How to Fix Bad Posture

A lot of people think bad posture is mostly how you look—and that’s not unreasonable. It’s noticeable, right? It’s the difference between looking tired vs. alert, and for some, confident vs. uncomfortable. But there’s so much more going on with bad posture than meets the eye.

Here’s what bad posture actually means for your body and what you can do to fix it.

The Bad Posture Breakdown

Are you hunched over at your desk right now? Looking down at your phone, neck craned? Yep, we see you—and it’s OK. Most people don’t exactly make good postural habits a priority. But trust us, it’s definitely having an impact on your body.

Appearance benefits aside, good posture can help you maintain the correct alignment of bones and joints, reduce stress and inflammation on your ligaments, minimize risk of injury, prevent muscle strain and overuse, conserve energy and decrease wear and tear on the joints.

And that’s a big deal! Your muscles, ligaments and bones are all a part of your musculoskeletal system, and if they aren’t operating correctly, they can affect the rest of your body—most noticeably your spine. We’re talking slipped discs, misaligned vertebrae and more. These issues open you up to a whole litany of mechanical and symptomatic problems!

Bad Posture Can Lead To:

• Poor circulation
• Exacerbated arthritis
• Fatigue
• Neck and shoulder pain
• Chronic headaches
• Breathing problems

How Can I Tell My Posture Is Off?

So… how do you know if there’s a problem with your posture? How can you even begin to tell if your poor posture has affected your health enough to develop symptoms? It’s actually really easy to spot. You just have to know how.

Consider whether or not you notice any of these symptoms in your daily life:

Slumped Shoulders

86 percent of Americans work a desk job, and sitting for such long periods, especially improperly, leaves many of us wide open for pain and dysfunction. Slumped or hunched shoulders are one of the most common postural problems of sedentary work. This is when your shoulders are more rounded with a tendency of your biceps turning inward.

• When you look at photos of yourself, are your shoulders more hunched and curved into the body?
• Are you suffering from frequent headaches, neck aches or shoulder tension?
• When you’re standing with your arms at your sides, are your palms facing behind you?

Forward Head Carriage

This is a big one that we see often in our offices, and in today’s tech world, it’s an easy pattern to get into. When your head is too far forward, it can put up to forty extra pounds of weight on your cervical spine, leading to pain and dysfunction. Your ears should line up directly above your shoulders.

• Are you experiencing pain or inflammation in the neck or shoulders?
• When you’re texting, driving or on the computer, do you crane your neck forward?
• Are your ears not aligned with your shoulders?

Uneven Weight Distribution

When one side of your hip is higher than the other, it can force you to put more weight on one side of the body. Uneven weight distribution can cause a structural imbalance in the body, forcing more wear and tear on the joints.

• When standing, do you tend to favor one leg over the other?
• Have you ever noticed the soles of one of your shoes more worn than the other?
• Do you ever experience pain on only one side of the body?

If you’ve said “Yes!” to any of these questions… it may be time to have a chat with your chiropractor.

How to Have Better Posture

Routine chiropractic care can not only help you correct your posture, it can also help you maintain it throughout your lifetime. Regular chiropractic adjustments and some advice from your chiropractor can make all the difference.

Here are some helpful tips from the American Chiropractic Association that may help you out:

Posture 101: Sitting

• Keep both feet on the floor, or if your chair is too high, a footrest
• Uncross your legs, and keep your ankles in front of your knees
• Keep a gap between the back of your knees and the front of your seat
• Make sure your knees are at or below the level of your hips
• Adjust your chair to support your low back
• Keep your forearms parallel to the ground
• Stay active! Take a five minute walk every thirty minutes

Posture 101: Standing

• Focus your weight on the balls of your feet
• Keep your knees slightly bent
• Place your feet around a shoulder-width apart
• Let your arms hang naturally
• Keep your shoulders back
• Stand with your ears aligned with your shoulders

Posture 101: Lying Down

• Find a proper mattress
• Sleep with an ergonomic sleep posture pillow
• DO NOT sleep on your stomach
• If you sleep on your side, place a pillow between your legs
• If you sleep on your back, keep a pillow under your knees

How To: 3 Breathing Techniques to Help Relieve Stress

The way you’re breathing says a lot about how you feel. If your breathing is shallow, you may be angry. If it’s extremely heavy, you may be worn out from a hike or other strenuous activity. And when you experience shortness of breath, it may be that you’re anxious, which should be addressed right away, before it accelerates from concern to panic.

