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Heads Up! by Autumn Libal “Shoulders back!” “Sit straight!” “Head up!” People are always telling us to have good posture. But good posture isn’t just about looking good, strong, and confident. It also influences development and health. Bad posture squeezes your internal organs, pinches nerves, reduces blood flow to certain parts of your body, and makes breathing and moving difficult. Good posture distributes weight evenly over your whole body, allowing each of your parts to function better. When people think about posture, they often think about their shoulders and backs, but posture includes everything from your toes to your head. When an earthquake happens in California, shock waves rumble across the whole continent. Something similar happens in your body every time you take a step. Your feet are where those rumbling shock waves begin, so they’re a good place to start when you’re thinking about posture. High heels cause serious posture problems for girls and women. Even a one-inch heel on the popular chunky-heeled shoes causes significant stress to your body. Lifting the heel one inch shifts your body's weight forward, stressing the delicate tendons and cartilage in your ankles, knees, and hip joints. Your calf muscles shorten, increasing your risk of developing muscle pain, and your pelvis tips forward, placing stress on your lower back. Imagine placing a one-inch book underneath the base of a floor lamp. At the base it doesn’t look like much of a tilt, but look at how it affects the rest of the lamp. Bad posture can have serious long-term affects like osteoarthritis, where your bones weaken and your joints swell. These conditions usually appear after age 40, but the potential develops when you’re young. Poor nutrition, lack of calcium, and bad posture when your body is still developing make future osteoarthritis likely. Another reason that posture is especially important for girls and women is our body structure. When a girl’s breasts develop, her muscles and bones need to adjust to the new weight in her upper body. Supporting the weight of your breasts through good posture when you’re young will help avoid back pain, hunched shoulders, and sagging breasts when you’re older. Thankfully, there are many things you can do to improve your posture. Tense muscles cause many posture problems, so exercises involving a lot of stretching, like yoga and tai chi, are helpful. Sleeping on your side with a pillow between your knees relieves stress on your hips. Using chairs with good lower-back support when working at desks and computers is very important. Strengthening your stomach muscles will help your lower back. And, even though they’re cute, switching those high heels to flat shoes will make you feel 10 feet taller! With your feet as a strong foundation, think of the other parts of your body as building blocks. Each set of joints—your ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders—should stack in a straight line over your feet. Your head should rest lightly on top. Test your posture by standing with your heels six inches from a wall and leaning back. With good posture, there should be one to two inches between the wall and your lower back and two inches between the wall and the back of your neck. Can you maintain this position and keep your muscles relaxed? Learn about the different approaches to achieving good posture at www.bodyzone.com/custom/posture_exercise.html. Find some great stretches at www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech138a.html. From the March/April 2003 issue. © 2003 New Moon® Publishing. New Moon®: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams, Duluth, MN. www.newmoon.org |
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