We call the cervical spine the curve of life, because it’s so critically important to how we feel and function physically and physiologically. It’s important for overall health because all the nerves in your neck control and innervate so many body functions.
The top two nerves that come out of the top two cervical bones, C1, C2, go back into your head. They control eye, ear, nose, and throat function. The mid cervicals are involved in innervating both the thyroid and the diaphragm. The thyroid plays a role in our sleep, mood, energy levels, metabolism and breathing function. The lower cervicals innervate your extremities.
In your cervical spine, the top bone should be on top of your bottom bone, and we should have a negative 42-degree curve within the neck. This is designed so when you’re upright, gravitational forces are in play. The weight of your head is carried in the back of the curve, where it should be, on all the extra bone. This in turn keeps pressure off the disc and pressure off the nerves.
When we have poor alignment and poor posture and we create stress within the cervical spine, we’re going to be dealing with symptoms such as headaches, migraines, neck pain, upper back pain. We can also start seeing changes in those important functions, our sleep cycle is not great, our energy level is low, we feel fatigue or irritability, we have the inability to gain/lose weight, and experience low libido. It’s all due to the stress that is coming from the cervical spine due to lack of alignment, which is then playing a role in dysfunction within that nervous system, both sensory and asensory.
If you’re consistently looking down at a tablet or phone, then the weight of your head, which on average weighs around 10 to 12 pounds, pulls you forward. As you start to shift forward it puts you in flexion. The top bone starts to shift in front of that bottom bone, and it starts to creep forwards. We call that anterior head carriage, or forward head posture.
if you’re a corporate athlete and you’re sitting all day, then you have to be absolutely switched on and dialed in regards to your ergonomics. Your ear should be on top of your shoulder. Look in the mirror and if you see that head starting to drift forwards, that’s a sign of your posture and your cervical spine posture changing. If you see those shoulders start to round in, and you’re getting a lot of tension in those trap muscles between the shoulder blades, that’s an indication that we’ve got some misalignments in the cervical spine.
This can create a lot of stress tension in those muscles at the base of your skull, called the suboccipitals, they control head rotation. Symptoms there can be those cervicogenic headaches. And then you’re going to get a lot of tension in the neck muscles and the upper back muscles. And then we develop something called upper crossed syndrome, which is classic corporate America posture, head shifts forward, shoulders round. This can create a lot of impingement in the neck, in the upper back. And this is essentially all coming from just that flexion. Over time, that’s going to create greater effects within the cervical spine. For every inch forward your head shifts, it doubles the weight of your head, which over time could really break down your cervical spine.
So, rule of thumb, whenever you’re in a posture where you’re on your phone, tablet, computer, just make sure you can be able to fit a whole hand between your sternum, so the manubrium, that kind of little divot between your collarbones, and then your chin. That’s the maximum amount of flexion we should be in at any juncture, so that’s driving, traveling, flying, walking, whatever it is. And by doing that, you’re going to limit the amount of flexion which drives that tech neck syndrome.
I would recommend getting your posture where it needs to be and for a chiropractor to perform the treatment algorithm we just discussed. Typical chiropractic treatment in our office starts with taking some x-rays, because that’s literally going to allow us to see exactly what’s going on. We’re going to find and clean out those subluxations with spinal adjustments. Every cervical spine is different. Not everyone is getting that manual kind of crack, there are other types of adjustment you can perform.
We then supplement that adjustment with spinal traction. We practice a technique called Chiropractic Biophysics, the most researched form of chiropractic that takes taking mathematic and engineering principles and applies them to the spine. It’s all about figuring about structure and load of the spine. Your cervical spine alignment precipitates the type of traction you do. But essentially when you’re in traction, it generates heat in the ligaments, called the creep effect. Which incrementally allows your spine to stretch back into its normal alignment.
We supplement that with physical therapy too. Posture muscles are intrinsic, which means they pick up on movement. So, we’re pinned to our desk, we’re not moving, it’s a requirement of the job. There are deep neck flexors that sit deep within the neck by the cervical spine, get weak and lazy, which slowly allows that head to transfer forward. And then those muscles that sit deep in between the shoulder blades, they get weak and lazy. Then all the big muscles that are designed to move us take over – traps, chest, shoulders. And then we’ve kind of got that classic forward head posture and those rounded shoulders. You are going to address that with physical therapy and mobility exercises. We work on stabilizing and strengthening the muscle groups so we can keep everything in alignment.
By that head shifting forward and the curve within the neck straightening out, this can increase disc pressure. Increased disc pressure over time is going to create degenerative changes, so we’re going to have cervical disc degeneration. Cervical disc degeneration is going to decrease essentially overall quality of spinal health, and essentially quality of life.
When your body is in a consistent state of stress, it just affects how we function physiologically, so we get those conditions. So again, stress raises cortisol, cortisol blocks insulin reception. So if we’re not absorbing insulin into the cells, it stays in the bloodstream as glycogen/glucose. Then we’ve got sugar in the bloodstream. It just has a massive effect on all sorts of things – sleep, mood, energy, metabolism. You’ve got those metabolic diseases, you’ve got more chance of type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease.
As you age and you increase that upper back rounding, that’s called kyphosis. More kyphotic you are, the more chance of morbidity of those cardiovascular disease you have as you age. So posture is literally the window to your health.
Procrastination is the thief of health. Get your spine moving well, get it stable, address those postural concerns. Not only are you going to look better, you are going to feel better, and you are going to function better. And that’s going to create longevity.
