Your mom was right about the importance of good posture.
Remember how your mom admonished you to sit or stand up straight and reminded you that slouching isn’t good for your health? Well, she was right.
If you’re like most people, it becomes second nature to walk around with bad posture or sit hunched over at a desk, and many people don’t even realize they’re doing it.
Good posture is crucial to prevent common long-term problems of muscle and joint pain.
“The human body functions optimally when all individual muscles and joints are in proper alignment, including the spine. With years of poor posture, muscles start to fatigue due to overuse, and the joints they move also become progressively dysfunctional and can start showing signs of wear and tear, such as early arthritis,” says Dr. Shashank J. Davé, a physiatrist at Indiana University Health and associate professor of clinical physical medicine and rehabilitation at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.
If this progresses, it can actually change the architecture of the bone, leading to deformities and even worsening posture. An example of this is hyperkyphosis, also known as the “hunchback” or “dowager’s hump,” which is excessive forward curvature of the thoracic spine.
Many people do not realize that maintaining a good posture can ward off many other health issues that affect people in everyday life, adds Michael Urban, senior lecturer and program director of the doctor of occupational therapy program at the University of New Haven.
“Many of my cases I have seen for pain and even increased fatigue can be attributed to our daily posturing,” Urban says. “Continued joint motion through a poor posture can cause physical changes through an arthritic joint, leading to a loss of functioning and increase in pain with your daily activities.”
When you slouch, while sitting or standing, your joints aren’t optimally aligned, which increases strain on your body.
Here are 14 ways poor posture can affect your health:
1. Arthritis exacerbation
Poor posture can lead to malalignment of your spine, pelvis and knees. This can increase stress on your knees, which can be particularly detrimental if you suffer from arthritis of the knees, says Dr. Chris Wolf, a sports medicine and regenerative orthopedic specialist at Bluetail Medical Group in Chesterfield, Missouri.
“Over time, that malalignment can worsen the effects of arthritis by putting pressure on one part of the joint and causing pain,” Wolf says. “The pain can decrease your overall function and quality of life.”
2. Breathing efficacy
Poor posture can compromise your ability to breathe optimally, Davé says. That’s because your lungs rely not only on your diaphragm, but also many accessory muscles for breathing that act on the rib cage and enable your chest to expand and contract, inhaling oxygen and exhaling waste products such as carbon dioxide.
These muscles are located between your ribs and in the neck and thorax. They rely on proper posture and correct alignment of the spine and shoulders in order to maintain full and complete ventilation.
“Poor posture can lead to shallower breaths, causing reduced ventilation and especially reduced oxygen,” Davé explains. “Maintaining correct posture helps to optimize lung function.”
Full, deep breaths help promote a healthy brain, heart and other vital organs.
3. Circulation problems
Maintaining good circulation throughout your body is essential for overall health and well-being. Proper circulation increases your body’s energy level, ensures that your muscles and organs receive sufficient nutrients and oxygen as well as stabilizes your core temperature.
Poor posture can contribute to an array of circulation problems, including:
“Sitting for long periods contributes to poor circulation, putting pressure on the pelvis and other vital organs like the bladder and prostate,” says Isa Herrera, a pelvic floor physical therapist in Miami. “Poor posture can cause pain in the lower back and trigger points in the muscles of the spine, gluteal muscles and even the leg region.”
Therefore, if your job requires you to sit for long periods of time, it’s important to sit up straight, avoid slouching and get up to move your body throughout the day.
4. Constipation
Constipation is one of the most common gastrointestinal problems associated with poor posture, Herrera says.
Slouching or hunching forward when sitting puts a lot of strain and tension on your pelvic floor muscles, which are essential for regulating bowel movements. Therefore, when these muscles are tense or under pressure, it can lead to constipation, problems with digestion and pain during defecation, according to health experts.
In addition, poor posture can weaken abdominal muscles, which can also contribute to bowel disruptions.
“This weakening of the abdominals can cause your intestines to be squeezed together, leading to a blockage of food and waste, resulting in constipation,” Herrera says.
5. Dizziness
The cervical spine is responsible for allowing mobility and stability to the head and neck. But when people slouch with their head leaning forward, it puts the spine out of alignment, potentially causing neck pain and cervical vertigo, also referred to as cervicogenic dizziness.
That’s because any deviation to the center of gravity of the head results in an increase in cantilever loads, which can be particularly damaging to the upper cervical joints, explains Dr. Medhat Mikhael, a pain management specialist and medical director of the Spine Health Center at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California.
The muscles and joints in your neck contain small receptors that send signals to the brain, eyes and inner ear, which orient where the head is in relation to the remainder of the body. This is known as the vestibular apparatus, which is part of a larger system that controls your general balance and muscle coordination, Mikhael explains. If any part of this complex system is out of whack, the wrong information is sent to the brain, leading to sensory confusion and dizziness.
A head or neck injury that causes major whiplash can also disrupt your proper head and neck alignment, Mikhael notes.
6. Elbow and finger pain
Trigger points refers to micro-spasms of muscles. Trigger points can occur in the neck, chest and upper back muscles in people who have poor posture.
When these micro-spasms develop, they can cause pain in those muscles or transfer pain to the fingers, elbows or wrists. Many times, trigger point pain can be confused for tennis elbow, carpal tunnel and even nerve injuries, Herrera says.
To confirm you are experiencing trigger point pain, she suggests pressing the painful area with a finger and contracting the muscle you are applying pressure to. If the pain worsens, you are most likely on a trigger point.
Maintaining good posture can help you avoid the pain and micro-spasms associated with these trigger points.
7. Fatigue
When you have poor posture, your body fights against its natural movement and spinal alignment and forces your muscles to work harder, which causes fatigue. It also puts your joints and ligaments under additional strain, which contributes to joint pain and muscle strain.
