Don’t Be A Slouch – How Posture Affects Health and Longevity with Al Brown

In a February 2021 article from Harvard Health Publishing, research links some surprising health problems to slouching, including incontinence and constipation.  On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, Al Brown, MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics takes a look at slouching, how it affects your health and some strategies for prevention.   Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. My name is Peter Koch, your host, and today we are here with Al Brown, the director of ergonomics for MEMIC. And we're going to talk about slouching. So we don't want you to be a slouch. And I want you to think about this right now. And I bet you if you heard this, you might have even sat up or stood up a little bit more straight. But think about your posture right at this moment or just moments ago whether your drive in your car, sitting at your desk, maybe you're sitting on the riding lawnmower or you're sitting on your couch at home or whatever you're doing. What's your posture like? Are you seated? Is your low back curved or your shoulders hunched forward? Is your head in a forward posture that's slouching? We're going to talk about that and the effects of slouching, how we got there, because that's certainly not how we were, how we were designed to sit and to stand. But that's a common posture and it has a lot of different negative effects on [00:01:00] our body and sometimes even our longevity. So I guess with that, Al, welcome to the podcast today. Thanks for being back again and sharing some fascinating it I think a little frightening information about what slouching might do for you. So talk to me about slouching. What's going on with slouching and why is this a big deal? Because I don't know. I like the slouch every once in a while. Right. Feels good. So what's the problem with it? Al Brown: [00:01:26] Well, first, Pete, thanks. Thanks for having me back. Much appreciated. It's an interesting thing. It's a phenomenon I'm watching unfold as I travel about different industries and particularly the office world and even watching my own kids. And the advent of the laptop, I think sort of was the thing that started that precluded all this. And, you know, the laptop is a lovely thing. It's portable. It allows us a lot of information in this little thing that we just kind of carry in our hand. But when we interface [00:02:00] with it. We sit down and we place it somewhere, they call it a laptop for a reason, a lot of times that's where it ends up. And but unfortunately, particularly, the younger crowd has pretty good vision. So they flip open that screen the keyboards down where their hands are and overcomes the head to view the content. This is sort of the initial start of creating muscle memory and this forward slouching posture, it's unconscious subconscious, not really recognized, and a lot of things begin to happen physiologically and it's very subtle over time. And then you begin to see the results of it after someone's been doing it for a couple of months, a couple of years. And I see it oftentimes when we have someone new young coming in to MEMIC and they have been a laptop user and are now [00:03:00] shifting to a desktop. And that's where the behaviors become very apparent to me when I see them positioning themselves in front of the screen. We talk about proper ergonomics and how to set up, and it's very hard for them sometimes to adapt to it because of all the things that we that have occurred because of the excessive laptop using and the slouching, which will get into more detail today. Peter Koch: [00:03:25] Sure, I see it well, I see it myself sometimes. I've lots of times I'm going to work off an iPad with a keyboard attached to it and the same thing that it'll sit right on my lap and my head will be bent over and I'll type and you'll get a little tightness in the back of your neck. And I don't have the greatest eyesight anymore. I'm certainly not one of the younger users anymore, unfortunately. But looking through my progressive lenses or my bifocals, I'll have to look down or look up to see part of that screen. And you really have a limited range of motion. I see it with my daughter, too. So a couple [00:04:00] of daughters in high school, of course, just about every kid in Maine gets a laptop or they have a laptop and they're doing all their work on it. They're sitting at the kitchen table. They're sitting on the couch. They're sitting on the porch. My youngest daughter was sitting in a hammock the other day, leaning back kind of in this banana shape with a laptop on her lap and like, wow, that's really uncomfortable looking. But yeah, so that's the habit that they're in. So I can only imagine what happens when you try to move to a different place, whether it be a desktop or you watch I'll actually watch my oldest daughter, who's home now who drive and she'll be in the same head forward position when she's driving seat back a little bit of that. You referenced this before we were talking the low rider position. So sit back a little bit, head forward, kind of looking just above the steering wheel in that same [00:05:00] posture translates between her laptop use at home and the car driving. And if she concentrates, she'll stand up straight. But if you just watch her kind of relax, sometimes that forward head posture will just become a normal a normal thing for her. Al Brown: [00:05:16] It's almost like if you look at it from a profile view, someone sitting at the desk. You'll see almost a C, you know, shape, you know, where the head is forward and then you follow the curve around at the mid thoracic area and even the lower back, which has normally, you know, a curve in the opposite direction of the mid back, is actually now continuing that same shape down to the pelvis. So you get this giant C shape and that has an impact all the way through the body. What happens is basically you're shutting your abdominal muscles off and you're kind of hanging on your back muscles. I always reference [00:06:00] a shirt, and when you're sitting there leaning forward, the shirt on the front side's all wrinkled up, which kind of represents muscles that are sort of tightening up. And then you look at the fabric on the back of the shirt and it's being overstretched, which happens to the muscles on the back of the body. They're being sort of statically stretched passively for an extended period of time. If you stay in the position long enough, it actually creates inflammation in a lot of the soft tissue. And then you start to see diagnoses like fibromyalgia and myofascial pain. And we can all experience it. You know, for the listeners at home, you can take one of your fingers gently and pull it back words so that it's fully extended and just keep a stretch on it for, oh, you know, maybe 15 to 30 seconds, a good stretch on it and then release it and curl it up. And you can feel that stiffness [00:07:00] that you've started. And think of that finger stained in that position for an hour, two hours. Eventually the tissue becomes in flames and you create an injury. So over time, someone who slouches at a computer is doing that same thing to all the muscle tissue on the back side of the body and weakening the abdominals on the front side. So that's just that's just the musculoskeletal system, you know, and sitting, you know, we have to throw in you look down at the hips and the hip flexors are shortening up. And so when you go to a standing position, you never get somebody that goes fully erect simply because the longer we do it, the more our body adapts and our more the muscles will shorten, tendons will shorten, ligaments will shorten. And so unless you take an active role in sort of reopening your body back up, you will, like you had mentioned your daughter, you'll see that transferred to from the hammock to the desk to [00:08:00] the car, and it becomes normalized in the brain. And we'll start to hear complaints about it because and people will only make a change when they get the discomfort. And we see young folks going for shoulder surgeries now, having back pain. I think