Good articular and vertebral hygiene is essential in maintaining proper posture and fully taking advantage of your body.

Poor posture can decrease the function of certain organs or create neurological problems (disc herniation, intercostal pain, visceral problems)

There are many consequences of poor posture on health which can impact various aspects of daily life.

Our body is organized to function with proper posture. When posture isn’t correct, it creates tension in muscles, tendons and ligaments, which then degenerates over time into back problems, pain, and stiffness. It can even degenerate until it’s impossible to return back to proper posture. Poor posture also wears intervertebral discs, which then can cause disc herniation, lumbago, sciatica, loss of muscle strength, etc.

The spinal column protects and allows movement to the nervous system, which is the most important system of the human body. It allows you to transfer information from one point of your body to another, treat it and react to it.

The nervous system is therefore what allows us to adapt to our environment. It is what’s behind our intelligence. It coordinates absolutely everything: from our thoughts to our hormones, our organs, our vascular system, our muscles and so on.

Poor posture alters the nervous system’s efficiency. It is less ‘fed’, receives less information and can’t transfer it as efficiently. This leads to compensations, loss of energy, or concrete functional harm, both physical and visceral. Poor posture, therefore, can harm virtually any body function, in the short or long term.

Poor posture restricts breathing, because the lungs need your ribs to elevate and widen so that the air can flow freely, and, slouching limits this rib movement.

As mentioned, poor posture restricts breathing. Breathing is, however, essential in maintaining:

•    The body’s the chemical balance, namely the body’s acid-base balance.
•    All brain and body cell oxygenation.

By restricting breathing, bad posture causes an increase in the body’s acidity, a decrease of oxygen and therefore a decrease in energy and of cognitive skills. This results in fatigue, concentration issues, irritability, headaches and more.

In addition, the nervous system doesn’t function optimally when poor posture is frequent. However, the nervous system coordinates organs that need nervous stimulations to work optimally and release hormones. Therefore, certain body functions such as chemical, hormonal, digestive functions can be limited by prolonged poor posture.

It is important to consider the human being as a “social animal”. Ask yourself “what does my posture say to my friends, family, and social and professional relationships?”

Take this intentionally exaggerated, short and simple visualization exercise.  Please don’t visualize someone you know.

* Imagine a man or woman walking down the street, shoulders hunched forward and head facing the ground. Whatever this person’s stride, what does their posture make you think about them? Do you instantly feel attracted to this person? Would you feel like striking up a conversation? How do you feel about this person? Is this how you want people to think and feel about you?
* Now imagine now a person with a straight yet flexible back, shoulders relaxed and held backward, head held up, looking towards the horizon. Can you even imagine this person dragging his feet?  Do you instantly feel attracted to this person? Would you feel like striking up a conversation? How do you feel about this person? Is this how you want people to think and feel about you?

This short exercise is a good example the power of para verbal communication. Take a look at your own posture, what does it say about you? Maybe you don’t even know what your posture looks like. If so, ask your friends to take a look at your posture, head positioning, shoulders, and back. Are your hips leveled? If you feel that your posture is something you want to work on, then ask your chiropractor for advice. Postural corrective care is a huge tool for prevention and personal development!

Posture can say something about you that doesn’t match what you want to transmit to the world, or your self-image. And it’s even more insinuous than this! Indeed, according to your posture, certain emotions and thoughts are facilitated. You unconsciously prepare your body and mind to increase the negative impact of your environment over you and decrease its positive impact. All the while increasing stress, anxiety, fear, irritability, and so on.

You have the power to self-sabotage yourself psychologically or to reinforce your mind. The choice is yours!

There are several known or hypothesized causes of scoliosis. There appears to be a genetic predisposition to this condition.  Moreover, child postural imbalance and intense, prolonged or chronic physical stresses (such as crossing one foot under the opposite thigh while writing, crossing your legs, heavy school bags, etc.) are also causes)

Whatever the cause, scoliosis rarely gets worse after the end of body ossification which is around 21 years old. If scoliosis is diagnosed, I would recommend taking your child to a chiropractor as soon as you can so that we can benefit from your child’s body malleability to get more results from this non-fully ossified body.

Depending on the situation, the objective of the treatment plan may be to improve the scoliosis, stop it’s worsening or slow the worsening down. We can’t always deliver miracles, but we’ve always seen results on the vertebral function and, most of the time, on the child’s posture. X-ray improvements aren’t as common, so your objective should be to reach a good functional state, a balanced body state. Patients are usually very satisfied with the results.

If your body presents scoliosis and you are over 21, our objective would be focused on vertebral function, which leads most commonly to a better quality of life.

Although there are sometimes very good surprises, X-rays improvements shouldn’t be expected, but only hoped for.

Scoliosis can, depending on its severity and the body’s functional state, cause nothing (in the best case) or tenderness, pain, spinal stiffness, decreased vertebral function, breathing or cardiac issues, headaches, concentration problems excessive fatigue, irritability, rib deformities.

In the case of scoliosis, it’s recommended to get checked by your chiropractor to determine if you or your child can benefit from a chiropractic treatment plan or not. Please bring all the exams you already passed such as X-rays, MRI and so on, so that your chiropractor receives the maximum, most precise amount of information, in order to deliver the most efficient and personalized care as possible.