Gone are the days when you could lounge for hours with little thought to keeping both feet flat on the ground and making sure you hold your chin up. Years of poor posture and the unbalanced body positions it creates can wreak havoc on your physical and mental health.
Contemporary life doesn’t help either, with an increased dependence on digital screens. Many of these devices force a head-down stance to view and enter data.
At Smoky Hill Chiropractic, Dr. Heath Hancock and the team can help you cope with the effects of unbalanced posture, whether you’re suffering from back or neck pain, headaches, or stiffness. The side effects of poor posture aren’t simply physical. They can affect your emotions and mood, too.
The advances of the industrial revolution, automation, and the Information Age have all combined to provide freedom from the need for constant physical exertion to survive. Today’s lifestyles tend to be less active and more sedentary than those of your great-grandparents.
In fact, technology introduced its own challenges in the form of laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Between the reduction of wide ranges of motion and the temptation to adopt unbalanced postures, we have a new range of disorders based on body position rather than exertion.
Hunching, slouching, and general lack of movement take a toll on your body and mind. Poor posture places added pressure on your lumbar spine (lower back) and cervical spine (neck), as well as potentially affecting nerve roots branching off your spine.
Since pain can radiate along the length of nerves (think sciatica), posture has a tremendous effect on how much pain you have in your life. Without treatment, unbalanced posture can lead to degenerative changes, including degenerative disc disease and chronic spinal misalignment.
Balanced body posture makes a positive impression on people you encounter. More importantly, it can help you feel more confident and less stressed, simply as a result of body position.
The reverse is also true. Slouching and slumping can markedly reduce your confidence and self-esteem. Part of this may be due to reduced lung capacity, which depresses your parasympathetic nervous system and raises levels of cortisol, a key stress hormone.
Lower levels of cortisol lead to fewer mental and physical effects from your body’s stress response. If you feel a boost when you sit or stand in a balanced position, it includes a chemical reaction within your body that has a real effect on your mood.
Chronic poor posture takes time and effort to overcome. Chiropractic care with Dr. Hancock and the team can reset your spine with a treatment plan designed to bring your spine and body back into physical balance.
We can also help you to build balanced posture into your life, including strategies like planning timed exercises throughout your day. Pausing and changing position relieves the negative effects of static posture, whether sitting or standing.
Adding movement like moderate amounts of walking actively addresses dynamic posture and how your body balances in motion, and it has the added benefit of stimulating blood flow while giving your body the movement it craves to stay healthy.
The time to build better posture is now. Contact Smoky Hill Chiropractic in Salina, Kansas, to schedule your personal consultation, online or by phone, today.