the tag line now thirty's the new 40. Peter Koch: [00:08:22] Oh boy. Al Brown: [00:08:22] And those comorbidities are coming sooner simply because of this sort of slouched posture. Peter Koch: [00:08:29] Wow. So and I always think about it, too, that there are you have complementary muscle groups. So, you know, when you're in the habit in that C shape to stretch out those back muscles and kind of relax those abdominal muscles, then you go to come back and combat that. If you haven't been working those abdominal muscles to help keep yourself in good posture, it will become more difficult over time to combat the bad posture that you have to move out of that habit. So the [00:09:00] longer you spend in it, the worse it is for you. Al Brown: [00:09:03] Yeah, I mean, what it does to tightens up those hip flexors and then you keep the back the inward curve of the back actually goes concave or convex. It goes in the opposite direction. And what happens, it's very difficult to roll out of that posture again. You know, if you think of yourself sitting, there's two ways to sit to a certain extent. I mean, all kinds of ways to sit. But one is sort of sitting back on your sacrum, which is what the slouches will sit on. So if you just kind of let your back roll that your low back flatten and you roll back on your tailbone and your head has to come forward as that happens. So you are creating that C. But if you actually arch your back and you pull your pelvis around, you actually come up on there's these two sitting bones as they're skilled, tuberose, and there's two of them, you'll pull yourself around up on top of those and you'll feel your core go [00:10:00] upright and your head will align. The chair should positively support you than the back of the chair should be in there and supporting your back for the low riders of the folks have been doing the slouching. If we pull their chair up into that position, they feel like they're almost being thrown into the computer. And that's because that visual mental image they have of themselves and sort of their muscle memory keeps them in that forward C posture. Peter Koch: [00:10:28] Yeah, that kinesthetic sense. They think their father forward and they should be because their natural well, their habitual place to be is in that forward head posture. Yeah. I just think that's where they are. Al Brown: [00:10:39] You'll see it in like older people go to the dentist now, you know, and the dentist tends to lay a pretty flat and you know, because as we age we tend to go into that forward posture. It's we're trying to look for stability. And what happens is when they lay you down on the chair, someone that's, you know, creeping [00:11:00] over into the forward posture, they'll go, oh, that's far enough that you've got me almost upside down. And there's still about 45 degrees, you know, before they even get the flat. So they'll slowly creep that person down as their muscles and their memory kind of relaxes a bit and they can sneak them down. But you can't get them really flat because of all the physical changes that's occurring earlier in young adults. Peter Koch: [00:11:24] When you think about that example of a dentist chair, it must change sleep patterns as well because you know, might not be able to lay flat or stretch out or get into that position. So you might not be able to be in a truly comfortable, restful position where your body can recover, which is really what sleep is for. Al Brown: [00:11:44] Yeah, you'll notice that the number of pillow starts stacking up behind you if you lay on your back and you'll know that when you roll over on your belly and your hands fall asleep a lot quicker, that again, welcome to the C posture. That's where your head. And so those are all indicators, [00:12:00] you know. So it's one of those things that we the more static activity you spend in front of a computer in time, you really need to spend a lot of time sort of resetting the body and opening it back up. You need to set yourself up neutral. But you had mentioned earlier on we were talking that you like to slouch and everybody does. It's a position of fatigue. After a while, you just can't hold yourself upright and you'll slouch. So every 30 minutes you probably should get up and move or change or change your posture. The advent of the dynamic workstation helps because I always tell folks when you start to lean or slouch, just pop the buttons and lift the desk because you'll bring your pelvis underneath you and you'll change that pattern because you won't stand in a slouch. You can, but it'll be more difficult to do that. So and that's kind of the cue. But every 30 minutes, you should be changing your position and posture. Peter Koch: [00:12:57] I think people listening might agree [00:13:00] with that, but they might find it difficult. And I know for me, if I have a project that I'm doing that requires concentration and you get into that zone and you're focused on what you're doing, 30 minutes goes by like that. Al Brown: [00:13:12] It does. Peter Koch: [00:13:13] And if I take that moment to stand up, it may pull me out of the zone, which isn't really true. I mean, I you will move out of it a little bit, but like you said, move from the sitting position, come up to the standing position, do your work for a little while and sit back down. It doesn't have to be a disruptive process. It doesn't sound like just have to change that posture so you can stretch things out, get back to a better posture and then keep going with your project. Al Brown: [00:13:42] I mean, you can even just roll your pelvis when you're sitting there. If your back is flat and you've got that C, you just roll your pelvis up into a more arched back and that in itself sort of just recuse the brain a bit. And again, we're just talking about what's happening [00:14:00] in the musculoskeletal system. I mean, there's other implications that are out there that, you know, and I think the it was the Harvard the Harvard Health Publishing in February 15th, 2021. They just came out and there was a Megan Markovsky who's at Women and Brigham's that associated with Harvard. You know, they start they're starting to look at other kind of physiological changes, you know, things like incontinence, constipation, and you can really see how mechanically you begin to impact your body. You know, I've said for years, you know, if you sit in that seat position, you know, think about your intestines. It's a giant hose that goes back and forth inside your gut. And that's convoluted enough with a lot of bends. But now when you sit in the C position, you just push it down. So you've not only [00:15:00] you've got this convoluted tube, but now you're going to compress it. And so think about food, trying to move through, you know, peristalsis or whatever that is trying to move down through and there's a little push back, you know, acid reflux, you know, like, oh, gee, I just or gastric upset or I don't feel so good. And again, you're mushing your intestines when you sit in that that poor position. Breathing is another example. You know, your diaphragm are these two conical shape muscles at the base of your of your lungs. That their job is when they're nice and perky is to pull those lungs down. And that creates a negative pressure in the air goes in. And then when they relax, your lungs are elastic, that passively it'll push the air back out. When you're sitting in that C posture slouched. Those diaphragm muscles are not perky. They're almost flattened out. So they have no ability to pull down. So to get a deep breath or even [00:16:00] to breathe normally, you have to almost start raising your shoulders, which is a lot of work. I mean, if you just you know, if you just take your shoulders and try to raise them up, you know, 60 times, you know, a minute or just, you know, even less than that when we breathe. But I mean, just that's very fatiguing because you're lifting up a large mass each time to breathe. So you're working harder to breathe and digest. Just from slouching. Peter Koch: [00:16:25] That's amazing. And so I get to see the breathing, definitely the breathing thing. And you might find yourself to be a