00:29
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of tissue talk. Today we are talking all about sitting as we sit here. As we sit here, talking to you about sitting is like the modern day epidemic.
Don’t Sit Too Long!
You guys, it is something that is really bad that’s going on and the way that the digital age and technology is moving us around and moving us through.
The more we sit on our computers, the more we sit texting, the more we sit with our face down. We have to make sure that we are paying attention to our posture.
The reason why sitting is considered to be the new smoking is because it’s killing people left and right. We really want to talk to you guys about it.
01:26
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
As the quarantine begins to lift, we find ourselves in the middle of a whole new epidemic.
01:31
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Absolutely. This is just crazy because we know as a, as we, as humans are self healing organisms and we have the ability to adapt to whatever circumstances are in front of us and it can be either good or bad. Oh.
01:42
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yeah.
01:43
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Sitting is one of the things we’ve been adapting to that is very bad.
01:46
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yeah. An unhealthy posture is an epidemic in modern day society. That’s hugely overlooked. Huge.
As many of you guys know we’ve been sitting for like three months, most of us sitting way more than we ever have before. We’re going to talk to you guys about that today.
The lack of posture awareness and the convenience of having everything at our fingertips, there is a huge, hidden downside to this whole digital age that we’re in.
We sit at our computers, we sit on the phone texting and we’re getting sicker and sicker from it. It’s really serious in the U S alone, 80% of people.
02:30
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
80% of people suffer from back pain. At some point in their lives, they seek medical treatment. Yeah, me too. I’ve had it. I’ve had it in myself.
I mean, most of us have some kind of back pain one way or another. You guys listen. The total cost of treating low back pain is over $100 billion a year in the United States, $100 billion a year for low back pain.
In fact, the treatment for musculoskeletal pain is more expensive than the annual cost of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
03:08
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Not to make light of it, but it’d be better for you to have diabetes and have back pain. Oh, my guy was,
03:12
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
It’s crazy.
03:13
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Don’t want to do that.
03:14
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Musculoskeletal injuries are costing us on all levels from the time away from work, to going to the doctor, to time to the doctor, to the expense of all of the different injections and everything else.
The majority of it leads to bad posture. This not only affects adults, but also affects children of young ages as well.
Posture And Lifestyle Habits
03:39
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Well, this actually leads me to a point I just wanted to make about this is that our posture is not determined by age or genetics.
That’s a, I mean, that’s really not. It’s all about lifestyle habits. What we choose to do. Now we can learn at a young child. We can learn either good or bad habits there, but as adults you get, and we get to take responsibility for our own actions.
Totally. And that definitely includes our postures. And when you say,
04:04
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yeah, and so think about you guys, as you guys are sitting here watching us. I want you guys to just take a quick inventory of your body right now and check in, how are you sitting?
Are you sitting like this? Are y’all bent forward? Are you looking into your phone? Like, how are you sitting with your shoulders rolled forward? Does your head forward take a look at how you’re sitting right now?
Because whoa, see Scully. He doesn’t even like it. How we’re sitting is how we’re sitting most of the time. So, unfortunately we are in a whole subconscious world of bad stuff.
04:37
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
How you show up when you’re with your posture, is how you’re showing up to all the people showing up emotionally and physiologically how your body is in a health and a health wise circumstance.
A sense of how we are. I’m all calm, all crunched up. I can’t even think right now my circulatory system is just dropping Seriously.
05:00
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Okay. Currently you guys school.
Here’s a big fact that I wanted to get out to currently 65% of school aged, not college school, elementary to high school age, children present with back pain due to postural distortion patterns and children.
As young as 10 years old are demonstrating visible spinal degeneration.
05:29
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
X-rays.
Backpacks and Back Problems
05:31
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Degeneration, backpacks sitting too much.
I don’t think anybody under the age of 18 can sit with a straight back anymore. I think there are several rounded and what’s called kyphotic blaster.
05:44
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
I can do it, but they have to choose to get up right. Use their standard muscle structures to hold up.
05:48
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
We’re all, where’s all of it coming from.
05:51
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
That’s all coming from the lifestyle choices that are habits, that we are bad habits that we’re getting into.
05:56
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yeah,
05:57
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
That’s it. I mean, that’s really all because we can choose to be upright or choose to be slouched, get to make the choice, but you get to make the decision to have better posture.
It’s this all correctable, but it takes changing habits in a good way. Okay. We can show, we’re going to tell you how to do that.
Sitting Destroys Everything
06:14
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
You guys are all coming from sitting, sitting, sitting. It’s horrible sitting is the structural equivalent to metabolic syndrome.
