The Connection Between Your Posture and Your Overall Health
Chances are, you heard your mother or other adults many times throughout your life reminding you to sit up straight, stand tall, or put your shoulders back. Poor posture can not only be a bad habit, but it can also negatively impact your health in several ways. Dealing with poor posture can be especially difficult for people who work at a desk all day, use their computer or phone frequently, or have back issues. Luckily, there are ways to improve your posture so that you can get your health back on track. Keep reading to learn more about poor posture, how it impacts your health, and what to do if you start feeling the symptoms of TMJ due to poor posture.
What is Poor Posture?
Skeletal muscle is made up of two types of muscle fibre – static (often called ‘slow twitch’) and phasic (often called ‘fast twitch’). Generally, static muscle fibres are found in the deeper muscle layers. They help us to maintain posture with minimal effort and contribute to balance by ‘sensing’ our position and relaying this information to the brain. Phasic muscle fibres are used for movement and activity.
Static fibres burn energy slowly and can keep working for a long time without tiring. However, phasic fibres quickly run out of steam. Poor posture causes muscle fatigue because it calls on the phasic fibres instead of the static fibres to maintain the body’s position.
Symptoms of poor posture can include:
- Rounded shoulders
- Potbelly
- Bent knees when standing or walking
- Head that either leans forward or backward
- Back pain
- Body aches and pains
- Muscle fatigue
- Headache
How Can Poor Posture Impact Your Health?
Having poor posture doesn’t just change your appearance. It can negatively impact your health in several ways. The way your muscles move, sit, and adjust themselves due to poor posture puts the body in an unnatural state for long periods of time. Due to this, there can be several complications that arise. Some of the issues that poor posture can cause include incontinence, digestive issues, chronic pain, and TMJ disorders.
Incontience
Poor posture can cause stress incontinence, which is the type of incontinence that happens when you leak while laughing or coughing. This happens because of the increased abdominal pressure placed on your bladder by slouching over for a long period of time. Poor posture can also cause your pelvic floor to weaken, and it becomes difficult to hold against the added pressure, so if you find yourself in the bathroom pretty often, it might be due to your poor posture.
Digestive Issues
In the same manner that poor posture causes incontinence issues, it can also cause digestive issues. The extra pressure on your abdomen can cause stomach acid to squirt up instead of down, causing major heartburn and slower digestion. Popping a lot of Tums or Pepto? Try sitting or standing up straight for at least 30 minutes after eating a meal, or going for a walk after you eat.
Digestive issues aren’t just an annoying pain. They can cause other serious issues in your body. You will find changes in your bowels, weight loss or weight gain issues, difficulty swallowing, nausea, and much more.
Chronic Pain
Slouching is painful, as the muscles are working in ways that are unnatural to them in order to support the way that you sit or stand. Slouching can cause chronic pain not just in the back but all over the body. It can cause issues with your feet, your neck and shoulders, and even your teeth.
Chronic pain is a slippery slope that can avalanche quickly. You may turn to over-the-counter pain relievers in order to help cope with daily aches and pains. As your body becomes accustomed to those, you may then graduate to prescription-strength pain relievers. Addiction can stem from this, as well as the worsening of your chronic pain.
TMJ Disorders
That’s right; slouching and poor posture can even cause issues with your teeth. The muscles that support the jaw are overworked and tense due to poor posture, which can lead to dental misalignment and, in turn, a TMJ pain disorder. Muscle imbalances spread throughout the body, so even if you have pain down your back or shoulders, it can be pulling and tugging on muscles connected to your jaw.
Some of the symptoms of poor posture-related TMJ include:
- Jaw pain
- Facial pain
- Frequent headaches
- Clicking sounds in the jaw, especially when eating
- Earaches or tinnitus
- Difficulty with chewing, especially large foods such as burgers or apples
- Neck and shoulder pain
Ways to Manage Your Poor Posture
Worried that your poor posture is causing painful health issues in your body? Luckily, there are ways you can manage and even correct your poor posture so that you can improve your overall health.
If you are feeling the effects of your poor posture on your body, you can significantly reduce your risk for these health risks by committing to improving your posture. Some of these methods include core strengthening exercises, setting a reminder on your phone, changing up your workstation, or trying a posture corrector.
Core Strengthening Exercises
A major key to correcting your poor posture is regularly performing stretches and strengthening exercises. The stronger your core, back, neck, and shoulders are, the easier it will be to maintain proper posture. This will require you to commit time to strengthening your body every day.
