Happy New Year!

Did your mom tell you to sit up straight when you were a kid?  Did you hear it at Sunday School?  If you sat up straight then, I hope you haven’t developed it as a habit.  Why, you ask?  Well, because unless you have great core strength, you probably have low back pain.  This has a lot to do with when sitting up “too” straight, the natural curve in your lumbar spine is being removed.

The lumbar curvature of the spine is made up of five vertebrae. These vertebrae are the largest vertebrae in the spine and bear the bulk of the body’s weight.  The lumbar shape is developed as we grow up we learn how to stand, then walk and carry things move around.  In fact, if the shape didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be able to stand or walk on two feet. When we shape our back in a way that removes the natural lordotic curve like, when we bend at the waist to pick something up off the ground or sit with our knees above our hips (think driving your car), the back is weak.  It has much less ability to pick up the weight you think you can.  And of course, when you pick up that weight, you strain your back. The curvature in the lumbar area strengthens the back because the curvature curved spine increases resistance to axial compression.  Basically that’s the ability of the spine of compress (spinalhealth.net).

Another way we hurt our low back is by simply sitting… well, sitting the wrong way.  It is true that sitting is referred to as the “new smoking” (mayoclinic.com).  “The chair is out to kill us,” says James Levine, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine.  Some studies show that for every cigarette smoked, you lose 9 minutes off your life but for every 30 minutes of sitting, you lose 30 minutes off your life.  Inactivity kills more people than smoking. Incredible, huh?  The human body is built for hunting and gathering, not sitting around and ordering take out.

Actually, the most beneficial position is the one between sitting and standing.  Really, it’s the movement.  A study performed by Cornell University evaluated the differences between the health and feeling of wellness of senior citizens who sat for long periods, stood for long periods and those that sat then stood then sat and so forth.  Yep, those that moved between sitting and standing had the best health gain and greatest feeling of wellness.

Back to sitting and low back pain.  I mentioned that if your knees are above your hips when you sit, you will develop (or already have) low back pain. When your knees are above your hips, you close your pelvis which then straightens out your lumbar area of your back. Straightening out the lumbar spine increases the tension of the  the psoas muscle group.  It is important to note that when sitting, you should always be sitting back into a backrest, even with your hips above your knees.  Sitting on an exercise ball or perching in your chair, requires you to do core exercises to hold you upright.  If you, the average person, attempt to do this for more than about 20 minutes, the muscles will fatigue and you will begin to slouch.  The poor posture, which we call the “turtle posture,” puts additional strain on your back, all the way up through your neck.

So, it is important to maintain the natural curvature in the lumbar area of the spine.  Use proper lifting, sit with the hips slightly above the knees, work at your desk while standing, get up and move around… and tell your mom to stop telling you to sit up straight, but don’t slouch either.  Take good care of your back… it’s very strong until it breaks.  Then it is never the same again.