At young ages the spinal column, which is the central support system of the human body, is susceptible to malformations, especially if the children are sitting in an incorrect position for long period. Our study examines the case of several elementary school students from a developed rural area. The aim of this study to analyze the impact of long sitting hours (5-6 hours) in incorrect position at on the normal standing up position at elementary school students. The study group for our study consisted of 80 elementary school students were recruited from a local rural elementary school. Each student was evaluated using a Kinect based system to determine their general standing up position. For 14 weeks, twice a week, each student has executed 5 type of Schroth exercises to improve their general body position. The first evaluation has shown that the students general standing up position is affected from the long sitting hours in the school benches. Most of them have shown misalignments at the shoulder and hip levels. In many cases one of the shoulders was higher than the other and the same is true for the hips as well. After 14 weeks of physiotherapy based on Schroth exercises the miss alignments were reduced to a bare minim. The results have shown that long sitting hours in incorrect positions can affect the spinal column and the standing up posture of the human body. In many cases malicious postures start to develop from childhood. If not treated they can transform in hyper-kyphotic and scoliotic postures which can induce other complications. If these malicious postures are observed in early stages of the children and with only 2 hours a week of physiotherapy based on Schroth exercise the postures can be corrected and the hyper-kyphotic and scoliotic postures can be avoided.
Food Intake among Elementary School Students in a Rural Area of Cambodia
