008 Desk dwellers save your spine

DESK DWELLERS SAVE YOUR SPINE

Do you have a job that requires you to conquer the world via keyboard or stoop over for long periods?

Does your back, neck and shoulders complain about it?

Have you got grand intentions to keep good posture, but naturally you forget after 2mins of conscientious effort. Don’t worry that’s normal, you’re human.

Or maybe you’re an OT, physio or exercise physiologist trying to educate and offset the imbalances in clients that do spend a large majority of their time sitting.

In this interview I speak with Lorraine Josey who’s been an occupational therapist for over 30 years and these days focuses her attention on posture retraining in the workplace. Lorainnes thesis entitled The Use of Biomechanical Biofeedback to Improve Posture and Reduce Symptoms of Musculoskeletal Disorders in Computer Users, yielded exciting results of which she shares in this episode of the podcast.

Many of us are forced into a seated position to carry out our workplace duties and then often we voluntary plop ourselves into one to enjoy RnR after a long day at work. Our bodies aren’t designed to be seated for such long periods and theres negative consequences, which I’m sure your body tells you about if you’re anything like me. Medibank reported a study that we spend 2/3 of our waking hours sitting or approx. 11 hours, even more on work days. This has 2 main negative impacts:
1. It increases our risk of death largely from cardiovascular-related conditions and diabetes
2. It puts strain on our musculoskeletal system because often we’re in poor postures.

If you’re in this situation and you’re bodies complaining, then listen into this interview with Lorainne as she shares her thesis findings around improving posture and relieving neck, back and shoulder pain for those that face the death by desk sentence.

CONSEQUENCES OF POOR POSTURE
The more slouched posture results in:

• Neck, back and shoulder pain increases
• Shoulder range of motion is reduced
• Compromised arm and hand function
• Reduced Self-esteem
• Lower energy and increased fatigue
• Attention capacity is reduced
• Lower mood
• Increased fear
• Communication is compromised
• Use fewer and negative/sad words
• Use more 1^st-person pronouns – me and I – inward focused.
• Reduced strength and endurance of pelvic floor
• Increased jaw pain
• Reduced productivity

Compared with being in an upright posture

THE PROOFS IN THE PUDDING

“In one particular study, the researchers got a group of people 74 people without problems and they measured them first so that they knew that they are all the same or the groups were the same. And then they positioned them in an upright posture and then I taped them with sports tape and some of them were positioned in a slouched posture and they taped them with sports tape. They then got them to do some reading tasks and some stress inducing speaking tasks and then they measured their communication and aspects of Psychological functioning again after that. They found that there were differences between the groups where no differences existed at the start of the study. It is a good study because it is not a correlational, it’s cause and effect. So we can clearly interpreter from this study that the change in self-esteem, energy, attention, and all those sorts of things happened because of they were positioned either in up right or slouched posture.” – Lorraine shared in the interview.

Survey of computer-based workers

• 76% had experienced neck pain in a 12 month period
• 86% of neck pain sufferers reported experiencing ‘frequent episodes of constant tiredness’.
• 71% experienced 1 or more episodes of shoulder pain in a 12 month period
• 89% of neck pain sufferers reported experiencing ‘frequent episodes of constant tiredness’.

HOW EFFECTIVE IS EDUCATION IN POSTURE RETRAINING
Short answer… not very

It’s the most common way to address posture. There is a key assumption that we can pay attention and monitor posture, however this just isn’t accessible most of the time as it’s a subconscious behaviour. You can’t pay attention to 2 cognitively demanding tasks at the same time ie. Working on intellectual tasks on the computer AND focus on posture. We can only improve posture when we’re focusing on it.

The best practise education approaches

1. Educators need to give immediate feedback in the environment or during the tasks you want to enhance posture eg. Desk, workbench, vehicle etc.
2. Reengineer your workstation to take the brain-work out of optimising posture, including posture reminders either visual or auditory associations.
3. Follow up to check in with peoples posture

HOW EFFECTIVE IS BIOFEEDBACK IN POSTURE RETRAINING?

• Biofeedback is a system that provides additional sensory feedback to a person about some aspect of their functioning.
• Use biofeedback whilst performing tasks as it gives instant real-time feedback.
• It’s ideal if the feedback is an irritant so that it provokes an immediate response
• In the case of Backtone the ‘beep’ irritant provokes a response to correct posture and ‘straighten up’.
• For many of Lorainnes thesis participants their pain reduced or completely disappeared in response to the biofeedback intervention

BIOFEEDBACK THESIS OUTCOMES

• Lorraine and her team measured participants thoracic and neck posture angles and their pain across 10 body regions prior to study commencement.
• Only participants WITH pain in their neck, upper back (thoracic) or shoulders were recruited in the study.
  Group 1: 18 people received 3 weeks posture education only
• Group 2: 18 people received 3 weeks biofeedback only
• Returned in 12 weeks to follow up and retest

Results:

• Both groups had improved pain 40% for education group and 78% in biofeedback which persisted after 12 week follow up.
• Thoracic and neck angle improvements were only sustained in the biofeedback group.
• 8 out of 18 people in the biofeedback group completely resolved their pain.

TAKE HOME
EDUCATION PLUS BIOFEEDBACK WILL OPTIMISE POSTURE AND PAIN MANAGEMENT. Plus it will reduce the negative impacts associated with poor posture such as fatigue, fear, reduced mobility, lower self-esteem, poor concentration and compromised productivity.

Connect with Lorraine
Backtone
LinkedIn
Facebook
Youtube

Contact Lorraine if you’re interested in:

• Posture retraining workshop for 8-10 people in the workplace
• Practitioner pricing 25% discount off the Backtone device

I’m so happy to be bringing you this thought leadership and I trust you got a lot of value out of todays episode with Lorraine.

Until next time, continue being part of the solution in taking your workplace from good to great…

Continue the conversation at www.fitforworkaustralia.com.au, say hi on LinkedIn or flick us a personal note at sally@fitforworkaustralia.com.au.

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