Articles labeled: back pain

Ever wonder how a pregnant woman is able to carry such a large weight in front of her, without simply falling over? Yeah, us neither — just one of those things we take for granted. Well fortunately for us some apparently bored researches decided to look into the matter, and determined that a pregnant woman’s natural stance during pregnancy is a product of evolution. It’s now been shown that pregnant “pre-humans” had the same stance in an effort to reduce back pain — so those of you with backaches during pregnancy can be thankful it wasn’t worse…

The bodies of women do two things when they are pregnant — they adjust their stance to move the centre of gravity to accommodate the growing foetus, and the lower vertebrae have evolved a distinct shape to allow this shifting to take place without damaging the spine, Katherine Whitcome of Harvard University and colleagues found.

“It was one of these things like, ‘Oh my god, no one’s ever thought of this,’ and it looks so obvious,” Liza Shapiro of the University of Texas at Austin, who helped supervise the work, said in a telephone interview.

Whitcome and Shapiro followed 19 women through their pregnancy, using digital cameras and motional analysis equipment to map the changes in stance and movement as the months passed.

“What women do when their pregnancy reaches about half of the expected mass … they shift backwards,” Shapiro said.