For this months blog I have decided to get back to talking about all things achey and one of the most common conditions that we treat but not the most discussed is upper cross syndrome.
Have you ever suffered from pain between your shoulder blades? Do you sometimes feel that you have to move around to get comfortable when you are sitting? Suffer with occasional neck and shoulder aches or headaches? Maybe you feel hunched over all the time with the base or your neck feel larger than it should?
If any of these apply to you then you may have upper cross syndrome. Upper cross syndrome is basically an imbalance of the muscles of your neck, shoulders and chest. Over time Some will have become too weak and some will have become too tight. This results in the classic poor posture look of rounded shoulders and an anterior head carriage, often referred to as a stooped or hunched back. The severity can vary a huge amount from mild poor posture to severely stooped. Our aim is always to try and prevent the most serious cases so how can we do that?
The obvious place to start is strengthen he weaker muscles and to loosen the tighter ones. Whilst this is a longer process, you can actually achieve a lot just in a few weeks of consistent stretching and exercising. In addition to this are some excellent mobilisation methods that your practioner can direct you with. Over the last year or so we have been using a new piece of equipment with patients called “The Balance Wedge”. We have learned and developed a 10-minute routine that is amazing for helping correct upper cross syndrome and the aches and pains associated.
So once we have explained and demonstrated all that you can do to help yourself patients are extremely successfully helped with some hands on therapy. Firstly your chiropractor can adjust your cervical and thoracic spine, ribs and even your low back. This can have a huge impact reducing your aches and pains. Then we all have lots of techniques to loosen the tight pec and neck muscles to reduced the pain and stiffness. Normally patients will notice an improvement as soon as they get off the table and with a handful of treatments patients report a consistent improvement in their symptoms from their headaches to neck and shoulder aches.
The good news is that there are methods to prevent our upper cross hunched back! The first and foremost is to make sure that we don’t sit for hours on end. Always do your best to move, move and move some more! No amount of moving is too much when you have a job that you happen to sit all day. Take the time to set your desk up properly, there is so advice online for desk set ups these days. If you enjoy the gym then remember to door more back strengthening or pulling style exercise than pushing. We would often say do 3 different pulling exercises to one set of pushing to get that strong looking posture!
So remember if you want the best chance to stay young then stay strong and keep moving!
