you'll always need it cracked."

Oh, man. I hear this all the time.

"Sitting at a desk all day will give you bad posture."

We need to get away from the notion

that there's one good or one bad posture.

"Massages will remove knots in your back."

First of all, the misconception is

that you have knots there to begin with.

Hi, my name's Dr. Tom Walters.

I'm a physical therapist based in Santa Barbara, California,

and I specialize in the treatment

of patients with general orthopedic pain and injuries.

And I am Dr. David Song, and I am a chiropractor

based in Toronto, Ontario,

and the patients that I mostly see are weightlifters

and other people who are experiencing issues

with their daily activities.

And today we'll be debunking myths

about posture and back pain.

Song: Myths people hear growing up.

"Good posture means standing or sitting up straight."

So, this is a myth that comes up a lot in the clinic.

There's this really ideal, good posture.

Tuck your chin in, pull your shoulders back.

The current pain science, injury, rehab evidence

just doesn't support that thinking.

There isn't really a bad posture.

If you were going to label a posture as bad,

maybe it would just be that posture that

you're in for too long.

And you get anyone to do anything

for eight hours, and chances are

it's not going to be comfortable by the end of it.

So, slouching in itself is not really the problem.

It's why you're doing it for so long,

or not even that --

it's about not doing anything else, really.

Walters: There's actually some really interesting research

where they actually put people in slouching

and show that in the low back

it actually improved nutrient and fluid delivery.

So we just have to keep moving.

"Stretching will give you good posture."

Oh, man. I don't think anyone

has ever achieved good posture through stretching.

By all means, do it.

It's better than just sitting there doing nothing.

Posture is not really determined

by how tight your muscles are.

There are a lot of other aspects that go into posture.

For sure. Genetics are a part of it.

The activities that you're involved in,

especially during development.

Your actual skeleton will change

depending on what activities

you expose it to in your teenage years.

Like, one that we talk about a lot are baseball pitchers.

You know, if they start at a young age,

their actual upper bone, their humerus bone

in their arm will actually twist

because of the stresses they're putting on it.

We might have mobility-type work or interventions,

and stretching could be a part of that.

And the only way you can permanently

really probably change your posture

is to be consciously aware of it all the time

and hold that new position.

But doing that all the time is probably going to

create other problems for you.

So just be dynamic.

Song: "A stiff mattress is better for your back."

Walters: There's always questions about

pillows and mattresses.

I mean, you can understand, we spend a lot of time sleeping.

A stiff mattress might be great for some people

but horrible for other people.

The best way you can gauge if something is good for you

is if it's comfortable.

This goes with shoes, mattresses,

pillows, all those things.

So you really have to think of your own body

almost as an experiment and test things

and see where you're most comfortable

and what's best for your body.

Myths from the internet.

This one should be a real doozy.

Song: "Massages will remove knots in your back."

First of all, the misconception is

that you have knots there to begin with.

There's not some balled-up muscle that we can MRI and see.

We have a bunch of muscles that are just long and skinny,

and if you rub on them like this, they feel like a lump.

Don't worry about it. It's just a muscle in your body.

Song: So, massages can help to loosen up a tight muscle.

It can influence how that muscle feels

and how that muscle perceives, you know,

digital pressure applied to it.

But will it get rid of the knot?

Well, I mean, the knot wasn't there to begin with, so.

"Body braces will fix your posture."

Dave, I'll let you go first.

Song: They do have their place. Don't get me wrong.

They can help assist you in a position

that you need to hold,

much like a crutch would assist you standing up

to not weight-bear on that broken foot.

And so it can help

to deload some of the muscles while you wear it.

They can temporarily improve your posture

while you're wearing them,

but will you get any permanent changes

is a totally different story.

Walters: We need those things sometimes medically

to let something heal,

but anytime you have something passive holding your body,

it means your neuromuscular system isn't doing it

and it doesn't need to anymore.

Those muscles that would have held you back

that are now being held by something else

will quickly atrophy and decondition.

So even if that brace gave you some relief,

we might say, OK, yeah, maybe use it temporarily

in certain times of the day or activities,

but it's only for short windows.

