Your Mother Was Right...Posture Is Important

"Sit up straight!" "Don't slouch!" I'm sure we've all heard those admonishing words more than once from our mother when we were growing up, at least I’m sure “bemittened Bernie” had to have heard this.  I know, I know, why share this picture after the viral photo of him bundled up, bemittened, slouched forward and socially distanced with his legs and arms crossed during the Inauguration last week went viral? When I saw that photo of Senator Sanders I instantly thought two things: “Wow, what awful posture” and “what’s up with those mittens?” I’m intentionally including this photo of him from the side to illustrate what we are going to talk about in regards to posture because the posture he has while sitting and trying to keep warm is rampant in our society. 

Though most of us begrudgingly complied with our mother’s command of “straightening up” chances are neither yourself or your mother might have understood the concept of the anatomical, biomechanical and neurological rationale behind her persistent prodding. In fact she probably wasn't aware of all the implications of poor posture herself! But somehow, some way, your mother always seemed to know best (mom’s are good like that.)

What is good posture anyway and why is it so important? Basically posture refers to the body's alignment and positioning with respect to the ever-present force of gravity. Whether we are standing, sitting or lying down gravity exerts a force on our joints, ligaments and muscles. This in turn, can add unwanted stress to our nervous system since the spine and the nervous system are very intimately related. Good posture entails EVENLY distributing the force of gravity through our body so no one structure is overstressed, especially our spinal cord!

An architect has to take these same laws of gravity and weight distribution into account when he or she designs a building. And like a building with a poor foundation a body with poor posture is less resistant to the strains and stresses we experience over the months, years and decades of life. It also clinically means that we can see some very tell-tale signs of spinal degeneration. When our structure is compromised so is our function to some degree. 

When I’m looking at someone’s posture I generally first look at the alignment of the weight bearing joints while someone is standing. Ideally from a back view the spine should be perfectly straight and have no lateral curvatures (aka scoliosis), the shoulders and hips should be level and the legs should be symmetrical without undue angulation at the knees or ankles (“knock kneed” or “bow legged” for example).  Here’s a visual:

From a side view the spine should form a smooth S-shaped curve, bisected by an imaginary plumb line dropped from the top of the head through the center of gravity of the body. This same plumb line should pass through the tip of the shoulder, the center of the hip joint and ankle joint and slightly behind the knee joint. With this ideal alignment the body weight is balanced over the spine and lower extremity joints requiring minimum muscular effort and much less likely to result in any negative effects to someone’s nervous system. You don’t have to be a structural chiropractor to know which one of these is better right?

This alignment also evenly distributes pressure on the intervertebral discs and avoids excessive stress on the spinal ligaments. Also, things like proprioceptors (sensory receptors which receives stimuli from within the body, especially one that responds to position and movement) can now send good input to the brain. Meaning whether you have good or bad posture, you’re programming your nervous system to start creating these “patterns” of learned posture simply from the feedback happening between the nervous system and musculoskeletal system. (Proprioception is sometimes described as your “sixth sense” for this reason.)  

Even Roger Sperry, PhD and Nobel Prize winner said this: “The more mechanically distorted a person is, the less energy is available for thinking, metabolism and healing.” This is a much more sophisticated way of saying structure determines function in my opinion (but I’m no Nobel Prize winner lol.)

Now this brings us back to “bemittened Bernie” as the sitting position is where most of us get into trouble with poor postural habits. This is especially true when driving or using a computer. These days more than ever, this is very concerning.  As we focus on the activity in front of us we tend to protrude the head and neck forward. Because the body follows the head, the thoracic and lumbar spine tends to round forward as well. When this occurs, the weight of the head and upper body is no longer balanced over the spinal column but instead must be supported by increased muscular energy and placing spinal ligaments on stretch. Over time this leads to fatigue and eventually even pain in the neck and upper back. You know those “knots” and “pinches” you get on the tops of your shoulders? Yup, that’s what I’m talking about.

Sitting and standing with proper postural alignment will allow one to work more efficiently with less fatigue and strain on your body's ligaments and muscles. Being aware of good posture is the first step to breaking old poor postural habits and reducing stress and strain on your spine and nervous system. By putting this knowledge into practice one can prevent the structural anatomical changes that can develop if poor posture is left uncorrected for many years, that might be a whole other post.  After all, this is where I come in as a Structural Chiropractor when dealing with a good portion of adult patients.

Our examination procedures are specifically designed to determine what is happening structurally with the spine and to see the possible implications of such shift/distortions within the musculoskeletal and nervous systems. Also, in our office we use Kinetisense® software which gives us real time static and functional movement measurements, there’s no guessing.  Nothing is left to my visual interpretation, it’s meticulously measured and recorded (I’m geeking out right now but it’s super sophisticated and very cool.)

So in closing, I’m going to repeat an old adage you may also have heard from your mother: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Thanks Mom!

I’ll leave you with my favorite “betmittened Bernie” meme (couldn’t resist):