Your posture and the way you work, sit, stand and 
sleep are a very important part of your health. Good postures allowing your body to function and perform optimally.
Poor posture will negatively affect your health in so many ways, that most people don’t realise.
Poor postures will most often cause musculoskeletal dysfunction in the body leading to lower back pain, headaches, neck pain and shoulder tension. And many other symptoms like sinusitis, reflux or indigestion, bad period pains can be exacerbated by poor posture. Other major body functions like breathing, digestion and circulation can be directly affected by your posture.
So if you are not breathing properly and oxygenating your cells, giving your digestive system physical space to contract and digest your food and your muscles are tense from stress, is it any wonder you are getting the symptoms you are getting?
DON’T: SLOUCH when your are standing or sitting because:
- Slouching whilst sitting increases your lumbar disc pressure by 80% and often is the cause of weakening your disc’s which leads to dics bulges and prolapses with small things like lifting an empty bucket that it finally starts to cause major symptoms like severe pain and Sciatica into the buttock or all the way down into the foot.
- Slouching does not allow deep breathing.
- Slouching compresses your abdominal organs causing reduced blood flow and irritated nerve flow causing digestive problems.
- Slouching irritates the lumbar spine causing direct irritation
the spinal nerves supplying reproductive organs which can cause dysfuntion leading to painful periods and erectile problems as well as the intestines leading to poor digestion. - Slouching is UNATTRACTIVE and often represents one’s emotional state of being depressed or feeling flat. ‘Physically we are a representation of our emotions.’
- Don’t sleep on your stomach because it causes extreme rotation in the neck and torsion in the spine commonly leading to headaches, neck pain, spinal tension problems, lower back pain and shoulder pain.
- Don’t sit with one leg over the other because it twists your pelvis causing lower back pain, sacroiliac joint pain, hip flexor pain, torsion through your organs leading to organ dysfunction.
-Therefore breathing becomes shallow which reduced oxygenation to the cells reducing energy and healing.
In addition headaches can also be exacerbated too.
-Therefore you use your accessory breathing muscles around your neck and upper back creating MORE tension in these muscles leading to more pain in the neck and upper back and headaches are common.
-Therefore you become more emotionally stressed as a response to your physical body tension.
DO:
- Sit on your sit bones (ischium): which minimizes disc pressure and gives your abdominal organs physical space to function optimally.
- Sit and stand with your shoulders relaxed down and back so your lower trapezius muscle is working to support you.
- Contract your core and tighten your abdominals to support you.
- Lift the crown of your head tall and tuck your chin in (towards your chest).
- Breath slowly and deeply into your diaphragm.
- Sleep on your side or your back.
- Have a good chiropractic pillow to support your neck.
- Have a good chiropractic approved mattress that is good for you (and your partner).
- ALWAYS THINK ABOUT MAINTAINING AS MUCH SYMMETRY IN YOUR BODY THROUGH YOUR VARIOUS POSTURES TO MINIMIZE IMBALANCES.
Written by Dr Sara Winchester (Chiropractor)