Your posture can influence your well-being and everyday life in major ways. Its effects can be either positive or negative, where good posture is correlated with positive effects, and bad posture with negative effects. Needless to say, the positioning of your back can also have an effect on the alignment of other parts of the body, such as the shoulders, hips, and knees.
Proper posture not only ensures your spine is properly supported at all times and reduces the frequency of back pain episodes, but it can also make you feel more confident when you sit or stand up straight and your back is comfortable. Consequently, bad posture can cause you pain and discomfort, stiffness, sleeping difficulties and sometimes even reduced levels of energy due to affected sleep hygiene.
Having healthy posture is not beneficial only for aesthetic reasons, but mostly for spinal health. When your spine is properly aligned, the chances of developing other back problems, such as disc herniation, pinched nerves, pain, stiffness, and limited range of motion, are reduced, making everyday life more comfortable. Below you can find exercises and tips on how to get better posture and improve pain symptoms.
What Is Good Posture?
Good posture can be split into two main categories, namely dynamic posture and static posture. Static posture refers to the alignment of your body while sitting, standing or laying down, while dynamic posture refers to the body’s pose and positioning during dynamic activities such as walking, running, carrying out manual tasks, working out, or playing sports.
For the first category, good posture can be noticed due to the absence of noticeable spinal misalignment or exaggerated spinal curves. The human spine has a soft S shape, where the cervical spine (neck) and lumbar spine (lower back) have an inward-leaning curve, while the thoracic spine’s curvature leans outward. If any part of the spine is misaligned, it can throw the other regions out of alignment as well.
While sleeping, good posture happens when the spine is sufficiently supported and rests in a neutral position. There are certain sleeping positions that are better for your spine than others, and which can reduce the chances of you experiencing back pain at night or waking up with pain.
What Can Affect Posture?
Our posture can be affected by factors such as genetics, spinal disorders, lifestyle, but most commonly by daily habits.
In many cases, poor posture is caused by lack of sufficient support for the spine, or overuse of our backs, which eventually leads to compression. People who tend to spend several hours sitting down and hunching over a desk are highly prone to postural problems due to compression of the spine.
People who are overweight are also prone to spinal compression and developing poor posture along with various other back problems and symptoms. That is because any excess weight that the body has to carry can also place additional stress on the spine, pressing it down. In this case, weight loss should be considered in addition to other measures.
Scoliosis and kyphosis, which are both disorders that affect spinal alignment, can influence one’s posture and cause pain, though not always. While these two conditions cannot be fixed, the symptoms they cause can be managed effectively.
How Can Posture Be Corrected?
Correcting bad posture often involves a combination of lifestyle changes as well as doing specific exercises to correct the misalignment. Effective weight management even weight loss are recommended for people with poor posture who are overweight.
If you sit down for long periods of time, try to take frequent breaks from your desk to walk around and stretch your body, but especially your back. Adjusting your workstation may also help reduce the need to slouch or sit in uncomfortable positions that hurt your posture and back.
Being active is also recommended as it helps strengthen the spine and provides it with support.
Because in many cases, poor posture can be associated with compression of the spine, it may be helpful to reverse this process and decompress your spine in order to help restore the natural shape of your spine and correct posture mistakes. You can decompress your spine simply, safely and effectively from home by performing specific exercises that target your spine with a device called the Backrack.
Backrack Spinal Decompression Device
Author: Spinal Backrack
