Podcast appearances and mentions of allan brown

One of today's guests spent seven years spinning a dress from stinging nettles and the other spent five years documenting the process. The result was the incredibly moving documentary The Nettle Dress — which I have now seen twice — co-created by Dylan Howitt and Allan Brown. It's a love letter to old skills, hand crafts and everything that cannot be hurried; to fibersheds, foraged threads, gentle stories, and the magic of following your heart.Dylan Howitt is a BAFTA nominated filmmaker whose roll call includes BBC, Netflix and Discovery. Allan Brown is a textile artist and subject of the film whose steady commitment to disrupting consumer culture is contagious.It's hard to sing The Nettle Dress's praises highly enough without shattering a window, but I truly hope you're moved to watch it after this conversation, perhaps with a posse of pals and a cauldron of nettle soup.

Ps Chad has a candid conversation with elementary principal Allan Brown and Missouri State counselor Laura Foster about digital screen time and the effects it's having on our children/students. As always, thank you for your generosity!  If you would like to give to Destiny Church, please click this link and then click the giving tab! https://destinychurch.me/

The Nettle Dress is available to stream online (https://watch.eventive.org/nettledressfilm/play/66fd50e5edab64004eb9dd5f) from November 15–December 2, 2024. Most of us avoid nettles, thinking of them as weeds whose little stinging hairs can inject a painful toxin into the unexpecting walker. But strolling through the woods near his home in England, Allan Brown was captivated by the tall native plants. Knowing that textile cultures across the world have produced cloth from nettles, he wanted to learn more about cloth made with nettle fiber. Except for a few exceptions—giant Himalayan nettles and ramie, which is a non-stinging plant in the nettle family—the era of nettle textiles is over. But thousands of years ago, nettle cloth and cordage fulfilled human needs for garments and tools. Like other ancient textiles, nettle cloth has almost entirely disappeared, rotted away and returned to the soil. Allan knew that the only way to experience cloth made from nettle would be to create it himself, so he set about processing, spinning, and weaving fabric from stands of nettles that grew wild in the woods. Before he could get down to cloth-making, though, he had to learn how to extract the fiber from the plant—a process without contemporary documentation or a skilled teacher. (The stinging parts of the plant are removed during processing, so textiles made from nettle fiber feel more like cotton or linen than stinging barbs.) He learned to spin, which proved not only the most time-consuming but also the most meaningful part of the project. “I just found spinning so therapeutic,” he says. He felt the solace of handspinning keenly when his wife, Alex, passed away over the course of his nettle exploration. In the aftermath of Alex dying, my world grew very small, my perimeters drew in, and I was just looking after the family. Sometimes my only connection to a wider world was just going out and collecting nettles, but it was within a really small geographical margin. So I think events sort of led me to, rather than looking for bigger and more, I tuned into the familiar, going in deeper and seeing what I could find and what I'd previously overlooked. And realizing, oh my goodness—all these plants, they provide dyes, these plants provide fibers, and they're all there right on my doorstep and have been under my nose all along. So it feels like it's really connected me to a sense of place in a much deeper way than perhaps I had been before. As he spun years' worth of yarn, Allan decided that the nettle project would culimate in a dress. A simple shape, cut efficiently from a narrow width of cloth, would be enough to create a dress for his daughter Oonagh, so he wove yards of plain-weave fabric and even spun the sewing thread to stitch the piece together. Seven years after his first experiments with nettle fiber, he slipped a handmade nettle dress over her head. Following Allan on his exploration, his film-director friend Dylan Howitt captured the stages of the process and has released a film called The Nettle Dress. (https://www.nettledress.org/) The film has been released in a number of markets, including the United Kingdom, and some audiences have been fortunate to meet the fiber artist and even touch the dress at a screening. The story of the dress and its creator remind us that the long history of foraged, handmade cloth can be ours again if we have the dedication to revive it. Links The Nettle Dress film website (https://www.nettledress.org/) The Nettle Dress on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/nettledressfilm/) "The Nettle Dress: A Tale of Love and Healing (https://spinoffmagazine.com/the-nettle-dress/) review by Linda Ligon Nettles for Textiles Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1648679398499874/) Nettles for Textiles web page (http://www.nettlesfortextiles.org.uk/wp/) From Sting to Spin, a History of Nettle Fibre (https://gillianedomsbook.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html) by Gillian Edom This episode is brought to you by: Treenway Silks is where weavers, spinners, knitters and stitchers find the silk they love. Select from the largest variety of silk spinning fibers, silk yarn, and silk threads & ribbons at TreenwaySilks.com (https://www.treenwaysilks.com/). You'll discover a rainbow of colors, thoughtfully hand-dyed in Colorado. Love natural? Treenway's array of wild silks provide choices beyond white. If you love silk, you'll love Treenway Silks, where superior quality and customer service are guaranteed. You're ready to start a new project but don't have the right yarn, or you have the yarn but not the right tool. Yarn Barn of Kansas can help! They stock a wide range of materials and equipment for knitting, weaving, spinning, and crochet. They ship all over the country, usually within a day or two of receiving the order. Plan your project this week, start working on it next week! See yarnbarn-ks.com (https://www.yarnbarn-ks.com/) to get started. Knitters know Manos del Uruguay for their yarns' rich tonal colors, but the story of women's empowerment and community benefit enriches every skein. Discover 17 yarn bases from laceweight to super bulky made and dyed at an artisan owned cooperative in Uruguay. Ask for Manos at your local retailer or visit FairmountFibers.com (https://fairmountfibers.com/). Creating consciously crafted fibers and patterns is more than just a focus for Blue Sky Fibers, it's their passion. Ever since they started with a small herd of alpacas in a Minnesota backyard, they've been committed to making yarn in the best way possible to show off its natural beauty. While their exclusive offerings have grown beyond alpaca to include wool, organic cotton, and silk, their desire for exciting makers about natural fibers hasn't changed one bit. It all winds back to the yarn, ensuring that every precious, handmade hank is lovingly filled with endless inspiration. blueskyfibers.com (https://blueskyfibers.com/)

This week, we embark on a journey to Brighton to talk to Allan Brown about his profound connection with nettles. Allan's unwavering commitment to crafting a garment from inception unfolded against the backdrop of his local woodlands, where the unassuming nettle became a transformative medium.Delicately harvesting and methodically drying the plants, the meticulous process of extracting fibres and skillfully spinning them into thread, culminating in the weaving of cloth and the creation of a dress — a testament to the resolute spirit of one man's quest.Allan's odyssey is now encapsulated in the cinematic portrayal, "The Nettle Dress." Through this film, he not only shares the intricacies of his undertaking but also delves into the profound background, reflective thoughts, and therapeutic nuances of the spinning process. Join us as we navigate the tapestry of Allan's journey, a story woven with threads of dedication, mindfulness, and the profound beauty found in the simplicity of nature.You can find Allan on Instagram as @hedgerow.couture Full info about The Nettle Dress film is on the web at nettledress.org and on Instagram as @nettledressfilmGarmology is by Nick Johannessen. There is no advertising or sponsorship, but you are welcome to support the podcast via my Patreon at patreon.com/garmology or you can  buymeacoffee.com/garmologyNick Johannessen is also the editor of the WellDressedDad blog and WellDressedDad on Instagram. You can email Nick as Garmology (at) WellDressedDad.com.Garmology theme music by Fabian Stordalen.

The Nettle Dress is a modern fairy tale about the healing power of nature and craft directed by BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Dylan Howitt, released by Dartmouth Films in cinemas across the UK and Ireland from September 15. Textile artist Allan Brown spends seven years making a dress from scratch, using 14,400 feet of thread made from the fibre of locally foraged stinging nettles. In doing so, he relearns ancient crafts of foraging, spinning, weaving, cutting and sewing. Making a dress this way becomes devotional, helping Allan to survive the death of his wife, which leaves him and their four children bereft.@nettledressfilm@hedgerow.couture (Allan's Instagram)https://www.nettledress.org/https://www.contemporaryhempery.com/https://www.facebook.com/hedgerowcouture/ http://www.nettlesfortextiles.org.uk/wp/ https://www.sofst.org/

Most of us avoid nettles, thinking of them as weeds whose little stinging hairs can inject a painful toxin into the unexpecting walker. But strolling through the woods near his home in England, Allan Brown was captivated by the tall native plants. Knowing that textile cultures across the world have produced cloth from nettles, he wanted to learn more about cloth made with nettle fiber. Except for a few exceptions—giant Himalayan nettles and ramie, which is a non-stinging plant in the nettle family—the era of nettle textiles is over. But thousands of years ago, nettle cloth and cordage fulfilled human needs for garments and tools. Like other ancient textiles, nettle cloth has almost entirely disappeared, rotted away and returned to the soil. Allan knew that the only way to experience cloth made from nettle would be to create it himself, so he set about processing, spinning, and weaving fabric from stands of nettles that grew wild in the woods. Before he could get down to cloth-making, though, he had to learn how to extract the fiber from the plant—a process without contemporary documentation or a skilled teacher. (The stinging parts of the plant are removed during processing, so textiles made from nettle fiber feel more like cotton or linen than stinging barbs.) He learned to spin, which proved not only the most time-consuming but also the most meaningful part of the project. “I just found spinning so therapeutic,” he says. He felt the solace of handspinning keenly when his wife, Alex, passed away over the course of his nettle exploration. In the aftermath of Alex dying, my world grew very small, my perimeters drew in, and I was just looking after the family. Sometimes my only connection to a wider world was just going out and collecting nettles, but it was within a really small geographical margin. So I think events sort of led me to, rather than looking for bigger and more, I tuned into the familiar, going in deeper and seeing what I could find and what I'd previously overlooked. And realizing, oh my goodness—all these plants, they provide dyes, these plants provide fibers, and they're all there right on my doorstep and have been under my nose all along. So it feels like it's really connected me to a sense of place in a much deeper way than perhaps I had been before. As he spun years' worth of yarn, Allan decided that the nettle project would culimate in a dress. A simple shape, cut efficiently from a narrow width of cloth, would be enough to create a dress for his daughter Oonagh, so he wove yards of plain-weave fabric and even spun the sewing thread to stitch the piece together. Seven years after his first experiments with nettle fiber, he slipped a handmade nettle dress over her head. Following Allan on his exploration, his film-director friend Dylan Howitt captured the stages of the process and has released a film called The Nettle Dress. (https://www.nettledress.org/) The film has been released in a number of markets, including the United Kingdom, and some audiences have been fortunate to meet the fiber artist and even touch the dress at a screening. The story of the dress and its creator remind us that the long history of foraged, handmade cloth can be ours again if we have the dedication to revive it. This episode is brought to you by: Treenway Silks Treenway Silks is where weavers, spinners, knitters and stitchers find the silk they love. Select from the largest variety of silk spinning fibers, silk yarn, and silk threads & ribbons at TreenwaySilks.com (https://www.treenwaysilks.com/). You'll discover a rainbow of colors, thoughtfully hand-dyed in Colorado. Love natural? Treenway's array of wild silks provide choices beyond white. If you love silk, you'll love Treenway Silks, where superior quality and customer service are guaranteed. Links The Nettle Dress film website (https://www.nettledress.org/) The Nettle Dress on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/nettledressfilm/) Nettles for Textiles Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1648679398499874/) Nettles for Textiles web page (http://www.nettlesfortextiles.org.uk/wp/) From Sting to Spin, a History of Nettle Fibre (https://gillianedomsbook.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html) by Gillian Edom

Felicity Beckett speaks to director Dylan Hewitt about his new film, The Nettle Dress, which is playing at Picturehouse Cinemas as part of our Green Screen programme. Textile artist Allan Brown spends seven years making a dress by hand just from the fibre of locally foraged stinging nettles. This is ‘hedgerow couture', the greenest of slow fashion but also his medicine. It's how Allan survives the passing of his wife, leaving him and their four children bereft, and how he finds a beautiful way to honour her. Stunningly filmed by award-winning documentary maker Dylan Howitt, The Nettle Dress follows Allan's journey through seasons and years, foraging, spinning, weaving, cutting and sewing the cloth, before finally sharing a healing vision of the dress back in the woods where the nettles were picked, worn by one of his daughters. A labour of love in the truest sense, The Nettle Dress is a modern-day fairytale and hymn to the healing power of nature and slow craft. It's one story representing a huge groundswell of people rediscovering the joys of making. Actor Mark Rylance called the film “Exquisite and inspiring, beautiful and helpful for anyone suffering loss or grief”. If you'd like to send us a voice memo for use in a future episode, please email podcast@picturehouses.co.uk. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow us on Spotify. Find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with @picturehouses. Find our latest cinema listings at picturehouses.com.  Produced by Stripped Media. Proudly supported by Kia. Thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate, review and share with your friends. Vive le Cinema.

