3 effective tips that you just can’t avoid to prevent a bad posture

I must admit it’s pretty rare for my patients to say that they don’t have a bad posture when they sit. Come on now who likes to sit erect on their couch while watching t.v? If you’re one to say you do…power to you! In saying that having a good posture is that difficult to achieve. Sometimes it takes a few simple things that will add up to prevent a bad posture. Whether sitting or standing bad posture can translate from one movement to the other. Have you seen very tall people with drooped shoulders and hunched over? It’s because subconsciously they’re trying to fit in with the crowd. I wonder if that’s true! So prevent a bad posture from worsening so you can certainly do exercises but haven’t you seen these bulky men with rounded shoulders? Does that suggest lifting weights is not the key then? All right before your head goes into an overdrive take a peak at the 3 simple things you can do to prevent a bad posture.

Are you the one to sit right on the edge of the chair so you can come closer to your computer screen to type? It’s humanly impossible to sit erect for hours together. So no matter how much you try you’re not going to be able to sit straight for 7-8 hours of your working day. Ok even if you’re not an office worker, it’s just hard to sit straight for more than 20-30 minutes at a time. So sitting straight is not the key to prevent bad posture. It’s important to support your back with the back rest. So as soon as you move your bum to the back of the chair, you can rest your back against the chair and sit comfortably. Pull your chair closer to the computer so you don’t have to reach forward and slouch over your working desk. That’ll certainly get you in a bad posture. What’s best is to use an ergonomic chair that has a lower back support. Or roll up a towel or use a small cushion in the curve of your back while sitting. This will definitely support your back and prevent you from having a bad posture.

If you tend to sit for hours in front of the computer, you are most defintiely doing so with a bad posture. Like I said before, it’s just not possible for our bodies to maintain the erect posture for more than 30 mins at a time. Our bodies were designed to be moving. So as soon as you’re in one position it will create bad posture. The best thing is to get up every 30-40 mins and take a little walk. Even if it’s to the kitchen and back. It’s important to get out of the sitting position and straighten your spine. There’s tremendous amount of pressure (nearly 2-3 times your body weight) that goes through your discs in the spine when you’re sitting in a bad posture. And this done repetitively will create back pain in future. So by getting up we are offsetting the effects of sitting in a way that will help us to prevent bad posture.

Most of my patients who suffer from neck pain invariably have 2 screens. I kid you not! So having 2 screens seems to make you more vulnerable to bad posture. This is probably because your work station may not be set up properly. For example, if you’re working from a desktop on one desk and a laptop on the other. Or the computer screens are not at the level of your eyes. It’s just so important to twist your chair and not just your head to prevent neck pain from a bad posture. It’s probably best to have the 2 screens right next to each other and the same size of screens when working. By following the above steps in addition to being careful with the screens will ensure that you don’t have a bad posture.

We’ve seen a prevalence of neck and back pain issues in the past 2 years because of bad posture while working from home. Home stations are not set up as best as work. In fact a lot of workstations in offices are also not set up correctly. So it’s absolutely important to do whatever you can to reduce the impact of bad posture on spinal pain. In fact we are seeing so many kids coming in with spinal pain these days due to tablets being introduced so early in schools. So at the very elast we need to create good pratice while using technology for our kids so they don’t end up with the health issues due to a bad posture.