Back Pain Back Pain Basics

Recline to Help Lower Back Pain

Feel free to call your mother and blame her for your aching back. Sitting up, a request often made of children by parents, places excess strain on your back and leads to chronic back pain. The best position, according to the study, is to be slightly reclined.

Lower back pain is the most common complaint of workers in the United States and is one of the major reasons workers call in sick, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. So, determining the cause of lower back pain may help employers and their employees take steps towards improving their work environment.

"We were not created to sit down for long hours, but somehow modern life requires the vast majority of the global population to work in a seated position," said Dr. Waseem Amir Bashir, study author from the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Alberta Hospital, Canada.

Waseem and colleagues used a special type of MRI machine, which allows patients to move within the scan, to look at the movement of the spine in 22 individuals in different positions. These positions included slouching forward, upright and a reclined position of 135 degrees.

When there is strain on the back, the disks inside the spine tend to move and misalign. This movement was seen most prominently when the participants were sitting upright and least pronounced when in a reclined position. Slouching, on the other hand, caused the spinal disks to compress, indicating that this position would cause a high rate of wear on the lower back.

"A 135-degree body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best biomechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal," said Bashir. "This may be all that is necessary to prevent back pain, rather than trying to cure pain that has occurred over the long term due to bad postures."

However, before you begin to lean back at your desk, keep in mind that the participants in Bashir’s study were in chairs that had high backs, so they supported the shoulders and neck. In a typical computer chair, many experts say, leaning back would cause undue stress on the upper part of the back.

So, if you are experiencing back problems at work, first find an appropriate chair and then lean back, but only if it feels comfortable. If it doesn’t, your La-Z-Boy at home will certainly feel great after a long day.