Online Research Study: How does sitting affect muscles?

Dr Ragnar Viir is looking for participants to complete an online survey looking at the way that sitting impacts muscle function.

From the survey:

Muscular activity, movement, keep us healthy. Excessive sitting is a risk factor for poor health and shorter life expectancy. The process starts from sitting per se – but what happen to muscles when we are sitting?

Here we explore whether the digital 3PPIUTT test (Three Position Personally Informative Upper Trapezius muscle Test) can be used to distinguish qualitative differences between standing, sitting and lying positions. Test results can enhance our understanding of how to recover from upright positions´ related muscular stress.

Method: Respondents are asked to investigate their own Upper Trapezius (UT) muscles in two ways.

1) Gently squeezing the muscle to form an opinion of muscle stiffness in sitting, standing and supine,

2) Pulling muscle, fixed by thumb and fingers´ pincer-like grip in frontal (to nose) direction alternately with pulling muscle in dorsal direction, forms opinion of muscle tension; again in three sitting, standing and supine positions.

Respondents should use thumb and fingers in a pincer-like grip and test left side muscle with right hand and right side muscle with left hand. Next page videos show location of Upper Trapezius (UT) muscle and using the thumb and fingers´ pincer-like grip to test UT muscle.

Subjective assessments of muscle stiffness and tension please mark on a scale of 1-5 where: 1 = Most relaxed and 5 = Most stiff / Most tensed.
By completing and submitting this survey you are providing consent for your results to be used for research purposes.

Tallinn Medical Research Ethics Committee (TMREC) has given acceptance nr 307 (application nr 1054, TMREC protocol nr 174) to Ragnar Viir Limited Partnership, principal investigator Dr. Ragnar Viir PhD

The survey can be found here.