Healthy sitting habits: the Chiropractor’s advice

Prevention, in the field of spinal health, is a great mindset and can save you a lot of pain and care needs if you look out for your body. That's why in this week's video, Dr Abbey Chilcott will cover our "sitting habits" and show you how to sit properly.

It's becoming fashionable to know that sitting is the new smoking. Our lives are dominated by sedentary behaviour and there is a growing body of evidence to suggest a link between sitting down for too long and chronic diseases like Type 2 Diabetes.

If you do need to sit down for a longer period of time, then there are a few healthy sitting habits you can use. Using Jess as my model over here...
Sitting down you should have your feet on the ground. If your feet can't reach the ground, they should be on a little foot rest. You should not have your knees crossed at all. The back of your knees should be in front of the front of the seat. Your knees should be either level with your hips or below the level of your hips. Your back in the lumber region and the thoracic region should be supported by the chair that you are in. If you don't have sufficient support with the chair that you're in you should use a back support. Have your shoulders back and relaxed and try to have your arms parallel to the ground. Obviously as comfortable as you get sitting down, try to not sit down for longer than about 20 minutes.

As you will see changing these habits is mostly about becoming aware of them first. The more you remind yourself to "check in" with yourself, verifying if your current sitting posture is a healthy one, the more you'll empower yourself to gently start implementing small changes. To then finally using nothing but healthy sitting habits.

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