Carrying is known to be one of the most common activities in normal daily life and also for manual workers in industrial settings. Carrying tasks may be related to people getting low back pain and we want to look further at how the whole body moves and reacts while performing the activity.
To investigate this problem, we are looking for male individuals aged between 20 to 64 years old without any history of low back pain within the previous 12 months, and free from any chest or breathing problems (i.e. heart problem, asthma) or any medical problems that can affect your balance (e.g. dizziness).
During the study, a number of sticky patches will be put on specific sites of your body (e.g. trunk, buttocks, arms, legs). You will be instructed to carry a container that will have increasing loads up to the point you feel tired. Your body movements throughout the activity will be recorded by high-resolution cameras. The whole session will be completed within 3 hours. The test will be repeated again after 3-7 days to see whether there is any change in your carrying performance.
The repeated session will only take up to a maximum 2 hours.
This study hopes to serve as a platform to increase the understanding of normal musculoskeletal function during carrying and to find effective ways of managing low back pain in future. If you are interested, please email us.