Improving Posture in Missouri City, TX

Comprehensive Consultation and Exam

Better posture starts with a consultation with an expert corrective chiropractor. You’ll discuss your health history, what’s going on with your body, and the health goals you want to achieve. The physical exam will include a postural assessment and range of motion analysis. We’ll take imaging of your spine to analyze the degree of postural distortion to the millimeter and create a customized plan of action to correct your posture and help you reach your goals.

As with all health problems, if you only treat the symptom but don’t address the root cause of the problem, even if you feel a little bit better, the problem will remain. The longer the issue stays in the body, the greater the likelihood it will progress, causing more discomfort, dysfunction, suffering, and inconvenience in your life. This results in more extensive treatment requirements, increasing the time and money you must sacrifice. Neglecting an issue risks the condition becoming uncorrectable, similar to a cavity.

Digital X-rays

Postural assessments without X-rays aren’t impossible but only result in an estimate based on certain external anatomical landmarks. A picture is worth a thousand words. X-rays take a detailed deep dive inside every part of your skeletal anatomy – the alignment of your joints, spinal column, hips, sacrum, and other joints that may be affected. They tell us exactly where the problem’s root causes are, how long the problem has existed, and which other body parts may be directly or indirectly affected.

X-rays help us create a customized and effective treatment protocol to correct the root causes of your specific problems and get your long-lasting results much faster. Thanks to modern technology, X-rays have minimal exposure to dangerous radiation and are generally very safe.

Specific Chiropractic Care in Missouri City, TX

Subluxation refers to any spinal column segment that is misaligned or unable to move through its full range of motion. Fixated joints and abnormal alignment increase stress and wear and tear on the joints, disc degeneration, and nerve compression. Your intricate nerve system controls every cell, organ, muscle, tissue, and function in your body. Compression and irritation of your nerves have several health consequences. Whatever the irritated or compressed nerve is responsible for will be affected and not perform at its best. Subluxation can also cause muscle weakness or muscle spasms as they work to compensate for the imbalanced structure created by a misaligned spine.

Subluxation can affect posture in several ways:

• Forward head posture or tech neck
• Uneven shoulders
• Torso curvatures
• Uneven hips
• Imbalanced pelvis
• Distorted gait

Corrective chiropractic care is designed to analyze areas of poor posture and reverse engineer the process through specific, gentle chiropractic adjustments. Realigning the spine’s structure, along with stabilization and rehabilitation exercises, restores stability and balance to maintain lasting improvements to your posture.

Custom Therapeutic Exercise Plan

Corrective adjustments work to reduce spinal distortions and poor posture, while a customized rehabilitative exercise plan retrains muscles to stabilize and solidify the changes. In the long run, chiropractic adjustments are not as effective without these types of exercises. This differentiates us from other clinics. We take a holistic approach, addressing your complete musculoskeletal system so that you can see sustained results.

Your muscles require a balance of tone and stability to maintain normal alignment of your spine. When certain muscles become weak, deconditioned, or neurologically inhibited from contraction, they can’t do their job correctly. The spine becomes unstable, leading to spinal distortions. Similarly, tight or spastic muscles can pull the spinal column out of its normal alignment and create discomfort and wear and tear on the spine and surrounding tissues.

These rehabilitative exercises aim to relax tight, overspastic muscles and strengthen and reactivate weak muscles so they can balance your musculoskeletal system and stabilize your spine and pelvis.

These exercises are especially important due to increased sitting in our modern society. While the work-from-home lifestyle may benefit some, it doesn’t come without hazards. If you’re working from home, you’re most likely sitting for most of the day. And that might not even be at a desk. Couches, kitchen tables, and even beds have replaced the traditional workstation. These are not the best ergonomic setups, leading to distorted positions and significantly increased joint wear and tear. This is why a holistic corrective care approach is critical to restoring posture.

Sedentary Lifestyle

While it may seem harmless, a sedentary lifestyle increases your risk of almost every major disease, including:

• Mental health problems like depression
• Fatigue
• Decreased energy levels
• Sleep problems
• Increased risk of cancer and metabolic diseases like diabetes, hypertension,
  blood pressure, and cholesterol issues
• Musculoskeletal disorders
• Pain
• Osteoporosis
• Arthritis
• Cognitive and brain impairment

For those with desk jobs, investing in a standing desk or scheduling regular breaks to get up, stretch, and move around are excellent ways to combat the adverse effects of sitting. Daily exercise helps maintain your body’s mobility by allowing your joints to move through their full ranges of motion.

