are working on. Your physical health will be much better, and your work quality will improve too. Banging away in long coding sessions is a good way to create tons of subtle bugs that are hard to find because you did too much coding before running all tests and having a code review.
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
Well, you should not seat for long periods of time. If you do you train your body, the same way that if you look just with one eye you modify the eye you don't use, you modify your spine if you seat or use heels for long periods of time. A good chiropractic professional could read your body in an amazing way. Once you have modified your body by use, being "comfortable" is not the same as "healthy". Smoking is comfortable for a smoker, taking drugs is comfortable for a drug addict and covering one eye is more comfortable than using it once you have used only the other for a long time.
- a-priori 13y ago
  There is no evidence that chiropractic treatments are any more effective for treating back pain than other manual treatments (e.g. massage). And it comes with much higher risks. There is no evidence it does any good for anything elsewhere on the body. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic#Effectiveness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic#Effectiveness
quinndupont 13y ago
I switch back and forth with a chaise lounge in my (luckily, home) office. I'm getting a sit/stand desk, so I'm hoping that the three positions should enable lots of healthful motion (lying/reclining, sitting, standing).
ivank 13y ago
Advice from someone who has been studying spine biomechanics for a while: http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/strategies-to-make-seated-work-less-demanding-on-the-back http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/strategies-to...
anentropic 13y ago
This is such bullshit. The problem with all forms of sitting for long periods is that (without corrective exercise) your spinal muscles waste away. This is where the pain comes from - your spine is not supporting itself any more and the discs become compressed and misaligned and the muscles more easily strained. In this context, sitting in a more relaxed position where "less strain is placed on the spinal disks and associated muscles and tendons" might temporarily avoid some of the pain from strained muscles but is going to make the problem worse in the long run. To get away from this cycle of back pain you need to do one thing: targeted exercise to build up the atrophied muscles. Personally I have found that a more 'active' (i.e. straight upright) sitting position also helps, now that my back is fit enough to cope with this. 'Ergonomic' office chairs like the Herman Miller seem to make the problem worse for me, I believe because they are all designed with the misguided notion that they should support your back for you. It is well known that bones, joints and muscles all need loading and working in order to stay healthy (for example: http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/guide/osteoporosis-exercise http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/guide/osteoporosis-exercis...) If any of you are suffering from back problems and are lucky enough to live in Europe near one of these gyms http://www.kieser-training.com http://www.kieser-training.com I highly recommend them (there are others with similar programme) ...I'm not associated in any way but they have made a massive improvement to my life. The suggestion that 'strain' on 'muscles and tendons' is bad for your back is a dangerous one IMHO ...yes this is why you have pain right now, but the answer is to strengthen the back so the muscles can cope, not to use the muscles even less!
- michaelgrafl 13y ago
  I absolutely agree. I've been working at a desk for about nine months now and I am dying of back pain. Out of all the various back exercises one can find on the Internet, which ones would you recommend for starters?
  - olegious 13y ago
    Try the simple back bridge progressions in the "convict conditioning" book. Dumb name, but a solid approach to exercising without a fun and a great section on back exercises.
mujunto 13y ago
They've only tried 3 positions (<90 deg, 90 deg and 135 deg), and in any case they aren't working with an explanatory theory, so how on earth are they entitled to claim that 135 deg is optimal? However I believe the optimal position is slightly reclined, for two reasons: (1) only then is there enough passive friction between the chair's back and the sitter's back to provide lateral support, (2) our spines evolved while we were walking and running around in Africa, looking mostly not at the horizon but at the ground several metres ahead, checking for snakes, pitfalls, stones, etc). thus our most natural viewing angle is less than 90 deg wrt to the spine
actionscripted 13y ago
I switched to a yoga ball a few years back and my lower back pain went away completely. While sitting in general might not be ideal for long periods of time, at least with a yoga ball my back is forced to support itself, is constantly moving/adjusting and I get the adult equivalent of a bouncy chair at my desk. For me personally it's been a great success, but I have yet to see any conclusive "yoga balls are better than chairs" articles that didn't read like new age dribble.
- collyw 13y ago
  That's a problem I find with a lot of these activities. There is some good stuff, mixed in with a lot of mystical / new age bullshit.
ebiester 13y ago
Has anyone ever figured out how to type at a 135 degree angle? It always seems to put too much pressure on my wrists and shoulders, and I return to slumping.
- vellum 13y ago
  Get one of those adjustable keyboard trays that allow you to control the angle of the keyboard.
kyllo 13y ago
Hip angle is not the issue, or at least, it's a secondary concern. The main concern is spinal flexion. You want to be sitting with a neutral spine, regardless of hip angle. You'll start to get issues like bulging discs and strained muscles if your lumbar spine is in flexion for long periods of time. Problem is, most sedentary people, especially men, do not know and cannot feel the difference between hip flexion and lumbar spinal flexion. When you ask them to touch their toes, they keep their hips mostly extended and flex their spine instead. Very bad. Strength training (particularly powerlifts like weighted squats and deadlifts with proper form, as well as assistance movements like back extensions and good-mornings) can help strengthen the muscles of the lower back, making it much easier to keep your lumbar spine neutral while sitting.
- timr 13y ago
  "Problem is, most sedentary people, especially men, do not know and cannot feel the difference between hip flexion and lumbar spinal flexion. When you ask them to touch their toes, they keep their hips mostly extended and flex their spine instead. Very bad." Agreed. This is something I didn't know I was doing until I started doing Yoga regularly -- after a while, you become very aware of the weakness of your back muscles, the tension of your hamstrings (if you're the typical male), and how the overall tendency is to tip your pelvis backward while seated, which makes your spine bulge to the rear. And when you're standing, you tend to tip your pelvis the other way (due to weak abs), leading to the "beer gut" phenomenon, and impinging the lower back. It's no wonder that people have back trouble as they get older! For men especially, Yoga focuses on stretching the hamstrings, straightening/strengthening the back, and increasing range of motion in the hips and legs. I highly recommend it -- if you keep at it, it really helps reduce pain in the lower back (plus, you get addicted to the stretching).

