Sitting is the new Smoking, What is the correct way to Sit?
Your chair is out to kill you. It not only causes back pain, obesity, diabetes, and colon cancer; but sitting incorrectly is now linked to heart problems. The modern way of sitting is one of the main causes which accelerates or initiates heart problems.
How we sit has a great impact on the entire body. The worst way to sit is on a chair or a sofa with your feet down, slumped over a desk looking at a computer. This is how we all sit today all of the time, even at home, at dinner and driving the car. Unfortunately the average Australian is guilty of sitting like this up to 9 hours a day; so it is not surprising that 80 percent of Australians suffer back pain. We are not giving enough attention to how we sit.
The reason is that sitting increases the work load for your heart. The heart has to practically increase its efforts by over sixty percent to pump back blood against gravity and get it to circulate across the body. This puts an amazing amount of extra strain on the heart.
The Solution
1: How To Sit
What is the correct way to sit? Preferably, on the floor. If you are on the floor itself, there is less work to do, to pump blood upwards.
If you cannot sit on the floor, then sit with your legs up in different positions. Sitting with your legs up cuts out the effort of pulling up blood from the waist downwards, because the body is folded closer to the heart. So the heart now has to pump that much of a distance less (the length of your legs, waist down is more than the upper body), against gravity. That is fifty to sixty percent of the effort gone.
Try sitting with your legs crossed over each other or intertwined. This locks the legs, and blood requirement reduces dramatically to the lower limbs. Initially you may find you get pins and needles, but with practice, this becomes very comfortable. Keep shifting your legs every few minutes in different positions. Once you are used to it, there will be no discomfort.
2: Sit Correctly with our Posture Vests
If you must sit then you need to make sure that you are sitting correctly by wearing a Posture Vests (available online) The posture vest is an innovative physiotherapy device specially designed to help straighten out the slouch and reinforce good postural habit in an easy and natural manner. It ensures your neck and shoulders are erected and balanced, your shoulders are relaxed and your spine has a natural curve with a slight forward curvature at lower back. This posture vest is a must for everyone especially children, students, and individuals with desk jobs. Poor posture can also lead to abnormal spinal growth, or cause irreversible hunchback.
3: See your Chiropractor
Dr Bianca can assist you with proper posture, including recommending exercises to strengthen your core postural muscles. We can also assist you with choosing proper postures during your activities, helping reduce your risk of injury and of course get your spine moving properly and your brain connected to your postural muscles with an adjustment