Why "Stand Up Straight" isn't the Answer to Improving Posture

Stand up straight! Stop slouching! Most of us have had that yelled at us since we were kids by well meaning (and some not so well meaning) adults.

And though certainly a more annoying admonition as we get older, it seems difficult to disagree that “standing up tall” is good for us. There’s a strong market out there devoted to various devices, straps, and apps purporting to help you improve your posture.

Because frankly, it just looks better! Whether from thousands of years of social norms or other deep seated genetic factors, tall and straight forms are perceived to be better than a bent and slouched structure.

But is it really necessary? Will it help us feel better, be more successful, healthier, and make us more attractive?

The answer, like for most complicated issues, is both yes and no.

Let’s start by going over the fundamental benefits that we know are associated with what’s considered to be “good posture,” along with the myths and misinformation out there, and then give some tips on how to figure out what you need for yourself.

Primary Benefits of Good Posture

Aside from the fact that upright and plumb posture is more aesthetically appealing, there is a lot of evidence for the physiological and mental benefits of a good posture.

Physiological and Mental Benefits

This was touted several years ago in the popular press as the “Power Posture,” where the various research indicated such benefitsas:

• Inducing feelings of being more powerful
• Improved self-ratings of confidence and ability
• Being perceived as more competent and attractive by observers
• Increased hormone levels (specifically, testosterone)

And though there has been controversy about some of the research, standing taller does seem to effect mental and physiological benefits in general.

Sport-Specific Benefits

Better aligned posture is also beneficial for active movements.

An obvious example is lifting overhead. When you are slumped forward, it’s simply harder to lift your arms up, let alone a heavy weight. An elevated chest and pulled back shoulders puts you in a better position to transfer your strength and power more directly to the load.

This is why there is so much time and energy placed on proper technique in sports training.

Through years of experience and research, there’s been a quest towards the ideal form for throwing a baseball, hitting a golf ball, and lifting weights. Postural alignment is a key component for all of these movements.

Posture Mythbusting

So yes, there are a number of good proven reasons to work on your posture, that could have an immediate impact on feeling and moving better. However there are also some myths out there that we should discuss to make sure that you won’t be disappointed by the outcomes of your time and effort.

Myth #1: Everyone should aim for “ideal” posture

The first myth is that there is an ideal and optimal posture that everyone should conform to.

You can see this in a variety of sources which attempt to force a rigid positioning. A classic example is military posture, with the chest puffed out and chin tucked into the extreme, at-attention position.

And there are others (usually trademarked and with their own zealots) that purport to have justifications for their brand of posture and advocate very specific details to conform. They may stress precise angles of your spine and shoulder positioning and have their own reasoning for such, but there is no evidence that there is a set position that everyone should be in for optimal health and performance.

Our bodies are dynamic systems that can adapt well to a variety of environments, and in spite of the very many individual anatomical differences that abound, you’ll see very healthy and high performing people of distinct body types and postures.

Myth #2: Slouching = Pain

Another myth (related to the first myth) is that, if you are not in the “correct” posture, you will inevitably have pain.

But particular postures do not directly equate to pain. If it did, everyone that regularly slouches would have pain, and everyone that tends to stand straight would not. And this, of course, is not true at all.

The existence of pain (particularly chronic) is very complex and involves interrelated factors (anatomy, personal history, emotional makeup, environment), and with regards to postural factors, it’s more of a matter of abrupt change and our capacity for resilience than a particular posture itself.

Any posture that we cannot sustain because of a lack of muscular endurance and/or flexibility can result in pain, whereas another person may be able to because they have a more robust capacity for it. If you aren’t used to standing for more than a couple of hours at a time, you’ll likely experience soreness when you first have to do 8 hours of it, even if in the most perfectly aligned posture possible.

Let’s not force ourselves into holding specific positions because it’s “good for us.” That’s a recipe for burnout and really confers no significant benefit.

Instead, it’s much better to take the lessons we learn from analyzing our particular deficiencies. What do we need to work on to improve our ability to get into and maintain good alignments for our daily lives and in our recreational activities? This matters much more than working toward an arbitrary “ideal” posture that may or may not be appropriate for our individual needs.

