St raightening out our ihumps

A South Island physio reckons millions of people worldwide live with neck and shoulder pain from sitting hunched over a computer. He's aiming to sell them something that helps.

DUNEDIN-BASED physiotherapist Steve August isn’t a relaxing interview subject. First, you feel like you have to sit up straight when you’re talking to him ( posture, girls, posture). Second, as people walk past, August points out examples of what he calls the “ihunch” – that tell-tale shoulder stoop that indicates too many hours at an electronic device.

And it’s scary once you start looking at your workmates how prevalent it is – twenty somethings well on the way to hunchback status. August notices it too.

“I watch 19-year- olds walking past my place on the way to university, with dowagers humps,” August says, referring to that stoop which sees little old ladies spend their latter years staring at the ground.

“If they are already like that as a teenager, boy, are they going to get problems later on. The most common upper spinal problem is a hunched upper back, driving neck pain and headaches.”

August reckons one in six adults in the devicetoting world have some symptoms of pain from bad posture – that’s half a million people in New Zealand, more than 100 million in Europe and 50 million in the US.

The worst culprits, according to August, are phones, laptops, tablets and iPads – anything where you can’t separate the screen from the keyboard, so you end up hunched over.

This puts huge pressure on your cervical spine, which has to support the weight of the head.

A study released in November 2014 by New York spinal and orthopedic surgeon Kenneth Hansraj and published in Surgical Technology International, found an adult head weighed about 5kg when sitting square on the shoulders. Once the neck was leaning forward at 30 degrees to the body, the effective weight of the head increased to 18kg, and at 60 degrees it was more than 27kg. That’s like supporting an six-year- old on your shoulders. Working hard to support that load, the muscles at the back of the neck can strain and tear, with scarring laid down as part of the repair process, August says. Eventually, like a tree growing in a windy spot, the joints of the upper back and neck can freeze in the hunched position.

Enter the Backpod, August’s invention designed to stretch your upper back the other way.

August started thinking about commercialising an upper back device after he retired from physio practice after 30 years. The Backpod was developed from a homemade »

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