Before and After
Individual results may vary
Case Study: Poor posture, lower back pain and knee pain due to long periods of standing.
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!
What’s your posture communicating about you?
At Spine and Health, we’re committed to helping our clients develop and maintain great posture. Improving your posture is one of the best things you can do for your health and makes it easier for your body to move the way it was designed. Good posture reduces pain, allows for a greater range of motion, encourages and enables an active lifestyle.
But posture is also important for another great reason – it is one of the strongest non-verbal messages you send into the world. Whether it is consciously or subconsciously, other people are making judgements about you based on your posture. This can have an impact on your success at work, how quickly you get served at the bar, and of course, in matters of love and attraction. At its most basic, when your posture is better you simply look better.
Hiding or striding?
A slumped posture sends the message that you lack confidence, or aren’t interested in what’s going on around you. Typically, your shoulders cave inwards, making yourself appear smaller – sending the message that you are insecure or even insignificant. It’s the non-verbal equivalent of saying “Don’t look at me.” Posture can either make you appear dominant or submissive – so it’s good advice if walking alone at night to think about standing tall and appearing strong and confident.
And, even more importantly, sending the right physical signals can actually change how you feel. 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. Being conscious of your posture is a key element in presenting a positive image to the world.
Hey boy, hey girl
We’re going to appeal to your vanity here: good posture just looks better. If you have good posture, you’ll appear taller and more confident. Posture is also one of the most important body language indicators that can influence if we’ll ask someone out on a date.
You’ll look more energetic and radiate youthfulness. Next time you are out and about, have a look around and you’ll see that it is true – poor posture and a hunched back makes you look old and weak. Nobody wants to look old before their time, and improving your posture can take years off your appearance!
Five simple steps for improving posture
- Maintain a healthy weight. We are partnered with Body Measure, who can help you calculate YOUR ideal weight.
- Pay attention to how you sit, and conduct a regular ergonomic assessment of your work environment. Book in to attend our ‘Sleeping, Sitting, Standing’ information session at the Spine and Health clinic and learn the correct way to sit.
- Sleep tight, sleep right. Consider upgrading to a firmer mattress that provides better support. Ditch the super-high stack of pillows that cause your neck to bend unnaturally and avoid sleeping on your stomach.
- Walk tall and with purpose. Concentrate on pulling those shoulders back and keep your head up looking straight ahead, rather than shuffling about with your eyes looking at the ground.
- Work with a posture chiropractor. At Spine and Health, we are posture chiropractors. We don’t just treat your symptoms, we’ll get to the cause of your problems and fix your posture so that you can remain pain-free.