[정상원 바른세상병원 척추클리닉 원장] Office worker Choi (female, 34 years old) habitually crosses her legs while sitting on a chair while working. She said that the habit of crossing her legs was bad for her back health, so even though she tried to sit straight, crossing her legs felt comfortable, so she unconsciously ended up sitting with her legs crossed. But back pain was a problem. Ms. Choi, who went to the hospital after experiencing back pain that occurred without any special trauma for more than two weeks, was diagnosed with scoliosis and herniated disc. She is the director of Spine Clinic at Barunsegae Hospital, Jeong Sang-won. When you sit in one position for a long time, you get tired and have a desire to change your position. At this time, posture supplementary behavior is instinctively needed to provide lower extremity stability, and the easiest form is crossing the legs. This is why we unconsciously cross our legs. Crossing your legs as a compensatory behavior to change your posture is not all bad. This is because crossing your legs for a short time reduces the muscle activity of your torso muscles, which can temporarily reduce fatigue when working in a sitting position for a long time. Additionally, when you straighten your back and alternately cross your legs, you can have a stretching effect on your lower back and pelvic muscles. However, the problem is when you cross your legs habitually for long periods of time. When you concentrate on work for a long time, you often cross your legs without realizing it, maintain the crossed posture, and forget that you have crossed your legs. If this habit is repeated for a long period of time, the risk of developing scoliosis, where the spine bends sideways, or kyphosis, where the spine bends forward, increases. Deformation of the spine can promote long-term degenerative changes in the spine and make it vulnerable to diseases such as lumbar disc herniation. There is a need for caution.
Just like sitting with your legs crossed, sitting cross-legged is also not good for your spinal health. When you sit cross-legged, the muscles on the inside of your thighs stretch and the muscles on the outside become tight. If this habit continues, it can cause deformation of the legs and place a lot of load on the lower back, causing degenerative changes to progress quickly. This leads to back pain, and if it continues, it is highly likely to develop into herniated disc and spinal stenosis. Because spinal stenosis is a degenerative disease, it usually appears in people in their late 40s, but if poor posture persists, the disease can occur even at a young age, so caution is needed.
Proper posture is more important than anything else for spinal health. It is better to sit on a chair rather than sitting cross-legged on the floor. When sitting on a chair, place your lower back together, lean back about 100 degrees, and avoid sitting for long periods of time. The height of the chair should be about knee height, and the legs should not be crossed. If you have bad habits, correct them as soon as possible, and if you are in pain, do not endure it and visit a specialist for early diagnosis and treatment to prevent chronic pain from developing.
2023-11-07 21:42:52
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