Research shows that a good slouch is better for your back

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Your mother's advice to sit up straight in your chair could be a prescription for lower back pain.


Scottish researchers said Monday in Chicago that a look at the spine with new imaging technology reveals how sitting upright with a straight back and thighs parallel to the floor increases the strain on lumbar discs in the lower back.

In fact it's better to lean back a bit in a chair, even if looks like slouching.

"Really the best position is what you get in a La-Z-Boy, although that wouldn't work well for someone using a computer," said Dr. Waseem Amir Bashir, who led a study conducted at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Bashir's findings, which confirm what experts in ergonomics have believed, were presented at the McCormick Place meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. His conclusions come from getting a different view of the spine, using a newly designed magnetic resonance imaging machine that allows for a full view of the back while sitting.

Conventional MRI equipment requires the patient to lie down while images are taken, but this puts the spine in an unstressed position, Bashir said. By making images when people are upright in a chair, he said he was able to capture instabilities and deformations not otherwise seen.

Lower back pain is almost universal, afflicting eight out of 10 Americans at some point, the National Institutes of Health estimates. It is the second most common reason people visit a physician, after colds and the flu, and accounts for an estimated 93 million days of lost work annually, at an estimated cost of $11 billion.

Bashir said that people weren't designed to sit in front of computer screens for hours at a time, but by assuming a more open sitting position, one can minimize the risk of back pain.

"A 135-degree body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best bio-mechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal," Bashir said.

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