Pandemic Posture – What To Know

Has your posture gotten worse since the start of the pandemic? Here’s what to know about your pandemic posture.

Here’s all you need to know about your ‘pandemic posture’. The trickle down effects of the pandemic are showing up everywhere and one of the biggest impacts is on a lot of people’s bodies and their posture. There’s a few reasons for this:

1. Work From Home. Now that many people have ditched the office for a remote work from home situation, many have struggled with achieving a good ergonomic set up for their new office. Needless to say, working from the couch/bed/floor/kitchen table on a small laptop may not be doing your spine or posture any favors.
2. Reduced Activity. With the restrictions that we’ve experienced, many have not had the same opportunities for physical activity that they enjoyed previously. No more walking groups, fitness classes, organized sports etc. When muscle tone decreases, the postural and core muscles that keep you upright are not immune to this and they will reduce in tone as well. When they are not as strong and toned, they cannot properly hold you up, and “hunching” over happens. Gravity in this case can be cruel, as it pushes further down on a hunched over body with weak muscle tone causing a quick progression to bad chronic posture.
3. Disrupted Routine. Many have had a disruption in routine that can effect the normal healthy habits that they participated in pre-pandemic such as physical exercise, shopping at farmer’s markets, sleep schedules (waking up later, going to bed later). When all these habits are disrupted, hormonal signaling in the body changes . One of the downstream effects of this is – you guessed it – a change in posture! It effects muscle tone which negatively affects your normal upright standing and sitting posture.
4. Change in eating habits.

Now, what can you do about it? Unfortunately, the fix isn’t as simple as “sitting up straight” like your grandmother used to preach. Partially this is because your posture can shift out of place in a lot of ways:

• It can twist and rotate. An example could be from chronic sitting crossed legs can cause a twist in your pelvis
• it can shift forward and backward (such as when your neck or hips jut forward)
• It can roll forwards or backwards (such as when your mid back “hunches” forward)
• It can even shift or rotate/twist from left to right or right to left. Take a good look at yourself in the mirror or a loved one- is their head completely centered on their shoulders? Or does it drift to one side? Are the shoulders level, or is one higher up? Is their ribcage centered over their legs, or does it shift to one side? Take a look at them from top down- do their shoulder blades stick out evenly, or does one twist backward? The same goes for their gluts, are they even or does one side twist back more than the other?

These are all ways the posture can change and when they do, they cause stress to the musculature and your nervous system integrity over the long term. The outcome is aching backs and necks, headaches, sciatica, low energy (it takes a lot of energy for your brain to counteract these negative effects!).

The solution is to have your SPECIFIC posture evaluated by a posture specialist and then through a combination of postural exercises, spinal traction, spinal orthotics, postural adjustments and in some cases bracing, your optimal posture can be achieved- even during the pandemic. Feel free to reach out to us for more information or schedule an evaluation if you’re in Hawaii.