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What is Vulture Neck?

July 16, 2011 By spencer 1 Comment

What is Vulture Neck?

Vulture Neck is a term that my wife invented to explain her postural problem also known as anterior head carriage or forward head carriage.  It is characterized by a person’s head being far in front of their body, just like a vulture’s.  It can also come accompanied with forward shoulders and a lump or bump on the base of the neck similar to that of a mini hunchback.  Vulture neck is at least a nation-wide problem.  To judge whether someone has anterior head carriage or not, simply look at their posture from the side.  If their ear hole is generally in front of the middle of their shoulder, then they have vulture neck!

Vulture Neck and poor posture starts early, don't let it turn into a bad habit!

Is Vulture Neck Normal?

Forward head posture is developed due to poor postural tendencies.  While many people have developed this pattern so that they do it normally while standing, it is easiest seen when people are working on their computers (especially laptops), texting, or playing hand held video games.  While it is so common that people may think this is normal, it is important to note that COMMON DOES NOT MAKE SOMETHING NORMAL. Obesity is now a common occurrence with 2 out of 3 people clinically being overweight.  This does not make being overweight normal.

Poor Posture Creates Stress on your Neck, Back, and Rest of your Body

Having poor posture can have detrimental affect on your body.  Your head is approximately 7-8% of your body weight or about 10.5 lbs if you weigh 150 lbs.  Since your head is on top of your head, every little bit that your head is forward of your spine is more stress that your neck muscles have to endure to keep your head from falling forward.  Since your muscles are attached to your bones, having chronic tight muscles due to poor posture greatly affects those bones, thus greatly affecting those joints causing a subluxation.  When your joints are compromised, the nerves coming out of those joints are also affected.  Since your nerves power everything in your body, including your organs, having poor posture can greatly have a negative impact on your organ and overall health, especially if kept for a long time.

 

Vulture neck can lead to many things.  Some of the symptoms in a progression like order include:

  • Neck and or shoulder pain/discomfort
  • Headaches
  • Arthritis
  • Carpal tunnel syndrome
  • Organ dysfunction or failure

Find out if you have Vulture Neck

Vulture neck is easiest to correct if caught early.  A chiropractor is well equipped to help any individual with postural problems included to, but not limited to vulture neck.  Our office in El Segundo does routine postural analysis on our patients and interested individuals at our office or any of our community events.  One of our goals is to address the total health and well being of the individual and we strongly believe that posture is an integral part to the entire picture.

Related Articles:
What is Good Posture?
How Poor Posture Affects your Health
What is a Subluxation?

Filed Under: Back Pain, Chiropractic, General, Posture Tagged With: , , , , , ,

What is Good Posture?

June 30, 2011 By spencer 1 Comment

What is Posture?

Posture is the way your body positions yourself.  Your posture is determined by the shape and size of your bones and the give and pull of the muscles of the body.  Assuming there are no anatomical birth defects or traumatic accidents, the posture of the spine in a healthy adult has 4 distinct curves, which go forward and backwards.  You are born with 2 of these curves in your mid back and sacrum or tail bone and you develop 2 more as you mature, in the neck and lower back.  The 2 curves you’re born with are called kyphotic or primary curves.  They round out towards your backside.  The 2 curves you develop are called lordotic or secondary curves and they round out towards your front side.  The body is not supposed to have curves that round out to the sides, which is a condition called scoliosis.

What is Good Posture?

Good posture can be measured by looking at specific body landmarks in relation to others.  This can be easily done by standing next to a weighted string to see where a straight line passes through your body from the side.  Some people call this a “plumb line”.  To achieve the best posture for your body the string should pass through the following parts of your body:

  • Ear lobe
  • Mid point of shoulder
  • Center of hip
  • Center of knee
  • Slightly anterior or in front of your ankle bone

If the plumb line does not pass through these body parts on you, then you do not have proper posture.  Having an altered posture creates distortions and imbalances in your muscles, movement, and stance.  Over time, it can easily lead to pain and arthritis.  Poor posture also creates subluxations in the spine, which leads to an decrease in the functioning of your body and nervous system.

