One of the most important things that tells a big story about your health is your posture. Over the years, I’ve noticed more and more that people’s posture is rapidly declining. Today I want to go through three things you can do to eliminate the postural stresses or at least reduce it as much as you can and things that you can start doing differently to improve your posture.
How to Eliminate or Reduce Postural Stress
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Posture Issue #1 – Forward Weight Bearing
The biggest postural stress that I see is what’s called forward weight bearing. Let me show you what this looks like. This is this posture [head protruding forward]
If you look around, you probably see a lot of people that look just like that. Maybe you see that when you’re looking in the mirror? Here’s why that’s a concern.
Your posture is like a window into your spine, so if your head shifts forward, what happens is you lose the normal curve in your neck. This curve is designed to support your head, to support your brainstem, the spinal cord, and the nerves that control every function in your body.
When your head shifts forward, your neck goes forward. You lose the curve at your neck and that puts pathological tension on the brain stem and the spinal cord.
What this means for your body is that your brain can no longer communicate the messages of health and healing into your body, and that leads to injury, dysfunction, disease, and even early death. That’s subluxation and its the most dangerous medical condition that you can have.
Correcting Forward Weight Bearing Posture
So doing simple things to change your posture, make a huge difference. So an easy one is just do the opposite movement. So instead of your head leaning forward, tuck your chin back. Try to hold that position for 20 to 30 seconds at a time throughout the day.
You can also do what I like to do, the red light check. Anytime that you stop in your car or you take a moment break, check to see if your head is up against the headrest, are your shoulders back, is your body back?
Another one that you can do at home that’s really easy is to do the shoulder squeeze exercise. So now what you’re doing is you’re squeezing your shoulders together. Imagine trying to hold a dollar bill between your shoulder blades.
These things will create a postural shift.
Posture Issue #2 – Shoulder or Health Tilt
The next thing that I see will be shoulders or head tilted in one direction. So same thing, what happens is as your spine tilts, it creates pressure. That could be a warning sign of scoliosis, which research has shown to take as much as 14 years off your life.
So if you’re looking at yourself, your kids, a friend or family member in the mirror and their shoulder is tilted, you want to make sure that they’re getting an x ray right away.
Correcting Shoulder or Head Tilt Posture
- Are you carrying a heavy bag or a heavy backpack?
- Do you have a repetitive stress exercise that you do or your working one sided all day at work?
You want to find what’s causing those postural shifts and eliminate them.
Posture Issue #3 – Pelvis Tilt
And the third posture shift that I see that’s very common is where the low back or the pelvis is tilted one direction or the other. People will say, “I have a short leg or a long leg”. The best way to have that evaluated is to actually go in and get it checked by a chiropractor.
Correcting Pelvis Tilt Posture
- For men, are you sitting on a wallet in your back pocket?
- For women, are you wearing the proper type of shoe wear? Are you wearing heels on a regular basis?
The best, most accurate way to assess any posture shift is doing an exam and an x ray from a qualified corrective care chiropractor. So if you live in our area, check us out online MaxLivingRocklin.com. If you live outside of the area, and you want to see a corrective care chiropractor, go to MaxLiving.Com and make sure you find out what’s causing these postural shifts because this is one of the most important areas in your health.
Have you had the opportunity to join us at one of our community education events yet? During the community education events, Dr. Tim sifts through all of the knowledge out there to bring you key information about how to get healthy and stay that way and shares answers to frequently asked questions on chiropractic care and healthy eating. Enjoy the clips of previous events here.