It's not a permanent solution,

because it's going to create all kinds

of other negative physical body side effects.

Song: You want to be able to

condition the body up and strengthen it,

as opposed to rely on some external influence.

Walters: "MRIs and X-rays can always

diagnose your back problem."

Oh, man.

I need to buy myself an MRI, if that's the case.

MRIs and X-rays are often overutilized

for diagnosing back problems.

A lot of the research shows that

a structural issue with MRIs or X-rays

and whether or not that person has a disability or pain,

that correlation is pretty low.

Likewise, you can have someone experiencing a lot of pain,

a lot of issues, and then you get an MRI

and it's completely clean.

It just looks like a healthy spine.

When we look at the spine and spine pain,

we don't recommend MRIs until the person's done,

like, a six-week course of rehab.

Because they've actually found

that when people get those images,

if there is something there,

it can create fear and anxiety.

And they've actually shown that outcomes

in terms of recovery are poorer

when somebody sees their MRI.

Often a patient will be like,

"Hey, I have this MRI report."

And I'm like, "Hold up.

Let me see everything else about you first."

But I don't want to let that MRI

determine everything else about you,

because it's just one aspect about what you're experiencing.

Myths we hear the most.

"Sitting at a desk all day will give you bad posture."

We need to get away from the notion

that there's one good or one bad posture

and just really realize

that the research doesn't support that.

Really the best thing you can do,

from a posture standpoint, is just move often.

Change postural positions often.

In the past, they've done studies where

they got a bunch of people riding this recumbent bicycle

while doing their desk work.

And it turns out that after eight hours of doing that,

their back was killing them,

because they're just doing the same thing

for eight hours straight.

Whether or not you're sitting, moving, biking,

standing, even the treadmill desk, guess what?

You're walking for eight hours a day,

and it might end up hurting your back a little bit.

Your nervous system is pretty good

about knowing when you need to change posture.

So you just try to take breaks every 30 minutes,

every hour or something, get up and walk around.

Just changing those stresses is going to change

how your nervous system perceives your physical body.

It's going to change blood flow.

It's going to change nutrient delivery to tissues.

And it's just implementing the right stresses

at the right time.

"If you get your back cracked,

you'll always need it cracked."

Oh, man.

This, I hear this all the time.

I think the idea that

you need to get your back cracked once it's cracked

is rooted in the idea that the cracking itself

is shifting your bones into place,

and that if you don't get it cracked again

it'll shift out of place,

and then you need to get it cracked back into place.

That in itself is kind of untrue.

What we know now is that those cracks,

what we call are cavitations,

is just gas bubbles being released out of the joint.

Spinal manipulation is just about

introducing movement back into those joints.

It's literally no different than cracking your knuckle

and then not needing to crack that knuckle ever again.

It's the same mechanism.

All it is, is to open up a small window of time

where you can move, like, pain-free

or move with a little bit more ease

and then reinforce that type of movement on your own.

But to sum it all up, no, you don't have to

get your back cracked to infinity and beyond.

"Resting is the best remedy for back pain."

The problem is that we see that when people

are mobilized or rested for too long,

they just decondition and atrophy.

And in some cases, it can make the pain system

sort of ramp up and be more sensitized

if they rest too long.

Rest is very important when it's needed.

Like, if you just sprained your ankle,

I'm not going to get you weight-bearing on that same day.

But the goal is to eventually get back to

what you were doing pre-injury

or even better than that.

Rest in itself won't get you there.

Rest is not rehab.

This is why when you have surgery,

they don't let you stay in the hospital

and sleep there for multiple nights anymore.

You're pretty much in and out,

and you're starting rehab right away.

And the best way to approach that type of thing

is to just slowly level up your body.

I think a lot of people go from 0 to 100

way too quickly, way too often.

"Your body needs to be symmetrical."

Another doozy.

This is one that comes up a lot,

especially on social media.

The truth of the matter is asymmetry is normal.

There's lots of examples of that in the body.

Approximately 90% of people, for example,

have a difference in their leg length.

We write with one hand, right? Versus the other.