How to fix bad posture
Tags: Health, Back Pain, Posture, Stretching, Exercise

By Allison Torres Burtka

Poor posture can flatten out or accentuate the natural curves in our spines, causing chronic pain and serious health issues. In fact, this is becoming increasingly common due to the amount of time people spend sitting at a desk or looking down at their smartphones.

Here’s why good posture is important for your health and five exercises to help you improve it.

Why is good posture important?

“In good posture, the bones are lined up on top of each other like children’s blocks, carrying the weight of the body,” says Karen Erickson, DC, a chiropractor in New York City and fellow of the American College of Chiropractic. “Good posture allows the bones to support weight, allowing the muscles to work the least. Poor posture causes the muscles to overwork.”

According to Erickson, poor posture can result in:

Neck and back pain

Excessive wear and tear on the joints and discs

Decreased flexibility

Headaches

Breathing problems

Gastrointestinal problems

Excessive wear and tear on the joints and discs in the spine due can also cause the spine to deteriorate. This can compress the spinal cord or nerves, which may result in numbness, tingling, or burning in the hands and feet, says Joseph Gjolaj, MD, an orthopedic surgeon and associate professor of Clinical Orthopaedics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Common posture mistakes

Bad posture is common, and there are few activities that can increase your risk of developing poor posture. This includes:

Sitting. Spending a lot of time sitting causes the natural forward curve in the thoracic spine to become accentuated. “That closes down our rib cage and our lungs, and it’s hard to take a deep breath,” Gjolaj says.

A small 2018 study of healthy men found that poor posture — with the head tilted forward, sticking out beyond the shoulders, or the head tilted to one side — reduced their respiratory function.

Texting. Looking down at a smartphone or other device can cause “text neck,” a repetitive strain injury that generates pain in the neck and shoulders.

An adult’s head weighs about 10 to 12 pounds. But when the head tilts forward, as people tend to do when looking at smartphones, the spine bears dramatically more weight than that, according to a 2014 study.

Being overweight. People who are overweight may be more likely to have spinal and joint pain. “Excessive weight in the spine will cause the spine to break down, and that causes the spine to fall into a bad posture as it deteriorates,” Gjolaj says.

5 exercises to improve posture

“Many of these exercises aim to counteract the effects of bad posture so our body finds that equilibrium again,” Gjolaj says. “The longer we maintain a poor posture, the more the muscles learn that posture, and then it’s hard to break it.”

You should do each of these exercises at least once a day, for 10 repetitions each, Gjolaj says. Then, as you get used to them, you can increase reps. According to Gjolaj, you might see some minor improvements in a few days, but because these exercises build muscle back up, it will probably take a few weeks to see more noticeable improvements.

1. Backward bend