Complaints & connections · borters.ch
First check whether the position can be straightened — mobile means trainable, fixed means investigate.
Also known as: poor posture · rounded back · kyphosis · drooping shoulders · forward head · slouching
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
A rounded back with shoulders drawn forward and the head pushed ahead. The decisive difference is whether the position can be actively straightened: if straightening succeeds in standing or on all fours, it is a postural weakness — the shape is mobile, what is missing is the endurance of the holding muscles. If it does not succeed, a fixed deformity is present, for instance after vertebral collapse in osteoporosis or with a growth disorder of the spine in adolescence. Both feel the same to those affected but need different answers. The widespread worry that such a posture inevitably leads to back pain has not been confirmed in long-term studies: neither the size of the rounded back nor the depth of the hollow back reliably predicted later complaints. What is measurably linked with complaints is the duration a position is held without change, and the strength behind it.
Stand at the wall with heels and buttocks touching and try to touch the back of the head and the shoulder blades without lifting the chin. If it succeeds with effort, the position is mobile. If it does not succeed at all, the spine belongs looked at — especially in older people who have lost height.
In studies of office workers the frequency of complaints hung more closely on the number of changes of posture than on the posture itself. Stand up before a position is an hour old — the single most effective measure and the least loved.
Rowing and pulling towards the body, two to three times a week over at least twelve weeks. The first four to six weeks bring mainly better command; the mass comes after. Stopping after a month gains only the part that disappears again fastest.
Turning and extending in the upper back, a few minutes daily. A stiff thoracic spine means the rotation missing there is taken by the body from the low back and the neck — both places where it does not belong.
Low values over a long time cause a dull ache in bones and trunk-near muscles, morning stiffness and weakness when rising from a chair. This is often blamed on posture.
Night calf cramps, twitching eyelid, a neck that will not release. The signs are unspecific — they work as a question, not as proof.
Not for the posture but for the muscles that hold it: with very low values a muscle weakness is described, mainly in trunk and hip. If you spend the winter indoors and tire quickly, this value is worth having.
Postural weakness is not a change in bone shape but a matter of strength and habit. It disappears when you straighten up — which is exactly what separates it from a fixed rounded back. Imaging does not answer this question.
The counterpart of calcium at the muscle fibre: calcium contracts, magnesium releases. With tension and night cramps it is therefore the first thing asked about — the studies are mixed, the mechanism at the muscle is not.
Belongs to the same question as magnesium. Sweating a lot, eating little or taking diuretics loses both together.
Muscles meant to hold a posture need building material. Spread over the day, more of it is used than in a single large portion.
With very low values a weakness of the trunk-near muscles is described — exactly those that straighten. This is no posture remedy, but a reason to know the value.
No preparation straightens a posture. What vitamin D does: at a low level diffuse muscle pain and muscle weakness arise — and weak holding muscles are exactly the problem at issue. Measured and replaced by finding, it is a precondition and not a treatment.
Strength training only takes hold if building material is there. 1.0 to 1.2 g per kilogram of body weight a day is the frame for building muscle, in older age nearer the upper end because the stimulus then acts more weakly.
Effective when deficient; effects on sleep and stress plausible but moderate. Too much causes loose stool.
Not as a cause of posture but as its mirror: under tension the shoulder girdle pulls forward and up. That is a protective posture, not a weakness — it releases when what causes it releases.
Postural weakness is a matter of strength and habit. What counts on the plate concerns the muscles behind it: enough protein across the day, and enough food at all.
For everything to do with statics, the method with the most data. What matters is not the kind but that it happens at all, and regularly — the back holds what it does daily.
It is not the session that works but what continues at home afterwards. After four to six appointments you can judge whether anything is moving.
The link here is unusually direct: noticing that you are slumping straightens you. The practice is the noticing, not the straightening.