Why Sitting Causes Pain And What To Do About It

80-90% of all people that sit the majority of the time have chronic pain in the low back, upper back and neck

It is completely preventable!

 As a Technical or Financial Professional, you sit most of the day. And many of you will be attending the HFTP Annual conference and will be sitting all day in education sessions and meetings.

A couple of years ago we started hearing from ergonomists and the medical community that “sitting is the new smoking,” an alarming claim about the potential risks of spending hours every day in a chair.

 The reality is that sitting creates tremendous stress in the low back, upper back and neck, and specifically causes the spinal discs to slowly bulge back until they touch the nerves, causing pain, and the muscles to get steadily tighter until they are in a painful chronic condition of spasm.

 Not only do these common conditions cause pain, but they result in reduced productivity, reduced quality of life in and out of work, and leave you prone to serious injury from an innocent activity or exertion.

 This takes years to develop, but once it does develop it takes minutes of sitting to flare the pain.

  Even if you are already in an advanced state of painful muscle tension and disc bulging, there are simple things you can do to feel good, be comfortable and as a result, be far more productive. Everything we share in this article you can apply while sitting at the HFTP Annual Conference to feel better immediately, and you can apply it daily when working. In fact, if you apply this daily at the conference, you will likely leave feeling much better than when you arrived.

The 2 areas we will address today are:

·      Sitting properly

·      3 second exercises you can do while sitting to reduce disc and muscle stress

 IMPROPER SITTING

The picture to the right is how most people sit.

No low back support and the low back spinal curve reverses

With no low back support the head and shoulders fall forward of the center of gravity.

The muscles in the low back, upper back and neck are CONSTANTLY contracting to hold this posture. And the muscle tension builds up and compounds hourly, daily, weekly, yearly, until the person has painful constant tight muscles.

They might feel fine walking about, and within minutes of sitting like this, the pain, fatigue and ache sets in.

The Discs are instantly impacted. This posture reverses the curves in the entire spine, and over time, the discs begin to bulge back until they are touching the nerves. That could take months or years to occur, but with this posture it will eventually happen.

This could be a local pain or it could travel down the arms or the legs.

PROPER SITTING

The only difference between proper sitting and the improper sitting above is the low back support. When there is “properly placed” low back support, not only is the natural healthy curve of the low back maintained, but the head and shoulders automatically relax over the center of gravity. Automatically the neck, upper back and low back healthy curves are maintained, the muscles are relaxed. The discs stay in the healthy position and do not bulge, and the person feels good, healthy, productive.

There is a very specific procedure to position the low back support, and it can be different from person to person, and can even be different in the same person from day to day.

1.     Place your Buttocks to the back of the chair

2.     Arch your back (stick the belly out) and reach behind and feel where the deepest point of your low back curve is

3.     Place the pillow in the deepest part of the curve.

What can you use as a pillow to place in your low back

• ·       A commercial low back pillow
• ·       A rolled sweater or at the conference bring a small bath towel from your hotl room and roll it into a tub

·       If your office chair or car has a built inpillow you can use that, but it only helps if it is in the correct position as described in the 3 points above. It will cause pain f it is too high or low. In that case, use one of the pillow as described above, properly placed.

In addition, your feet must be flat on the floor, with your knees alightly lower than your hips.

If you have short legs which don’t reach the ground relaxed, use a step stool, briefcase etc to bring the ground up to your feet.

3 SECOND EXERCISES TO REDUCE SITTING STRESS

Perfect posture as described above minimizes sitting stress, but there still is a bit of stress.

The exercises below, performed 1-2 times per hour will eliminate the stress and energize you

Pull each knee into your chest, hold for 3 breaths

Place hands or thumbs in your low back

Push the low back forward and belly out. Hold for 3 slow breaths

This is actually a self mobilization of the disc, pushing in away from th nerve and where it belongs

Sit forward.

Clasp hands behind back and straighten arms

Raise arms in the back and chest in the front.

Hold for 3 slow breaths

Sitting is stressful and causes pain and injury. the information above are the most important points to feel and function better

Take less stress in by sitting properly

Get rid of some of the built-up stress by performing the 3 breath self-treatment movements 1-2 times per hour

Dr. Barry Carlin will be presenting a system that has a 100% success for 15 years reducing injury costs 50-90% in hospitality at the HFTP Annual Conference. Come by and learn a predictable system to increase profits at 8am Thursday Morning