Your Posture and Your Spinal Health

There’s a good chance that you’ve heard the importance of good posture before. Most people have been told as children to “sit up straight” or to “stop slouching” on more than one occasion. However, when adults tell children to fix their posture, it’s often because sitting or standing up straight results in an appearance that exudes confidence, strength, and discipline. But that’s not why good posture is important. Good posture is important because it will help maintain the proper function of your spine as you grow older.

How Posture Affects Your Spine

The adult spine consists of 26 moveable segments. These segments include seven vertebrae in the neck, 12 vertebrae in the middle of the back, and five vertebrae in the lower back along with the sacrum and coccyx. Each of these areas is alternatively curved from the top to the bottom to ensure biomechanical balance and to promote the flexibility of the spine overall. For example, the cervical spine (the neck area) is convex to the front, while the middle of the thoracic spine (the middle of the back) is convex to the rear. The way the spine is structured allows it to distribute biomechanical loads both efficiently and effectively, thereby making motion easy while performing activities of daily living.

Your posture can be affected by a number of different factors, including physical stress, mental stress, diet, spinal biomechanical dysfunction, certain musculoskeletal habits, and injury. These factors can reduce the degree of curvature in affected spinal regions over time, resulting in the loss of natural curves in these spinal regions. When the spine is affected in this way, it’s typically flattened, which reduces the biochemical resilience and can cause muscle spasms, muscle tension, and pain in different parts of the spin. Physical tasks that were once easy, such as bending over and picking something up from the floor, becomes more difficult to do and can result in pain and injuries that can last for weeks.

How Chiropractic Care Can Help Improve Your Posture

If you’re having difficulty with your range of motion when it comes to your back or neck, you’re feeling pain in your spine area that won’t go away, or are recovering from an injury to one of your spinal regions, then you should consider chiropractic care. Chiropractic care involves the manipulation of the spine and can help to reduce pain, improve range of motion, and help you to restore and maintain a functional posture to help prevent issues in the future. A professional chiropractor will be able to detect any spinal biochemical dysfunction and nerve interference as well as analyze and correct it.

To reestablish normal spinal biomechanics and to improve your physiological function and performance, be sure to visit a professional chiropractor today. For more information about chiropractic care or to schedule an appointment in Vero Beach, be sure to contact us at Florida Spine by calling us at (772) 918-9495 today.