Stop Back and Neck Pain from Long Sitting-
Desk, Computers, Trains, Planes, Cars, Buses, Internet, and TV

The training and pain prevention methods developed by Dr. Bookspan
are used by top spine centers in the United States and abroad.


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© Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
Director, Neck and Back Pain Sports Medicine
Director, AFEM - Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine

With good sitting, you can sit long periods without pain. Most lists of instructions for sitting tell you to sit in exact ways at exact angles. These rules are uncomfortable and not necessary. Instead, this article shows you concepts of how and why strain and injury may occur when sitting so that you can sit in healthy ways that are comfortable and easy. Then you no longer will get the pain and your neck, shoulder, and back can heal.

No health insurance needed. Much of costs, time, and worry spent on many current medical treatments and surgeries are unnecessary, and often unhealthful. It's not health care if it's not healthy. Not all exercise is medicine. Not all medicine is healthy. We change that. I have developed information through years of research in the lab, and put it here on my web site to benefit the world. Get better and the world will be better. See the books on the BOOKS page, and at the bottom of this article. More about me in Research. Now go get better:

Answers In A Nutshell

1. You do not need special chairs or expensive cushions or strange positioning devices to relieve pain from sitting or to sit in healthful ways for work, travel, or relaxing.
2. You do not need to give up working at a computer or desk, or avoid long car trips. With a little common sense and information, you can sit and move in healthy comfortable ways - yourself.
3. Painful muscles, discs, or joints are not the cause of the problem - they are the RESULT of what you are doing to hurt your body - things you can fix yourself. Even when inflammation or immune response are identified, they are results, not causes. This article will show you how to understand and fix causes instead of using drugs and surgery or bracing and devices for the results.
4. A large number of common medicines and prescription drugs can cause much body pain. This may be mistaken for pain from sitting. Unneeded treatments, surgeries, and pain products are used next to relieve this pain - often causing more pain and reduction in physical ability. Easy changes can stop the need for harmful medicines.
5. Not all pain is from the results that show on an x-ray or other test or scan. You are not doomed by scan results.
6. This article explains the above. Make sure you understand the concepts (many highlighted in green).

 

 

Why Does Slouching Hurt?
Sitting with a rounded back does several things to cause injury and pain. Rounding your spine forward (slouching) when sitting holds your muscles in a longer than normal position, which weakens them. It also slowly degenerates your discs, the little cushions between your back bones (vertebrae), and pushes the discs outward to the back. This is how discs bulge also called herniated or slipped. Holding your neck tilted forward for much of the time, or angled back with the chin jutting forward also mechanically harm discs. A disc can bulge outward enough to press on nearby nerves, sending pain down your leg. Pain down the back of the leg is called sciatica. Pain can also go down the front of your leg when other nerves are pressed, and down your arm from neck and shoulder bad positioning. Even without disc involvement, soft tissue pain from slouching can be uncomfortable and frightening, often mistaken for diseases and given unnecessary drugs and treatments. These are all easy to prevent.

Years of rounding and sagging under your body weight pushes soft tissue and discs outward (herniate), especially the neck and the low back (see discs drawn in showing how tilting pushes them outward. More in the DISC article).

Check If You Round (or Tighten) Your Back When Sitting.

Do you round your back all day at work, then the same to "relax." Too much. No wonder your neck or back hurts.

Many seats have a round (concave) back. Do you allow your back to round to fit the round chair back?

Check if you not only round into the chair back, but hunch forward even more, or put a pillow behind your head, pushing the head further.

Do you sit away from the back of the chair, and create a "hammock" of your spine?. Body weight pushes outward on your low back muscles and discs.

 

Simple Pain Prevention
Instead of sitting forward in your chair, move your hip all the way to the back of the chair. Lean slightly back in comfort. If the chair back is rounded, put a small soft cushion in the space between your low back and the chair, to preserve healthy normal back posture instead of assuming the curved posture of the chair.

Preserve the normal small inward curve instead of rounding to fit the chair.

 

Making a Lumbar Roll
To feel the right size for a lumbar roll, sit back in a chair and nestle your forearm behind you in the lumbar space between your lower back and the chair. Lightly lean your upper back against the chair so that the low back does not press your arm, but rests lightly. It should feel comfortable. It it's not comfortable, it's wrong. Your forearm is usually about the size to look for in a lumbar roll.

There are commercially available rolls. Some are expensive and cumbersome, and many are uncomfortable. You do not need to purchase anything. Many soft household items can work for a lumbar roll. Try a small folded towel, shirt, or gloves. Fold your jacket or part of it, just enough to be the size you want. If it is too large, it will not be comfortable. Use a small inflatable pillow, available at dollar stores or camping supplies. You can cut a roll of soft foam lengthwise to make two lumbar rolls:

If a foam lumbar roll is too big, cut it lengthwise to make two - one for home and one for the car.
Put the cut side to the seat and the rounded side facing your lower back.

Using the Lumbar Roll - Lean Back, Not Forward
Don't use a lumbar roll that feels too large. It will be uncomfortable. If you feel like it is sticking you in the back, check to make sure you aren't rounding against it, or that it isn't too large, or extending too high or low on your back. If it is not comfortable, it is not right or helpful. Change it: Lift your upper back against the chair instead of pressing against the roll. Don't force into unnaturally straight or arched posture. Keep head upright, not tilted forward or back, or craned and bent back at the neck.

Do you round your back against the lumbar roll? That is uncomfortable and just as useless as rounding without one.