"Grasping the Nettle' is at the heart of the film. Making a dress this way is a mad act of will and artistry but also devotional, with every nettle thread representing hours of mindful craft. Over seven years Allan is transformed by the process just as the nettles are. It's a kind of alchemy: transforming nettles into cloth, grief into beauty, protection and renewal. A labour of love, in the truest sense of the phrase, The Nettle Dress is a modern-day fairytale and hymn to the healing power of nature and slow craft."This week is our one hundred and ninety ninth episode of the Accidental Gods podcast. It's been quite a ride, and to celebrate the end of our second century, my partner, Faith, has come to join me as host, and we have two guests, textile designer Allan Brown and Dylan Howitt who is a filmmaker with over 20 years of making documentaries and features for the BBC, Netflix, Sky, Discovery - if you've heard of them, Dylan's worked with them. Allan was exploring how we could feed and clothe ourselves as we head towards a world of localism and increasing self reliance. A journey that began with a simple question - namely 'how can we clothes ourselves?' -  led to his spending seven years of his life making a a dress from the fibres of the nettles that grew locally. He harvested them in his local wood, made the fibre, spun over fourteen thousand feet of it, hand wove it, and then made it into a truly beautiful dress for his daughter. It was an extraordinary process of experimentation, discovery and ensoulment - a journey into possibility that would be hard to match in our current, frenetic world. And we know about this: the patience of it, the wonder, the loss, the grief, the resilience, the alchemy… the sheer magic, because Dylan made a film, 'The Nettle Dress' which also took 7 years and is also a process of emergence and ensoulment and magic and discovery. The film is one of the most profoundly moving I've seen in a long time: it's deep time brought into being, it offers connection and profound attention and intention as it follows Al's profound intention and attention. It's so, so different from what we normally see, so grounding - and when we had the chance to talk to Al and Dylan, it made sense for Faith to join me: she's the maker in our partnership, she's been a textile maker and designer and she thinks differently than I do in many ways. So this is a joint endeavour and all the stronger for it. Dylan Howitt Bio  Dylan Howitt is a filmmaker with many years of experience telling compelling stories from all around the world, personal and political, always from the heart. Twice BAFTA-nominated he's produced and directed for BBC, Netflix, ITV and Channel 4 amongst many others. His latest feature documentary, The Nettle Dress, follows textile artist Allan Brown on a seven-year odyssey making a dress from the fibre of locally foraged stinging nettles. Allan Brown Bio Allan Brown (Hedgerow Couture) is a textile artist from Brighton, East Sussex, in the UK. Working primarily with sustainable natural fibres like nettles, flax, hemp and wool, Allan takes these raw materials and transforms them into beautiful cloth with the aim of creating functional, durable clothing that draws lightly from the land, reflecting the fibres and colours of the landscape he lives and works in.  Dylan's website www.dylanhowitt.comDylan on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-howitt-babb3395/Watching The Nettle Dress https://www.nettledress.org/watchNettles for Textiles on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/1648679398499874Hedgerow Couture on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hedgerowcoutureSimon and Ann at Flaxland https://www.flaxland.co.uk/contactGillian Edom from sting to spin https://gillianedomsbook.blogspot.com/

In this week's episode of the Microsoft Cloud Executive Enablement Series, Olga Karpman, Chief of Staff Engineering of the Industry Cloud, sits down with Allan Brown, Global Head of Product Microsoft Cloud for Industry, to discuss how Microsoft and its partners are revolutionizing the industry by delivering industry-specific solutions on top of the Microsoft Cloud. As the ISV Product team leader, Allan works closely with a prioritized set of Industry ISVs to ensure that clients can derive maximum value from their investments in technology. Partners who tune in will gain valuable insights into how Microsoft and its partners collaborate to accelerate client time to value by leveraging their combined strengths. This episode is a must-watch for anyone looking to stay ahead of the game in the industry. In This Episode You Will Learn: How Microsoft is building specific industry-focused services to accelerate time to value Three engagement patterns to frame the way we work with ISVs How to partner with Microsoft and what to consider when working with Industry ISVs. Some Questions We Ask: Why is partnering with GSIs crucial to our customers and Microsoft Cloud? How do you determine a partner's shift across Microsoft's core cloud solutions? Can you explain the Partner Solution Journey Map and how it will help our future partners? Resources: View Allan Brown on LinkedIn View Olga Karpman on LinkedIn Watch the full video episode on YouTubeDiscover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at microsoft.com/podcasts Download the Transcript Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What exactly is a blackwater aquarium? In this episode of the podcast, the Water Colors team do their best to demystify what exactly makes an aquarium "blackwater" and how to do it at home. Corrections: - Betta brownorum is not named for its color. It is named after Barbara and Allan Brown, who first collected the species. Fishes Mentioned in this Episode: - Apistogramma spp. - Cardinal tetra (Paracheirodon axelrodi) - Licorice gourami (Parosphromenus spp.) - Tucano tetra (Tucanoichthys tucano) - Betta rutilans - Betta coccina - Chili rasbora (Boraras brigittae) - Neon tetra (Paracheirodon innesi) - Rummynose tetra (Hemigrammus rhodostomus) - Betta macrostoma - Discus (Symphysodon spp.) - Betta brownorum - Nanochromis splendens - Nanochromis transvestitus - Noble gourami (Ctenops nobilis) - Chocolate gourami (Sphaerichthys spp.) - Pelvicachromis kribensis "Lobe" - Pelvicachromis kribensis "Moliwe" Literature Cited: Li, Y., Fang, F., Wei, J. et al. Humic Acid Fertilizer Improved Soil Properties and Soil Microbial Diversity of Continuous Cropping Peanut: A Three-Year Experiment. Scientific Reports Volume 9: 12014 (2019). Kraus, T.E.C., Dahlgren, R.A. & Zasoski, R.J. Tannins in nutrient dynamics of forest ecosystems - a review. Plant and Soil Volume 256, 41–66 (2003). Peng, K,  G. Wang, Y. Wang, B. Chen, Y. Sun, W. Mo, G. Li, Y. Huang. Condensed tannins enhanced antioxidant capacity and hypoxic stress survivability but not growth performance and fatty acid profile of juvenile Japanese seabass (Lateolabrax japonicus). Animal Feed Science and Technology Volume 269: 11467 (2020).

Allan Brown, VP of Total Rewards at Electronic Arts Today, NatureBox CEO John Occhipinti shares a conversation with Allan Brown, VP of Total Rewards at Electronic Arts. You'll learn about the following topics, among others: Given that "culture" is a top priority at EA: how has culture and collaboration specifically been impacted? How to "Build to Inspire" in a world with less physical presence Especially in the Bay, commutes are super-long. In a world where employees are going increasingly remote, what ideas do you have to make the trek worth it once more? How does empowering your employees to help solve these problems make a difference? Let's talk here about the multiple workstreams and the "leadership teams" built as a result. Enjoy! Learn more about NatureBox here: https://naturebox.com/office Connect with our host, NatureBox CEO John Occhipinti: https://www.linkedin.com/in/occhipintijohn/

