Now, sit up straight and pay attention! No, not that straight! Who do you think you are, a professional stuntman? You’ll do your back an injury. At least, that’s the latest word from the medical world. Researchers have found that sitting in the 90-degree posture dictated by stern schoolteachers and parents does not spare you from back trouble later in life. It may actually exacerbate it.
Scientists using new magnetic resonance imaging have found that sitting upright places needless strain on your back, provoking potentially chronic pain if you spend long hours sitting.
So if you spent last night sprawled awkwardly on the sofa and you’ve woken up feeling stiff, then sitting up the way matron taught you may not dispel the aching. What you need is yet more sprawling backwards, tracing a generous angle of 135 degrees with your body: think of it as the chiropractic equivalent of the hair-of-the-dog remedy drinkers use to chase away a hangover.
Stiffening your spine as a mark of good breeding might thus be destined to go the way of the legendary stiff upper lip on which the British Empire was built — until, that is, Metrosexual Man came along and showed that the stiff upper lip of the British male had less to do with sang-froid than with insufficient applications of moisturiser.
And if sitting up straight is bad for you, who still dares say that eating up all your greens will make you strong? Or that an apple a day will keep the doctor away? Or that Donald Rumsfeld won’t be proved to be a military genius?
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Ah, that’s more comfortable. Just one problem with typing while sprawled backwards like a human deckchair: it’s sometimes tricky to reach all the keys on the computer keyboa