Your spine and nervous system are the core foundation of your health and life. The nervous system sends strength and energy from the brain down the spinal cord to literally every cell in your body. This nerve communication network is how your body stays healthy and functions optimally.
But, here’s the catch: your spine must be in normal alignment, or what you and I know as normal posture, in order to protect the nervous system. If a spinal bone or area of the spine misaligns from its normal posture, not only does it not protect the spinal cord and spinal nerves, but it actually puts damaging stress on it. Modern scientific research keeps emphasizing the relationship between normal posture and optimal health. In order for us to have our bodies work at their best and for you to be your best ever, you must care for your spine, ideally from birth throughout your lifetime. The second-best choice is from today throughout a lifetime.
Your body is self-healing and self-regulating. If we cut our finger, we typically don’t worry whether it will heal. We know that our body has immense healing and reparative capabilities. The nervous system controls this healing. We must protect it with a great postural frame. If we have normal posture, then our body can work at its best, leading to a lifetime of healing and excellent health.
Scientific research is now incredibly specific about the optimal degrees, angles, and shapes of an optimal spine. During a Spinal Discovery Exam, our Chiropractors use computerized photographs, visualization of posture, and X-rays to detail the specific angles, degrees, and measurements of how an individual’s posture may have deviated from ideal.
Our modern world creates many regular daily stresses that threaten our posture.
- Looking down at a cell phone for extended periods
- Poor workstation ergonomics
- Too many pillows while reading in bed,
- Soft couches
- Bad shoes
- Bad exercise techniques
- Car wrecks
- Slips and falls
Chiropractic has always focused on the importance of normal posture and its relationship to optimal nerve function and optimal health. As available research has expanded, chiropractic continues to lead the way in both the analysis and effective techniques of spinal postural correction.
$99 New Patient Special
We sit knee-to-knee for a detailed consultation on your primary concern to get an overall understanding of your health. We’ll assess your neurology, posture, and biomechanics during our thorough spinal discovery examination. X-rays may be taken to further identify the cause of your health issue.
How Our Care Plan Works
1. Freedom of Knowledge
Even in the worst of circumstances, it helps patients to know exactly what is going on. Through one-on-one doctor patient reports and group education lectures we empower our patients with the knowledge and understanding of their specific problem.
2. Freedom of Choice
The fact that you didn’t know you are supposed to care for your spine from birth is not your fault, but it is your responsibility. OUR responsibility is to guide you in the pathway to health. It’s your choice to decide how you want to participate in your health care.
3. Freedom of Health
Your health is your responsibility. Our job is to share our findings with you and lead and encourage you in the pathway to health. It’s your choice to decide how you want to participate in your health care and how you want to show up in life.
How We Improve Posture In Midtown East, NY
Comprehensive Consultation and Exam
When you arrive for your Discovery Exam at Rowe Chiropractic Offices, the doctors will start with a consultation and ask health history questions to help better understand the origin of your health issues and your health goals. The doctors will then perform a thorough analysis of your spine and posture as part of the examination process. Based on the results of your examination, X-ray imaging may be recommended.
As part of your Discovery Exam, the doctors will perform various tests to get the most accurate diagnosis, including:
- Posture analysis
- Range of motion testing
- Orthopedic tests
- Spinal examination for subluxation
Subluxations are misalignments of your vertebrae or posture that affect the functioning of your nervous system. Your nervous system is the master control center of your body and is essential for normal, healthy functioning. When a subluxation is present, it interferes with your body’s healing potential and ability to express health.
At Rowe Chiropractic Offices, we get to the root cause of the problem by analyzing all of the information from your consultation and examination, as well as any X-ray images, to deduce the origin of your concerns. Postural distortions are very complex and are the intricate accumulations of various stressors in a person’s life. Therefore, determining each distortion pattern is essential to full postural correction.
Digital X-rays
X-rays are a critical tool in assessing a patient’s posture. There are 128 million postural distortion combinations, so we must determine your unique distortion to best treat your case. They allow us to see spinal and postural relationships that are not evident to the naked eye. Some complicated spinal postural subluxations can only be accurately viewed using an X-ray study. There is very little danger to the type of X-rays we use at our office, and their benefit to your treatment outweighs those potential concerns.
