Don’t Be A Slouch – How Posture Affects Health and Longevity with Al Brown

In a February 2021 article from Harvard Health Publishing,
research links some surprising health problems to slouching,
including incontinence and constipation.  On this episode of
the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Al Brown, MEMIC’s Director of
Ergonomics takes a look at slouching, how it affects your health
and some strategies for prevention.


 


Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Welcome to the MEMIC
Safety Experts podcast. My name is Peter Koch, your host, and
today we are here with Al Brown, the director of ergonomics for
MEMIC. And we're going to talk about slouching. So we don't want
you to be a slouch. And I want you to think about this right now.
And I bet you if you heard this, you might have even sat up or
stood up a little bit more straight. But think about your posture
right at this moment or just moments ago whether your drive in
your car, sitting at your desk, maybe you're sitting on the
riding lawnmower or you're sitting on your couch at home or
whatever you're doing. What's your posture like? Are you seated?
Is your low back curved or your shoulders hunched forward? Is
your head in a forward posture that's slouching? We're going to
talk about that and the effects of slouching, how we got there,
because that's certainly not how we were, how we were designed to
sit and to stand. But that's a common posture and it has a lot of
different negative effects on [00:01:00] our body and sometimes
even our longevity. So I guess with that, Al, welcome to the
podcast today. Thanks for being back again and sharing some
fascinating it I think a little frightening information about
what slouching might do for you. So talk to me about slouching.
What's going on with slouching and why is this a big deal?
Because I don't know. I like the slouch every once in a while.
Right. Feels good. So what's the problem with it?


Al Brown: [00:01:26] Well, first, Pete, thanks.
Thanks for having me back. Much appreciated. It's an interesting
thing. It's a phenomenon I'm watching unfold as I travel about
different industries and particularly the office world and even
watching my own kids. And the advent of the laptop, I think sort
of was the thing that started that precluded all this. And, you
know, the laptop is a lovely thing. It's portable. It allows us a
lot of information in this little thing that we just kind of
carry in our hand. But when we interface [00:02:00] with it. We
sit down and we place it somewhere, they call it a laptop for a
reason, a lot of times that's where it ends up. And but
unfortunately, particularly, the younger crowd has pretty good
vision. So they flip open that screen the keyboards down where
their hands are and overcomes the head to view the content. This
is sort of the initial start of creating muscle memory and this
forward slouching posture, it's unconscious subconscious, not
really recognized, and a lot of things begin to happen
physiologically and it's very subtle over time. And then you
begin to see the results of it after someone's been doing it for
a couple of months, a couple of years. And I see it oftentimes
when we have someone new young coming in to MEMIC and they have
been a laptop user and are now [00:03:00] shifting to a desktop.
And that's where the behaviors become very apparent to me when I
see them positioning themselves in front of the screen. We talk
about proper ergonomics and how to set up, and it's very hard for
them sometimes to adapt to it because of all the things that we
that have occurred because of the excessive laptop using and the
slouching, which will get into more detail today.


Peter Koch: [00:03:25] Sure, I see it well, I
see it myself sometimes. I've lots of times I'm going to work off
an iPad with a keyboard attached to it and the same thing that
it'll sit right on my lap and my head will be bent over and I'll
type and you'll get a little tightness in the back of your neck.
And I don't have the greatest eyesight anymore. I'm certainly not
one of the younger users anymore, unfortunately. But looking
through my progressive lenses or my bifocals, I'll have to look
down or look up to see part of that screen. And you really have a
limited range of motion. I see it with my daughter, too. So a
couple [00:04:00] of daughters in high school, of course, just
about every kid in Maine gets a laptop or they have a laptop and
they're doing all their work on it. They're sitting at the
kitchen table. They're sitting on the couch. They're sitting on
the porch. My youngest daughter was sitting in a hammock the
other day, leaning back kind of in this banana shape with a
laptop on her lap and like, wow, that's really uncomfortable
looking. But yeah, so that's the habit that they're in. So I can
only imagine what happens when you try to move to a different
place, whether it be a desktop or you watch I'll actually watch
my oldest daughter, who's home now who drive and she'll be in the
same head forward position when she's driving seat back a little
bit of that. You referenced this before we were talking the low
rider position. So sit back a little bit, head forward, kind of
looking just above the steering wheel in that same [00:05:00]
posture translates between her laptop use at home and the car
driving. And if she concentrates, she'll stand up straight. But
if you just watch her kind of relax, sometimes that forward head
posture will just become a normal a normal thing for her.


Al Brown: [00:05:16] It's almost like if you
look at it from a profile view, someone sitting at the desk.
You'll see almost a C, you know, shape, you know, where the head
is forward and then you follow the curve around at the mid
thoracic area and even the lower back, which has normally, you
know, a curve in the opposite direction of the mid back, is
actually now continuing that same shape down to the pelvis. So
you get this giant C shape and that has an impact all the way
through the body. What happens is basically you're shutting your
abdominal muscles off and you're kind of hanging on your back
muscles. I always reference [00:06:00] a shirt, and when you're
sitting there leaning forward, the shirt on the front side's all
wrinkled up, which kind of represents muscles that are sort of
tightening up. And then you look at the fabric on the back of the
shirt and it's being overstretched, which happens to the muscles
on the back of the body. They're being sort of statically
stretched passively for an extended period of time. If you stay
in the position long enough, it actually creates inflammation in
a lot of the soft tissue. And then you start to see diagnoses
like fibromyalgia and myofascial pain. And we can all experience
it. You know, for the listeners at home, you can take one of your
fingers gently and pull it back words so that it's fully extended
and just keep a stretch on it for, oh, you know, maybe 15 to 30
seconds, a good stretch on it and then release it and curl it up.
And you can feel that stiffness [00:07:00] that you've started.
And think of that finger stained in that position for an hour,
two hours. Eventually the tissue becomes in flames and you create
an injury. So over time, someone who slouches at a computer is
doing that same thing to all the muscle tissue on the back side
of the body and weakening the abdominals on the front side. So
that's just that's just the musculoskeletal system, you know, and
sitting, you know, we have to throw in you look down at the hips
and the hip flexors are shortening up. And so when you go to a
standing position, you never get somebody that goes fully erect
simply because the longer we do it, the more our body adapts and
our more the muscles will shorten, tendons will shorten,
ligaments will shorten. And so unless you take an active role in
sort of reopening your body back up, you will, like you had
mentioned your daughter, you'll see that transferred to from the
hammock to the desk to [00:08:00] the car, and it becomes
normalized in the brain. And we'll start to hear complaints about
it because and people will only make a change when they get the
discomfort. And we see young folks going for shoulder surgeries
now, having back pain. I think the tag line now thirty's the new
40.


Peter Koch: [00:08:22] Oh boy.


