Health blog Category: Ergonomics
Better Posture
You may have heard that good posture is essential for good health, but do you know why??
- Posture refers to how you position your body when you’re sitting, standing, or lying down. Your posture is the result of habits formed over the course of years.
What is Good Posture?
- It is the proper alignment of your body when standing or sitting.
- Correct positioning involves training yourself to hold your body against gravity with the least strain and tension on supportive structures, such as your muscles and ligaments.
- Proper posture keeps your bones and joints in optimal alignment and decreases wear and tear on supportive structures.
Is Your Posture Causing You Pain? We Can Help!
Jun 30th 2021What is posture? And how does it affect us?
Simply put, posture is the position in which someone holds their body. Typically, when it is good, it is described as sitting or standing upright without slumping the shoulders or arching the back. Having and maintaining good posture takes practice and effort, but when it is bad it can negatively affect your daily life in many ways. Read below to see what can come from incorrect posture and how you can correct it.
Common issues associated with it:
- Headaches: poor posture causes stress on the body which can manifest in headaches for some people
- Neck pain: Sitting or standing in a slumped position puts strain on the neck musculature and can result in dull or sharp pain depending on the severity
- Back pain: Similar to the neck, poor posture can cause the muscles in the back to be constantly firing or over stretched which can lead to pain.
- Shoulder pain: The body is connected!
Results of Not Treating Neck Problems
Think back to the times when you have fallen asleep in an awkward position and had the unexpected pleasure of waking up to a “crick in your neck.” You know when you have an aching neck it makes it very difficult to turn your head to check your blind spots when driving, bend your head forward to check your cell phone, or enjoy knitting or crocheting without discomfort or pain.
Now let’s say you’re like most people who think “oh, it’s not that bad”. When not handled appropriately and immediately, this small “crick” in your neck can lead to:
- Tension headaches
- Facet joint (the junction between two neck vertebrae) dysfunction
- Inability to perform daily tasks safely
Good News! Physical Therapy can address many of these ‘pain in the neck’ problems. It’s important to remember that in order to address any kind of pain or discomfort for good, you need to handle the root cause of that problem.
Read full blogErgonomics When Working From Home
With most people working from home, one of the most common questions I hear at our clinic has to do with ergonomics. Specifically, how to set up your at home office.
If you are used to working in an office and are lucky enough to have a good work chair or even better a stand up desk, you may be wondering what you can do at home to remedy your current situation. In any case, most people were not set up to work from home and now may be working from home for the foreseeable future.
Pain from Posture: Get Relief TODAY!
Posture is something that we hear about all the time and it’s usually followed by “oh, I have terrible posture”.
Postural weakness in the neck is a problem many of us struggle with. We spend a lot of time sitting whether it is at a desk or on a couch and 9 times out of 10 we are looking down at some kind of a screen. This is the number one reason we have postural weakness.
Solution to that Back Strain
Are you feeling:
- Pain across the low back into the buttock and hip area
- Stiffness and limit motion
- Swelling
- Inability to maintain positions
- Muscle spasms
If you are experiencing any of these symptoms you may be dealing with a lumbar strain. A lumbar strain is when the muscles or tendons in the back get overstretched or tear. Microscopic tearing can occur suddenly due to injury or develop overtime. Strains are classified into varying degrees based on the severity of the injury.
Read full blogForward Head Posture
Posture plays a huge role in all of our activities. We are so busy throughout the day that we usually don’t pay much attention to our posture, especially while we work, watch tv, or stand. The increased use of cell phones, tablets and computers has made forward head posture a problem for many and a common postural problem we see in our clinic.
Over time, forward head posture can cause:
– Neck pain
– Decreased neck motion
– Shoulder pain
– Decreased shoulder motion
– Upper back pain
What does forward head posture look like?
Read full blogThe Chain to Low Back Pain
How Much Does Back Pain Impact Us?
Chronic back pain and discomfort is a debilitating condition that will affect the majority of Americans at some point during their life. In fact, chronic back pain is one of the leading reasons people go to the doctor and employees miss work. Chronic back pain can make it difficult to walk, sit, drive, and perform routine activities such as laundry, and dishes; to name a few.
What are the symptoms of chronic back pain?
Read full blogThe Low Back Pain Epidemic
Generalized back pain continues to be rampant in many parts of the US and world-wide and does not seem to be decreasing despite many calculated efforts to do so. This particular diagnosis, sadly, has many attributes that makes it very difficult to pinpoint an exact cause. There is a substantial amount of literature on treatments, effects, causes, specific diagnosis and ramifications that is available to anyone that suffers from this ailment. We all know this, but in the 21st century ‘sitting’ is the new ‘smoking.’ Generalized back pain is one of many negative effects from consistent sitting, but it is no mystery that these are strongly correlated.
Read full blogDesk Jobs and Neck Discomfort
Many of us have sedentary jobs at a desk and/or using mobile technology for day to day communications. It’s so easy for us to slip into a poor posture when we’re mindlessly reading emails or sending texts. The problem is that these poor postures are therefore creating more complaints of neck discomfort.
Neck pain is no longer an ‘adult issue.’ At Loudoun Sports Therapy Center, we also see a lot of young people complaining of neck discomfort, headaches, trouble standing up and other painful issues in these upper body areas.
Forward Head Posture
Think about this: for every inch that your head is tilted forward, there is twice the amount of pressure being placed through your spine.
Read full blog