little short of breath sometimes, too, if you're sitting in that position. Some of the results of slouching that you talked about, the incontinence, the heartburn, acid reflux, are those immediate or would you find those to be something that that occurs hours or maybe even 24 hours later after you've had a bout of slouching? I'm trying to think of like that what that Q would be. And are people connecting their posture of what they [00:17:00] did all day yesterday? To now they wake up on Saturday morning after having spent all day or all week in the office and that slouched position. And now they're struggling to enjoy life on Saturday because of what's happening. So when one of those physical cues occur. Al Brown: [00:17:19] You know, it probably if I were to theorize, I would I would think that it's maybe not something that you notice right away because you're, and particularly if you're younger, you're very tolerant and you probably are a little more active and moving around. But as you continue to have a job that requires that you sit and you begin to change that body physiologically and like you had mentioned, you know, from the hammock to the computer to the car, you repeat that same behavior to sitting at night, chill and watching a movie. You are you are [00:18:00] exposing yourself to that same issue. So it becomes more apparent and probably sort of insidiously sneaks in on you. And that's when you at some point discomfort, you know, you kind of go, what's going on? And I don't think people connect the dots to that sitting piece and off to the doc getting tested and finding out what's going on. Now you're starting to medicate, but when you really look back at the root cause you've got to reopen your body back up. You got to look at your behaviors, because until you change those, you're still mechanically beating yourself up. Peter Koch: [00:18:37] Right. And I think a lot of people feel that the amount of exercise that they have, maybe at the end of the day they get an hour's walk in or something like that after they've been sitting in that slouch position for let's just call it an hour, six hours at work. Maybe they get up and walk around a little bit at lunch or whatever. So they sit slouched for six hours and then they got two more hours on the couch [00:19:00] and they got maybe an hour commute back and forth. So now you're at eight, nine, ten hours of slouched position. But I got one hour of exercise. You talk about how that's not quite enough and maybe you can elaborate a little bit about that right now, too. Al Brown: [00:19:16] Yeah. James Levine works at Mayo Clinic and he actually wrote the book Stand Up. I think your chair is killing you, something like that. Or, you know, sitting is the new smoking kind of came from that sort of tagline. But when you look at I mean, that's kind of our mentality. I'm guilty of it, that I'll sit and do my work all day long in front of a computer. And then I think, oh, I got to get out and take my run or I have to lift or I have to exercise. But you won't. The degradation, degradation you've done to your body during those seven to eight to ten hours to eleven hours of sitting, you cannot recover from that one hour of [00:20:00] exercise, I think in Australia that. Actually coined the term they had done some research down there on this, and it's called the Active Couch Potato. So you still are going to suffer the you know, if you're sitting for 11 hours a day, there are I think there's 35 medical conditions, you know, type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers, that the risk factors will go up exponentially just from that sitting. And you can't recover by just having that one hour of exercise. It's something that you need to incorporate throughout the whole day of movement and each time you move. That's when I always encourage folks to sort of reset their body upright, you know, recue the game of Jenga, you know, get the blocks realigned, because if you don't, you continue down that road of impacting your health negatively. Peter Koch: [00:20:57] Sure, sure. It's an important point [00:21:00] that I don't think we can stress enough, regardless of if it's the positions that you're in at work or if it's positions that you would like to be in when you're at home. It's we're not made to be stationary. We're made to be active. Everything about us is made to be active from just the amount of assistance the large muscle gives to our heart, to move blood around from our lower extremities to upper extremities, to try to fight off gravity. We're made to move around. We're not made to just sit in one place Al Brown: [00:21:33] Yup everything sucks down to the earth. So and when you sit down, unfortunately, you shut off the largest muscles in the body. And so now you've lost all that assistance that any time they contract, they actually will milk and push the fluid back up. I mean, it assists your cardiovascular system, obviously, the venous return and the arterial flow, but the lymphatic system really kind of depends [00:22:00] on it. So and it's the filtering system that gets the junk out of your body. So, again, when you sit slouched, you sit and you sit. You know, you've not only are you mechanically compressing all the structures, but then you shut off the big muscles in the body that are assisting. So the accumulated effect of all that going on, you know, you'll start to have those physiological changes and you'll start, you know, like I said, shoulders from the mechanics of your shoulder change completely. And, you know, I can see folks I've seen folks that are queuing up for shoulder surgery and I'm going before you go there. Wait a minute. You need to open up your body first. They go what? And it's amazing how much a person has lost how to pull themselves back into neutral. And it's very cumbersome. It's exhausting for the first week to 10 days. But once they get it and they break on through to the other side, they actually feel a [00:23:00] whole bunch better. It's kind of. You know, it's like walking around with a stick and holding it in your hand and tipping the stick forward, maybe 15 to 20 degrees, that creates sort of a bit of a force on the wrist and hand and shoulder and arm. You're like, oh, you know, after you do that for a while, it's kind of my wrist is getting shaky where if you just balance that stick on your hand and walk around, you know, a little more of a challenge, but it's less awkward forced on the wrist. So you're just kind of bouncing around. So same thing with your body. When you get it all set up and you balance it out, you're much more efficient and it takes a lot less energy to move it around Peter Koch: [00:23:38] A lot less. Take us through that exercise again of going from that C position and straightening up in your chair just by tipping your pelvis. I think that's that could be a simple thing that people can do. And if the folks listening to us right now, again, like I started this podcast, think about where you are, think about that C position is [00:24:00] your head forward or your shoulders hunched as your back round. And then Al is going to take us through that sequence of how just sit up straighter just by tipping your pelvis in a different direction. So when you do that. Al Brown: [00:24:11] Yeah. I mean, think about yourself right now and where you're sitting. And if you can imagine that you had on a pair of. Pants or jeans, let's call them jeans, and they have back pockets and are you sitting on your back pockets right now? Are you rolled back? And so those back pockets are actually sort of facing down and on the seat. And if you are, then that's the start of C sitting. You actually are doing more sacral sitting. You know, you're sitting back on that sacrum. So what we want to do is rotate your pelvis and bring you out of that position. So and what you're going to notice is that as you as you bring your pelvis around, you're going to notice that you're getting taller. And you're also probably going to notice that your head will start to tuck back [00:25:00] in because your head follows your butt here, Pete, I'm telling you. So if your pelvis rolls forward and your pelvis