Feb 13, 2017 by spinalcare

Do you remember as a kid, dressed in Sunday best, feeling like a princess, and smiling for a picture when out of nowhere, you would hear that maternal shriek, “Sit up straight”? That voice was right.  Just as moms always are. But for most of us, we don’t always listen to that voice. We may think about posture when we know our picture is being taken (or when being yelled at by mom), or when we experience pain, but then it often becomes a distant thought. Yet, posture is incorporated in every movement: sitting at a desk for hours a day, texting multiple times a day, posting pictures onto social media, and even walking and running. We are victims of habit, and as we grow deeper and deeper into a habit it becomes more and more difficult to break. Rather than only correcting posture for a selfie or family snapshot, proper posture needs to be addressed throughout the entire day until it becomes habitual.

Injuries and traumatic events aren’t the only causes of injury. In fact, most of the injuries we see in the office are the result of repetitive motion or overuse.  Overuse is not just repetition of the same motion multiple times in a day (although that will also cause overuse injuries), it’s also the hundreds of minutes we spend holding and looking at computers and mobile devices each day. Users spend 177 minutes on their phones per day1. DailyMail conducted a study that concluded the average person spends 8 hours and 41 mins on electronic devices a day. To put this number into perspective, that is about the same amount of time adults need to sleep per night for optimal function. With new technology comes new problems, and with that we introduce tech neck, also known as text neck. Tech neck is the result of too much time spent looking down at smartphones, tablets and laptops. This repetitive injury can cause headaches, upper back, shoulder, neck, and arm pain. Let’s pretend you are holding a bowling ball against your body, it may take several hours for your arms to fatigue, whereas if that bowling ball is held away from your body it will take far less time for your arms to fatigue. The same applies to a forwardly flexed neck. When looking down there is up to 60 pounds added onto the neck and upper back. Sixty pounds of added stress for 177 minutes looking down at your smartphone a day is far too much stress and will lead to pain.

Upper Cross Syndrome

The image below shows the correct posture when looking from the side. Notice how the ear lobe is in line with the top of the shoulder. No forward head carriage or rounded shoulders are seen here. We assure you that the skeleton below does not experience headaches, heck pain, upper back pain, or even arm pain.

The first step in any repetitive injury is recognizing the fault and fixing it. After recognizing what to fix, correct the fault. Pull the shoulder blades “down and in”.  Tuck the chin. Correct the posture. Hold the cell phone higher to avoid looking down. Place the lap top on a table rather than your lap. Set timer to evaluate posture every hour while at work.  Rehab exercises given in the office, such as scapular retraction and chin tucks, are designed to engage muscles that may have been on vacation. We need to isolate muscles that otherwise have not been doing their job. With any bad habit, it can be replaced with a good habit. It is clear how many changes and added stress poor posture can and will contribute to future aches and pains. Always know when simply addressing the posture is not alleviating the pain to come into Spinal Care to get checked out and back on track.

1Flurry Analytics, Comscore, Q4 2014

The image above shows the correct posture when looking from the side. Notice how the ear lobe is in line with the top of the shoulder. No forward head carriage or rounded shoulders are seen here. We assure you that the skeleton above also does not experience headaches, heck pain, upper back pain, or even arm pain.

The first step in any repetitive injury is recognizing the fault and fixing it. After recognizing what to fix, correct the fault. Pull the shoulder blades “down and in”.  Tuck the chin. Correct the posture. Hold the cell phone higher to avoid looking down. Place the lap top on a table rather than your lap. Set timer to evaluate posture every hour while at work.  Rehab exercises given in the office, such as scapular retraction and chin tucks, are designed to engage muscles that may have been on vacation. We need to isolate muscles that otherwise have not been doing their job. With any bad habit, it can be replaced with a good habit. It is clear how many changes and added stress poor posture can and will contribute to future aches and pains. Always know when simply addressing the posture is not alleviating the pain to come into Spinal Care to get checked out and back on track.