Maintaining healthy cervical spine posture is critical for overall health and wellness. Chiropractors can evaluate the health of your spine and provide treatments that help correct misalignments to restore proper spine health and function.
Can you start by explaining what the cervical spine is and why it’s so important to our overall health and well-being?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Absolutely. The cervical spine is your neck. You have cervical spine, thoracic spine, so that’s your upper to mid back, and then your lumbar or pelvic spine, which is your lower back, pelvis, and tailbone. So cervical spine is the neck. And then in the chiropractic profession we call the cervical spine the curve of life, because it’s so critically important to how we feel and both function physically and physiologically. It’s super important for overall health, just simply because all those nerves in your neck control and innovate so many feelings and functions of your body.
So obviously all the nerves in your neck, the top two nerves that come out the top two cervical bones, C1, C2, go back into your head. They control eyes, ears, nose, throat function. Those mid cervicals are involved in innovating both the thyroid and the diaphragm. So obviously thyroid controls our sleep, mood, energy levels, metabolism, or plays a role in it at least. And then obviously the diaphragmatic functions or breathing function. And then obviously the lower cervicals innovate your extremities.
So it’s important to have good cervical spine alignment and posture essentially because when we have poor alignment and poor posture and we create stress within that portion of the spine, then typically we’re going to be dealing with symptoms such as headaches, migraines, neck pain, upper back pain.
So we help a lot of our patients within the clinic with we what we call those corporate lifestyle diseases – poor sleep, low energy levels, fatigue, irritability, inability to gain/lose weight, 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
Are there any early warning signs that someone may be having issues with their cervical spine posture?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah. I think 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. So early warning signs can simply be the aesthetic changes, so your ear should be on top of your shoulder. So if you have a quick slip and check, you look in the mirror and 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.
And then obviously we’ve got symptoms, so all of a sudden we start dealing with headaches, pain in the neck, in the upper back. Or we start seeing some of those changes in those important functions, our sleep cycle is not great, our energy level is low, fatigue or irritability. These are all early symptoms or conditions that we typically see from shifts within the cervical spine posture.
In today’s world many people spend a lot of time on their phones and computers. How does this impact cervical spine posture?
Dr. Luke Stringer: That’s a great question. And it’s essentially called tech neck syndrome. It’s a medical phenomena which essentially means that due to what you just mentioned, us consistently being on devices, iPhones, iPads, or our computer, and the workstation ergonomics aren’t set up correctly. Essentially what this does, it puts us in flexion. Flexion is where you’re looking down. So if you’re consistently looking down, then obviously the weight of our heads on average weigh around 10 to 12 pounds, so then as you start to shift forward gravity starts to play a huge role in the equation.
So what we see in the clinic is again 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. But this is designed so literally when you’re upright, gravitational forces are in play. The weight of your head, 10 to 12 pounds, 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, pressure off the nerves. And obviously you have to supplement that with good balance and strength in those posture muscles.
Now, if we’re on a phone all day looking down, on our tablet, on our workstation, well, as we look down that top bone starts to shift in front of that bottom bone, and it starts to creep forwards. We call that anterior head carriage, forward head posture essentially.
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.
And then over time, that’s obviously going to create greater effects within the cervical spine. So for every inch forward your head shifts, it doubles the weight of your head. It’s kind of that bowling ball analogy, if you carried a 10 pound bowling ball nice and snug to your arm it’s going to be 10 pounds. But for every inch forward you go, the weight of that bowling ball doubles. So for every inch forward, you’re doubling the weight of your head, which over time could really break down our 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.
In your practice, what kinds of chiropractic treatments or techniques do you use to address cervical spine misalignment?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, great question. And every case is case dependent, right? So might come in and see any reputable chiropractor, detailed health history, subluxation examination, finding those joints that are out of alignment compressing nerves and creating stress in symptoms. Orthopedic exams, range of motion exams, neurological exams. Kind of figure out exactly what’s going on.
It is kind of like building a house, you kind of figure out where your cervical spine misalignments are on a global scale, so structurally. Then we’re going to take some x-rays, because that’s literally going to allow us to see exactly what’s going on.
And every case is dependent, but typical treatment in our office, we’re going to clean out those segmental subluxations, sensation of stress on a nerve. Nerve stress doesn’t let the brain and the nerve communicate while it’s kind of like being stuck in a traffic jam, so this manifests as symptoms, conditions. So how do we address that? Spinal adjustment.
So obviously every cervical spine is different, so the case presenting you dictate the type of adjustment. Not everyone is getting that manual kind of crack, there are other types of adjustment you can perform. Next thing we’re going to be doing is supplement that adjustment with spinal traction. Our practice practices a technique called Chiropractic Biophysics, most researched form of chiropractic, taking mathematic and engineering principle, apply it to the spine. It’s all about figuring about structure and load of the spine.
Obviously when we have misalignments, in your mind’s eye, if you shift it transfers weight. Weight plus gravity over time breaks the spine down. So 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 over time allows your spine to stretch back into its normal alignment.
And then we supplement that with physical therapy too. Obviously 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.
So 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. So you’re going to address that with physical therapy.
Just following a kind of algorithm of physical therapy and mobility, prerequisite for a healthy joint, and then obviously stabilizing and strengthening the muscle groups so we can keep in alignment. So it’s a pretty comprehensive approach.
If poor cervical spine posture is left unaddressed what long term consequences might a person face?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, great question. And if poor cervical spine posture is left unaddressed, long term consequences, aesthetic changes. You take a picture, first thing you look at is yourself. If you allow your posture to continue to deteriorate then your head is going to continue to travel forward, you’re going to see those round shoulders, you’re going to see that big upper back curve. And we’re not going to be in that kind of good posture.
Also, posture is a window to your health essentially, or to your spine which is a window to your health. And then poor posture is essentially stress on the nervous system. To be honest if our nervous system is under stress, then we’re not going to feel and/or function well. So feeling symptoms, so classic poor postural symptoms if we’re talking about the neck and the upper back, again headaches, neck pain, upper back pain.
And then obviously by that head shifting forward and the curve within the neck straightening out, this can increase disc pressure. Referring to the bowling ball analogy we just used, increased disc pressure over time is going to create degenerative changes, so we’re going to have cervical disc degeneration. Cervical disc degeneration is obviously going to decrease essentially overall quality of spinal health, and essentially quality of life.
We all degenerate in time, but it should be a steady aging process. Not 40 years old with phase two cervical disc degeneration because you’ve been pinned to your desk 50 hours a week between your 30s and 40s.
And then also too, 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.
Again, 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.
So if you’re in poor posture and you’re asymptomatic, great. I would recommend getting that posture where it needs to be and for a chiropractor kind of perform the treatment algorithm we just discussed. And then if you’re asymptomatic, or if your symptomatic obviously get on top of the symptoms. Procrastination is the thief of health.
So essentially get that in alignment, get it moving well, get it stable, address those postural concerns. And then not only you’re going to look better, you’re going to feel better, you’re going to function better. And that’s obviously going to create longevity. Particularly if you’re a corporate athlete and you’re required to sit, stand at your desk all day every day, that’s something you want to be absolutely be dialed in with.
If you are interested in speaking with Dr. Luke Stringer visit www.southloopchiropractor.com or call (312) 987-4878 to schedule an appointment.
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