Anti-aging products generate almost $200 billion annually worldwide, yet most of their benefits are purely cosmetic. However, not only can bad posture add years to your appearance, it can accelerate many of the physical problems that come with aging. Here are some of the reasons why you may want to make your posture a priority from now on.
Bad posture makes you look old…and fat.
Standing up straight, with your head held high, pulls your belly in naturally. Slumping over will cause rolls of fat to appear on your upper abdomen, and that’s not all. Janice Novak, author of Posture, Get it Straight notes that “…when you are slouched over, your internal organs have nowhere to go but down and out—you immediately look fatter.”
Additionally, you can literally become hunchbacked. Building up fat to protect the spine is how your body alleviates the stress of misalignment. The result is a hump on your upper back.
Bowel movements can become an issue.
In any diagram of the human body’s internal organs, you will notice that they are shown in a body that is standing upright. So, if you stop to think about it, slouching will definitely affect their placement. Unsurprisingly, that will in turn negatively affect their function.
Significantly arching your spine can cause your intestines to sag. This often leads to constipation.
Long-term bad posture can result in muscle distortion that affects your balance.
For every muscle group working in one way, there is a muscle group working in the opposite way. These counteracting groups are called agonist and antagonist muscles. Poor posture sometimes means that you are constantly working one group without the opposing muscles getting the equal amount of exercise they are supposed to have.
The result is often some muscles being stretched longer than they are meant to be, while others are being excessively shortened or tightened. Such distortion can cause decreased balance and range of motion.
Where did those aching joints come from?
Our bodies are miracles of engineering. But, simply put, they are meant to work at peak efficiency in an upright position. Our joints are given the amount of protective tissue they need according to the amount of load bearing they are expected to experience. A misaligned spine distributes weight improperly, causing some joints to bear more weight than they were meant to.
The areas most commonly affected by this misalignment are the knees, spine and shoulders. So if your posture is too bad, for too long, you may find yourself with the aching joints that would not be expected until much later in life.
What’s the solution?
It’s challenging enough to try and slow down the natural aging process, so you probably don’t want to hasten it unnecessarily. The problem is, breaking the habit of a lifetime can be really difficult. It means entirely retraining yourself, and learning good posture is no different.
However, reacting to the gentle vibrations of the UPRIGHT is actually involuntary. That means UPRIGHT’s method of training almost completely subconscious, so you barely even have to think about it. Never has breaking a lifelong bad habit been easier, or faster.
