Causes of Bad Posture
- Muscle Tension and Weakness
- Technology Devices
Using a tablet or a cell phone, sitting at a computer all day, and operating several devices at once can gradually take your body out of alignment. You may develop pain around your neck and shoulders when you text incessantly because of too much flexion or bending forward for too long. This causes pain and can lead to headaches.
- Injury
Muscles can spasm after an injury as a way of protecting the affected area. Although muscle spasms can stabilize the vulnerable area for a while, it limits your movements causing pain. When this continues for a prolonged period, they create an imbalance between the muscles that are working normally and those that are guarding the injury.
- Daily Habits/Work Routine
You can abandon good posture because of your daily routine as your body tries to find other ways to accommodate tension, weakness, and imbalance between muscle groups. Your body may be forced to alternate in these situations but your patterns of muscle contraction and stretch will operate less efficiently.
How it Causes Your Headaches
Your head is connected to your cervical spine (neck). Ligaments, muscles, tendons, and receptors that keep the head in a healthy position during stillness or motion balance the head. The tissues surrounding the joints in the neck and head can become tight, weak, or unstable during injuries and accidents. A bad posture that causes headaches can come because of poor alignment or forward head posture.
- Forward Head Posture
This kind of posture can be illustrated by the head moving forward in a way like it is jutting out from the body. Bad posture exerts a lot of pressure on the head and neck anatomy, leading to serious migraines over time. It affects the muscles that are attached to the back of the neck and skull (suboccipital muscles) shorten, while the ones at the front of the neck lengthen.
Poor Alignment and Function
Poor alignment of vertebrae in the cervical spine is an overlooked aspect that leads to constant headaches. Poor posture causes misalignment and fixation of the upper cervical spine. It impinges the nerves around this area and distorts the neck muscle, limiting blood supply to the head. To diagnose this problem, a professional need to examine the third vertebrae of your cervical spine. If your physician detects poor motion and misalignment of the spine around the neck region, it could be the major reason why you are experiencing serious migraines.
What You Can Do About It
The good news is that you can clear your headaches by correcting bad posture. The first thing you need to do is to make it easier for yourself to stand and sit up straight. A few exercises that you can do to make this possible are to do squats with lunges, weights, and shoulder rolls. Depending on your physique, age, and health condition, your physician can recommend other useful remedies such as massage, stretching exercises, and visiting a chiropractor for spinal adjustment. A spinal adjustment not only solves your headaches but also improves blood circulation and your health in general.
Bad posture can indeed cause your headache since it puts a lot of pressure on the nerves and muscles attached to your skull. The kind of pressure exerted around the cervical spine can lead to serious migraines that may continue in the long term if you do not correct your body posture. Besides taking painkillers for headaches, it is important to visit a chiropractor or get a recommendation from your doctor on how you can adjust your posture.