Avoiding Future Agony and Back Problems: Improve Your Posture

We've been told as young kids to "sit up straight," "don't slouch," "pull your shoulders back," for example. While all these are critical for spinal health that's not necessarily what I mean when I say back posture. Posture takes into account everything from the head to the feet. There is a correct posture for each part of our skeletal structure, and clearly there's an abnormal posture as well.

Habits: the Primary Cause of Abnormal Back Posture

Fundamentally, something that we become used to doing, and feel at ease doing, is a learned behavior that is incorporated into our nervous system. When bad posture becomes habitual, it occurs unconsciously. For example, we're all guilty of holding our phone to our ear, using our shoulder to free up the use of both hands. I personally do it without even knowing. This is something that becomes incessant, and causes postural abnormalities. In this situation, incessant actions will cause postural abnormalities over the course of time, leading to a high right shoulder and lateral list or bending of the cervical backbone. This is just one example of a regular action that involves bad back posture. Consider how you sit at your desk, how you sleep, how you sit in your vehicle, how you sit in your favorite chair. These are all things that may cause postural changes to the backbone, and they're harmful back posture changes.

Avoid Back Pain in Your Future

The concern with these abnormal postural changes created by bad posture habits is they cause prolonged symptoms that can become irreversible, or even turn out to be a surgical case. Studies have shown that a structurally abnormal spinal joint segment is over 50% more weak than a structurally normal spinal joint segment. To put this into some kind of perspective, a spinal joint segment comprises the spinal disc between two vertabrae units. By lowering the strength of a spinal segment, the disc is more inclined to herniation or a disc bulge. These conditions involve disability and notable discomfort. Is it not good medicine to simply avoid back pain altogether? For one to fix posture issues by personal choice is the medical cure we advocate.

Fix Posture to Defer Metastatic inflammation

Not only does adverse back posture decrease the strength of a spinal segment, but it also increases the deteriorative or arthritic process in the spine. With adverse spinal posture, the spinal joint planes are adversely altered. It is rather similar to the front end of your automobile being out of alignment, the tires will wear abnormally. A similar thing happens to a joint which has an abnormal joint plane. That joint will "wear abnormally," or become arthritic. Again, for one to be proactive and fix posture habits one will maintain better alignment, and the enduring result is a delay in arthritic difficulties as one grows older. And again, one will avoid back pain in one's future.

Therefore , posture is very important to the health of your spine, and your mom and dad were right, and it is never too late to incorporate better posture into your lifestyle.


Dr. Andy Thomas of Village Chiropractic in The Woodlands Texas shares his opinion on the serious implicatons of good back posture. To fix posture problems today means one can enjoy a pain and disease-free spine tomorrow, and Dr. Thomas is a chiropractor who believes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.