Simple Steps to Perk Up Your Posture

It's easy to forget about your posture when you're engrossed in work at your computer or sitting behind the wheel in your vehicle. Yet, slowly but surely, if you don't take steps to strengthen and lengthen your spine, your shoulders will begin to hunch forward into a more rounded position, and you'll find it difficult to stand as tall as you once did. Meanwhile, poor posture is often a precursor to pain. An estimated 80 percent of the US population will experience back pain at some point in their life, and learning proper posture is crucial if you want to avoid this fate. So what is "good posture"? It's actually quite different from what is normally taught, such as "sit up straight," "stand up straight," and "tuck in your pelvis." By understanding the functional biomechanics of your body and working with gravity instead of against it, you can learn to optimize your body's structural health and the way you move about. Posture Enemy #1: Too Much Sitting If you want to improve your posture, it's imperative to engage in intermittent movement throughout your day. Sitting for extended periods of time is an independent risk factor for poor posture, poor health, and premature death. One analysis of 18 studies found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least. According to lead researcher Thomas Yates, MD: "Even for people who are otherwise active, sitting for long stretches seems to be an independent risk factor for conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease." Another study highlighted evidence linking sitting with biomarkers of poor metabolic health, showing how total sitting time correlates with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other prevalent chronic health problems—even if you exercise regularly. On the other hand, people who spend more time doing low-intensity, everyday activities instead of sitting benefit greatly. One study involved participants who were signed up at the age of 60 and were tracked for more than 12 years, and the findings were quite telling: • Those who reported overall higher levels of daily intermittent movement suffered fewer heart-related problems. • For every 100 of the sedentary people who experienced a heart attack or stroke, only 73 of the highly active group had such an event. • For every 100 of the least active who died, only 70 of the most active died. • Those who had high daily activity levels and engaged in a regular exercise program had the lowest risk profiles overall. How to Work with Gravity to Improve Your Posture You may be aware that in an anti-gravity situation such as space, your body deteriorates far more rapidly. This is why teams of experts are devoted to protecting NASA astronauts from suffering such ill effects. Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of NASA's Life Sciences Division and author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals, is among them. What she found during her research is that it's not only astronauts who need to be protected from anti-gravity situations. Here on Earth, sitting for extended periods of time simulates a low-gravity environment, posing extreme risks to your health over time. According to Dr. Vernikos: "The key to lifelong health is more than just traditional gym exercise, three to five times a week. The answer is to rediscover a lifestyle of constant, natural low-intensity non-exercise movement that uses the gravity vector throughout the day." Activities such as housecleaning, rolling dough, gardening, hanging clothes to dry, bending over to pick up a stray sock, reaching for an item on a high shelf... all of these fall within the spectrum of movements you would ideally engage in—more or less continuously—during daily life. Dr. Vernikos refers to these types of activities as "G habits." The reason why they're so critical for your health is that when you move, you increase the force of gravity on your body. Again, anti-gravity environments speed up cellular deterioration, so the key is to disengage from the gravity vector—this low anti-gravity situation—as much as possible. 35 Times a Day: The 'Magic' Number of Intermittent Movements? Based on double-blind research conducted by Dr. Vernikos, the minimum number of times needed to interrupt sitting in order to counteract its cardiovascular health risks is in the neighborhood of 35 times per day. Interestingly, and importantly, her research also shows that sitting down and standing up repeatedly for 35 minutes does NOT have the same effect as standing up once 35 times over the course of the entire day. In order to be effective, the activity needs to be spread out. This helps explain why vigorously exercising a few times a week still isn't enough to counteract the ill effects of daily prolonged sitting. When you do this type of intermittent movement, your posture also benefits greatly because you avoid sitting hunched over for extended periods of time. As I've become increasingly aware of the importance of intermittent movement, I've incorporated a variety of strategies to counteract the ill effects of sitting, including incorporating some posture-strengthening strategies in combination with Dr. Vernikos' recommendation to frequently stand up: • To make sure I interrupt my sitting enough times each day, I use an online timer set to go off every 15 minutes. • Another alternative that I am currently experimenting with is to use a stand-up desk and simply walk more. You can wear a fitness tracker and seek to walk 10,000 steps a day, which is over 5 miles. While one can clearly walk five miles all at once, ideally, it is best to spread the 10,000 steps evenly throughout the day as much as your schedule will allow. • Also Dr. Vernikos says that simply standing up and sitting back down may be enough to do the trick, provided it's done frequently enough, if you are already in good shape you may want to do more. One key is to encourage more companies to implement these strategies. Interestingly, the companies that did this, actually significantly increased their employees' health and their company's profits. Source: mercola.com, 9/25/14.