The good news is that you can regain control with something as familiar as your breathing. An online fact sheet from the American College of Cardiology advises you to interrupt the buildup of anxiety in order to avoid more serious reactions and, ultimately, damage to your health. For starters, the article instructs you to lie down, if possible, or at least be seated and relax your shoulders.

Then you may want to try some of these suggested breathing techniques designed to reduce stress:

Diaphragmatic Breathing

While lying on your back, place one hand on your chest and the other hand on your belly. Breathe in, pushing up on your belly, paying attention to the rise of your belly hand. Then, as you exhale, feel the hand on your belly sink as the air leaves the lower lungs. With experience, you can learn to do diaphragmatic breathing from a standing position.

Pursed Lip Breathing

Place your arms in front of you on top of a table or desk and lean forward. Keeping your lips pursed and fairly closed, breathe in through your nose for approximately 4 seconds, and exhale out your mouth for 6 to 8 seconds.

Alternate Nostril Breathing

Placing a finger over one side of your nose, close one nostril and begin by breathing out, then in the same nostril. After each breath cycle, which is one exhale followed by one inhale, switch sides. Perform 5 to 9 rounds of this exercise, always inhaling through the same nostril you just exhaled through.

Air it Out in Advance

You don’t have to wait until anxiety gets the best of you to reap the benefits of relaxation techniques. Deep breathing is effective as a daily practice, regardless of your circumstances. When you make it part of your routine, you’re more likely to return to a calm inner place when you encounter discord with the boss or a family member, or find yourself caught in a traffic jam.

An article in Harvard Health points out the benefits of breathing techniques to inhibit natural reactions such as the “fight or flight” response that occurs when everyday problems such as money issues or getting cut off on the freeway are unavoidable. Individuals who don’t foster a calm surrogate for stress may be, instead, fostering illness. High blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for heart disease, is one of the detrimental results of a life filled with anxiety.

“The stress response also suppresses the immune system, increasing susceptibility to colds and other illnesses,” the article says.

Practice the techniques 10-20 minutes per day, Harvard experts suggest. Your goal is deeper, calmer rhythms directing your focus. And it exceeds the need to just reduce physical responses to negative emotions. Breathing exercises also can serve to feed your soul, made plain by an attitude poised by acceptance and calm -- not overreaction and hostility.

You can further minimize the effects of stressors with practices such as yoga, meditation, acupuncture and chiropractic care. Taking a holistic, multi-pronged approach to your health is an effective means to address the complex nature of anxiety without the need for medication.

Just as stress and anxiety are forces of nature, the best way to handle them is with the natural tools you can access from regular visits to your chiropractor. When you apply the expert advice you get from your practitioner and practice regular breathing exercises, you avert the health risks resulting from long-term anxiety and you stand to improve your attitude by airing out a growing level of negative emotion.

If you haven’t taken early steps to make relaxation a part of your life, you can hope for fast-acting results that includes accepting things as they come. But don’t hold your breath.

How to Avoid the Painful Side Effects of Gift Giving

The holiday season is a popular time to buy the latest technology for loved ones, but if you have a new phone or the latest video game system wrapped beneath your tree, you may also be giving pain along with it.

Text neck, a condition in which the continual use of technology causes neck pain and discomfort, can cause serious health risks. It happens most often when you bend over to read text message, browse the internet or gaze at video game screens and controllers. And with the large amount of technology and gadgets gifted over the holiday season, cases of text neck will be rampant.
The severity of text neck symptoms will vary from person to person, but tend to be more prominent with an increased level of activity on the phone or device used.