Al Brown: [00:08:22] And those comorbidities are
coming sooner simply because of this sort of slouched posture.


Peter Koch: [00:08:29] Wow. So and I always
think about it, too, that there are you have complementary muscle
groups. So, you know, when you're in the habit in that C shape to
stretch out those back muscles and kind of relax those abdominal
muscles, then you go to come back and combat that. If you haven't
been working those abdominal muscles to help keep yourself in
good posture, it will become more difficult over time to combat
the bad posture that you have to move out of that habit. So the
[00:09:00] longer you spend in it, the worse it is for you.


Al Brown: [00:09:03] Yeah, I mean, what it does
to tightens up those hip flexors and then you keep the back the
inward curve of the back actually goes concave or convex. It goes
in the opposite direction. And what happens, it's very difficult
to roll out of that posture again. You know, if you think of
yourself sitting, there's two ways to sit to a certain extent. I
mean, all kinds of ways to sit. But one is sort of sitting back
on your sacrum, which is what the slouches will sit on. So if you
just kind of let your back roll that your low back flatten and
you roll back on your tailbone and your head has to come forward
as that happens. So you are creating that C. But if you actually
arch your back and you pull your pelvis around, you actually come
up on there's these two sitting bones as they're skilled,
tuberose, and there's two of them, you'll pull yourself around up
on top of those and you'll feel your core go [00:10:00] upright
and your head will align. The chair should positively support you
than the back of the chair should be in there and supporting your
back for the low riders of the folks have been doing the
slouching. If we pull their chair up into that position, they
feel like they're almost being thrown into the computer. And
that's because that visual mental image they have of themselves
and sort of their muscle memory keeps them in that forward C
posture.


Peter Koch: [00:10:28] Yeah, that kinesthetic
sense. They think their father forward and they should be because
their natural well, their habitual place to be is in that forward
head posture. Yeah. I just think that's where they are.


Al Brown: [00:10:39] You'll see it in like older
people go to the dentist now, you know, and the dentist tends to
lay a pretty flat and you know, because as we age we tend to go
into that forward posture. It's we're trying to look for
stability. And what happens is when they lay you down on the
chair, someone that's, you know, creeping [00:11:00] over into
the forward posture, they'll go, oh, that's far enough that
you've got me almost upside down. And there's still about 45
degrees, you know, before they even get the flat. So they'll
slowly creep that person down as their muscles and their memory
kind of relaxes a bit and they can sneak them down. But you can't
get them really flat because of all the physical changes that's
occurring earlier in young adults.


Peter Koch: [00:11:24] When you think about that
example of a dentist chair, it must change sleep patterns as well
because you know, might not be able to lay flat or stretch out or
get into that position. So you might not be able to be in a truly
comfortable, restful position where your body can recover, which
is really what sleep is for.


Al Brown: [00:11:44] Yeah, you'll notice that
the number of pillow starts stacking up behind you if you lay on
your back and you'll know that when you roll over on your belly
and your hands fall asleep a lot quicker, that again, welcome to
the C posture. That's where your head. And so those are all
indicators, [00:12:00] you know. So it's one of those things that
we the more static activity you spend in front of a computer in
time, you really need to spend a lot of time sort of resetting
the body and opening it back up. You need to set yourself up
neutral. But you had mentioned earlier on we were talking that
you like to slouch and everybody does. It's a position of
fatigue. After a while, you just can't hold yourself upright and
you'll slouch. So every 30 minutes you probably should get up and
move or change or change your posture. The advent of the dynamic
workstation helps because I always tell folks when you start to
lean or slouch, just pop the buttons and lift the desk because
you'll bring your pelvis underneath you and you'll change that
pattern because you won't stand in a slouch. You can, but it'll
be more difficult to do that. So and that's kind of the cue. But
every 30 minutes, you should be changing your position and
posture.


Peter Koch: [00:12:57] I think people listening
might agree [00:13:00] with that, but they might find it
difficult. And I know for me, if I have a project that I'm doing
that requires concentration and you get into that zone and you're
focused on what you're doing, 30 minutes goes by like that.


Al Brown: [00:13:12] It does.


Peter Koch: [00:13:13] And if I take that moment
to stand up, it may pull me out of the zone, which isn't really
true. I mean, I you will move out of it a little bit, but like
you said, move from the sitting position, come up to the standing
position, do your work for a little while and sit back down. It
doesn't have to be a disruptive process. It doesn't sound like
just have to change that posture so you can stretch things out,
get back to a better posture and then keep going with your
project.


Al Brown: [00:13:42] I mean, you can even just
roll your pelvis when you're sitting there. If your back is flat
and you've got that C, you just roll your pelvis up into a more
arched back and that in itself sort of just recuse the brain a
bit. And again, we're just talking about what's happening
[00:14:00] in the musculoskeletal system. I mean, there's other
implications that are out there that, you know, and I think the
it was the Harvard the Harvard Health Publishing in February
15th, 2021. They just came out and there was a Megan Markovsky
who's at Women and Brigham's that associated with Harvard. You
know, they start they're starting to look at other kind of
physiological changes, you know, things like incontinence,
constipation, and you can really see how mechanically you begin
to impact your body. You know, I've said for years, you know, if
you sit in that seat position, you know, think about your
intestines. It's a giant hose that goes back and forth inside
your gut. And that's convoluted enough with a lot of bends. But
now when you sit in the C position, you just push it down. So
you've not only [00:15:00] you've got this convoluted tube, but
now you're going to compress it. And so think about food, trying
to move through, you know, peristalsis or whatever that is trying
to move down through and there's a little push back, you know,
acid reflux, you know, like, oh, gee, I just or gastric upset or
I don't feel so good. And again, you're mushing your intestines
when you sit in that that poor position. Breathing is another
example. You know, your diaphragm are these two conical shape
muscles at the base of your of your lungs. That their job is when
they're nice and perky is to pull those lungs down. And that
creates a negative pressure in the air goes in. And then when
they relax, your lungs are elastic, that passively it'll push the
air back out. When you're sitting in that C posture slouched.
Those diaphragm muscles are not perky. They're almost flattened
out. So they have no ability to pull down. So to get a deep
breath or even [00:16:00] to breathe normally, you have to almost
start raising your shoulders, which is a lot of work. I mean, if
you just you know, if you just take your shoulders and try to
raise them up, you know, 60 times, you know, a minute or just,
you know, even less than that when we breathe. But I mean, just
that's very fatiguing because you're lifting up a large mass each
time to breathe. So you're working harder to breathe and digest.
Just from slouching.