is going forward, your head's going to go forward as your pelvis rolls backwards and comes behind your head is going to want to like the game of Jenga. We have to push the block up on top with the block on the bottom to keep it all balanced. So what I want folks to do now is get off your hip pockets and I want you to almost like you're pushing your belly forward and you're arching your back and you're trying to take your head up, you know, up towards the ceiling. So you rotate that pelvis forward and you'll feel a shift up on to that that part of your pelvis. So that's neutral sitting. That's hard to do right now, probably for most folks of in here going, OK, I'm working really hard to do that. That's why you want a good supportive chair that in that position now you want that inward curve of your back filled by your chair so that lumbar support becomes very important. You can't just and some [00:26:00] people do. Perch there are perchers that will sit on the edge of the chair and perch. That's OK. But that's a fatiguing thing to do. And eventually what you're going to do is you're going to, out of fatigue, roll back onto your hip pockets. OK, so, you know, again, it's just what you're doing is you're going have your hip pockets, you're going towards the ceiling with your head and you're rotating your pelvis forward so you'll feel an inward curve in your low back. And that's a more neutral position for your body. Peter Koch: [00:26:27] And I think that's a good reset for folks when you're you stayed at your chair for a while. And if you can think about that sequence when you've been at your chair and you do tip your pelvis and you sit up straighter and you get a curve in your low back and your head tucks back, that's a cue to continue to get taller and stand up and adjust your desk, get up a little bit, maybe move the laptop from your lap to maybe the counter or maybe someplace else. So you're not sitting in that position slouched all the time. Al Brown: [00:26:59] What [00:27:00] you know, one thing we didn't mention is the disk pressure. So you know that you have your vertebrae and then the disks are in between. So the vertebrae, the bony structure, the disc is soft tissue, very rugged structure, but again, exposed to long passive forces. It's impacted and sitting. If you think about it, you bring your thighs sort of towards your abdomen, you know, to about a 90 degree position that actually because of the attachment of like your hamstrings are attached to your pelvis and as you bring up that thigh, will tend to pull the pelvis around and want to force you into that C position. That's why it's good to have normal length in your hamstrings and all that kind of good stuff. But if you pull your thigh up into that position and your back does round off and just sitting in and of itself puts about 40 to 50 percent more force on that disc. So just the act of [00:28:00] sitting, you've loaded your back. So it's important to get up. And when you get up, another great thing to do is when you stand, you just hands on waist, feet, shoulder width apart, and you just do a little bit of and keep your chin tucked. You don't want to do the what is it, the limbo where your head goes way back. You keep your head your head tucked and you do a little bit of back extension and there should just be a little bit of pressure in the low back and maybe a little bit of stretching on the front side. But that resets that disc could actually reposition some of the pressure, the gel inside it. It's a slow, gentle movement. It's not something that you force. But any time you're sitting in a car and sitting at your desk, you know, every 30 minutes, that's one of those things you get up and just sort of reset your body in that regard. Peter Koch: [00:28:52] People will do that. As they feel really fatigued, you'll get really tired, you'll start feeling all those bodily [00:29:00] cues, you'll get achy, you'll get stiff in your mind, I'll get a little foggy. But you really want to make those changes before those cues happen. That's the whole idea Al Brown: [00:29:09] Right it's too late when you're hurting. Peter Koch: [00:29:12] Exactly. Al Brown: [00:29:12] Water over the dam. Peter Koch: [00:29:13] Yeah. And we ignore those cues, too. So like, oh, just a few more minutes or I'm almost done or I'm going to get this here, but we got to get into that habit and be more intentional, I think. And that's the key word to be intentional about how we go about our day in our body position as we sit at our desk or stand at our desk because our well doesn't even need to be at a desk. You could it could be anywhere you can be in an excavator working for a construction company or a bulldozer or you can be a truck driver. You're going to find yourself in those C positions often. Or I was driving actually back from this area yesterday and there's summer. So there's a lot of road construction and there are quite a few folks out there as flaggers. And you can look at posture's as they get as the day [00:30:00] gets on, they'll be in that standing C position where they might have started to be in the beginning of the day. When they're fresh, they're upright, their shoulders are back, their heads where it needs to be. And as the day goes on, they get kind of in that old man position where they're leaning on the stop sign instead of standing up with the stop sign. Al Brown: [00:30:19] That used to be a more brutal job, you know, because back they figured out that remember the day when they used to just have a little handle? I do stop sign and they would just flip it around. Peter Koch: [00:30:29] And they were holding it instead of on a poll right? Al Brown: [00:30:30] They were holding it. So and some genius came along, probably some famous ergonomist and said, you know, if you had a longer pole, that would be less force on the body. And so you'll see that that long pole is present in all construction. Peter Koch: [00:30:48] It's ubiquitous now. Al Brown: [00:30:48] It's ubiquitous. But the problem is, is you're right. You know, here's a person standing there all day long not moving, you know, because you can walk longer [00:31:00] than you can stand still. That makes sense? Peter Koch: [00:31:04] Does it make sense to me? Al Brown: [00:31:06] So, like, if you stand there and don't move, Pete, and then I'm going to go walk and we're going to see how many hours I can walk and how many hours you can stand still and see who can last longer. I'm going to last longer simply because I'm sharing the load throughout my whole body. And it's just brief moments. You're statically loading and you can't move. Peter Koch: [00:31:26] Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about our E-Ergo resource that can be used to help solve ergonomic challenges at your workplace. Sometimes contacting, contracting with and scheduling an ergonomist or occupational health nurse for an onsite evaluation doesn't fit with our Just-In-Time workflow in a competitive economy, fixing the problem right now is essential, and improving worker comfort and efficiency are key components to ongoing success. Free to our policyholders MEMICs E-Ergo, Tool can help you overcome ergonomic challenges. [00:32:00] With just five quick photos or a short 30 second video and a brief description of what's being shown, you can send us the critical demands and essential functions within the work tasks once received. Our ergonomics team can identify risks and exposures and provide reasonable suggestions for ergonomic improvement within just a few short days. Start the E-Ergo process by logging into the MEMIC safety director at www.MEMIC.com/Workplace Safety. Now let's get back to today's episode. Peter Koch: [00:32:35] And you talked about it before the podcast as we were discussing this, the body carburetor. When I'm moving that carburetors move in your lungs, your heart, there's a demand in there. You've got enough cardiovascular activity to support that demand. But when I'm just standing there and I was on the way home late yesterday evening watching the [00:33:00] gentleman stand with the stop sign, and it was for whatever reason, it was a long stop. We must have