The bottom line: Good posture supports good health.
A balanced posture minimizes the stress of gravity on muscles, joints, and nerves. Much like levers and pulleys, the muscle control movement and dictate posture.
Unfortunately, ideal posture is often the exception rather than the rule. Poor posture can affect you head to toe, contributing to a number of problems:
- Headaches. Poor posture can strain the muscles at the back of your head, neck, upper back and jaw. This can put pressure on nearby nerves and trigger what are known as tension-type or muscle-spasm headaches.
- Back and neck pain. Pain and tightness or stiffness in the back and neck can be due to injury and other conditions such as arthritis, herniated disks and osteoporosis, but poor posture is a common contributor. Though rarely life-threatening, back and neck pain can be chronic and reduce your quality of life.
- Knee, hip and foot pain. Muscle weakness, tightness or imbalances, lack of flexibility, and poor alignment of your hips, knees and feet may prevent your kneecap (patella) from sliding smoothly over your femur. The ensuing friction can cause irritation and pain in the front of the knee, a condition known as patellofemoral pain. Poor foot and ankle alignment also can contribute to plantar fasciitis, a condition in which the thick band of tissue connecting your heel to the ball of your foot (plantar fascia) becomes inflamed and causes heel pain.
- Shoulder pain and impingement. Your rotator cuff is a group of muscles and tendons that connect your upper arm to your shoulder. Muscle tightness, weakness or imbalances associated with poor posture can cause the tendons in your rotator cuff to become irritated and cause pain and weakness. A forward, hunched posture also can cause these tendons to become pinched (impinged). Eventually, this can lead to a tear in the rotator cuff tissue, a more serious injury that can cause significant pain and weakness and limit your ability to carry out daily activities.
- Jaw pain. A forward head posture may strain the muscles under your chin and cause your temporomandibular joint (TMJ) to become overworked. This may result in pain, fatigue and popping in your jaw, as well as difficulty opening your mouth, headaches and neck pain.
- Fatigue and breathing problems. Poor postural habits may restrict your rib cage and compress your diaphragm. This can reduce lung capacity, leading to shallow or labored breathing, fatigue and lack of energy, which can affect your overall productivity.
Improving your posture can help prevent or reverse many of these conditions. You’ll be amazed to see how your quality of life can improve — simply by standing a little taller.
Who should get their Posture Checked?
Literally everyone! Even if you not experiencing any pain.
Prevention is key to changing posture!
A posture check is even important for children (12+) to help them prevent developing poor postural habits and to screen for scoliosis.
Why see us?
Chiropractors are posture specialists. We literally spend our working lives analysing postural and alignment issues. On top of that, our location in Canary Wharf, makes us uniquely experienced in work related/sitting postural problems and how to correct them.
One of the unique techniques we use is a specialised augmented reality software which allows us to image the patient and then measures all the various postural angles. This then helps us to measure how much stress this posture is causing on your muscles and joints.
With these results we can target which muscles and which joints we need to work on to obtain maximum postural change.
If you concerned about your posture why not book a digital postural screen with us.