Peter Koch: [00:16:25] That's amazing. And so I
get to see the breathing, definitely the breathing thing. And you
might find yourself to be a little short of breath sometimes,
too, if you're sitting in that position. Some of the results of
slouching that you talked about, the incontinence, the heartburn,
acid reflux, are those immediate or would you find those to be
something that that occurs hours or maybe even 24 hours later
after you've had a bout of slouching? I'm trying to think of like
that what that Q would be. And are people connecting their
posture of what they [00:17:00] did all day yesterday? To now
they wake up on Saturday morning after having spent all day or
all week in the office and that slouched position. And now
they're struggling to enjoy life on Saturday because of what's
happening. So when one of those physical cues occur.


Al Brown: [00:17:19] You know, it probably if I
were to theorize, I would I would think that it's maybe not
something that you notice right away because you're, and
particularly if you're younger, you're very tolerant and you
probably are a little more active and moving around. But as you
continue to have a job that requires that you sit and you begin
to change that body physiologically and like you had mentioned,
you know, from the hammock to the computer to the car, you repeat
that same behavior to sitting at night, chill and watching a
movie. You are you are [00:18:00] exposing yourself to that same
issue. So it becomes more apparent and probably sort of
insidiously sneaks in on you. And that's when you at some point
discomfort, you know, you kind of go, what's going on? And I
don't think people connect the dots to that sitting piece and off
to the doc getting tested and finding out what's going on. Now
you're starting to medicate, but when you really look back at the
root cause you've got to reopen your body back up. You got to
look at your behaviors, because until you change those, you're
still mechanically beating yourself up.


Peter Koch: [00:18:37] Right. And I think a lot
of people feel that the amount of exercise that they have, maybe
at the end of the day they get an hour's walk in or something
like that after they've been sitting in that slouch position for
let's just call it an hour, six hours at work. Maybe they get up
and walk around a little bit at lunch or whatever. So they sit
slouched for six hours and then they got two more hours on the
couch [00:19:00] and they got maybe an hour commute back and
forth. So now you're at eight, nine, ten hours of slouched
position. But I got one hour of exercise. You talk about how
that's not quite enough and maybe you can elaborate a little bit
about that right now, too.


Al Brown: [00:19:16] Yeah. James Levine works at
Mayo Clinic and he actually wrote the book Stand Up. I think your
chair is killing you, something like that. Or, you know, sitting
is the new smoking kind of came from that sort of tagline. But
when you look at I mean, that's kind of our mentality. I'm guilty
of it, that I'll sit and do my work all day long in front of a
computer. And then I think, oh, I got to get out and take my run
or I have to lift or I have to exercise. But you won't. The
degradation, degradation you've done to your body during those
seven to eight to ten hours to eleven hours of sitting, you
cannot recover from that one hour of [00:20:00] exercise, I think
in Australia that. Actually coined the term they had done some
research down there on this, and it's called the Active Couch
Potato. So you still are going to suffer the you know, if you're
sitting for 11 hours a day, there are I think there's 35 medical
conditions, you know, type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease,
cancers, that the risk factors will go up exponentially just from
that sitting. And you can't recover by just having that one hour
of exercise. It's something that you need to incorporate
throughout the whole day of movement and each time you move.
That's when I always encourage folks to sort of reset their body
upright, you know, recue the game of Jenga, you know, get the
blocks realigned, because if you don't, you continue down that
road of impacting your health negatively.


Peter Koch: [00:20:57] Sure, sure. It's an
important point [00:21:00] that I don't think we can stress
enough, regardless of if it's the positions that you're in at
work or if it's positions that you would like to be in when
you're at home. It's we're not made to be stationary. We're made
to be active. Everything about us is made to be active from just
the amount of assistance the large muscle gives to our heart, to
move blood around from our lower extremities to upper
extremities, to try to fight off gravity. We're made to move
around. We're not made to just sit in one place


Al Brown: [00:21:33] Yup everything sucks down
to the earth. So and when you sit down, unfortunately, you shut
off the largest muscles in the body. And so now you've lost all
that assistance that any time they contract, they actually will
milk and push the fluid back up. I mean, it assists your
cardiovascular system, obviously, the venous return and the
arterial flow, but the lymphatic system really kind of depends
[00:22:00] on it. So and it's the filtering system that gets the
junk out of your body. So, again, when you sit slouched, you sit
and you sit. You know, you've not only are you mechanically
compressing all the structures, but then you shut off the big
muscles in the body that are assisting. So the accumulated effect
of all that going on, you know, you'll start to have those
physiological changes and you'll start, you know, like I said,
shoulders from the mechanics of your shoulder change completely.
And, you know, I can see folks I've seen folks that are queuing
up for shoulder surgery and I'm going before you go there. Wait a
minute. You need to open up your body first. They go what? And
it's amazing how much a person has lost how to pull themselves
back into neutral. And it's very cumbersome. It's exhausting for
the first week to 10 days. But once they get it and they break on
through to the other side, they actually feel a [00:23:00] whole
bunch better. It's kind of. You know, it's like walking around
with a stick and holding it in your hand and tipping the stick
forward, maybe 15 to 20 degrees, that creates sort of a bit of a
force on the wrist and hand and shoulder and arm. You're like,
oh, you know, after you do that for a while, it's kind of my
wrist is getting shaky where if you just balance that stick on
your hand and walk around, you know, a little more of a
challenge, but it's less awkward forced on the wrist. So you're
just kind of bouncing around. So same thing with your body. When
you get it all set up and you balance it out, you're much more
efficient and it takes a lot less energy to move it around


Peter Koch: [00:23:38] A lot less. Take us
through that exercise again of going from that C position and
straightening up in your chair just by tipping your pelvis. I
think that's that could be a simple thing that people can do. And
if the folks listening to us right now, again, like I started
this podcast, think about where you are, think about that C
position is [00:24:00] your head forward or your shoulders
hunched as your back round. And then Al is going to take us
through that sequence of how just sit up straighter just by
tipping your pelvis in a different direction. So when you do
that.


Al Brown: [00:24:11] Yeah. I mean, think about
yourself right now and where you're sitting. And if you can
imagine that you had on a pair of. Pants or jeans, let's call
them jeans, and they have back pockets and are you sitting on
your back pockets right now? Are you rolled back? And so those
back pockets are actually sort of facing down and on the seat.
And if you are, then that's the start of C sitting. You actually
are doing more sacral sitting. You know, you're sitting back on
that sacrum. So what we want to do is rotate your pelvis and
bring you out of that position. So and what you're going to
notice is that as you as you bring your pelvis around, you're
going to notice that you're getting taller. And you're also
probably going to notice that your head will start to tuck back
[00:25:00] in because your head follows your butt here, Pete, I'm
telling you. So if your pelvis rolls forward and your pelvis is
going forward, your head's going to go forward as your pelvis
rolls backwards and comes behind your head is going to want to
like the game of Jenga. We have to push the block up on top with
the block on the bottom to keep it all balanced. So what I want
folks to do now is get off your hip pockets and I want you to
almost like you're pushing your belly forward and you're arching
your back and you're trying to take your head up, you know, up
towards the ceiling. So you rotate that pelvis forward and you'll
feel a shift up on to that that part of your pelvis. So that's
neutral sitting. That's hard to do right now, probably for most
folks of in here going, OK, I'm working really hard to do that.
That's why you want a good supportive chair that in that position
now you want that inward curve of your back filled by your chair
so that lumbar support becomes very important. You can't just and
some [00:26:00] people do. Perch there are perchers that will sit
on the edge of the chair and perch. That's OK. But that's a
fatiguing thing to do. And eventually what you're going to do is
you're going to, out of fatigue, roll back onto your hip pockets.
OK, so, you know, again, it's just what you're doing is you're
going have your hip pockets, you're going towards the ceiling
with your head and you're rotating your pelvis forward so you'll
feel an inward curve in your low back. And that's a more neutral
position for your body.


