The University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences (USA) states the term “posture” refers to the position in which we hold our bodies. We rely on our postural muscles to maintain balance, prevent the forces of gravity from pushing us forward, and move in ways that place the least strain on supporting muscles and ligaments. Many of us spend a large part of our work day in a relatively static position, so it’s important that our bodies are positioned correctly. In this post, we highlight the benefits of correct posture. Numerous factors can contribute to poor posture, including tight or weak muscles, stress, obesity, and wearing unsupportive shoes. Poor posture can lead to back pain, breathing problems, and headaches—and it can even impact mood. (Harvard Health Publishing.)
It’s important to recognise that posture can have a profound impact on your health and well-being, as well as your ability to thrive at work. Improving your posture may provide the following benefits: 1. Increased Confidence Correcting your posture can impact the way you feel about yourself. One study found that students who held an upright, confident posture were much more likely to have confidence in their thinking—and performed better on math tests. Feeling more confident in your ideas at work will ultimately help you succeed. 2. More Energy Poor posture can negatively affect energy levels, resulting in fatigue. Practicing good body alignment may help you remain focused and energized at work. Whether you’re delivering packages or caring for patients, correct posture can allow you to power through the day more easily. 3. Greater Self-Esteem and Better Mood In addition to giving you more energy, better posture can also reduce depressive feelings and improve your self-esteem and mood. Feeling good about your professional life often starts with feeling positive about yourself. 4. Easier Breathing When the body is aligned correctly, it’s easier to breathe. Slouching can reduce lung capacity, leading to shortness of breath. Having difficulty breathing can impact your ability to do your best work. To breathe more life into your lungs, try altering your posture. 5. Less frequent headaches Bad posture creates tension in the upper back, neck, and shoulders, leading to headaches that manifest as throbbing pain in the base of the skull and sometimes the forehead. Headaches are no fun, so this is an incentive to have good posture. 6. Reduced Risk of Injury Proper posture can help you avoid injury, especially to your back, shoulders, arms, and wrists. One of the most common reasons people see a doctor or miss days of work is back pain. It’s particularly important to have good standing posture, as standing for long periods of time is associated with short-term adverse health issues, such as back pain, fatigue, and leg cramps. 7. Boosted Productivity Research shows that posture impacts productivity. If you’re in pain, injured, or fatigued, or if you lack self-confidence, you will likely have trouble staying focused and productive at work. Because improving your posture can positively impact your mental and physical health, it enables you to be a more productive member of the team.
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Asthma is an inflammatory disease affecting the airways of the lungs. Patients commonly present with symptoms including episodes of wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath. The severity and duration of asthma related symptoms varies per patient, and may be worse at night, with exertion, and/or with exercise. Asthmatic patients experience an increase in airway resistance that overburdens both respiratory and non-respiratory muscles. This increased stress to the body often results in shortness of breath leading to hyperventilation. The European Respiratory Society reports that asthma is frequently poorly controlled despite effective modern medication and that psychological factors can be as important as physiological factors in affecting symptom perception and disease impact.
It is recommended that asthmatic patients seek postural correction treatment due to the correlation of better posture and proper respiratory capacity. The literature demonstrates that poor posture is correlated with asthma. Asthmatic patients commonly present with the following postural distortion patterns:
Postural correction care is therapeutic for asthmatic patients and may help them reduce severity and duration of symptoms associated with asthma. Research Review:
Patients suffering from asthma should consider postural correction, breathing training and stress management as part of their management plan for the debilitating affects of asthma. Neglecting any of these three clinical protocols can decrease clinical improvement. Natural approaches to reducing symptoms of asthma are supported in the research and should be considered a high priority for management of asthma related symptoms, and for the prevention of respiratory disorders. (Thank you to the American Posture Institute for the above data). In a medically reviewed article from 2021, the website WebMD has listed commonly accepted benefits of having better posture. These are listed below. It also notes... "Our modern lifestyles may contribute to poor posture. Looking down at our phones or sitting at a desk for several hours a day working on a computer changes the way we hold ourselves. You may notice that you are slumped forward when performing these activities, rather than sitting or standing up straight." Benefits of Good Posture