While sitting in a chair, it is critical to scoot your hips and pelvis back as far as you can, touching the back of your chair so your torso remains in line with your ears over your shoulder and your shoulders over the pelvis. Anytime one of those three body parts becomes out of line with the other two, you create a stress point somewhere in your hips, spine, or neck.

One of the most common things people do at a desk is slide their pelvis, even just a few inches in front of the back of the chair, allowing their spine to roll backward against the back of the chair in a distorted posture. This will accentuate how much their head shifts forward in front of their shoulders.

Stress

We experience different kinds of stressors throughout our day.

Physical – repetitive actions, bad habits, traumas
Emotional – relationships, money, jobs
Chemical – poor diet, medication side effects, household and cleaning products

All of these stressors can interfere with numerous metabolic and physiological processes.

Various physical stressors can affect your spinal alignment.
1. The All At Once Things

• These are single events where an injury seems obvious
• Falling off a ladder
• Slipping down the stairs
• Car accident
• Sports injury
• Work injury
• Improperly lifting a couch

These are single events you can trace your poor posture back to. These events can misalign your spine, and even though symptoms may subside, the unaddressed misalignment accumulates more distortions over time.

2. Repetitive Actions

• Workout routines
• Desk jobs
• Sleeping positions
• Technology use
• Too much sitting

The sustained distortion that results creates wear and tear every day, accelerating poor posture.

There are natural stress management techniques that can help address all three of the potential stressors.

• Restful sleep
• Deep breathing
• Work breaks
• Exercise
• Spending time in nature
• Hobbies
• Connecting with family and friends
• A healthy diet
• Listening to music
• Taking a walk
• Avoiding caffeine and alcohol
• Volunteering
• Yoga and meditation
• Massage

Chiropractic care is also an excellent natural stress management technique. It can reduce a common cause of stress—pain—and chiropractic adjustments regulate your nervous system and the production of hormones like endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine while reducing the impact of cortisol.

Muscle Weakness

Old injuries or unrehabilitated surgeries can cause muscle weakness. It can result from a sedentary job or lifestyle, being inactive, and not getting enough exercise. Muscle weakness also occurs from spinal subluxation. A misaligned spine weakens the nerves powering your muscles, inhibiting them from contracting. In severe cases, this neurological inhibition can cause wasting, muscle atrophy, and shrinking of the muscle mass. Weak stabilizing muscles increase the likelihood of poor posture patterns.

While adults with desk jobs or elderly people who become inactive are at risk for muscle weakness, kids are most at risk now more than ever. It seems like everything they do is on a phone, tablet, or computer, from hobbies to social media and even school. Not only is heightened screen time unhealthy for their developing brains, but it is also detrimental to their posture and developing spine and nervous system, affecting their overall health in numerous ways.

The best approach to combating this is staying active, regularly exercising, eating a healthy diet, and receiving regular corrective chiropractic care. Consulting with an expert chiropractor who can identify risk areas in your posture and muscle tone and design a program with proactive corrective solutions will help you maintain healthy alignment and posture throughout your lifetime.

Scoliosis

Scoliosis is a global spinal distortion often resulting in abnormal lateral spinal curvatures, most prevalent during adolescence. Scoliosis is a progressive condition that will continue into adulthood if not effectively managed. Scoliosis causes musculoskeletal imbalances, resulting in pain, muscle tension and imbalances, and decreased range of motion. Musculoskeletal imbalances interfere with nerve signals, resulting in pain, numbness and tingling, and organ dysfunction, while spinal distortion increases the risk of injury, premature joint degeneration, and other disc injuries.

Less than 5% of chiropractors train in corrective techniques designed to stabilize and reduce spinal curvatures, such as scoliosis. Although not always correctable, corrective chiropractic care can stabilize the spine and reduce abnormal curvature, improving a patient’s spinal health, reducing the risk of injury and future complications, and allowing them to live a more vibrant life.

Early scoliosis detection is critical. Although it’s not always correctable, corrective chiropractic care can stabilize the spine and reduce abnormal curvature, improving a patient’s spinal health, reducing the risk of injury and future complications, and allowing them to live a more vibrant life.