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'Ideal' sitting posture questioned

Woman sitting on an office chair

Current recommendations for sitting posture and chair design are based on limited evidence, says one researcher (Source: iStockphoto)


Researchers at the University of Queensland's Centre of Clinical Research Excellence in Spinal Pain, Injury and Health, have found that the posture often recommended as ideal cannot be achieved without assistance.

More importantly, the 'ideal' curved lower back posture is not only difficult to achieve in a sitting position, it also takes effort to maintain.

Lead researcher Dr Andrew Claus says this is the first time that researchers have accurately measured how our spine and the muscles respond when manipulated in a range of postures.

Challenging dogma

Theories surrounding good and bad postures have been based on measurements of the pressure applied to spinal discs in different positions, says Claus.

He says the belief that slumped postures are worse for your spine than upright ones is making assumptions based on this limited evidence.

"That's the thing that we're starting to redress," says Claus.

"It may be that slumped postures are uncomfortable for the spine and may cause people some problems, but the science to actually test or prove that is really weak."

The research, published in the journal Manual Therapy, used sensors attached to the backs of ten male volunteers to monitor the angle of their backs as they imitated pictures and descriptions of various postures. They were later helped to achieve the positions by a physiotherapist.

Intriguingly, the men could not achieve the much-recommended curved lower back posture unless hands-on guidance was provided, but were able to adopt the flat back and slump positions without any help.

Claus says that it suggests that if such a posture is the ideal, people must be educated properly on how to achieve it and specially designed chairs are unlikely to be enough.

Posturing new theories

The work is part a growing cross-disciplinary field - involving neuroscience, physiotherapy, biomechanics and psychology - to examine how our spines operate. It is expected to have future implications for how we sit and how much sitting is healthy for us.

Separate research by the centre has already shown that sitting is not linked to damaged spinal discs as had been previously thought.

"There's reason for confidence that why we sit all day is partly because it's not as bad as we used to think," says Claus.

"I do think that we're heading towards something really clinically useful once we get to the stage of clinical trials comparing one posture versus another and how people respond to that."

Tags: anatomy, back-pain