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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

How often do you find that a person with a low body-fat ratio with negative effects caused by bad posture? The people who I've seen with obvious problems caused by poor posture, like a hump or sore back or joints, are usually moderately to highly overweight. Kind of like how women with large breasts can have problems with soreness or neck humps. I suspect that it's not so much about good posture as it is about having a variety of postures throughout the day and not having bodyweight stressing one's joints. Granted, I have no scientific evidence for this. It's just from my own observations(and my own experience of being a former fat guy).

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To supply a counter-point, I'm underweight, and I had sore wrists and lower back pain before I made my workspace ergonomic.

I'm a tall (1.86 m) and fit middle aged man. I have neck problems from using laptop or bad chair. I started to have lower back problems but I fixed them with a chair.

I realized nearly two years ago that almost all tall people in my office use external monitors and it clicked. The taller you are the worse the laptop ergonomy is. Human head weighs 4.5kg-5kg. If you have to bend your neck even a little bit your muscles have to do lot of static work. You can compensate by bending your back, tall people have to bend their back more.

My hypothesis is that short or fit people can get away more than tall or unfit, but things will show up after 20-30 years of bad posture for everyone.

> If you have to bend your neck even a little bit your muscles have to do lot of static work. You can compensate by bending your back, tall people have to bend their back more.

Or you could (with the right chair and foot rest) angle your seat instead of bending your back.

I don't see how you can fix things with just chair if you work with laptop that is in the table and your are tall.

External monitor and keyboard is must.

Me. I'm a skinny guy, and developed osteoarthritis in my neck due to years of intensive computer use (since 1981). The problem as explained by my physical therapist is sitting with a hunched neck. The acute symptom for me is a bout of pain running down my left arm and wrist, lasting several months before it goes away. This has happened twice. Second time, I switched to a standing desk.

As an aside, I don't goof off as much when I'm standing at my desk.

Skinny dude here who has had serious RSI/postural problems. Same for my boss. None of the research I did mentioned bodyweight as a cause for RSI.

My wife weights 43kg and she has pretty bad posture. She is developing a hunch at 35! In my limited knowledge, its because of weak muscles all over. She's been skinny all her life.

I'm looking in to what exercises she can do to get better.

It's worth checking her thyroid function:

"Some studies have related hypothyroidism to muscle dysfunction... Furthermore, studies ... demonstrated that thyroid hormone action on skeletal muscles affects mainly type-I muscle fibers, which promote slow contractions and are most prevalent in the postural muscles recruited during prolonged effort" [1]

Also, not sure where you are in the world but your doctor telling you your thyroid hormone levels are ok unfortunately may not necessarily mean they are ok... There is a controversy about reference ranges amongst experts [2], and I think it's wise to pay attention to that.

[1] http://www.scielo.br/pdf/abc/v87n3/en_a33v87n3.pdf

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16148345

Hmm thanks for the tip I'll look in to that for sure. Coincidentally, her thiroid levels are being monitored by her doctor after pregnancy. One of them was low if I remember correctly.

You're welcome, hope it works out.

BTW, I think this is also worth highlighting (from [1] above):

"Different metabolic changes, yet with similar consequences, may therefore be observed in both hypothyroid and hyperthyroid patients. In the first case, fatigue is directly related to deficient action of thyroid hormones. In the latter, however, the cause is mainly depletion of muscle energy substrate due to high metabolic demand."

I'll second this; after losing 50lbs, many health issues just went away. Adding in the the strength training (Rippetoe's SS:BBT), has just made me feel that much better.

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