Have you ever noticed that when you are slouching, you don't feel as confident as when your body is in good perfect posture? Have you noticed that when you are slouching, it almost feels as if you're a sad puppet on a string, collapsed and hunched over?
Every day, countless people who are slouching enter chiropractic offices worldwide, receive their chiropractic adjustment, and leave with much better posture than when they arrived. Some of them leave with perfect posture. They came to the office feeling down and depressed, hurting, wondering if they would ever be 'normal' again, and the good news is that when they leave, they have the feeling that they're on top of the world again.
And you could be one of those people who feel like you're on top of the world again because a chiropractic adjustment has the amazing ability to re-align joints and muscles that give you good posture within seconds.
There are several reasons why people slouch. One reason is because you may have moved incorrectly or experienced a trauma to a joint that causes it lock up. A locked joint sends signals to the surrounding postural muscles that tells them to protect the 'injured' area. When this occurs, muscles in the area increase their electrical activity causing them to contract continually. Before long, you've lost flexibility and pain can become unbearable. Chiropractic treatment can restore joint motion and stimulate proper nerve and blood flow, rejuvenating the area, bringing restoration and good posture along with it.
Another reason for poor posture is obesity. Large amounts of body fat in the wrong places, such as in the waist can create muscle imbalances that result in slouching and poor posture. For example, a large belly can add 20+ pounds to the body skeleton, pulling the center of gravity out of alignment. It then takes more effort on the part of the back muscles to prevent the body from falling forward. Over time, the muscles can become strained and stretched, causing chronic back pain, hip pain, knee pain, ankle and foot pain. Slouching becomes part of the degenerating problem.
A third reason for poor posture and slouching is weak muscles. Even just a 30-minute workout at the health club on the weight machine circuit three times a week can do wonders for slouching due to weak muscles. One of the best feelings of working out is the feeling that you can stand tall after the workout. With that good posture comes self-confidence and a feeling of contentment. See how good you feel after your next workout!
Wearing high -heeled shoes can be the fourth reason why someone slouches. The higher the spike, the quicker the shoe will throw off the body's center of gravity, straining muscles and firing up the electrical activity of those muscles to the point where the result is pain.
Faulty ergonomics while sitting at a desk, standing behind a cash register, carrying heavy restaurant meals to patrons, or even sleeping on an uneven bed can also cause postural imbalances that result in slouching and aiding in poor posture.
Slouching may not seem like a big enough health problem to go see the doctor but the fact is that poor posture strains muscles and makes them more prone to injury.
A chiropractic adjustment can do wonders to restore the motion in the joints in your spine and eliminate the associated muscle tension that pulls you into the slouching position.
Remember that long-standing postural problems may require a series of chiropractic adjustments to retrain the body to go back to that upright puppet /string position. Although you will feel a noticeable difference with one spinal adjustment, it's the repeated adjustments that educate the body to stay in that proper upright puppet position. And it's these repeated adjustments that keep you feeling confident and walking with perfect posture for days to come.