Are sit-ups good for your cervical spine?

Nowadays, many office workers need to sit for a long time when they work. If they sit for too long, it will cause great harm to the cervical spine. Many patients with cervical spondylosis are caused by long-term sitting. To relieve the pain caused by cervical spondylosis, you should pay attention to exercise and movement in your daily life. So, are sit-ups good for your cervical spine?

Lie down, rise up and repeat the cycle. This is sit-ups, which is the most popular way to exercise the waist, back and abdominal muscles both at home and abroad. Recently, a trend of criticizing sit-ups and whether sit-ups should be eliminated has spread from the Internet to the real world. Can we still do this exercise that has been popular for decades or even hundreds of years? Is it really as useless as the rumors say? Does it really cause paralysis? The conclusions given by spinal orthopedics and sports injury rehabilitation experts tend to be consistent - sit-ups can exercise muscles, but improper operation can indeed cause lumbar muscle strain, intervertebral disc herniation, cervical spine injury and other problems. "But to say that this exercise can cause paralysis is a bit exaggerated."

"We cannot use some extremely rare phenomena to refute the significance of sit-ups as a training method. No matter what kind of exercise you do, the key is not to overdo it, not to exceed your tolerance, not to do it explosively, and to do it quickly," said Yan Huibo, doctor of spine surgery and associate chief physician at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Southern Medical University (Guangdong Orthopedic Hospital). Zhao Chenning, director of the Sports Injury Rehabilitation Research Center of Guangdong Provincial Work Injury Rehabilitation Hospital and senior therapist, said that compared with other forms of exercise, sit-ups do have low requirements and are easy to master. But for sedentary groups like students, this sport can easily lead to problems such as strain and muscle soreness. "Currently, in the field of fitness and sports, plank or crunch exercises are more popular, but these exercises are more difficult to master and require higher venues."

Sit-ups may seem simple and easy to do, but when you break down the movements, you will find that they actually pose many health risks. Among them, the action of "holding the head" may bring pressure to the cervical spine and cause shoulder problems; while the process of lying flat on the body, relying on the strength of the waist to pull the body up, and then falling down can easily cause a variety of lumbar diseases including lumbar disc herniation. In severe cases, it may even cause paralysis to the practitioner.

Sit-ups are helpful for exercising people's back muscles and abdominal muscles. If you compare the sit-up exercise to "standing upright at 90 degrees", that is, letting a person stand up, you will find that the sit-up is equivalent to an exerciser bending over quickly. Similar movements are harmless for ordinary people if performed in moderation, appropriately and accurately. After changing to sit-ups, you need to lift your upper limbs upward, which increases the strength requirements of the waist, back and abdominal muscles, and can play a certain role in exercise. This movement is easy to learn and easy to perform, so it has a good mass base.

But this movement also clearly stretches the spine. Therefore, this exercise is not suitable for patients with spinal damage, lumbar disc herniation, or spinal tumors, because during the stretching and bending process, the pressure on the vertebrae and the intervertebral discs between the vertebrae (equivalent to spring pads) increases. If one already has lumbar disc herniation, spinal tumors, or damage, these spinal gaps may be severely squeezed and worn, and even the spinal bones may be damaged, aggravating the lumbar disc herniation and the pain.