When you sit, do you usually cross your legs or not? Although this position is comfortable for many, it is necessary to ask yourself what the real impacts of this posture are on our physical health.
As we age, taking care of our health becomes increasingly necessary. Therefore, understanding how everyday actions can affect our well-being is very important.
Do you want to understand a little about the consequences that crossing your legs can have on your life? Keep reading and we’ll show you what the experts have to say about the subject!
Is crossing your legs bad for your health?
Most scientific research suggests that crossing your legs at the knees is much worse than crossing your legs at the ankles.
According to experts, sitting this way increases blood pressure due to the accumulation of blood in the veins.
This means that the heart has to work harder to compensate, which can cause damage to the blood vessels. For this reason, when measuring blood pressure, it is necessary to keep your feet flat on the floor.
What are the effects in the body to cross your legs?
In this sense, crossing your legs frequently can cause long-term changes in your body, for example: this habit can affect the length of your muscles and even the bone structure of your pelvis.
Furthermore, this habit can cause disappointment in the spine and shoulders, and there is also the possibility of the head position becoming misaligned due to the change in the bones of the neck, as the spine compensates to keep the center of gravity above the pelvis.
This imbalance increases the chances of a person developing scoliosis (abnormal alignment of the spine), as well as other deformities.
Staying in this position for too long and too often can also cause greater trochanteric pain syndrome, a common and painful condition that affects the outer side of the hip and thigh.
On the other hand, sitting cross-legged can be positive.
But for some people, this position can be beneficial. A 2016 study found that sitting cross-legged helps people who have one leg longer than the other.
Therefore, sitting this way can help the person with this imbalance to adjust the height on both sides of the pelvis, improving alignment.
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