Specific Chiropractic Care in Midtown East, NY
Subluxations are misalignments of the vertebral bones of the spine or of your posture that impact nervous system function. The brain is the master control center of the body, and communicates with the body through the delicate nervous system. When you have spinal misalignments or postural distortions, those deviations irritate your nerves and interrupt your brain-to-body communication. This leads to sub-optimal functioning of the body, which can present in many ways. Most people tend to think of the pain component of subluxations, but it is important to note that subluxations can impact body function in addition to irritating pain signals.
Posture problems can cause subluxation in many ways. Research shows they impact the spinal cord directly and also the spinal nerve roots that exit the spinal canal. Additionally, unless we are actively working to correct these postural problems, daily stresses, including gravity, bring us further and further into a misaligned posture.
Chiropractic adjustments are an integral part of correcting bad posture. Depending on the technique used, adjustments work to specifically correct spinal and postural subluxations at a specific segmental level or even on a global body scale.
Doctors of Chiropractic are the only health care professionals trained to detect and correct spinal subluxations. At Rowe Chiropractic Offices, our detailed system of analysis and subsequent individualized treatment will target each patient’s unique postural subluxation pattern. We also give our patients a variety of tools to continue their care at home. With all of the methods of spinal postural correction we employ in our office, we set up our patients for a lifetime of health.
Custom Therapeutic Exercise Plan
In order to achieve posture correction, you must physically and neuromuscularly retrain your muscles to hold your posture in a correct, healthy position. We’ll perform a posture analysis, including 3D technology, to determine the optimal postural corrective exercise plan for you. Not addressing the muscular strength and conditioning issues that led to or resulted from your subluxation will make the issue much harder to correct.
Muscles often contribute to bad posture by becoming either tight or loose in various areas, depending on how the posture is misaligned. This inequality in muscle tone and tension encourages the unhealthy posture to continue to degenerate over time.
A sedentary lifestyle, in addition to an improper ergonomic set-up at your in-office or work-from-home workstation, encourages unhealthy patterns that cause significant imbalances in your posture. Simply put, sitting puts the spine in a harmful position, often placing too much stress on the lower back and encouraging forward movement of the head and neck.
The correct exercise routine is a vital component of spinal correction, but it must be tailored to each individual. Because adult spinal postural patterns can be quite complex from a lifetime of uncorrected spinal stress, a patient’s exercise pattern must accurately mirror their unique complex pattern. The wrong exercise routine is just one more stress on the spine.
Common Causes of Poor Posture in Midtown East, NY
Tech Neck
Teck neck is an unhealthy neck posture linked to the use of technological devices, specifically cell phones. It results in a change in the position of the neck and cervical curve. The head starts to creep forward so that the person’s ear is forward from their shoulder, and their healthy ” C”-shaped neck curve starts to straighten or reverse.
Tech Neck is so prevalent because of the dominance of modern technology in our lives. It is almost unavoidable. The impacts on the spine and nervous system are devastating. Once the neck loses its “C” curve, the spinal cord and spinal nerves are no longer relaxed in the spinal canal. This ensuing tension on the spinal cord and nerves affects the functionality of the nervous system, leading to a variety of health problems, commonly seen as headaches, migraines, visual disturbances, hearing issues, and numbness and tingling in the arms and hands, just to name a few.
Sedentary Lifestyle
Our bodies are designed to move. A sedentary lifestyle or chronic sitting affects the health of your spinal column and spinal discs, increasing your risk for heart and diabetic diseases.
Sitting is bad for the body for many reasons. Lack of movement can irritate your spinal nerves, leading to pain and stiffness. The sitting position puts extra pressure on the lumbar spine and discs, which can cause lumbar disc bulges and herniations.
If you spend time at a desk or in a sitting position from home, it’s crucial to incorporate movement into your daily routine. Take regular scheduled breaks to get up, walk around, and stretch. Make sure to include exercise, especially postural corrective exercises, in your routine to keep your body and joints lubricated and mobile.
Muscle Weakness
Muscles play an important role in stabilizing our bodies while allowing for movement and flexibility. Healthy, balanced muscle tone impacts the orientation of our posture and, if unhealthy, causes the body to fall into postural subluxations more easily.
As structural postural subluxations start to form from the various stresses we are exposed to in life, the muscles and ligaments of the body will adapt to the postural changes. This can lead to areas of muscular tension or weakness depending on how the posture is misaligned.
