You Need a Posture Routine — Here’s Why

Dr. Matt, MBBS BSc
6 min readJul 20, 2019
Image by Darwin Laganzon from Pixabay

Many of us work at computers. You might be at one right now. An unfortunate byproduct of working at a computer is the inevitable slouching posture.

Our modern lifestyles, spending hours slouching over a computer, are having serious impacts on our health. We are seeing an increasing number of young patients attending their doctors suffering from back pain — unfortunately, I must include myself in that number. Here I want to discuss why we are seeing this trend and how I turned my situation around using a simple postural improvement program.

The effects of bad posture

The amount of time we spend in the sitting position has increased over of last few decades. This appears to be correlated with the increased ownership of computers and other screen based activities, e.g. watching TV. In 1997 the average amount of time spent in front of a monitor was 5.9 hours. By 2013, this had increased to a whopping 14.6 hours. There is a long list of the reported negative effects of bad posture, but I will summarise a few here.

  • Excessive neck bending, as occurs when sitting in front of a monitor, causes upper cross syndrome, characterised by a weakening of the neck muscles resulting in neck pain. This can also result in reduced range of motion within your shoulder girdle as well as referred pain to your arms.
  • A slumped posture eliminates the correct curvature of the spine and increases pressure on the intervertebral discs. This can result in disc herniation, which can press on spinal nerves and cause substantial pain.
  • The slump position is linked with low activity within your transversalis muscle (more on that later). This position can have a negative effect on your respiratory function by reducing the movement of your diaphragm, making you rely on your accessory muscles for adequate respiration.
  • The slump position is often the result of a loss of your lumbar lordosis (the curvature to the lumbar region of your spine). Interestingly, it has been shown that this position can have a severe impact on the range of movement of your shoulder girdle.
  • Back pain is one of most common reasons for taking opioid analgesia. These analgesics are highly addictive and it can take as little as 2…

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Dr. Matt, MBBS BSc

Medical Doctor | Medical Technology | Neurology | Published Researcher | While I have your attention, you may as well scroll down.