I chat with long time friend and industry pal Allan Brown..... on all kinds of topics. Enjoy.Bermcannon Adventure Store https://radrhythm.club/collections/bermcannonBusiness Inquiriessender@bermcannon.comBermcannon Adventure PodcastNow Available. Apple Itunes, Spotify, Iheart Radio or download here.https://bermcannon.com/adventure/ Social MediaWEBSITE: www.bermcannon.com/adventureJoin the Social Conversation INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/bajadiaries/FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/bajadiaries/TWITTER https://twitter.com/bermcannonTo keep your Bike Running Mention “baja diaries” get 30% Off.www.lasleeve.comBike Prep/ Suspensionhttps://precisionconceptsracing.com/LINKS ::::::: :::::: :::::: ::::: ::::::: :::::: ::: ::::: ::::::PLEASE... Don't forget to like and subscribe to never miss the next adventure.WAYS TO HELP ME AND MY CHANNEL GROW1. SUBSCRIBE + HIT THE NOTIFICATION BELL2. BUY A SOUVENIR HERE…. https://radrhythm.club/collections/bermcannonVISIT MY go fund me page https://www.gofundme.com/f/6rawawgSupport the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/6rawawg?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Do you sit all, or most of the day?  Are you more tired, and sore after getting out of your office chair than you are after a workout?  MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics, Allan Brown, introduces listeners to the concept of how non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) can increase your overall health and improve safety on the job.  Brown asks, “When you get to that elevator, do you really have to push that button, or can you walk up?”  In this episode, host Pete Koch and Allan Brown explore how basic activities like walking, standing, stretching and even chewing gum can improve workplace ergonomics and employee well-being. Pete Koch: Hello listeners, and welcome to The Safety Experts podcast. Do you sit all day? Are you more tired and sore after getting out of your office chair than you are after a workout? On today's episode, we're going to discover the secrets of NEAT and how to make friends with your seat again. The Safety Experts podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leading worker's compensation provider based here on the East Coast. A new episode of the podcast drops every two weeks featuring interviews with leaders in the field, top executives, MEMIC staff and other industry experts. We discuss how safety applies to all aspects of our lives. I'm your host, Peter Koch, and for the past 17 years, I've been working for MEMIC as a safety expert within the hospitality and construction industries. What I realize is that safety impacts every part of each position that you have or even the tasks that you do. And from one perspective, safety can be seen as not doing something that can be dangerous. Simple cause and effect. If it hurts or it can hurt, then don't do it. This can be pretty easy, if the choice of the for the effect.  This can be pretty easy, if the choice for the effect is immediate and the cause is obvious. The burner on the gas stove is on the fire's hot, don't touch the stove. However, we don't often recognize the effect a behavior can have on us, or that we are too susceptible to the effect of that behavior. So, another perspective on safety could be as an active choice to do something walk at lunch, use protective gear, learn more about the hazards you're exposed to, or stand instead of sitting for part of your day. These simple choices can positively impact you at work and at home. So, for today's episode, make friends with your chair again up your NEAT. How non-exercise activity thermogenesis can help you make friends with your chair again. I'm speaking here with Al Brown, Chief Ergonomist at MEMIC to better understand NEAT how to turn it on and the negative effect sitting has on us. Al's been with MEMIC for 15 years and has helped hundreds of businesses get a handle on ergonomics and the benefits of activity in the workplace.  Al, welcome to the podcast. Al Brown: Thank you, Peter. Appreciate being here. Pete Koch: Very good. Al Brown: Correction there. I'm actually the Director of Ergonomics. I got a promotion. Pete Koch: Very good. The Director of Ergonomics.  Moving from Chief Ergonomist to Director of Ergonomics, that's even better. Even better. But before we dig into that and figure out how our NEAT, how not NEAT our chairs are. So, tell me a little bit more about you at MEMIC and how you got to where you are, and how ergonomics fits in with your place here. Al Brown: Sure. Actually, I'm a physical therapist and that's an unusual person to find, probably in the insurance industry. Pete Koch: It is. Al Brown: In early on in my life as a physical therapist worked on site at industry, Bath Ironworks, L.L. Bean. And one of the one of the things we would do is if someone were injured, we'd walk back to the workspace and take a look at it and look to see if we could change, modify the job, reengineer it. Then we'd start treatment. It was a natural transition to a place like MEMIC, where they focus on workplace safety, specifically ergonomics. So, I became part of the team here and that's what I do now as I actually partner with industry. Go out, take a look at if they've got risks and exposures. Help them see those. Help them understand what might create or cause injury and things they might do to change those things. Pete Koch: Very cool. So that's it's an interesting path to get here, being a physical therapist. But I do see that's a great tie in to be able to take what you would find when you saw your clients as a physical therapist and see the connection back actually in the workplace now that you're here, at MEMIC some of the cause and effect; what you see as the presentation of the patient versus how where it came from, possibly in the workplace and how work and the non-work life contribute to some of the aches and pains that might be there. Al Brown: Oh, sure, it's a continuum. Rarely is it just something that occurs just at work and then it shuts off and punches out at that point and the person goes home. It's a different life. It's a continuum from work right through. So repeated behaviors unconscious behavior are things that are repeated 24 hours a day. Pete Koch: Yeah. And they can kind of catch up with us. Which kind of moves right into our topic today with that concept of NEAT. And so that the where I heard about it first is actually from a book that you turned me on to by Dr. James Levine titled "Get Up and Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It". And you told me prior to the podcast that you had had the opportunity to see Dr. Levine speak at a conference on this topic. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what NEAT is and why should we care? Al Brown: Sure. Yeah, no it was one of those moments. I'm at a conference that was in Las Vegas at the National Ergonomics Conference, and James Levine was one of the presenters. He's an endocrinologist with the Mayo Clinic, had great credentials, has done a lot of research in this area, pretty extensive. You should when you look at the book and you go and you read through, what exactly did they really controlled for a lot of variables. But his premise was that he looked at non-exercise activity, thermogenesis.  When you look at life, about 60 percent of our day is basal activity. Sleeping, sitting in a chair, really not moving much and that accounts for not much NEAT non-exercise activity thermogenesis. You're not burning much fuel doing those things. For example, sitting in a chair, it's only about 300 calories per day to do something like that. Then you have about 10 percent, which is the thermal activity from just eating. So, when you eat, your body actually burns fuel because it's digesting. So that gives you the last 30 percent of the day, which is this non-exercise activity thermogenesis which it can vary between people. You and I might have a 2,000 calorie per day difference. Just because you might be very active walking around, you're a farmer, you’re or you are a housekeeper, you are a manual material handler, you are a brick layer, whatever the case may be. And I might be sitting in front of a computer. And they've discovered that, you know, when you look at trying to control diet and all that kind of stuff, it really doesn't work that well when you're looking at folks that have type 2 diabetes and all those kinds of things, that's what sort of stimulated this research. And they realize it was more related to this need, this non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So, I began thinking, here we are in a world of technology that has crept into our lives and you know, what do we do less now? Pete Koch: Stand, act, be active, walk around. Al Brown: We don't move as much as we used to. So, if you think about it, those little micro movements throughout the day are part of that NEAT. And now we've decreased our NEAT. So, we begin to impact our health. Pete Koch: Yeah, I totally can see that. So that concept of, and even us standing when we did, we made a conscious choice to stand here today. And while we're standing, there's a lot of movement back and forth, side to side, one foot to the other. Moving our hands, moving our arms. But if you swap that out and you sit down at the table for dinner or you sit on the couch to watch television or stream Netflix or something, play a game, whatever that is. There's a lot less of that micro movement that would happen. So, you're burning fewer calories throughout the day. What's the connection between better health and burning more calories? Al Brown: Well, you're processing the food. So, when you consume food, it's kind of like think of a credit card. I always use a credit card analogy where you can use a credit card. You can eat but you got to pay it back. Pete Koch: At some point in time. Al Brown: And if you don't pay it back.  You accumulate interest on that credit card, and it gets expensive and sometimes it can run away and get away from you.  Eating. You can eat. But as long as the intake and the outcome are, are negated, you're fine. You can eat whatever you want as long as the activity level matches that. If the activity level is less than the intake, then you're going to accumulate interest, which is body fat. Things of that nature. And then with that, we know that there are risk factors related to it. Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, all those things that come along with higher risk factors which come along with obesity. Pete Koch: You definitely see that. And then there is also a health benefit in there. As I get to burn more calories, I'm more active, there's more blood flowing, oxygen moving around in my body. I'm going to be healthier overall because like any machine, the human machine, the more we can move and work, the better off we'll be in the long run. Things will stay tuned, we'll be mentally sharper, we'll be physically sharper throughout the day. So that helps us not only at home, but at work and play, whatever we end up doing. Al Brown: Well, yeah. You'll actually find, for example, you know, an example for the listening audience if you take a walk. Pete Koch: Yeah. Al Brown: And when you come back from the walk, you will have a bit of a euphoric feel, you'll feel good. You've released a little bit of an endorphin, probably not the level you would maybe if you were running or lifting, but you still get that endorphin plus you get that filtering of the systems in your body. You know, your heart runs a lot of the pressure within our body, so it moves a lot of your, your blood flow throughout. And again, if you think about it, we live in a world of gravity. So, everything always wants to go down to the feet. So, you need that return. And the return occurs by the heart, creating this positive pressure. However your muscles also contract when you're walking and moving, so your venous system which returns the blood flow back up to your heart from your feet are a system of one way valves and those valves open as the pressure pushes back up and pushes the fluid back up towards your heart and close as the fluid tries to move back down. So, the heart continues the pressure and there's a strain if you're not walking, but if you're out walking, the muscle contraction actually assists the heart. So, you’re actually cleaning the body. And when you clean the body, you get rid of a lot of the impurities. All the nasty stuff that when you sit just sits in your body. Think of it again, you know, I like analogies. You know me. Pete Koch: They're all good. Al Brown: And think of a swimming pool. Your body is like a swimming pool. The water in the pool is kind of like the blood your blood system. And think about the filter not running but having a lot of people swimming in it. And there's a lot of bacteria, dirt, all kinds of things accumulating in the pool, but it's not being cleaned out. And that's because things are static in the pool. That's very much like being static, sitting at your desk, standing at a workstation where you're not moving. Just lying down to get up and move or to, to change position, walk around, whatever the case may be is like turning that filter on and cleaning the pool out. Pete Koch: Right. Al Brown: So you get rid of those impurities. So that's what your blood system does. That's what your lymphatic system does.  And your lymphatic system really does depend on you just moving. It doesn't really have a heart connected, a pump, so to speak. The pump is you. Pete Koch: Moving stuff around, cleaning it out. So, there is a connection in there, not only to overall health, but we can make a connection to even work productivity. Sharper thinking. Feeling better. Moving. Being able to move more freely throughout the day. Not being maybe as sore from repetitive activities. If I can clean the product of work out of the body through movement. Al Brown: Yeah, oh absolutely. Just getting up and moving is, think of that, here's another thing. If eating, if you eat, eat and have dinner, your blood glucose levels go up, you know. But if you go take a walk right after dinner, you can drop that glucose level. It's kind of like stirring it a little bit, like stirring the circuit a little bit. It's not all accumulated on the bottom. And you can drop your blood glucose levels by about 20 percent just by taking that walk. Yeah. Pete Koch: Yeah. Because you're using the fuel. You put fuel in, if I, if your body's in storage mode is just going to store it. If you're active and you go out to use the fuel that you put in as it's being processed, then you don't need to store it. You're actually burning through it. Al Brown: Correct. Pete Koch: Awesome. So, let's talk about the issue that Dr. Levine is targeting here. Is sitting, being the biggest, or one of the biggest challenges to health overall in the United States and a big challenge to our workers. So, I'm going to ask you the question here, is sitting really as big a deal as Dr. Levine makes it out to be? Al Brown: The short answer is yes. The longer answer, which I always will have, is the when we use the number 11 hours, 11 hours of sitting. And the question is, do you sit for 11 hours a day cumulatively? So collectively over the day. If you think of your day, do you spend eleven hours sitting? If you do, your risk factors, your health risk factors go up exponentially. You begin to have the same risks and exposures as someone who smokes fairly heavily. Pete Koch: Wow. Al Brown: And we're talking not only type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and those types of things, we're even talking about breast cancer. So, the risks go up if you sit, if you start to close in on 11 hours a day. So, what can you do to make differences? So, you know, in this technology creep that we're looking and I call it technology creep, because what happens is more and more things we do are related to the computer from, you know, shopping, getting your media content, setting up meetings. I don't have to go down and talk to someone at MEMIC, I can send them an e-mail, or I can text them. So, we, you know, we move less. So, with that technology, we sit more, and we creep towards that 11 hours of inactivity. Pete Koch: Sure. So a lot of the times, you know, you go back 20, 30 years and sitting wasn't as, it was common, it was something that we looked to for more relief to get kind of take a break, get off our feet. But we sit more than we think. So, within the book, there was an interesting set of questions, a quiz that Dr. Levine posed the sitting that the chair quiz to see how comfortable you are with your chair. Al Brown: Did you pull it out of the book? Pete Koch: I did, I pulled it right out of the book. So, we're going to take that quiz, right, So I'm going to ask the question.  And then we're both going to keep track in our head of yes and no questions. Al Brown: OK. Pete Koch: So if you answer yes, you get a point. If you answer no, you get no points. Al Brown: Okay. Low score wins, right? Pete Koch: Low score wins. Al Brown: This is a game of golf. Pete Koch Kind of and I'm really bad at golf. Al Brown: But that ups your NEAT, if you don't take the cart, walk around. Pete Koch Yeah. All right. Al Brown: Opportunities. Pete Koch: It does. OK. So, the first question. Pete Koch: Number one, do you work seated at a chair? Al Brown: Oh. Pete Koch: Got it. Al Brown: I do. Pete Koch: All right. So, I think I'm going to have to give me a one there. Al Brown: Aha, me too. Pete Koch: Most of what I do, although a lot of what I do is standing whether I'm doing a training or I'm going to do, I try to have sometimes meetings with people when I get to get up and walk around. But a lot of the work that I do is going to be in a chair. Al Brown: So you find opportunities to up your NEAT? Pete Koch: I do. I try. Al Brown: Because you're cognizant of that sitting. Yeah and driving. We drive a lot. Pete Koch: Oh, my gosh. We drive all the time. And that's another place where, you know, if I go back before I worked for MEMIC, the job I had wasn't travel based. So, I spent a lot more time on my feet in the transition between that and a more sedentary job was very challenging for me. I mean, it's taken me quite a while to sort of overcome that and figure it out. So, number one is the, have you worked seated in a chair? I'm going to give myself a one for that. So, number two is, have you ever shopped on the Internet? Pete & Al: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I have. Yeah. Guilty. I have to give us a one on that one there. Pete Koch: So do you watch, number three: Do you watch TV or a streaming service while seated for an hour or more a day? Al Brown: Oh, geez. Yes. I watched Netflix last night. Pete & Al: Netflix, Amazon Prime. Also, YouTube. Holy cow. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you get there on and only watch it for a little bit. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You got to turn the auto play off. That's right. Yeah. And then you're the you know, the cliffhanger. You got to go to the next episode and all a sudden, it's three hours later. Right. Yeah. But I pull the plug at two hours sometimes. Yes. Pete Koch: OK. Number four. Do you ever eat while watching TV or in the car. Pete & Al: Oh yes. Yes. Yeah. So, I'm going to have to I'll say no to the television, but I'm going to have to say yes to the car just because the car for me. Television we don't snack or, you know, maybe a cup of tea, coffee. Sure. That's it. Have, have you ever Internet dated. Al Brown: Interstate dated? Pete & Al: Internet dated. Internet, no. I'm going to have to give us both a 0, A big 0. Sure. Computer didn't exist when I met my wife. Pete Koch: Yeah. Number six, I think. Do you own a recliner? Pete & Al: No, I do not. I don't either own recliner. Very good. Pete Koch: If you go to a party, do you seek out a chair or a stool? No. Is that because you don't go to parties or because you don't seek out chairs or stools? Al Brown: I'm typically not invited to parties. No, I don't. I tend to stand just because you end up, you get engaged in the conversation. It will be like this where I am probably more comfortable standing and talking. Pete Koch: Yeah. So, me to. I'm the same, same there as well. So that's going to be a zero. And then at if you look at your sofa, does it have an imprint of your butt in it. Al Brown: No. Pete Koch: Is that because it's new? Al Brown: No it's old, and it doesn't have an imprint. Doesn't, I don't spend a lot of time there. And change position all the time. Swap the cushions. Right, go back and forth. Depends on whoever wants the light to do an activity while watching TV, they get that side. Pete Koch: So this, this question might apply more to millennials than you and me, but I still think it's an important question to ask, especially in this day and age. So, do you spend more time with friends electronically than in real life? Pete & Al: No, I do not facetime, text, and all that. I talk directly to them.  Try to go see him. Yeah. Pete Koch: And the last question. Have you ever fantasized about just sitting? Al Brown: I was on top of Katahdin once and I was been walking for 8 hours. I guess you could say I was fantasizing about just sitting sown just sitting down to give my hips and legs a break. But no, not typically. Pete Koch: Yeah. Not typically either. All right. So, let's total them up. So, we've got one, two, three, four. So, we have four totals. And then the possible last one could be five. So if we total this up in one point for each answer and for those of you who are, who are doing this quiz with us on online here, for if you have zero, then you don't need to read Dr. Levine's book. You're good. You don't have a great relationship with your chair. And you can just keep on going. If you got two, one to two, you are considered a chair pre-addict. Hmm. Three to five. He gives us a Chair Addict. So we are, we are smack dab in Chair Addiction Al, because we're at 4.  Al Brown: Time for rehab. Pete Koch: Yeah, and six to eight, then you're in the Chair Imprisoned. And if you have hit 9 or 10, you are a Chair-a-holic. Yeah. Al Brown: Ouch. Pete Koch: Yeah, ouch. Wow okay. So relationship with your chair, we've talked some about like the body's response to not sitting at a biological level, so the cellular level, how the heart works in cleaning it out, and our endocrine system. But what do you see when you start talking to other workers or go into different businesses about the physical effects of sitting in those people? So, what do you see? Al Brown: Well, you know, I see musculoskeletal changes, you know, changes in their, in their body. Muscle length, muscle tightness. For example, when you sit down your hip flexor, the muscle on the front side of your thigh.  And it starts at the front side of your thigh, kind of right at the bottom where your pocket is, and it passes through your pelvis and attaches to your lumbar spine. So, it kind of goes right through your pelvis.  In a sitting position that muscle is in a shortened position. So, if you sit for an extended period time and what happens to muscles if they are in a position for a long period of time is they begin to adapt or if they're short, they shorten to that position. If you ever stretch something, it'll overstretch in the other direction. But in this particular case, your hip flexors, your hamstrings, which are the muscles on the back side of your thigh because your knees are bent will also shorten. You will oftentimes when you're sitting, you will tend to, the head will come forward a bit. Or you may recline. But in any case, you'll shut off your core muscles, particularly the front core muscles, your abdominal area, your back muscles will actually, your upper shoulder area, will get overstretched and lengthened.  If they're chronically lengthened and overstretched, that can lead to a condition called fibromyalgia or myofascial discomfort, which is connective tissue that is constantly under strain. Very difficult to recover from that simply because you have to either you have to shorten it, but that means contracting this irritated tissue. So, it's a very difficult thing to kind of change back. So those, those muscles in your body and to your chest area tends to close down because everything's in front of us. So, you, and those impact us. So, when we go to stand back up and those muscles are short, they change the mechanics of standing. So, if you think of us as a game of Jenga, we begin to start knocking some of those blocks out of position. And instead of a nice stout stack of blocks that are well-organized, the tight muscles begin to pull us forward or begin to flatten our back. We begin to lose our lumbar curve. We begin to have shortened hamstrings with knee pain. And that's all because of that prolonged static sitting posture. Pete Koch: So there's a musculoskeletal change that happens from sitting all the time. And when that occurs. So, what does that what does that look like, like when you talked about it, it changes the mechanics of how we stand back up. But if you've been sitting for a long time, that's your habit. Let's say that you took the quiz and you're in that chair imprisoned or chair-a-holic. Like most of the stuff that you do, I sit at work.  I spend a long time in the car commuting back and forth or on the bus or in a plane. And then I'm at home and I am doing work at a computer at home, or I'm exhausted when I get home. So, I just like to sit on the couch and play a video game or stream movies. So, I'm seated for eleven hours or more a day. What is it? What does it look like in a person? Like, what do you physically look like? Al Brown: Well, you, you know, one of the things I didn't mention in that that little list on the front side is the, you will tend to lose some of your muscle mass around your buttock area, your gluteus medius, gluteus maximus. Those are sort of your hip area. So, things you'll see, you'll see sort of a forward posture flattened back. But when during a gait, if someone's walking, you will see what we call in the medical world a Trendelenburg gait and the Trendelenburg gait, you have to realize that when you stand on your right hip, you weight bear on your right leg, your muscles on the right side of your hip contract tighten and they lift your pelvis to keep your belt, let's use the belt as a reference point, level with, with the earth or slightly elevate it.  