Poor Posture the Good the Bad and the Ugly

Current Health Misconceptions

As a chiropractor, our first concern is to address the problem.  In this article I will address some of the resultant disease processes that are often tackled by drugs and pharmaceutical products as a band aid approach for treatment. These drugs do not address the cause.  It would also be much much easier and much less time consuming to address the problem before it really becomes a problem!   That is where chiropractic care and a chiropractic healthcare and lifestyle model comes into play.

Posture is the framework of human design, to keep the body in an upright position against gravity.  Postural fitness is the ability to consistently maintain correct body position against gravity during activities of daily living. The inability to efficiently do this opens up a pandoras box of disease processes.

Lets go down just one path.  By slouching forwards (head forward of your body’s centre of gravity, shoulders forwards and hands towards the front of your thighs with the palms facing behind you) places you into what is termed a ‘fight or flight’ or a stress physiology.  Because of your posture your brain assumes that you are in danger and thinks that you are stressed.  The issue here is that your brain can not tell the difference as it will take it’s cues from the body and its proprioceptive and positional state. As you have placed yourself in fight or flight physiology, your brain assumes a stressful situation and will innately up regulate stress hormones such as cortisol.  This in due course will change your body’s reactive status.  You must remember also your posture is often you.  You will remain in this posture subconsciously until you consciously change it.  In reality this is close to never, or until it is brought to your attention.  So rather than a one off running away from danger response, which your body was initially designed to do with a stress response, the stress of the poor posture is chronic, operating day in day out 24/7/365.  A lifetime of stress.

End Result of Postural Stress

Your heart rate will increase as will your blood pressure. But don’t worry, there is a drug for that.  Cholesterol will increase.  Again more medication.  Band aid approaches never fully addressing the core problem.

Blood sugars will rise (think Type 2 diabetes) and inflammation will increase.  Research coming out at the moment is linking these two items (inflammation and increased blood sugar) as the two main precursors to nearly every chronic disease that we suffer.  One of the greatest increases in medication had been for depression and anxiety.  Could posture and movement hold the key to these?  Could not bending over your phone all day be part of the solution?

Concentration and Memory will take a downturn .  Think of brain fog, or kids with ADHD and learning issues.  Fertility becomes an issue, as do gynaecological problems increase in women (Polysystic Ovaries, fibroids, heavy or irregular cycle). This is because when cortisol increases, the ability of the body to balance oestrogen and progesterone decreases and oestrogen dominates the hormonal cycle.  Top this off with the inability of the Vagus Nerve to fully activate due to the increased tension placed upon the neck and you are getting close to a perfect storm.  The body’s inability to relax.

Our immune system gradually turns itself down.  It does not run at its full capacity and we can become immunocompromised.  This is all added to the further cardio vascular and digestive tract issues due to the compression of our organs as we slouch.  Top this off with early arthritic changes, and the monitoring our posture by health professionals such as Chiropractors plays a huge role in health, longevity and wellbeing.

Chiropractic Works!

The great news is that we are currently measuring the changes that we are attaining with postural work on people.  The bonus is that we are getting even better results with the people who stick to their schedule of adjustments; take on the advice as to lifestyle changes; and do the simple yet effective exercises (eg the Denneroll; Posture Pole; or the YWTL  exercises) that we are asking them to do.

There is evidence both in the literature and in hundreds of chiropractic offices, as to what chiropractors can help do to enhance great posture for a lifetime. Helping us create healthier, happier people and families within our community, decreasing the reliance upon drugs and surgery.