Posture is a Habit

Clearly, posture isn’t as cut-and-dried as simply “standing up straight.”

Posture is important and necessary, but there’s no universal ideal that works for everyone. It’s a matter of working to attain the posture that’s most advantageous for you.

We can design the best exercise program, targeting your personal strength, flexibility, and control deficits, but if you default to problematic postures for the rest of your day, then the benefits won’t be fully realized.

But changing postural habits is a difficult thing, and can take a long time. It requires a lot of patience and a understanding of personal motivations and dispositions, and it can never be as simple as yelling at yourself to stand up taller and quit slumping!

As you can see, we feel the topic of posture and changing it is much more nuanced than it can appear to be on the surface.

There are physical, mental, and habitual shifts that need to occur to make sustainable changes in your life. But it is well worth it because postural change can be a vehicle for insight into your personal strength, mobility, and habit detriments, and this can affect the entirety of your being.

So What Can You Do to Improve Your Posture?

Posture is a pretty complex subject, and one we can’t cover in near enough detail within an article like this. But if you want to work on improving your posture for your own needs, you’re in luck.

Steven Low, author of the bestselling and most comprehensive bodyweight exercise training tome, Overcoming Gravity, reached out to us to collaborate on his new posture book. We, of course, accepted with great excitement.

This article originally appeared on gmb.io and was written by Jarlo

Feeling Sleepy? Have a Nap. It's Good For you!

Here's a very valid case to have a power nap. Experts say an after-lunch snooze is good for you and your productivity.

If you’ve ever felt the need to rest your head on your work desk to secretly get a few minutes of post-lunch shut-eye while the boss wasn’t watching, it turns out you’re not lazy or disinterested. In fact, you are very normal.

According to Moira Junge, sleep psychologist and member of the Sleep Health Foundation, we were designed to require an afternoon kip to get through the day.

“We are all pre-programmed to need a little nap in the afternoon, explains Junge. “What happens with our body’s sleep mechanisms is that we have a post-lunch dip in our system and have a propensity to sleep.”

Junge explains the ‘post-lunch dip’ in our 24-hour circadian rhythm is like a sleepy switch that just flicks on in the afternoon. It’s independent of what we eat and of the amount we’ve slept the night before. This dip also gets repeated at night around 11pm and is the reason why some of us ‘crash out’ around that time.

“We are all pre-programmed to need a little nap in the afternoon. What happens with our body’s sleep mechanisms is that we have a post-lunch dip in our system and have a propensity to sleep.”

But, says Junge, what’s unique about this afternoon napping signal is that it’s temporary. It lasts 30 minutes to 1.5 hours before we go back to feeling alert again.

“If you don’t get an opportunity for sleep, say if you are at work, you can cycle through this dip quickly as your body’s systems will rise again, with or without a sleep if you can just manage to stay awake through it.”

Professor Leon Lack from the School of Psychology at Flinders University is pro-power napping and says if we can, we should. He reminds me that our need to nap in the afternoon is the reason why siestas are an accepted practice in many countries and explains that napping is a natural human habit dating back hundreds of years.

“We’ve become so fixed in our cultural habits of having a single nighttime sleep,” Prof Lack tells SBS. “This idea is a reasonably recent cultural adaptation from the industrial revolution and because of the advent of electric lights.

“Over 300 years ago, when most people were rural farmers, you probably had naps in the middle of the day and stayed up a little later at night but only so long as the fires burned in your house.”

So let’s say one day, our workplaces radically changed to become pro-napping zones. How long a kip should we have on our desk before the alarm rings? Junge says the trick is for the nap to be very short: 20 minutes is ideal, with time dedicated for you to fall asleep.

“If you sleep more than 20 minutes, you get into that deep slow wave of sleep where you can’t hear anything or wake up and don’t know where you are,” says Junge.

“That’s because the first 20 minutes of sleep are very light, stage one and two of sleep, and if you sleep for longer, you are more likely to have sleep inertia, where you wake up and feel worse or take a long time to ‘wake up’ and get going. Longer naps might also affect your sleepiness and ability to sleep at night. So short, sharp naps are recommended.”

