Posture, Posture, Posture

Inspiration for this next post again comes from the Health and Growth Series: Adventures in Health by Charters, Smiley and Strang, published in 1935.

The inspiration for this post came from reading the chapter title "He's Straight." Now, in my 21st century-trained eye, seeing the phrase, "He's striaght" immediately made me think gay rights, homosexuality, equality, or actually, since this was published in 1935, I  considered homophobia and scientific techniques to turn gay people straight.

Boy was I wrong!  There was actually no mention of homosexuality or gayness in this chapter.  It was about posture!! Psh, DUH!

So anyway, in 1935, saying someone was straight meant he's honest and you can trust him.  And apparently being honest and trustworthy can be further determined by your posture because "people who stand straight usually give the impression of being straight."  Well, silly me!

Posture, defined as by my apple dashboard as "a position of a person's body when standing or sitting" actually has a large impact on physical (and mental) health. 

CSS start with the advantages of maintaining good posture.  For starters, sitting in a confident posture can make you look and feel more confident.  An article in the European Journal of Social Psychology supports this claim. The article "Body posture effects on self-evaluation: A self-validation approach" by Briñol et al. (2009) states that the direction of thoughts in subjects during a self-validation analysis was more positive when subjects were sitting in a confident posture (chest pushed out) as compared to a doubtful posture (back curved).

Physically speaking, bad posture has many ill effects on the body.

Poor posture and fatigue share an interesting relationship.  Their connection may be causal in both directions: bad posture can lead to fatigue and fatigue can lead to bad posture. I found numerous ergonomics studies involving truck drivers, surgeons,  dentists, and even musicians that supported this claim. 

More generally, ll the non-academic searches I looked for had the same quote from Nobel Prize winner Dr. Roger Sperry who reports "that the spine is the motor that drives the brain. According to his research, '90% of the stimulation and nutrition to the brain is generated by the movement of the spine.' Only 10% of our brain's energy goes into thinking, metabolism, immunity, and healing. Sperry demonstrated that 90% of brain energy goes into processing and maintaining the body's relationship with gravity (your posture)."

Here is the same quote in 3 different blogs:
Blog #1
Blog #2
Blog #3

The blogs also mention that lung capacity can be decreased by about 30% from poor postures, such as leaning or hunching forward. This can lead to problems oxygenating the blood, which amplifies into many more health issues such as asthmatic conditions, gastrointestinal issues resulting in a lack of nutrient absorption (I will get back to this later), and decreasing endorphin production which affects perception of pain.

Another study from the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society entitled Hyperkyphotic Posture Predicts Mortality in Older Community-Dwelling Men and Women: A Prospective Study by Kado et al. (2004) shows that hyperkyphotic posture (defined as requiring one or more blocks under the occiput to achieve a neutral head position while lying supine) causes a greater rate of mortality.  Their study used older male and female subjects. Males are also more prone to hyperkyphotic posture.

CSS mention that "digestive disturbances and failure to gain weight" are related to poor posture.  They mention this most likely since it is a children's book, and eating and digestive health are really important in children's development. One study I found about children's health problems and poor posture in the Journal of School Health entitled Prevalence and Risk Factors of Poor Posture in School Children in the Czech Republic (Kratenová, 2007) found that 38.8% of 7, 11, and 15 year old children had poor posture.  These children reported headache and pain in their spine more frequently than other children. An interesting finding in the study actually connects CSS's claim of poor posture and failure to gain weight.  Out of the children sampled, underweight children (48.5% of the children were categorized as underweight based on their BMI) had higher occurrences of poor posture compared to overweight children (33.6% percent of the children, who had a BMI over the 90th percentile). No other correlational studies were done on this fact, but the authors noted that higher fat tissue may stabilize the spine, thus resulting in better posture.  So does poor posture cause a failure to gain weight, as CSS mention, or does obesity prevent poor posture, as Kratenová et al. reported?

I think this is a really interesting concundrum and I would love to look into it further, but no time right now, as its my birthday and I have to go eat some cake, increase my BMI, and therefore protect myself from bad posture and decrease my probability of mortality! Just kidding.

However, before I go,  I ill leave you with this take-home message:
Kids, if you want to maintain a healthy weight AND good posture, go walk outside and play (children who played sports had a lower probability of poor posture.)
And adults, try to equip your workspace with ergonomic equipment (eg desk chair, desk height) as to maintain an upright spine and a straight back and decrease your chances of mortality. Or actually, just go out and play too!

Or if that doesn't sound good, just go grab a stack of books, plop it on your head and walk around. (The scientific credibility of this has yet to be looked into in this blog, but you'll look really cool doing it).