In more recent discussions of health in graduate school and academia, much of the emphasis has seemed to fall on mental health. This is undoubtedly a good thing. However, I haven’t seen anyone discuss the (sometimes nasty) side effects of sitting and reading/typing all day, so I figured I’d mention a few things I’ve run into, just as examples. I’m going to try to keep this short. (I’ve not yet read it myself–I’ve mostly relied on a hodge-podge of advice I’ve gotten from physical therapists and things I’ve discovered on my own that have worked well–but I have heard that Deskbound is a good place to start.)
I had been pretty active up through my time at community college. I spent a significant portion of my days not sitting, e.g., working retail, playing sports or hiking, or playing guitar. However, once I got to Ohio State and decided I was aiming for graduate school, I began spending the majority of my days sitting behind a screen, book, or in classes/talks. I still exercised fairly regularly and walked a few miles most days, but the overall trend of spending most of my days sitting continued through my first year or so of graduate school.
I then began lifting and playing pick-up basketball regularly. Not long after that–mid-2015, I think–I subluxed my left shoulder. Then, toward the end of 2015, I sprained an ankle and began having hip and knee problems. I backed away from lifting and basketball and tried to rehab them on my own, but without the input of an expert I wasn’t seeing much success. I ended up going to physical therapy for a couple months in mid-2016, but even with insurance it was pretty expensive, so I didn’t get as much from that as I could have. (Yay, graduate student wages! /s)
Anyway, to make a long story short, a major factor seems to have been poor posture and work habits. Despite being much better than they were, I am still dealing with a number of problems. For instance, I just subluxed my shoulder again last week, for like the twentieth time; standing still and going down stairs still hurts my knees and hips; and I have tightness/weakness in my neck and shoulders that causes headaches and compression of cords of the brachial plexus. Not the worst stuff to be dealing with, obviously, but I’d still prefer not to be dealing with them at all. And more to the point, I don’t want to be dealing with these sorts of problems already.
Moral of the story: start thinking about the consequences of your posture and work habits early, before you start experiencing problems.
EDIT 03/12/19: This shouldn’t be taken as a general endorsement of him or his programs, let alone the bro-scientists that seem to surround him, or of an exclusionary one-body-fits all approach to “good functioning,” but this video gives a good intro heuristic for thinking about the connectedness of various joints (modulo my own understanding of these things, of course).
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