You are human, therefore you are bipedal, meaning you should be upright. However, you spend much of your time hunched over in a seated posture. Whether it’s computer work, driving, or relaxing while watching a movie, you can’t deny that we are slowly folding like a lawn chair.
Sitting and leaning forward, with gravity pulling your head and shoulders down, creates unpleasant postural strain. This can present as neck pain, low back pain, shoulder pain, and the associated daily stiffness. Most commonly, the pain and stiffness is not severe enough to stop you from your daily activities, but nagging enough that it will cause you fatigue.
Repetitive strain is something that you cannot avoid, but depending on your posture it can either set you up for a future of pain and stiffness or with better/proper postural alignment, it can improve your body’s ability to cope with the repetitive strain placed on it.
Here is an example of a posture out of normal alignment. This example highlights the effects of forward head posture and how it correlates with increased strain in the neck.
Notice the red box. This estimates the amount of strain placed on the neck muscles, that have the task of holding the head upright.
Over time, a daily strain that is 2.5 times the normal force on the neck, will increase the rate at which the underlying structures break down. You can read more on the strains placed on the neck in this post here.
One of the most common signs of chronic wear and tear is the breakdown of the vertebral discs that space each moving vertebrae in your spine. This takes years to develop but with proper care, and posture awareness this can be limited. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The example below is a degenerative disc that occurs over a period of time.
This postural effect isn’t isolated to the neck, but it’s also common in the low back, especially with people who are desk-bound for 40 + hours a week. Low back pain and stiffness over time can lead to concerning conditions such as sciatica, which can be difficult to recover from.
Often times we assume the breakdown is caused by “old age”. The correct way to put this is it is associated with age, ie. the more time this postural strain has been present, the more breakdown and degeneration is going to be evident.
In the past, as a chiropractor, I would expect to see signs of spinal degeneration in someone who has been working for 10-15 years at a desk for 40 hours a week. The concerning part for me is this is happening more and more in youth, especially since the reliance on technology, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
Below is an example of a teenager that was referred to me by her family physician, for having a history of multiple disc bulges.
You can tell in the x-ray that her neck has lost the normal curvature and is putting undue strain on her spine, causing the discs to bulge on the now convex side of the curve.
It’s concerning to me what the next 10-15 years will look like for the youth of this generation. Prior to the pandemic kids were glued to tech and as a chiropractor, I was already seeing concerning issues in kids, teens and young adults, all related to their daily posture. Symptoms such as numbness and tingling into both hands, shooting pain down shoulders and arms, chronic headaches, and many more. Unfortunately, all of this has been exacerbated over the past year with online schooling and the obvious limitations of available recreational activities.
Like with your car, when the alignment is off, your tires wear unevenly and more rapidly. If your spinal alignment is out of position, the structures of your spine wear unevenly and more rapidly than if the alignment was good.
When it comes to the alignment and breakdown of the spine it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.
It worries me that for the current generation of youth we will not be able to chalk up spinal osteoarthritis to “old age” when they are going to show those signs at a much earlier age.