Does Good Posture Prevent Back Pain? The Truth About Sitting & Movement

Transcript

Jeffrey Jones 

So, for this week’s Q&A with Dr. J, the question is, will sitting with good posture keep my back from hurting? As with most answers to questions like this, it’s a little yes and a little no. We hear all the time, stop slouching, sit up straight, sitting is the new smoking, on and on and on. Really, it comes down to whether or not you can change your position throughout the day. It really doesn’t matter if you’re sitting all day long, if you’re sitting with the best posture anybody’s ever seen, or slouching, both of those scenarios are going to lead you to having low back pain. So it comes down to less about the posture and more about your ability to change your position all day long. 
 
Even slouching for short periods of time is not likely to cause your back to hurt as long as you can regularly change that position.
That’s why sit-to-stand desks are such a great recommendation and a useful tool for people, not because standing is any better than sitting, but because it allows you the ability to be able to go from sitting to just standing and bounce back and forth between those two all day long. 
It keeps you from being in that one position, be it sitting or standing, all day, and typically that’s what leads more to low back pain. Now, that being said, if you are having low back pain or if you find that sitting for long periods of time causes your low back to hurt, yes, sitting with better posture, fixing your posture, or even using something like a lumbar roll or a wedge can be a useful tool while you work to get yourself out of that painful position.
 

Usually, if you are sitting more towards the front of your seat, you’re going to use something like a wedge. Sitting towards the front of the seat using a wedge is going to be more useful because it tends to tilt the pelvis forward, so you still stay in that good spinal position. Usually, if you’re dealing with low back pain for the majority of the population, these types of positions where you’re rounding that spine forward tend to be problematic for you.

So sitting towards the front of that seat with the wedge is going to be a useful option for you if you’re that person. If you sit more towards the back of your seat using something like a lumbar roll, but all the way to the back of the seat, that lumbar roll goes in that hollow space that’s created by the lumbar spine, and this again keeps that lumbar spine from rounding out, which if you’re dealing with low back pain, the majority of the time is going to be problematic for you. So to sum up, sitting with good posture is not necessarily the fix for low back pain. If you are sitting all day long or find yourself in a position where you have to be parked in front of a desk, that ability to go from sitting to standing or changing positions, whatever it happens to be, is what keeps your low back from hurting. 

Now I’m going to do a follow-up video next week that’s going to go over some specific examples of, hey, I’ve got to be at my job, I don’t have a sit-to-stand desk, I need to sit for long periods of time, you still have some options that are going to help keep that low back from hurting. So we’ll do that follow-up video next week, and I look forward to getting some more questions from you.

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