If you, as a high school student, are troubled by back, neck, or shoulder pains, it may be because of bad posture or because you lift too much. However, one of the most common causes is overweight backpacks.

Carrying a backpack which is too heavy can cause chronic low-level trauma, shoulder, neck, and back pain, according to therapist Chris Wood. These problems mean that your back, shoulders, or neck will hurt and become weak from an overload of weight.

The catch to having a better backpack fit is not having your straps down, because that makes it feel heavier. Also you need to have both straps on both shoulders equally, so that one shoulder isn’t strained.

A survey was taken to see how heavy a group of CHS students’ backpacks measured up. Junior Caitie Emerson weighed 135.5 pounds and her backpack weighed about eighteen pounds. Her backpack weighed approximately 13.38% of her body weight which is considered a ‘healthy’ backpack weight according to www.pediatrics.about.com

Emerson was aware that heavy backpacks can cause back pains, but what she didn’t know is that it can also cause chronic low-level trauma, chronic shoulder pains, and a pain in the neck. Before weighing her backpack, she estimated that her backpack weighed about twenty pounds.

To see if you have a healthy backpack weight, first weigh yourself and then your backpack. Then divide your backpack weight by your body weight. If your backpack is between 10 and 15 percent of your weight, you have a “healthy”-sized backpack. A backpack should weigh no more than ten to fifteen percent of a person’s body weight, according to a recent The Baltimore Sun article.

Junior Nikko Gurnsey weighed in at 173 pounds and his backpack weighed about 15 pounds. When calculated, his backpack was approximately eight percent of his body weight, which is also a “healthy” backpack weight.

When Gurnsey was interviewed, he thought the same as Emerson; he also said she thought a normal backpack should weigh about 10 pounds.

“I get those all the time,” Gurnsey exclaimed when he was told about the different pains and diseases you can get from a heavy backpack.

Junior Ryan Hill had a pretty light backpack, weighing in at about eleven pounds, which is exactly fifteen percent of his body weight. He was surprised about the different problems a heavy back pack can cause a person.

However, not all students’ were so lucky. Freshman Erin McGinty’s backpack weighed approximately 24 pounds. When calculated, her backpack weighed 18% of her body weight. McGinty says that an average backpack should be about ten pounds just like everyone else.

“My shoulders dislocate by themselves, and it bothers them a lot,” McGinty said about her backpack being too heavy for her shoulders.