Spine and Health

Tag: North Sydney

Posted on

Healthy Bones, Healthy Spines!

Healthy Bones Action Week (3-9 August 2015) is here, and Spine and Health is encouraging people of all ages to protect their bones.

But how does chiropractic treatment affect bone health?

It all comes down to posture and the effect it can have on your bones. Poor posture increases the strain on your bones, discs and joints. This increased strain causes wear and tear on all your tissues including your bones AND is the number one cause of osteoarthritis in your spine. As Sydney’s  posture chiropractors, we can help.

About 7 years ago Spine and Health built our own radiology centre, and x-ray all our new clients. This allows us to  see and measure the osteoarthritis caused by poor posture. It’s shocking how much osteoarthritis we find in our clients’ spines. Correcting posture can halt the worsening of this condition, and sometimes even reverse it with regular treatment and exercise programs. If left untreated, poor posture can also lead to serious problems like degenerative disc disease.

 

BONE HEALTH AND POSTURE

Apart from poor posture, there are other factors that can result in a patient suffering from bone degeneration or osteoarthritis. Some of these may be repetitive stress to a joint or abnormal joint motion, a past traumatic event on the body, or age and genetic predisposition.

Your posture has a tremendous impact on the health of your joints. Consistently sitting in the wrong positions will place abnormal chronic stresses on your body and joints. Poor posture can cause the loss of the three natural curves of the spine (found in the neck, upper back and lower back) and place additional strain on your muscles as they compensate to take pressure off the joints.

If your head isn’t sitting above the shoulders, the muscles will try to help adjust the body by working harder and will become tired. The force from the head and neck will wear down the small joints of the neck, and can trigger early development of osteoarthritis. If you already have this condition, improper posture will speed up the degenerative process and cause more pain.

 

Poor posture doesn’t just play havoc with your bone health. We regularly see clients experiencing back and neck pain, headaches, fatigue and even problems with breathing and function of major organs.

 

 

 

WHY SEE SPINE AND HEALTH’S  POSTURE CENTRE?

Our chiropractors can help diagnose and treat degenerative disc disease and osteoarthritis. The only way to see if you have osteoarthritis or bone degeneration is via x-ray. We can offer you a bulk-billed x-ray in our practice at the time of your consultation.

 

At your initial appointment with a posture chiropractor, we’ll go through your past medical history and determine areas of restricted joint motion, disc injury, muscle spasm, and ligament injury. We will also look at how you walk as well as your overall posture, helping us understand your body mechanics and how your spine moves.

Our x-rays also show if you have disc or joint issues in areas of the body apart from your spine, and even a short leg (which is actually quite common).

 

TREATMENT

Our treatment is unique. Spine and Health chiropractors are qualified in postural based chiropractic. Our goal is re-aligning the spine and joints of the body.

Our techniques can help increase mobility and range of motion, and reduce any pain. By restoring posture to a normal healthy range, we can relieve the pressure and inflammation bones may be causing on the joints and muscles.

When your body is aligned it takes pressure off areas of the body that are overworked to keep your body functioning with minimal pain. Having good posture will stop the fatigue and strain on your muscles, joints and bones, and reduce the risk and symptoms of osteoarthritis and disc degeneration.

What are you waiting for? Call our Posture Chiropractors today for an initial assessment, and take care your bone health!

Posted on

Is poor posture making you feel bad?

Everybody knows that poor posture can contribute to physical pain. It can also negatively affect your appearance – it can make you look older, less fit and less attractive.

As we discussed in a recent blog post, posture also plays an important role in how people make assessments about you and your personality. Posture can be the difference between being seen as weak or powerful, timid or confident, and desirable or not.

But aside from the messages your posture sends to other people, have you ever stopped to think about what messages your posture is sending to you? Yes, your posture can have a direct impact on how you feel about yourself and your internal dialogue. It can literally make you feel bad.

 

Power posture

Research over the past ten or so years is consistently demonstrating that tweaking your posture can actually change your emotions. In her TED talk, Harvard researcher Amy Cuddy, explains how if you adopt the body language of looking powerful and confident, you will actually feel more powerful and confident – and it even influences your hormones.

When investigating the question of whether or not our bodies influence our minds, Cuddy discovered that changing posture has an impact on two key hormones: testosterone, which is the dominance hormone, and cortisol, which is the stress hormone. So by changing our posture, Cuddy found that is possible both to make ourselves feel more powerful as testosterone levels increased, AND so called ‘power postures’ also reduced cortisol levels, meaning that people were better able to react and respond to stress.

 

Straighten up and lift that self-belief

These findings are supported by other research also. A study at Ohio State University found that people who were told to sit up straight were more likely to believe thoughts that they wrote down while in that posture concerning whether they were qualified for a job. Study co-author Richard Petty, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, said that, “People assume their confidence is coming from their own thoughts. They don’t realise their posture is affecting how much they believe in what they are thinking.”

 

Another study suggested that an upright posture can also boost your ability to recall positive thoughts and have a stronger self-image.

 

 

See what not slumping can do for your mood

 

Researchers in New Zealand strapped 74 people into assigned postures with tape, and measured blood pressure and heart rates as they completed a series of tasks designed to assess their mood, self-esteem and stress levels. According to the study authors, upright participants reported feeling more enthusiastic, excited and strong, while slumped participants reported feeling fearful, hostile, nervous, quiet, passive, dull, sleepy and sluggish.

At Spine and Health, we see the evidence every day of the difference good posture can make to quality of life. Improving your posture reduces pain and helps to prevent unnecessary injuries. It helps you to look, move and live better. And now, a growing body of evidence is demonstrating that good posture can help you to be happier and more confident too.

We’d love to chat about how we can help you to improve your posture and see how much better your life can be. Give us a call today to book an appointment with a chiroprator in our North Sydney or Crows Nest clinics.