When you sit, you burn one calorie an hour, as opposed to three times as much high Josh, when you were even just walking. So sitting, it just destroys everything. It tanks your metabolism and puts it into the bottom. It tanks your respiratory and your breathing.
Everything drops forward and is compressed. You guys don’t even get a good deep breath. Researchers have found that prolonged sitting increases the risk of developing chronic diseases.
Again, various types of cancer, heart disease, type two diabetes from sitting and other research shows that people who are sitting in front of a computer for five hours or more that’s me right now, unfortunately, a day have an increased risk of developing mental illness.
So there you go.
07:17
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
That’s my excuse, depression and insomnia. Just from all of the city that we’re doing on our computers at home, you have an opportunity to have an increased risk of developing mental illness, depression, and insomnia.
07:31
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
While we’re talking about this research, did that EMT talk about stress, the mental, emotional, all the stress that we take on while we’re sitting.
We’re just talking about the position of her spine, just our spine being in that C curve instead of the normal Esker we’re in that sea curve, just from being in that position, all these negative effects are happening.
You couple that with stress, massive amounts of stresses out there right now, your health distracts or health effects are just going down lower and lower.
Low Back Pressure From Sitting
07:56
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yeah. Instead of evolving, because our technology, as our textile technology evolves, we’re D evolving at the speed of technology where every time it gets more and things get easier for us in the tech world, we lose it as far as our physical and it’s really, really bad, prolonged sitting.
It decreases metabolic function and increases the pressure in spine and posture while you’re in a seated position. Right now, while you guys are sitting, the pressure in the low back is increased. Good, John. Awesome.
The pressure in the low back while you’re sitting is increased by 1.7 times, your body weight, 1.7 times, your body weight that’s with proper posture, That’s with good posture. You slouch, it takes it even more.
If, and what it shows on average is that a 10 per street PR saw a 10% increase in forward head posture when sitting and working with a computer monitor.
09:07
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
I mean, we’ve talked about forehead posture with when you’re standing around that bowling ball is getting more and more, all that pressure is put on the spine, but we’re just sitting here and we’re adding more pressure to our spine,
09:15
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Right? We’ve always talked about that whole 42 pound head thing. Remember to the minute the head and the shoulders roll forward. The muscles that are back here that are doing their job, supposed to be posturely to hold everything up are no longer doing it because they’re being overstretched.
Now they’re asking for the joints and the vertebrae, the bones to take over, which that’s not their job. They provide structure, they don’t provide the stability. That’s where the muscles come in. If the postural muscles aren’t working, then this big head, that’s a lot of weight.
The S I know I got a big head geesh, so listen, I know Robin crazy, huh? It’s so much get this one. The S this, it gets better. The spine is generally strong enough to handle the pressure of a slouch spine for only 20 minutes.
That’s after that, the vertebral disc starts to absorb all the pressure.
How Many Minutes Do You Sit At A Time?
10:14
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Now you understand what’s happening with all the degenerative disc issue, because people are sitting and sitting 20 minutes of sitting. How many minutes do you guys sit at a time?
10:25
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
And do you think about it? Just talk about where you are right now.
How many breaks do you take during the day during your work day, where you could sit in front of the computer and just knock out something, how long are you there?
45 minutes, an hour, three hours. Now I know people, they don’t get up at all. It’s maybe going to go to the bathroom once or twice, but then that’s, it’s a 7, 8, 9 hour day.
They’ve only gotten up when they went through.
10:44
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
We’re, we’re always talking to our clients about it. In fact, I’m teaching right now, I’m teaching online. I’m teaching some students anatomy, and literally every other second, I have to stand up because I just can’t sit for that long.
A period of time, it’s driving me crazy. I find that my body hurts if I’m sitting that much, but we’re. It’s such a subconscious way of doing things that we disconnect from what we’re doing, because we’re focused on what we have to get done.
So think about that. Poor posture slowly decreases the amount of energy that you have. In fact, just 15 minutes of reading or typing in an ergonomically inefficient position with poor posture.
It exhausts your neck, your shoulders, and your upper back muscles. Just hanging out like this after 15 minutes, you don’t have anything more. No wonder you start getting that forward head issue.
11:36
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
He just doesn’t. He just like, oh, he forced her to fall asleep with whatever you’re doing. I know.
It’s All About Changing Your Posture
11:40
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
I mean, it’s, and it, and so here’s the beauty of this. It’s not just how many hours you sit, that’s bad for. It’s often how often you interrupt that sitting position.
That’s good for you. It’s about changing your posture. All posture can be fixed up to a certain point. After a certain point, there’s too much adaptability and your body just won’t do.
