If your mother has ever told you to stop slouching and has always pulled your shoulders back at some point in life, she probably has a good reason – to encourage good posture habits into you. Sure, she may not have known the scientific and bio-mechanical reasoning behind it, but sometimes mothers just know best. Maintaining good posture is very important!
What is “good posture”?
Is there really a way to say what’s “good” and “bad” posture? Definitely!
Posture basically refers to the position and alignment of your spine to gravity. That means that whether you’re laying down, sitting or standing, your posture will put pressure on your ligaments, muscles and joints. You have good posture when no single part is burdened when your body is in a certain position. In fact, we’ll show you that it’s not that hard to maintain a good posture.
Why Is Good Posture Important?
Having good postural habits is something that all of us should have because of its detrimental effects on our health; pain can develop everywhere in our body if we don’t take care of our posture.
The way that you sit and stand can affect you in the long term if you don’t start taking care of your posture immediately.
Some benefits of maintaining good posture include:
a) Reduces back pain
Did you know that sitting or standing while slouching for too long can strain your muscles in your back? It may feel comfortable at first when you don’t have to keep your back straight all the time, but when your head is leaned forward, it actually stresses out the posterior structures of the spine, including the intervertebral discs, facet joints, ligaments, and muscles which causes back pain in the first place.
Therefore, you should be moving around frequently for about 20-30 minutes after staying in the same position for a while. We know with the current COVID-19 situation, being stuck at home for long periods of time doesn’t seem like the greatest option, especially for those of you who actually need to sit in front of a computer and work. However, we believe that your health should come first! Leave your computer for a bit and just walk around your house for a bit before continuing your tasks. This makes a difference to your posture too!
b) Prevents muscle degeneration
Correct posture also benefits your muscles and ligaments from wear and tear. Good posture helps to maintain the alignment of your bones and joints and prevents excessive stress on your muscles and tendons.
Good posture can also ensure the mobilisation of our joints, hence reducing restrictions whenever we do any movements. Muscle tension can also be prevented as well as developing joint pain and degenerative arthritis.
c) Reduced muscle tension in the neck and shoulders
Do you frequently experience headaches? Though there can be many triggers to headaches, many studies have shown that it is normally due to poor posture.
As mentioned before, poor postural habits such as leaning your head forward and slouching your back can negatively affect your spine and increase muscle tension. Staying in a fixed position for long periods of time can irritate your joints and muscles, and affect the biomechanics of your neck and shoulders, causing headaches to occur. Maintaining a good posture can help with that, hence it’s recommended to step away from what you’re doing and do some light movements to release that tension build-up.
d) Improved energy levels
Good posture prevents pain. If you experience body discomfort, it’s very likely that you won’t be in a good mood and that you’ll often feel fatigued and tired. By having the correct posture, your energy levels will improve because there is less strain on your muscles.
When your bones and joints are properly aligned, your muscles will then have the capacity to function efficiently without much restriction, therefore reducing the likelihood of muscle fatigue and having more energy to function in life. People who have a good posture tend to have better concentration at work and at school and hence perform better!
e) Increased lung capacity
Remember how we mentioned that posture can affect other parts of your body? This is also proven to be true, as poor posture can actually compress your lungs and affect your breathing ability due to the restriction through the muscles and ribs. This affects the heart and lungs to be unable to function to their full effectiveness.
Sitting or standing without slouching can increase lung capacity as it provides more space for the lungs to expand. It also makes sure that we have a good breathing technique!
What Are The Consequences of Poor Posture?
Poor posture results in a higher likelihood of developing chronic pain and injury to our body due to the constant build-up of stress and tension. It also decreases our heart and lungs function. This means that it’s more than just a bad back; poor posture can even result in early death!
Some of these consequences include:
- Intestinal problems
- Osteoporosis
- Varicose veins
- Hip and foot deformities
- Poor quality of life
- Shorter life-span
Don’t wait until you develop serious issues with your posture to seek help. In fact, it’s always a good idea to keep your health in check at all times, and that includes your posture and correcting any bad habits before it’s too late.
Can poor posture be corrected?
Absolutely! In fact, there are many conservative options that can help with posture correction.
For adolescents, wearing a brace may be recommended as skeletal maturity may not be achieved at their ages and extra support for their spine is needed in order to correct their posture. However, wearing a brace for the long term is not recommended as it can potentially affect blood circulation as well as over-relying on the brace and hence leading to weaker postural muscles.
Another option for posture correction would be to receive chiropractic care and is the most effective option to consider. It’s one of the safest alternatives that provide long term solutions that do not affect you with dangerous side effects that prescribed medicine runs the risk of having and has positive effects on your body systems as well. Plus, chiropractic care can be for people of all ages; if your child has a posture problem, a chiropractor can help!
Looking for a posture corrector? Elite Spine Centres has your back!
Quite literally we do! Located in Singapore, our chiropractors at Elite Spine Centres take your health very seriously and want to help you improve any posture issues that you may have. We help our patients correct their posture by using the Functional Correction Method (FCM) by looking at all areas of your spine, joints and soft tissues to restore functionality and faster recovery.
Have other problems you want our chiropractors to look at, like knee pain or neck pain? It’s all connected to your posture and what’s great is that you don’t have to run around looking for another chiropractor when you can get all your treatments right here!
We want to get you feeling better in no time that one day you can stop being reliant on chiropractic care and start taking your health back into your own hands once more. Book a consultation now so we can begin your healing journey!