Between the 2nd and 8th of October 2017, it’s Backcare Awareness Week.
Backcare Awareness Statistics
- One quarter of UK secondary school pupils suffer from regular or daily back pain
- School bag burden was associated with a ten-fold higher rate of back pain
- Back pain was also linked to prolonged sitting
Last year, during Backcare Awareness Week, we promoted the importance of choosing and fitting the right backpack for school. This year we want to bring your attention on a different aspect, which is sitting position.
Indeed there is a lot of emphasis at the moment regarding sitting. Most adults, and even children, experience the adverse consequences of sitting for long periods of time.
But do we actually learn how to sit down properly?
If you are one of our guests here at Reflex Spinal Health, you probably know how to sit down properly. But if nobody teaches you, how are you supposed to know how to do it right?
School – the place where we really sit down for the first time
Slouching sitting posture
As shown in recent statistics, back pain can often be linked to prolonged sitting. Now if we think about it children only actually start sitting down when they start school. But do they really know how to sit? Without thinking about it, they just sit down and relax… and they end up slouching.
Now because they start doing it so early in their lives, this position will feels natural for the rest of their life unless we teach them otherwise. Of course we will need to nag, nag and nag them again ALL the time about it but this could make so much of a difference to their future.
Unfortunately for all of us, sitting has become a massive part of our lives. And with the evolution of technology we can do so much without having to move as much.
Good posture comes with sitting up right
For us adults, sitting up right for a long time is quickly tiring because we have, over years, deactivated numbers of important muscles. Remember that your body was never built to stay sitting in the first place. It was designed to move! Every time we sit in a slouching position we deactivate our core muscles. These muscles are the ones supposed to hold our spine in the correct position. Now these muscles are still active and strong in children so we need to make sure they keep using them. And we can easily do so by training and educating them to sit up right.
Here at Reflex we see more and more young adults presenting to us complaining of back and neck problems. The vast
Upright sitting posture
majority of these health issues are due to poor posture. What’s even more worrying is that when we observe the children coming with their parents, most of them already have worse posture than their parents.
So how are they going to be when they are your age?
A few tips for improving posture
- Sitting up tall as often as possible will make a difference! Train for the future and it will become normal to do it.
- Do Not stay sitting for more than 1 hour in a row.
- Be careful about their position when they use smartphones, tablets and computers. These devices are one of the main reasons their posture is worse than the one of adults because they start using them much earlier than we did.
- A correctly fitted school backpack. Carrying so much weight when your spine is still developing isn’t ideal. A good backpack can make a massive difference!
If you want to learn more about backpack fitting, you will find the links for our blog article and YouTube video below.
If your child is complaining about his back, here at Reflex we offer a free 15min Spinal and Backpack check. We will have a look at their spine to determine is there is something we can help with and also, we can teach them how to properly fit the books in their bag to reduce the impact on their spine.
Should you get your children checked over, even if they currently have no pain? Yes! Why? Because children’s bodies are tolerant and they can absorb a lot of stress before it becomes exhibited as pain. However, many functional issues can be resolved during childhood before they lead onto permanent change as an adult. So use Backcare awareness week to get you to take action.
Act today for the sake of tomorrow!