Peter Koch: [00:26:27] And I think that's a good
reset for folks when you're you stayed at your chair for a while.
And if you can think about that sequence when you've been at your
chair and you do tip your pelvis and you sit up straighter and
you get a curve in your low back and your head tucks back, that's
a cue to continue to get taller and stand up and adjust your
desk, get up a little bit, maybe move the laptop from your lap to
maybe the counter or maybe someplace else. So you're not sitting
in that position slouched all the time.


Al Brown: [00:26:59] What [00:27:00] you know,
one thing we didn't mention is the disk pressure. So you know
that you have your vertebrae and then the disks are in between.
So the vertebrae, the bony structure, the disc is soft tissue,
very rugged structure, but again, exposed to long passive forces.
It's impacted and sitting. If you think about it, you bring your
thighs sort of towards your abdomen, you know, to about a 90
degree position that actually because of the attachment of like
your hamstrings are attached to your pelvis and as you bring up
that thigh, will tend to pull the pelvis around and want to force
you into that C position. That's why it's good to have normal
length in your hamstrings and all that kind of good stuff. But if
you pull your thigh up into that position and your back does
round off and just sitting in and of itself puts about 40 to 50
percent more force on that disc. So just the act of [00:28:00]
sitting, you've loaded your back. So it's important to get up.
And when you get up, another great thing to do is when you stand,
you just hands on waist, feet, shoulder width apart, and you just
do a little bit of and keep your chin tucked. You don't want to
do the what is it, the limbo where your head goes way back. You
keep your head your head tucked and you do a little bit of back
extension and there should just be a little bit of pressure in
the low back and maybe a little bit of stretching on the front
side. But that resets that disc could actually reposition some of
the pressure, the gel inside it. It's a slow, gentle movement.
It's not something that you force. But any time you're sitting in
a car and sitting at your desk, you know, every 30 minutes,
that's one of those things you get up and just sort of reset your
body in that regard.


Peter Koch: [00:28:52] People will do that. As
they feel really fatigued, you'll get really tired, you'll start
feeling all those bodily [00:29:00] cues, you'll get achy, you'll
get stiff in your mind, I'll get a little foggy. But you really
want to make those changes before those cues happen. That's the
whole idea


Al Brown: [00:29:09] Right it's too late when
you're hurting.


Peter Koch: [00:29:12] Exactly.


Al Brown: [00:29:12] Water over the dam.


Peter Koch: [00:29:13] Yeah. And we ignore those
cues, too. So like, oh, just a few more minutes or I'm almost
done or I'm going to get this here, but we got to get into that
habit and be more intentional, I think. And that's the key word
to be intentional about how we go about our day in our body
position as we sit at our desk or stand at our desk because our
well doesn't even need to be at a desk. You could it could be
anywhere you can be in an excavator working for a construction
company or a bulldozer or you can be a truck driver. You're going
to find yourself in those C positions often. Or I was driving
actually back from this area yesterday and there's summer. So
there's a lot of road construction and there are quite a few
folks out there as flaggers. And you can look at posture's as
they get as the day [00:30:00] gets on, they'll be in that
standing C position where they might have started to be in the
beginning of the day. When they're fresh, they're upright, their
shoulders are back, their heads where it needs to be. And as the
day goes on, they get kind of in that old man position where
they're leaning on the stop sign instead of standing up with the
stop sign.


Al Brown: [00:30:19] That used to be a more
brutal job, you know, because back they figured out that remember
the day when they used to just have a little handle? I do stop
sign and they would just flip it around.


Peter Koch: [00:30:29] And they were holding it
instead of on a poll right?


Al Brown: [00:30:30] They were holding it. So
and some genius came along, probably some famous ergonomist and
said, you know, if you had a longer pole, that would be less
force on the body. And so you'll see that that long pole is
present in all construction.


Peter Koch: [00:30:48] It's ubiquitous now.


Al Brown: [00:30:48] It's ubiquitous. But the
problem is, is you're right. You know, here's a person standing
there all day long not moving, you know, because you can walk
longer [00:31:00] than you can stand still. That makes sense?


Peter Koch: [00:31:04] Does it make sense to me?


Al Brown: [00:31:06] So, like, if you stand
there and don't move, Pete, and then I'm going to go walk and
we're going to see how many hours I can walk and how many hours
you can stand still and see who can last longer. I'm going to
last longer simply because I'm sharing the load throughout my
whole body. And it's just brief moments. You're statically
loading and you can't move.


Peter Koch: [00:31:26] Let's take a quick break
so I can tell you about our E-Ergo resource that can be used to
help solve ergonomic challenges at your workplace. Sometimes
contacting, contracting with and scheduling an ergonomist or
occupational health nurse for an onsite evaluation doesn't fit
with our Just-In-Time workflow in a competitive economy, fixing
the problem right now is essential, and improving worker comfort
and efficiency are key components to ongoing success. Free to our
policyholders MEMICs E-Ergo, Tool can help you overcome ergonomic
challenges. [00:32:00] With just five quick photos or a short 30
second video and a brief description of what's being shown, you
can send us the critical demands and essential functions within
the work tasks once received. Our ergonomics team can identify
risks and exposures and provide reasonable suggestions for
ergonomic improvement within just a few short days. Start the
E-Ergo process by logging into the MEMIC safety director at
www.MEMIC.com/Workplace Safety. Now let's get back to today's
episode.


Peter Koch: [00:32:35] And you talked about it
before the podcast as we were discussing this, the body
carburetor. When I'm moving that carburetors move in your lungs,
your heart, there's a demand in there. You've got enough
cardiovascular activity to support that demand. But when I'm just
standing there and I was on the way home late yesterday evening
watching the [00:33:00] gentleman stand with the stop sign, and
it was for whatever reason, it was a long stop. We must have been
there for ten minutes. And I don't think he shifted maybe once or
twice during that entire ten minutes. And I'm look at him going,
That that can't be comfortable because if it was me, I'd have
been shifting back and forth, moving side to side, because I
can't I can't stand in that one position. My back will hurt. My
knees will hurt. My feet will hurt. Because my carburetor is not
going the way it's supposed to, it's not getting enough air,
right? There's not enough not enough air to make combustion
happen. Kind of.


