UCRH researcher Chris Williams is among a group of authors to publish a new review delving into whether sitting around too much could be causing back pain in children and teenagers.
The team of researchers reviewed a large number of studies to see if there’s a connection between being sedentary and experiencing spinal pain, with their work now published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
The study looked at data from over 700,000 young people and found a slight link between sitting for long periods and having back pain. However, when they looked at long-term data, they didn’t find strong evidence that sitting too much actually causes back pain to start.
Interestingly, the researchers also noted that there’s a big gap in the studies when it comes to understanding how sitting affects the long-term outlook for kids who already have back pain.
In short, while there might be a small connection between sitting a lot and having back pain, it’s not clear if sitting too much is the cause. More research is needed to fully understand this relationship and to see how it affects kids in the long run.