been there for ten minutes. And I don't think he shifted maybe once or twice during that entire ten minutes. And I'm look at him going, That that can't be comfortable because if it was me, I'd have been shifting back and forth, moving side to side, because I can't I can't stand in that one position. My back will hurt. My knees will hurt. My feet will hurt. Because my carburetor is not going the way it's supposed to, it's not getting enough air, right? There's not enough not enough air to make combustion happen. Kind of. Al Brown: [00:33:35] You know, it's funny as a related topic, which I always like to reference this, you know, the sort of the beginning research of cardiovascular function and how it impacts us from a static to a dynamic activity is Jeremy Morris, who's an epidemiologist out of London, and he died in the 90s at 99 and a half years old. But he did the study on the double decker buses [00:34:00] in London and looked at the drivers and compared them to the I'm going to call them ticket takers. And the drivers sat. The whole day and the ticket takers would put in an average, I think it was, if I think back in the piece of research, I read about 600 steps a day that was. Peter Koch: [00:34:21] Just going up and down. Al Brown: [00:34:22] Up and down the double decker bus to punch tickets. And in the cardiovascular incident rate for the drivers was 50 percent higher. Then the ticket takers, and that was true cardiac events, that's not you know, they just have, you know, higher risk. And it was you know, it is a longevity. You know, they did it over a long period of time and they just set up incident rate driver to take, you know, and took into account some other. Variables, but for the most part, the drivers were out of, you know, 50 percent higher incidence rate of cardiovascular issues. Peter Koch: [00:34:58] Wow. And that's supported [00:35:00] in current day. I know a professor that I've worked with in the past, Dr. Delia Roberts, who's done a lot of work within the recreation industry with her fit for ski program. But she's got a fit for Drive program for the long haul truckers out in British Columbia and did a study from a blood sugar standpoint and the effect of diet and lack of exercise sitting in the truck all the time. And just a couple of changes with a little bit of dietary change to manage blood sugar better and then more frequent breaks to be able to increase cardiovascular activity, change alertness, changed accident rates. There's not the studies not long enough to see the morbidity or cardiovascular incidents. But as the study goes on, as she keeps working with them, I bet she'll find some of the same results as the guy from London. Al Brown: [00:35:54] Sure. Yeah, no, it's I think it was Dr. Levine. He had mentioned that, you know, post dinner, post [00:36:00] lunch, post dinner or go take a go take a 15 minute walk and blood sugar drops by about 20 percent, you know, so it sort of stirs the mix. And it's a healthier mix for you at that point as opposed to, you know, when you get up and now you're hypoglycemic because you just ate and you're like, that lazy boy over there was pretty good. I think I'm just going to go take a nap and, you know, and so it's a you know, one of those things that that it's not rocket science. It's not a magic pill, but it is common sense. It makes a huge difference in our body physiologically. It's kind of like the posture thing. I mean, it's your parents, you know, coming in and going straight up, straighten up, you know, when you're thinking, come on, leave me alone. But it's more present nowadays because of the advent of the laptop. And you throw a phone, a cell phone, and most folks will just bend their neck over and take a look at that cell phone. [00:37:00] So they're just contributing to it when they look even at their cell phone. So it's or you see, you know, a person sitting on the park bench or somewhere in a chair and they're just in that giant seat posture with their forearms down on their lap, you know, looking at whatever's going on the screen. And you're like, oh, you know, it's a physics problem because. You know, we always talk about the head weighing somewhere between, you know, there's 10 pounders and there's 15 pounders, but let's call it 13. But for every 10 degrees, you know, we live in a world of gravity, as you'd mentioned earlier. So for every 10 degrees that head comes forward, we add another 10 pounds of force to the neck and shoulders, to that flat and back to that disc, compressing the front side abdominal intestinal area, lowering the diaphragm so now it can expand. It's just it's messy all the way around. Peter Koch: [00:37:54] All the way around. Al Brown: [00:37:54] All the way around. Nothing good. Peter Koch: [00:37:57] Nothing good can come of this. And [00:38:00] then there's the habit. Right. So you do it for long enough. And how many of us are conditioned to look at that phone? Right. So the phone vibrates or you hear a sound that sounds like your ringtone and you automatically look down at your phone or at least look down at your pocket or wherever it's stored. And it's not even your phone. It's somebody else's phone. But we're conditioned to do that. So we have this habit of looking down, looking at something that's in our lap or below shoulder height. And once you get into a habit. It becomes really hard to break that habit Al Brown: [00:38:36] Once the genie is out of the bottle. It's hard to get them back in. Yeah, same thing with the posture. I mean, once you're down that and again, because we have a younger population that's kind of they you know, they didn't know life without a cell phone and a laptop. You know, I can go back to when none of that existed, you know, and as I do presentations now, I realize [00:39:00] that, you know, sometimes folks are looking at me like, wow, you know, it's just that it's always been part of my life. So but then I see this change in body posture that's beginning to occur because that thing that's in front of them and when you're young, you just don't think about those things. You're going to live forever and never have an ache or a pain. But, you know, you can talk to anybody who's. In the in the twilight, as would be the twilight, the twilight of life, and they'll say, you get achy and you do. So you don't want to contribute to it. If there are things that are that you can do that are easy, it's just a matter of initiating those and make sure you incorporate those into your daily life. Peter Koch: [00:39:45] And the younger you are, like you had said, the easier it is to not notice or feel like you've recovered from. But again, if you continue those postures over and over and over again, you're not recovering enough. You're recovering a little bit enough [00:40:00] to not find that discomfort anymore. But as soon as you go back to that posture again, you're doing the same damage that you did before or the postures having the same effect as it did before. So all of a sudden, you know, you're 13, 14, 15, 16, not a care in the world high school. It's great looking on the college. It's awesome at the college. It's great you get out into the workforce and now you're 28 or 30 years old and you've spent 15 years or longer in that posture. Now, going back to that little demonstration you asked people to consider by taking your index finger and pulling it back. So now do that for a day instead of doing it for 15 seconds. And that's, you know Al Brown: [00:40:44] Do it for a day, do it for a week, do it for a month. Do it for 15 years. And the accumulation of trauma. Leads to. Peter Koch: [00:40:56] Sure. And it's not just in one place, it's not just work, we talk about this for [00:41:00] hearing conservation. When we talk about hearing conservation programs in the workplace and regardless of how much time you spend in your workday, it's almost always more time in loud noises outside of your workday. For most people, Al Brown: [00:41:18] They're not as loud, though. At home, the chainsaw is not as loud at home as it is at work. Peter Koch: [00:41:22] right the homeowner chainsaw is always less, Al Brown: [00:41:25] Right you don't need the safety