Brace for Impact

For the longest time, I have found that my poor posture has made it so that walking or standing around for any length of time makes my back hurt and fatigues me to the point of wanting to sit down and thereby greatly reduce my step accumulation that we all so carefully monitor these days. Do I have a bad back…not really. I have no vertebrae or disc issues per se that I know of. I once had that all x-ray checked and was told there were a few minor hairline cracks (probably from some self-inflicted trauma of youth…the Lucy football slip…the skiing yard sale…the motorcycle mishap…etc.), but nothing that caused discs or vertebrae to be bulging too badly or in need of fusing. I feel for those folks with real back problems because I can imagine how debilitating that all feels…with literally no rest for the weary. But being a guy who was once 6’5” exactly (according to the Liberty State Science Museum laser height measurement devise) and spent his whole adult life over 300 pounds, gravity has taken its toll on my physique and I hunch like so many others. My shoulders, which are naturally horizontal and straight across (as opposed to downward sloping) have tended to roll forward and down. My buffalo hump pushes upward and my middle back gets an unnatural amount of ribcage muscular tension…especially on my left side, which matches my natural lateral pronation (yikes! I sound like Quasimodo!)

The back ribcage is held in place by several groups of muscles that work together to provide stability and enable movement. The Intercostal muscles run between each rib and are crucial for maintaining rib spacing and assisting with breathing. The Multifidus are the deep spinal muscles that provide segmental stability, and the Rotatores are the small muscles that connect vertebrae to ribs and help with rotation. Now there are lots of other muscles in the back as any good kinesiologist will tell you…like the Serratus posterior superior and inferior, the Iliocostalis, the Latissimus dorsi, Rhomboids and, of course, the ever-popular middle and lower Trapezius. These muscles work as an integrated system. The deeper muscles provide fine motor control and stability, while the larger superficial muscles generate force for movement and maintain overall posture. Problems with any of these muscle groups can affect rib positioning and contribute to back pain or breathing difficulties…and so it goes for those of us with bad posture. Why didn’t I listen to Mom when she told me to sit up straight? “Don’t slouch!!!”

Well, the damage is done by age 72 and now we are into the remedial program. I have had so much changing with my physical life with compression socks, I have decided to see what I can do about my middle-upper back in order to feel more like walking and standing. So, I saw an Instagram ad…currently one of my best sources of wasting my money on junk I really don’t need or really want except in that brief Instagram moment. This ad was for a shoulder brace that pulled your shoulders back and wrapped around your waist and used big Velcro to keep it all in place. There was a certain girdle aspect to it all, but I bought what is now the third or fourth version of this contraption, purchased with great expectations. It is not so different from when I sent away for the comic book X-Ray Specs or the package of 2,000 plastic army men for $1.99. The gap between the ad and the reality left room for much disappointment. In the case of anything that wraps around my waist, there is more than ample room for disappointment.

When the device arrived, I put it on and wondered how it would feel over time…then I sat down and felt that telltale sign of trouble approaching as the slow and rising sound of Velcro straining to be free started coming from my waist. There was no way I was going to be able to wear this girdle for a whole day and that was that. I even contemplated doing surgery on the device using one of the previous monster Velcro gadgets as a donor device. But then Google came to my rescue. What Instagram got me into, Google could get me out of. I looked up back braces. To begin with, it is quite disconcerting to see the same basic device as I had bought, advertised by various manufacturers and resellers in price points ranging from $9.95 to $700. There is room in that sort of price range for much chumpism and schmuckism…in both directions. But one product caught my eye. It was European, which is always a hopeful product feature. Europeans have been at this “getting through life” process a lot longer than we Americans have been and I tend to think they generally do it better or at least wiser than we do. I am led to believe that very few Europeans ever send away for Amazing Space Phones or Onion Gum.

The European version of this back braces contraption is a lot like the others in the way it works to keep your shoulders pulled back and therefore your posture more upright. It’s hard not to think about the contortions and discomfort that most normal to big busted women have to go through every day, morning and night, as they put on their over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders (a.k.a. brassier). Well, I put the thing on and tightened it up with the Velcro straps under the armpits and up over my shoulders and voila…I’m suddenly standing up straighter. The difference of not having the waist strap makes all the difference to me. I’ve now been wearing this shoulder brace for about a week and I have gotten used to strapping it on in the morning and taking if off before bed. At first it was cramping my upper middle back, but now I hardly notice it except that I’m standing up straighter and feel more comfortable walking. The other day in the San Francisco airport we had a last minute gate change that caused us to do the O.J. Shuffle. My back allowed me to hustle through the airport doing a better job of keeping up with Kim than before. It’s too soon to say that the shoulder brace is my new compression socks. Those have been road tested for going on four months and I have zero doubts about their impact on my leg energy. The shoulder brace feels like it could well have similar impact on my upper back and I see no reason not to keep using it. My stretch kinesiologist tells me she thinks its probably a good thing and sees no reason not to keep using it.

So now I have propped up my lower and upper extremities and feel not the least bit self-conscious about either. I figure that anything that makes me feel better and stay more active has to be a good thing. So, if you see me in the street some day, brace for the impact of seeing me standing ramrod straight.