According to Harvard Health, some essential exercises include shoulder strengtheners such as scapula squeezes (squeezing your shoulder blades together for 30 seconds at a time) and rows (using a resistance band to pull back your elbows like you’re rowing). Core strengtheners include modified planks (in which you hold a push-up position while propped up on your elbows) or simply tightening your abdominal muscles, pulling your navel in toward your spine.
Set a Reminder on Your Phone
Poor posture can be a bad habit that you need to train your body to snap out of. While you’re getting out of the habit, your body will want to naturally return to poor posture in order to be more comfortable. This mindless habit can prolong your healing process and make your symptoms flare up again and again, which can cause anxiety and more pain for you.
A good way around this, and to train your body to sit up or stand up straight, is to set a reminder on your phone to correct your posture. At first, you may need to do this hourly. As time goes on, you can lengthen the time between alarms.
During these reminders to fix your posture, here are things to do:
- Stand with all your weight on the balls of your feet
- Relax your shoulders
- Relax your jaw
- Align your head with your shoulders
- Align your shoulders with your hips
- Roll your shoulders back
Change Your Workstation
If you work at the computer, desk, or your phone for long periods of time, it can be difficult to correct your posture. When sitting for long periods or using a device for long periods, it is very common to slouch throughout the day. A great way to combat this is by changing up your workstation.
- Make sure your chair is adjusted so that your feet rest flat on the floor and your thighs are parallel to the ground
- Ensure your chair and desk are at a height that allows your shoulders to be relaxed
- Make sure your computer’s monitor is right in front of you, not slightly down or slightly up
- Consider investing in a standing desk to give your back, shoulders, and neck a break throughout the day
Try Posture Correctors
Posture correctors are designed to help you sit up straight, stand taller, and stop slouching. While these are helpful throughout the day, especially while working at a desk, they can often be a band-aid solution that doesn’t fix the problem. You may still be required to train your body to sit up straight and stand up straight without posture correctors. They come in many forms, including back braces or shoulder straps to hold your shoulders back.
Understanding TMJ Due to Poor Posture
Wondering if your jaw pain is posture-related? Luckily, if you are able to work on correcting your posture, you are already halfway to feeling better. TMJ pain does not go away overnight, and it actually can get worse over time. It requires treatment in order to fixit for the long term.
Temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) are a group of more than 30 conditions that cause pain and dysfunction in the jaw joint and muscles that control jaw movement. “TMDs” refers to the disorders, and “TMJ” refers only to the temporomandibular joint itself. People have two TMJs; one on each side of the jaw. You can feel them by placing your fingers in front of your ears and opening your mouth.
There are three main classes of TMDs:
- Disorders of the joints, including disc disorders
- Disorders of the muscles used for chewing (masticatory muscles)
- Headaches associated with a TMD
What to Do About Jaw Pain
Tired of feeling pain in your jaw, even if you’ve been working on correcting your posture? TMJ is a complex condition that does not have one simple cookie-cutter cure. Everybody who experiences TMJ disorders can experience it uniquely, which is why it is so important to book a visit with a TMJ specialist in order to not only find relief, but to fix your TMJ for good.
TMJ Help from Gorman Health and Wellness
If you have or had poor posture and are experiencing jaw pain, we can help you.
Dr. Gorman is a part of the breathing wellness movement, which aims to increase awareness and improve treatment for sleep-related airway conditions like sleep apnea. He has partnered with organizations focused on collaborating with dentists to apply the sciences of Craniofacial Epigenetics (the study of cranial modifications caused by gene expression as opposed to genetic code alteration) and Pneumopedics® (the practical application of oral appliance therapy and non-surgical airway remodeling) in the management of sleep apnea.
Together, the application of these sciences allows for the underlying causes of airway obstruction to be treated in 98% of cases, resulting in a high success rate among sleep apnea patients. For every sleep apnea case at our practice, Dr. Gorman will gather patient data and determine the patient’s specific needs based on home sleep test results, dental impressions, CT scans, and images. Our state-of-the-art technology, paired with Dr. Gorman’s experience with sleep disorders, allows him to find the most effective treatment plan for each individual’s particular case, yielding improved daytime and nighttime breathing for the patient.
“I have been helping people suffering from Sleep Apnea with a non-invasive, clinically approved treatment method. This method has allowed my patients to sleep with far fewer events per hour, allowing them to get rid of their CPAP and BiPAP machines. Imagine not having to use one of those machines, getting back a much greater quality of life along with the benefits of being able to breathe better.” – Dr. Gorman.
For more information on Dr. Gorman and getting help for your jaw pain, contact us today.