stuff. Oh, no, it's a different animal altogether. Peter Koch: [00:41:29] But as you start adding it up, so now you ask people, OK, so how long do you spend in this, this decibel level? Sorry, it's a hundred decibels and we're going to do this job for an hour or two hours or 15 minutes and we're going to take a break and we're going to go back the noise. And overall, they might be four hours in that that noise environment at work out of an eight hour day. Certainly there's other work that you're going to do. It's going to be louder for longer, but on average, it's not going to be that loud for that long. And then you start adding up the time that people [00:42:00] spend with headphones in with the music up to 100 decibels, or they're going to mow the lawn at home and it takes them a couple hours. I'm not wearing hearing protection or they're using the chainsaw or they're on their snowmobile or they're on their four wheeler or they're out shooting or they're out at a bar or at a concert. And all of a sudden you add up all this time and you've got a lot more time and loud noise outside of work than you do in work. But you have to add it all together. So you have four hours at work, you got six or seven hours outside of work, and now most of your day and it creeps up on you. And like you said, with posture, your body will get a little more achy regardless of how good you take care of it. So when you don't take good care of it, you just end up getting achy sooner. And you get to that point one day. And like you said before, what was it. Al Brown: [00:42:52]  30 is the new 40. Peter Koch: [00:42:53] That's scary. Al Brown: [00:42:55] Yeah, I mentioned that the other day in the presentation. And some of the folks like I don't understand what you mean. [00:43:00] And I said, you know what? But someone in their 60s felt at 40. Because of the technology that now exists in a lot of our lives, those folks using more of the technology and slouching are going to feel those discomforts 30. So there's been a 10 year slip backwards. You know, I mentioned things like technology, like simple things like when we used to back a car, if you would rotate your body, which is good, you like to rotate your body because it helps to sort of lengthen a lot of these old, like tissues in your body. But now today you just look down at the camera and line up the lines. Still can't do it. Peter Koch: [00:43:38] That's a whole other topic. Al Brown: [00:43:39] So you just you don't you know, or if to answer the phone, you would have to run to get the phone or, you know, walk or go to the room where it was attached to the wall or on the counter. And now you just lift it out of your pocket and decide if you're going to answer it or not or Peter Koch: [00:43:55] Or if it's not for you. You throw the phone to whoever it was. Al Brown: [00:43:58] Yeah. And [00:44:00] that's where you get a lot of your entertainment now, too, you know, from screen time to actually music. So you don't have to go put an album on. You don't have to get a cassette. You don't you don't have to go turn the TV on and adjust the ears on the you know, it's so I mean, those are all kind of funny, very vintage things, but it's true. So we have eliminated movement. Peter Koch: [00:44:21] Yeah. That almost the devolution said go back even farther. And you talk about the work where we used to do and get back to the agrarian society that we used to be. And you spent the majority your day in the field. They are your milk and cows or you're preparing the field or you're standing at the stove or you're doing you're splitting wood. Whatever those things were, it was you were spending the majority your time in activity and you got home at the end of the day and there was only just enough time to eat, relax for a little bit and then get enough sleep so that you can get up in the morning. And now we have all these conveniences which have [00:45:00] almost devolved our ability to be that active. Al Brown: [00:45:05] That's right. Peter Koch: [00:45:06] I have a I have a very good friend of mine who's whose dad has been a dairy farmer all his life, and the dad is now getting into his 70s. But, you know, he will still put in more physical activity in his day just by he still goes out and milks the cows. He's not anywhere near as fast anymore. And he's a little more grumpy. It's sometimes when things don't go his way. But he still puts in a pretty physical day that would kick most people's butts. They would be exhausted. He gets back at the end of the day and he's like, yep, just the same thing I've been doing for the last 60 years or so. . So it's interesting how that lack of activity has crept into our lives and it's made it easy for us to relax. But that relaxation has it [00:46:00] doesn't always have its benefits. It has it detracts from our ability to have really a pain free longer life. Al Brown: [00:46:08] Hmm. There was there was an utter pun in there, but I just couldn't fit it in. Utterly amazing that he does so well at this age. Peter Koch: [00:46:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it right in the bucket. Al Brown: [00:46:22] There you go. You know, you know, the one thing if you think about, you know, a couple of things we didn't I'm going to throw these in the bucket too. TMJ. Oh yeah. Jaw pain. Because as soon as you project the head forward, you change the function of the jaw, headaches, vision issues. When we look at a computer screen, we blink a whole bunch less so we get dry eyes. So there is a whole bunch of products out there from ballooning my glasses etc. And it's just mechanically you just don't you're not remoistening your eyes often, [00:47:00] as you would if you were just looking out into the world as opposed to a screen. So we blink a whole bunch less. So it's, you know, again, just more things that are not good when we slouch and we tip forward. So you got to pull back. Peter Koch: [00:47:14] Got to pull back and it becomes habit. And when we get into a habit, our body adjusts to the habit that we're in. So it starts to shut down those things that it doesn't need, but it does need those things. But we're driving that negative behavior through habit. So just over time, just the shortening of the oh, I don't need to be that long as your muscles just shorten up and all of a sudden my hip flexor is getting out of the car becomes painful because my hip flexors have been shortened so much for sitting all the time because you're sitting in front of your computer screen and then long commute, you're not walking as much. So those habits and I think that's a key part to remember too, to break that habit, [00:48:00] you need to be intentional, but you need to try to break those habits so that you. Can be more pain free and not suffer some of the changes that will occur in your body over time through those habits that you've built up for the last 15, 20, sometimes even 30 years. You think nowadays going back through the oh, I was in the in the grocery store the other day and I kept hearing like a video playing. I'm looking around. I can't see anybody like I was expecting someone to be watching a video as a shopping. But what it was there was a kid, probably six years old, in the cart groceries all around him. And he was just watching the video. He was on his phone. And so he's six years old. And we're creating that habit of head because he was head forward looking at the phone [00:49:00] in his lap. Al Brown: [00:49:00] Yeah, he's been indoctrinated. Peter Koch: [00:49:03] There we go. Al Brown: [00:49:03] There we go. Yeah. Peter Koch: [00:49:04] So, you know, intentionality about the technology that we have and that intentionality of what we do with it and around it and how it affects us. It's important for us to know those effects. And we'll put the reference of the study that you referenced earlier in the podcast. Show notes. But can you maybe talk a little bit more about the Harvard study that talked about those the effects of what's going on when you have that C posture? Al Brown: [00:49:29] Yes, it's fairly recent Peter Koch: [00:49:30] You said 2021. Right. Al Brown: [00:49:33] It's a newsletter they put