How important is correct posture in everyday life?

The most important points in brief

• Few people pay attention to maintaining a healthy posture in everyday life.
• This posture is of essential importance in order to minimize the risk of possible late effects in the back or on the intervertebral discs.
• Proper posture is not only important when sitting at a desk.
• In principle, we have to work on ourselves all the time to really protect our backs.

Who doesn't know the tension on the shoulders and neck after spending a lot of time sitting at the desk? Who does not know that such tension can only be the beginning and that the pain will eventually move to the back area, where serious problems with the intervertebral discs then threaten? It is therefore important to maintain a healthy posture in all everyday situations.

Even when brushing our teeth, we forget the back-friendly posture

Sure, the greatest danger to your back, neck and shoulders comes from sitting at your desk for a long time. However, it is not just a matter of posture, but also of whether the table height is right or whether you are sitting too high or too low. But even if all these factors go together so that we can adopt a healthy posture, it is still extremely important to get up at regular intervals, walk around a few meters, maybe do a few squats and stretch.

Fitness and gymnastics (or almost all sports) are of course always good for training the stressful parts of the body. Often, however, we overlook the fact that we not only adopt a bad posture when doing office work. Take care of it yourself, for example in front of the mirror when brushing your teeth: In the rarest cases this is back-friendly, even when we are lying down we overstrain the spine, intervertebral discs, shoulders or neck.

Many household chores are bad for your back

You have probably noticed in yourself that it hurts in the cross while preparing food. For example, if you lean too deep over the vegetable board while chopping. Or when vacuuming. Or doing the dishes in an unhealthy posture. Even emptying the dishwasher puts a strain on your back. If you make sure to keep your back straight during all these activities, you can protect your back - you should only use hollow back and bending forward.

The burden of an unhealthy posture begins, however, it is hard to believe, while standing. If you constantly load the same leg, push your hips out on one side and support yourself with one hand on the hip, you bend your spine over the long term. Chest out, stomach in is also only conditionally useful as an instruction to yourself, usually a hollow back is created. While doing this, push your knees through and also put pressure on your lumbar spine.

Tools for desk work

Back to the posture at the desk. If you notice that you are often leaving the correct posture there, you can get a standing aid. This creates a relaxed posture, at the same time you can always easily circle or rock, which has better blood circulation in the back than standing or sitting motionless.

A pezzi ball is also recommended. You can't and shouldn't sit on it for long, but it does loosen up rigid sitting postures. Sit on the ball in front of the desk with your legs apart and try, while you are working on the computer, to roll the ball a little while rotating your hips at the same time.