THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2009
NEWS 5A
HEALTH
Midterms can really hurt
Nurses say heavy backpacks, bad posture may cause back pains
BY MICHELLE SPREHE
msprehe@kansan.com
How students carry their backpacks is the biggest concern, Patty Quinlan, nursing supervisor, said.
Each week, Watkins Memorial Health Center sees about four patients with back pain, but that number increases in the weeks before midterms and finals.
"Their class assignments have increased and they have more studies they're working on so their backpack is getting heavier," Quinlan said.
She said college students' back pain could be attributed to improper backpack positioning, poor posture and faulty mattresses.
Emily Richardson, Derby junior, frequently has intense back pain that started five years ago. Richardson, who is 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 100 pounds, has a hard time handling the weight of multiple books and other class necessities in her backpack.
"It's been getting worse lately," Richardson said. "The more I walk and the heavier my backpack is, it makes the pain more intense."
Karen Loudon, physical therapist at Watkins, said using both straps on a backpack and putting heavier objects closest to the back could help relieve the strain put on muscles.
"You need to keep the backpack weight about 15 percent or less of your body weight." Loudon said.
Even if students don't carry a backpack or bag, poor posture can still cause back pain.
"It's easier to keep muscles in
shape now than to retrain muscles back to their original purpose," Loudon said. "The more years of getting into that poor posture and the stiffer they get, it's just harder to change that position."
Loudon said another problem occurred when people popped their own backs because it could lead to hypermobile joints, or joints that are too loose.
When a joint is hypermobile, there is more stress put on the joint and it's not as stable as usual, Loudon said.
"It can become a vicious cycle because when you pop it, the more you do it, the more you feel like you have to do it." Loudon said. "We would recommend that people not do that on a regular basis."
Because of her back pain, Richardson said she could only study in one place for an hour before the pain became so bad that she had to move to a different place.
Loudon said she had seen students who were already in a bad fixed posture.
"I don't really feel like I have a comfortable place to sit to study," Richardson said. "When I have to sit down and do a lot of work it's not very fun for my back."
Richardson usually takes aspirin or ibuprofen to help alleviate her pain but last summer she saw a chiropractor once a week or every two weeks.
Students who visit Watkins for back pain are educated on proper positions for sitting and lifting. Sometimes, a physician will recommend that a student see one of the three physical therapists at Watkins.
sitting posture
standing posture
Graphic Credit: H. Duane Saunders MS, PT
Quinlan said if students were unable to see a physician, yoga could help. And for students who smoke, quitting could also lessen pain, she added.
"If you keep your aerobic levels up high then you're going to have a better oxygenation of your tissues which is going to help your spine," Loudon said. "But if you're a smoker, all the chemicals create a quicker degenerative process that goes on in the spine."
STATE
Edited by Melissa Johnson
Kansas house passes two bills restricting abortion
TOPEKA — The House passed two bills Wednesday that would impose new restrictions on doctors performing late-term
abortions. Both bills went to the Senate.
One bill, approved 82-40, requires doctors to provide state health officials with detailed medical reasons for performing a late-term abortion. The other bill, which passed 85-37, requires doctors using ultrasound or monitoring fetal heartbeats to offer women a chance to view the information at least 30 minutes before an abortion.
Associated Press
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Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir attends a graduation ceremony Wednesday at an air force academy near Khartoum, Sudan. Sudan denounced an international tribunal that issued an arrest warrant against its president Wednesday on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, calling it a "white man's court" that aims to destabilize the country.
INTERNATIONAL
Sudanese leader under fire President charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes
BY MIKE CORDER Associated Press
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The president of Sudan became a wanted man Wednesday when the International Criminal Court charged him with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur — its first action against a sitting head of state and one that could set the stage for more world leaders to be indicted.
President Omar al-Bashir's government retaliated by expelling 10 humanitarian groups from Darfur and seizing their assets, threatening lifesaving operations, a U.N. spokeswoman said.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States supported the court's action "to hold accountable those who are responsible for the heinous crimes in Darfur." Up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes in the region.
U. N. officials in Sudan will continue to deal with al-Bashir because he remains the president of the country, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said in New York.
In the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, the government denounced the warrant as part of a Western conspiracy aimed at destabilizing the vast oil-rich nation south of Egypt. "There will be no recognition of our dealing with the white man's court, which has no mandate in Sudan or against any of its people," the
Information Ministry said.
Al-Bashir, who denies the accusations, drove through the capital after the warrant was announced, waving at crowds. Security was tightened at many embassies, and some diplomats and aid workers stayed home amid fears of retaliation against Westerners.
Several thousand people waving pictures of al-Bashir and denouncing the court turned out in a rally in Khartoum. Some waved posters of chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo's face with pig ears superimposed to chants of, "Cowardly pig, you will not get to the Sudan."
MOTORCYCLE
SPEEDWAYS
The decision by the court lays the groundwork for potential indictments of other heads of state who have been mentioned as possible targets of war crimes investigations, including leaders of other African nations and Israel.
"Head of state immunity no longer is a bar to prosecuting heads of state who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity during their time in office," said David Crane, an international law professor at Syracuse University and former prosecutor of the Sierra Leone tribunal that indicted exiled Liberian President Charles Taylor and put him on trial in The Hague. After he left office, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic was indicted by the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The Security Council adopted a resolution ordering the International Criminal Court to investigate Darfur in 2005, leading
to the charges against al-Bashir even though Sudan does not recognize the court's jurisdiction.
ICC spokeswoman Laurence Blairon said that in issuing the warrant for the arrest of al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity, the three-judge panel is said he is suspected of responsibility for "intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians, and pillaging their property."
But the judges said there was insufficient evidence to support charges of genocide.
Ifal-Bashir is brought to trial and prosecuted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
African and Arab nations fear the warrant will destabilize the whole region, bring even more conflict in Darfur, and threaten the fragile peace deal that ended decades of civil war between northern and southern Sudan, China, which buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil, supports the African and Arab positions.
Some African nations reportedly threatened to pull out of the court in retaliation for a warrant. Thirty African countries are among the court's 108 member states.
Al-Bashir refuses to deal with the court, and there is no international mechanism to arrest him. The main tool the court has is diplomatic pressure for countries to hand over suspects.