New Research Shows Forward Head Posture May Affect The Brain
If you know anything about Melbourne City Chiro, you know we care about posture.
Put simply the essence of what we do is to improve your posture in so that you body can work how it is meant to.
It’s easy to understand the role that posture has in pain reduction. That an imbalance in posture equals pressure on joint and muscles, therefore pain.
What most don’t recognise in the vast amount of research that demonstrates the role posture has in your overall health and well-being.
For instance a 2020 study (1) has found that forward head posture may lead to abnormal afferent nerve impulses and sensorimotor control.
In laymen’s terms, in means the impulses that you neck is sending to your brain are being disrupted.
Proprioception is your body’s sense of where it is in space. If the messages being sent to your brain from your body are not normal it can affect things like balance, spatial orientation and motion sickness.
The study also indicated forward head posture was associated with abnormal autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity.
To explain, your ANS is split into two parts; your parasympathetic system (rest, digest, reproduce and repair) and sympathetic (flight and fight response).
We need both but this study indicted that forward head posture may be associated with an increase in our sympathetic system.
What that means is that our body may be overreacting to stressors and/or distorting its response to normal stimuli. It is basically creating an unnecessary stress response.
Improving forward head posture is one of our primary focuses at Melbourne City Chiro.
It’s common for clients to report better balance, co-ordination, physical performance when getting care.
We also commonly hear people report “feeling better within themselves,” or “feeling less stressed” once they start care.
These studies simply support our long held belief that posture has a huge impact on your overall health and well-being, well beyond the reduction of aches and pains.
(1) Ibrahim M Moustafa, Ahmed Youssef, Amal Ahbouch, May Tamim, Deed E. Harrison (2020), “Is forward head posture relevant to autonomic nervous system function and cervical sensorimotor control? Cross sectional study, Gait and amp: Posture (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaitpost.2020.01.004 retrieved 16 Jan 2020
Dr Ben Coupe
There is no need to put up with pain any longer
Schedule your first appointment with our expert ABC™ Chiropractors and get back to doing what you love.