Why is posture important? Should you really care if you have good posture? And if so, how do you go about fixing your posture? I would argue that posture is incredibly important and not just because I’m a chiropractor and that’s part of my job. It turns out that good posture has many physical health benefits as well as mental and social benefits.
Let’s start with the physical benefits. When it comes to spinal health, a well-stacked spine with good healthy curves can help decrease degeneration and reduce your chances of bulging a spinal disc. Think of each spinal disc like a jelly doughnut. When we have good posture, the jelly stays inside the doughnut. When we have poor posture and are very forward bent, it’s like you are sandwiching one side of the jelly doughnut and pop! The jelly comes out the back! Secondly, when you have good posture you also have better lung capacity. If your shoulders are rolled forward and slouched, you put downward pressure on your lungs and reduce the amount of space they have to work with. A decreased lung capacity can mean faster breathing and a higher resting heartbeat, neither of which is healthy. When you have poor posture your organs will also not function as well. Your abdominal space is decreased when you slouch. This decreased space puts increased pressure on all of your abdominal organs and restricts blood flow. Again, this compression is bad for your health and can cause issues, especially with digestion. The last point I will make on the negative effects physically is on our overall energy levels. When we are standing or sitting in bad posture, we overuse a lot of muscles. While it may seem like more work to keep good posture, when your head and shoulders are sitting too far forward, your trapezius muscles and neck muscles get over-worked and can cause headaches and a decrease in energy levels.
While those physical reasons should probably be good enough reason to maintain good posture, what about the mental and social side? Well, it turns out that good posture has been linked to good overall mental health and maturity. When we are first born we have very poor posture and no spinal curves to speak of. As a baby’s brain develops so does its posture. Good posture is essential for walking, that C-shaped spine we are born with is not ideal for when we want to start doing life in an upright manner. Most toddlers learn good posture fairly quickly as it is natural and ingrained in our DNA. Good posture with the shoulders pulled back has been shown to represent good brain health because the cerebellum (the part of the brain that controls posture) is firing on all cylinders. This is actually very observable and why as a person’s mental health declines, especially with diseases such as dementia, their posture will also decline. On a social scale, good posture has been shown (in more studies than I can list) to improve other people’s opinion of you and they will have a natural inclination to assume you are a more competent person and someone worth taking note of. This is not a feature that is limited to humans either, most mammals will display this mannerism. Simply think of your dog’s behaviour when it’s been bad and knows it. A dog will take on a forward slouch and keep its head low to the ground as a sign of submission.
There are many more reasons why good posture is important, but I want to make sure you have a good starting point towards better posture. The first step towards better posture is being more active in pulling our shoulders back and making sure we aren’t slouching in front of the computer, good ergonomics will play a big role here. A second way is to make sure that our spines are highly mobile. Chiropractic care, stretching and yoga will help here. Lastly, we need to strengthen some under-utilized muscles. Obviously, everyone is different and theirs no one size fits all. But the vast majority of us would benefit from a daily regimen that includes these few exercises. For the upper spine and neck, I like to see a daily routine including the YWTL exercise and stretching of the pectoral (chest) muscles, this will help to pull the shoulders and head back naturally. For the lower back, stretching the iliopsoas muscles (hip flexors) and strengthening the core with abdominal planks will go a long way in improving your posture. If you are unsure of how to do these exercises or stretches, there are a huge number of videos on Youtube that will provide better instruction than I ever could in writing. At the end of the day, your posture actually has a huge effect on your overall health and is often overlooked. 4-5 minutes a day devoted to good postural exercises can make a work of difference.