Osteoporosis – and the iPhone plague – lead to bad posture. Here’s how to stay ahead of the curve
The 19th-century term ‘dowager’s hump’ was coined because the abnormal curvature of the spine was more likely to afflict older, richer, women than younger, poorer women. An old, rich widow did less physical labour than an old female peasant, too. The peasant was less susceptible to the curvature because her hard work made proper use of her muscles and didn’t allow them to decline. As with ‘housemaid’s knee’, the sexist diagnosis does not exclude male sufferers. But, still, women are simply more likely to have it than men. At a modest estimate, the NHS judges that osteoporosis afflicts half of women over 50 but only a third of men over 60. Osteoporosis causes the spine to start giving way and the head incrementally to move forward, thus creating the hump. It is not a lump growing on your back, as with a camel. It is all to do with the...
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