Posture

We always hear about the importance of posture. Your mom or a teacher constantly reminded you when you were young to “sit-up straight”! So let’s take a closer look and see if they were onto something.

First, a study and the importance of posture.
Posture affects and moderates: spinal pain, headache, mood, blood pressure, pulse, respiration, sympathetic
function, homeostasis, autonomic regulation, breathing and hormone production. Sounds pretty important!
American Journal of Pain Management, 1994

Dramatic respiratory changes.
The Breath of  Life.  Did you know that after age 20, your vital capacity, (the maximum volume of air that a person can exhale after maximum inhalation), decreases 5-20% per decade! Mostly due to postural changes! - Brian K Ross, MD, University of Washington

A quote from someone in the know:
“Better than 90% of the energy output of the brain is used in relating to the physical body in its gravitational
field.  The more mechanically distorted a person is (bad posture), the less energy available for thinking,
metabolism and healing.” - Dr. Roger Sperry, Nobel Laureate

Sit-up Straight! Loss of proper joint structure and function (due to poor posture) increases adhesion formation in the soft tissue in and around the spine. - Grieve, Common Vertebral Joint Problems, 1988

Now, go take a look.
Next time you are out, start observing people over 50.  First ask yourself; do they have good or bad posture. Then ask yourself if they look healthy or not. You will discover that almost always people with good posture look younger and healthier than those with bad posture. Very interesting indeed!

How about a couple of demonstrations?
Try this:  First sit-up straight and take a big breath in and out.  Notice how full a breath you can take. Now hunch over and breathe again.  The difference is obvious.  With chiropractic adjustments and proper stretching, you can maintain or even improve your ability to breathe.

Here is another demonstration.
Try this: Stand up straight with good posture, (head directly over shoulders, no tilted head) and put your arm out at 90° to your side. Have someone behind you push down on your arm as you resist their effort. Your shoulder should hold strong. Now slump over (anterior head translation and flexion) with bad posture and have your partner push down again. Your shoulder should be weaker and you should have some difficulty holding it up.  This seems odd, as if your muscle was shut off.  Try this on your family and friends.

Explanation - with good posture, your brain can communicate via your spinal cord to all your muscles and vital organs. Your muscles and vital organs also communicate back to your brain in a kind of loop or circuit.  This is how your autonomic nervous system works.  There is a constant two-way flow of information that helps run all your systems and keeps you alive.  With poor posture, you can see the communication between the nervous system and the body does not work at 100%.  You can maintain proper nervous system function with proper posture,

Big benefit!
Maintaining your autonomic nervous system function is one of many benefits of chiropractic care
that has nothing to do with pain.  All too often, the public thinks that chiropractic care is only useful for low back pain - not so!   We will continue to discuss other benefits of chiropractic care that are not pain related in future blogs.

The Physiology Behind The Sore Back

So what is actually happening when my back or neck is sore? First off most people are not involved in traumatic events ie. car accidents, slips and falls or sports injuries, although that can be the cause of low back pain, neck pain or headache. In these cases, it is obvious why we hurt. Most chiropractic patients claim: “Nothing happened!” or “I didn't do anything - I just woke up with it”. The explanation: repetitive micro-trauma, or in other words, activities of daily living. That is, all the things we do in our daily lives add up and eventually become "the straw that broke the camel's back”. 

Try this:  
1. Stand with proper posture and have a friend stand behind you with their hands on your shoulder (trapezius) muscles.  
2. While your friend is feeling how tight your muscles are, imagine doing things that you normally do throughout your day, (work, lifting your child, doing dishes, driving your car, working on your computer etc.). 
3. No matter what your activities, your trapezius muscles immediately tighten up. 

If you do things all day long - and you do - those muscles slowly and progressively get tighter.  Now let's look at the physiology: If you have a spinal vertebra/joint out of alignment, it can pinch the nerves coming off of the spinal cord.  Those nerves become irritated due the pressure of the misalignment.  Those same nerves go to muscles which then tighten up and so, blood flow to the muscles gets cut off or at least decreases.  As a result, those muscles become shorter, less flexible and lose their ability to move. In 4 days, adhesions begin to form in and around joints and surrounding soft tissue, (muscles, ligaments, tendons, and fascia). These joints are now even more restricted and can’t move properly. With all this restriction and nerve irritation, chemicals are released and build up, These can be either normal metabolic waste products and/or inflammatory chemicals but the chemicals cause pain receptors to fire and that is what causes the pain - a vicious cycle.

The solution: Chiropractic adjustments, of course!  With a quick, sudden, but gentle thrust, the the joint movement is restored, pressure on the nerve is released and the muscles relax (stimulation of the Golgi Tendon Organs inhibit muscle spindles), adhesions either breakup and/or elongate and chemicals can now be absorbed or allowed to dissipate, and the pain is alleviated.  There may be residual pain but many times that disperses within a couple hours.  Massage can help this process but if it is caused by joint misalignment, the problem will not resolve and the vicious cycle will continue.

Wellness care: This is why so many Chiropractic patients seek routine care - they want to interrupt this cycle of repetitive micro trauma instead of waiting until they hurt so bad, they can’t function. We will cover additional benefits in future blogs. 

So if you have recurring aches and pains or just want to prevent it from happening in the first place, talk to your doctor of chiropractic about repetitive micro-trauma and the benefits of regular chiropractic adjustments.