These symptoms may include:

• Soreness
• Stiffness
• Pain to the shoulders, neck and upper back
• A slight curving of the spine
• Increased headaches

There are solutions for this type of pain. Of course, curbing technology use might be the most obvious one, but if you can’t pry the controller from your child’s hands this winter break, there are other options, as well:

Lift Your Device

Try lifting your device to eye level. You might feel silly at first, but you’ll be protecting the health of your neck and spine for the long term. If you don’t want to lift the device, then leave the device low, but avoid bending your neck and look only with your eyes. Another option is to rest your neck while using your device. Use a headrest, a pillow, or even a wall to hold your head up instead of holding it bent for hours at a time.

Limit Your Time

This is a harder one, but giving yourself and your family members time limits for device use will ease neck pain. Try to only use your phone when you have somewhere to rest your head at the same time.

Chiropractic Care

Since text neck often causes actual misalignment of the spine, chiropractic care can help. A chiropractor can use spinal manipulation to properly align the spine and keep it healthier and pain free. And at Franklin Chiropractic & Accident Clinics, Inc., we treat children, as well as adults, so aligning the spine of the child who is never without his phone is no problem.

To get some help and care from a chiropractor, walk into Franklin Chiropractic & Accident Clinics, Inc. any time. Walk-in appointments and affordable pricing make it possible for everyone to get the care they need to protect their neck and back this holiday season and in the year ahead. A chiropractor at Franklin Chiropractic & Accident Clinics, Inc. may be able to align your spine and put your neck in better shape so that you can enjoy your technology now and for years into the future.

What’s the Deal with Vertigo?

As much as 35 percent of American adults over the age of 40 have experienced a vestibular disorder—and the biggest offender? Vertigo. For those who’ve experienced it, or currently are experiencing it, vertigo can greatly impact daily life, making a sufferer sick, tired and unable to go through their day. How do you deal with it? How can you get your life back? Let’s take a look. 
 

What is Vertigo?

Those experiencing vertigo feel a sensation of being off balance, like they’re spinning or being pulled in one direction. It can cause nausea, headache, vomiting, sweating and a ringing in the ears or abnormal eye movement. For some, vertigo seems to simply go away with time. For others, it is a reoccurring problem that reappears with little warning and makes everyday tasks difficult.

Why Does it Happen?

A commonly cited cause of vertigo is inner ear issues—often due to buildup or infection—which can compromise the body’s ability to find balance. In our experience, patients who suffer from vertigo are often found to have subluxations, misalignments, in the C1 region at the base of the skull. The C1 affects blood supply, the pituitary gland, scalp, bones of the face, brain, nervous system, and unsurprisingly, middle and inner ear.
This misalignment can interfere with sensory information to the cerebellum part of the brain, which coordinates voluntary movements like balance, posture and coordination—it can also cause dizziness, the commonly seen symptom of vertigo. This subluxation could be the result of a number of things, from prior head/neck trauma to minor traumas such as improper posture or poor sleep positioning.

How Can You Get Help?

Our best recommendation is to be seen for a full evaluation by a chiropractic physician, who will likely prescribe regular chiropractic adjustments to remove subluxations from the spine. Studies show that spinal manipulation can have many positive effects on vertigo symptoms—improved balance, reduction in dizziness and for some, even complete remission. Additionally, by addressing the subluxation in the C1 region of the spine, potential disruptions between the brain and spinal nerves are eliminated, allowing the body to heal as it was meant to.

5 Healthy Breakfasts That’ll Help You Start the Day

Good morning, sunshine—it’s time to rise and grind! But first you need fuel, and a cup of coffee and a bite of high-fructose granola bar just won’t cut it. In fact, a lot of the breakfast selections we consider “easy” aren’t exactly the easiest on your body.
Let’s take a look at some protein-packed, all-natural breakfast alternatives that’ll give you a fresh, healthy start to the day!

Overnight Oats

OK, friends—we know, we talk about overnight oats a lot. But they’re such a good breakfast option (in moderation!) how could we not? Full of fiber and easily paired with different flavors, oats are a great way to get the nutrients you need. Stick to Greek yogurt, a bit of honey, some berries, a scoop of nut butter, almond milk and some steel-cut oats.