Poor posture is a very common problem for many individuals, but that doesn’t mean it’s normal.  It is much easier to correct postural tendencies when you are younger.  In really chronic situations, it can be irreversible.  Having a good posture is an important aspect to having and living a healthy life.  Do yourself a favor and get your postured checked!

Posture Analysis on our receptionist Shantoi

*Our office routinely does postural workups on our patients.  We are able to track what your posture should be relatively against what you already have.  We find anterior head carriage to be the biggest problem for most people and a common cause of upper back and or neck pain.  We find it so often, we have termed the posture problem “Vulture Neck.”  If you would like to get your posture analyzed, call our office.

Filed Under: Back Pain, Chiropractic, Posture Tagged With: , ,

What is Sciatica?

May 11, 2011 By spencer 2 Comments

What is the Sciatic Nerve?

Sciatica is a condition where the sciatic nerve becomes inflamed.  The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in the body and travels through your buttocks and back side of your thighs.  It is the culmination of the 5 separate nerves, L4, L5, S1, S2, and S3.  It also branches out into many different nerves in the lower leg including the peroneal and tibial nerves.  It powers many of the muscles in your thigh including the quadriceps and hamstrings and also your hip capsule.  Its branches further innervate almost every muscle in the lower leg.

Sciatica Signs:

The most common sciatica symptom, in addition to back pain, is shooting pain down the back side of the leg.  The shooting pain may feel like an electric shock and is usually made worse upon bending forward, trying to touch your toes, or sneezing, coughing, or passing a difficult bowel movement.  This is because all of these actions increase the pressure in your discs and spinal column.  The pressure can be too much for your inflamed nerves, which let your body know via pain.

Please keep in mind that shooting pain is not always due to sciatica or the sciatic nerve.  Pain going down the back of the leg, but not past the point of the knee could be due to something called facet syndrome.  Shooting pain down the front of the leg and near the groin is commonly a sign of a pelvic subluxation or misalignment.

Finding the Cause of Sciatica:

There are three typical causes of sciatica, increased pressure on the sciatic nerve, clamping on the nerve via a tight piriformis muscle, or trauma injuring the nerve.  Other irritations to the nerve could be a viral or bacterial infection, but this is not as common.  As mentioned earlier, there are many symptoms, usually involving shooting leg pain, that are confused for sciatica.  It is very important to find and treat the cause of sciatica to effectively treat it.  For example, sciatica due to a tight piriformis should be treated by actively stretching and relaxing that muscle.  If a patient is improperly diagnosed and has sciatica due to increased pressure due to a herniated disc, then stretching the piriformis, which usually involves hip flexion, will actually make the sciatica worse!

Treating Sciatica:

There are many treatments for sciatica, but it is strongly recommended to choose a treatment that will address the cause, and not just the symptoms.  Chiropractic, physical, and occupational therapy do great jobs at treating the cause and helping patients with sciatic pain.  Treatment can vary from adjustments, spinal decompression, muscle conditioning, and posture evaluation.  Acupuncture can help for sciatica due to a tight piriformis and pain management.  It may be necessary to see your medical doctor as well to get anti-inflammatory medicine to reduce swelling and help with the pain.  This will greatly help with patient comfort, but if the cause is not addressed, the symptoms can easily come back, sometimes worse than before.

Filed Under: Back Pain, Chiropractic Tagged With: ,

Avoid Back Stretches in the Morning

May 10, 2011 By spencer 2 Comments

Forward stretches such as touching your toes cause a backwards bulge of the veterbral discs.

For those people with low back pain, stretching the lower back is often prescribed to help deal with tight low back muscles.  What they aren’t told however is that stretching their lower back up to 2 hours after waking up, can also do harm to the discs in their back, which could cause severe low back pain and or sciatica if a disc protrusion or herniation occurs.

