Don't Die of a Misprint!

As many of you know, I was an engineer in an automotive lab for over ten years. In that time I ran more studies than I can remember. Many of them were inconclusive. That is, you really couldn’t draw any conclusions one way or another, or you could draw conclusions, but they were either counter to conventional wisdom, or raised more questions than they answered.

That’s how science works. Unfortunately, most bosses want answers, right or wrong. When someone gives you money to run a test, and you come back with “inconclusive” as the result, there’s a tremendous amount of pressure to “make up” an answer.

There’s also the problem of the whole second hand news phenomenon. When you read a health article in a magazine or online, it’s most often written by a reporter who is putting their own spin on the researcher’s results. Often times, an erroneous spin.

I saw this many times during my years in the auto industry, and I became very good at “reading between the lines” to figure out what a study really said.

In the study I’m talking about today, researchers studied the forces on your spine and surrounding muscles under various seated positions. What they found was that the forces were higher when seated straight up than when the individual leaned back in a reclined position.

The conclusion that I’ve now seen reported 4 times in the last two weeks was that we should all start leaning back while we’re seated.

Really? Did the study actually run for many years and measure back problems in people who sat up straight verse those who reclined? No, of course they didn’t. Instead the researchers and reporters drew conclusions with insufficient data.

You see, as anyone who is well researched in lower back disorders knows, continual loading of the lower back musculature is REQUIRED for optimum back health and strength. It’s why astronaunts have to be very careful to exercise while in space, and even so will experience muscular atrophy that they must recover from once they return to earth. It’s also the reason why any modern surgeon will have a back surgery patient out of bed and walking mere days after the surgery.

Lower back health is not about avoiding the use of these core muscles, it’s about constantly exercising them with forces that are high enough to keep them strong and healthy, but low enough to not cause damage. The reports did correctly report that slouching over in your chair is not good because it not only places higher loads on your spine, but it relaxes all of the surrounding musculature.

Standing or sitting with a proper straight posture does load your spine to some small degree (well below any level that could cause damage), but also requires your muscles to do a continuous workout in order to maintain the upright posture (hence why we slump when we get lazy).

The study generated correct data, however the conclusions everyone is generating are simply incorrect.

You’ve seen the same thing happen all throughout the health and fitness world: First eggs were healthy, then they were unhealthy, now they’re healthy again. The researchers didn’t make any mistakes, but whoever drew the conclusions went further than the data allowed.

One of my favorite quotes is by Mark Twain: “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”