Al Brown: [00:33:35] You know, it's funny as a
related topic, which I always like to reference this, you know,
the sort of the beginning research of cardiovascular function and
how it impacts us from a static to a dynamic activity is Jeremy
Morris, who's an epidemiologist out of London, and he died in the
90s at 99 and a half years old. But he did the study on the
double decker buses [00:34:00] in London and looked at the
drivers and compared them to the I'm going to call them ticket
takers. And the drivers sat. The whole day and the ticket takers
would put in an average, I think it was, if I think back in the
piece of research, I read about 600 steps a day that was.


Peter Koch: [00:34:21] Just going up and down.


Al Brown: [00:34:22] Up and down the double
decker bus to punch tickets. And in the cardiovascular incident
rate for the drivers was 50 percent higher. Then the ticket
takers, and that was true cardiac events, that's not you know,
they just have, you know, higher risk. And it was you know, it is
a longevity. You know, they did it over a long period of time and
they just set up incident rate driver to take, you know, and took
into account some other. Variables, but for the most part, the
drivers were out of, you know, 50 percent higher incidence rate
of cardiovascular issues.


Peter Koch: [00:34:58] Wow. And that's supported
[00:35:00] in current day. I know a professor that I've worked
with in the past, Dr. Delia Roberts, who's done a lot of work
within the recreation industry with her fit for ski program. But
she's got a fit for Drive program for the long haul truckers out
in British Columbia and did a study from a blood sugar standpoint
and the effect of diet and lack of exercise sitting in the truck
all the time. And just a couple of changes with a little bit of
dietary change to manage blood sugar better and then more
frequent breaks to be able to increase cardiovascular activity,
change alertness, changed accident rates. There's not the studies
not long enough to see the morbidity or cardiovascular incidents.
But as the study goes on, as she keeps working with them, I bet
she'll find some of the same results as the guy from London.


Al Brown: [00:35:54] Sure. Yeah, no, it's I
think it was Dr. Levine. He had mentioned that, you know, post
dinner, post [00:36:00] lunch, post dinner or go take a go take a
15 minute walk and blood sugar drops by about 20 percent, you
know, so it sort of stirs the mix. And it's a healthier mix for
you at that point as opposed to, you know, when you get up and
now you're hypoglycemic because you just ate and you're like,
that lazy boy over there was pretty good. I think I'm just going
to go take a nap and, you know, and so it's a you know, one of
those things that that it's not rocket science. It's not a magic
pill, but it is common sense. It makes a huge difference in our
body physiologically. It's kind of like the posture thing. I
mean, it's your parents, you know, coming in and going straight
up, straighten up, you know, when you're thinking, come on, leave
me alone. But it's more present nowadays because of the advent of
the laptop. And you throw a phone, a cell phone, and most folks
will just bend their neck over and take a look at that cell
phone. [00:37:00] So they're just contributing to it when they
look even at their cell phone. So it's or you see, you know, a
person sitting on the park bench or somewhere in a chair and
they're just in that giant seat posture with their forearms down
on their lap, you know, looking at whatever's going on the
screen. And you're like, oh, you know, it's a physics problem
because. You know, we always talk about the head weighing
somewhere between, you know, there's 10 pounders and there's 15
pounders, but let's call it 13. But for every 10 degrees, you
know, we live in a world of gravity, as you'd mentioned earlier.
So for every 10 degrees that head comes forward, we add another
10 pounds of force to the neck and shoulders, to that flat and
back to that disc, compressing the front side abdominal
intestinal area, lowering the diaphragm so now it can expand.
It's just it's messy all the way around.


Peter Koch: [00:37:54] All the way around.


Al Brown: [00:37:54] All the way around. Nothing
good.


Peter Koch: [00:37:57] Nothing good can come of
this. And [00:38:00] then there's the habit. Right. So you do it
for long enough. And how many of us are conditioned to look at
that phone? Right. So the phone vibrates or you hear a sound that
sounds like your ringtone and you automatically look down at your
phone or at least look down at your pocket or wherever it's
stored. And it's not even your phone. It's somebody else's phone.
But we're conditioned to do that. So we have this habit of
looking down, looking at something that's in our lap or below
shoulder height. And once you get into a habit. It becomes really
hard to break that habit


Al Brown: [00:38:36] Once the genie is out of
the bottle. It's hard to get them back in. Yeah, same thing with
the posture. I mean, once you're down that and again, because we
have a younger population that's kind of they you know, they
didn't know life without a cell phone and a laptop. You know, I
can go back to when none of that existed, you know, and as I do
presentations now, I realize [00:39:00] that, you know, sometimes
folks are looking at me like, wow, you know, it's just that it's
always been part of my life. So but then I see this change in
body posture that's beginning to occur because that thing that's
in front of them and when you're young, you just don't think
about those things. You're going to live forever and never have
an ache or a pain. But, you know, you can talk to anybody who's.
In the in the twilight, as would be the twilight, the twilight of
life, and they'll say, you get achy and you do. So you don't want
to contribute to it. If there are things that are that you can do
that are easy, it's just a matter of initiating those and make
sure you incorporate those into your daily life.


Peter Koch: [00:39:45] And the younger you are,
like you had said, the easier it is to not notice or feel like
you've recovered from. But again, if you continue those postures
over and over and over again, you're not recovering enough.
You're recovering a little bit enough [00:40:00] to not find that
discomfort anymore. But as soon as you go back to that posture
again, you're doing the same damage that you did before or the
postures having the same effect as it did before. So all of a
sudden, you know, you're 13, 14, 15, 16, not a care in the world
high school. It's great looking on the college. It's awesome at
the college. It's great you get out into the workforce and now
you're 28 or 30 years old and you've spent 15 years or longer in
that posture. Now, going back to that little demonstration you
asked people to consider by taking your index finger and pulling
it back. So now do that for a day instead of doing it for 15
seconds. And that's, you know


Al Brown: [00:40:44] Do it for a day, do it for
a week, do it for a month. Do it for 15 years. And the
accumulation of trauma. Leads to.


Peter Koch: [00:40:56] Sure. And it's not just
in one place, it's not just work, we talk about this for
[00:41:00] hearing conservation. When we talk about hearing
conservation programs in the workplace and regardless of how much
time you spend in your workday, it's almost always more time in
loud noises outside of your workday. For most people,


Al Brown: [00:41:18] They're not as loud,
though. At home, the chainsaw is not as loud at home as it is at
work.


