How do you remember to take breaks from sitting? What measures do you take to avoid or alleviate muscle pain? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Girl, sit up straight! If your mama or granny ever said this to you when you were younger, you were probably annoyed by their words, but it turns out, you should have listened.
You have probably heard that sitting is a disease that is as bad for you as smoking. You’ve probably been working on ways to move more and sit less. But what you may not realize is that it’s not just how often and how long you sit but also how you sit that can impact your health.
“There's not many diagnoses that I see as a physical therapist that are not impacted by posture,” said Dr. Krys Hines of KH Ergo & Wellness in Washington, D.C.
Poor posture could be the cause of or could exacerbate a number of ailments including:
- Headaches
- Brain fog
- Low mood
- Hypertension
- Acid reflux
- Jaw pain
- Shooting arm pain
- Neck pain
- Back pain
- Foot pain
- Sciatica
- Blood clots
Your sitting posture can even affect your lung function as slouching can impact your rib cage over time.
Bad sitting postures can lead to injuries too. For example, sitting with your shoulders rounded may not immediately cause pain but do this long enough, and your shoulders get out of alignment. And the next time you’re traveling, and you try to store your bag in an overhead bin, you could easily injure yourself.
Developing good posture is all about fostering good habits to override the not-so-good ones that we’ve picked up over time. And this is crucial as we age.
“I think menopause is really one of those moments for women where our habits catch up to us,” Hines said. “These habits that I'm talking about, they start when we're really healthy, vibrant and our hormones are functioning appropriately.”
But as we age, we face a change in bone density and lose muscle mass and as a result, “we get a drastic notification that says, ‘your bones aren't going to support this anymore’ and now these habits – it’s glaringly obvious that they’re kind of bad for us,” Hines said.
If you think it’s too late for you to improve your sitting posture, think again. Hines has helped an 83-year-old patient change her sitting habits and reduce pain.
“It doesn't matter how old you are,” Hines said. “Your body is changing anyway, and we can have influence on that change.”
5 Sitting Postures to Avoid
As a physical therapist, Hines never tells her patients to avoid completely any certain sitting posture.
“I never say, never do those things because we are human beings, and we have these bodies that are designed to do all kinds of movements,” she said. “It's one of the most beautiful things about having our body, but it's the habits that get us in trouble.”
In other words, it’s key to check yourself on how often you’re seated in a certain position and for how long.
Here are some sitting positions to try to avoid:
- Stop straining your neck looking down or at screens for a long time. “Wherever your eyes go, your head will follow,” Hines said. Elevate your computer screen and raise your phone to eye level as often as you can remember.1
- Avoid sitting slumped to one side with your spine bent. “Change posture as often as you can think about it,” Hines said. While it’s best, of course, to avoid slumping to one side altogether, if you’re in the habit of sitting this way, at least switch to the other side occasionally.
- Don’t keep your knees, ankles, or arms crossed. “Our blood vessels, our nerves, they kind of run through our body like hoses. And so as soon as we start crossing things and bending stuff, we're kinking our hoses up, and so things aren't flowing as well,” Hines said. In fact, an older study from 2010 found that sitting with your legs crossed may raise your blood pressure.
- Avoid sitting with your feet dangling. Be sure feet are properly supported when you’re seated. You could, for example, add a footrest to your workstation.
- Stop sitting in one position for extended periods without taking a break. If you’re going to sit on one leg, switch to the other leg for a while. An even better idea – stand up. Hines is a big fan of using walking pads to break up periods of sitting. “Different movement patterns start to change where we're putting pressure at in our body, particularly the spine,” she explained.
The Ideal Sitting Posture
So how should you position your body when seated?
“Chest up, girls out – like our mothers told us,” Hines said. “They were on to something.”
It’s in this position that pressure is more evenly distributed throughout our spine, Hines explained.
Ideally, you should sit up straight, looking forward without straining your neck. Keep your feet planted on the floor or a footrest, placing your ankles in front of your knees. Hold your elbows at your sides, creating an L-shape with your arms. Try to keep your knees at the same height or slightly lower than your hips. Be sure to support your back too, either against the back of the chair or with a backrest or cushion.
Movement is Medicine, Motion Is Lotion
Ironically, one of the best ways to improve your sitting posture is to sit less.
Sitting for too long can not only cause problems with your posture, but can also throw off your balance, slow down digestion and make you less flexible.
If possible, get up and move around for at least 10 minutes after an hour of sitting.
“Movement is medicine. Motion is lotion,” Hines said. “The more we can do that, we're going to combat a lot of things, and it doesn't matter your gender, your age or what's going on with your cycle.”
How do you remember to take breaks from sitting? What measures do you take to avoid or alleviate muscle pain? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
