Car­la Rauseo

I am trav­el­ing in the near fu­ture, mak­ing that long, Transat­lantic flight to the "Old World." I have to say that I am dread­ing the flight, not be­cause I am afraid of fly­ing, but be­cause sit­ting in air­plane seats for hours on end dri­ves me in­sane. It is the bore­dom that frus­trates me, and no num­ber of movies can help the sit­u­a­tion be­cause I am al­ways too un­com­fort­able in those back-break­ing seats to be able to fo­cus on the movies. Sleep is un­heard of, un­less I self-med­icate, and even then, the dis­com­fort dom­i­nates the ef­fects of the med­ica­tion, and I can usu­al­ly on­ly man­age two or three hours of obliv­ion if I am lucky. I al­ways won­der who could pos­si­bly have de­signed those air­plane seats, and my con­clu­sion is al­ways the same...a per­son with very short legs and the worst pos­ture ever. I feel like my spine is crunched in­to a "C" in those seats, and it is no sur­prise that most peo­ple have back pain dur­ing and af­ter a long flight. I think it would be­hoove the air­line com­pa­nies to em­ploy the help of a phys­i­cal ther­a­pist to re-de­sign those ridicu­lous seats. When one thinks about it, fly­ing is ac­tu­al­ly quite haz­ardous to the body. Be­sides back pain from the worst chairs mankind ever in­vent­ed, we need to con­sid­er the ac­tu­al ef­fects of pro­longed im­mo­bil­i­ty in these hor­ri­ble seats.

Deep vein throm­boses (DVT's) are life-threat­en­ing blood clots in the legs, which arise due to im­mo­bil­i­ty. They are of par­tic­u­lar con­cern to peo­ple with car­diac con­di­tions, those who have just had surgery, the obese, those 40 years and old­er, smok­ers, and those with vari­cose veins. The im­mo­bil­i­ty on a long flight can com­press the ves­sels in the legs and make it hard­er for blood to get back to the heart. Grav­i­ty can cause the flu­id to col­lect in the legs and make the feet swell, in­creas­ing the risk for DVT. De­hy­dra­tion is an­oth­er risk fac­tor for DVT, and it is ac­tu­al­ly very easy to de­hy­drate at high al­ti­tude be­cause of the dry air in the plane. In fact, the hu­mid­i­ty is of­ten less than 25 per cent. I know of peo­ple who refuse to drink on flights be­cause they do not want to get up to go to the bath­room! This is a huge risk fac­tor for de­hy­dra­tion and a recipe for dis­as­ter.

I see that in their safe­ty book­lets and mag­a­zines, the air­lines now pro­vide ex­er­cis­es to re­duce the risk of DVT's. These in­clude sim­ple lit­tle ex­er­cis­es that one can do in the seat, such as an­kle cir­cles, but­tocks clench­ing, march­ing in a sit­ting po­si­tion, and pulling the knees up to the chest for a low back and but­tocks stretch. There are al­so lit­tle pos­tur­al ex­er­cis­es one can do to lim­it the painful ef­fects of pro­longed sit­ting in those aw­ful C-shaped seats. Ex­er­cis­es such as neck rolls, shoul­der rolls and shoul­der blade squeezes at­tempt to as­sist with these.

An­oth­er sit­ting ex­er­cise that I like to call the "Bar­bie Doll," in­volves push­ing the chest out in front, while stick­ing the but­tocks out be­hind to cre­ate an arch in the back. Re­peat­ed Bar­bie Dolls through­out the flight are good for those who de­vel­op low back pain from pro­longed sit­ting. I al­so like to bring my in­flat­able cer­vi­cal pil­low (that fun­ny, horse-shoe-shaped pil­low) to sup­port my neck, and I use the blan­kets on the plane to place in the small of my back for some lum­bar sup­port. Need­less to say, I am quite a sight on the air­craft, all pil­lowed and propped! I will ad­mit that I must al­so be a huge pain to sit next to, and I pity the stranger be­side me. How­ev­er, my need for com­fort over-rides this pity and I am con­stant­ly mov­ing on the flight. Apart from my per­pet­u­al ex­er­cis­ing and prop­ping, I drink a ton of wa­ter. Not on­ly does this keep me well hy­drat­ed, but it forces me to get up of­ten to go to the bath­room. The poor soul next to me must be fre­quent­ly dis­turbed as he must get up to let me out in­to the aisle. I guess in the long run, he should thank me for mak­ing him get up of­ten, to pre­vent these ef­fects of im­mo­bil­i­ty! But I try to lim­it my in­tru­sion on oth­er pas­sen­gers by al­ways re­quest­ing an aisle seat. In these seats I can al­so stretch my legs out in­to the aisle...but watch out for those drinks carts!!! By far, the best thing one can do on a long flight to lim­it the ef­fects of pro­longed sta­t­ic po­si­tions is to get up and move about the cab­in. How­ev­er, I fear that if every­one did this, the air­craft aisle would be­come like the East­ern Main Road at rush hour!

Still, I in­sist on do­ing it for my­self. Not on­ly do I get up and move about fre­quent­ly, but while wait­ing in line for the bath­room, I do some back bends to re­verse the di­rec­tion that my spine has been con­fined to dur­ing sit­ting in those C-shaped seats, and I have to say that this re­al­ly helps my back. Of course, I get strange looks from pas­sen­gers, and I move so fre­quent­ly that by the end of the flight some of them even nod to me in a ges­ture of recog­ni­tion. Oth­ers nudge their friend next to them as if to say, "Here comes that weird la­dy again!" I don't care. By the end of the flight, I have lit­tle dis­com­fort and am a much more pleas­ant in­di­vid­ual than if I were to have sat in hor­ri­ble seats for ten hours of a trans-At­lantic flight! My trav­el bud­dies ap­pre­ci­ate that! The body is made to move. Mo­tion is lo­tion, and I will con­tin­ue to take ad­van­tage of be­ing "free to move about the cab­in."

Car­la Rauseo, P.T., M.S., C.S.C.S., is a state reg­is­tered and li­censed phys­io­ther­a­pist;

Cer­ti­fied strength and con­di­tion­ing spe­cial­ist at To­tal Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre Lim­it­ed