Do posture supports work?

Chiropractors get asked by patients on a daily basis if posture supports help. It’s not surprising because social media is full of adverts for them.

There is a massive range of supports available but we have yet to see one which actually does what it claims, keeps patients in an upright posture.

Bodymotion’s Ben Glenister, a chiropractor with over 20 years experience, with a postgraduate qualification in Biomechanics explains his thoughts on posture supports.

Main issues with supports:

• Most posture supports are positioned across the mid back, chest and shoulders. Yet most, seated posture issues stem from patients tilting their pelvis backwards which results in rounding their lower back. This means the spine can no longer maintain its subtle s-shape curves and forms more of a c-shape as we slouch forward and hang off our spines.
• The many posture supports, we have tried, aren’t strong enough to resist the mid-back rounding associated with tilting the pelvis back.
• Even if the posture supports was strong enough, it wouldn’t prevent the lower back rounding or head carrying forward of the shoulders. These two things are associated with the majority of symptoms Chiropractors see on a daily basis, lower back pain, neck pain and posture related headaches.
• If ever there was a device that could hold you in a perfect posture then it would be fundamentally floored. The user would hang off it rather than use their own muscles to hold themselves upright. They certainly aren’t the most attractive things and when the user decided not wear it they would, potentially, have a worse posture than before as they would have lost some muscular endurance.

Can posture supports help ?

So, is it all bad? Well, not necessarily. If wearing the posture support reminds patients to actively sit-up and move more then there would certainly be some value to them. However, we have yet to see one which is marketed for this purpose.

What are the other options? There are some great posture sensors available which alert you too prolonged periods of slouching. They help train your posture and remind you to move through-out the day. We will write another blog on this soon.