Why fix slumping and how….Today's post:  Tuesday, 3-20-2018

In our today’s paper the Dear Abby column had a letter from a man who was bothered by his wife’s slumping posture.

He said it was getting worse and looked so bad it bothered him.

When he tried to ask her to fix it, she felt picked on pressured which made it worse.

Her reply was that it is extremely hard to improve and he should stop bugging her about it.

That’s bad advice both ways!

1.  In women, it may mean she is getting dangerous osteoporosis which will hasten her death and disability.  If so, she would be much happier and healthier if she did the things that stop that and tend to reverse it.  She would live longer and stay mobile longer and be in less pain

I’ve posted on what those things are.  Such things as stopping ALL soft drinks, particularly colas and doing leg exercises with relatively heavy weight that she builds up to and many other things work to do this.  Taking boron and magnesium and vitamin D3 and vitamin K2 also help.

Oddly, the drugs doctors are told to use are neither effective or safe to take.  So knowing NOT to take them or waste money on them is important.

In both men and women if you slump over often to read things on your lap or a table in front of you as a young person you tend not to think of it becoming frozen in place.

But surprisingly soon your back bones and cartilage grow to fit that posture and then fight you when you try to stand straight.  Worse, as you get older than 40 this gets impossible to fight and stand straight without some kind of extra help.

For hundreds of years people who read a lot have gotten this.  One of the older Civil War generals had it. They called him “old shell back.”

As years go by this worsens to such an extent your heart and lungs have less room; but it’s even harder to fight.

There is an operation to fix this.  But a substantial percentage of the people who get it die of heart attacks many before they leave the hospital.

So the advice columnist was wrong that it’s OK to leave alone! That really isn’t so!

2.  But his wife was correct.  It does seem impossible to not do once this afflicts you.  If you spend 60% of your attention all your waking hours you can slump less.  But if you forget and just go about your life at any time during your day, the slump automatically returns.

The much better news is that this is no longer true!

For less than $90 you can get an easy to use trainer to help you stop slumping.

This was on Facebook today:

“This device can dramatically improve your posture!

Get yours here - https://www.uprightpose.com/ “

It zaps you when you begin to slump.  Yes this clearly is hard to deal with at first.  But if you simply straighten up as much as you can each time you get zapped and keep wearing it, you gradually begin to sit and stand as straight as you can by habit.

This trains you to do by habit what you cannot do by yourself!

Since this is problem I have, I’m also working to afford the more expensive fixes I’ve posted about to unfreeze your back’s stuck on slump appearance and posture. 

But until I try those and find they do work, I’ve decided not to post on them yet or again.

But I’ve found two things I can do for free that help keep it from getting worse as fast:

Each morning while I make my coffee and the water for it is heating, I spend about 20 seconds holding my head back as far as I can while also holding my shoulders as far back and squeezed together as I can.  It’s only once a day and fast to do and linked to the coffee I always make.

Once a week on Sunday when I have a bit of extra time, my last part of my Sunday morning exercises I do a longer and more advanced version.  I stand as straight as I can and rotate my arms so my thumbs are forward and lift my chest as high as I can and hold my chin back and my shoulders back and stand as tall as I can for about one minute.

These two exercises do NOT improve the frozen spine problem as far as I know.  But I do think they keep it from getting worse until I can try the more expensive fixes.