The Many Health Benefits of Proper Posture
What comes to mind when you think of ways to maintain your optimum health? Your list may look something like: Staying hydrated, eating your vegetables, exercise, and a lot of awesome sleep. Unfortunately, the advice your mom, and maybe even your grandma, nagged you about all those years, (or if you’re in my position… constantly, all the time, still), seems to be commonly left off many of those lists.
Every time someone told you to stand or sit up straight, it turns out they weren’t just being totally drags, they were actually helping you become a happier person who could reap and maintain all of the many health benefits of proper posture.
Make Your Bad Habits Good Ones
It is important to know how to stand, or sit, up straight, which should come as natural to you as breathing. Your body is designed to stand and sit in a way that is most efficient and beneficial to your health and energy expenditure. But much to biology’s despair, enter stage left: the rise of the sedentary lifestyle, brought on by the invention of technology, our growing need for stationary desk jobs, and exhaustion in its most extreme forms. Suddenly, slouching and drooping becomes “easier,” less time consuming, and mindlessly less of a hassle.
Fortunately, once a good or positive habit is formed, it becomes a similar mindless opportunity one hardly has to think about after it’s initiated regularly. Reforming habits is sometimes difficult to do, and in this case a little assistance may be needed to help you become more comfortable with the feeling of how it is to sit or stand correctly. There are quite a few tools to help you obtain the perfect posture, starting with this site that’s dedicated to proper posture.
How To Train Your Brain…To Do What Your Body Already Knows
1849 Illustration of Good vs. Bad Posture. Image via Flickr.
So how does one obtain proper posture? If you were to look at an x-ray of either the front or back of your body, standing up correctly would look like a straight line with all of your vertebrae stacked on top of one another. From the side, you would see the S-shape of your spine. As a visual, you could draw a line from your upright neck to your shoulders, hips, knees, and your ankles.
As you’re sitting, your neck should be straight over your shoulders with your arms in towards your body and at a 90* angle above your hips, your 90* knees would fall above your ankles and your feet would be flat on the floor. This all assists with keeping your center of gravity at its most efficient midpoint helping you utilize the least amount of energy and fatigue to keep you upright.
Because we have formed unhealthy habits of improper posture, sitting or standing under these guidelines can feel awkward and uncomfortable. But they won’t only help you physically, they will also assist in your mental and emotional stability as well as your future physical situations you must adapt to temporarily.
Ladies & Gentlemen, The Rebel
Yes, your body should know how to work effectively, and ultimately it does…but somehow, the right way is overridden by the easier way and the former becomes clunky and unattainable easily without having to utilize extra energy and mental resources – all of which ironically nature meant to avoid in the first place. So, it is best to avoid those bad habits all together to prevent having to essentially correct your overcorrection.
If all of this is a little bit of a mess, it’s because it is. Our growing reliance on technology, passe procrastination, and too-cool-for-school attitudes have all lead us to become individualistic rebels against not only “the rules” but also our own bodies… it’s absurd!
A Short Anatomy Lesson…anatomy,
An illustration from an 1849 treatise of how to sit properly. Image via Flickr
As an infant, our spines are a single convex curve (in the shape of a letter c), we have very little muscle mass and thus the main function of our spine is to be flexible. As we grow, the shape changes into an S, our muscle mass increases, tendons and ligaments become more functional. Curves help us remain upright and absorb stress from activities such as walking and running. With proper posture your muscles stay strong, ligaments stay supple, organs can do their jobs, mentally and physically you’re able to cope with everyday fatigue life brings about as well as awkward physical situations you may be forced to endure intermittently.
When we consistently slouch our body becomes less efficient. A slouching body has to work harder. The force of gravity will naturally drag you down farther in your unnatural stance, and the wear and tear on your body will be harsher than if your posture was where it should be naturally. Balance is also affected and it will become harder to stabilize.
As time goes on in this condition, the muscles are tight and inflamed, tendons are inflexible, you’re hunched over, unstabilized, your worn and torn body is much more prone to injuries, costing you time, money and most importantly chronic pain and future proneness to other injuries and issues.
Inside, when slouching your body is compacted too! Organs, like your lungs can’t expand and contract, blood doesn’t flow properly causing circulation issues, arthritis is a very real concern, and tension headaches are likely to pop up relatively often. Your spine that we talked about earlier, won’t have that beautiful S-shape anymore and can develop issues like scoliosis and poor posture will accrue into painful problems like disk and nerve complications. All this pain and poor bodily function can deteriorate your mental state making it harder to maintain emotional stability and your threshold to pain.
Proper Posture: The Confidence Builder
An illustration from an 1849 treatise on how to sit up straight at a table. Image via Flickr
It’s pretty wild to think your simple physical posture can affect not only your complex emotional state of mind about yourself and the world around you but also how others see you. With proper posture your confidence increases and others can see and feel it and studies prove it! “Power Poses” have been proven to not only build confidence but actually change hormone levels, making your confidence rise, your outlook brighten, your skin glow, and gives others a new and improved, or even a great first, impression of you, who you are, and who you can be.
It all may seem a little overwhelming, to change everything about your physical stance all at once would prove difficult. Small changes are best, mental notes of how you feel when you make those changes will help motivate you to continue to improve. If all else fails, or if you are honestly worried about your mental or physical health, never be wary to seek out a professional to oversee your needs and help you in your journey to becoming the best version of yourself.
Have a spinal problem or condition? Search for an orthopedic spine surgeon near you at https://www.md.com/specialists/orthopedic-spine-surgeons.
Frank Apodaca
@thesleepjudge
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