Eggs Your Way!

A breakfast classic, eggs are a protein-rich way to start the day off right, and there are so many variations you can try. Have to leave quickly in the morning? Prep some hard-boiled eggs the night before to take with you, and pair them with some kiwi and berries. If you’ve got more time, try scrambling some eggs with black beans or a nice vegetable omelet filled with fiber-rich leafy greens.

Greek Yogurt with Chia Seeds

Fun fact: Chia seeds have double the fiber of bran flakes! Greek yogurt has way more protein than milk (12-17 grams per serving) and helps build strong bones, muscles and cartilage. Just stir the seeds into the yogurt and store it in the fridge overnight! If you’d like a little sweetness, add a little honey and top it with some fiber-rich dark berries in the morning.

Fresh Fruit Smoothie

The Greek yogurt powerhouse is back again! For a quick meal, put together a healthy breakfast smoothie—it’s the perfect way to get in a whole batch of nutrients at once. Start off easy by combining the fruit of your choice (you can use frozen), Greek yogurt, water and ice in a blender until smooth.

Apples and Almond Butter

Packed with protein, fiber and good fats, almond butter is known for being a great heart-healthy food choice. Spread thinly on some apples, and you have a bonafide snack superhero on your hands. But beware, this breakfast treat is best in moderation! Too much sugar, even natural, can be harmful. Also, keep an eye on any additional salts, sugars and preservatives on the ingredient list when selecting which almond butter to buy. Many stores have a raw, unsalted version!

Chiro 101: Should You Talk to Your Friends and Family About Chiropractic?

Simple answer: absolutely! If you’re someone who’s benefiting from the effects of chiropractic care, the next step after improving and maintaining your own wellness is spreading the word! So many people don’t know how beneficial chiropractic can be for their whole body—and let’s face it, we all know someone who could use the extra help.

The Stats

An estimated 35.5 million people saw a chiropractor in the last year. To put that into perspective, that’s only about 9 percent of all American adults. Not very many, right? But for those who did go to a chiropractor, 77 percent of people saw their care as very affective, saying:

• The quality of care they received was a good value for the money
• The chiropractor took time to educate them about treatment options
• The chiropractor really cares about them

The Results

So, why aren’t more Americans under chiropractic care? Complicated healthcare politics aside, it’s most likely because they just don’t know. The best thing you can do is talk about your own story, because at the end of the day, the power of a percentage pales in comparison to real, lived experience. Here’s how some of our patients are starting the conversation.

“At first, I thought chiropractic wouldn’t work, but now, I think it’s something everyone can benefit from. My neck and shoulder pain has seen lots of improvement—I no longer have to worry about cutting down on activities.” –M.R., Lakeview Patient

“I thought I would have to live with pain, but with chiropractic, not anymore!” –A.A., Orland Hills Patient

“My adjustments help me get through the week. I didn’t realize how much the spine and neck played into my health—but now I know.” –B.P., Libertyville Patient

“I was in constant pain for a very long time. Sometimes it hurt just to get out of bed. After I started chiropractic care, I have better movement in my back and joints—I believe it really helps me. Now I know there’s a “light” at the end of the tunnel.” –L.K., Vernon Hills Patient

“I haven’t felt this good in 20 years.” –D.C., Des Plaines Patient

“The CTs at Chiro One are excellent, helpful and answer any questions I have. The doctor also teaches us something new at least once a week.” –A.O., Schaumburg West Patient

“My hip pain went away… I feel like I don’t need to live with aches and pains just because I’m getting older.” –S.S., Libertyville Patient

“Because of chiropractic, I move more freely and pain-free. I’m enjoying the freedom to do things I thought I could no longer do.” –J.S., Round Lake Beach Patient 

“At first, I wasn’t really interested in chiropractic, but now I love it! I can function pain-free and know that I have a plan that will keep me well for the rest of my life.” –A.L., Wheeling Patient