Article 04

The power of posture.

Poor posture is not posture without money, but rather a bad physical habit that contributes to pain and disease.
By Dr. John A. Pecora

When you were young, adults would tell you to “sit up straight,” “don't slouch,” “lift your chin up” and “pull your shoulders back.” You may have resented the harping at the time, but this wasn't just another suggestion they were making to hear themselves speak. They knew that as you get older, you start to acquire aches and pains that might have been avoided if someone had just educated you on how to more effectively correct your posture.

Posture is one of the most controllable aspects of health, yet bad posture continues to lead to millions of hours of missed work every year - as well as, potentially, a lifetime of tension and discomfort.

Poor Posture can cause arthritis, chronic pain, muscle spasm and inflammation, degenerative disc disease, poor circulation, headaches, numbness and tingling in the hands and feet, reduced range of motion, difficulty breathing and a number of other systemic conditions. Happily, physiological imbalances caused by slouching at your computer or hunching over when you drive can be corrected by fixing your posture.

Listen to your body
Let's look at it from a practical standpoint. The body is a machine, like a car. It is designed structurally in such a way that muscles, which are controlled by your nervous system, work in unison with one another to support movement and activity. Every time you decide to lift your arm, your brain sends a signal to the group of muscles that produce the actual movement of the limb, muscles that assist this movement and muscles that resist this movement. The way we maneuver effortlessly through our everyday lives is an amazing demonstration of physics.

But, just as with a car, there is daily wear and tear on our biological “machine” caused by faulty biomechanics and abnormal positioning. This impaired motion can be avoided by simply addressing your everyday routines, listening to your body and becoming aware of the quiet signs and symptoms that may manifest themselves into larger, more annoying conditions.

How did posture get poor?
Stedman's Medical Dictionary defines posture as “the position of the limbs or the carriage of the body as a whole.” Basically, posture is the positioning the body assumes during any activity, whether it's sitting, standing or walking. Poor posture is created when muscular imbalance and repetitive dysfunctional movement patterns habitually create a form that your body holds onto.

One example of this type of bad physical habit is “forward head carriage.” This posture, which is all too familiar to many of us, is the product of what is known as “upper cross syndrome,” or tight musculature on top of and in front of our shoulders and neck, and weak muscles between the shoulder blades that are responsible for holding the scapulae back and retracted against your rib cage.

As your shoulders are allowed to round forward, your chin has a tendency to jut out, allowing your head to slip forward. Now, everyone who has seen the movie Jerry McGuire knows that the average human head weighs 8 pounds, and for every inch your chin slips forward, your head seems to increase in weight.

To illustrate how this causes problems, assume that your head weighs the customary 8 pounds. Now imagine holding an 8- pound bowling ball out in front of you all day. It's no wonder that the muscles in your neck and on top of your shoulders feel like rocks, and every time you sit for a prolonged period at your desk your upper back begins to burn and ache.

Fixing the problem
So what to do? Everyone says “correct your posture,” but no one gives us a blueprint to actually accomplish this goal. How do you reverse a lifetime of faulty conditioning patterns influenced by your workplace, your car and your stressful live? How do we undo the years of burning knots in our shoulders and backs, the headaches and the shooting pains that have molded us into a society that has to check our blind spots by turning our entire body and not just our neck?

Awareness is the key. You have to become reacquainted with your own personal vehicle by listening to your body's attempts to inform you when something isn't functioning properly. Conscious attentiveness to positioning and paying attention to your body's response system is your most powerful tool in combating poor posture.

But what do we mean by being aware? I'm sure that everyone notices the aches and pains they experience on a daily basis. When we talk about awareness, we're not referring to awareness of the symptoms of the dysfunction, but rather a conscious attentiveness to the posture that leads us to the end product, discomfort. In doing so, we are able to address the issues, retrain and reverse these faulty patterns and condition ourselves to live a more balanced and upright existence. In doing so, we raise our quality of life.

And while we're at it, let's dispel the myth that chronic aches and pains we deal with from day to day are “normal,” something we just have to live with until they go away. What actually happens is that the body, unbeknownst to us, begins to accommodate and compensate over a period of time, and we begin to build a progressive layer of imbalances that slowly allow other conditions, like osteoarthritis or degenerative disk disease, to settle in. There are things you can do about your discomfort - but you have to be aware of what's causing it.

Major disconnect
Despite increasing evidence that posture affects almost every physiological function ­ from breathing to hormonal function, from musculoskeletal pain and headaches to mood, blood pressure, pulse and lung capacity ­ the significant influence of postural effects on health are still not addressed by most physicians.

So are we nearing a postural epidemic? Is there anyone who isn't affected somehow by poor posture? And what is the solution to our society's movement toward the adulthood fetal position?

The answers to those questions are complex, but here are a few quick things you can work on that will make a world of difference when it comes to correcting your own posture.

1. Squeeze your shoulder blades together and hold for a three-second count whenever you notice that you've been hunched over at your desk or in your car for too long. This will allow the muscles that are responsible for holding you in those positions a chance to reset, and thus give them more time before they begin to fatigue and spasm. It will also help to wake up the stabilizing muscles responsible for holding
you shoulder blades back, and keep that 8-pound bowling ball on top of your body instead of suspended out in front
of it.

2. Try to breathe through your nose whenever possible. This will help to keep you relaxed and focused on the present moment, thus reducing tension and stress. It will also help you learn to become more connected with your own personal vehicle, your body.

3. Listen for the body's whisper that something is wrong, instead of waiting for the scream of injury or disease.

4. And last but not least, “Sit up straight and don't slouch.” OCM

Dr. John A. Pecora operates his practice, Harbor Chiropractic, within the Interdisciplinary Health Center in Newport Beach. The Health Center offers chiropractic, acupuncture and massage therapy to provide patients with an advanced treatment plan for optimal recovery as well as prevention and wellness care. Address: 2700 West Pacific Coast Hwy, Suite #234, Newport Beach. Phone: 949.631.1440