Better Posture With Cervical Traction | Chiropractor for Posture in Boulder, CO
Hey guys, Dr. Jeff here with Dr. Emery. And today we’re going to review what are some things we do in the office to help correct posture. Now today I’m going to focus on one of the most common postural distortions, which is a loss of curvature of the neck when we see a forward head posture.
We Use Cervical Traction for Spinal Rehabilitation
So after we’ve evaluated what the posture looks like, and we’ve decided that okay, this is abnormal to putting pressure on our bones on our spine, or muscles or joints in our overall nervous system, then we can talk about how to fix it. Now exercises and adjustments and stretches alone are not enough to long term fix posture. So one of the things that we do here in the office to correct it long term is by utilizing spinal rehabilitation, also known as traction. So to work on the neck, we’ve got Dr. Emery in a seated position here, her chest is laying back against the chair, we’ve got some straps and things located here. And what we’re going to do to start is we’re actually going to put a head harness over her head underneath her chin. And what this is going to do is it’s going to lift up and create a anti-gravity scenario. Place that under your chin for me. And then we’re going to tighten it up to the point where now we’re kind of cradling the head and behind I have a point that’s going to bring down I’m sorry, bring up the head with about the same weight as the head about eight to 10 pounds. So she’s just going to relax in here. Now what’s therapeutic about this is as we start to lift the head up, we’re taking pressure off of the joints. And what that’s going to do is it’s going to open up and create space for us to also pull some more curvature into the spine to help with issues like disc herniations. It can help with the set joint irritations, it can help with muscle irritation.
How Cervical Traction Helps the Spine
Let me give you an example what that looks like. So now we have this rope kind of attached right behind her head here and another pulley to pull forward at the same time as we’re pulling up. So this has a little bit less weight on it. Or sorry, a little bit more weight on it so that we can kind of counteract that force. Now both of these at the same time are helping are going to help open up the joints of the cervical spine and take pressure off of discs, it’s going to provide more relief and take pressure off irritated or burning joints. And it’s going to help actually correct the spine by stretching out the ligaments and muscles around the spine to achieve a more sustained, nice neck curvature.
This is just one of the ways that we help with addressing posture. We’ve got many different types of traction. Feel free to scroll around to look at some of the other videos on how we can change different postural distortions utilizing spinal rehabilitation or traction.
