Home > Learning Center > Why sitting in the office is a pain
Why sitting in the office is a pain
Why sitting in the office is a pain
Do you get a sore back from sitting in your office chair, even though it has a bunch of levers and knobs for almost every conceivable adjustment to make it conform to your body?
Well, maybe the problem is that your chair is still missing something: a separate adjustment for men and women.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo have completed a study showing that men and women don't sit the same way, leaving them prone to different types of back ailments.
Women tend to position themselves closer to the front of the seat and maintain a more upright posture. So they are more susceptible to back-muscle pain because their typical upright sitting posture requires greater use of back muscles.
Men tend to sit back in the chair seat and slouch against the back rest. That makes them more prone to low back pain, some from muscles and also from spinal discs --they are at increased risk of disc damage from prolonged sitting in a slouched position.
The researchers were commissioned to do the study by Keilhauer, a Toronto-based chair manufacturer. "We noticed that women and men, in general, were sitting differently," company vice-president Jackie Maze explained. "And we wanted to know if we were right."
Jack Callaghan, who did the study with doctoral student Nadine Dunk, says anatomical differences between the sexes likely account for the seating preferences. Simply put, women have more flexible hips than men.
The findings may seem self-evident, but they will come as a surprise to many in the chair industry, Ms. Maze said. Dr. Callaghan expects his research will have a big influence on the future design of chairs so that they finally "accommodate both genders."
The study, in the journal Clinical Biomechanics, concludes that "females could be encouraged to use the back rest more to reduce muscle activity and males may need greater lumbar support" to prevent slouching.
Stopping road carnage
Drivers may hate them, but police cameras and other automated ways of catching speeders prevent traffic accidents and save lives.
Australian researchers reviewed 26 separate studies. The combined results revealed that accidents fell by at least 14 per cent along roads where speed cameras or similar devices were installed.
Even better, crashes resulting in deaths or serious injuries were reduced by 40 per cent.
The researchers conclude that speed traps are beneficial because they encourage drivers to slow down.
"The faster the vehicle is travelling, the greater the energy inflicted on the occupants during a crash and the greater the injury," they write in the Cochrane Library, a publication of an international organization that evaluates medical studies.
Meanwhile, experts are worried about a global increase in road carnage as more developing countries become "motorized."
A report in today's edition of The Lancet, notes that 1.2 million people were killed and 50 million injured in traffic accidents worldwide in 2002.
That figure is expected to surge in the next decade.
Detecting colon cancer
Women and low-income people appear to be missing out on tests for early colon cancer detection, a new Canadian study suggests. That means that if the disease is detected at a later stage, it is harder to treat.
The study, by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, found that women are seven times more likely than men to have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis. And low-income people were 22-per-cent more likely to have their cancer detected later than wealthy individuals.
The researchers aren't sure why women and the poor are less likely to benefit from early detection.
But the study "underscores the need for a provincewide screening program for colorectal cancer," lead author Linda Rabeneck told The Canadian Press.
Currently, no province or territory has a specific program to screen the general population for the disease.
An organized approach should, in theory, help reduce colon cancer deaths among all groups. With early detection, the cancerous part of the colon can be surgically removed before it spreads.
Bright idea
Bright light therapy is just as good as Prozac at chasing away the winter blues, a Canadian study indicates.
During winter months, many people slip into depression, a condition known as seasonal affective disorder, or SAD.
Their mood gradually lifts as spring arrives. Limited sunlight is thought to be the cause.
Previous research has demonstrated that these patients respond to antidepressant medications as well as light therapy (in which the person is exposed to a specially designed bright light for 30 minutes each morning).
However, the two treatments have never been rigorously tested against each other to determine if one is tops.
The new study, involving a total of 96 patients in four Canadian cities, found both treatments to be equally effective. About 66 per cent of patients who received either light therapy or Prozac (fluoxetine) showed an improvement in their condition, according to the study in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
But the light therapy seems to work slightly faster and has fewer side effects than the drug.
Even so, the treatments are so close in effectiveness that "patient preference" should determine which one is used, said researcher Anthony Levitt at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
