快猫短视频

ADMIT it. Regardless of how often your mother told you to sit up straight
when you were a child, you still slump in your chair. Whether you鈥檙e relaxing in
your favourite comfy chair, sitting like a curled up spring in a traffic jam, or
poised before your computer at work, your lower back slouches into a C shape,
your head juts forward and your shoulders hunch over.

Sure, you straighten up now you鈥檝e been reminded. But it won鈥檛 last long, and
it may already be too late. Your bad posture is habitual and the damage has been
done. You have a lump at the top of your spine from years of craning your head
as you read, and your viscera have adapted to years of being squashed by your
sagging ribcage. But it鈥檚 not your fault: the chairs are out to get you.

The Western seated position is simply unnatural, says Galen Cranz, a
sociologist by training and now an architecture professor at the University of
California, Berkeley. She teaches on how people respond to the environment
around them, and sits on chairs as infrequently as possible. 鈥淚 have come to
believe that chairs are hazardous to our health,鈥� she says.

The most obvious danger from chairs is that scourge of the Western world,
lower back pain. Chair sitting puts 30 per cent more pressure on the spinal
discs than standing. It also strains the back muscles, lower back nerves and
diaphragm. But that鈥檚 not all. Cranz searched through reports from many
countries and uncovered evidence that chairs contribute to a depressing
catalogue of disorders.

鈥淰aricose veins only exist in cultures that do chair sitting,鈥� she says. One
theory to explain this argues that Western schoolchildren spend years sitting
still with their feet at right-angles to their legs. This habit opens wide the
leg鈥檚 saphenous vein, which loses its elasticity. And when, in later life, the
children get jobs where they have to spend lots of time on their feet, their
permanently dilated veins cannot cope. Sitting has also been linked with other
circulatory problems, reflux鈥攊n which the constricted stomach pushes acid
back up the gullet鈥攁nd even elimination. Asian and African cultures that
do not share our devotion to the chair avoid the worst of these problems.

From a fundamentalist perspective, chairs should all be destroyed, says
Cranz. But, to be pragmatic, they could at least be made more body-friendly.
This job should have fallen to ergonomists but, she argues, they cannot seem to
agree even on issues such as chair height or whether arm rests are necessary.
And, anyway, they鈥檙e missing the point. Physiological problems stem from
positioning the torso at a 90-degree angle to the legs. 鈥淭hey never challenged
the right-angle seated posture itself,鈥� Cranz says.

To maintain the natural curvature of the spine, particularly the curve at the
small of the back, the angle between the torso and the legs must be larger, she
says, which means changing the fundamental design of chairs. One way to create
this obtuse angle is to lean back further. But without a high back rest, you are
forced to crane your neck forward to support your head鈥檚 weight. So the back
rest must extend high enough to support the head and neck. This results in a
lounge chair鈥攏ot what you鈥檙e used to when scribbling at the desk or
digging into a pot roast.

If instead you keep the back vertical and drop the legs down to an angle of
about 130 degrees to the spine, the muscles to the front and back of the pelvis
share the work of keeping the body upright, making it easy to sit even without a
backrest. But that also raises the seat, putting you in a semi-standing or
perching position. This option would mean raising desk and table heights as
well.

To open the angle but keep the seat low, Norwegian designer Peter Opsvik
created the balance chair in the late 1970s, with a slanted seat and a platform
to rest the knees on. Popular among the health-conscious, this chair doesn鈥檛
strain the spine like normal chairs do. 鈥淏ut there are problems,鈥� Cranz says.
鈥淚t鈥檚 hard on the shin. And you lose the physical advantage of having your feet
on the floor and getting feedback from the soles of your feet.鈥�

Cranz thinks perching may be the answer. 鈥淩ight-angle sitting is hard on the
back and standing is hard on the legs,鈥� she says. 鈥淧erching is halfway between
the two, rests both the back and the legs, and doesn鈥檛 distort either one.鈥�
Chresten Mandal, a surgeon from Klampenborg in Denmark, agrees. For 20 years he
has argued that children鈥檚 school furniture should be higher, with the seats and
desks slanted downwards towards each other. This puts children in a
semi-standing position and the mutual angling of chair and desk means they don鈥檛
have to slump over their desks to read and write.

鈥淭his is really a serious problem for mankind that we already spoil our backs
in school age,鈥� Mandal says. 鈥淢ost of the schools in Denmark and Sweden are
using much higher furniture now.鈥� Mandal says office furniture should also be
higher.

If using lounge chairs or tall chairs with slanted seats is the answer to the
West鈥檚 horrendous toll of back problems, why haven鈥檛 we welcomed them into our
homes and offices? Cranz says there is a cultural dependence on鈥攅ven
obsession with鈥攔ight-angled chairs. From the managing director鈥檚 chair to
the carver at the head of a dining table, they are inextricably linked to issues
of status and hierarchy, making it very difficult to change people鈥檚 minds. 鈥淭o
make radical changes, you have to start in the schools because grown-up people
are accustomed to sit bent over,鈥� Mandal suggests.

Cranz herself bucked the trend and lived for several years without any
traditional chairs in her home. 鈥淭hat was fun to practise what I perched,鈥� she
laughs. To rest your bones in her apartment, the only options were high stools,
lounge chairs or platforms to perch or lie on. 鈥淣ow,鈥� she says, 鈥淚 also have two
straight chairs for people who are psychologically uncomfortable not sitting on
肠丑补颈谤蝉.鈥�

Ultimately, Cranz says, it doesn鈥檛 matter if you have the perfect Mandal-type
chair or lounge chair if you spend too much time on it. 鈥淓very posture has its
problems,鈥� she says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not as a species designed for stasis. That鈥檚 why
moving from one to the other is so important.鈥� Now think about how much you
moved while reading this article. It鈥檚 time for you to take a walk, jog or even
enjoy a good crawl across your floor. Above all, get out of that chair!