out. And I think it was Megan Markovsky, who's a physical therapist. And I think it was a Kyle Staller. He's a gastroenterologist at Mass General. But it was an interesting read because I've theorized for a number of years that, you know, mechanically you're compressing all those structures. So they're now beginning to go. And [00:50:00] I'm sure they they've thought the same. I mean, that's what starts the theory. And then they're probably much better about doing the research than me. I just tend to get stuck, you know, bite onto that bone and I'm not going to change. But I feel that's the case. But, I can give you the link to that? Peter Koch: [00:50:16] Yeah, please. Al Brown: [00:50:16] And beginning to recognize that that slouch posture is so common, but it's going to create so many common problems that they're probably seeing those same complaints over and over again. And at some point you start to put two and two together and you go, all right, you know, and we can't in the medical world, sometimes we are so busy treating the symptoms, we forget to think about the root cause. And when you when you walk it back and you start looking at it and again in the world we live in, in safety and risk and exposure, I mean, that's what we're always doing, is trying to find the root cause because you can sit there and throw things, tools, money. But until you've discovered where the problem is and again, this [00:51:00] is you know, it's pretty basic to me that it is just, you know, just repeated unconscious behavior of sitting in front of something that you're looking down at throughout the day. And we do a lot more things on that computer than we've ever done in the past. You know, I mean, how many jobs now are just what is about 80 to 85 percent? I think we're closer to 87 percent of jobs now are sedentary and they're sedentary, most likely because of technology. Sure. I mean, look at our logging industry nowadays. Peter Koch: [00:51:29] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Al Brown: [00:51:30] You know, there's no more log runs down the river with people with spikes on their boots, running around with pick poles. And, you know, it's you know, there's a forwarder. They go in. I don't mean that they don't even have to get out of the seat. Now, the whole forward spins back around. They drive back out the way they came. Peter Koch: [00:51:47] And it's like the Starship Enterprise in there with the amount of controls that they have because they can do everything from that seat. Everything most of the things that your hand crew was going to do, you know, 30, 40 years ago, [00:52:00] it's all done by machine now. Al Brown: [00:52:03] Yeah. So and that's an office that bounces around, you know. So think about now we got that forward head posture with our C posture and you're going to go over stumps and bumps and that creates a forward momentum of your head and core, which translates into a huge extra load on the back. So, yeah, that's an office on steroids. Peter Koch: [00:52:25] It's watching a guy a couple of days ago at a at a resort. They're doing a big construction job and they're hauling Phil from the pit up the up the mountain road, which is pretty bouncy, full of water bars. Al Brown: [00:52:37] Don't you think Phil should walk? Peter Koch: [00:52:38] Well, you know, Phil could walk, but Greg's on his way, so you never know. Put that in the bucket, too. So and, you know, I got a good view of the driver, so and all day long, he probably made twenty trips while we were there doing the training all day. And as he drove past us just in the, you know, maybe [00:53:00] six, seven hundred feet that we could see the truck, a lot of bounce happen and you can see the guy bounce. Up and down in the head, moving back and forth, he looked like he was at a heavy metal concert for crying out loud. How much motion was happening? Even with the air right seat, there was still enough movement. And so he's doing that all day. And just the compression just from being in the posture. And like you said, now you add the bouncing adding to gravity and velocity in that, too. So things aren't going to go well. Over time. Al Brown: [00:53:29] Yeah, I'm sure he had his fill of that job. Peter Koch: [00:53:36] And on that note. All right. So we've talked about some solutions for this, right? We have we want to be intentional about how we're setting up our workstation. We want to be intentional about when we take breaks and not just wait for our body to cue us with a pain or fatigue response. You gave us that little exercise [00:54:00] of being able to tilt your pelvis the opposite way to sit up straighter, tuck your head back and get up every 30 minutes or so. What else can we do to combat that forward head posture? And let's talk specifically about maybe the office environments or when you you're actually working at a computer, you maybe you have a laptop and that's the only thing that you have assigned to you for a machine to work on. Al Brown: [00:54:27] Yeah. I mean, simple things. If you only have a laptop, go out and buy a secondary keyboard and a mouse and just move that laptop up so that if you have good vision and that's, you know, you might have a single lens, single vision lens, not a progressive like you or me, but if you have a single lens glass or you have good vision, most likely you want to put that that laptop screen [00:55:00] up. So where the content that you're viewing is at eye level and then the keyboard should be down so that your upper arm is parallel to your core and your forearms parallel to the floor, that  keeps us the quietest and be in a good chair because again, we don't want it with the laptop or the screen too low. You're going to, you know, slump over into the seat position. So that's one of the basic things to do. And with this work from home that we just saw recently, we really kind of pushed at least get a secondary keyboard and mouse and get away from using the laptop for both. If you have a you know, you move that up a level and you go get a docking station and get a screen at home, that's at the right height and the keyboard and all that kind of good stuff. Those things all influence where your head goes. So it's important that you look at where those screens are now as a sort of side note, if you're a progressive lens where that screen won't go as high because you can actually go in the opposite [00:56:00] direction with your head going backwards. So we really want that game of Jenga balanced. So you might have to lower the screen a bit lower than contented eye height might have to be fifteen or so degrees below that level because of the way you use your lenses. Paperwork is another thing that a lot of folks will just lay it. A classic was to push the keyboard away so that the arms were extended and then the paperwork was laid between the keyboard and your belly to a certain extent. So you had an extreme forward head posture to look down at that paperwork, reverse that, put the paperwork on the other side and put the paperwork on a slight incline, 15, 20 degrees. You don't want to cover the screens, but a little bit of a document holder. And it can even be something basic, like a little binder that's propped up and it'll raise that document up enough that you can glance down with your eyes because your eyes can look down 15 to 20 degrees without you tipping your head and you can read the document [00:57:00] and then look back up at the screen. So, you know, look at the things that you interact with on a daily basis and try to get them at eye level, your iPhone or your iPhone Android. Sorry didn't mean to sell advertisement for anything, you know, think about bringing it up to your eyes as opposed to bringing your head down to it. And I know that can be tiring because that that phone weighs a ton, particularly if you're sitting there reading it for a while. Sometimes I tell folks just to cross their arm over almost like they're sticking their arm, like they're half folding their arms. So you might have the left arm under the right arm sort of up in the armpit area and it can support your hand. So the phone is in a better position for your hands. Had to