12:04
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
It was what I talked about earlier. Our bodies are designed to be adaptable in many ways, good ways, and in very negative ways.
That native way of bones can actually change position, change the way they’re formed. We can add bone, we can subtract mode.
We can do all these things. It’s all because of our foster and then city.
12:20
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Here’s the other thing too, that I want to read. I know it’s so quick, Robin. It’s so quick, 15 minutes is not any time at all. It’s like a blink of an eye.
12:31
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
You read how much time do we sit on Facebook and watch how much time we sit on Instagram in school through how much time are we just hanging out in the.
12:39
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Copper Bruce book library?
12:41
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
No,
12:42
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Not yet.
12:43
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
We’re not there yet, But here’s the crazy part. It’s not just standing. You can actually have poor posture and standing to stand on one leg. You stand on another.
12:56
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Leg, not standing desk. Now you’re standing all the time, right?
12:59
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Or you’re standing in a funky way that isn’t really that isn’t supportive. You’re wearing non-supportive shoes. You’re not doing whatever. Yes, on the standing desk, but you gotta move.
It’s All About Movement
So this is also about movement. It’s about contracting your glutes. It’s about using your postural muscles in the back. I always say, if you have eyes in the back of your head, you will have great posture and a great look and butt.
I really believe it because our head, our eyes are faced here. We start thinking this way, where we’re watching and thinking about what our eyes are into. And we forget about all the rest.
You have to make a conscious effort for posture, because if you don’t, we’ll drop right back into what’s comfortable. Even so if you, I just had a student tell me this morning, were talking about a shoulder where we’re doing the anatomy.
13:48
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
We’re doing shoulders and biceps and trapezius and all bodies of the muscles of the upper torso and back. She said that her shoulder is killing her.
That if she pulls it back, then her body feels a lot better. And she doesn’t understand why. I’m like, because it’s supposed to be that way. Posture can actually make you better if you just have to focus on it.
Posture Is Habitual
14:11
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Yeah. The bad posture is probably what we’re talking about. Posture is habitual. You think about it.
When you drive on the freeway. Anyway, you’re going down and going down the highway. You just, all of a sudden, you’re at your house all of a sudden, and you’re even remember the steps you took to get from wherever you were to there.
You’re setting up your new driveway. You demand safely, you hope and that’s official. It’s subconscious that your unconscious mind is taking over, doing that visual way to go.
Now you can react to circumstances that have in front of you, but you’re not planning out your route. Right? To change that, to bring it to the conscious mind is intentional. You can change your posture, but you have to be intentional about.
14:46
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Totally. John Morrow, two great exercises stretches to do at work. We’re about to get it to you right now. So how do we combat this?
Hi Oliver. First of all, you need to take posture breaks. What we mean by that is if you’re sitting, you need to stand up every 20 to 30 minutes, every 20 to 30.
15:08
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Minutes.
15:11
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
For as long as you possibly can.
15:12
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
What’s the minimum. Give me, give me a minimum. That’s my minimum.
15:15
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Please just come up. Squeeze, squeeze, and then sit back down. It’s not that.
15:21
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Hard.
15:23
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
He should do it more often though. I tell you this like this posture, but so first of all, squeeze your butt and stand up. That’s a pretty easy little mantra.
Squeeze your butt and stand up. What you’re doing is as you squeeze your glutes, what you’re doing is you’re starting up those postural muscles. Those are big guys. Back there we would get forgotten about because we sit on them, they get ischemic, which means they lack blood flow.
They get a lack of activity. Every 20 to 30 minutes, we are not meant to sit. We are built for movement. If you are standing and you get your cool standing desks, like John has like a dog.
What you’re gonna do is make sure that you don’t stand on one leg for more than the other. You’ve got to make yourself, make sure that you are even make sure that you’re not dropping into one hip.
16:10
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Make sure also that you are ergonomically functional, which means your monitor has to be up high enough so that you don’t have to look up and you don’t have to look down.
It should be straight in front of your face. You want to make sure that the mouse and the keyboard aren’t so far away, that you have to keep reaching for it. Because every time you reach, you drive your shoulder forward.
The other thing too is you want to make sure that everything is pretty much within the front of your gaze. Because if you have to turn to the left or to the right, all the time, you’re actually going to end up throwing your posture.
16:45
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
I have to start sitting over there because I keep looking this way all these times.
16:47
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
It’s because you look at me. It’s true. Yeah. What did I say? What? The other thing too is ha I got the thumbs up for that one. What does changing posture look like? Like we’ve been saying, stand up, move, stand up, move, stand up.
