| Strong muscles keep your body
upright and allow you to move. Good muscle strength and
balance are critical to maintain proper posture and
minimize muscle tension. Your muscles function much like
the wires that hold up a tall radio or television
antenna. If the wires are equally strong on all sides,
the antenna will stand up straight. If one of the wires
becomes weak or breaks, the antenna will either lean to
the side or collapse. The same is true with your body.
If the muscles on all sides of your spine are balanced
and strong, your body will stand up straight and strong.
Unfortunately, most people don’t have balanced and
strong muscles – due, once again, to lack of exercise
and to misalignments of the spine.
Muscles are very efficient at getting stronger or
weaker in response to the demands placed on them. Since
most of us sit at a desk, drive a car, and sit on the
sofa at home, many of our muscles are not challenged.
Consequently, they become weak. At the same time, the
muscles that are constantly used throughout the day
become strong. This imbalance of muscle strength
contributes to poor posture and chronic muscle tension.
Left unchecked, muscle imbalances tend to get worse, not
better, because of a phenomenon called "reciprocal
inhibition."
Reciprocal inhibition literally means "shutting down
the opposite." For all of the muscles that move your
body in one direction, there are opposing muscles that
move the body in the opposite direction. In order to
keep these muscles from working against each other, when
the body contracts one muscle group, it forces the
opposing group to relax -- it shuts down the opposite
muscles. When consistently only one set of muscles is
used, the opposing group, from being continuously
shut-down, is liable to atrophy.
This phenomenon is especially important to people who
work at a desk, because all day long the same muscles in
the upper back and chest area of the body are used. This
means that all day long the body is essentially shutting
down the opposite muscles in the middle back. Over time,
the muscles in the middle back become very weak because
they are not being worked like the muscles in the front.
This contributes to poor posture and chronic muscle
spasms and pain. The easiest way to correct this
imbalance is to do specific exercises which will
increase the strength of the back muscles, along with
manual therapy and chiropractic care. Once the muscles
in your middle back are strong, the tightness and poor
posture simply disappear.
Call us at (215)340-9949 to receive
relief now. |