School starts: Your heavy rucksack can cause chronic diseases

Little Spaniards suffer more and more from back pain.

Who or what is guilty? Their heavy rucksack – say experts from the CONSEJO GENERAL DE COLEGIOS OFICIALES DE MÉDICOS. According to norms, it should not exceed 10% of the body weight, indications not respected by more than a third of little students. What causes serious pain on shoulders and in the back in 51 percent of males in 69 percent of females, that could become a chronic disease in adult age and spread in other parts of the body. Such data have been released on occasion of a national campaign that takes place every year to prevent health risks in children who go to school.

The same problem everywhere

Heavy backpacks don’t just sap children of energy that might be better used doing schoolwork or playing sports. Lugging them can also lead to chronic back pain, accidents and possibly lifelong orthopedic damage.

Among the risks described by Dr.Pierre D’Hemecourt, a sports medicine specialist at Children’s Hospital Boston, are stress fractures in the back, inflammation of growth cartilage, back and neck strain, and nerve damage in the neck and shoulders.

The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission calculated that carrying a 12-pound backpack to and from school and lifting it 10 times a day for an entire school year puts a cumulative load on youngsters’ bodies of 21,600 pounds — the equivalent of six mid-sized cars.

The issue has been raised repeatedly in countries all over the world for more than a decade. In December 1999, doctors in Milan reported in The Lancet that 34.8 percent of Italian schoolchildren carried more than 30 percent of their body weight at least once a week, “exceeding limits proposed for adults.”

The load carried by these sixth-graders was equivalent to a 176-pound man hauling around a 39-pound backpack each day.

But even in this digital era, when at least some schoolwork can be done online, there has been no apparent decrease in the burdens we ask the younger generation to tote around all day.

 

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