Where is Your Posture Taking You?
Why is that we forget about posture when all of us can remember in our childhood a parent or grandparent telling us to “stand up straight!” or “stop slouching!”? Most of us have been to a retirement home or senior living home and have witnessed those who have not taken care of their posture over the years. They find themselves unable to stand up-right and now their leaning forward over the top of their toes. With my grandmother now living in a senior assistant living home I have been seeing this first hand far too often and made me start to think. Where did they go wrong or when did they stop focusing on their posture?
Posture is one of the keys to living a long healthy life, when our posture starts to deteriorate that’s when most of start to have different health problems. Why is this? OUR NERVOUS SYSTEM! When posture starts to go bad it has the greatest effect on our spine aka our back. Can you guess what the spine houses? The spine houses a major component of our nervous system, the spinal cord. The nervous system is made up of our brain, our spinal cord and the nerves leaving from the spinal cord out into the body.
The nervous system is the grandmaster of our bodies and everything and I mean everything that occurs in the body could not and would not happen if there was no nervous system to control them. From the beating of our heart to the movement of our pinky toe, all of this is controlled by our nervous system. The nervous system literally gives us life! When our posture starts to go this puts pressure on the nervous system and effects how effectively it may work. Why would anyone allow anything to interfere with such an important process?
This can be seen again in a retirement home, if you were to go around and ask the people living there how much medication they had to take each day. I would bet you the seniors with poorer posture are the ones taking the most medications and have the most restrictions as well. I don’t know about you, but I want to be living my life to the fullest for all the years of my life!
If posture is something you struggle with or you don’t know where to start in improving your posture, please know that I am always here to help. Just know, it’s never too late to start working on your posture and improving your health/life!
Best of Health,
Dr. Matt
