Ways Chiropractic Adjustments Enhance Your Posture

Healthy posture is essential to overall body health, and first-time patients are often shocked to see how their poor posture has contributed to chronic pain or discomfort, such as headaches,  migraines, or neck, shoulders, and back pain.

Posture Correction Is a Priority of Chiropractic Care 

Most patients schedule their first chiropractic appointments because of accident or injury-related pain or because chronic issues have become so intense they can no longer stand it. 

While chiropractors will use a combination of techniques to treat acute accident-related pain or spinal injuries, we will also pay close attention to your spine alignment and posture, including how you stand, sit, and move.

Poor Posture Leads To Misalignment & Discomfort

When even a single vertebra in the spine is out of alignment, the entire spine and surrounding muscles start to compensate. If this happens from time to time because you're sitting in an uncomfortable chair while watching a movie or you happen to be turning your head a sure way to watch a live ball game, the spine will correct again once you're in a more normal position.

However, if that posture is repeated or held for extended lengths of time, those compensations by the vertebrae and muscles become more permanent. This creates a cascade effect of misaligned vertebrae overcompensating connective tissues and tension. Most of the time, this takes place without you ever knowing it.

If posture problems go untreated, you will begin to suffer from increasingly poor posture, which can lead to common pain and discomfort from the head to the base of the spine - or issues with balance, mobility, and everyday functions. Poor posture can also be a cause of health issues such as poor digestion, insomnia or interrupted sleep, and overall inflammation, particularly in the joints.

Chiropractic services take a whole-body approach to wellness, and that includes paying attention to postural misalignments affecting your health.

Common Causes of Postural Problems

Unfortunately, how we live modern life creates some of the most common causes of postural problems. These include things like:

• Leading a sedentary lifestyle.
• Spending hours at a desk.
• Working on computers.
• The way we hold and use our phones.
• Not adhering to healthy ergonomic practices at work and home.
• Wearing high heels or poorly fitting shoes.
• Not taking stretch or movement breaks at least every 20 minutes.
• Using mattresses or pillows that are not right for our bodies or how we sleep.
• Repetitive motions (often work or tech-related) that lead to the overuse of certain joints or ligaments.
• Holding stress, tension, anger, frustration, or sadness in our bodies rather than finding ways to release it and let it go.

6 Ways Chiropractor Treatments Yield Permanent Posture Improvement

Over time and with routine appointments, chiropractic treatment can help you correct your posture, become more mindful of your everyday movements, and help you strengthen your core muscles. 

1. Evidence-based information resources and support

First and foremost, we are here to provide research and evidence-based education, resources, and support. We do this by taking a personalized approach with each and every patient.

After learning more about you, your medical history, how you live everyday life, and your general concerns and goals, we'll design your treatment plan We start with adjustments and techniques that provide relief for acute pain and discomfort 

2. Spinal adjustment

In most cases, each appointment will include some version of a spinal adjustment to relieve pain and improve posture. These adjustments include a variety of techniques and should not be painful. 

Each adjustment is designed to correct misalignment in the spine and surrounding connective tissue. Chiropractic adjustments vary from appointment to appointment depending on your symptoms or concerns and what we discover from week to week. So, one week, we may focus on the base of the skull and upper neck because that's where we notice the most significant imbalance. On the next visit, assuming the head and neck are better aligned, we may pay more attention to areas in the mid or lower back.

Other hands-on chiropractic techniques we may use include:

• Gentle pressure to realign vertebrae.
• Both light and deep tissue massage.
• Passive manipulation of limbs and joints to increase mobility and flexibility (like the hips, knees, and shoulders).
• Breathing techniques that choreograph with our adjustments, which can enhance the adjustments by creating more space in micro-movement in the spine and nerves.

3. Innovative rehabilitation therapies

We may also use innovative rehabilitation therapy tools that we have here in our office.

For postural issues, that will include intersegmental traction to stretch and create space between the vertebra and the surrounding muscles and connective tissues. We may also implement cold laser therapy or electrical muscle stimulation, depending on your symptoms or specific condition.

As mentioned above, our treatment plans are specifically designed for the individuals and their conditions, diagnoses, or symptoms. So you may be exposed to any or all of our available therapies.

4. Making observations about your posture

How you move in and live daily life significantly impacts the body's postural habits. The brain can play tricks on you, and you may feel that your posture is far better than it actually is. 

For example, you may feel like you're standing straight when, in fact, you're slouching, and your shoulders are rounded forward, or your head is slightly tilted to the left or right. Now we'll have a better idea of why you're experiencing headaches or neck and shoulder pain. 

We want to observe these in our office so we get a better idea about how you unconsciously hold your body. We may also have you look in a mirror so you can see the difference between your body with incorrect posture and healthy posture.

Awareness is the first step, and the simple act of learning how you should hold your body can help you make micro-adjustments as you cultivate increased body and posture awareness throughout your day.

5. Targeted exercises for you to do at home

We wish that we could heal every patient with a single visit to our office, but that is not how chiropractor help works. Our visits together give us an opportunity to utilize specific evidence-based therapies to treat poor posture and related pain and discomfort. However, those adjustments are temporary unless patients are committed to an at-home exercise routine.

Part of the solution for enhancing your posture will include specific exercises that help to strengthen core muscles, support healthy spinal alignment, build strength where it's needed, and help you restore overall stability and balance.

In most cases, the exercises, stretches, or activities we assign as your homework would rarely take more than 5 to 15 minutes per day. The benefits are multifold, including enhanced daily function, relaxation, and relief from things like neck and shoulder pain, back pain and sciatica. 

6. Healthy lifestyle recommendations

In order to maintain the health benefits associated with your chiropractic care plan it's important to make healthy lifestyle choices. You are already aware of some of these. 

We'll encourage you to quit smoking, refrain from drinking excessively, and take stretch and movement breaks between long periods of sitting. However, we may also make recommendations about your diet, including foods that reduce inflammation and support general health, emotional well-being, and physical comfort.

The best chiropractors also acknowledge that we cannot restore an individual back to health on our own. It requires a group effort, so to speak, including the patient's willingness to explore other healing modalities that can support their experience, such as meeting with a physiotherapist or an acupuncturist and getting regular massages.

Improve Your Posture With Zahn Chiropractic

Enhancing our clients' posture is something we do each and every day here at Zahn Chiropractic. 

If you suffer from common posture-related complaints or want to have the confidence of knowing you're moving through the world with your head held high and shoulders back, we are the solution.

Schedule an appointment so we can learn more about you and craft a personalized chiropractic treatment plan that gets results.