Postural subluxations can affect anyone at any age, but the more a person is exposed to conditions that would cause increased stress, the more likely they are to experience posture issues and abnormal muscle weakness. The best way to combat these subluxations is with corrective exercises that precisely counteract the postural issues you have developed.
Stress
There are many types of stress, but the three main categories are physical, chemical, and emotional. They can each impact the body in different ways. Physical traumas are probably easiest to understand because they can be readily observed and experienced. Chemical and emotional stress are also important players and can have lasting effects on the body.
We can easily get trapped in the vicious cycle of stress and poor posture. Posture initiates in the brain and manifests in the frame, meaning your body initiates the structure of your posture in the brain and then communicates the desired posture to the body structure. Poor posture can put physical stress on the spinal vertebrae and, subsequently, the nervous system. This can lead to subluxations, which cause stress to the body and interfere with the body’s ability to heal. This suboptimal state of health can further exacerbate postural issues, leading to permanent degeneration.
Scoliosis
The correct anatomy of the spine is to be straight from the front view and have three shock-absorbing curves from the side. An abnormal lateral curve of over 10° is scoliosis. Scoliosis can begin at any time in life, but is thought of as an adolescent problem or a problem in the geriatric population. Scoliosis is progressive by nature. Because the effects of gravity worsen scoliosis, the longer it goes unaddressed, the worse it gets.
Like any postural problem, scoliosis weakens our posture and puts stress on our nervous system. However, scoliosis is particularly devastating because it is associated with the actual change in the shapes of our spinal vertebrae. The longer the scoliosis is there, the more abnormal the shape of the vertebrae becomes, which leads to a worsening of the angles and further distortion in the shape of the vertebrae.
Scoliosis is linked to spinal pain, dysfunction, problems in body image, and, at its worst, severe disability. Since scoliosis can occur at any age, the best approach is for everyone to have regular spinal check-ups so that if scoliosis begins, it can be found in its early stages when it is easiest to correct. Just like how we check the health of our eyes, ears, and teeth throughout our lives, we should check our spine for any abnormal postural or scoliotic changes from birth throughout our lifetime.
A simple spinal postural checkup from a properly trained chiropractor is the best initial tool to identify scoliosis. If a suspected problem has occurred, standing X-rays will further evaluate and define the problem. Fortunately, if scoliosis has occurred, there are amazing techniques to reduce and manage it: chiropractic postural correction, specific scoliosis therapeutic exercises called ScoliBalance, and bracing if needed are all non-surgical, conservative, and effective techniques for the correction and management of scoliosis.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a chiropractor in Midtown, New York, help with posture?
Yes, the doctors at Rowe Chiropractic Offices are specially trained to analyze postural issues and to formulate individualized corrective treatment plans to fix these issues.
Can a chiropractor permanently fix posture?
Yes, through a multifaceted approach, the chiropractors at Rowe Chiropractic Offices will recommend a series of treatment protocols to correct your spinal postural issues. We equip our patients with the tools to succeed, and once corrected, patients may need occasional maintenance to combat the deteriorating stress of daily life.
How long does it take a chiropractor to fix bad posture?
How long it takes a chiropractor to fix bad posture depends on the severity of the patient’s postural problems. Some postural subluxations are easily corrected, while others which have developed over decades can take time to fix.
Can chiropractors fix a hunchback?
Chiropractors have great success with “hunchback” or hyperkyphosis cases. Many interventions are available for patients who want to correct this postural issue.
Can you realign your own spine?
Unless you are expertly trained in spinal correction, it is very difficult to know how to fix your own spine. Chiropractors dedicate their careers to better understanding posture and have the best understanding of it in the medical industry. You have to be cautious about applying generic posture advice to yourself, as it may not apply to your specific problem.
How do you know if your body is out of alignment?
The only real way to know if your body is out of alignment is to have it examined by a trained eye. Sometimes, postural misalignments are obvious to the person experiencing them. Sometimes, the postural changes are so minute that they may not be easily observable or even cause discomfort. It’s always best to correct these issues before they become big issues.
$99 New Patient Special
We sit knee-to-knee for a detailed consultation on your primary concern to get an overall understanding of your health. We’ll assess your neurology, posture, and biomechanics during our thorough spinal discovery examination. X-rays may be taken to further identify the cause of your health issue.
