Do You Know How To Sit And Sleep?

Most of us spend most of our time sitting, sleeping, a combination of the two, or both simultaneously.  Most of us do these two activities incorrectly.  When it comes to sitting, one needs to be mindful of proper posture.  Ever think of how hours, days, months, years, and decades of poor sitting may affect your muscular-skeletal system?

The first thing to be affected is your muscular system.  When you sit hunched over a desk looking down at papers, books, or the computer it makes the hip flexors, hamstrings, abdominal, and chest muscles shorter and tighter causing added stress to the hips, lower back, mid-back, and neck areas.  When you sleep with your head in any position other than neutral, it causes a shortening of neck muscles on one side and a lengthening of the muscles on the other side.  The unbalanced and tight muscles that are now pulling unevenly on the spine do two things.  First, they interfere with the normal motion of the spinal vertebrae. This can cause nerve pressure and deterioration of the joint.  Second, the taught muscles form trigger points which are areas of the muscle that spasm and build up toxins, causing pain.  In our Chiropractic office, we deal with this problem in 2 ways.  First, we need to sit in the proper position and sleep in the proper position.  We can achieve this by using a low back pillow to help maintain the proper low back arch, and a neck pillow to help maintain the proper arch in the neck we carry both types in our Charlotte Chiropractic office.  In addition to setting up the proper position to sit and sleep, we need to address the damage that has been done over months or years.  Fixing this problem involves adjusting to the spine to restore proper vertebral motion and alignment, stretching and massaging the proper muscles to relieve tension in the skeletal system, and strengthening the muscles that have been overstretched and are now week due to poor habits.