Long Sitting When Driving
- Use a lumbar roll, described above, if needed.
- Sit with your hip at the back of the seat, not the middle.
- Move your seat in so that you do not round forward or downward to reach the desk or steering wheel. Tilt the seat slightly backward. Sit up and lean your upper back back against the seat, instead pressing the lower back and reaching and rounding. A bonus to moving the car seat forward, is that by sitting back instead of reaching forward, your chest and face are farther from the airbag, said to be safer.

 

Long Sitting at Your Desk
- Use a lumbar roll, described above, if needed.
- Sit with your hip all the way against the back of the chair.
- Move the seat in and sit closer to the desk so you can sit up instead of hunching forward.
- Put the monitor up on a book, block, or shelf. Use an external keyboard for laptops.

Even without a seat back, you can sit comfortably. Move your seat in. Put the monitor up on a block or shelf. Keep the keyboard up on the desk, not under it on a keyboard tray. Depending on your height, you can lower your seat a bit so you don't have to reach down for the desk.

 

Long Sitting for Buses and Flights
Commercial airline, bus and train seats are often rounded, encouraging prolonged, enforced rounding.
- Use two pillows, one in the natural curve of your low back, and the second above that one for your upper back, in the space still left by the rounded seat. Sit upright and lean back to rest the back of your head against the head rest.

For the very rounded seats common in flights and buses,
use two pillows to allow you to sit comfortably straight, not rounded forward to fit the chair.

- Flights sometimes have a video message encouraging in-seat stretching. Often the advice is forward bending. That is the last thing you need after sitting bent forward for so long. Instead, stretch your back and shoulders backward, not forward. Pull your chin in while leaning back. Breathe. Smile.

 

Sitting to Relax

Use the principles above to easily and inexpensively fix your existing chairs and sofas.

 

 

Sitting On The Floor

More to come here about sitting on the floor, and squatting to rest and work.   Check back!

 

 

Don't Forget To Get Up
No matter how well you sit, it's still a lot of bending at the hip and time spent off your feet. Muscles at the front of the hip will eventually shorten from this. Short, tight hip muscles add their own posture and achy hip and back pain problems. Your hip needs standing weight for strong bones. Your legs need use. Stand more. There are chairs that allow keeping some weight on your feet. Even for my wheelchair patients, I recommend pulling to a stand for time every day.

Stand up and straighten out. Tip your hip under you to straighten it from the bent "behind-stuck-out" position - see the free abs article and the back pain article for how.

Another nice stretch to straighten out after house chores or exercise is to lie face down and prop up on elbows. Don't pinch or crane your back or neck, just gently stretch the entire spine and hip the other way.

Don't forget to get out of your chair, stand and get weight on your legs, and "unround" your entire spine

No Strange Rules
It is not true that you must sit at 90 degree angles (or any specific angles) or hold your thighs parallel to the floor, or other strange, strict rules about positioning your arms or legs.

Don't worry about exact angles. Get the concepts, then you can keep healthy posture while you go about your life. Don't sit frozen in place. Movement is important for joint health. Joints don't have much blood flow. Joints get nutrition in and waste out by physical movement. Move freely in your chair instead of sitting still for hours at a time.

Sit in healthy position whether the chair has straight back, a round back or no back. You are the one to determine your positioning,not the chair. Keep it simple. Sit preserving the small inward curve of your back and you will prevent injury and get up after long sitting with straight happy position and no pain.

How Long Does It Take To Stop Lower Back Pain With Good Sitting?
If you hurt when sitting, you should feel the pain and pressure stop the moment you change your sitting to healthier ways. If you're not feeling better right away (that means as soon as you try it), check what you are doing compared to what is presented above. Are you still rounding your back anywhere, or leaning forward? Are you craning your neck? Are you using an expensive (but wrong) ergonomic keyboard tray. Are you sitting forward of the seat back and letting your back "hammock?" Is your chair made to round you? Don't let it - use the techniques above? Are you tightening or clenching any muscles? Remember - fixing pain is not "doing" a bunch of exercises or stretches, then going back to sitting badly. That is defeating the purpose.

Make sure there is not something else contributing to your pain - many common prescription drugs and supplements that are not needed in the first place with healthy living and healthful real food. It is is almost always quick and easy to start getting your life back and start feeling better right now. Don't wait.

 

How To Remember:

• Please do not e-mail saying, "I read the article, now please tell me how to sit right" or  "I am doing the exercises 10 times and still sit rounded, now please write me a personal article on how to stop my pain" or "It hurts to sit at the computer to read your book on fixing pain." Here is the answer now: If you stop hurting yourself with bad sitting, then the pain can stop. This free article tells how. More free articles on my Sports Medicine Office page. The books tell more.
• Watch how other people sit - it helps remind you why it is not a mystery when people hurt.
• Notice injurious positioning and movement habits, especially those featured in fitness and health magazines
• Notice your own sitting habits.
• Get out of your chair every now and then, straighten out and keep better habits.Try it now.
• Send me photos and your success story showing the principles in action. Prizes for best candid.

 

You Don't Have To Live With Pain

 

What To Do NOW:
Look what you have saved on unnecessary overpriced ergonomic chairs, back devices, medical treatments, and worry :-) Use what you saved to give to the  poor and take a  vacation, and tell this scientist to keep getting you the good stuff -

Thank you!.

 

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That said, Be Healthy - Respect Copyright This information, drawings, and photos are © No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To cite this article or any parts, put author Dr. Bookspan, and this site name and link DrBookspan.com at the top of your reprinting. A suggestion to get the books is also nice :-) Drawings of Backman!™ copyright © by Dr. Jolie Bookspan from the books Health & FItness THIRD new edition, and Fix Your Own Pain. Back To Article

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