“You can very quickly do something against your bad attitude,” promises Erik Peper of San Francisco State University. Together with other researchers, he examines how the office people protect your neck and back. Her unusual proposal: about 30 seconds extra crooked sit in front of the screen, write in the journal “Biofeedback”.
Who is aware of the crooked seats, and feel what it means to have a bad posture for the body, the researchers argue. This is much more effective than constant exhortations such as “sit up straight!”
Common Problem: head to the front lines
“If your Position is high and upright, your back muscles light weight the weight of your head and your neck,” says Peper. It is around 5.4 kilograms. When the head is tilted by 45 degrees to the front, will fold the neck to a kind of long lever and the load multiplier. It is not surprising that people with this attitude, stiff neck and shoulder and back would pain.
The researchers tested the effects of a poor body posture in several experiments. During an investigation, first of all, 87 students should be sitting upright and the head to both sides in turn. Then you should tilt your head forward and do the same. First result: 92 per cent were not able to rotate your tilted head as good as before in the upright Position.
In another experiment, 125 students should remain 30 seconds in this pre-bent posture. After that, all was reported by almost of pain in the head, in the neck or in the area of the eyes.
In another Test, the subjects should sit straight and the chin for 30 seconds to easily advance, so that the neck cast wrinkles. 98 per cent reported symptoms such as a stiff neck or a headache and were surprised that they felt.
The Exercises in the study made the participants aware of symptoms that can arise from poor posture, the researchers write. “Feel and Look – self-experience – is much more effective to say as a participants, you should correct your attitude.” Most of the subjects were surprised, what is the impact of bad posture on your well-being.
The following tips can help according to the researchers, to find the optimum Position:
- The head erect in a line with the neck.
- Temporarily deliberately a crooked stance, the negative consequences of awareness.
- Who stretches the head to the screen, you should consider purchasing a pair of glasses or the font bigger.
- Screens in the morning and the Position will not change. The prevent a drop during the day.
- Longer Work better with the Laptop, but an additional screen should be at eye level.
“This is a reasonable study,” says the Secretary General of the German society for Orthopaedics and trauma surgery (DGOU), Bernd Kladny, who was not involved in the study. They show health effects that were from the “phone-neck”. To make these effects conscious, is the first step. “The question is,” Kladny, “how long such an effect lasts.”