Hi i'm dr paula moore the chiropractor presenting part 3 of forward head posture the shocking
truth here we have an actual patient only in their 60s with some pretty devastating
forward head carriage and i'm going to look at some of the health effects of this extreme
forward head posture so let me draw in a few lines to orient you again first of all we've
got the chin the base of the skull so the head's in actual abnormal alignment and this
person is actually standing to have this x-ray taken so pretty shocking this is where their
ear would be this is where their shoulder would be now let me draw in a few lines vertebra
number one two three four five six and seven and i'm going to draw in a line here and i'm
going to draw in another line to show you the measurement of how much forward head posture
this person has 87.4 mm if i zoom in on that so you can see that a little more clearly
let me draw in a few more lines now down the backs of the vertebra if you go back to Part
1 (see description below) you'll see i also did this and you're going to see that in Part
1 the ideal head position meant the person's posture was very upright almost in a vertical
alignment this person's is almost horizontal now again if i zoom out you can see this more
clearly yes so ideally we would have a c-shaped curve you can see this person has an s-shaped
or what i call a reverse neck curve don't forget the spinal cord and nerves and arteries
lay underneath here and there is a total kink almost a 90 degree angle just imagine doing
that to a garden hose and the effects to the water flow well here we are talking about
blood flow and nerve function so you can guess the kinds of potential health effects this
person could have now ideally the curve would begin at the base it would have a c-shape
and the ear would intersect the top of this line but in actual fact the ear is sitting
way out here now there's a law in physics known as Wolff's Law that tells us that when
a bone is under extreme loads or under changing loads it has to adapt we also know that for
every inch the head comes forward in this forward head posture it takes an extra 15-30
pounds of muscle tension (per inch forward) to keep the head upright that's 2 stone (UK)
now this is almost four inches forward so that means that it takes an extra 4-8 stone
or 60-120 pounds of muscle effort to keep this head upright constantly as a result that's
an awful lot of extra load on the bone and the bone has started to remodel according
to Wolff's Law and that's a form of osteoarthritis so if we look at the top vertebra and we see
nice healthy disc spaces here and then we get down to vertebra number five six seven
and you can see these bones have fused together this is severe osteoarthritis very little
disc space left and big thick flowing calcium deposits bone spurs that have fused the bones
together here this person won't ever be able to bend their neck backwards again because
of this fusion so not only will they be experiencing discomfort and stiffness but that will likely
continue to progress we'll do work on the upper portion of the neck here and try to
help just maintain the posture but it would have been much better to see this person thirty
forty years ago and as i said they are only in their 60s quite young this is the reason
why one wants to correct forward head posture this is extreme and obviously i don't see
this every day but it shows that forward head posture does lead to osteoarthritis and other
health problems so i hope that's really useful go back to Part 1 and 2 (see description below)
and take a look at the whole series and please email me ask@posturevideos.com with any questions
thanks for watching