It is important to teach children how to maintain proper posture because their spine and their bodies are still developing. This includes helping them learn basic ergonomics of how to sit properly at a desk and the best way to wear a backpack.
What does the term ergonomics mean and why is it so important for a child’s growth and development?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, great question. Ergonomics is essentially the study of people’s efficiency in their working environment. So how is that person, child, essentially sitting in the classroom, sitting and studying at home, in the library, and/or, we’re going to discuss this, standing. And it’s critically important to get this right. Our child’s spines are so bendy and malleable that posture plays a huge role into how that spine develops over time. And then your posture is essentially a window to your health.
Poor posture creates a chronically stressed environment. We’re going to be discussing all things that can cause as we go through this chat, but if your child has poor posture, it’s something you absolutely want to get on top of just because of the things that can happen downstream from poor posture, which essentially comes from things such as poor ergonomics in the classroom, at home, in the library, or wherever they’re doing their study.
For children sitting at a desk or in front of a computer, what is the best ergonomic setup that will allow them to be comfortable and maintain proper posture?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, great question. I think the first thing we need to discuss is motion is lotion. So any posture, regardless of how good it is, for a prolong period of time has a negative effect on our body, right? We are bipedal. We have two legs and eyes in the front of our head. We’re built to be upright and moving. This concept of being pinned to your desk all day every day, in the classroom, at work, studying, wherever it is, it’s not what our bodies are built for. So, it’s pretty important to get it right.
We go through the ergonomics of sitting, you could jump on Google images, Pinterest, and just type, or pardon me, punch in there, “Best sitting ergonomics.” There are great pictures that you can look up. Our YouTube channel, South Loop Chiropractor has some awesome videos on how you should be sitting and standing at work.
But for anyone who’s listening, ergonomic setup is going to be, if we’re talking about sitting specifically, when we sit, we want to start off with butt on the front of the chair. You want to slide back until our back touches the chair, and this is for everyone, not just kids. And you want to lean back a little bit so our shoulders are behind our hips. If your shoulders are on top of your hips, but most importantly, we start to creep in front of the hips, in flexion, leaning forward, it increases the pressure of the discs in your low back by 300%. So that can really break the spine down quickly, can pull us forward, can pull us out of alignment.
Secondly, you want to make sure feet are flat on the floor, with a 90-degree bend in the knee. So, if your chair is too high, you’re going to have your tiptoes on the floor, if your chair is too low, you’re going to have knees that are above your waist. That’s going to create a lot of hip impingement, a lot of pressure on the back of the leg.
Then you want to be nice and snug to the desk. So essentially you want to be getting your stomach right into the desk, even touching it. And then importantly, the desk needs to be the right height. So, if imagine you’re sitting at your desk, you don’t want your shoulders elevated, you want your shoulders down and relaxed, and then you want an obtuse angle of around 90 degrees, probably get to about 110 degrees in the elbow, and then you want to make sure your wrist is nice and flat. So, if your desk is too high, your wrists are going to be flexed open, or flexed so where you’re bringing your wrist towards you, and if the desk is too low, you’re going to be in flexion, which is essentially where your wrist is flexed down. So, all those things can create irritation in the elbow or the shoulders, and the wrist.
Really importantly, you want to make sure your computer screen is at eye level and you’re not looking up or looking down, so you’re in neutral posture. And a key piece to that is if you are looking down a little bit, that’s okay, but slip and check is four fingers between your chin and your chest. You should have no more flexion, so looking down, than that.
So, if you’re in that posture, that’s your working posture. But then you should only be in that posture for 20, 30 minutes. Then we should be standing up for the rest of the hour, 30 to 40 minutes. So again, I’m not sure if schools have standup desks yet, but hopefully that’s coming down the pipe. I know work study stations at home should absolutely have a standup desk.
So again, standing, even weight distribution into your feet, nice and snug to the desk, shoulders are down and relaxed, more than 90-degree bend in your elbow, no flexion extension in your wrist so it’s nice and neutral. And then your workstation’s raised up so you’re looking straight out, you’re not looking down. If you are looking down, it’s more of an eye down than a face down. And then again, maximum amount of flexion is four fingers between your chin and your chest. Once you get past that, it can really start creating that tech neck where the neck goes straight. And this just has a massive amount of issues for kids particularly neurological, sensory issues.