48 points by linux_devil 13y ago

I'm always putting my feet up so I'm more lying than sitting. I'm probably screwed anyway. I'm way overweight so worrying about my seating or standing position is like worrying about which orientation my deck chairs are facing. Standing vs sitting is for the ultra-healthy.

marcosdumay 13y ago
If you are fat, you have one extra reason to be carefull about your body positioning, any strain created by bad posture increases with weight.
- leokun 13y ago
  You look at these standing desk types, they're usually skinny and already healthy. Standing for long hours when you're overweight is not a reasonable, nor probably healthy suggestion.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

delackner 13y ago

This is exactly how I have been sitting this week, on a sofa actually, since my chair was getting too uncomfortable, and now my neck feels alarmingly stiff.

Sharlin 13y ago
I'm pretty sure it's the sofa, not the posture.

collyw 13y ago

The problem is people are in the habit of slouching forward, pulling on the muscles at the front. In order to "sit straight", they will likely tense the opposite muscles and pull both front and back muscles at the same time, making the problem worse. Far better is to reeducate yourself how to release the forward pulling muscles. This however is no easy task. Thommas Hanna has a good book about this with very interesting exercises to practice. http://www.amazon.com/Somatics-Reawakening-Control-Movement-Flexibility/dp/0738209570 http://www.amazon.com/Somatics-Reawakening-Control-Movement-... The Alexander Technique is another discipline that teaches you how to re-educate your mind / body control. Watch professional dancers, how they appear to be both straight and relaxed and fluid with their movements. Not stiff and rigid. Also people who practice Yoga are both flexible, yet have better than average posture.

epaladin 13y ago
I've always wondered how dancers do it, even though I'm athletic and more flexible than the average person (hypermobile in some joints actually). So that sounds like potentially useful reading. I've been standing at work for a few years, full time since I got an Ergotron Workfit a couple of years ago. It probably would be healthier to go for a balance of sitting and standing, but I think I do tend to be a little too rigid when sitting up. Additionally, I'm not much more than five feet tall and it seems like chairs and desks just aren't designed for people of that sort of stature. Even ones that are otherwise relatively ergonomic. I wish it were easier to find a healthy balance without having to treat oneself as a longitudinal case study.

lucaspiller 13y ago

Is there any type of sitting that isn't bad for backs?

