Are you sitting comfortably? -Deep Frontal Line
Are you sitting comfortably?
We now spend on average 13 hours a day sitting, and the desk/chair combination has become the cultural norm.
- Sitting whilst eating breakfast
- Sitting on the way to work
- Sitting at work
- Sitting in front of the computer
- Sitting while eating dinner
- Sitting while slouched over the phone
- Sitting in front of the TV
The ramifications of sitting can be neck pain, tight chest and stiff shoulders compromised diaphragm, lower back pain, muscle degeneration, pelvic floor dysfunction. For nearly 200,000 years, Homo Sapiens spend the majority of their time on the move. If they wanted something to eat, they had to hunt for it or dig it up out of the ground. If they wanted to travel, they had to get there by foot. All the movement that surrounded us might sound exhausting to us now, but that activity shaped our bodies design, both internally and externally. Our bodies are built for movement, and in turn movement keeps our bodies healthy. It is a symbiotic relationship that allowed our species to survive.
Flash forward a few years and how is this affecting us now? When we sit and even dare I say slouch a few things happen. Our gluts and our abdominals completely turn off. Try slouching and mentally trying to contract your gluts and/ abdominals, now try it standing up. It's a completely different state of affairs! So not only do we not activate the right muscles but other areas get oveused and tight. Our diaphragm is shortened, which expands across the whole bottom portion of our chest cavity. The fascia (connective tissue skin) which surrounds it also goes around our hip flexors and our muscles between our ribs the front of our neck and to the little muscles we use for chewing. This is called the deep frontal line. I'm sure my patients are sick of me going on about the deep frontal line, but when this is shortened, it puts extra stress on our lower back, our mid back and and our neck and shoulders and can cause imbalance in our jaw (hello TMJ syndrome).
As a Chiropractor our job is to use various techniques to get you out of pain, surprisingly this is the relatively quick and easy bit. The next stage is make sure we address the cause of the problem, the dysfunctional areas! So often this means switching muscles back on, lengthening the right ones and strengthening the other ones. This help to overcome that "stuck in a box" slightly squashed and compressed deep frontal line posture and get everything back to the way we were designed!
If you have familiar lower back pain, neck pain, headaches, mid back pain, jaw pain, tight hips, then do come in for a thorough examination, we can get you back to your Homo Sapien self in no time!
