Environmental factors
The design of seating found in business and industrial settings, transportation, and the home only encourages poor postural habits. Rarely do the chairs and seats available give adequate support to the lower back and neck and, unless a conscious effort is made to sit correctly, we are forced to sit badly.
For the neck, ideally the back of the chair will come up high enough so that we can rest our head against it. But many seats provide no support for the head. An exception are the seats manufactured for most airlines, but, unfortunately, their head supports push the head and neck into the very same protruded position that causes our problems. It is the brave person indeed who takes the risk of sleeping in one of these seats, because when he or she wakes up he or she may well feel the old familiar pains in the neck.
When traveling by car, train, bus, or plane, we often are compelled to sit in the position dictated by the seats provided. It may be necessary for the driver of a car, bus, or truck to protrude the head and neck in order to see through the windshield; this is especially likely in bad weather.
Furniture in offices and factories all over the world is often designed poorly. Improvements have been made in the past decade, but not enough. And, to make matters worse, the furniture is rarely adaptable to individual requirements. This is one of the reasons that so many people who spend most of their day in a seated working position develop lower back and neck pain. Until all furniture designers un-
derstand the requirements of the human frame and begin to manufacture their chairs accordingly, we will continue to suffer from their neglect.
Finally, the design of domestic furniture is not any better. Unless your favorite living room chair is exceptional, you will have insufficient support in the lower back and the neck and will continue to place strains on these areas when you relax in the evening. If your neck problems are aggravated by reading or watching television, it is unlikely that the story is giving you a pain in the neck. The cause of the pain is not a ridiculous plot or unconvincing acting but rather the posture you have adopted. And this posture depends to a large extent on the type of chair or support you use.
Although the poor design of furniture contributes to the development of back problems, equal blame lies with the way we use the furniture. If we do not know how to sit correctly, even the best-designed chairs will not prevent us from slouching. On the other hand, once we are reeducated in correct sitting, bad chairs will not have a big impact on our posture.