Good posture isn’t just about how you present yourself. Having poor posture can actually affect your physical and mental health. 1. Better mood and energy. One of the best benefits of good posture is the way that you feel about yourself. Improving your posture can help you stay focused and more energized throughout the day. This can help improve your mood too. Research also suggests that good posture can lead to more self-confidence. When you carry yourself well and feel good about yourself, you’re less likely to experience depressive thoughts. This can give you more self-esteem and a better feeling of pride and confidence in yourself. 2. Bone, joint, and muscle health. As mentioned, your posture depends on your muscles and bones. When you align your spine correctly, you put less stress on your joints and bones. This can lead to less overall pain or reduced chances of developing problems like osteoarthritis. Even though there are tons of exercises out there to help you improve your core muscle strength, doctors say that practicing proper posture is one of the best ways to help tone this muscle group. 3. Better breathing and fewer headaches. When you sit or stand up straight with your shoulders back, you’ll find that it’s easier to breathe. There’s more room to open up your chest for deeper breaths. Practicing poor posture, such as when you’re slouching over, can cause tension in your shoulders and neck. This can lead to headaches in your forehead or the back of your skull. 4. Improved spine and neck health. By practicing proper posture, you help reduce the risk of back and neck pain. Slouching or hunching at a desk can affect the way your spine grows. Back pain is actually one of the most common reasons why people miss work. If your job requires you to stand for long periods of time, standing properly can help you fight back against fatigue and leg pain or cramps. Many of us are quite inefficient when it comes to how we breathe. It may come as no surprise that our increasingly sedentary lifestyle and slouched spinal postures would impact our ability to breathe well, but to what extent? The average Australian spends nearly 10 hours a day sitting. A sedentary lifestyle has been defined in research by less than 5,000 steps a day or sitting for more than 6 hours a day. Now if you factor in a daily commute, sitting down for meals, watching TV, we can easily hit 6 hours of sitting before even adding on the number of hours we have to sit at work, school or university. Our bodies are designed to be in motion and when we don’t move, we function inefficiently. We now live in a world that promotes this type of sedentary, dysfunctional lifestyle, and it comes with consequences. So how are we designed to breathe?
To inhale, the abdominal muscles should relax for the diaphragm to contract downwards and push our organs out of the way. The intercostal (between the ribs) muscles should then contract to expand the rib cage and decrease pressure in the lungs to create a vacuum, drawing air into the lungs. To exhale, the diaphragm and intercostals need to relax to allow the abdominals to contract and push air out of the lungs. If we sit in a slouched posture with our abdomen compressed, there is no room for our organs to move out of the way, limiting the ability of the diaphragm and intercostals to expand the lungs. This reduced expansion means a significantly reduced lung capacity (taking in less oxygen). Up to a 30% reduction in lung capacity has been observed in studies, which puts more stress on the heart and lungs, increasing the risk of an overall stress response in our bodies and our cortisol levels skyrocket. Elevated cortisol levels are linked with a wide range of medical conditions such as anxiety, weight gain, slower healing, high blood pressure, fatigue and headaches. Movement is an acquired skill and if you’ve ever attended a yoga or Pilates class, you were likely reminded to breathe by the instructor, regularly. At times you probably caught yourself holding your breath to help stabilise yourself in positions because the muscles meant to stabilise have lost their ability to do it themselves. If you’ve lost a skill it will take time to relearn and redevelop the correct technique. Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent. If we continue to down the path of inactivity, we are training ourselves to be less efficient and therefore placing more stress on our bodies in an already stressful environment. Breathing Exercise Keep it simple and start with the breath. Place one hand on the abdomen and one on your chest. Take a slow breath in, allowing the abdomen to press up into your bottom hand while the top hand stays relatively still. Breath out smoothly and feel the abdominals drawing the ribs down while imagining you are trying to make a candle flicker but not go out. Try this first lying down on your back and gradually progress to supported sitting, unsupported sitting, and standing. Add in more challenging functional movement patterns as your breath improves. You'll find that this abdominal breathing exercises is always easier in an upright posture. The way you breathe can impact your whole body, helping to regulate important functions such as heart rate and blood pressure. It can also reinforce proper body mechanics that put less stress on your body as you move. Deep breathing is also called abdominal or belly breathing. It involves inhaling slowly and deeply through the nose, causing the lungs to fill with air as the belly expands. This type of breathing is associated with many health benefits, from reducing stress to lowering blood pressure. While these benefits are widely known, the busy pace of life plus a sedentary work environment have conditioned many of us to take only quick, shallow breaths. Over time, this weakens the strength of our respiratory muscles. It also creates tension in the upper body that can alter our posture and undermine our health. If you’re a shallow breather, regular physical activity and brief sessions of respiratory muscle training can reverse these symptoms and help to improve your quality of life. Breathing rate can vary with age, weight, tolerance to exercise, and general health. For the average adult, a normal breathing rate consists of 12 to 18 breaths per minute. However, several factors can impair respiratory function, creating a pattern of quick, shallow breathing.
