So grab some popcorn. Put your feet up and even post some comments while we wait for the interview. You can watch it on the widget below. I will be!

One of the biggest take-aways for in-person participants always seems to be how breathing can be used to help them find support for their body posture.

In Clear the Blear, we learn how to transfer body weight onto the surface we sit on, such that being upright feels like floating. Nice, huh?

After that, we apply a few breathing techniques to relax that nasty neck muscle tension. Everyone looks so relaxed and balanced after 5 minutes of breathing!

Are you curious about Clear the Blear? Tempted? Here’s the link to the digital version.

My take on this dearth of information on upper-mid back pain is that it will be a while before there will be evidence based treatments for thoracic spine pain. So we non-medical people are left to our own devices to deal with it.

Let’s sus this thing out to try to determine the best course of action for what they call “non-specific” upper and mid back pain. Non-specific back pain is the type that’s not connected to a disease or injury that can be directly correlated with the pain. It’s the everyday, muscle and posture pain, generally speaking. What do we know about thoracic spine pain?

First a definition. Thoracic spine pain is pain (and related symptoms) felt in the area between the 1st thoracic vertebra and the 12th (T1 – T12). T1 to T12 is that area of your back that corresponds to the vertical span of your ribs. Now one of the problems with medical studies is they all define “thoracic” a little differently. This skews the data. Data is the traffic cop of medical treatments – no data – no medical treatment. I exaggerate, but it does go along those lines. And that’s why it’s important to know about the data that is out there. Every little bit helps the self-educating consumer.

• Thoracic spine pain, and this what comes to my mind only, is like a mini-epidemic in the world of work. About 30% of the working stiff population – office workers, manual laborers and the like have thoracic spine pain. I can hear all about that when I get my hair done. But I like listening to people talk about their back pain. I know, I’m different.
• Kids get thoracic pain, and yes, it can be related to growth. By the time a child reaches 18, they may have just as much pain as we adults.
• Smoking ups the probability of getting thoracic spine pain.

So already we know that it’s out there more than the doctors can acknowledge when determining treatment, that we need to dialogue with our kids about their pain (and listen to them!) and we need to quit smoking – for our own good.

I’m going to be covering the topic of upper back and mid back pain in installments, so that I can really peruse the research that is out there, and interpret for us self-empowering and holistic types. So, I’ll be back and I hope you will, too.

Sources:
Jeffries LJ, Milanese SF, Grimmer-Somers KA.Epidemiology of adolescent spinal pain: a systematic overview of the research literature. Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 2007 Nov 1;32(23):2630-7.
Briggs, A. et. al. Prevalence and Associated Factors for Thoracic Spine Pain in the Adult Working Population: A Literature Review. J Occup Health 2009.

Non-Neutral Work Positions can Cause Muscle Tension and Pain.

Work related pain often comes from holding yourself in what ergonomists call non-neutral positions. These positions are ones in which the joints are not centered, i.e., the two bones that make up a joint are not aligned with one another. The fit just isn’t right. This reduces how much support you can get for the position you are in. Non-neutral positions create a tremendous amount of tension (and pain!) in the body, because the muscles become like bones in order to scaffold the joint’s position.

After 18 months, improvement was seen in those who not only received new desks and chairs, but also received the benefit of professional help in setting them up. These workers had less muscuolskeletal pain and less eyestrain than the comparison group. Results from this study apply only to workers who began the study with pain. Those who started pain free didn’t seem to benefit from the ergonomic perks provided by the study.

“Just providing new office furniture and written instructions is not sufficient to achieve proper accommodation,” the authors conclude. “Good office equipment is a poor substitute for good working positions.”

Sources:
Laestadius, Jasminka Goldoni; Ye, Jian; Cai, Xiaodong; Ross, Sandra; Dimberg, Lennart; Klekner, Meg.
The Proactive Approach-Is It Worthwhile? A Prospective Controlled Ergonomic Intervention Study in Office Workers. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 51(10):1116-1124, October 2009. Date Accessed. Jan 12 10. doi: 10.1097/JOM.0b013e3181bae19d.

Newswise. Press Release. The Proactive Approach-Is It Worthwhile? A Prospective Controlled Ergonomic Intervention Study in Office Workers. Oct 21 09. Date Accessed. Jan 12 10. http://newswise.com/articles/proactive-approach-to-ergonomics-reduces-pain-in-office-workers.

Good news for yoga practitioners: If you practice regularly, you may be reducing the amount of inflammation you have. A new study out of Ohio State University and published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, compared women who practice twice weekly with those who are more sporadic about it. They gave them things to do that were intended to up the participants’ stress levels, and then followed that up with yoga, a walk on a treadmill or something boring to do. Then they took blood samples. By taking the blood sample, the researchers were looking for a chemical called IL-6 (pro-inflammatory cytokine), which both stimulates and inhibits inflammatory action in the body.

Yoga May Reduce Inflammation and Risk of Disease

The women who practiced yoga regularly had 41% less IL-6 than their not-so-dedicated counterparts, suggesting that yoga may be an easy and rewarding thing to add to a disease prevention lifestyle plan. The Ohio state researchers are planning more studies on this topic.

Sources:
Faculty of the Harvard Medical School. Inflammation: A unifying theory of disease. Health Encylopedia. AOL Health. Last Updated Sept 5 08. Accessed Jan 12 10. http://www.aolhealth.com/conditions/inflammation-a-unifying-theory-of-disease

Press Release. Ohio State University. Yoga Reduces Cytokine Levels Known to Promote Inflammation Released Jan 11 10. Accessed Jan 12 10. http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/560214/?sc=dwtr;xy=5040587