BODY | HEALTHY POSTURE
POSTURE
CHECK
Realigning
your posture for
overall health
Story by DR. SHANNON VIANA
W
ith increasing numbers of devices
available to us, we’re spending
more and more of our lives
plugged in. Estimates across the globe suggest
that we spend a whopping 8 to 11 hours a day
on technology; this is not without effect. Laptops, tablets and cell phones, while convenient,
fall flat in terms of ergonomics and encourage sloppy posture and bad habits. While
mainstream media has coined the phenomena
“iposture,” the long-term effects are far from
comical. Common symptoms include headaches, which squeeze at the temples or start
at the base of the skull and move up over the
head, neck and shoulder pain, cold or tingling
into the hands and low back pain.
For many, it’s difficult to draw the connection between poor posture and a sudden
onset of pain or headaches. While the pain
and dysfunction seem to begin quite suddenly,
for most, the process has been progressively
worsening over years. Fortunately — and
unfortunately — the human body is an amazing, adapting machine which compensates by
allowing us to function with limited range of
motion and by recruiting other muscles. The
pectorals, scalenes, hamstrings and gluteus
muscles become extremely tight while the
opposing muscles (the rhomboids, upper
neck muscles and low back muscles) become
stretched and painful. Over time, these tight
muscles act like tethers on our bones and
joints and restrict motion further. Often one
of the first changes people notice in their
day-to-day living is the inability to check their
blind spot by turning just their head. By the
time they present with pain they have resorted
14
THE HOLISTIC PARENT
Winter 2015
think
your
posture
is in
check?
...
Ask a friend or coworker to take a
side profile photo
of your hear, neck
and shoulders.
to turning most of their upper body to accomplish this simple task.
Fortunately, for most, the solution is really quite simple. We must
get up, we must move and we must stretch. Changing posture begins
by first recognizing that how you act in your environment is causing
the problem in the first place and to change it you must change how
you are in that environment. First, you must accept that it’s unnatural
and unhealthy to sit and slouch forward all day long. Next, you must
isolate during which activities you tend to adopt poor posture. Many of
us function on autopilot and we rarely check-in to see how we are feeling in different situations so that we can recognize where the posture
problems are originating.
Think your posture is in check? Ask a friend or co-worker to take side
profile photos of your head, neck and shoulders with your phone to see
how your posture has changed. Next, check to see that your ear opening is in line with the middle of your shoulder and that shoulders are
not curving forward. Ask yourself these two simple questions: When
was the last time I could check my blind spot by only turning my head?
Do I have any of the above symptoms at least two days of the
week? Chances are if you are like most of the population you will
fail at least one and likely all of the above posture checks. Common signs to look for: forward rounding of the shoulders, unleveling of the shoulders (one higher than the other), humping at the
base of the neck, head extended forward past the shoulders.
DR. SHANNON VIANA , DC, is a chiropractor and owner
of Inspire Health & Wellness in Kitchener. Beyond the
traditional chiropractic care, she also employs the use of
ultrasound, electrotherapies and orthotics in the care of
her patients. www.inspirehealthandwellness.ca
theholisticparent.ca