The left side so that the left leg can move through. And then when you weight bear on the left side, the left side contracts, lifts and brings your right leg through.  So, your upper core, your upper body stays pretty vertical. When you've been sitting for a long time and you've lost that muscle mass on those hips, you will see people wobble. So, you'll see their head when they weight bear on the right, their head will shift over on the right hip to assist that muscle that's weak and bring their leg through. So it's sort of a wobbling gait when they're walking and you realize that person probably has got a lot of weakness in their hip areas, which will eventually lead to hip pain, which will probably eventually lead to total hip replacement, which really doesn't solve the problem. Pete Koch: It doesn't. Al Brown: Because we're just taking care of the joint. We haven't taken care of the strength of the core and the pelvic floor and that hip musculature. Pete Koch: So it's really a long-term effect. Like we could have some short-term acute effects. Like well for example, when I get out of a car, if I've been sitting in a car for two, sometimes three hours, though I try not to do that anymore. I'm sore like my hip flexors are tight, my low back is tight, my shoulders are tight, and it's because within the car I am like you said, my hamstrings are shortened, and my hip fractures are shortened and head forward in my posture.  And I'm in that single position for a lot of that time. Even if I do try to move, I can't move as much as I want to or should, and I'm sore. So that acute change for us or the acute effect is some short-term pain which can be alleviated with movement. But the long-term effects is what you're describing is that there could be the long term effects of that constant sitting is loss of muscle mass and eventually some degradation into the joints that will support because we're not ergonomically functioning the way we're supposed to anymore. Al Brown: Correct. And you know, again, it's that if you go back to the premise of art or talk today, which is NEAT, we suddenly begin to change or reduce that NEAT. And it does have those cardiovascular impacts that we talked about earlier button. But the physical effects are also right there. So, and then those two tend to feed off each other. And if you think about it, we really depend on independent movement of our body around the earth, so to speak. So, we're slowly painting ourselves back in a corner of inactivity. If you've ever seen the word the movie, Wall-E. Pete Koch: Yes. Al Brown: You know, where humans basically were chair bound and they really had no course. They couldn't stand up. And the little robots had to do everything for them. Think about that. And where we're heading. Pete & Al: We're getting there. We're developing robots. Yeah. Help us do those things right now. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Pete Koch: Okay, so lots of effects there for long-term sitting. And we've, we went through the quiz. We've talked some about what we already do. What are some, you know, when you go to a workplace, what are some areas where you find people seated for, for long periods of time? Al Brown: Well, we try to one first introduce this concept of because again, not everybody understands NEAT and understands the basis for, I might come in and say, you know, let's do job rotation or, or let's take a stretch break. And people think of that as "stretch breaks don't work" and, or let's collaborate, let's in an office setting might encourage folks to go and receive somebody that's come to the front office that they're going to meet with back as opposed to just, you know, "send 'em in" type thing. So, you're encouraging that movement, but you have to get them to understand that foundation on the front side of why we're doing this. If you look at the transition of our office over the last five to six years, you've seen an office that was static, cubicle driven. Stay inside that cubicle. You had a six or a 10 by 10 space and that was your space. And typically, you didn't leave it to more open space, more collaborative space. Rooms that you can go to, desks that go up and down. So, we try to encourage industry to look at those kinds of solutions where you're encouraging movement throughout the day. It's funny because one of the when James Levine was down in Vegas doing this presentation, there were about 400 vendors and probably 350 of those were dynamic desks. Or as we may know, most people know them as standing desks. So, the perception was that, oh, let's just stand up at work. And in fact, that's, that's an OK thing. And it's great because it takes those sore muscles like you dealt with in the car, and it allows you in the office to change frequently and again, if you look at Harvard, the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Jack Dennerlein, Nicolaas Pronk, a lot of those folks that have done some of the work down there, they you know every 30 minutes stand up, 30 minutes sit down. And about half the day up, half the day down. It doesn't solve the physiological issues that Levine is talking about. And he's not saying stand up and that'll fix the problem. That is, I call it a three-legged stool. And we look at wellness. One is you sitting. We're going to have to sit. That's here. Computers are here. We're not going to change that.  Two, given the opportunity to change position by, and allowing, like you in the car. Let you get up, stand, move, different position, put the muscles, reset the body. And then three of that stools, that third leg is “Go Move”. Don't work through the stretch break. Don't eat at your desk and continue the work. You take a walk. Same thing even in a manufacturing facility. Some folks will get up, but they'll go and sit down in the cafeteria and eat and then go back and sit right back down and do what they're doing. This, an example this morning, just myself personally, I realized this conversation is coming up today and I said, Gee I get my cup of coffee. I go out. I sit in the chair and I look out at the lawn. And today I said, no, I'm going to walk around the lawn drinking my coffee. So that's what I did. So, I just took that opportunity to up my NEAT. So, we try to find those wind, but you really have to educate folks on the front side why we're doing this. Pete Koch: I would agree with that totally, that the why around movement is important. And I think also identifying all of the, all of the times when we're not active like, well, we're almost either required by a particular task or by a job or we are requiring ourselves through habit to stay in one position and helping people identify those, those times throughout the day when you might be approaching 11 hours in the chair or even eight hours in the chair is quite a bit of time to think about that throughout our day and then the more we can be active. I like that connection, that three-legged stool, stool, sit, stand, move. So basically, you can have two different positions that you need to swap between the two all day. But even if you're just sitting and standing and changing your position at your desk for eight hours, it's not going to be as beneficial to you if you get up and move through a break to do something else.And the standing piece too, just as a sidebar.  The fidgeter is going to have a higher NEAT level than the non-fidgeter.  And you yourself know, are you a fidget or not a fidgeter? You know, I mean, you wiggle back, and I mean, we're here having a conversation. Pete Koch: I'm totally a fidgeter.  Al Brown: And I'm on the right hip, then I'm over on the left hip. So we're fidgeting. And when folks stand, we really try to encourage them that when you're standing, don't just stand, you know, move back and forth, bend your leg.  Do toe raises, you know, do anything that kind of creates actual contraction muscle movement in the lower stretches.  Because, again, remember, it assists that feedback loop of bringing fluids back up to the heart and filtering the system. So, anything you can do along those lines are going to be beneficial. Pete Koch: Yeah, that's great. So, we're going to take a quick break and we'll come back with Al to talk a little bit more about NEAT and then discuss some potential solutions that we have and our ideas for the workplace. But we'll take a break and we'll be right back. Pete Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Al Brown, director of ergonomics at MEMIC. So, let's jump back in with more questions right away. So, let's get back to I have a sedentary job. I'm going to drive a lot. I'm going to sit at my job, and I enjoy at home just being still.  So fine, I’m going to sit there, but I'm going to try to work out. So, I'm going to after work, I might go to the gym and work out for an hour. High intensity workout. Going to sweat a lot to get a lot of steps in and get my heart rate up. I feel really good afterwards. But how much is that really combating the long term sitting for that day? Al Brown: Unfortunately, it's not combating it much. They actually coined the term, I think it was in Australia or New Zealand, the active couch potato. And I'm just as guilty as you because necessity sometimes dictates my life in terms of drive a certain distance to do my job. And then, you know, generate reports or whatever the case may be. So, I'm sedentary. So same, I feel like I need something. So that pill I take is the walk, the run, the lift. And unfortunately, we do that in a short window of time. And in that short window of time, we you know sweat like you said. But then when we're done, what do you do? We sit down for dinner or then Netflix or whatever TV. Pete & Al: Fantasize about that chair. I just want to sit down. I'm tired. Al Brown: So it doesn't, it negates. Now, granted, you are creating a good muscular musculoskeletal system. You're strengthening your muscle tone and you're getting some muscle memory back. All those things are good. So, don't stop your workout. That's important. What you want to do is find strategies to add activity throughout the day. If you go back to James Levine's research and I encourage you all to kind of go back and look at that, because, you know, it's interesting. When he did his presentation out at the National Ergonomics Conference, he never stood still. He moved constantly and he did it purposely. And we're talking, you know, a room with 200 people and that he just raced around the whole time making his point. But what you want to do is in his research, he looked at folks that were lean, that had low risk factors actually moved, and again this was a very comprehensive study, two and a half hour, two and a half hours more a day.  And that's not I'm going to go out and run for an hour. And then I'm going to go work out for another hour and then do something for a half hour. These were little tiny increments. These were 10-minute increments throughout the day where I'm going to walk down and go get a cup of coffee at the corner. I'm going to walk over and get some lunch. I'm going to walk here and collaborate. So collectively, and those things to a certain extent are unconscious for a lot of folks.  You have a lot of folks that will not leave their chair, and that's unconscious, too. They don't rule our subconscious. They just don't realize they don't move. So, you have to try to find strategies that get you, and again, there's apps and all that kind of good stuff, but it's a behavior change. So, if you are locked in and you don't really think about, it's easy to push that button for the elevator and skip the stairs. Going "I don't want to do the stairs", nobody's watching and no one really cares. It's your body, it's you. It's your physiology. You would think you should care. Pete Koch: Yeah. Al Brown: Because it's the quality of life down the road. So, you begin to try to find those strategies that get you to move more.  Park across the parking lot. Don't park close. But park far away. When you go to the store in the weekend, park further away, protect the car doors. Don't get into the whole mess. I got to get close to the door. I have to laugh, we have a large outdoor retail store up in the Freeport area and I see a lot of people circling, trying to get as close to the door,  and meanwhile, it says "Outdoor hiking, camping, store" I'm thinking. Pete Koch: Yeah, exactly. Al Brown: Park further away! Pete Koch: You can do it! You can do it! Al Brown: So it's one of those things that you have to find those opportunities, be it at work. And again, management has to support that, too. Pete Koch: Sure. Al Brown: You know, if you have a management style that says if you're not at your desk, you're not working everything else is going to fail. You need that support at the upper management level that says, "I want folks to move and change." And what they have to realize is by allowing that you re-oxygenate the body, you rejuvenate the body.  Instead of getting that 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon "logy-ness", you come back, and you know, you produce a letter or you know manufacturing, you don't stick your finger someplace where it shouldn't be.  You're fresher. So again, I go back to the analogy of, you know, if I had, if I drove a truck for work and I said I don't have time to rotate the tires and change the oil and I make more money if I just keep going. Eventually I'm going to see the engine sort of burst into smoke and the tires fall off and major repairs. Oh, my gosh. Where if I take that time to actually do preventative maintenance and service it, I just keep chugging along and keep producing. So same thing with a human being. We're no different. We're a mechanical system within the world of gravity that we need to take time and sort of refresh ourselves, reset ourselves, and the benefits outweigh themselves from, you know, from staying at the desk. I mean, get out. You move around. You've come back actually are much better at what you do. Pete Koch: Those are really good points. And in some cases, I think it could be easier for someone that has a job at a desk or has a job in a place where they are allowed to get up. What about some of those positions, like a truck driver, like someone in manufacturing who literally is measured on production. I've got to get X amount of pieces out per day or I'm order picking or I'm doing something else. What are some strategies for someone who has a job that's based on the amount of time that they can actually do the job? What are some things that they can do to up their NEAT? Pete & Al: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Now in order pickers got probably a lot of NEAT. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Al Brown: It's like a mail person that, you know, walks and delivers mail. I think, I always thought the fantasy job would be to do that because you are, you're shooting the breeze, you're talking to people and you're walking and you're delivering mail. Of course, you're hanging it off one shoulder, so you have to change it every so often. But for those folks like the truck driver, again senior management has to support, let me pull off and take a stretch break occasionally. But, even then, truck driving is one of those tough things that you just, it's time, money and get down the road and you can't get up out of the seat to, to move around. So, when you do get out of the truck, first of all, I have to be very careful, because when you're getting out, you don't want to jump down. A lot has changed physiologically like you and I talked about earlier in the cast. So, you have to get yourself down safely. But when you're on the ground, then you reset and then you take time and opportunity to kind of move around 10, 15, 20 minutes. Don't just go and sit down somewhere else. Actually, take a walk around the rest stop, take a walk around the truck, give yourself some time to kind of recover.  Then back into the truck and then next stop, same thing. Find those 10 to 15-minute opportunities to just walk around and lengthen your body and kind of get things going. And you certainly should be someone that when you get home, you go for the walk.  And go, don't rush it.  Just take your time. Pete Koch: Nice and easy. Al Brown: A nice, slow walk through the woods is better than a quick run. Pete Koch: Yup. Al Brown: Because again, it's going to be that slow burn that's kind of important.  You know, in, in Maine, you know, we have long summer days, you know. So instead of our mindset sometimes is, oh, it's, it's four o'clock end of the day, or four-thirty or five o'clock end of the day and we tend to get home, you know, where we still have sunlight. Pete & Al: Habits. Yeah. Its habits. Al Brown: So extend that time, extend that time. Go out and do something, mow the lawn, go out and garden, go out and find those opportunities where if, you know, you're restricted like a truck driver, you have to find those on the other side. Now, if it's manufacturing or something like that, again, getting folks out to take a walk at lunch, take a, you know, get them to understand the value of resetting.  Job rotation.  You know, have them go move to a different job. Pods, if they have a pod and they have three machines, I worked with an auto manufacturing, that you know they're at this pod and then they move over to this pod. So, it's allowing them to move and use different muscle groups. But they're moving. It's again, it's that sort of getting the body to move. Pete Koch: And that can fit into the lean manufacturing concept.  And also, really, when we're thinking about the workplace, regardless whether it's truck driving or whether it's manufacturing or if it's the office space or it doesn't matter what it is, we're looking at that concept of as a, as an employer, I need to look at my workplace from a productivity standpoint.  But also, to maximize the productivity, I also have to keep in mind how well my employees can move within the workplace to up their NEAT in order to maintain their productivity.  Because a worker that is able to move more freely throughout the day, to, to bring more blood and oxygen to those muscles and those muscle groups will be more productive throughout the day, not just in the morning when they get there or in the evening when they first get to work depending on their shift. Al Brown: Correct, yes.  Pete Koch: So it's a more, not so much a holistic concept of it, but it's really looking at how we, we take the workplace and we can help the worker be healthier within the workplace. Yeah, those are all interesting concepts. Al Brown: Plus lower injury rates, too. I mean, because, again, that static, not moving posture, you know, and doing repeated tasks, you know, those are where we see high injury rates.  So, the movement within this does improve the wellness of the worker, but it also reduces the risk and exposure to those types of injuries we see in a work environment. Pete Koch: Sure. Now, how about the fidgeting part? Like so I you know I was thinking about that truck driver. When you were talking about the truck driver and I've you know, I've got a long road to go, heavy traffic sometimes.  There’re not many places, depending on where you're traveling, that you can pull off a big rig someplace safely and get out and wander around so I can fidget help within? Al Brown: I think, I think it was Levine's book. He said chewing gum is, you burn more calories chewing gum than you do actually sitting at a computer. So, if you're driving, chew some gum. Pete Koch: Chew some gum. Al Brown: Yeah, those types of things.  You know, I have a gripper that I keep in my vehicle that I'm actually sitting.  And I'm constantly working on gripping because my hands, you know, I used to do a lot of manual work and I lost a lot of my hand strength. So, I said, I've got to improve my hand strength. So, I just picked up a little gripper that I keep. And when I get to a stoplight, you know, instead of looking at my text or phone, I don't do that. I pick up my gripper and I, I do a couple repetitions. So, exercise bands, they sell those nowadays. You know, great, you can throw them in your suitcase if you travel or you're in the truck. It doesn't take a lot of space. You can take them out, do a little exercise. We're working with a company now that does every time, they get to their third stop, they come out and do three movements and three stretches, three sets or one set. So, it's sort of integrated into one, their job performance they're expected to do it.  And two, you know, they that it just becomes almost routine or habit for them. So those are the kinds of things you want to do is sort of change. Really have to take a critical look at your, it's like anything else, a critical look at your behaviors. You know, it's like money. Again, if you go back to if you don't know where you're spending your money, then you'll be struggling with money for a long time. You really have to look and be critical of where I spend every dime. And OK, now I'm going to start doing these things to save money. Same thing with your NEAT, which is even more important because I am going to tell you, your health is more important than your money. And you know, so you really need to take a critical look and be honest with yourself. And then also when your kind of trying to up that NEAT, be honest with yourself. When you get to that elevator, what do you really have to push that button, or can you walk up? And it's going to be harder. But in the long run by up in your NEAT and lowering your risk factors, you're going to feel a lot better later on and compressing your comorbidities and life, those aches and pains and cardiovascular type things. Pete Koch: Those are all really great points Al for that.  And I think the bottom line for us as we close out the podcast today is that kind of understanding first, looking at our habits, understanding where our NEAT level is right now, and then what are we going to actively do to increase that throughout the day? So, the overall, like you said, the slow burn movements that we have. So, don't stop those high intensity activities that you might have outside of work or outside of your relaxation or other activities.  But look towards what can I do to increase my activity in between or during some of those more sedentary tasks or jobs that we have. Al Brown: Exactly. Pete Koch: Awesome. So, thanks again today. And to all the listeners out there, really appreciate that. If you have any questions for our guests or we'd like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast, you should email podcast at MEMIC.com. Get out there. So, we really appreciate that. So, we're wrapping up today's podcast here with Al Brown, Director of Ergonomics at MEMIC. I really appreciate you sharing your expertise with us today. Any final comments for our listeners out there today? Al Brown: Pete? No, thank you for the invitation. It's one of those things, you know, find those opportunities to improve, improve your NEAT. I'm an exerciser.  I'm an active couch potato.  And I still need to find those areas, places where I can improve my NEAT. You were very good today by, I was walking towards the elevator and you said, "Aren't you going to take the stairs?"  And so, the fact that we did this whole podcast standing up, which is a great thing. The time flew by and we feel better. We're probably looking forward to sitting down now. Pete & Al: At some point reacquaint ourselves with our chair. There we go. Al Brown: But not spend too much time there. Pete Koch: I'm not fantasizing about it, for sure. Al Brown: No neither am I. Pete Koch: Excellent.  So, this podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leader in the competitive worker's comp market and committed to health and safety of all workers. To learn more about how MEMIC can help your business, visit MEMIC.com. And don't forget about our upcoming workshops and webinars. And you can also visit MEMIC.com for dates and topics.  When you want to hear more from the Safety Experts. You can find us on iTunes or right here at MEMIC.com. And if you have a smart speaker, tell it to play the safety experts podcast and you can pick up today's episode or a previous episode. You can also enable the Safety Experts podcast skill on Alexa to receive safety tips and advice from any of our episodes. So, we really appreciate your listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know that you can find it on their favorite podcast player by searching for the Safety Experts. Thanks again for tuning into the Safety Experts podcast. And remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast.  Thanks for listening. Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast   MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/ Peter Koch - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch Allan Brown - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/allan-brown Bath Iron Works - https://www.gd.com/en/our-businesses/marine-systems/bath-iron-works L.Bean - https://www.llbean.com/?&qs=3147769&Matchtype=e&msclkid=2d14580265a515a69b3d05b3fa8a9a0c&gclid=CPHZjtv4tOUCFRDcswod0iMO2A&gclsrc=ds Mayo Clinic - https://www.mayoclinic.org/ “Get Up: Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It” by Dr. James Levine - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/get-up-james-a-levine/1118661250 James Levine - https://doctor.webmd.com/doctor/james-levine-9fee2b4b-e59b-427b-a3c2-5e6d2ead739b-overview National Ergonomics Conference - https://www.ergoexpo.com/ Wall-E - https://movies.disney.com/wall-e Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ Jack Dennerlein - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/jack-dennerlein/ Nicolaas Pronk, PhD - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ecpe/faculty/nicolaas-pronk/

