Shoulders feel like concrete? Sore neck? Headaches? You’re not alone.
It’s quite common actually, but it’s not normal.
Having a heart attack is common as well, ⅓ of all people who die in Australia die from heart disease, but its not “normal” to have heart disease.
The most common reason for having sore shoulders and neck is bad posture. Check out this image below, and note that 42 pounds is a whopping 19kg!
(Source: http://www.mouthmattersbook.com/why-crooked-teeth-why-myo/3/)
As you can imagine, hanging a 19kg weight (your head) off your shoulders, is going to make them stiff and sore.
How do you get forward head posture? Most commonly:
- Feeding your baby and constantly looking down at them,
- “Text neck”
- Sitting at your computer/in your car wrong.
- Whiplash injuries
(“Text neck”. Source: http://www.activateclinic.com.au/text-neck-posture/)
Forward head posture causes chronic neck pain, headaches, carpal tunnel symptoms, pain between the shoulders and even reduces your ability to breathe freely.
Over time, it causes the “dowager’s hump” aka nursing home posture – something nobody wants.
(Dowagers Hump)
Here how we prevent that from happening… Get yourself a foam roller. You can get these from Big W for around 30 bucks. You can get them online.
Now lay on it like this for up to 5 mins daily to prevent bad posture and neck and shoulder pain:
(If it hurts – stop. Speak with us and find out why.)
Okay – you already have a dowagers hump. Or you try and sit up straight but it’s really uncomfortable. We can correct that too with a specific treatment protocol that typically involves:
- Specific postural exercises to strengthen inactive and weak muscles.
- Trigger point therapy or similiar to break down adhesions and scar tissue in fatigued and overused muscles that prevent you from achieving a normal posture.
- Putting the curve back in your neck using custom traction devices to re-shape ligaments. This is an essential component of any program if you want lasting posture correction – especially when it comes to reducing dowagers humps.
- Adjusting you to reposition any bones that are stuck or out of place. Again this to get rid of the dowagers hump.
- Neuromuscular rehabilitation. This is critical. Your posture, good or bad is “learned” by the body. Its thinks what it’s doing is “normal”. The only way your body will hold the new posture long term is by teaching it a new “normal”. This does that.
As a side note, if you have a desk job it’s critical your desk is set up right for you.
If you are a patient of ours we will come to your work and set your desk up for you at no charge to make sure that it’s not sabotaging you. Just ask.
In your service,
Dr Jesse Middleton
Wellness Expert
Chiropractor
Dr Jesse Middleton is a wellness expert, leading chiropractor, speaker and natural health advocate. Dr Middleton is a respected, highly regarded master chiropractor whose passion is to teach people how to achieve health for themselves and their family regardless of genetics, age, and history. His Chiropractic Health & Wellness Clinics, onsite corporate and business wellness programs and ergonomic assessments provide people of all backgrounds with the practical tools necessary to build their own health towards the path to true wellness.
