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We're here today to talk about backpack use and how
that can either beat up your back and your neck
or how you can use your backpack
to treat your back a little bit better.
There are a lot of examples of really,
pretty horrible situations walking around there on campus,
and we end up seeing a lot of them here in Physical Therapy,
and that's not the whole problem,
but that probably is part of it.
A lot of times the recommendation is just
to carry less in your backpack, and that's great,
and that would help, but that can be kind of hard
when you're a full-time student, so there are other ways to come
at this, and we thought we'd talk about that today.
So this is Paul carrying a backpack, not super heavy,
but just over one shoulder, which a lot of people do.
Not a terrible idea for a short distance,
or if it's not real heavy, or you're not tiny,
but you can see what it does when he stands looking forward.
That shoulder hikes up, that whole side of your neck
and upper traps are working pretty hard to keep
that backpack from falling off your shoulder,
and you have lost the use of one arm, so not your best choice.
So now Paul has put it on both shoulders,
which helps even him out, right versus left,
but it still loads his spine from the top, pulling on both
of your shoulders, stressing out your neck,
pulling on your upper traps, and loading your entire spine,
actually, all the way to the bottom.
So this, although it's a little bit better than the one arm,
it's still not a great choice.
So in the first backpack situation, Paul had straps
that were either pushing on one shoulder, or both shoulders,
and you can kind of see
on my little skeleton friend here how that's going
to both pull on your neck, and stress your whole spine, here.
It's like walking around with someone leaning on your shoulders.
Alright, so now Paul has a different backpack entirely on,
and this one has got two features
that are really important in a backpack
when you're carrying any kind of load over any kind
of distance, with any frequency.
It's got a hip belt, which helps him put the load of the backpack
on his pelvis, and load the big joints, your hips, and knees,
and ankles, and the big muscles, and he's got a sternum strap,
which keeps the load close to his center of gravity,
and keeps those shoulder straps in place.
So, when you have those two features,
you really should not have any load coming
from the shoulder straps themselves.
You should actually be able to put your finger
between the strap and your shoulder,
and therefore your neck and your whole spine is entirely
out of the loop.
If you use the hip strap, you've got the weight
of the backpack sitting here,
and these are all the big joints, the big muscles,
and they don't mind having an extra ten, fifteen, twenty,
even thirty pound load to carry around.
That's just more exercise.
So, things to think about when you're trying
to decide what kind of backpack you need and how
to use it are how big you are,
how big the load you're carrying is, how far you have to travel
with that, and how often you have to do that trip.
The more often the answer is...
I'm small, I have a big load, I have to carry it often,
and I do it everyday, you need the right equipment,
and that's a situation where having a hip belt
and a sternum strap makes a huge difference.
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