Does your back drive you crazy every time you buckle up? It could be that what you’re sitting on is the seat of your problem.
“If you have back problems, the root of your problem could be your car seat, says Roger Minkow, M.D., a back specialist and founder of Backworks in Petaluma, California, who redesigns seats for airplane and automobile manufacturers. “German cars can be the worst when it comes to backs,” he says. “American cars are usually bad, too, but you can at least fix them. Japanese cars, on the other hand, have the best seats, followed by the Swedish cars Volvo and Saab.”
Next time you’re in the market for a car, Dr. Minkow suggests testing for cushion comfort as well as cruise-ability The following hints will help you make a wiser choice.
Take a new car for a sit.
“Look for a seat with adjustable lumbar support and adjust the support down as low as it goes,” he says. “See how that feels, and if you need to adjust it, do it from the lowest level.”
Get do-it-yourself comfort.
If you have a car seat that does not suit your back and you drive an American-made car, you probably can fix the situation yourself with little effort. Most American cars have a zipper on the bottom of the back cushion. “Just unzip it and slip a homemade lumbar support inside the car .seat,” he says. Here’s how to do it.
Go to an upholstery shop and buy a cushion of high-resiliency foam, which means 2.5- to 3.5-pound foam with an ILD (indent load deflection) of between 30 to 45 pounds. Cut a strip of foam 5Y2 inches wide by 1 inch thick with an electric carving knife. Then cut its length to fit your car seat width, being sure that you bevel the edge so that when the seat cover rolls over, it won’t roll it up. Shove the foam under the seat cover, then make the necessary adjustments by either raising it or lowering it so that it fits your back over the belt line (not the small of your back). Then zip the cover back up. “It takes about 15 minutes, costs about $3, and works as well as an $80 lumbar support,” Dr. Minkow says.