Long sitting increases disc herniation

[admin]

The Journal of Neursurgery had a paper in October by doctors at the Spine Center, Hakodate Central General Hospital in Hokkaido, Japan. The study took MRI scans of 200 volunteers aged from 30-55 and looked at disc degeneration and disc herniation amongst this group.

The report concludes that age and hours sitting were significantly related to L4–5 disc herniation. In other words if you sit for a long time you're more likely to get a herniated disc.

[BP4MS]

According to a report in British Journal of Sports Medicine, and covered in the Boston Globe, long periods of sitting can be DEADLY. Yes, deadly - and I was just worried about my back!!!!

"After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals," said Elin Ekblom-Bakof the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences. She explained that genes regulating the amount of glucose and fat in the body start to shut down.

"We don't have enough evidence yet to say how much sitting is bad," said Peter Katzmarzyk of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, who led a study on 17,000 Canadians. "But it seems the more you can get up and interrupt this sedentary behavior, the better."

[Paula]

I realize this is an old thread, but the advice still applies:

One of the ways I have been able to significantly reduce my back pain, is to vary my acitivities throughout the day. Not everyone has the choice of walking about after a few hours of sitting, but if you sit all day in your job, make sure you move about when on your breaks.

Go for a walk at lunchtime (to the deli perhaps), rather than eat your sandwiches at your desk.

Also use the stairs whenever possible, rather than elevators and escalators.

Consistency is better than quantity, so doing a little each day will be better than doing a lot one day, then nothing for a while.

And in the evening when you are tempted to veg out in front of the TV for 6 hours, do a bit of tidying up or cleaning the kitchen when the commercials are showing. You'll be surprised how much you can get done in four minutes!

I once cleaned my whole sofa just using the ad breaks in "You've Got Mail"!