Does your back hurt? Is work literally a pain in your neck? Find out from MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics Allan Brown if workplace ergonomics could be the culprit to some of your most common aches and pains. Good ergonomics is fitting the work to the worker, not the other way around. If you sit down at a workstation or desk or sit in a new vehicle and you don’t adjust anything, then you have to adapt yourself to the machine or tool. If you don’t make adjustments, then you may be exposing yourself to unsafe situations and blind spots. Pete Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. Does your back hurt? Is work literally a pain in your neck? On today's episode, we're gonna find out if workplace ergonomics could be the culprit to some of your most common aches and pains. The Safety Expert podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leading worker's compensation provider based on the East Coast. A new episode of the podcast drops every two weeks featuring interviews with leaders in the field, top executives, MEMIC staff and other industry experts discussing how safety applies to all aspects of our lives. I'm your host, Peter Koch. And for the past 17 years, I've been working for MEMIC as a safety expert within the hospitality and construction industries. What I realized is safety impacts every part of each position that you have or tasks that you do. Yeah, sure, you can get lucky, but there's just no way to be successful in the long term without safety. There was a time when I believed that safety was important, but it was something extra that had to be done for those most dangerous jobs and in some cases an unnecessary concern that would slow you down. The realization that a safe job is also a productive job is when it came when I was clearing ice from towers here one winter in New England. The tools that I had to keep me from falling also allowed me to work hands free in a better position and with a lot less fatigue during the shift than some of my co-workers. So, as the shifts rolled on, I got more done. I didn't go any faster. I didn't just slow down as fast and was able to move more confidently in the environment. And it was a few years later that I realized that if we had the same tools and training, that level of productivity could have been multiplied. So, for today's episode of putting the person at the center of work or industrial ergonomics, I'm going to speak with Al Brown, the director of ergonomics at MEMIC, to better understand what ergonomics is and how it impacts our business. Al has been with MEMIC for more than a decade and helping hundreds of businesses get a handle on ergonomics in the workplace. So, Al, welcome to the podcast today. Al Brown: Thank you Pete. Happy to be here. Pete Koch: Awesome. I really appreciate you coming down. Today we wanted to focus on ergonomics in the industrial environment. So manual material handling, order picking and even housekeeping. But before we get into all those topics and unpack ergonomics, I want you to just give us a little bit of your history here at MEMIC and how you got to where you are as the Director of Ergonomics. Al Brown: Sure, Pete, thanks. I'm actually a physical therapist with a safety background and started onsite industry prior to being at MEMIC, which we when we were at industry, we would often go and they were manual material handling industries, mostly shipyards, retail, distribution centers. And the clinic was there. And if someone had an injury, we would often walk back with the person to the job to look at where they felt they were having problems. So sometimes we would re-engineer and we would analyze it and then re-engineer out that particular task or modify it or educate the person a better way to do it then we'd do the treatment.  It was very successful, and it seemed to be a win, win, win for everybody involved. That led me to Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Company and who partners with industry, and I felt the skills that I had learned in my previous life as an onsite physical therapist were well tailored for this type of industry. And it's great because we do partner with industry and we do get to go into industry. Look at, you know, there might be high exposure in particular area and we just have a different set of eyes. So, I tend to look at things from a physiological standpoint. We have a lot of safety professionals onboard. Sometimes I have to defer to them about safety issues, but I tend to look more at the human being and the ergonomics of work environments. And that's what has led me to where I am today. Pete Koch: To where you are right here today at the podcast. So, you talked about ergonomics. Let's define ergonomics. So, what is it? And then can ergonomics be tied to worker discomfort or pain in the workplace? Al Brown: Sure. I mean, ergonomics, the term ergo it's looking at work and the mechanics of work from the human perspective.  What are the tolerances of a human being? What are the reach distances? When you look at, for example, human beings, probably 5'1" to 6'2" represent about 90 percent of the population. Anything outside that becomes an outlier and so design a lot of times within the workplace is for that range of folks. Look at clothing, you know,  you get outside that range and it becomes extra tall or petite. Look at anything, look at door design in terms of people going in and out. Old homes have very short doors because there wasn't really a standard. Now there's a standard so that the majority, 99.9 percent of the population can go through the door without ducking. So, this has been it actually started with Department of Defense looking at tool and equipment and aircraft design because of issues they had, and it has morphed into more things. Another example is going down the interstate, you'll see a green and silver sign because that's the best unlit colors for the human eye to see. So again, these are all a little subtle inroad of ergonomics, but we tend to overlay it within the industry where we look at what are the tasks at hand, what are the critical demands of that job? How do we measure those and are things that are they outside the range of tolerance for the human being? And we understand that tolerance with human beings and there are things we can do to bring it back inside the tolerance level, be it automating or just changing the process. Pete Koch: So really the effect on the job, on the human person, and then how to redesign the job or the task or the environment they're in to fit that person. Al Brown: Right. We're trying to fit good ergonomics, is fitting the work to the worker, not the other way around. Oftentimes, you know, you sit down at the desk, you sit down in a manufacturing plant, you sit in a car. If you don't adjust anything, then you the worker has to adapt to the machine or the tool or whatever and often creates awkward postures, awkward reaches. Where in fact, good ergonomics, that tool should be fit to you, just like in your car. You adjust the seat, you adjust the mirror, you prepare yourself to drive so that you can safely see and drive and reach the gas pedals in a comfortable position. Pete Koch: So, when we look at the design, either designing the task or environment specific to the person who's doing it or providing adjustments to allow the worker to make those adjustments real time, like the car that you would. Al Brown: With adjustments, you can meet a greater range of people. Pete Koch: Yes. Al Brown: Unfortunately, like in the old manufacturing plants, the tool and die. Pete Koch: One size fits all. Al Brown: 1940 equipment, it's one size fits all. So, it's a bit more of a challenge when you deal with older tooling. Modern day tooling, we tend to see a lot more of that adjustability to adapt to different statured workers. Pete Koch: Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up. One of my first jobs back when I was 14 years old, I was working in a manufacturing facility and my job was to bring the dyes from the dye room onto the factory floors, to switch the dyes out for the metal stamping process. And so, all the machines, it's one size fits all, but it wasn't one-person size. So, you had someone like yourself who's more than 6' standing at a particular task and the work is down by their belt. And then you've got the little old lady who is there; who is 5'6" or 4'6" right, just there.  And her shoulders, I remember this specifically cause it just a wonderful woman. Really kind of was friendly to me, which was not what most of the people were when the little 14-year-old kid is tooling around the factory floor. But her shoulders were at the level where the tooling was happening. So her arms were basically, she spent most of her day with her hands at shoulder level.  I didn't realize then what an issue that could be. But now I can't even imagine spending even half an hour or 15 minutes, 10 minutes with your arms at that level. There'll be a lot of fatigue and challenge with it. Al Brown: Energy expenditure for her was exponentially much higher than someone where the tooling or the work area was at elbow level. Pete Koch: And that wasn't all that long ago even. So, there's been leaps and bounds made in a lot of the new machines that are out there. But we still find a lot of tools, a lot of machines that have been built in the ‘50s or the ‘60s or the ‘70s and even in the ‘80s where they're not as adjustable. So we're gonna get into some of those pieces. So, let's talk about risk factors, because without understanding risk factors, I think it's hard to understand how a particular machine or a task would affect the worker negatively. So, what are some of the risk factors that can cause or, if you can notice them, predict future discomfort? Al Brown: Risk factors can range. You know, there's exertion. Heavy lifting that one is obvious. And the perception is that's the cause for a lot of things. And in fact, as we go through this podcast you may discover that everything is not what it appears, that it's not necessarily always the heavy lift, but exertion, repetition. How often am I doing this task, how often is it repeated? In the manufacturing world it's not one widget, it can be a thousand widgets an hour. So just repeated motions, so that you create fatigue and exhaustion, muscle tendons, ligaments. So, it's exertion, repetition. Pete Koch: Force was there. Al Brown: Yes, kind of exertion. Awkward posture, yes. So extended awkward reaches, just like the person you were talking about earlier in the podcast where it was an extended awkward reach. So, when the body is in those awkward positions, you can have a considerable reduction in the ability to generate force. So that shoulder on that the woman you were talking about earlier, she's going to have to generate a lot more force or a lot a greater percentage of her force that she can generate in that awkward position in order to do the task compared to the person that was standing in more of a working neutral position. So, the force requirements or the percentage of force required is much greater for her. So, she's almost maxing out every time she does something at that level. So, you're looking at exertion, awkward postures, repetition. Those seem to be the high sort of risk factors that we are looking at when we look at a work environment. Pete Koch: So, when I look at my job as I'm looking through a whole cycle of the tasks that I'm going to do. So, start to finish. I'm looking at so where are the person's position versus where the work is positioned? How many times they have to do that? How much force do I have to exert in order to get it done, whether it be pressing a button or moving a raw material into a machine, removing the raw material from or produce machine material from the machine into something else.  All those pieces that you're looking at. Al Brown: All those pieces you're looking at, you know, where's the workflow? Where is it? You know, we try to get folks to keep work between knee and shoulder. Pete Koch: Okay. Al Brown: And we'll probably get into that a little bit later on. But you try to keep that sort of your power zone. That's where when we look at a lot of the research that's been done out there, trying to keep that work in that area is of greater benefit.  When you start to go beyond that, for example anything, I always go into industry and say, "Don't put anything on the ground that you don't have to."  Placing it on the ground, particularly if it's a light thing, our perception is no big deal. I'll throw it on the ground, and I'll bend over to pick it up.  And bending over to pick it up, oftentimes it's a bend at the waist, a reach down and a pickup with the hand.  And you, when if you can visualize this, the buttock and the head end up on the same plane for the reach down to that object. And we refer to that as the butthead maneuver because the forces on the back often exceed what the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health deems sort of a safe limit. And all you're doing is picking up a small object. It might be a pen, piece of paper, the scrubbing bubbles if you're in housekeeping, whatever the case may be. That you don't realize it's the little things that cause a lot of the increased force on the low back.  Pete Koch: And that movement to the ground to pick something up from the ground is habitual, really. That movement, the bend from the waist to lift something from the ground comes more from habit. Because if we were going to lift something that was very heavy. So you take that piece of paper or the squirt bottle or the spray bottle, that might weigh a pound more or less. That's a pretty easy pick. But, if I'm going to pick up 60 pounds of concrete or one hundred and twenty pounds of something, or a bag of whatever from the ground, I'm going to do more because I have to exert more force to do that. But what you're saying is that you can exert just as much force on your back picking up something small when you've got the butthead effect going on. So, your head and your butt are in line and I go to lift something light up, I'm putting a lot of force on the lower portion of my back and all I'm doing is picking up that one piece. And I'm doing it from habit. So heavy thing I might think about more, but that little thing that I don't think about that I'm going to bend over at my waist to pick up is what's really going to cause the bigger problem, especially over time, is that correct?. Al Brown: Right. And again, we're always searching for that big thing. And your perception's right that typically when there's a big thing to lift, people are more cautious about lifting because in their mind, it's a heavy object. So, I have to be careful how I do this. Not everybody is good at proper lifting technique. But we all pause when we look at that thing and say that's gonna be heavy. And we either choose to lift it and we get pretty close to using good technique or we get help, or we use a device to lift it.  The little object where everybody is guilty of just bending over to pick that up. Think of this. How many times when you're making a bed? Do you think a housekeeper just takes some sort of reaches out with her arm to sling the sheet out over like a double, or a queen, or king-sized bed instead of walking around the other side? It's just really quick and easy. But that's a huge load on the back and the shoulder, because you know what? In today's work environment, we probably see backs and shoulders kind of lead the way in regard to injuries. So, both of them are exposed to these awkward heavy loads; shoulder more, you know, when you're working overhead, backs, the little things. Pete Koch: Mm hmm. And statistically, shoulders and backs from a soft tissue injury are not only leading the way from a frequency standpoint, but they also are quite expensive over time for our clients and also for the individual and not so much expensive from a cost perspective. But it could have an expense on the pain side for someone and not just at work, but it could be a home. If my back hurts all the time, my quality of life starts to change substantially. I know a number of my friends have sustained back injuries, whether it be through work or play, and they've gone through periods where they've had chronic back pain for weeks or months at a time. And it changes personality, it changes how they work or their job and how they can work at their job. But it also changes what they like to do outside of work as well. So I think it's important to understand these risk factors and not just because it's a workplace thing, but it's because if we can protect what we have, we can do more for longer with what we have and the things that we enjoy, whether it be being outdoors hiking, whether it be something active or even inactive. If you have low back pain, sitting in a chair watching a movie can be excruciating over the long term. Al Brown: It's funny, you know, you talk about back pain and again, going back to that, little things can cause back pain. Education is so important when it comes to those types of injuries, shoulders and back. And again, that's kind of one of the key elements of when we go into industry, we try to work with industry to understand that, you know, for example, a back injury, you sitting will place more force on a back than you and I standing right now. And it can be up to 50 percent more force on a back in terms of disk pressure, if we were to measure that. If you look at some of the studies done by Al Makinson and the folks in the past, they actually have documented that, you know, sitting places more force on the back. So, you going home with a sore back and thinking, I'm going to sit down and watch a show -- "Oh, my back hurts worse."  If you don't understand those nuances, you can actually make things worse. Pete Koch: Yeah, because that that connection between if it hurts, rest it, I mean, it's been driven in our heads for years and years. So, it's good that you go to the doctor. Something hurts. Oh, so take some time, rest, come see me, take some ibuprofen or whatever that is, and the rest is going to be good for you. But many times the rest that he's talking about or she's talking about as a doctor is not that my back hurts after work and when I go spend the rest of the day seated to take the load off, because what we're you're actually saying is that if it's a back issue and it's a disc issue, you're putting more force on your back sitting in that chair, or sitting on that sofa, or on that couch, or in that movie theater seat than you would be standing or even walking. Al Brown: 30 to 40 years ago the treatment of choice was, you know, if you had a rupture or herniated disc was to put you to bed for two weeks. And the problem was that, you know, again, we live in a world of gravity and you take muscle tissue, tendons, ligaments and all those structures in your body and they actually begin to decondition. So, after two weeks, the core musculature, which actually gives our body stability and the back stability have become weakened. So, if you can think of a radio tower and these tethered wires that stabilize it, we've actually loosened those all up, so we've actually made the back more prone to further injury or recurring injury down the road. So today we've gotten smarter and people are much more active, and they begin to understand that, you know, the mechanism of injury and the things that kind of help improve health and start to allow for the rehabilitative process. Pete Koch: Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about lifting. Because lifting is a task that gets done in every job. It doesn't matter what it is. You could be seated at a desk and you will lift something. It could be the telephone, it could be the stapler, it could be the mouse, whatever it is. It could be a book off a shelf. Or you might be in manufacturing and you're lifting material or you're in housekeeping and your lifting laundry or product or whatever.  There's lifting everywhere. So, you'd mentioned before that there are possibly safe lifting limits that one could follow, but depending on how you lift, it might not be quite so safe. So, can you speak to that a little bit, what those safe lifting limits might be and how it all works. Al Brown: Right. Sure. I mean, it's based on science. Tom Waters back in '91 with a host of other folks, Vern Putz and then some contributing from the folks at University of Michigan, Chaffin, Tom Chaffin, Armstrong collaboratively put together what's called the NIOSH lifting equation. And about 3 years later, they had the modified NIOSH lifting equation. It's an equation you can go online and Google NIOSH lifting equation, but it's based on science and in that equation there's 51 pounds, which is the load constant that is started.  And I don't to want to get too deep into the weeds on the science here, but, as industry out there has kind of grabbed on to that number and said that's a safe amount of weight for workers to lift. And here's the deal. It's the load constant that starts the equation. And they figured that that was 99 percent of male, 75 percent of female could safely handle that if these particular factors exist and those factors without, again, getting too deep in the weeds. It's a perfect lift. It's only 10 inches from our center of gravity. It only goes up or down 10 inches. There's no rotation, there's good coupling blah blah blah.  