stay upright. Peter Koch: [00:57:52] Sure. It moves it out a little bit farther away from your body. Yeah. Al Brown: [00:57:54] Yeah. And you can do it sort of passively and kind of read what's going on. So that's kind of the workstation. Think [00:58:00] about those things and all the stuff you interact with. Same thing in the car, like adjust your mirrors. So that when you're sitting upright in the car, you can see, you know, you might frame out the back window and if halfway through a drive you look in the mirror and all of a sudden you're looking at the ceiling, you're going, oh, and tells you that you've just gone into a forward head see posture. So. Correcting those mirrors so that they give you cues of where you are, you can do fun, little things to like once you have your screens at the right place. I often thought this would be a cool thing to do, is you put a little and you could you could do anything you want. I'm thinking this would be sort of the Elton John kind of tool to help you keep good portion. I reference Elton John simply because I'm thinking eyeglasses, but if you put a little mirror at the top of your screens, you know, just there that when you're in the right position, you can see your eyes. OK, so as the day goes on, all you have to do is and that's why I called the Elton John's, I put a set of glasses [00:59:00] over so you could see yourself in the eyeglasses reflecting back things like you're wearing eyeglasses as the day goes on, if you fade out of out of sight. And you don't see yourself, you pop back up until you see yourself, and it also cues you to get up and move because you're obviously fatigued and slouching. And then just from a walking around standpoint, because here's a showstopper. You never look at yourself. OK, so, you know, how do you have to rely on these internal memory, muscle memory kinesiology to understand where you are in space. So, you know, you're not looking at yourself. So when you were in great posture walking around, you typically don't see you. Let me say that again. When you're walking around in great posture and your head's upright and you might occasionally see your hands swing by, but other than that, you really won't see much of you at all, which tells you you're in good shape. If [01:00:00] you're hanging over in the seat posture and you're seeing a lot of you, you're creating a lot of problems for yourself. Peter Koch: [01:00:06] Chances are that's not so good right. Al Brown: [01:00:09] You'll see it coming. Yeah, it's one of those things are good position. You won't see much of you. Peter Koch: [01:00:16] Yeah, that's an interesting key. And I really hadn't thought of it that way. But it is if I'm looking down, you know, you can see your feet, you can see your knees, some of us might see, you know, shirts or skirts or whatever. But if you're sitting up or standing up straight, you're not really seeing anything now. You might see hands, you might see a toe, but you're looking around. You're looking at the world around you instead of yourself and the sidewalk all the time. Al Brown: [01:00:40] Good, solid game of Jenga. You know, you're upright. Peter Koch: [01:00:45] So what are some work if people want to find more information about the effects of slouching and maybe some different ways to counteract it or how to set your workstation up or to do things to counteract slouching, where might they [01:01:00] go to find stuff? Al Brown: [01:01:02] You can go to our safety director and we have a lot of resources there on the effects of sitting and ways to set up proper ways to set up a workstation. We have work from home references simply because most of us have been doing that for the past year and a couple of months. And we also have stretches, a couple of good stretch posters, movement. I call them resetting posters because it's I mean, some of them are stretches, but a lot of it is just resetting your body. Kind of like I talked about standing up and doing some back bends. That's really sort of a resetting of the body in the back. So there's great material there. You know, James Levine's book on Stand Up, you know, I don't get any royalties from that recommendation, but I found it a great a great quick read. It's one of those kind of Peter Koch: [01:01:55] It is a really good book. Yeah. Yeah. Al Brown: [01:01:57] It just kind of hits the physiology of it and you kind of [01:02:00] go, huh? And it really touches on some other things to some. We didn't talk about obesity and all that kind of stuff from sitting and lowering your metabolism, but he really does a great job and he did a solid piece of research on that fidgetors and non-fidgetors and moving so a great book to reference and certainly online. There's always good, good references there. We'll put that the Harvard newsletter on the back side so that you can take a peek at that. Peter Koch: [01:02:27] Be great. There's a ton of resources out there. Just when you're searching for stuff, always try to go to a reputable resource. There's always new and different information that's out there. Sometimes it's not always the best. So not that you have to start with MEMIC resources, but certainly, like you said, we've got a ton of resources out there. The Harvard Medical Review is also a great place to go. And then some of the books that are out there are good as well. But as long as you're talking about how to counteract those things with just natural stuff, like it's not going to be a quick, easy it's an easy [01:03:00] fix when you think about it set up straight. Right. Get up and move. Those are too quick and easy things to do, but they tend to be difficult because of the habits. So it's not a pill, it's not a surgery. It's not. I can go see somebody else and they can fix me. You kind of have to fix yourself. So that could be the biggest challenge. So when the solution that someone proffers for you to fix your fix, what ails you is that magic pill or the surgery or something revolutionary that someone else can do for you, it's probably not going to correct it. Might help for a little while, but might not correct that all the way. So those things that you can do for yourself are going to be immediately helpful. Just be intentional about them. Al Brown: [01:03:43] Yeah, I mean, those are just addressing the symptoms. If you think about it and you know, what we're talking about is addressing the root cause. So it's harder, much cheaper, but it works. And, you know, you know, gravity's going to get you in the end anyway. So, you know, [01:04:00] don't help it along. Peter Koch: [01:04:02] Don't give up. Al Brown: [01:04:03] Don't. Yeah. Don't start doing the things that are going to happen to you anyway with aging and the breakdown of the body by mimicking those postures. Hmm, I was a little commercial break there, mimicking those postures early on. And again, it's just be mindful. Sure. Of where you are in space. Yeah. Yeah. Peter Koch: [01:04:29] Excellent. Well, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast and sharing all this great information with us and the listeners out there. So appreciate it again very much. Al Brown: [01:04:39] Thank you very much. Appreciate being here. Always fun. Peter Koch: [01:04:42] Always fun. Thanks to all of our listeners out there for joining us today on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. We've been speaking about how slouching can affect your health with Al Brown PT and director of ergonomics at MEMIC. If you have any questions or would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email [01:05:00] me at [email protected]. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast, where you can find additional resources, links to other podcasts with our as well as our entire podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our Safety Net blog so you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. If you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on. And if you've already done that, thanks, because it really helps us spread the word. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe. That really helps us to please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.