Do you have tech neck?

Technology has been a wonderous thing, and allowed us as a society to develop in so many new ways that we previously thought possible. The downside, however, is that we all use technology so much that it’s started to have a negative impact on our health.

Our posture is very important, and we all know what the ‘perfect’ posture should look like. But how many of us actually have a perfect posture? The real answer is very few. The most common postural change seen now is people having a slouched posture, with rounded shoulders and the head sticking forwards. 

‘Text neck’ has become a common phrase now, and describes this most common postural change. We all spend so much of our time sitting scrolling through our phones or sat behind a computer screen, and we’ve gotten lazy with it.

So many of my clients complain about being achey and stiff after a day at work, sitting at a desk and staring at a screen. A lot of these people also confess to not getting up and moving regularly throughout the day, and not having a proper ergonomic desk set up to aid their posture whilst working. It’s also incredibly surprising how many people sit in bed or slouch on the sofa whilst working on their laptop, there's no way you can maintain good posture in those positions!

But why does it matter?

Well, there are a lot of health implications that come with poor posture. 

Sit up straight in your chair and take a big deep breath in. Then slouch down and lower your chin down towards your chest, and take a big deep breath in. You can feel the difference right? In the slouched posture, it's much harder to take a full breath, and less comfortable. 

Research has shown that people with postural changes, like the ‘text neck’ described above, have an altered breathing pattern. In turn, this contributes to pain and motor control deficits which alters how your body moves. This becomes a vicious cycle, as these altered movement patterns then lead to pain and symptoms starting to develop. 

There's also big implications for our mental health too. Nobody wants bad posture, and often people become very self conscious about it once they notice, or worse if someone else points it out to them. 

Studies have been done to assess how our posture affects our resilience, and found that when performing a stressful task, people doing it with ‘good’ posture out perform those doing it in a ‘slouched’ posture. Those with a good posture also report higher self esteem, better mood, and lower fear. 

Postural changes don’t happen overnight, which means they won’t go away overnight either. The brain takes 2-4 months to adapt to changes and regain the control needed to maintain good posture, and muscles take 12-18 muscles to adapt to working in that position, especially if flexibility has been reduced by the negative postural changes. 

This means that the sooner you start to address your posture, the better outcome you’ll get. Don’t wait until you're in debilitating pain and can;t walk before you do something about it. Get it checked as soon as you notice it starts to stray away from that ‘perfect’ position.

If your not sure if you posture is good or not, then get yourself booked onto one of our free posture screening days, and we can assess it with you can create you a tailored plan to resolve it.