Peter Koch: [00:41:22] right the homeowner
chainsaw is always less,


Al Brown: [00:41:25] Right you don't need the
safety stuff. Oh, no, it's a different animal altogether.


Peter Koch: [00:41:29] But as you start adding
it up, so now you ask people, OK, so how long do you spend in
this, this decibel level? Sorry, it's a hundred decibels and
we're going to do this job for an hour or two hours or 15 minutes
and we're going to take a break and we're going to go back the
noise. And overall, they might be four hours in that that noise
environment at work out of an eight hour day. Certainly there's
other work that you're going to do. It's going to be louder for
longer, but on average, it's not going to be that loud for that
long. And then you start adding up the time that people
[00:42:00] spend with headphones in with the music up to 100
decibels, or they're going to mow the lawn at home and it takes
them a couple hours. I'm not wearing hearing protection or
they're using the chainsaw or they're on their snowmobile or
they're on their four wheeler or they're out shooting or they're
out at a bar or at a concert. And all of a sudden you add up all
this time and you've got a lot more time and loud noise outside
of work than you do in work. But you have to add it all together.
So you have four hours at work, you got six or seven hours
outside of work, and now most of your day and it creeps up on
you. And like you said, with posture, your body will get a little
more achy regardless of how good you take care of it. So when you
don't take good care of it, you just end up getting achy sooner.
And you get to that point one day. And like you said before, what
was it.


Al Brown: [00:42:52]  30 is the new 40.


Peter Koch: [00:42:53] That's scary.


Al Brown: [00:42:55] Yeah, I mentioned that the
other day in the presentation. And some of the folks like I don't
understand what you mean. [00:43:00] And I said, you know what?
But someone in their 60s felt at 40. Because of the technology
that now exists in a lot of our lives, those folks using more of
the technology and slouching are going to feel those discomforts
30. So there's been a 10 year slip backwards. You know, I
mentioned things like technology, like simple things like when we
used to back a car, if you would rotate your body, which is good,
you like to rotate your body because it helps to sort of lengthen
a lot of these old, like tissues in your body. But now today you
just look down at the camera and line up the lines. Still can't
do it.


Peter Koch: [00:43:38] That's a whole other
topic.


Al Brown: [00:43:39] So you just you don't you
know, or if to answer the phone, you would have to run to get the
phone or, you know, walk or go to the room where it was attached
to the wall or on the counter. And now you just lift it out of
your pocket and decide if you're going to answer it or not or


Peter Koch: [00:43:55] Or if it's not for you.
You throw the phone to whoever it was.


Al Brown: [00:43:58] Yeah. And [00:44:00] that's
where you get a lot of your entertainment now, too, you know,
from screen time to actually music. So you don't have to go put
an album on. You don't have to get a cassette. You don't you
don't have to go turn the TV on and adjust the ears on the you
know, it's so I mean, those are all kind of funny, very vintage
things, but it's true. So we have eliminated movement.


Peter Koch: [00:44:21] Yeah. That almost the
devolution said go back even farther. And you talk about the work
where we used to do and get back to the agrarian society that we
used to be. And you spent the majority your day in the field.
They are your milk and cows or you're preparing the field or
you're standing at the stove or you're doing you're splitting
wood. Whatever those things were, it was you were spending the
majority your time in activity and you got home at the end of the
day and there was only just enough time to eat, relax for a
little bit and then get enough sleep so that you can get up in
the morning. And now we have all these conveniences which have
[00:45:00] almost devolved our ability to be that active.


Al Brown: [00:45:05] That's right.


Peter Koch: [00:45:06] I have a I have a very
good friend of mine who's whose dad has been a dairy farmer all
his life, and the dad is now getting into his 70s. But, you know,
he will still put in more physical activity in his day just by he
still goes out and milks the cows. He's not anywhere near as fast
anymore. And he's a little more grumpy. It's sometimes when
things don't go his way. But he still puts in a pretty physical
day that would kick most people's butts. They would be exhausted.
He gets back at the end of the day and he's like, yep, just the
same thing I've been doing for the last 60 years or so. . So it's
interesting how that lack of activity has crept into our lives
and it's made it easy for us to relax. But that relaxation has it
[00:46:00] doesn't always have its benefits. It has it detracts
from our ability to have really a pain free longer life.


Al Brown: [00:46:08] Hmm. There was there was an
utter pun in there, but I just couldn't fit it in. Utterly
amazing that he does so well at this age.


Peter Koch: [00:46:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got
it right in the bucket.


Al Brown: [00:46:22] There you go. You know, you
know, the one thing if you think about, you know, a couple of
things we didn't I'm going to throw these in the bucket too. TMJ.
Oh yeah. Jaw pain. Because as soon as you project the head
forward, you change the function of the jaw, headaches, vision
issues. When we look at a computer screen, we blink a whole bunch
less so we get dry eyes. So there is a whole bunch of products
out there from ballooning my glasses etc. And it's just
mechanically you just don't you're not remoistening your eyes
often, [00:47:00] as you would if you were just looking out into
the world as opposed to a screen. So we blink a whole bunch less.
So it's, you know, again, just more things that are not good when
we slouch and we tip forward. So you got to pull back.


Peter Koch: [00:47:14] Got to pull back and it
becomes habit. And when we get into a habit, our body adjusts to
the habit that we're in. So it starts to shut down those things
that it doesn't need, but it does need those things. But we're
driving that negative behavior through habit. So just over time,
just the shortening of the oh, I don't need to be that long as
your muscles just shorten up and all of a sudden my hip flexor is
getting out of the car becomes painful because my hip flexors
have been shortened so much for sitting all the time because
you're sitting in front of your computer screen and then long
commute, you're not walking as much. So those habits and I think
that's a key part to remember too, to break that habit,
[00:48:00] you need to be intentional, but you need to try to
break those habits so that you. Can be more pain free and not
suffer some of the changes that will occur in your body over time
through those habits that you've built up for the last 15, 20,
sometimes even 30 years. You think nowadays going back through
the oh, I was in the in the grocery store the other day and I
kept hearing like a video playing. I'm looking around. I can't
see anybody like I was expecting someone to be watching a video
as a shopping. But what it was there was a kid, probably six
years old, in the cart groceries all around him. And he was just
watching the video. He was on his phone. And so he's six years
old. And we're creating that habit of head because he was head
forward looking at the phone [00:49:00] in his lap.


Al Brown: [00:49:00] Yeah, he's been
indoctrinated.


Peter Koch: [00:49:03] There we go.


Al Brown: [00:49:03] There we go. Yeah.


