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Posture says a lot about a person. It can convey confidence or insecurity; happiness or depression. Good posture not only keeps the spine healthy and back muscles strong, it can improve appearance and the way people interact. For those reasons neurologist Moacir Schnapp, MD of Mays and Schnapp Pain Clinic and his wife Elma Schnapp, MD developed an electronic device to help people improve their posture. The patented iPosture is meant be worn as a pendant, clipped to clothing or adhered directly through the skin and it vibrates intermittently when the user slouches.

“It reacts to the angle of your chest,” explained Schnapp. “It’s actually measuring your posture every second, continuously calculating whether to warn you or not.”

This smart device is a nanotechnology that measures gravity on a small scale. Schnapp said inspiration struck for the idea after he and Elma wrote their posture exercise book, “Young, Sexy and Healthy: The Ten Best Exercises for Your Posture,” a book which combines their more than 30 years of tailoring specific workouts for thousands of patients with spinal pain and musculoskeletal diseases. The book is a companion piece to the device.

It took four years from initial inspiration for technology to catch up, Schnapp said, because the device needed to be unobtrusive, self sufficient and sophisticated enough to detect posture and ignore other outside movements.

It only has one button to control everything. Users choose a posture, press the button to set it, and if they begin to slouch more than three degrees, they receive a gentle vibration to correct the posture. If they are going to be in a meeting and don’t want to use it, they can hold the button for three seconds and it goes to sleep for 15 minutes, or simply set it on a desk and it turns itself off.

“This device was designed for people who are gadget phobic,” he added. “It’s very simple to use.”

The iPosture should be worn four hours per day the first two to four weeks. Over time it works like behavior modification, prompting people to think about posture even when the device isn’t on them. Schnapp said it’s important for users to simply set the device to a posture that’s comfortable, not stand at attention. Through greater use they will naturally improve the posture and eventually wear it only once or twice a week, a way to refresh the posture memory.

“We often forget how much posture affects how we look and feel, as well as how it influences how people perceive us. Everyone is afraid of developing a ‘pooch’ or ‘beer belly,’ but we don’t realize the role poor posture can play in that,” Schnapp maintained. “Posture directly affects how tall and thin we look –and how confident we appear to others – but we are all so busy we hardly have time to think about it. The iPosture is designed to do the thinking for us.”

The iPosture is licensed through MYCO, the device company Schnapp launched with his partner, Kit Mays, MD. It will go on the market this month.

For more information, visit www.iposture.com

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