There’s little question measuring posture can be a helpful assessment tool, but what can bad posture tell you about your child’s future health?

THE MASTER CONTROL SYSTEM

The spine is the central protective casing for the delicate and vital communication system within the human frame. This makes its structure and function paramount to the health of the body in general.

Your Neuro-Structural System (spine and nervous system) makes up the primary input-output pathways for information to and from the brain, coordinate complex movements, as well as play a unique role in the health of your brain.

Damaging one’s posture can come from many individual sources, but more likely, it’s a combination of many or all of these potential factors ranging from child birth, car seats, back packs, sitting, injuries, inactivity and chronic stress just to highlight a few.

HOW DOES BAD POSTURE AFFECT CHILDREN?

While we recognize the fact that bad posture will affect us as we age, most overlook its origin and the opportunity to correct it long before it becomes a major source of dysfunction and increasingly difficult to alter.

Here are some of the outcomes bad posture in your children today could lead to in their future.

1. ABNORMAL BONE GROWTH

Wolff’s Law states that bone in a healthy person will adapt to the loads under which it is placed. Simply put, abnormal postural stress and current loads will alter bone development.

This is one of the reasons a postural problem now could easily become a structural problem in the future and with that, become far more challenging to correct.

One study of 154 10 year olds showed 9% were already demonstrating disc degeneration in within their developing spines.

Osteoporosis and arthritis aren’t conditions a child should need to worry about but with excessive spinal stress and the high level of youth inactivity…it’s starting to be the case.

2. MENTAL HEALTH

In a 2015 study from Health Psychology, researchers noted participants with poor posture were more fearful, hostile, nervous, quiet, still, passive, dull, sleepy, and sluggish.

A survey published in 2012 in the journal Biofeedback indicated there was a link between posture and mental health, particularly mood, anxiety, and stress.

Whether it’s the chicken or the egg, posture seems to influence how feel about ourselves, how we handle our stress and how happy we ultimately are.

3. LUNG FUNCTION & LIFE SPAN

Uncorrected postural problems can play a role in age-related postural issues such as dowager’s hump and excessive kyphosis.

The long-term effects of these conditions may include reduced pulmonary function and even a reduction in life span!

4. HORMONES

In a Ted Talk well worth watching, researcher Amy Cuddy explains how changes in our position affect us at the deepest levels including our hormones. Altering our posture dramatically impacted both testosterone and cortisol, two key hormones in controlling our long term health.

The long-term implications of excessive cortisol production alone are dramatic…destruction of healthy muscle and bone, slowing down healing and normal cell regeneration, impairment of digestion, metabolism, and mental function, interference with healthy endocrine function, and a weakening of your immune system.

Dr. Steven Gall has been offering exceptional chiropractic care to infants, children and adults for over 25 years. He has spent his life learning, and improving his knowledge, skills and ability to provide his care. As a public speaker and health coach he strives to assist people in seeing and attaining a life of extraordinary health. Contact the office to join others who have started the same journey.

The kids are screaming, you’ve had less than 4 hours of sleep, your work deadline is approaching fast and you haven’t had time for yourself in weeks! To add insult to injury, now you have a raging headache blasting away at your skull like a jackhammer…how are you going to make it through the day?

It’s time to pull the trigger on your pre-set plan to stop this headache dead in its tracks and get back to feeling human again. You need the Headache Survival Guide!

WHAT IS A HEADACHE?

Headaches are one of the MOST common types of pain experienced by the population with 90% experiencing a headache at some point in their lives, 13% in the past year, and 3% suffering from chronic and debilitating headaches.

A headache is defined as pain arising from the structures and tissues that surround the upper neck, brain, and skull.

Types of headaches include migraines, cluster, tension, and 14 other classifications, while the pain can be throbbing, sharp, dull, aching, constant, intense, or mild.

Regardless of type or character, one thing remains true… HEADACHES SUCK!

YOUR HEADACHE SURVIVAL GUIDE

Here are five things you can start doing right away to reduce your headache pain and stop the suffering. Let the healing begin!

Drink Water

This sounds too good to be true. “I can get rid of this throbbing headache by just drinking some water?”

Yes.

In fact, one CBS news report claims up to 75% of the American population could be chronically dehydrated.

When you experience a loss of fluid, the brain itself can shrink and pull away from the skull causing irritation to the structures and pain in your head.

Once re-hydrated, the brain returns to normal and the headache disappears.

Take a Nap

In addition to all of the other benefits of napping, like more energy, better moods, and enhanced memory, participants in some studies have noted that going to sleep was the MOST effective strategy for reducing or resolving a headache.

Get Your Spine Checked

A cerviocogenic headache is characterized by pain perceived in the head but from a source in the tissues of the neck. Those sources could include the discs, ligaments, soft tissues, and blood vessels.

Distortion in the spinal column can exist for years affecting all of these components without presenting any symptoms…much like a cavity can deteriorate a tooth without causing pain.

The best way to determine if a structural problem could be contributing to your headaches is via a detailed analysis by a Life By Design Chiropractor.

Break a Sweat

It’s a common myth that you shouldn’t exercise when you have a headache.

Truthfully, I think it gets perpetuated as more of an excuse than anything else as running around and lifting weights are probably not high on the list when you feel like garbage.

However, if you can muster up the will power, exercise releases endorphins which are the body’s natural painkillers. They can help you reduce the severity of most headaches and impact the frequency of your future episodes.

Eat Well

It’s not new to attempt to reduce headaches by removing food “triggers”, however, it makes more sense to approach nutrition with respect to headaches from a different perspective.

Eating By Design naturally leads to a lower inflammatory response which means less irritation in the brain and an increased capacity for the body to self-repair.

HOW TO GET STARTED

Start with any or all of these five steps as a guide to survive your headaches and better yet, maybe even get rid of them for good.

Dr. Steven Gall has been offering exceptional chiropractic care to infants, children and adults for over 25 years. He has spent his life learning, and improving his knowledge, skills and ability to provide his care. As a public speaker and health coach he strives to assist people in seeing and attaining a life of extraordinary health. Contact the office to join others who have started the same journey.

As if there wasn’t enough to worry about during pregnancy, experiencing back pain can feel like adding insult to injury. If you’re a mom searching for quality information, solutions, and would love to avoid wasting time sifting through miracle cures and magic bullets, these guidelines will give you everything you need to know about low back pain during pregnancy.

What does the data tell us about low back pain during pregnancy?

Dr. Steven Gall has been offering exceptional chiropractic care to infants, children and adults for over 25 years. He has spent his life learning, and improving his knowledge, skills and ability to provide his care. As a public speaker and health coach he strives to assist people in seeing and attaining a life of extraordinary health. Contact the office to join others who have started the same journey.

Here it comes… the pressure over your left eye, the blurred vision, the feeling like there is a vice squeezing your head and now the throbbing pain has you searching for somewhere to hide.

You are getting another headache.

Luckily this time it’s just a “normal” headache… the kind you seem to get ONLY a couple times a week. That’s so much better than one of those nasty migraine headaches that debilitate you every month!

Of course, they always seem to appear when you have a million things to do and they make every single task exponentially more difficult to complete.

So now comes the most important question:

What are you going to do about it?

Dr. Steven Gall has been offering exceptional chiropractic care to infants, children and adults for over 25 years. He has spent his life learning, and improving his knowledge, skills and ability to provide his care. As a public speaker and health coach he strives to assist people in seeing and attaining a life of extraordinary health. Contact the office to join others who have started the same journey.