Consequences of postural neglect
Some people who habitually adopt poor posture remain unaware that their posture is causing their back pain. These people experience back pain throughout their lifetime simply because they do not have the information needed to correct the postural faults.
When pains stemming from bad posture are first felt, they are easily eliminated if one merely corrects his or her posture. But if time passes and posture is not corrected, the habitual poor posture causes changes in structure and shape of the joints. As a result, excessive wear occurs in the joints and the joints age prematurely. As a further consequence, the effects of poor posture can be just as severe and just as harmful as the effects of an injury.
Those of us who permit poor posture to persist throughout our lifetimes become bent and stooped as the aging process develops. If we are in this situation, and we are called upon to straighten and stand erect, we cannot do so, much as we might
like to. For many of us in this situation, if we are asked to turn the head, we cannot do this either. Our mobility is now so impaired that we appear to others to be old, because we exhibit the postures and mobility problems of the elderly.
Stooped posture and restrictions in mobility are the visible effects of poor posture that has become habitual. But there are also secondary consequences to the organs that may be even more severe, invisible as they are to others. As the back becomes bent, the lungs may become constricted, and as a result our breathing may be affected. The stomach and other internal organs may be deprived of their correct support and may function less effectively than otherwise would be the case.
The typical person believes that the bent, stooped posture seen in so many of our older friends and relatives is an inevitable consequence of aging. This is not the case. And I believe the time to commence preventive action is now. If only once a day we stand fully erect and bend fully backward, we need never lose the ability to perform those actions and therefore we need never become bent, stooped, and impaired in how we look and in how our bodies function internally.