The discs in your spine are naturally filled with fluids to help it protect your back and nerves from physical stresses on the body.  Due to gravity and body movement, the discs naturally lose fluid throughout the day like how a cushion slowly gets flatter when sat on for a while.  When people sleep at night, the body does its job at healing and restoring the body, including the discs in the back.  The recovery process involves the resorption of fluids back into the disc insuring that they are plump in the morning and can resist your physical stresses.  Stretching the lower back involves flexing the hip, the same action for when you try to touch your toes.  This action causes the disc in the lower back to bulge backwards, which squeezes out the fluids from the disc, helping to wear them out.

According to Dr. Stuart McGill, the foremost authority in low back rehabilitation, the first 2 hours in the morning are when your discs are the most sensitive in losing their hydration.  Lower back stretching, especially extreme stretching, such as yoga, can do a great job at decreasing your disc height in the morning.  To keep your disc health up throughout the day, try to avoid as much forward bending or positions where your hips are bent for the first 2 hours after you’re awake.  This not only includes stretching, but sitting and bending over.  Changing posture habits such as squatting to pick something up instead of bending over can go a long way in the long run.  For those people that have desk jobs, getting a kneeling chair lessens the degree of hip flexion and reduces slouching that happens in normal chairs.

Filed Under: Back Pain, Exercise, Posture Tagged With: , ,

What is Scoliosis?

April 25, 2011 By spencer Leave a Comment

This is a moderate case of scoliosis

What is Scoliosis?

Scoliosis is an unnatural curvature of the spine.  It usually occurs when the spine moves from side to side and in the mid back, but this is not a hard fast rule.  There are many causes of scoliosis, but the most common cause is due to unknown factors.  A common time for scoliosis to occur is during growth spurts for children.  This is why scoliosis screenings are so common in school.

Because scoliosis creates unnatural curve(s) in the spine, it can lead to muscular imbalances, poor posture, and altered gait.  This can eventually lead to compensation muscular pains and arthritis in the body.  The worst fear for scoliosis is that the spine will become so distorted that it will either begin to affect the nerves that leave the spine, or encroach on the organs, mainly the lungs and heart.

Severity of Scoliosis:

Typically, a curvature less than 15 degrees is thought of minor and can be treated with non invasive measures.  15-30 degree curves are of medium severity and are typically treated with a combination of non invasive and invasive treatments.  Above 30 degree curves are severe and typically will require surgery.

Structural versus Functional Scoliosis:

Structural scoliosis implies that the person was born with the scoliosis.  This can be due to unnatrually shaped vertebrae in the spine.  A person with a structural scoliosis will still have scoliosis upon bending forward and touching their toes.  A functional scoliosis commonly begins as a muscular imbalance, which over time, can distort the bones and cause a permanent scoliosis.  A person with a functional scoliosis will typically have a greatly reduced curvature to the point of disappearance when they bend forward.

Is Scoliosis Treatable?

In terms of treatment, it is very difficult to improve a structural scoliotic curve with non invasive procedures since the bone is irregularly shaped.  It is possible to live without pain or symptoms, which is what these type of people should try to accomplish.  Functional scoliosis has much better results with non invasive treatments as long as the curvature isn’t allowed to persist for too long.

Chiropractic is considered a non invasive therapy, along with physical and occupational therapy.  Both have been known to demonstrate good results, especially for children if caught early enough.  It has been shown that there is a good chance at reducing or eliminating scoliosis in an adolescent if discovered by the age of 16.  Other forms of treatment that have been shown to work are wearing braces and posture aides.  Surgery is normally reserved as a last attempt form of treatment where rods , but for some people is necessary.

Related Articles:
How Posture Affects your Health
What is Good Posture?
Should the Spine be Straight?

Filed Under: Back Pain, Chiropractic, Posture Tagged With: , ,