Spine in Sitting and pain

[emad]

Hallo all :

I am seeing many people trying to keep their spine so erected espicially women like that is here in this photo attached .



Sometimes ; i feel keeping spinal muscles working all that læong time all the day may cause pain throough stressing nerves and Nervous System from the continous position .Do you have veiws regarding this position ? and what do you advise your clients to do ?

cheers
Emad

[Diane]

I tell them to slouch and breathe with their abdominal wall, to lie on their backs and practice arching/curling/breathing as per Hanna somatics.

[oljoha]

I tell them: "Move - it's better with a hundred "incorrect" postures than one "correct" one." Someone once told me - I can't remember who.

[emad]

Yes , Diane I am advising them the same however sometimes I doubt I am not absoultely right .

Yes Oljoho ,movment is fanastic seems keeping in one position longer time puts stress over one same nerve but changing positions gives nerves chances of rest , work ,changable stress and food of blood supply . I can not understand how women whom I see keeping these positions of the spines these long times of ages !!

cheers
Emad

[Diane]

I can not understand how women whom I see keeping these positions of the spines these long times of ages !!

Emad, welcome to the world of culturally supported, conscious inhibition of movement that has become a nonconscious habit of non-movingness.

[Julie]

Dr. Janet Travell (of the Simons-Travell trigger point books) treated JFK for back pain for years. She was the one who told him to sit in a rocking chair because movement was the best thing for him....

A reporter once asked John F. Kennedy, during an interview when he was running for the Presidency, "Do you plan on taking your rocking chair with you to the White House if you are elected President?" Kennedy responded, "Whither I goest - it goes." Over the years, Kennedy purchased 14 identical rocking chairs from a small family-owned furniture maker in North Carolina for use in the Oval Office, on Air Force One, in his suite at New York's Carlisle Hotel, in his White House bedroom, and other locations.

He was a young senator from Massachusetts in 1955 when he went to see Dr. Janet Travell for lingering back problems from a war injury. She prescribed swimming and the healthful use of a rocking chair as therapy to ease his pain. She believed that a rocking chair relieved tension in the lower back by keeping the muscles moving, contracting and relaxing.

[nari]

I can remember in the mid 1980s trying to get a patient in severe chronic spinal pain to buy a rocking chair - he wouldn't because he felt it was a sign of decrepitude and his wife would laught at him. The Travell book was all the rage then - but I still think the continuous movement would have helped him a great deal.
I never told him to sit up straight - because he was totally unable to.

Nari

[oljoha]

Lying down is good for you too. Sort of... I remember a study where they measured IVD pressure during supine - it increases and decreases with respiration basically pumping the disc. Atleast one can go to sleep with a good conscience.

[Erica]

I think people trying to sit up straight all the time - because we are always taught as children to do this- is one reason people who sit have issues with their back. I had a patient recently whose back extensors were so tight. She bought a ball to sit on because she thought that would help her sit up straight. Not the best idea.
Erica

[emad]

Seems there is culture of practice of health care professions . Most Therapists in one arena /decade tend to advise same advice and that one was one of past arena . Every thing is changing ,there is no wrong and correct just up-to-time !!

cheers
Emad

[nari]

People are still being told to sit up straight and lie in bed a certain way without regard to their particular pain problem. I would agree with this only if these instructions improve their pain. I found it didn't most times.

Nari

[Gary]

Encouraging spinal alignment in all positions is sound but should not be done at the expense of producing pain. Human beings were meant to move and any instruction to inhibit this or encourage prolonged static positioning goes against our need to move, and therefore how could it be considered therapeutic.

[Barrett Dorko]

Gary,

What's "sound" about it? The case might be made that it, at times, enhances efficiency. Other times, it doesn't. What it always does, according to the culture, is enhance appearance, and cosmetics are no small thing. After all, they are an excellent ploy for replicating genes.

[Gary]

Barrett,
I think it is sound because proper spinal alignment may lead to decreased mechanical deformation versus other positions that one might use, but by no means should one be encouraged to stay in any position if it is producing pain. In the battle between function vs fashion I will always choose function, gene replication or no gene replication.

[nari]

Gary,

If I slouch (and I am a sloucher) for ten minutes or sit 'properly' for ten minutes, pain may result in either case. Ironically, I used to have LBP off and on when I took notice of ideal posture, up to about 10 years ago. Since then, and years older, I ignored the posture bit and have no LBP at all. As you say, movement is important, no matter what the posture is like. Even a bit of a wiggle around in the chair can fend off pain.

I think the perfect posture hunt is based on unproven mechanical surmises and cosmetic appearance rather than neurological. Also the idea of someone sitting erect in a lecture or cinema looks like they're awake, and so it is desirable.

Someone with CP sits for up to 8-9 hours at a time. Their spine is usually kinked and contorted. Interestingly, they don't usually get spinal pain - but some do, just like the population at large.

Nari

[emad]

I agree with you nari , Cerberal Palsy ,congenital anomalies and kyphosis usually have no pain from position or shape of the spine .

Emad

[Gary]

Nari,
I see what you are saying and it does make sense. When my patients come to see me they are in pain therefore what they are currently doing is not working for them. I tend to use "proper" spinal alignment as a new starting point and then make adjustments for the patient depending on the reduction or progression of symptoms. I have had a lot of success treating patients this way so that is where I see the usefulness of the "ideal" posture. However there are cases where you have to change course and that is where you and I are in agreement. In other words I'll use "ideal posture" as a therapeutic tool rather than a therapeutic law (One must stay in this position).

[nari]

Gary,

That sounds fair enough. I agree that a 'tool' tends to become a 'law' with many PTs, and then they wonder why improvement doesn't happen often.

Nari

[JasonE]

Originally Posted by Gary

Nari,
I see what you are saying and it does make sense. When my patients come to see me they are in pain therefore what they are currently doing is not working for them. I tend to use "proper" spinal alignment as a new starting point and then make adjustments for the patient depending on the reduction or progression of symptoms. I have had a lot of success treating patients this way so that is where I see the usefulness of the "ideal" posture. However there are cases where you have to change course and that is where you and I are in agreement. In other words I'll use "ideal posture" as a therapeutic tool rather than a therapeutic law (One must stay in this position).

Nice, Gary. In teaching yoga, I often used a similar concept. Class members would be striving for the "idealized pose", and I would individually help each person make the appropriate adjustments for their body at that time. Those who adopted the adjustments always made faster progress than those who just kept banging away at the "ideal" version.