Good posture means you look good and you put less strain on your back muscles.
And how do you get good posture?
It’s drilled into you when you are a kid.
By Dona Suri
Parents keep a sharp eye on their children’s health. Obvious symptoms, such as fevers and rashes, getting the quickest responses. Cuts and scrapes, falls and bumps have to be dealt with immediately, especially if there is redness, swelling and pain. Many families strictly follow a schedule for routine dental check-ups and, of course, toothache can’t go untreated. Routine eye examinations usually happen in the school; if glasses are required, no time is wasted in getting them made up. Many, (alas, not all) parents are nutrition-conscious and try – with varying levels of success – to keep kids away from junk food and too much sugary, fatty, carb-rich stuff.
The health area that attracts the least parental attention is posture. In fact, many people simply don’t see how the two are connected. They think posture is just about looking good and making a good impression.
It’s MUCH MORE.
Health is most certainly affected by posture and here are very good medical reasons why your child (and YOU) should always take care to stand up straight, sit up straight, walk straight and save your neck when you are watching TV or a computer screen.
Your skeleton is all about stability and weight distribution … just like the frame of a building. You do not have to be a structural engineer to understand that the stress on an out-of-plumb column is greater than the stress on a straight column; when load is not correctly distributed, stability of the whole structure is impaired.
This brings us to the concept of “core strength”. “Core” refers to a group of muscles that stabilizes and controls the pelvis and spine. The muscles need a certain amount of strength but, in addition, muscle coordination is necessary for maintaining balance and allowing us to assume postures that make it easy to move without putting undue weight and stress on the joints.
Having a weak, imbalanced core lead to problems up and down the body. When you twist your ankle, something has imbalanced you long enough to allow the body’s weight to bear down on the ankle joint when it was in an awkward position. This is an easily recognized instance of load-bearing failure.
Knee pain is often caused by insufficient pelvic stabilization. Some runners develop neck and back pain when running because the “shock absorbers” in their core are insufficiently developed. Mis-alignment of the vertebrae, shoulders and pelvis does not always cause immediate, sharp, sudden pain, but habitual bad posture will make itself felt eventually.
Bad posture strains the muscles, ligaments, joints and bones and is a factor in the degeneration of the joints and arthritis. Proper posture, with the joints and bones aligned, allows back muscles to relax and reduces fatigue and backaches.
One glance at a person’s posture not only reveals what’s happening with their spine and pelvis, it is a reliable clue to what’s happening with other parts of the body – and it even indicates their state of mind. Sitting or standing hunched up means the lungs are compressed, breathing is shallow, blood is receiving less oxygen. Less oxygen to the brain means impaired concentration. Your stomach, pancreas, liver and intestines need room to work. Slumping in a chair, compresses all these organs and when they aren’t functioning properly your metabolism suffers.
Imagine someone who has been caught up in a situation that was demanding physically, mentally, or emotionally.
When it’s all over, they exhale noticeably, shoulders drop and they slouch. Slouching says “crisis”. Habitual slouching demonstrates all round chronic fatigue – physical, mental and emotional. In fact, slouching adds to fatigue: the body to has to work harder to remain upright, as well as to support the weight of the limbs.
Orthopedics is the medical specialty that is devoted to problems of the musculo-skeletal system (bones, muscles, joints and soft tissues). An orthopedist is a surgeon but not every orthopedic problem requires surgery; orthopedic doctors may prescribe several types of therapy. For example, braces and elastic supports may help musculo-skeletal problem. Many kinds of orthopedic aids are available for both adults and children.
When an orthopedist sees a spine he thinks lordosis, kyphosis, flatback, swayback, forward head or scoliosis.
While lordosis, kyphosis, flatback, swayback and forward head can usually be treated with exercises and perhaps a brace, treating scoliosis is a challenge. This condition can occur in people suffering from cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy, but the cause of most childhood scoliosis is still a puzzle.
Most cases are mild, but doctors like to monitor even mild cases closely with X-rays to see if it is getting better or getting worse. While the child is still growing, scoliosis can go either way. Some children may need to wear a brace to stop the curve from worsening. Others may need surgery to straighten the spine.
Just commanding the child to stand up straight is no use: if the child were able to stand up straight, then he or she would not be a scoliosis case.
Maintaining good carriage of the head and neck has never been more important. By now, everybody has heard of tech neck. New name, old problem. It means neck pain that’s caused by repetitive strain and injury to the muscles and other tissue structures of the spine.
An average adult human head weighs around 11 pounds, so a child’s head will weigh less, proportional to body weight. But it’s still heavy enough. All a person has to hold up that heavy head are seven little neck vertebrae and 20 muscles. When the head is held upright, the pressure on the neck is only around 11 pounds and the direction of the force is straight down the spine.
But if you tilt your head forward as you would look at a screen, tablet or laptop, then the force increases drastically. The weight of the head places 50 pounds of force on the neck. Subject the vertebrae and neck muscles to that force for prolonged periods and you can expect muscular and ligamentous strain and other structural issues – all summed up in the label tech neck
Back in the day, students sat at desks that had slanted tops. Now children sit at tables, the tablet or laptop is placed flat on the table, meaning that the child has to bend forward to use it. Children sit this way for hours. If there are any schoolkids WITHOUT tech neck, that is amazing!
The label “postural problem” can also be applied to knock knees (medical term genu valgum).
Up to about the age of 18 months, all babies are bow-legged (medical term genu varum). When the infant stands with feet and ankles together, the knees stay wide apart; the hip, knee, and ankle rotate outward. Between year-and-a-half and two years, the legs straighten. Between age two and age five, an inward-turning alignment (genu valgum) develops, but by six or seven years, the legs should be straight again and remain straight.
A child who doesn’t get enough Vitamin D and calcium may develop a bone disease called rickets which is recognized by knock knees.
Rickets is pretty much gone from modern day America. When knock knees are seen in school age children today, the victims are usually overweight. If the weight problem is corrected and the child performs daily exercises that strengthen leg muscles, then knock knees will not persist into adulthood. Depending on the severity of the condition, a doctor may prescribe a leg-brace. Surgery is another option but it is reserved for the very worst cases.
As with scoliosis, it is no use to command a child to “make your legs straight!” A child with knock knees will need help to correct the problem. Parents should keep an eye on how their child’s legs are developing so that remedial measures can be taken early. Early intervention equals speedy correction.
A person’s posture reflects their state of mind. “Embodied cognition” as the psychologists call it, is no longer a theory; it is now well established that our mind influences the way our body reacts; likewise, the form of our body also influences our mind. You smile when you feel happy and you feel happy when you smile.
Would you like to feel optimistic, confident and resilient? Here’s how:
Chin up !
Shoulders back !
Chest out !
Stomach in !
And stand up STRAIGHT !