Sharlin 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riding-like_sitting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riding-like_sitting might be. I personally use a saddle chair at work these days, although there are fewer serious studies done on the subject than I'd like. One of the evident benefits of sitting higher is that it's less effort to stand up, walk around, and also work standing up (if you have an easily adjustable desk).

bitwize 13y ago

The thing you should be doing is not sitting at all, at least not for hours at a time.

Sharlin 13y ago
I'm not sure why you were downvoted - I thought it's pretty well-accepted that prolonged sitting is bad for you.
- bryanlarsen 13y ago
  It's also fairly well accepted that prolonged standing is bad for you.
  - nialo 13y ago
    In case anyone is curious, an explanation of this from Cornell ergonomics researchers: http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - cylinder 13y ago
    Not a big concern, few people who make an effort to use a standing desk are going to end up standing for too long, as they will take breaks (get a stool). It's far more likely the average person will sit too long since the symptoms of excessive sitting only appear later on; the actual time of sitting will feel comfortable and people go 9 hours a day without taking a break.
memracom 13y ago
Few people are in a job where they can't walk around the office every hour or so. Go get some green tea from the coffee room, stand at a window in an empty meeting room and stare into the distance thinking about a better way to solve the problem you are working on. Your physical health will be much better, and your work quality will improve too. Banging away in long coding sessions is a good way to create tons of subtle bugs that are hard to find because you did too much coding before running all tests and having a code review.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

Well, you should not seat for long periods of time. If you do you train your body, the same way that if you look just with one eye you modify the eye you don't use, you modify your spine if you seat or use heels for long periods of time. A good chiropractic professional could read your body in an amazing way. Once you have modified your body by use, being "comfortable" is not the same as "healthy". Smoking is comfortable for a smoker, taking drugs is comfortable for a drug addict and covering one eye is more comfortable than using it once you have used only the other for a long time.

a-priori 13y ago
There is no evidence that chiropractic treatments are any more effective for treating back pain than other manual treatments (e.g. massage). And it comes with much higher risks. There is no evidence it does any good for anything elsewhere on the body. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic#Effectiveness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic#Effectiveness

quinndupont 13y ago

I switch back and forth with a chaise lounge in my (luckily, home) office. I'm getting a sit/stand desk, so I'm hoping that the three positions should enable lots of healthful motion (lying/reclining, sitting, standing).

ivank 13y ago

Advice from someone who has been studying spine biomechanics for a while: http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/strategies-to-make-seated-work-less-demanding-on-the-back http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/strategies-to...

anentropic 13y ago

This is such bullshit. The problem with all forms of sitting for long periods is that (without corrective exercise) your spinal muscles waste away. This is where the pain comes from - your spine is not supporting itself any more and the discs become compressed and misaligned and the muscles more easily strained. In this context, sitting in a more relaxed position where "less strain is placed on the spinal disks and associated muscles and tendons" might temporarily avoid some of the pain from strained muscles but is going to make the problem worse in the long run. To get away from this cycle of back pain you need to do one thing: targeted exercise to build up the atrophied muscles. Personally I have found that a more 'active' (i.e. straight upright) sitting position also helps, now that my back is fit enough to cope with this. 'Ergonomic' office chairs like the Herman Miller seem to make the problem worse for me, I believe because they are all designed with the misguided notion that they should support your back for you. It is well known that bones, joints and muscles all need loading and working in order to stay healthy (for example: http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/guide/osteoporosis-exercise http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/guide/osteoporosis-exercis...) If any of you are suffering from back problems and are lucky enough to live in Europe near one of these gyms http://www.kieser-training.com http://www.kieser-training.com I highly recommend them (there are others with similar programme) ...I'm not associated in any way but they have made a massive improvement to my life. The suggestion that 'strain' on 'muscles and tendons' is bad for your back is a dangerous one IMHO ...yes this is why you have pain right now, but the answer is to strengthen the back so the muscles can cope, not to use the muscles even less!

