CHICAGO - When your high school teacher scolded you for slouching, he or she was giving you good advice. But when the same teacher admonished you to sit up straight in your chair, you were getting painfully bad information.
The best way to sit to prevent back pain and injury is to lean backward from the waist and sit on a wedge that forces your hips higher than your knees, according to a presentation on Monday at the 2006 RSNA meeting.
Using an Upright MRI scanner by Fonar of Melville, NY, to conduct a series of studies, researchers in the U.K. and Canada explained that they found sitting at a 135˚ angle -- sort of a leaning back, relaxed posture -- comes close to having the least strain on back disks.
"We found that this angle is closest to being supine -- lying down -- than any other position," said Waseem Amir Bashir, MCChB, a clinical fellow in musculoskeletal radiology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
"The worst way to sit is to slouch forward with your hands or elbows on your hips or the ground -- the way most young people play video games," Bashir said in a press briefing. "Sitting up straight is also bad. It is worse that standing. A 135˚ body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best biomechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90˚ posture, which most people consider normal."
Bashir noted that when most people feel back pain or their backs feel stiff, they tend to stretch backward. "The body knows what it needs for relief," he suggested.
Dr. Francis Smith, a professor of radiology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and a co-author of the study, said that presently it is difficult to find chairs designed for proper sitting. "Perhaps this work will spur someone to make such seats," he said.
By Edward Susman
AuntMinnie.com contributing writer
November 27, 2006
Related Reading
Ergonomics -- It's all about you, November 23, 2005
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