Hey guys, Dr. Brian here with Beyond Bones. Let’s take a look at posture, what it is, how it can get bad and what we can do about it here. Now most of us know when we look at somebody, we can just tell right away, that person’s got good posture, there’s something about the way that they look. But more importantly, there’s often something about the way that they feel maybe they’re more confident or more energetic, they’re more welcoming. In some way, we can just tell when posture is good. We can also tell when it’s bad.
The Importance of Maintaining Good Posture
And we’ve often all of us, at some point, been lectured throughout our lives about stand up straight, watch your posture, all that kind of thing. But what lots of folks don’t understand, unfortunately, about bad posture is that it’s very rarely the case that a person’s posture gets bad simply because they’re lazy, because they’re not trying. In reality, bad posture can be both a sign of more serious problems on the inside. It can, it can also be the cause of more serious problems coming down the road, if we don’t address it. Fortunately, analyzing posture doesn’t have to be complicated or mysterious, it can be straightforward when it’s done properly. And this is the first step here at beyond bones that we put new patients at our at our practices through in order to assess how their posture is what may have gone wrong, how it may be related to their spine, and what we can do about it. So first of all, looking at a person who’s standing on balance feet. facing forward, we look for a few things, we look to see whether or not their head is tilted to one side or the other, we look to see whether one shoulder has gone higher than the other or whether the ribcage is rotated, we look to see if the space between their arms and their sides is even or roughly even on both sides lower down, we’ll look at the height of the hips to make sure that their level is well, we’ll look to see whether the feet and the knees are pointing at roughly the same angles. So those are the few of the things that we look at from the front, when we’re analyzing posture.
How We Analyze Your Posture With the Side View
Arguably the most important part of a person’s posture to assess is the side view. And for that we’ve invited over mi’ amigo, Hector. So as we look at Hector, here, we can see a few things. And really the the most important one of all is this, imagine where his ear would be. If he still had an ear, it would be about there, and his ear lobe should line up with roughly the midway point of his shoulder, can you see that how his ear lobe would line up more or less directly on top of his shoulder. That’s the number one sign of bad posture when we lose that. And that ends up making us look something like this. Look around, you look at your friends, look at your family, look at your coworkers look at the people at Target, you’re gonna see that a lot that forward head posture, that’s a sign of lots of stress and pressure throughout the neck and the upper back, the muscles will probably be tight, the spine may have misaligned and there may be pressure on some of those nerves. That’s the number one sign of bad posture, it’s easy to spot. And it’s a good thing to do, it’s a good thing to look out for the folks in your life to see if there’s signs of a problem, because it’s probably correctable, at least to some degree. And that’s what we’ll talk about now, how it is that we hear it beyond bones can correct posture once it’s gotten bad.
Our Chiropractic Adjustments Improve Your Posture
The first and the primary thing is the main thing that chiropractors do, it’s really the only thing that we do in terms of helping people here in the practice of beyond bones. And it’s the chiropractic adjustment, it’s done by hand, the intention is to realign the spine back as close as possible to its original healthy positioning. That takes pressure off of the nerves that lets the person heal up and feel better from all sorts of symptoms. And it always results in better posture, shoulders rolled back, head back, chin up with all the benefits that brings with us. So the chiropractic adjustment is number one.
Specific Exercise and Stretches for Better Posture
Number two is there may be some exercises or stretches that we have our clients do at home in order to strengthen the muscles that need it. And in order to stretch the muscles that need that, that helps bring balance back to the spine and can often improve posture as well. And the third thing is lifestyle changes if your sleeping position. Or if your work position, if the way that you sit in your car or at your desk, if those things are causing or contributing to your bad posture, we’ve got to get that corrected as well. And that’s another big part of what we do here, consultations about those specific things with tips and advice about how to change them, as well. Of course, his motivation to keep them changed one thing so once things have started to get better.
Your Consultation and Posture Assessment
The bottom line here is assessing somebody’s posture can be very, very helpful when it comes to helping them improve their overall levels of energy, vitality, and health. You can really change a person’s life by having straighten up and keep them straightened up if it’s done in a healthy way. So the evaluation here and the assessment of a person’s posture. That’s the first step after that we may take X rays to see what’s gone wrong on the inside in terms of misalignment of the spine causing nerve pressure so that we can get that corrected not just now for short term hospital improvements, but for the long term so that you’re upright, you’re breathing deeper, you got more health, more energy, and you’re more the way you should have been all along!