So make sure we’re sitting and we’re standing. And when we are sitting and standing, we’re in good posture. We’re making some time to be up, down, up, down throughout the day, if that’s in the classroom, in the library, at home, wherever we’re getting the work done.
When shopping for a new backpack, what are the basic guidelines for choosing the one that fits best?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, great question. I think it starts with weight, Liz. Backpacks should not weigh any more than 15% of your child’s body weight. So obviously if your child is a hundred pounds, that’s 15 pounds. And you are to actually weigh that. You get one of those suitcase scales that you have at home to make sure your bag is not over 50 pounds. You can do that with your backpack. And obviously all the text books and school supplies that are in the backpack should be in the locker and kept in the locker and then moved in and out of the backpack. We have kids coming in the practice, who just have backpacks weigh about half their body weight and it’s just really having a detrimental effect on their spine and their posture.
We work with a company called Bixby. They’re a specific kids’ brand and they specialize in ergonomics, ergonomic school equipment. They have a great backpack that comes double strapped. You never want a single strap so there’s even weight distribution into the shoulders. I like the chest piece that comes across the front, so you can pull it nice and snug, which keeps the backpack nice and tight to the spine. If it’s loose and it starts to drift away and then you’ve got the space between the backpack and the low back that pulls you into extension, which can really beat up the lower base of your lower portion of your low back. I like Bixby backpacks because they’re oblong in nature, so your books are going spine down and spine up, it evenly distributes the weight. It’s a great backpack. So yeah, I’d say weight, shape of the backpack, double strap, chest strap, nice and snug to the spine is the best way to obviously fit your kid with a backpack before they go back to school this fall.
Is there a right way and a wrong way to carry a backpack?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, I think I just answered that question for you, right, Liz? Wrong way is a backpack that weighs more than 15% of their body weight. It’s a single strap on one shoulder, it’s a cross body bag. And then it’s a bag that’s really loose so it gets away from the spine. All those things are going to essentially start pulling us out of alignment. It’s going to over time, that micro stress is going to change the shape of your kid’s posture. The spine works in something called kinematics. So, if your backpack’s going one way, your low back starts to shift. Well, where does your head go? Goes the other way, right? To counteract. The next thing you know you’ve got that huge anterior head carriage, your necks going straight and then you into extension. So, your shoulders are behind your hips compressing that lumbosacral juncture at the base of your low back. So yeah, getting your backpack ergonomics correct is critically important for allowing your child’s spine to grow and develop as it should in good alignment.
What are some good exercises kids can practice every day to help break their poor posture habits like slouching and hunching over?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, great question. We built this into our corporate athletes and our kids who are at school. We like to educate our patients on postural breaks. So, if you sit down in class at 8:00 AM and you get up at 3:00 PM, you should be spending some time at least twice a day, I typically like to say between breakfast and lunch, lunch and dinner, you just step away from your desk and you just do some basic posture exercise you can do standing up.
So, neck flexors, sit deep in the neck, they help keep your head back. They pick up on movements. If you’re pinned to your desk all day, they get weak and lazy, so that allows your spine or your neck to shift forward. So that’s that classic anterior head carriage, that forward head shift, which is obviously no good. And then all the muscles that sit deep in between the shoulder blades, again, they pick up on movement, if we’re not moving everything in front of us in the chest and the traps in the shoulders. Then you get those rounded shoulders, the scapulas, your shoulder blades start to pull off the rib cage. So, you can see that space between the ribs and the scapula. That’s no good. That’s going to get that forward posture, which essentially increases the hunch.
Then we stand up against the wall, we’re doing some CARS, controlled articular rotation of the shoulder, to activate those shoulder muscles. Then we’re doing some pull work. Simple stuff you can do standing up, keep your elbows nice and tight to your hips and just externally rotate the arms outwards. So, it’s like you imagine you’re Woody from Toy Story, someone’s pulling on that toy string and you’re just engaging those muscles between your shoulder blades. You can spend three to five minutes in a session and get some really effective postural rehab done while at school, in the library, working from home. And that’s the adults listening too. You should be doing the same thing.
If you are interested in speaking with Dr. Luke Stringer visit www.southloopchiropractor.com or call (312) 987-4878 to schedule an appointment.
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