That doesn't exist in industry. So, the way the equation works is we begin to look at the other factors.  Where's the starting of the lift?  Where's the termination of the lift? Is there good coupling, is there rotation in the body? What's the distance? Vertical distance? Horizontal distance? So how far my travelling with it. How far out am I placing it. You know, think about reaching across a pallet and placing something way across a pallet. Well, that's going to be a 20 to 25 inch reach across a pallet to lay a box down. With those increase in critical demands or those increase in exposure, you begin to take that 51 pounds and chisel away at it. And they do that by, they have multipliers. So, it's something less than one. And obviously the higher the critical demand, the smaller that multiplier and it starts cutting that number down so that we can actually look at a job task, put it through the NIOSH lifting equation. And, you know, it might be a 35-pound object. But really, when we get done with the equation, it says that lift is only safe for 99 percent of males and 75 percent of females if it's 14 pounds. Pete Koch: Wow. Al Brown: So, if you think of the 51 pounds, it's probably not a good indicator of what everybody can do within a working environment. You know, NIOSH has actually come out and looked at the healthcare industry and said, "Let's call it 35 pounds." And again, I'm not totally happy. I mean that's a great number. And you know, a good way to feel that is to go out and buy a bag of cat litter or dog food that's in and around that and have people handle it so they can get a sense of what 35 pounds is. It's still Pete, if you think about it, when we go back to that butthead maneuver, that was just a pencil that we were picking. So, it had nothing to do with the weight. So sometimes we get locked in on this weight, but it's those other factors that will impact what is a safe limit. So, you know, just a rule of thumb for industry is to think about nothing below your knees, nothing above the shoulders and 35 pounds. But still, there are other issues you have to think about within those ranges. How far is a person reaching when they're putting things down, that kind of stuff. Pete Koch: So, it comes really it comes down, what affects that 50 pounds or a safe lifting? 51 pounds for safe lifting is all about posture. And it seems that the more awkward the posture is, the harder or the less weight that you are able to lift safely for that 99 percent of males and 75 percent of females. Can you look at it as simply is that?  Like the more awkward the posture is, the less weight you're gonna be able to do move safely? Al Brown: Yeah, that's probably it. You know, and again, it's better to keep it simple when you're thinking about it. So, the more awkward the lift, the less force, the less mass, the less weight that that person can safely handle.  And you know, you begin to look at, if you're a, an owner of a company, you know, a quick walk or just a walk through and start looking at the job tasks within your industry, as you know, who's what stuff are you putting on the ground?   You know? And that's a good start. And then how much is that stuff that I'm putting on the ground? What weight is it? And can I raise that thing up? And it might be simple as instead of having a single pallet on the ground, you double the pallet. So now instead of four to six inches, we're eight to 12 inches, you might triple the pallet so that it actually gets up into that 15 inch about knee height. That's a cheap, easy way to do it. Obviously looking at pallet lifts or a more automated way. But, you know, you start to look for those exposures within industry. Pete Koch: So that concept of keep it off the ground, keep it below your shoulders in that lift. So, I'm looking at lifts between my knees and my shoulders is a good, again, simplistic way to try to limit some of the awkwardness of the posture and how things are going to function. So that's two good pieces. But it's not always the lift from low or high, but it's the reach out that can also cause some of the challenges. So how far can I reach? Where's my, where's my reach to keep it safe? Al Brown: Yeah. I mean, if you think of the primary power zone, we actually have a resource in a chart that actually shows kind of a power zone.  You can actually go online too and just Google manual material power zone and you'll actually see it's a graphic. But when you're looking at it arm extended, so staying within that 10 inches from your core out to where your hands are approximated on the thing that you're holding. That's kind of the real power zone. You can extend beyond that maybe out to 15 or so inches. But again, it depends on the mass and weight that you're handling. So, staying within that power, almost elbows at your side is probably the safe zone. So, think about just flexing your elbows and coming to your shoulders or extending down to your knees where your elbows kind of stay in close to your core. That's your safe zone to work. Soon as you go out a little further, it turns into a yellow zone. And then finally, you get out to the no go zone, which is the red zone. Pete Koch: How does, and I might be getting a slightly off topic here, but how does posture, human posture, affect that? So, you know, if I have that forward head posture or I have a slouched posture, how does posture affect my ability to safely lift that that load? Al Brown: Well, think of it this way. You see a forward head posture. For example, if you take your head, which weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 to 15 pounds for every 10 degrees, you tip your head forward. So think about looking at your eye, your cell phone. And we all tend to look down at our cell phones. So, for every 10 degrees, you tip your head forward, you add 10 more pounds of force. So with a head that's tipped forward, 30 degrees, which is kind of almost like your chin down on your chest a little bit, looking down at something instead of 13 pounds, we now have 43 pounds of force that we are adding to our axial skeleton and our ability to hold. So now we've loaded our back up with that head position. And then if we round our shoulders and bring our core forward, we add that much more force and we haven't even initiated a lift. So again, going back to just body posture and where you're located, you can create a huge load on your back just from your body position. Think of a kitchen. Go to the kitchen, and if you look at the bottom of your cabinet in the kitchen, there's a toe kick space and I'm not sure where that was invented, but the toe kick space allows you to almost belly up to the counter and your toes can go in that extra three to four to five inches. And that allows you to stay upright as long as the counter fits you. If it didn't exist, you would have to lean in on that counter. And you've already loaded your back up simply because of that minor little difference. So toe kicks, have a significant role in the world of happy back in the kitchen. Pete Koch: And you can take that into the industrial kitchen also. And I know going into some industrial kitchens, so I have my prep table and I've never been in a kitchen that has enough space. To put things so sometimes you find things that are actually stored at floor level, so you can't get that close because that toe kick space is being filled with something. Stuff. Al Brown: Stuff. If we go, even at a workbench people end up using that area underneath for storage and all of a sudden, they have no toe kick space. So just because of that storing of things there, you've already loaded your back up simply because you have to lean forward into the job. Pete Koch: And that's a pretty interesting part to think about, like most people wouldn't think. They always think about height, like what's the height of the workplace that I have to work at and how close I can get to it makes a big difference, too.  Because it will change my ability to stand up straight versus just that little forward posture and even just a few degrees forward as you mentioned, you know, how many pounds of force was it again if I tip my head for again? Al Brown: For every 10 degrees, it's 10 pounds of force, just for the head. We haven't talked about the weight of the core, because those measurements are taken, if you go back and look at the Natkinson research those forces are taken at like L5, S1, the low back area. So, anything that you tip forward of your pelvis, above your pelvis, impacts that disc pressure and like I said it will go up exponentially because we live in a world of gravity, so it's not a one to one relationship. It's like a game of Jenga. The further out you start moving those blocks, the more unstable the stack. And sooner or later, it's going to fall over. Pete Koch: Yeah, that's interesting. If you think about it that way, you're really working like a machine, like a crane, and you take a skilled crane operator, he's always or she's always, take into consideration how far out do I have to have the stick? What's the weight of my load? Where does it have to swing to and move to so that they stay within the capacity of their crane or their machine? And we as humans don't often think about all those pieces. We just think about how heavy is it? Not so much where it's located first. how do I muckle onto it? How high do I have to lift it? How far do I have to go with it? We just take for granted that our body can do it because we might have done it before. But as we get older and I think across the nation where we're finding that our workforce is aging, we are as we get older, we struggle to do the same amount of things or lift the same amount or recover faster from doing something incorrectly that we might have been able to do before. Al Brown: Our physiology's slower. And it's as we as we age, we also bring along comorbidities to define that term those are the aches and pains. That's the sprained knee from hiking the hill. That was the old football injury. That was the cheerleading, "Oh I hurt myself." So those aches and pains that kind of come along with life, heal but there's always a little bit of scar left over. And when we start to get to that point in life where we're we consider ourselves aging, and that seems to be a moving target nowadays for me, I'm trying to push it back as far as I can. Those aches and pains come with you and our posture indicates it will impact those comorbidities, too. So, the more awkward or, or forward, or leaning posture as we age, we tend to drop down a bit the more you will impact the joints, ligaments and tendons in your body because they weren't originally built for that posture. So now something has to take up those forces and that's when you begin to get chronic pain and discomfort and strain muscles sooner and easier and tear muscles and tendons and ligaments. So, we're a little bit more exposed. So, when you're taking care of the body and trying to maintain that body in an upright position.  Again, it's like that crane, you've got a preventive maintenance.  It allows you to do more. But still at the end, gravity wins. It's undefeated. So, you're gonna go. So, you're trying to compress your comorbidities as much as you can in the manual material handling world. Pete Koch: So, let's look at those risk factors again. So, exertion, repetitive motion or movements and then awkward postures. So, when you're in the workplace, give me some examples of where you see these either three combined into something that could be very challenging for somebody or just where you might see these in the workplace. Al Brown: Well, you know, it can be a low work area, you know, where you have a tall worker that comes in and they might be doing auto parts, where they're reaching and then they have a box to the side of them that they're stacking these parts and the box might be a little too high. So, or it's just in an awkward position. So, they have to kind of reach up and over the box and place it. And then when the box is filled, they close it up, they pick it up, they turn around and then they put it on a pallet which is on the ground. So, we've got we've got, you know, awkward posture. Static standing, reaching for the parts, to rotating, to put it in a box, up and over with a shoulder being exposed to kind of an up awkward overreach. And then you finished with this I pick it up, it's a heavy lift and I place it on the pallet. So, I'm very exposed.  Now, let me tell you something. Just a little physiology about disks. Disks are, we hear about slip disks. That's actually a bad term.  Disks don't slip.  They are well attached to the vertebrae above and below.  The vertebrae are the bony structures, and through those bony structures go your nerves. And there's lots of tendons and ligaments that hold this all together. And the discs are well attached. However, they are the weak link.  And so, they're a little bit like a jelly doughnut is always used as an example. So, with bending forward slightly, you will create sort of a forward compressive force on the front side of the disc and a forcing that gel inside the disc sort of posterior backwards.  And behind that disc are your nerves that kind of go to different parts of your body.  So, you can create sort of a bulging to that disc.  A natural bulging. And that's why you, me and everybody else, when we've been sitting or even leaning, we have this, some of us will have this natural instinct to stand up and do sort of a backward bend. And all we're trying to do is reset that gel back where it belongs. And with industry, we try to encourage workers to do that. We do that with drivers that are delivery drivers or truck drivers because they're sitting. They change that disc and it takes about anywhere from three to 10 minutes to get that disc to reshape, because you're at great exposure to a to a back injury if you just go and muckle on and pick something up.  So that person I was talking about earlier that is doing the auto parts, they're bent forward, they're loading the disc, they're placing in the box. And then the next thing they do, they turn around and they pick the box up and put it on a pallet and they go, "Oh, my gosh, it was the heavy lift." And it wasn't so much a heavy lift, but it was that awkward leaning forward posture that prepared the disc for injury. Pete Koch: Yup. The movement of the inside of the disc or that gel inside the disc, as I sit forward it's not a quick change all the time, So the longer I stay in one position the longer it takes for that to then reset. Al Brown: Physiologically you have do have a limit. I mean it's like I said three, maybe five minutes. We usually encourage folks to go longer because what happens is sitting flattens your there's an inward curve in your low back. So, it actually flattens that curve and that changes the physics of the compression on that disc. And again, it depends on all the comorbidities you bring along for that disk and how weak the back wall is. But let's call it a healthy disk, when you stand up, that curve doesn't just spring back to its normal shape. It will as you stand and walk around just because it's resetting, it's the gel is re-shifting. And it's not a like a water filled water balloon in there that just squirts around, it takes a moment for it to change. So, it's a slow process, but it resets. But you can assist that by doing a little bit of a back extension. A lot of times we, we encourage that with like I said, drivers or folks that are in manufacturing, where they're doing a lot of stuff in front of them, that during that stretch break they sort of reset their back. Pete Koch: And I think the key right there is it's a stretch break. So, it's a break from doing what's in front of you. Again, the repetition to help change the effects of the awkward posture. So if I'm gonna be in that forward position for a while, if I can't change what's in front of me, then before I go to lift the heavy part, I need to take a not just a moment, but I need to actually take maybe a minute or two and reset before I go to lift that. Al Brown: Yup and in that case, you know, here's an example of working with a company to realize that they're going to say, I can't wait three or five minutes for them to move that box. So that's where you look at can I automate.  Is there a spur? Can we roller conveyor once it's filled? Can we just kind of push it off? So, we eliminate that risk factor because you can't you know, you don't want to interrupt production.  You don't, you know there's a fallacy that ergonomics actually creates a slowdown in the world of production, but in fact, it sort of enhances it and minimizes the risk. But in that particular case, you have to find that kind of a solution. For example, the roller conveyor or, you know, a vacuum lift or whatever to kind of move the box up and out. Pete Koch: Well, you know, talking about that part like ergonomics slows it down so that story I told at the beginning of the podcast about clearing ice from towers one winter.  So, the task we had a group of people we were clearing ice from towers, we were up anywhere between 30 and 60 feet in the air working in the wintertime. The environment was very slippery. So, we're in a full body harness and we have fall protection. And so, in my kit, I have work positioning that allows me to connect into something, lean back into it and sit into a good spot and then work hands free with it and not having to muckle onto something, where my co-workers didn't. They either leaned into their fall protection equipment, which you don't want to do. Or they had to hold on with one arm and do all the work with the other arm. So, what happened throughout the day is that I got more done because I had less fatigue throughout the day. So, production can come from many different ways. Either it's a solution that allows the worker to exert less throughout the day, therefore getting more done throughout the day.  Or it eliminates or reduces one of those risk factors and allows the production to move more quickly.  Like a roller conveyor instead of a pick and a lift. Anytime you can put something on a piece of machinery and move it from point A to point B, it's gonna be a lot more efficient than it is if you're going to give it to somebody to move it someplace else. Al Brown: And think of it, you're just more efficient, you're working more efficiently. So, your fatigue factor is a lot less compared to that person that's struggling and lifting and kind of reaching around. They're going to use much more force or much greater percentage of their force that they can generate. We always do a grip dynamometer; it measures your grip strength. So, we'll have someone in their power zone grip and for ease of math and for everybody listening. Say the person can generate 100 pounds of force and then we'll have them do a reach across the table, maybe an awkward position of the wrist and we have them squeeze that grip dynamometer again. And often, more often than not, that person will generate only half the force that they can in their power zone. And it's not because they gave us less effort, that was their maximum grip because of that awkward position. So, they lose half of their force. So, if they're doing a task that requires 50 pounds of force when they're in their power zone, that's half of their ability to generate force. So, they're much more efficient. They have to reach because they're in an awkward position and reaching across the bed to make the bed. They're reaching around to remove the ice, that's a maximum grip every time. So, they're exerting everything they've got every time. So, their fatigue factor sets in much quicker.  Get clumsy. They start to trip and fall. They make mistakes. Boom: injury occurs. So that efficiency factor and the ability, it's all about positioning the person, whether they're on a tower or in front of a manufacturing plant, how can we get that product again, fitting the work to the worker into their power zone? And again, another quick example. I worked in an industry that was a wood manufacturer and they would bring in these 50-pound bins, back to that 50-pound number again, and we watched raw product to finished product. And in that process, those 50-pound bins got picked up and set on the floor 14 times. So those are 14 opportunities to create back injury. Plus, if you just did a time study on "I Pick It Up and I Set it Down".  The amount time they spent doing that, lifting up, setting down, they were spending a lot of wasted time, non-productive time that was high risk time. So, we actually got to the point where we created a roller conveyor where this product would just stay at the same working level and those 14 lifts went away. Pete Koch: Yeah. Not to mention the fact that you start doing the math and, you know, 14 times 50, you start thinking about, all right, I'm going to I'm going to go work out today. I'm going to go lift that 50-pound dumbbell or whatever, 14 times like that's a lot of weight -- at work. Laundry, picking up a 50-pound bag of laundry from the floor 10 or 15 times because I'm not putting it in a place where I don't have to lift it from the floor.  