May is Posture Awareness Month

May is Posture Awareness Month. I have a little homework project for you today. I want you to look in the mirror and see if one shoulder is higher than the other. That is also a good test to do for your spouse, your parents, or your kids. Look at them from the front or from behind and see if their shoulders are even or if one is higher than the other.

In this blog we are going to give you four reasons why your shoulder positioning might be off.

1. The first reason is there might be different shoulder tension on one side compared to the other. So if the shoulder muscles on top, the upper trap muscles and the levator scapulae muscles are contracted up here, that is going to bring your shoulder up on one side and down on the other. If your teres muscles on the back of your shoulder are too tight and the lat is too tight on the back, it is going to bring your shoulder down.

2. The second reason is that you might have a misalignment in your upper back. If there's a misalignment in your upper back, that can throw your posture off and it can make it look like one shoulder is higher than the other.

3. The third reason that your shoulder positioning might be off is you may just have an anatomical difference. Everybody is built differently, and you might have a scapula that's built a little shorter on the right side compared to the left side, and that might make your shoulders look uneven.

4. The fourth reason is scoliosis. Scoliosis is a right to left or left to right curvature in the upper back. When you have a curvature in the upper back that can cause the shoulders to be misaligned. Now, specifically, we want to look at the teenagers in our lives, because through the teenage years, there are growth spurts that can lead to exacerbated scoliosis. Scoliosis can lead to several issues such as chronic pain, more postural deformity, and even heart and lung issues in some cases. It’s extremely important to detect scoliosis as early as possible.

If you notice that you or somebody in your life has uneven shoulders and you want to get that checked out by a professional, please come in for an evaluation. We do free posture analysis on all of our new patients!