We’ve had a hell of a week seeing patients with anterior head carriage and we’ve been working hard to explain it all to them and then get them back on the right track.
Correcting any anterior head carriage is never going to be accomplished overnight. It takes a long time for the body to adapt to a new posture (I think it’s thousands of repetitions to learn a new motion pattern) and correcting your own posture is next to impossible as it involves conscious thought which is really difficult to maintain for any length of time and do some work at the same time.
But how is it mended?
Firstly get in and see your chiropractor to get your neck working well as there is no point of learning new posture with a rotated neck – why? as this will then become the default posture for your neck and you’ll try to revert to it. A visit will also reduce some symptoms (if you have any) but this will only be temporary because without a change in posture, the body will go right back to its previous position creating the problem again. So we must tackle the ‘why’ bit of the problem.
Anterior head carriage affects those that sit all day, usually in front of a computer or at a desk. Most people in these cases find themselves leaning over a desk to read or are hunched at a computer typing all day. Take a look around you; you’ll see them out there, like this cracking example of it in Drew barrymore – no less.
If your posture is correct then the red Centre of Gravity (CoG) line should pass through your ear hole. What happens in AHC is that the head comes forward of the CoG and starts to slow-fall to the keyboard. The only thing stopping this fall are the muscles of the neck and shoulders, such as the traps and the lev scaps.
However, once the neck is working well and the shoulder and neck muscles are functioning again it is time to start the anterior head carriage stretches to combat the damage done by peering into the computer for years.
I’ll add this on the blog once I get some decent photos of the stretch so hold your horses, get it working right by seeing your chiro and by the time it is I’ll have the stretch ready.
RMSC