Or raw product or completed product, the more times you handle it, like you said, the less efficient it is overall for lean manufacturing. But also, it takes away from the person's capacity throughout the day. Al Brown: Yeah, fatigue. I mean, it's just it's energy.  Housekeeping. You know, the butthead maneuver, if you go back to the butthead maneuver and typically, if you're looking at an average individual and they're bending down and it's an extended reach, they can generate up to a thousand pounds of force inside that disc. Now, in the NIOSH lifting equation, sort of references 770-inch pounds as kind of a safe force that's tolerable by the back, so you’re reaching a thousand pounds of force. So, if I'm a housekeeper and I know we've worked together with a housekeeping company, and they're in condos and they put things on the floor. Every time they needed something; they'd bend over to pick up that thing. And if that was 30 times in the day, that's 30,000 extra inch pounds of force on the back, that if I had just taken that same object and placed it on a table, I've eliminated 30,000 extra inch pounds of force on the back that day. Pete Koch: And that's, you talked about doing a time study.  That same thing, doing a lifting study or a moment study when you're looking at the workplace throughout. Where are those times where you're putting something that's below your power zone or above your power zone? Because if I asked you, "Al, thanks for coming in today, I want you to lift a thousand pounds 30 times for me." You'd look at me and go, "There's no way I'm doing that. I'm going to find a different job" Al Brown: Maybe if I warmed up Pete Koch: Oh, possibly. But we're asking or inadvertently causing that same piece to happen with some of our workers. And no wonder that we get to the end of a long week or a long day or increased productivity or I've lost somebody on the shift for whatever reason, I have more work to do that you get a fatigue-related or repetitive motion style injury or cause to one of the workers. Where if we understood more about the effect of the work on the worker, we might be able to manage some of those risk factors. Al Brown: Yeah, I mean, it's like I said, when we go into industry, that's one of the big things is we help industry sort of identify those. We actually have a little 10 tips for good manufacturing or manual material handling environment. So, you begin to look at those 10 parameters, you know, and you can begin to identify where the where the issue might be. And then that's where you might find your root cause and you back up and go, "OK, what can we do to make a change there?" I mean, that's always what we're trying to do. And we, sawzall and duct tape, we try to, you know, provide a solution that is low tech. Because obviously, people can't just throw hundreds of thousand dollars at a solution. But in the long term, you know, you may suggest robotics, you may suggest automation, you know, vacuum lifts. And those things can be worked in the capital budget over time. But prior to that, you know, we've got to find the low hanging fruit, or we've got to find the thing that we can do now to reduce that exposure. And let me just as a caveat here, or as an outlier, you know people go, "Can you teach them proper lifting?"  And proper lifting is not going to solve bad ergonomics. It is not going to solve bad ergonomics. And sometimes I have to sit down and go, OK, we have to have a conversation because that's just not going to solve it. That's an administrative thing that you can teach. A proper lifting is a skill. Not everybody has it. Soon as you walk away, they're going to go lift it the way they're going to go lift.  And you're better off to engineer out the problem. So, so proper lifting, you know, it looks great on paper. It sounds good when you do the presentation, but in reality, you're better off to address the ergonomics of it. Pete Koch: So, it's one component that addresses the outlier that couldn't be managed by the engineering solution.  Al Brown: Yes. Yes. Pete Koch: Hey, so let's take a quick break and we'll be back in just a moment with the Safety Experts podcast. Pete Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. And today, we're talking with Alan Brown, Director of Ergonomics at MEMIC. And today, we're talking about industrial ergonomics and putting the worker center in the workplace. And so, let's jump back in with more questions. So, prior to the break, we've been talking about how ergonomic risk factors affect the worker. And we talked about repetitive motion and awkward posture, excessive reach and excessive force. So, talk to our listeners about how they might be able to evaluate their work area. So, if they're at a workspace right now, they're listening to this podcast through headphones and they're hanging out at their workspace or they're thinking about their workspace. It could be an assembly station. They could be order picking. They can be in a laundry space. They could be in a kitchen space. What would they look for? And then what might they be able to do to make some adjustments? Al Brown: Sure. Pete, thanks. The very first thing is if you go back to that NIOSH lifting equation and you have folks handling weight beyond 50 pounds, that's a red flag.  That's a good place to start and ask yourself, why are they handling 50 pounds? And is that a two-person lift? And if it's not that you need to reassess, why are we handling, what can we do to change the 50 pounds? Do we bring in smaller bags? You know, we think of like the beer brewing industry, where there are bags of hops that come in that are 50 pounds.  Or flour, that has to be lifted into a vat. And in that particular case, if it's not going to be a two-person job, they actually are using, actually, this was a real-life assessment it was, where actually went to a vacuum lift. So the very first thing is if you're handling things greater than 50 pounds, you have to look at how can I bring that back to more of a 35 pound force or do I have to automate or find a mechanical way to handle that? There are all kinds of mechanical material handling devices out there. I think of barrels, barrel tippers, you know, those kinds of things. Al Brown: The second thing is to add anything you're putting on the ground, stop putting it on the ground if you don't have to put it there. Go back to that wood manufacturing plant I talked about where they would put the 50-pound bin on the ground 14 times. So, don't put anything on the ground that doesn't have to go there. Use the knee as sort of a guideline that anything below the knee, ask yourself, "Why are we doing that and how can we get it above the knee?" And again, early on it can be stacking pallets to bring the load up. It can be something fancy like a pallet lift or you know, that will actually with a rotating top so you can load the pallet and you don't to reach across the pallet and spin it around.  And then nothing above shoulder level. So, you go to that and we throw numbers at it, and again, looking at the average individual, think of 15 inches at the knees, nothing above 60 inches at the shoulder and 35 pounds in between. Al Brown: So, when you start to find outliers in your industry that go beyond those critical demands, you have to ask yourself, is that an essential function of that job? And if it is, how can I change it? And if I can't change that weight, then mechanically I have to figure out how to move that.  In the health care industry, in nursing homes and extended care facilities. Human beings are really starting to get much larger.  We have bariatric units. We have folks that are 400, 500 pounds.  And poor handles, no handles. So, we actually are very focused on using mechanical lifts. Now, now part of the issue there too, is you have to apply the belts and things and that can be those little things that causes back pains. They have to be more aware of those. So, in an industry, you have to look at where you're outside those critical demands. Housekeeping is another challenge. You know, getting folks educated about reaching across the bed because that when you reach across the bed -- here's one of these funny little awkward things -- when you bend forward at the waist and you reach out with your arm to pull the sheet up. Is that above your shoulder or below your shoulder? Pete Koch: As I'm looking at you right now it's above your shoulder. Al Brown: It's above your shoulder, right?  And most folks don't realize that when they're bending over and they're reaching way out, that's actually above shoulder work. And it's actually provides greater force than if I was to stand straight up and reach above my head because I've at least got the game of Jenga lined up. And, you know, the forces are compressing me down through my axial skeleton. And when I reach across the bed, I'm that long extended crane and that's above my shoulders. So very inefficient. So, in that case, we can't change a bed configuration. So, you have to do some education and that becomes a two-person task. So, you'll look at situations like that. So, it depends on the kind of industry you're or you're in.  Just moving product around. Take a look at the flow of your product and going from raw product to finished product. Is it a linear process moving through your industry or is it zigzagging all over the place? And if it's zigzagging all over the place, you're taking a lot of time to move stuff around that you probably don't have to and you're probably moving at multiple times. So how can we actually line up the process to minimize all that extra movement and risk of injury? And certainly, look at, you know, automation and the mechanical lifts that are out there because they've gotten very sophisticated. You might think that a bag of flour can't be vacuum lift. But it can.  You know, it's amazing the stuff that you can do. Big awkward things might not be 50 pounds. I'm thinking of like a window, you know, but it's a big awkward thing that also is gonna create awkward postures to kind of pick it up and put your shoulders or your back in an awkward position or an inefficient position.  So you might use a vacuum left to move that around. So, it depends on the thing you're doing.  So those are some of the when you're walking through your industry or when you're first taking a glance at it. Think about that, 50 pounds. Am I exceeding that? I like 35. So, if you see things above 35 pounds, that's also a red flag for me. Pete Koch: Well I think that's a that's a key point to bring up and even though 51 pounds, is that NIOSH Lifting limit, as we talked about before, there are so many factors that cut into that 50 pounds that don't make it 50 anymore. So, 35 is a much place.  Al Brown: 35's a much more realistic number. Pete Koch: Because I have never seen anybody in a in a non-laboratory, you know, testing standpoint be able to pick up 50 pounds and keep it no more than 10 inches away from them and no more move at no more than 10 inches up and down and not twist with it. You always have to do something else like that. So, yeah, 50 pounds. Great place to start. But let's start at 35 because that's more realistic throughout anything. Al Brown: And if you look at a lot of the research that's been done the past, I've always asked this question of the researchers, "What age were these workers?"  Because oftentimes they're young college students that they, you know, volunteered to do this or get a little extra money for the research project. And I'm thinking that is not our workforce nowadays, particularly Maine. You know, we are the oldest workforce in the nation with an average working age of about 47.8 years old. So, you know, 35 pounds is much more realistic. And again, as we get older, we lift less and are less tolerant of those kinds of forces. Pete Koch: And I think in a lot of the manual jobs and a lot of the jobs that that require someone to do lifting or reaching or those physical tasks, you're gonna find an older workforce regardless of what state you're in. The workforce as aging overall, not just in Maine, but overall. And we're finding that to be more of a challenge. So, yeah, I think just from an efficiency standpoint, it makes sense to think to think about it in that perspective. So again, kind of recapping so the, anything above 35 pounds we're really paying attention to and then location of where that product is. So where is it? And you referenced your knee and your shoulder as being those two pieces.  What were the measurement that you had in there? Al Brown: Well, I said 15 to 60, but that's the average worker, when you look at shoulder height, knee height. But to include all workers always think knee and shoulder, because if I have someone that's five foot one in that job, their knees are gonna be a little bit lower than someone that's 6’2”. And again, that 5'1" to 6'2", you know, that's going to be 90 percent of your workforce is going to fall between those two heights. If you have someone that's not 5'1" and they're less than you have someone greater than 6'2", you may have to make some accommodations simply because they are at the extremes. But you want to try to find, you know knee to shoulder is kind of what you're looking at. And you had mentioned it earlier on, Pete, in the podcast and that is adjustability. So, knee and shoulder, if your workspace has adjustability, I know at one of these large retail distribution center in the Freeport area, a lot of their work benches do height adjust. Pete Koch: And I was thinking in that same example. Al Brown: They walk in and the first thing they do is they adjust it to their stature. Pete Koch: I’ve seen it happen actually; it was actually at one of the checkout stations that they had. There was a little guy who came in. He probably was, I don't know, maybe 5’4”. So pretty small in stature. And then the next person that came in was close to 6'4". So almost a two-foot difference. And when they came in, the first thing that the person did was not go right to work, but they adjusted the workstation to bring it up to. So, each person was working at the same level, but they adjusted the workstation. So great training on that, the company's part to instill it into the heads of their workers that this is where we expect you to work and we're providing you some tools in order to accomplish that and work to accomplish that. Al Brown: And that's a that's a high level. I mean, when you get to adjustability, I mean, that's a company that's really forward thinking. And they've been, oh, 40 years kind of through this process, you know, as long as I've been involved and to current day. So that's been an evolution. So, you might have you know, you don't need to be that fancy, but that's where you would like to get where you could actually have a workspace that is adjustable that fits multiple statured individuals. Pete Koch: And I think if that's your plan, as you begin to look at your workplace like that would be the ultimate thing to be able to adjust the work place or the workstation or the work area to the myriad of different workers that I have. If that's the goal, then you can always make incremental steps towards that goal. But if you don't start with that goal, then chances of you ever getting there, it might take you 40 or 50 years and that's not really functional. And as quickly as we move these days, you need to be more thoughtful as you're working towards those ergonomic solutions towards adjustability. So even though it is advanced, I think if you set that as the goal, then that would be you're more likely to achieve it than if you don't set it from it from the beginning. Al Brown: And I'm going to tell you, one of the greatest resources you have is the worker.  When I go into an industry, I go talk to the person doing the job task and ask them where the low hanging fruit is. What do you see as a solution or what would make this job easier? And they can often give me one through three bullet points that are like this would make this job a lot easier if I could do this. And enlisting that worker is invaluable. In instituting a change, because if I came in and just dictated a change, I might get some folded arms and that closed body posture looking at me going, I don't think so. Pete Koch: That's not going to happen, you don't know my job. Al Brown: If I collaborate and work with the worker, the change comes much easier. And also there's process improvement because they're going to try something, then they're gonna go back and go, you know, if we tweak this and that has been repeated time and time again through industry throughout the US that we've been working with. You go to that valuable resource at the front line. Pete Koch: That's a really great point. That change is difficult for everyone. And when you change something at work that's been constant for a long time, it becomes very challenging regardless of how awkward or uncomfortable it is. So enlisting the person that will have to manage the change, to develop the change and to tweak the change. It helps with that productivity helps them become more comfortable as there is a great way to eliminate some of those change challenges that you're gonna have in the workplace. Fantastic. So, I think we've hit just about all the points that we wanted to make today. There's certainly a myriad of other concepts and discussions that we can have around industrial ergonomics, but I think we'll leave those for a different episode. So, I really do appreciate all those suggestions today about how to make changes in the workplace and industrial ergonomics. And we're going to wrap up today's episode with maybe some final comments from you about industrial ergonomics and how employers might help manage some of their challenges in the workplace. Al Brown: Sure. You know in the news, if you listen to the news nowadays, everything is going to go to robotics. And as often as I've been out in industry, I haven't seen robots take over all the jobs. And the human factor is still there. And as long as the human factor is there and I think it will be there for a very long time, there is always going to be risk and exposure. And we have to know the limits of a human being. Know the limits of human physiology. And if you understand those and you work within those limits, you find that you actually will have a very efficient work environment that can be very productive and that workers can come in happy and go home happy without aches and pains. And a lot of times the pearls of wisdom that you share or enlist in your workplace, they can overlay those in the non-work environment, too. So, it's kind of a win, win, win. And robotics won't take every job. So, we're here to help out that that that human equipment. Pete Koch: I think that's great. So, know the limitations, understand them and how they will affect your workforce is a great piece. And that ties right into the definition of ergonomics and how it fits in within industry. So, thanks Al for joining us today and to all of our listeners out there who have spent the hour with us. If you have any questions for Al or would like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast, email podcast at MEMIC.com. The podcast is presented by MEMIC, we are a leader in workers compensation insurance and a company committed to the health and safety of all workers. And to learn more about how MEMIC can help your business visit MEMIC.com. Don't forget about any of our upcoming workshops and webinars, and if you do, you can always go to MEMIC.com for a listing of topics and dates. And when you want to hear more from the safety experts, you can find us on iTunes or right here at MEMIC.com. And if you have a smart speaker, you can tell it to play the safety experts podcast and you can pick today's episode or a previous episode if you'd like. You can also enable the safety experts podcast skill on Alexa to receive safety tips and advice from any of our episodes. We really appreciate you listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know where they can find it and they can go right to their favorite podcast player and search for safety experts. Thanks again for tuning into the Safety Experts podcast. And remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast. Resources/People/Article Mentioned in Podcast MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/ Peter Koch -https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch Allan Brown - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/allan-brown US Department of Defense - https://www.defense.gov/ NIOSH - https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/index.htm NIOSH Lifting Equation - https://ergo-plus.com/niosh-lifting-equation-single-task/ University of Michigan - https://umich.edu/ Alf Nachemson - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2200702/ Tom Waters - https://www.cdcfoundation.org/blog-entry/thomas-r-waters-receives-niosh-lifetime-achievement-award Vern Putz Anderson - http://behavioral.cybernetics.cc/index.php/2-uncategorised/19-vern-putz-anderson Tom Armstrong - http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tja/ta.html Don Chaffin - https://bme.umich.edu/people/don-chaffin/

