If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times. Watch your posture! Be mindful of your posture! You keep hearing about it because it’s important. If you’ve ever suffered a massive headache due to several hours’ worth of improper sitting, you understand and appreciate why posture is so important.
What few people realize, however, is that poor posture can do a lot more than simply giving you an aching neck or back. Over the long haul, it can literally reshape your spine and do even more than that. Here are a few of the other ways your posture can negatively impact your health:
Nerve Constriction & Damage
Your body was designed to stand and sit a certain way. Any time you do something that runs counter to your body’s inherent design, it can cause nerves all over your body to become pinched and constricted. Pinched nerves can obviously cause pain in the immediate area where the nerve is, but they’re all interconnected in a massive highway inside your body. That means a pinched nerve in your back can cause pain in your arms or legs too. Worse, these kinds of issues don’t go away on their own. They’ll only get more severe with time.
Increased Risk Of Heart Disease
Just like poor posture can pinch nerves, it can also constrict blood flow by constricting blood vessels all over your body. This, in turn, can result in blood clots and a condition called ‘Deep Vein Thrombosis,’ both of which can and will increase your chances of developing heart disease.
Poor Digestion
On top of that, poor posture, especially while seated in a slouching position, can compress the organs in your abdominal region, which includes your digestive tract. The effect isn’t immediate, but over time, it can negatively impact your metabolism and your ability to digest food properly.
As you can see then, poor posture is bad news for lots of different reasons you may not have considered!