Activate Your Postural Muscles While Seated
17:06
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Let’s see you for whatever it is. You can’t stand up in the moment. You can pull your belly button down, squeeze your butt while you’re sitting there, hold it for 42 moments. Let it go. Do that several times. At least you’re activating your postural muscles.
17:17
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Reminding your body that it needs to work as well. That you really are. The other thing too, is when you go from sitting to standing, squeeze your buttocks, your butt should be driving your movement.
We tell our clients all the time, drive from your glutes. As you squeeze the stand, that’s actually what is driving you upward. Otherwise you’re leaning forward and you’re using the front of your legs, which is going to then throw you into bad posture.
17:41
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Your hip flexors are so as you’re all going to grab on. It’s going to pull on your spine more.
17:45
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
We have muscles in the back of our body that are considered our postural muscles there. The back of the neck, the back, the big erectors of the back, the glutes, the hamstrings and the calves.
Everything that lines back is considered postural because we are very intelligent beings. We like to stand upright, drive from your glutes, drive from them. I say it to everybody. I talk about it. Here’s the funny thing is I say that this is the place where everybody’s telling you to get your head out of your butt.
We really want you to get your head in your blood, because if you’re thinking about it’s working. Please get your head in your butt and squeeze from it. So the other thing too is John.
If you’re standing at your desk, be conscious about what you’re doing, pay attention, to make sure that your belly is turned in, pulled in, that you are sitting and you’re pulling your belt, buckle up towards your belly button.
18:38
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
That will actually go into the posterior.
18:39
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Tilt. Mindfulness.
Be Aware Of How Your Feet Hit The Ground
18:41
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
If you’re aware of how your feet are hitting the ground, where your feet are in locations, the ground where the weight is in your feet, not one side or the other, not outside on either edge of your feet, not sitting in your heels or sitting in your toes.
That’s actually going to go up your kinetic chain into an ascending posture and actually help you. As long as your being conscious, standing, moving, walking, squeezing your butt, because we love that your posture will actually get better.
You can fix your own posture and you, then you don’t have to be one of the 80% of the people who are suffering from a musculoskeletal injury.
19:27
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
That way you can get out there, be athletic in some manner and then hurt yourself, right? And then come on, we’ll help you.
19:33
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yeah, we do that here. So we’ll help you. But, but the beauty of that is too, even if so, here’s the thing.
Majority of people think that people who are sedentary are the ones with bad posture. Sedentary means you’re not moving. Static is what people are doing when they’re sitting in their chair at work and they’re sitting in their car.
Sedentary is like, where you’re just not doing anything.
19:57
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Netflix. Yeah.
19:58
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Majority of people are actually doing stuff. They’re static. They’re just not moving. We are dynamic creatures and we need to move.
The thing is you can get bad posture from overdoing. It just as much from underdoing it. From you guys that are working out and overdoing it at home on your home workouts, because you’re trying to like, get it in when you can get it in, right.
You can overdo it by repetitive movement. That, and that will mess with your posture,
20:26
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Doing something a hundred times, the wrong way is not going to help you. It’s only gonna make things worse, right?
20:31
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
It’s all of the repetitive issues of sitting, smashing your spine, compressing your disks, like wearing stuff. That’s too heavy. Having a bag one side all the time, that 600 pound bag that everybody wears.
It’s really, really up to you to change it. The people that you go to find they can be catalysts, but at the end of the day, you get to take a lot of Feel better. Okay?
As long as he feels better about that, you get to be in charge of you because really only you can fix you. Anything else that you go to outside of it?
If you don’t follow along, we’ll only last about two hours because the body you’re in your body, way more than we’re in your room.
21:15
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
We can only show you the path pallets right over there. We can guide you on how to walk on the path. You have to walk the path yourself.
Get Up And Move Around, Right Now!
21:20
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yes. So is everybody tired of sitting now? Because I know I am and I have to go back to class.
I’m going to say a sign off for this week, but I hope you guys learned a lot about sitting. I hope you guys learned that you shouldn’t be sitting. I hope you guys pay attention to your glutes.
I hope you pay attention to your movement. I hope you pay attention to your body and how it is moving in this world because let’s get those injuries down to a minimum.
21:46
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
I would set a timer every 20 minutes.
21:49
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Huge AARP. Hey you guys. I hope you guys enjoyed what we said today. We will see you all next week with another great episode.
If there’s anybody who needs anything on sitting, please pass this along to them.
Let them know that we are here. Also if there’s anything that you guys want to hear about, shoot us a DM or a comment. We’d love to have an episode just for what you’re looking.