Ask Allan Brown - a VP and GM, Digital Community Markets at Finastra - what keeps him up at night and his answer is simple: it's trying to stay on top of the digital revolution that is transforming credit unions and community banks.  Brown also is very optimistic. His belief: community institutions that partner with the right fintechs can not only keep pace with the big banks digitally, they very well may be able to beat them at this game.Along the way Brown discusses mega trends that are changing how financial services are delivered and two key trends, he says, are real time banking (it's coming!) and much shrewder use of data to deliver better and smarter services to consumers."The future of financial services is going to be phenomenal," says Brown.This is one of a half dozen podcasts recorded at Finastra Community Markets in Chicago, October 2019.Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available.Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

Allan Brown and his wife are “Digital Nomads”. They are constantly on the go, travelling the globe and living in different countries. Together, they founded Compasio in 2006 to facilitate a vision of loving, protecting and empowering some of the world’s most vulnerable people. Allan's vision is to see Compasio doing what it does in a very thought-out and effective way, and he is delivering on that vision in a very real way. “While a good heart is a good start, great ideas with not well thought out plans can create damage” Allan also has a particular passion for helping families in crisis stay together and empowering nationals to lead the charge. After 13 years of field work in Myanmar, Burma and Thailand, he and his family have re-located to Mexico with hopes of expanding Compasio's work into Latin America. “We have to start thinking about how we can bring about the greatest amount of impact in a sustainable way” Allan loves to change things for the better. He's a strategic problem solver. His entrepreneurial tendencies began in the high-tech world as a consultant and business owner followed by a life-changing move into international development. He speaks three languages comfortably and has over 15 years experience working with and building cross-cultural teams. He is passionate about seeing development done in a sustainable, healthy and empowering way. That is why Allan is re-imagining Compasio 2.0 as a global community that connects the knowledge gaps for people in disadvantaged countries around the world. With new thinking and renewed passion, Allan Brown is making this big ball called Earth a better place, and we can all help and learn from his dream. “Ask yourself: What is it that I am doing that I could be doing better” If you or your organization want to be more thoughtful about leading change, or if you want to join Allan’s cause in making this world a better place, don’t miss the great perspectives and best practices that Allan Brown describes on this week’s episode of Inspiring Leaders. Tune in right now! LINKS Allan Brown on LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/allanleebrown Allan Brown on Twitter https://twitter.com/AllanLeeBrown Allan Brown’s Email albrown@compasio.org Compasio Relief & Development Website http://www.compasio.org Compasio on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/COMPASIO/

What are the lessons we can learn for the life of Daniel? Drawn from Daniel 1 v 1-21

Rev Allan Brown - a former Army Chaplain with 22 years service in the Army talks about the significance of Remembrance Day for the nation and it' importance for him personally.

Lessons from Philippians 3 v 12-21 - what is the Christian hope?

What does it mean to be a child of God, how do we become a son or daughter of the living God? We discover the answers in Galatians Chapter 3

How our baptism links with the great story of the Bible. Luke 24 v 44 to the end.

How does God relate to our suffering? What does the cross teach us about God?

Allan Brown, author of Inside The Wicker Man, talks to Jonathan Melville at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 14 August 2010. Apologies for the audio quality of this mini-episode. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reelscotland.substack.com

Allan Brown, author of Inside The Wicker Man, talks to Jonathan Melville at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 14 August 2010. Apologies for the audio quality of this mini-episode.