Sudden or chronic pain can activate a section of the nervous system that governs many bodily systems, including your breathing rate, heat rate, and body temperature. Chronic stress and strong emotions such as rage or fear intensify your fight-or-flight response, which can impair your breathing rate. Poor posture also contributes to breathing pattern dysfunction. This is commonly seen in people who spend long hours sitting each day. Rounded shoulders and a forward head posture cause the muscles around the chest to tighten. That tightening limits the ability of the rib cage to expand and causes people to take more rapid, shallow breaths. A slow, steady breathing pattern enhances core stability, helps improve tolerance to high-intensity exercise, and reduces the risk of muscle fatigue and injury. Taking balanced, equal breaths should be your goal. A good way to practice balanced breathing is to take a deep inhale, count to four, and then release a deep exhale to the same count. If you’re unsure of whether you’re a shallow breather, place your palm against your abdomen beneath your rib cage and exhale. Take a deep breath and follow the movement of your hand. If your hand moves as your abdomen expands, you’re breathing correctly. If your hand only moves slightly but your shoulders elevate, you may want to consider practicing breathing exercises to strengthen your muscles and reinforce proper breathing patterns. Performing deep breathing exercises along with general fitness training can increase the strength of the respiratory muscles. Breathing techniques such as roll breathing can also be used to develop full use of the lungs while controlling the rhythm of respiration. Poor posture contributes to problems in breathing patterns. We see this issue frequently in people who spend a lot of time sitting each day. Maintaining a posture where your shoulders are rounded and your head is forward causes the muscles around your chest to tighten. These tight chest muscles can limit the ability of your rib cage to expand, and this can cause you to take rapid, shallow breaths. More specifically, people with a more curved upper back (thoracic kyphosis) and internally rotated shoulders have limited movement of their thorax. When breathing in, the rib cage can’t fully expand and the lungs cannot fully inflate.
An increased arch in your lower back (lumbar lordosis), where the pelvis is tilted forward, decreases the range of motion of the lower lumbar spine and shortens the latissimus and lower back extensor muscles. This limits the range of motion of the diaphragm, again restricting the inflation of your lungs. The abdominal muscles are overstretched in this posture as well, limiting their function of helping to breath out. Some people may also find difficulty breathing with an exaggerated curve in their neck (cervical lordosis) due to compression of their larynx. Belly breathing pulls down on your diaphragm, which is a dome shaped muscle between your chest and your stomach, to suck air into your lungs. Belly breathing fully inflates your lungs so that you get as much air as possible, whereas chest breathing only partially inflates your lungs. Stress-related illnesses, sleep problems, respiratory problems, immune system weakening, and high blood pressure are all symptoms of long term shallow breathing. Try it for yourself While sitting in a chair, let your shoulders slump and your head hang forwards. Now in this position try and take a deep breath. How does it feel? Hard to do a belly breath right? Poor alignment in that slumped position means your diaphragm can’t descend easily making it hard to activate the posterior half of your diaphragm that attaches to your lower ribs and spine. To get enough air in, your body has to recruit its “back up” breathing muscles around the neck and chest to help breathe in, expanding the rib cage to get air travelling down into the lungs. These neck and chest muscles are not very efficient and are not designed to be used for the 17,000 breaths we take on average per day. They get tired, fatigued and tight, which can lead to headaches, neck and jaw pain. Now try sitting tall, with your head up and shoulders back, then take a deep breath into your belly. It’s easier, right? The process of putting yourself in a more optimal position for your spine allows the correct respiratory muscles to activate, drawing air into the lower lobes of the lungs where the best bloody supply is. *Clinical research findings* Forward head posture causes expansion of the upper thorax and contraction of the lower thorax, and these morphological changes cause decreased respiratory function. (JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL THERAPY SCIENCE 2019) Results indicate that forward head posture could reduce vital capacity, possibly because of weakness or disharmony of the accessory respiratory muscles. (JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL THERAPY SCIENCE 2016) Alteration of head and neck positions can have an immediate negative impact on respiratory function. Clinicians should be prompted to assess respiratory function when assessing individuals with forward head posture and torticollis and reduce the tension on respiratory system to avoid negative consequences. (BIOMED RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL 2018) |
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