Want Better Health Ladies? Sit Like A Man!

Have you ever been told to sit like a lady?

Well now, you can tell whoever tries to cramp your style that actually, their 'advice' is medically unsound. According to Barbara Bergin, an orthopedic surgeon, sitting like a MAN might actually be more beneficial to your health.

According to The Washington Post, the American orthopedic Bergin believes imitating men's posture is better for your joint health.

So srtong is her belief in this, that she's even started a movement: S.L.A.M (sit like a man) for women's health.

In her blog, DrBarbaraBergin.com, Bergin writes that this is not a corporate or feminist movement to push forward equality and "reject lady-like behaviours."

"This may be resutlant from it, but SLAM is a women's health movement," she asserts.

A Personal Journey to SLAM

Bergin chanced upon this revelation when she herself went through the change in posture, albeit inadvertently.

She writes that when she was 32, she started experiencing knee pain - symptoms of bursitis, an inflammation of the fluid-filled sacs that are like a cushion between joints and soft tissue. But then, mysteriously, her pain disspaeared on the weekends.

What changed? She drove her big truck and not the compact car she drove on the weekdays, and she thinks this is what happened: the smaller car forced her legs and knees close together and caused hip pain.

She explains the science behind this: Women have a wider pelvis than men and therefore the femur, or the thighbone, rotates internally from the hip joint. This rotation causes women's knees to line up inside the hips in a sort of knock-kneed stance. This misalignment can lead to pain in the knees or hips.

“Way back in 1987, when many in the almost exclusively male orthopedic community, pooh-poohed patellar malalignment as some kind of female growing pain, or just one of those female aches and pains, I was actually suffering from it…and knew that it was not in my head. It was in my knees.”

Barbara Bergin in her blog

So sitting lady-like, like women have been conditioned to do for aeons, is hurting us.

She explains that with age, this condition worsens, but sitting like a man immediately eases the pain.

According to the Guardian, Bergin aims to make women worldover realise that their sitting habbits have a huge impact on muscoskeletal problems. And they may be able to reverse all this by adopting certain behaviours from their male counterparts: spread your legs and sit comforably. Your health will thank you!

This is Bergin’s goal: To make women realize that sitting habits can be a risk factor for musculoskeletal problems, and that they may be able to avoid particular aches, pains and conditions by refusing to sit with their legs pressed together, crossed or otherwise anatomically scrunched.

Of course she says don't manspread, "That's too far the other way.We want [your legs at] about 11 and 1 o’clock."

(With inputs from The Guardian)