“At first, maintaining good posture can be exhausting, as it takes extra effort to keep your body in the correct position,” Herrera says. “Once you retrain yourself, it takes less effort to maintain excellent posture, which will help prevent fatigue and reduce the risk of joint pain and muscle strain.”
To ensure good posture when sitting, make sure your chin is parallel to the floor and your chest is lifted so you avoid sacral sitting, in which your pelvis is tucked under your body. Then, draw your shoulder blades back and down, and keep your back straight.
If you spend a lot of time sitting during your work day, you may want to consider investing in an ergonomic chair to help support your back.
8. Headaches
Bad posture can compromise the natural curvature of the spine and cause or exacerbate tight neck muscles, which can send pain up to your head and cause headache.
A meta-analysis published in 2019 in the journal Current Reviews in Musculoskeletal Medicine found that adults with neck pain show increased forward head posture in comparison to asymptomatic adults.
Poor posture can also contribute to inflammation in the neck, which is associated with headaches. Maintaining good posture can help lower the risk of headaches associated with neck muscles that are too tight.
9. Heartburn
A slouched posture reduces the normal space for your digestive organs and contributes to heartburn by putting extra pressure on the stomach and the lower esophageal sphincter, which is the valve that separates the stomach from the esophagus.
“When you slouch or hunch over while eating, excessive pressure on your stomach can force the stomach acid to go in the wrong direction, causing heartburn,” Herrera says. “Maintaining an upright and seated position during and after meals can alleviate heartburn symptoms. However, numerous Americans exhibit postural distortion patterns that cause them to adopt a hunched or forward-leaning posture while eating and afterward.”
In addition, poor posture can affect the digestive system’s ability to work efficiently. This makes it harder for food to move easily through the digestive tract and, therefore, contributes to heartburn, Herrera says.
10. Incontinence
Poor posture can contribute to a weakened pelvic floor, which can lead to bladder leaking and urinary incontinence.
“When we sit and stand with poor posture, it puts additional pressure on the pelvic floor muscles,” Herrera says. “Over time, this can lead to weakened pelvic floor muscles, making it difficult to control the bladder and resulting in leaking or incontinence.”
Poor posture can also cause misalignment of the spine and hips, further exacerbating pelvic floor weakness and incontinence.
11. Jaw pain
Poor posture can lead to temporomandibular joint disorder, also known as TMJ, for short. As poor posture misaligns the spine, it can also cause an improper bite pattern, which affects your temporomandibular joints — the two joints that connect your jawbone to the temporal bones of your skull.
“These joints function similarly to a hinge, allowing you to open and close your mouth,” says Anne Bierman, a physical therapist with Athletico Physical Therapy in the Chicago area. She manages Athletico’s clinical programs, specialty techniques and residency programs. “Poor posture in the neck and shoulders or forward head posture can cause these delicately balanced joints to become misaligned. When the jaw joints are misaligned, they’re more likely to pop, lock, cramp or even go into spasms, resulting in jaw pain and difficulty chewing.”
12. Mood
Bad posture can negatively affect your mood in multiple ways. It’s been associated with low self-confidence and depression, as well as fatigue and irritability due to the unnecessary strain slouching puts on your back and neck.
“When you sit up straight, you are more likely to feel confident and in control,” Herrera says.
In fact, studies have shown that a slumped or stooped posture is one of the traits of psychomotor retardation, a condition characterized by slowed cognitive and physical function and is a key feature of major depressive disorder.
In a 2017 preliminary study published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, researchers found that good posture may increase positive affect and reduce fatigue and self-focus in people with mild-to-moderate depression. The study provided evidence that upright posture is associated with high-frequency brain activity — beta and gamma waves — in comparison to slouched posture. The magnitude of beta waves depends on the interaction between posture (upright or slouched) and the recall of positive or negative events. Recalling happy events, researchers concluded, takes longer and is more difficult to do when individuals are in a slouched posture than when they are in an upright posture. This suggests that slumped body posture can inhibit access to positive thoughts and, therefore, affect mood.
13. Sexual dysfunction
Having poor posture while sitting can adversely affect your sexual function.
Sacral sitting, also referred to as rounded lower back sitting or slumped sitting, can be worse than other postures, Herrera explains.
“Sacral sitting can profoundly affect men’s and women’s sexual function because this posture shortens and tightens the pelvic floor muscles, which are our primary sexual muscles,” she adds.
This can lead to weaker ejaculations and an inability to last long during sex in men, as well as weak orgasms in women.
14. Shoulder and back pain
Bad posture is one of the top causes of chronic back pain. This is because the spine has three natural curves: a forward curve at the neck, a backward curve at the upper back and a forward curve at the lower back. Good posture means the spine is aligned straight over the pelvis, which helps maintain these natural curves.
On the flip side, a hunched posture can pull the muscles and add additional stress to certain areas. As a result, the upper back muscles will become overly developed, forcing the lower back and core muscles to strain as they work double-time to keep you balanced.
Slouching, hunching, sliding down when seated and other seemingly harmless positions can create major pressure on the discs in your spine, which can cause discogenic back pain, a type of lower back pain. Maintaining good posture can help you avoid discomfort and pain in your back.
14 ways poor posture can harm your health:
— Arthritis exacerbation.
— Breathing efficacy.
— Circulation problems.
— Constipation.
— Dizziness.
— Elbow and finger pain.
— Fatigue.
— Headaches.
— Heartburn.
— Incontinence.
— Jaw pain.
— Mood.
— Sexual dysfunction.
— Shoulder and back pain.
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How Poor Posture Can Harm Your Health originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 05/31/23: This story was previously published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
