Optimizing your health and extending your life requires more than just exercising and eating more fruits and vegetables: good posture is essential to living a more fulfilling life and avoiding negative health effects that can worsen over time if not addressed, including neck and back pain, respiratory problems, reduced sports performance, digestive issues, muscle fatigue and hormonal imbalances.
“Over the course of a lifetime, our joints and ligaments become less elastic and less able to adapt to poor posture, which can lead to nerve and spinal cord compression, reduced tolerance to physical activity, and chronic pain,” says Praveen Mumaneni, MD, a spine surgeon at the University of California, San Francisco.
Good posture not only helps you avoid such problems, but also provides benefits such as improved coordination, improved balance, increased energy, enhanced cognition and increased self-confidence.
“Good posture also helps distribute weight evenly, which is important because when weight is evenly distributed, it keeps your musculoskeletal system properly aligned, reduces stress on your joints and bones, reduces overall wear and tear, and allows your body to function more efficiently,” says Laura Deon, MD, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Here we explain how to maintain good posture and alignment, and the positive health benefits that doing so can have.