Prof Lack goes even further to suggest that the average adult should be having 10 minute power naps in the afternoon, as needed, with a few minutes added to fall asleep.

He co-conducted research in 2006 comparing no naps with naps of five, 10, 20 and 30 minute durations. The 10-minute adult nap gave participants the biggest rise in alertness with the minimal amount of post-nap grogginess.

“With the 20 and 30 minutes sleeps, performance was impaired a little bit immediately after waking up for the first half hour or so,” says Prof Lack. “But the 10 minute naps produced significant benefits in cognitive performance.”

"Stop the struggle and have a quick kip so you can be more productive at work for the rest of the day.”

The moral of this dreamy story, Prof Lack suggests, is that if someone is really struggling with sleepiness in the afternoon, it’s likely they will continue on struggling for up to 90 minutes until they come out of ‘that dip’.

“So managers should find out what’s better for the worker. Is it better for them to be below par at work for 1.5 hours [during their afternoon dip] and potentially make mistakes? Or allow them 15 minutes – five minutes to relax and fall asleep and 10 minutes of napping – to increase the productivity for the remainder of that 1.5 hours?

“Napping could be considered beneficial if you are struggling with sleepiness in the day, commonly in afternoon and have a decline in alertness. Stop the struggle and have a quick kip so you can be more productive at work for the rest of the day.”

Both experts stress that this advice is general and that sleep needs vary according to individual needs and circumstances. They recommend that people with sleep disorders consult a GP and, if needed, see a sleep specialist.

This article originally appeared on sbs.com.au and was written by Yasmin Noone

What Does Arthritis Mean For Younger People?

Think arthritis only affects the elderly? Think again. By 2030, an estimated 580 million people worldwide, ages 18 and older, will have been diagnosed with the disease. Pretty eye-opening, right?

Conventional medicine tends to treat arthritis with strong, immune-suppressing medications that temporarily relieve the symptoms of the disease. Unfortunately, I've seen how these medications can also damage your gut and how they fail to truly address the root cause of the issue. This World Arthritis Day, it’s time to make a change. I’m here to tell you that there’s another way—a way that’s designed to address the underlying causes—in order to reduce inflammation without medication. Here’s how:

1. You can treat all kinds of arthritis with one approach.

There are more than a dozen different kinds of arthritis, and while there are certainly differences in conventional understanding and treatment for each one, they all have common root causes and triggers for inflammation and pain. For example, the two most common diagnoses are rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis (OA). While RA is considered an inflammatory (autoimmune) disease and OA is typically thought of as the result of "wear and tear" and injury to the joint, both of these conditions are influenced by lifestyle choices such as diet and exercise. No matter what kind of arthritis you have, it’s important to know that it can be made worse by inflammation that starts elsewhere in the body, including the gut. Which brings me to my next point…

2. Heal the gut, and you heal the joints.

You may have heard some talk about gut health—and the gut-brain connection or the gut-pain connection—and you’ve probably heard the word "microbiome," or the friendly bacteria in your body. Fascinating studies have confirmed that the root cause of your arthritis is most likely lurking in your digestive system, so to heal your joints, you must first heal your gut. But where do you start? The best first step is to take a probiotic daily to help remove the harmful microbes that might be causing your symptoms, but some require a more intensive plan.

3. Treat your terrain with inflammation-fighting foods.

A fresh start for your microbiome means a new chance to influence your "terrain," or what I think of as the body’s deepest soil, where cells either thrive or wither. There’s a strong connection between your diet, your gut microbiome, and your pain level, so I recommend choosing foods that fight inflammation like organic plants and foods high in fiber and healthy fats, while avoiding refined sugars, dairy products, and red meats. Here are some of my guiding principles:

• Increase fiber, micronutrients, and phytonutrients, or, in less-scary terms, eat more vegetables and fruits, and choose organic whenever possible.
• Reduce refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and refined grains.
• Improve the quality of fat by removing refined oils and hydrogenated fats.
• Improve the quality of the animal protein you eat by choosing 100 percent grass-fed and finished beef, free-range chicken, and sustainably farmed, low-mercury fish.
• Limit salt, food dyes, and preservatives (which happens naturally when you limit processed foods).

