No one has given me a grant because it had not occurred to me to apply—-but here’s a tip from someone who has pounded every kind of keyboard made.

I am convinced, based on my own experiences and those of a large sample of friends who write, that we who spend hours at the keyboard serve as the canaries in the coal mine, so to speak, of back problems.

For much of my adult life, I had low-grade back pain. I assumed that was how it was if you spent your day writing.

No.

After a painful frozen shoulder, I was forced to start writing on a laptop while doing PT, and…at the end…there was no more lower back pain, either.

There is little that is natural about working on a desktop PC. (I am sure I will be hearing from those folks any minute.) Observe. See the people bent toward their screens, looking like herons or flamingoes, so weirdly positioned are their necks. And we all know where necks lead to: backs.

A laptop enables you to sit in a more natural position, to be closer to the screen, to have a mouse you direct wirelessly or with a button on the screen….oh, the joys of a good laptop cannot be over-stated.

It was like going to Lourdes for my back. Healed!

Pilates also makes a big difference in keeping my back ache-free but I could not do Pilates while in PT for the shoulder. My personal “controlled study” of laptop versus desktop had no “confounding factors.” Problem. Intervention. Cure. No other variables could have, in fact, contributed to, or been the cause, of the healing.

In the meantime, this study, definitely composed of all kinds of patients, shows Iyengar Yoga to be effective in comparison to other treatments.

Medical News Today

“US researchers studying people with chronic lower back problems found that those who did Iyengar Yoga were better at overcoming pain and depression than those who followed conventional treatments for lower back pain.

“The study, which was funded by the US National Institutes of Health to the tune of 400,000 dollars, was the work of Dr Kimberly Williams, research assistant professor in the Department of Community Medicine at West Virginia University in Morgantown, and colleagues, and can be read online in the 1 September issue of the journal Spine.

“Low-back pain is the largest category for medical reimbursements in the US, accounting for 34 billion dollars of medical costs every year, said the researchers.” (Emphasis added)

Source: Medical News Today, September 7, 2009

Citation: Spine, 1 September 2009 – Volume 34 – Issue 19 – pp 2066-2076