If you’re not sitting up straight before you read this, you will be afterwards.
Apparently, slouching can cause your head to explode.
Okay, not really explode, but it can raise your blood pressure and heart rate. Jim Deuchars and colleagues at the University of Leeds have found a co-relation between the neck muscles and the part of the brainstem that controls your heart rate and blood pressure.
So, nya. Watch your posture in front of that computer screen, as Deuchars says hours of slumping in front of it could cause the kind of brainstem overload he’s researching.
Slouching: it may not cause Armageddon (unless you’re a rough beast, and I don’t mean the kind that is sometimes enjoyed in the bedroom), but it will cause concussive cranial cacophonies.
I can hear the distant “crump” in the cubicle farms now…
New Scientist story: Bad posture could raise your blood pressure
Bonus quote from Saint Swift, re: posture:
“Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.â€Â