The most common thing I see in the clinic is forward head posture, this is when the head is in a forward position.
The most common cause of this is bad posture when sitting on the computer, or on devices, have you ever caught yourself with bad posture when you are on your phone?
Sometimes we even see rounding of the shoulders which causes more strain on your back and spine.
With this bad posture comes a lot of different problems and symptoms people may experience.
We see people with a lot of neck pain, headaches, trap pain and shoulder pain because of their forward head posture.
In some severe cases people may experience numbness and pins and needles running down their arms and fingers.
Now the main reason why forward head posture can affect people so much is because the average head weighs 5 to 6 kg and when that head moves forward greater than 10 mm it loads the muscles and the soft tissues around the back of the neck significantly. The greater the forward head posture the greater the load and the bigger the problem
Common thing I see with this pain is that a lot of people reach for the pain medication or muscles relaxants but this is only treating the symptoms of your neck problem and not fixing it.
So instead of just masking the pain, what can you do to actually fix the problem?
I even see people getting Massage to help with the neck and shoulder pain however think about this if your head is forward and you loosen the muscles your head will get further forward. Can you see how that’s not fixing the problem
First thing I recommend you do is get your neck problem diagnosed,
Chiropractors are the best people to see for this condition
this may require and examination and X-rays to look at the alignment of your cervical spine and see what’s going on beneath the surface. Because you may have another contition called cervical kyphosis…. But that’s a topic for another day
After you have a diagnosis you and your chiropractor can start a treatment plan, here at Robina Chiropractic Wellness we use manual adjustments and are the only practice on the coast that uses traction
Or Chiropractic Biophysics
to correct the alignment of your neck and correct the curve in your neck.
By doing this, your other symptoms may go away.
One of my patients came to me for shoulder pain and after looking at her X-rays we noticed she actually had forward head posture and once we started treating that, she no longer has a shoulder problem/pain.
Lastly we have this great posture app that we can assist you with if you would like to know if you have forehead posture or other postural problems