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To end back pain at work

Ian Sample

London: If office colleagues begin to slide beneath their desks or flail hopelessly at out-of-reach keyboards, fear not. The latest medical advice on preventing back pain may be to blame.

Researchers at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen in Scotland used positional magnetic resonance imaging capable of taking snapshots of 22 volunteers' spines as they sat upright, slouched and hunched forward or laid back at an angle of 135 degrees.

Desk slouchers, the images showed, are at high risk of causing wear and tear to spinal discs in their lower spine. But those sitting upright also faired badly. With the back vertical strain on the spine forced spinal disc material to shift out of line.

The safest posture, which put least strain on spinal discs and surrounding muscles and tendons, was the substantially more relaxed 135 degree backward sprawl, the researchers found.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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