Author: Dr. Bryce Hendy, DC, DNCert
Posture is a hot topic and has been for many years in the rehab and conservative medicine world. With being a hot topic, also comes a lot of incorrect information and different companies looking to take advantage of a problem with a “solution”. In the past 5 or so years there have been a lot of companies that are making posture braces and even clothes that have extra tensile strength to help improve posture. While these products all sound great and seem like they could be the solution to many people’s problems, these actually create an even larger issue for people who use them.
In our bodies we have muscles that their sole purpose is to work to stabilize the spine and other joints in our axial skeleton, and are given the term postural muscles. These muscles just like other groups of muscles can be exercised and trained to better support our bodies in different postures and positions. For most people who have pain with sitting up right or feel as though they need to change positions frequently, this could be an issue of the postural muscles being weak and needing to be conditioned. These muscles are constantly firing throughout the day and for certain individuals have more responsibility. Females who have larger breast tissue have a center of gravity that is further forward than a male with little to no breast tissue. This causes an issue for the postural muscles because they have to work harder to help keep and maintain upright posture.
This is where these companies have targeted with their postural supportive clothing and braces. These devices take the place of the postural muscles and help the person wearing them to maintain better posture and be able to maintain this position longer. This sounds like a great thing and why would I be taking a stance against these devices? Have you ever broken a bone and had a cast placed for 6+ weeks while the broken bone healed up? When you finally got that cast off did you notice that the muscles in limb that the cast was on were smaller and weaker? This is called atrophy and this is what happens to muscles when they are not used for their function for extended periods of time.
Similar to wearing a back brace, using a postural brace or postural device built into clothing is going to take the responsibility of the postural muscles and do the job for those muscles. If you were to wear something like this for a couple months to help with your posture, you would likely find that when or if you stopped using the device, your posture would be worse, or you would notice that the muscles in the upper back and low back are weak and get fatigued when trying to sit up right and find good posture. This is due to atrophy of the postural muscles from them not performing their function on a daily basis. In most cases wearing postural braces and devices leads to worse posture.
The better option to work on providing better support to your spine and improving your posture, is to work out and exercise the postural muscles. This will help to increase the strength and condition of these muscles, which would allow for them to help provide you better posture for longer periods of time. Even if someone wears a brace and these muscles get weaker or atrophy, they can be built back up, but it will take more work than if you chose to start with exercises instead of the brace.
If this is something that you found applies to you, or you are considering purchasing a postural device, come talk with one of us at Acacia Natural Medicine and let’s figure out what is best for your case and make sure you get on the right path to better posture without first worsening your overall condition.
