visovari: decrystallize:boogedyboogedyboo:castiel-for-king:micdotcom: Carrying a heavy backp
visovari: decrystallize: boogedyboogedyboo: castiel-for-king: micdotcom: Carrying a heavy backpack may make you shrink The pain starts in middle school. A 2010 study in the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which studied a small test group of children around the age of 11, found that the constant weight of the bag was actually causing spinal cords to compress and cause significant back pain. Those bags were on the lighter side of the average: only 26 pounds. It gets a lot worse with the average bag weight. So funny story, when I was about 22 (I’m 26 now) I worked at a gym and we did this promotion thing that involved a local chiropractor doing the little spine scan you see above for free to whoever wanted one. So I was like well, fuck might as well. Anyway, turns out my spine is pretty messed up and I lean a little to one side like the picture. Guess which side? To the right. Why? Because that’s the shoulder I carried my 20-30lbs backpack on for the 7 years of middle and high school. The chiropractor just looked at me and gave me this knowing, slightly frustrated look and said something like, “Yeah, we’re starting to see this a lot in people your age.” No one believed me but it’s real!!! I STILL need to make a conscious effort to stand up straight, 8 years after having to carry that kind of weight for school. If I look in a mirror to fix my posture, what looks right feels to me like I’m leaning backwards. It’s actually physically uncomfortable for me to stand properly. My middle school made a really big deal out of how we HAD to bring ALL our books to school with us EVERY DAY, and take them home EVERY NIGHT. Kids not bringing their textbooks to class was becoming an “epidemic,” so the announcements every morning involved the faculty hounding us about it. We had assemblies about it what must have been at least three times in 7th and 8th grade. But the worst was, at some point during 7th or 8th grade, the principal and vice principal did this “experiment” that they HIGHLY publicized (talked about it all day beforehand, then wouldn’t shut up about for MONTHS afterward) where they both filled backpacks with textbooks, waited outside the front door with the kids in the morning, and when the doors opened they walked the entire first floor, the entire second floor, and the entire third floor before the bell rang and school started. Their whole point was “if we can walk through the entire school with bags full of books before class starts, you can at least walk straight to class with yours” Except, like… they were full-grown adults in their 30s or 40s, and we were between the ages of 11 and 13. We were children. I started having back pain in 7th grade and I still have it 12 years later. It got really intense from 8th to 10th grade, and then it started getting better, but that kinda damage lasts, man, and even though I’m not lugging heavy shit on my shoulders and back anymore, the pain flares up sometimes and can last for days. And every time it hurts, I just think about my fucking middle school principal and vice principal doing that walk and then gloating about it for the rest of my time at that school. They deliberately made us, children, feel bad for not being able to carry a heavy backpack full of text books (when like HALF OUR CLASSES required them for both schoolwork and homework) because “we walked through the whole entire school!” and it was just… ugly. Ugly and awful and frustrating and I’m gonna be dealing with this pain for the rest of my fucking life and my middle school vice principal’s stupid mustache is going to etch itself in my brain every time pain arcs up my spine and through my shoulders forever -- source link