Take a look into your child’s backpack. After lunch, school supplies, notebooks, and textbooks, that bag can get pretty heavy! In fact, it often exceeds the recommendation of the American Academy of Orthopedic surgeons, who say that a backpack should weigh less than 10-15% of your student’s body weight. Putting that much weight on your child’s shoulders can lead to injury such as severe joint, neck, and back pain, or posture problems.
Some sufferers of backpack-related problems hear the claim that they should use lockers more often. But for many students, or for adults with laptop bags going to work, this isn’t necessarily feasible. So we have some tips on adjusting a backpack’s weight, and selecting bags for any age that will help reduce pain in the long run.
Detecting Backpack Problems
Watch your child with his or her backpack on. You can quickly spot an overweight and problematic backpack by observing your child’s posture.
A too-heavy backpack is obvious by your child leaning forward to compensate for the weight. This adjustment in posture can lead to problems as varied as neck pain to knee and joint problems as your child’s body tries to adjust.
Another way to find out is if your child has red marks on his or her shoulders from carrying a backpack. Your child may also complain about his or her hands and arms falling sleep when they carry the backpack.
Distribute Weight
Most backpack problems come from poor or uneven distribution of weight. How can you avoid this?
It’s simple: go for bags that are better at distributing weight. Choose a backpack that doesn’t strain one side. This means avoiding shoulder bags that don’t fit across the body. If you or your child isn’t comfortable wearing a shoulder bag across the body, ditch this type of bag for a backpack.
It also means using both straps of a backpack, even though it may be tempting to use only one in a hurry. Especially when carrying textbooks and other heavy objects, this can cause strain.
Pack Smart
We can’t always choose what we’ll carry and where. Sometimes it’s possible to lighten the load, but when it comes to laptops and textbooks, that’s easier said than done. So, to make the load easier to bear, pack smart and save yourself pain in the long run. Move the heaviest items to the bottom and against the back. This makes it easier to carry. Light items like pencils, small notebooks, and handheld electronics should go outward and upward. This is great for organization, too; putting smaller items in easier-to-reach places will make them easier to find in class.
Necessary Features
If adjusting the weight in a backpack doesn’t help, it may be time to get a new backpack.
Get a bag with thick shoulder straps. Thin straps or drawstring bags can dig into the neck and shoulders, particularly under a lot of weight like with books. But the thicker straps don’t press on the shoulders so much, reducing much future pain.
When selecting a backpack, make sure that it’s the length of your torso. Too-short bags can cause upper back strain and uneven weight distribution.
Another tip is to choose a backpack that also has waist straps. Using these straps helps move some of the weight from the shoulders to the hips. Go for a design that snaps on and off easily for you and your child. You may encounter some resistance from this suggestion. But Dr. Elise G. Hewitt–president of the American Chiropractic Association’s Pediatrics Council–stresses this as a wise decision. She says that “shoulders are not designed to hang things from,” making it all the more important to move some of that weight to the hips.
If you are still concerned about the effects a heavy bag may have had on you or your child, contact us today!