Your posture can reveal a lot about your health, lifestyle and mood. For example: when you see someone in a meeting with their arms crossed and slouched in their chair what do you think of them? Maybe they’re mad, maybe they’re cold, or maybe they’re going through some troubling times. You can make those assumptions based off of seeing them in that context.
A chiropractor is different. They look at someone walking down the street and can make accurate assumptions about the way the sleep or what they do for a living based on their posture.
Here are a few things that your chiropractor may know about you based off of your posture:
- You’re addicted to your phone – one of the most common things chiropractors notice in their patients is a rounding of the spine along the neck and down toward the shoulder blades. The diagnosis for this condition: text neck. This condition used to be commonly found in people who had been in car accidents, but chiropractors now see the condition in eight-year-olds. The condition is caused by the pressure your head puts on your spine as you tip it forward. Text-neck can lead to migraines, arthritis, and neck pain. Luckily, habitual changes can help relieve the condition.
- You spend most of your day sitting – as technology and the work landscape has evolved, humans spend more of their day sitting down. The problem with this is that the human body is not constructed for long periods of sitting; it is designed to move and redistribute weight from time-to-time. Sitting for long periods of time causes the psoas muscles, which connect the torso and leg, get tight and your hamstrings shorten. This results in a tilted-forward-at-the-hips posture. Lunges and yoga poses can help elongate these muscles, but develop the habit of getting up and walking several times a day will improve your overall health.
- You have stomach troubles – When your upper back is curved, it can compress your organs leading to reflux or GERD.
- You are a stomach sleeper – when you sleep, the full weight of your head pulls on the flaccid muscles and ligaments that hold the cervical spine together. That amount of weight on the delicate structures of your neck will eventually cause joint damage. A body pillow can help you avoid joint damage. Even if you don’t have a body pillow, placing a pillow between your knees will keep your knees and shoulders the same distance apart, which ensures your lumbar spine stays in a natural position. Hug another pillow to prevent you from rolling onto your stomach.
- You’re out of breath – as mentioned in #3, a hunched posture can compress your organs. This can cause stomach troubles and it can cause your lungs to take in up to 30% less oxygen. Depending on your overall fitness level, this might make you feel tired or out of breath on a day-to-day basis.
- You carry your laptop everywhere – when you carry heavy things, you tend to hike up the shoulder that is carrying the load. The habit can cause misaligned shoulders, which can be visibly obvious, as well as changes to the curvature of your spine. To prevent this, alternate the side of the bag to help keep one side from carrying all the weight and prevent a drooping shoulder or curving of the spine.
- You’re feeling blue – people who feel down about themselves often carry themselves with rounded shoulders and with their head down to avoid eye contact. This can result in your emotions controlling your musculoskeletal structure and your balance.
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