Peter Koch: [00:49:04] So, you know,
intentionality about the technology that we have and that
intentionality of what we do with it and around it and how it
affects us. It's important for us to know those effects. And
we'll put the reference of the study that you referenced earlier
in the podcast. Show notes. But can you maybe talk a little bit
more about the Harvard study that talked about those the effects
of what's going on when you have that C posture?


Al Brown: [00:49:29] Yes, it's fairly recent


Peter Koch: [00:49:30] You said 2021. Right.


Al Brown: [00:49:33] It's a newsletter they put
out. And I think it was Megan Markovsky, who's a physical
therapist. And I think it was a Kyle Staller. He's a
gastroenterologist at Mass General. But it was an interesting
read because I've theorized for a number of years that, you know,
mechanically you're compressing all those structures. So they're
now beginning to go. And [00:50:00] I'm sure they they've thought
the same. I mean, that's what starts the theory. And then they're
probably much better about doing the research than me. I just
tend to get stuck, you know, bite onto that bone and I'm not
going to change. But I feel that's the case. But, I can give you
the link to that?


Peter Koch: [00:50:16] Yeah, please.


Al Brown: [00:50:16] And beginning to recognize
that that slouch posture is so common, but it's going to create
so many common problems that they're probably seeing those same
complaints over and over again. And at some point you start to
put two and two together and you go, all right, you know, and we
can't in the medical world, sometimes we are so busy treating the
symptoms, we forget to think about the root cause. And when you
when you walk it back and you start looking at it and again in
the world we live in, in safety and risk and exposure, I mean,
that's what we're always doing, is trying to find the root cause
because you can sit there and throw things, tools, money. But
until you've discovered where the problem is and again, this
[00:51:00] is you know, it's pretty basic to me that it is just,
you know, just repeated unconscious behavior of sitting in front
of something that you're looking down at throughout the day. And
we do a lot more things on that computer than we've ever done in
the past. You know, I mean, how many jobs now are just what is
about 80 to 85 percent? I think we're closer to 87 percent of
jobs now are sedentary and they're sedentary, most likely because
of technology. Sure. I mean, look at our logging industry
nowadays.


Peter Koch: [00:51:29] Oh, yeah. Yeah.


Al Brown: [00:51:30] You know, there's no more
log runs down the river with people with spikes on their boots,
running around with pick poles. And, you know, it's you know,
there's a forwarder. They go in. I don't mean that they don't
even have to get out of the seat. Now, the whole forward spins
back around. They drive back out the way they came.


Peter Koch: [00:51:47] And it's like the
Starship Enterprise in there with the amount of controls that
they have because they can do everything from that seat.
Everything most of the things that your hand crew was going to
do, you know, 30, 40 years ago, [00:52:00] it's all done by
machine now.


Al Brown: [00:52:03] Yeah. So and that's an
office that bounces around, you know. So think about now we got
that forward head posture with our C posture and you're going to
go over stumps and bumps and that creates a forward momentum of
your head and core, which translates into a huge extra load on
the back. So, yeah, that's an office on steroids.


Peter Koch: [00:52:25] It's watching a guy a
couple of days ago at a at a resort. They're doing a big
construction job and they're hauling Phil from the pit up the up
the mountain road, which is pretty bouncy, full of water bars.


Al Brown: [00:52:37] Don't you think Phil should
walk?


Peter Koch: [00:52:38] Well, you know, Phil
could walk, but Greg's on his way, so you never know. Put that in
the bucket, too. So and, you know, I got a good view of the
driver, so and all day long, he probably made twenty trips while
we were there doing the training all day. And as he drove past us
just in the, you know, maybe [00:53:00] six, seven hundred feet
that we could see the truck, a lot of bounce happen and you can
see the guy bounce. Up and down in the head, moving back and
forth, he looked like he was at a heavy metal concert for crying
out loud. How much motion was happening? Even with the air right
seat, there was still enough movement. And so he's doing that all
day. And just the compression just from being in the posture. And
like you said, now you add the bouncing adding to gravity and
velocity in that, too. So things aren't going to go well. Over
time.


Al Brown: [00:53:29] Yeah, I'm sure he had his
fill of that job.


Peter Koch: [00:53:36] And on that note. All
right. So we've talked about some solutions for this, right? We
have we want to be intentional about how we're setting up our
workstation. We want to be intentional about when we take breaks
and not just wait for our body to cue us with a pain or fatigue
response. You gave us that little exercise [00:54:00] of being
able to tilt your pelvis the opposite way to sit up straighter,
tuck your head back and get up every 30 minutes or so. What else
can we do to combat that forward head posture? And let's talk
specifically about maybe the office environments or when you
you're actually working at a computer, you maybe you have a
laptop and that's the only thing that you have assigned to you
for a machine to work on.


Al Brown: [00:54:27] Yeah. I mean, simple
things. If you only have a laptop, go out and buy a secondary
keyboard and a mouse and just move that laptop up so that if you
have good vision and that's, you know, you might have a single
lens, single vision lens, not a progressive like you or me, but
if you have a single lens glass or you have good vision, most
likely you want to put that that laptop screen [00:55:00] up. So
where the content that you're viewing is at eye level and then
the keyboard should be down so that your upper arm is parallel to
your core and your forearms parallel to the floor, that 
keeps us the quietest and be in a good chair because again, we
don't want it with the laptop or the screen too low. You're going
to, you know, slump over into the seat position. So that's one of
the basic things to do. And with this work from home that we just
saw recently, we really kind of pushed at least get a secondary
keyboard and mouse and get away from using the laptop for both.
If you have a you know, you move that up a level and you go get a
docking station and get a screen at home, that's at the right
height and the keyboard and all that kind of good stuff. Those
things all influence where your head goes. So it's important that
you look at where those screens are now as a sort of side note,
if you're a progressive lens where that screen won't go as high
because you can actually go in the opposite [00:56:00] direction
with your head going backwards. So we really want that game of
Jenga balanced. So you might have to lower the screen a bit lower
than contented eye height might have to be fifteen or so degrees
below that level because of the way you use your lenses.
Paperwork is another thing that a lot of folks will just lay it.
A classic was to push the keyboard away so that the arms were
extended and then the paperwork was laid between the keyboard and
your belly to a certain extent. So you had an extreme forward
head posture to look down at that paperwork, reverse that, put
the paperwork on the other side and put the paperwork on a slight
incline, 15, 20 degrees. You don't want to cover the screens, but
a little bit of a document holder. And it can even be something
basic, like a little binder that's propped up and it'll raise
that document up enough that you can glance down with your eyes
because your eyes can look down 15 to 20 degrees without you
tipping your head and you can read the document [00:57:00] and
then look back up at the screen. So, you know, look at the things
that you interact with on a daily basis and try to get them at
eye level, your iPhone or your iPhone Android. Sorry didn't mean
to sell advertisement for anything, you know, think about
bringing it up to your eyes as opposed to bringing your head down
to it. And I know that can be tiring because that that phone
weighs a ton, particularly if you're sitting there reading it for
a while. Sometimes I tell folks just to cross their arm over
almost like they're sticking their arm, like they're half folding
their arms. So you might have the left arm under the right arm
sort of up in the armpit area and it can support your hand. So
the phone is in a better position for your hands. Had to stay
upright.


