Who doesn’t remember being told off as a kid at school?
Sit up straight, tuck your shirt in, don’t talk with your mouth full.
Most people wish they had listened to their teachers. At least to the first bit anyway.
If only you knew how sitting in your chair back at school would impact on the way your posture is as you sit in your office chair now.
When it comes to bad posture, staying aware of it and sitting up straight works well, at least until you stop thinking about it.
That’s where a chiropractor can help.
A chiropractor can help improve your posture by assessing and finding the underlying cause of your poor posture to correct it and get you sitting and standing up straight without you constantly reminding yourself.
How Can A Chiropractor Fix Bad Posture
History Taking
Have you ever experienced neck or shoulder pain and thought it might be linked to your posture?
That’s one of the first things that will go through many health therapists heads too.
Before a chiropractor even touches your back to examine your posture they will ask a series of questions to conclude if any pain you have is coming about because of your poor posture.
This is the most important step for you because it will allow the chiropractor to determine if they can fix your posture.
These questions will include things about your lifestyle such as day to day activities, exercise and what you do at work to determine how your posture has changed over time.
Postural Assessment
A chiropractor will first determine how to fix your posture before commencing with treatment by assessing exactly how your posture has changed.
A chiropractic postural assessment is performed to judge how good or bad your posture is. This is completed with the chiropractor assessing you from a front and side on view measuring specific landmarks in your body.
Front on view
A chiropractor will generally stand behind you to measure symmetry and determine:
– If your head is tilting to the right or left
– Uneven/tilting of your shoulders
– Tilting of your pelvis
Side on view
A chiropractor will look at how you’re standing from the side and assess:
– If your head pokes forward beyond your shoulder
– Whether your shoulders roll forward
– If there’s an increased curve through your mid back (hunchback)
– A change to the curve in your lower back to determine if your pelvis is tilting forward or backwards
Examination
Since we’re reminiscing about what we should have done as kids, remember sitting on a see-saw in the playground?
When you move up the other side moves down.
When you move down the other side goes up.
Your body is like a see saw (Just a whole lot more complicated)!
When one area of your body moves or changes due to poor posture another area also moves to compensate for it.
It’s for this very reason that a chiropractor will do various movement tests to not only assess the area that you think you have poor posture but the entire spine to see if there are compensations in other parts of your body.
This will help the chiropractor determine which joints and muscles have changed leading to your poor posture and allow them to determine a treatment plan to start reversing these changes.
X-rays
When it comes to changes in your spine a postural based chiropractor will often send you for x-rays (if warranted) to get a clear picture of how your spine is structured on an internal view.
X-rays show a number of vital things to the chiropractor to help determine what they can do to start correcting your bad posture.
Imaging shows things such as:
– Changes to the curves in your spine
– Scoliosis
– Degeneration/Arthritic change
– Unleveling of your hips and pelvis
– Short leg
All these structural changes which show up on your x-rays will allow a chiropractor to assess what they can specifically do to help improve some of the postural changes you experience.
In some cases there will be changes seen which a chiropractor cannot help with. X-rays help them to decide who the best person to refer you to is so you get the best results possible for your problem.
Treatment
Now for the part you’ve been waiting for.
A chiropractor will help to improve your posture with treatment specific to the problems they’ve identified.
Chiropractors have multiple techniques which include adjustments, soft tissue work, as well as specific exercises and rehabilitation that you can do both in the clinic and at home to help change your posture…and keep it that way.
What Can a Chiropractor do for Bad Posture
Adjustments
While the cracking noise that people generally associate with adjustments is pretty scary for some to hear it isn’t always required.
Our chiropractors at Spine and Posture Care use very gentle joint movements to get you the best posture correction with or without ‘the crack’.
These joint movements help to increase the motion in the joint as well as reducing tension in the surrounding muscles.
Soft Tissue Work
Soft tissue work involves focusing on how your muscles interact with the rest of your body in order to improve posture.
To alter the words of Sir Isaac Newton: For every action there is a reaction.
When one muscle changes another muscle also needs to change to compensate for it.
If one of your muscles becomes weak and underused another muscle has to become tight and overactive to make up for it.
A chiropractor will always address these overactive tight muscles through specific muscle releases and stretches before working on strengthening your underactive muscles through exercise and rehabilitation.
Stretches/Exercise/Rehabilitation
Stretches always come before rehabilitation because if you have overactive muscles and try to strengthen a weak muscle the overactive muscle will end up doing all the work.
This ends up with your weak muscles staying weak!
A chiropractor will prescribe specific exercises and then rehabilitation based on your postural changes to reduce tension in your muscles and then gradually increase strength in your weak muscles.
We ensure to run through these exercises and rehabilitation programs within the clinic before you do them at home so we can make sure you’re doing them correctly so you get the best postural correction possible.
A Chiropractor Can Help Fix and Correct Your Poor Posture
While treatment will obviously be what you need to fix your posture and get it back to where you want it to be the 4 steps before it: History Taking, Postural Assessment, Examination and X-rays are so important in allowing the chiropractor to know exactly what you need to get it there!
If you need a chiropractor for posture, at Spine and Posture Care our Chiropractors in Sydney CBD focus on assessment and rehabilitation of your poor posture to get you the best results in the shortest space of time.
After reading this, if you think your posture needs improvement and you’re looking for posture correction call us today or book online to see how we can help you.
