Sitting up straight ‘is not good for you’

Office furniture designers may have to go back to the drawing board to create the perfect sitting position after a new study revealed the best way to work.

Researchers at the Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen have discovered that sitting up straight may not be the best position for the human spine and have instead recommended workers adopt a relaxed position.

Using a new form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), they discovered that office furniture which allows an angle of over 125 degrees between the thighs and the torso is ideal for good posture and can help protect the discs in employees’ backs.

Based in Canada and Scotland, the researchers discovered that a 90-degree sitting angle could compress the spine and lead to possible pain and long-term back problems.

Dr Waseem Bashir, who led the research, said: "When pressure is put on the spine it becomes squashed and misaligned.

"A 135-degree body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best biomechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal."

He added that the ideal position to adopt was akin to an astronaut during take-off but most office furniture was not designed for such an angle.

A lazy boy chair was cited by the researchers as one of the best examples of an ideal sitting position but Levent Caglar from the charity BackCare claimed that adopting that stance when using office furniture can "make sitting more difficult as there is a tendency to slide off the seat".

At Paperstone, we offer a full range of comfortable office furniture to suit every work environment.