michaelgrafl 13y ago
I absolutely agree. I've been working at a desk for about nine months now and I am dying of back pain. Out of all the various back exercises one can find on the Internet, which ones would you recommend for starters?
- olegious 13y ago
  Try the simple back bridge progressions in the "convict conditioning" book. Dumb name, but a solid approach to exercising without a fun and a great section on back exercises.

mujunto 13y ago

They've only tried 3 positions (<90 deg, 90 deg and 135 deg), and in any case they aren't working with an explanatory theory, so how on earth are they entitled to claim that 135 deg is optimal? However I believe the optimal position is slightly reclined, for two reasons: (1) only then is there enough passive friction between the chair's back and the sitter's back to provide lateral support, (2) our spines evolved while we were walking and running around in Africa, looking mostly not at the horizon but at the ground several metres ahead, checking for snakes, pitfalls, stones, etc). thus our most natural viewing angle is less than 90 deg wrt to the spine

actionscripted 13y ago

I switched to a yoga ball a few years back and my lower back pain went away completely. While sitting in general might not be ideal for long periods of time, at least with a yoga ball my back is forced to support itself, is constantly moving/adjusting and I get the adult equivalent of a bouncy chair at my desk. For me personally it's been a great success, but I have yet to see any conclusive "yoga balls are better than chairs" articles that didn't read like new age dribble.

collyw 13y ago
That's a problem I find with a lot of these activities. There is some good stuff, mixed in with a lot of mystical / new age bullshit.

ebiester 13y ago

Has anyone ever figured out how to type at a 135 degree angle? It always seems to put too much pressure on my wrists and shoulders, and I return to slumping.

vellum 13y ago
Get one of those adjustable keyboard trays that allow you to control the angle of the keyboard.

kyllo 13y ago

Hip angle is not the issue, or at least, it's a secondary concern. The main concern is spinal flexion. You want to be sitting with a neutral spine, regardless of hip angle. You'll start to get issues like bulging discs and strained muscles if your lumbar spine is in flexion for long periods of time. Problem is, most sedentary people, especially men, do not know and cannot feel the difference between hip flexion and lumbar spinal flexion. When you ask them to touch their toes, they keep their hips mostly extended and flex their spine instead. Very bad. Strength training (particularly powerlifts like weighted squats and deadlifts with proper form, as well as assistance movements like back extensions and good-mornings) can help strengthen the muscles of the lower back, making it much easier to keep your lumbar spine neutral while sitting.

timr 13y ago
"Problem is, most sedentary people, especially men, do not know and cannot feel the difference between hip flexion and lumbar spinal flexion. When you ask them to touch their toes, they keep their hips mostly extended and flex their spine instead. Very bad." Agreed. This is something I didn't know I was doing until I started doing Yoga regularly -- after a while, you become very aware of the weakness of your back muscles, the tension of your hamstrings (if you're the typical male), and how the overall tendency is to tip your pelvis backward while seated, which makes your spine bulge to the rear. And when you're standing, you tend to tip your pelvis the other way (due to weak abs), leading to the "beer gut" phenomenon, and impinging the lower back. It's no wonder that people have back trouble as they get older! For men especially, Yoga focuses on stretching the hamstrings, straightening/strengthening the back, and increasing range of motion in the hips and legs. I highly recommend it -- if you keep at it, it really helps reduce pain in the lower back (plus, you get addicted to the stretching).