Is sitting on your wallet bad for your back?
The wallet or purse- a staple for a lot of us! They can be chunky due to holding essentials such as cards, coins and receipts and sometimes lots of pointless items as well! Now ask yourself or your partner where is it kept most of the time and usually it’s in the back pocket but why does this matter?
Every time you sit down with your wallet in your back pocket, whether it’s in the car or on a chair, you are raising one side of your pelvis causing it to be unlevel. After a while your body will begin to compensate to make up for this unlevelling, as the pelvis is at the base of the spine it supports everything above it so this imbalance will have a knock-on effect to the surround tissues. For example, if you always place your wallet in your back left pocket this will raise your pelvis on the left and then cause your spine to curve slightly to the left to correct this imbalance.
However, this is not the only issue that can arise from sitting your wallet! The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in the body and it runs from your lower back through your buttocks and into your leg. The constant pressure from your wallet causes compression of the sciatic nerve which can cause pain, numbness and tingling down into your leg. To make this more complicated this is often incorrectly diagnosed. A lumbar disc herniation is the primary cause of sciatica so due to its similar presentation this is often the diagnosis. When in fact the correct diagnosis should be Wallet neuritis however there are many other names for this condition such as hip pocket syndrome and fat wallet syndrome.
So, with 75% of us suffering from low back pain at least once in our lifetime why increase your chances by doing something so easily preventable?
