Good posture is bad.

Good posture is bad.

For generations, schoolteachers and moms have told young people to stop slouching and to sit upright. That advice, it turns out, was wrong.

Using advanced scanning equipment, doctors have concluded that the best way to avoid back pain is not to sit bolt upright but to perfect a more laid-back posture, a sprawl that is halfway between upright and horizontal.

“When they looked at all test results, the researchers said the 135-degree position was the best for backs, and say this is how people should sit.”

Researchers at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen used positional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) capable of taking snapshots of 22 volunteers’ spines as they sat upright, slouched and hunched forward or laid back at an angle of 135 degrees.

Desk slouchers, the images showed, are at high risk of causing wear and tear to spinal discs in their lower spine. But those sitting upright position caused the most damage. With the back vertical strain on the spine forced spinal disc material and muscles to shift out of line.

“We were not created to sit down for long hours, but somehow modern life requires it,” said Waseem Bashir, a doctor on the study from the University of Alberta, Canada.

The safest posture, which put least strain on spinal discs and surrounding muscles and tendons, was the substantially more relaxed 135 degree backward sprawl, the researchers found.

“This may be all that is needed to prevent back pain, rather than trying to cure pain that has occurred over the long term due to bad posture.”

To avoid a lifetime “pain, deformity, and chronic illness,” he recommends sitting in a chair that provides full support to the spine when you lean slightly backward, which mimics the supine position.

Source