Neglecting your back posture can lead to more than just discomfort – it can have a serious impact on your long-term health.
The back posture is simply important because you spend a long part of your life seated. You need to be aware that any position you adopt can impact your health and movements in the long term.
Correct and incorrect back postures
What would be a healthy back posture?
This is a great posture. The back is in its natural S-shape and the pressure that our body exert on the back is balanced. There are no points that can be vulnerable to get harm or injured over time.
Also, this positions allow us to do different movement without any hart time because is a basic and natural stance.
Then what would be a incorrect back posture?
Studies show, and you must’ve experienced it, that when using a regular chair we lay our backs all over it. Our backs bend automatically and take almost immediately an unnatural curved form.
This is a harmful posture. It can be comfortable in the beginning, but over time, we notice a little pain in some portions of the spine. This posture that is adopted often can be the one responsible for some anomalies in our back in the future.
What happens inside our body with a bad posture?
Basically, when we seat in this way, the bones that conform to our vertebra, what is called the chain of bones in our back, curve into themselves generating an position under pressure.
This posture transfers pressure on the middle of every bone surrounding the bend portion because the body weight is no longer held by a strong natural shape. Now the weight is transferred to specific curved portions. At that moment we can find some postures like this comfortable but as time goes by, we might start feeling a little discomfort that makes us re-sit and readjusts in another way.
The bones are not the real problem but what is in the middle of them is. The intervertebral disks. They allow our backbones to move flexibly. Without them, we would be as ridged as a broom handle. Also, they help the body to cushion the shocks of some movements that we do in our daily basics while we are walking, running, or jumping. Slouching can generate pressure that can damage the disks driving to degenerate our back functionality.
The consequences
The impact that our backs receive is dangerous both in the short term and the long term:
In the short term
- Lower back pain, most common because this part is more flexible than the upper back. Thus, it bends more cushioning the body when it bends in an incorrect way. All the pain generated will increase its duration if people keep an inadequate posture in their daily life.
- Neck and shoulders tension or pain. In this case, the head goes slightly forward our body, and the backbones corresponding to the neck area receive a significant amount of weight from the whole head driving to develop pain.
In the long term
- Bones’ position change Slowly, an inadequate seated posture can lead to a slight change in the natural structure of bones. This is because, after long periods of time in a certain posture, muscles, nerves, and bones, get used to it and remain like that. The more we hunch the more our stance will change into a new posture. This is one of the reasons why we usually see people with humps on their upper back, their heads slightly forward their shoulders, or entirely hunched bodies.
- People are at risk of pinching the nerves that branch out from the spinal cord because the bones’ movement can bring strong pain all along the affected area.
What would be a possible solution?
The short answer is to correct your posture but also to use a different chair. Simply because every day, everyone spend long periods seated and is affected by the posture adopted while doing it.
By changing the convectional chair that does not promote the natural S-curve of your back for a saddle chair that does you will be lead to better sitting habits that will bring healthy benefits to you.
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