Can you correct forward head posture?

We had a young lady come into our office with head forward posture and upper cross syndrome, which is where the front of her spine was shortened and she had strain along the back of her spine. This young lady, Catherine, was experiencing some headaches and she had been told that she had a curve in her lower back. She came to HealthWorks: A Family Wellness Center in Plano, Texas for a chiropractic evaluation and here is what we found.

Taking a look at Catherine’s posture when she first came into the office, you can see that the green line is her center line of gravity and that’s measured from where her foot meets the floor. The red line follows along with where her body is in space. You can see that her body’s pretty confused about where the center line of gravity should be.

What that translates to is that it creates lots of stress through her neck and shoulders. It creates stress in her lower back as well because that area is trying to compensate for the head forward posture. When we measure how far forward her head is, we can see that she is 4.31 inches forward from her central line of gravity. That means that her head, which based on her body weight should weigh and have the amount of stress of about 7 1/2 pounds, is actually putting 22.1 pounds of stress on her spine and nervous system.

How do you fix your head too far forward?

Looking at Catherine’s post posture, you can see how her body has come much closer to that center line of gravity. From 4.31 inches to 2.6 inches. The 22 pounds of strain that was going into the back of her neck and her lower back has reduced by 33% , bringing it down to just 14.7 pounds.

Catherine reports that she’s having fewer headaches and her body overall feels better. Now underneath the surface instead of her spine prematurely aging and the muscles being chronically stressed out, the weight of her head on her spine and her vertebra is in the proper position which will go a long way towards preventing premature aging for her as time goes on.

We see these kinds of results with many of our patients and of course with healthcare nothing’s guaranteed, but our very own Dr. Taylor did some research a couple of years ago and found that on average in our office people lose five and a half pounds of that strain of head weight after just one chiropractic adjustment.

Watch the full video here.