After a long day of work and hours of sitting at your desktop, it’s common to feel pain in your back. If you have back pain, you may feel like it’s a never-ending battle. While several reasons could lead to back pain, bad posture is one of the most.
Muscles and joints of the human body are interlinked so that they work better when you sit in proper posture. Understanding the relationship between good posture and back pain can be a massive help in understanding why your body hurts so much in the first place.
- Good Posture and Its Key Characteristics
Proper posture is crucial for your body. It helps keep your spine in the appropriate alignment, removes pressure from your joints, muscles, and bones, and increases blood circulation. But what is good posture?
Good posture refers to a position of the body where the head is directly over the shoulders, the back is straight, and all four corners of your feet are on the ground. When you sit correctly, you should have this unnatural curve on the lower back, which places more pressure on the abdomen and glutes. Some key features of good posture include:
- Standing to display maximum height
- The exact distance between feet and shoulders
- Shoulders pulled to the back
- Knees completely unlocked
- Arms left naturally hanging
- The Problem With Bad Posture
Bad posture can result in several issues; usually, the body parts locked in place as you sit for long hours tend to suffer the most. In this case, your neck and back muscles get overused, eventually leading to muscle strain, gradually weakening the back and making it more prone to injuries.
Furthermore, if you are suffering from back pain or any physical discomfort in any other part of your body, you should identify whether you are sitting in the correct posture. Reducing stress factors could be the solution to your posture problems. If you can’t reduce stress naturally through exercise, then you can consult professionals at QC Kinetix (Maplewood).
- How Does Good Posture Reduce Back Pain?
When you have back pain, it means your body has a problem putting the right amount of pressure in the right places at the right time of the day. The spine is a complex network of bones in which almost every joint is impacted. Since it’s soft and moves with our body, some areas (especially vertebrae) can be strained or injured too often.
Your upper body will be naturally tilted backward if you stand straight up. In good posture, your upper body naturally leans slightly forward as well. This helps your spine to stay in the correct alignment, reduces unnecessary pressure on joints, and allows for more blood circulation in muscles and tendons.
When you sit in an improper position, your body might not feel comfortable in any way. However, you can always work on your posture to overcome pain and increase your output at work. In this case, it needs continuous muscle strain and tissues to distribute weight evenly across different areas of lower limbs.
