Sitting at a Desk Too Much

Poor posture is a faulty relationship of the various parts of the body, which produces increased strain on the supporting structures and in which there is less efficient balance of the body over its base of support. The

You can probably guess that neither of these ways of getting your head up is ideal. But most of us maintain our head position by using a combination of these two motions. The result is hyperextension of the neck (for those of you who wear bifocals, you know how constantly lifting your chin can cause headaches and neck pain), constant vertebral shea

This is not rocket science. The body responds to loading patterns. If we load it in the fetal position for long enough it will adapt to it until that pattern becomes comfortable. This does not imply that it is optimal. It just means it becomes habitual and easier in the short term. It changes the position of the pelvis, the torso is distorted, the

The first thing a medic does is tilt the head back to open the throat. We’ve adopted this CPR posture all the time. Our bodies hate this position. The weight of the sloping head stresses the back muscles, leading to back pain; the kink in our necks adds pressure to the brain stem, triggering headaches and other neurological problems; the tilted ang

Posture is really just another form of movement — it takes skilled and coordinated work of the muscles and proper positioning and alignment of the joints. Further, posture always involves some small degree of movement — breathing, oscillations around a center point, turning the head from side to side, etc. Because the quality of posture is determin

While these adjustments (chest up, shoulders back) reduce the forward-displacing loads to the spine, they don’t actually undo the curve; they just hide it. And, even worse, adjustments made to facilitate a temporary visual improvement actually introduce new curves in the opposite direction and compromise the mechanical leverage of the muscles that

The Centers for Disease Control reports that we are spending 75 cents of every health-care dollar on chronic conditions linked to sedentary behavior, like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.11 According to the National Institutes of Heath, back pain affects 8 of 10 people in their lifetime, and it is the leading cause of disability worldwide.12 I