4. Carve out time for daily stress-reduction activities.

Traumatic events and ongoing stress are very real triggers for inflammatory diseases. In our go-go-go world, we’re always rushing; we can’t miss this deadline or that meeting, and we very rarely take the time to sit back, relax, and let our minds reset. Diet and stress are two root causes of a damaged gut, inflammation, and chronic disease, so it’s no surprise that in order to heal your arthritis naturally, you must take time to practice your favorite stress reduction activities daily. I recommend meditation, yoga, long walks through nature, and journaling to ease the mind.

This article originally appeared on mindbodygreen.com and was written by Susan Blum, M.D., MPH

5 Steps to Bounce Back From a Bad Day

A bad day starts when you spill coffee everywhere on your way to work. Then you space out about the important tasks you had to get done. The icing on the cake? Your boss cancels a presentation you spent all yesterday preparing for. Bottom line: Today sucked.

Even if you love your job, an occasional bad day is par for the course. It can be hard to shake grouchiness when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, are annoyed by at work, or distracted by world events or relationship drama.

The secret to recovering from a bad day is learning how to move forward despite it. How you respond can mean the difference between a quick recovery and a full-blown funk.

Here are 5 steps to help get you back on track so you can come back stronger tomorrow:

The only constant is change.

That’s why we created the Making a Change course and guide. Whether you’re starting a new job, moving across the country, or changing a habit, Making a Change will prepare you to get Unstuck. 
Learn more here >

Step 1: Embrace your bad day

You’re human, and like the rest of us, you’re bound to make mistakes or have moments where you’re not performing at 100 percent. As much as your inner perfectionist may be freaking out, forgive yourself. Give yourself permission to feel bad (for a little while at least).

Release any anger, guilt, or self-blame so that you can move on. Take a breather and walk around the block. Scribble out your frustrations in a journal. Call your mom or best friend. There’s no shame in crying in the bathroom, either!  

Step 2: Change your mindset

Once you’ve moved through the sorrow, shift your mood by asking yourself, “How do I want to feel right now instead?” Calm? Joyful? Strong? Consciously generate positive emotion so that you can get back to work with a fresh perspective.

Watch for ways you may also be blowing things out of proportion (“I’m not good enough. I always screw up” or “Nothing ever goes according to plan”). Unhelpful thinking is common, but you can unhook from it by reframing your perspective. To do so, first identify those automatic negative thoughts, then tweak your self-talk to be more balanced and realistic.

Step 3: Recalibrate mentally and physically

As you may know, bad days affect both the body and mind. Stress shuts down many normal functions, which is why you may feel anxious or rushed and experience symptoms like tunnel vision or shallow breathing when things are going badly.

Try bringing blood, oxygen, and calm back into your system with a grounding practice, stretching, or a few jumping jacks.

Step 4: Treat yourself — the healthy way

Don’t confuse self-care with self-sabotage. Skip drinking the day away at happy hour. Steer clear of numbing out through food, TV, or another substance or bad tendency. Focus on what restores you and makes you genuinely feel good, even in the tiniest way. That may be giving a calling a friend, going to bed an hour earlier, or saying “no” to a networking event so you don’t overextend yourself.

Step 5: Leave it behind

Emotions are contagious (including negative ones) and when work sucks, unhappiness can follow us home. Draw a boundary with an evening routine to signal the shift and bring closure to a bad workday.

At home, speak up and let your family, roommates, or maybe your pets know you’re having a rough day. Request space to decompress if you do need it, but resist the urge to isolate. Connection with others, even virtually, is an important component of happiness. It helps us realize that bad days are universal and also serves as a much-needed source of support and advice.

No one is perfect. Life rarely works out exactly as planned. Instead of beating yourself up when a crummy day happens, expect them. And remember, you get to decide how you respond when bad days happen. Will you let it derail you? Or will you choose to see it as a tiny bump in the road on the way to achieving your goals?

Ironically, a bad day can be a hidden gift — it’s an opportunity to show to yourself exactly how resilient you are. You have the capacity to do hard things, so go show today who’s boss.

This article originally appeared on unstuck.com and was written By Melody Wilding.