Sitting is not the problem, sitting still is

Priya sees a lot of backs that belong to people who sit for a living, and most of them arrive having already bought the chair, the standing desk and the lumbar cushion. Some of it helped a little. None of it fixed anything, and that is because the problem was never the sitting.

What the evidence says

Spines like variety. The research on office workers points the same way every time: the people with the least back pain are not the ones with the best posture, they are the ones who change position most often. Sitting well for eight hours is still eight hours in one shape, and the back that does that will complain.

The one-minute rule

Once an hour, stand up and do something for a minute. Walk to the kitchen, do ten squats, lean back over the chair, anything. The exercise itself matters less than the interruption. Patients who do this and nothing else usually report a difference within a fortnight. Patients who buy another chair usually do not.

When it is more than that

Pain that runs down a leg, numbness, weakness in a foot, or back pain that is worse at night and does not ease with movement are all reasons to be assessed rather than to wait. So is back pain that has stopped you doing something you love. That is what we are here for, and it is rarely as complicated to sort out as people fear.

If your back is sore and you are not sure which of those you are, a 45-minute assessment will tell you, and you will leave with the first exercises on your phone rather than a shopping list.