Peter Koch: [00:57:52] Sure. It moves it out a
little bit farther away from your body. Yeah.


Al Brown: [00:57:54] Yeah. And you can do it
sort of passively and kind of read what's going on. So that's
kind of the workstation. Think [00:58:00] about those things and
all the stuff you interact with. Same thing in the car, like
adjust your mirrors. So that when you're sitting upright in the
car, you can see, you know, you might frame out the back window
and if halfway through a drive you look in the mirror and all of
a sudden you're looking at the ceiling, you're going, oh, and
tells you that you've just gone into a forward head see posture.
So. Correcting those mirrors so that they give you cues of where
you are, you can do fun, little things to like once you have your
screens at the right place. I often thought this would be a cool
thing to do, is you put a little and you could you could do
anything you want. I'm thinking this would be sort of the Elton
John kind of tool to help you keep good portion. I reference
Elton John simply because I'm thinking eyeglasses, but if you put
a little mirror at the top of your screens, you know, just there
that when you're in the right position, you can see your eyes.
OK, so as the day goes on, all you have to do is and that's why I
called the Elton John's, I put a set of glasses [00:59:00] over
so you could see yourself in the eyeglasses reflecting back
things like you're wearing eyeglasses as the day goes on, if you
fade out of out of sight. And you don't see yourself, you pop
back up until you see yourself, and it also cues you to get up
and move because you're obviously fatigued and slouching. And
then just from a walking around standpoint, because here's a
showstopper. You never look at yourself. OK, so, you know, how do
you have to rely on these internal memory, muscle memory
kinesiology to understand where you are in space. So, you know,
you're not looking at yourself. So when you were in great posture
walking around, you typically don't see you. Let me say that
again. When you're walking around in great posture and your
head's upright and you might occasionally see your hands swing
by, but other than that, you really won't see much of you at all,
which tells you you're in good shape. If [01:00:00] you're
hanging over in the seat posture and you're seeing a lot of you,
you're creating a lot of problems for yourself.


Peter Koch: [01:00:06] Chances are that's not so
good right.


Al Brown: [01:00:09] You'll see it coming. Yeah,
it's one of those things are good position. You won't see much of
you.


Peter Koch: [01:00:16] Yeah, that's an
interesting key. And I really hadn't thought of it that way. But
it is if I'm looking down, you know, you can see your feet, you
can see your knees, some of us might see, you know, shirts or
skirts or whatever. But if you're sitting up or standing up
straight, you're not really seeing anything now. You might see
hands, you might see a toe, but you're looking around. You're
looking at the world around you instead of yourself and the
sidewalk all the time.


Al Brown: [01:00:40] Good, solid game of Jenga.
You know, you're upright.


Peter Koch: [01:00:45] So what are some work if
people want to find more information about the effects of
slouching and maybe some different ways to counteract it or how
to set your workstation up or to do things to counteract
slouching, where might they [01:01:00] go to find stuff?


Al Brown: [01:01:02] You can go to our safety
director and we have a lot of resources there on the effects of
sitting and ways to set up proper ways to set up a workstation.
We have work from home references simply because most of us have
been doing that for the past year and a couple of months. And we
also have stretches, a couple of good stretch posters, movement.
I call them resetting posters because it's I mean, some of them
are stretches, but a lot of it is just resetting your body. Kind
of like I talked about standing up and doing some back bends.
That's really sort of a resetting of the body in the back. So
there's great material there. You know, James Levine's book on
Stand Up, you know, I don't get any royalties from that
recommendation, but I found it a great a great quick read. It's
one of those kind of


Peter Koch: [01:01:55] It is a really good book.
Yeah. Yeah.


Al Brown: [01:01:57] It just kind of hits the
physiology of it and you kind of [01:02:00] go, huh? And it
really touches on some other things to some. We didn't talk about
obesity and all that kind of stuff from sitting and lowering your
metabolism, but he really does a great job and he did a solid
piece of research on that fidgetors and non-fidgetors and moving
so a great book to reference and certainly online. There's always
good, good references there. We'll put that the Harvard
newsletter on the back side so that you can take a peek at that.


Peter Koch: [01:02:27] Be great. There's a ton
of resources out there. Just when you're searching for stuff,
always try to go to a reputable resource. There's always new and
different information that's out there. Sometimes it's not always
the best. So not that you have to start with MEMIC resources, but
certainly, like you said, we've got a ton of resources out there.
The Harvard Medical Review is also a great place to go. And then
some of the books that are out there are good as well. But as
long as you're talking about how to counteract those things with
just natural stuff, like it's not going to be a quick, easy it's
an easy [01:03:00] fix when you think about it set up straight.
Right. Get up and move. Those are too quick and easy things to
do, but they tend to be difficult because of the habits. So it's
not a pill, it's not a surgery. It's not. I can go see somebody
else and they can fix me. You kind of have to fix yourself. So
that could be the biggest challenge. So when the solution that
someone proffers for you to fix your fix, what ails you is that
magic pill or the surgery or something revolutionary that someone
else can do for you, it's probably not going to correct it. Might
help for a little while, but might not correct that all the way.
So those things that you can do for yourself are going to be
immediately helpful. Just be intentional about them.


Al Brown: [01:03:43] Yeah, I mean, those are
just addressing the symptoms. If you think about it and you know,
what we're talking about is addressing the root cause. So it's
harder, much cheaper, but it works. And, you know, you know,
gravity's going to get you in the end anyway. So, you know,
[01:04:00] don't help it along.


Peter Koch: [01:04:02] Don't give up.


Al Brown: [01:04:03] Don't. Yeah. Don't start
doing the things that are going to happen to you anyway with
aging and the breakdown of the body by mimicking those postures.
Hmm, I was a little commercial break there, mimicking those
postures early on. And again, it's just be mindful. Sure. Of
where you are in space. Yeah. Yeah.


Peter Koch: [01:04:29] Excellent. Well, thank
you very much for coming back on the podcast and sharing all this
great information with us and the listeners out there. So
appreciate it again very much.


Al Brown: [01:04:39] Thank you very much.
Appreciate being here. Always fun.


Peter Koch: [01:04:42] Always fun. Thanks to all
of our listeners out there for joining us today on the MEMIC
Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking about how slouching
can affect your health with Al Brown PT and director of
ergonomics at MEMIC. If you have any questions or would like to
hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email
[01:05:00] me at podcast@MEMIC.com. Also, check out our show
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