Postural Assessment

What

Who needs a Postural Assessment? People often present with postural related pain. What this means is that often we spend many hours adopting one position, either for work or studying or with sports. If the posture is a static one, eg. at work we can often find ourselves getting into bad habits.

Posture is an interesting topic and the cause of much debate in the physio world. Questions such as can we change posture or ‘what is the best posture?’ occupy the time of many clinicians’.

Often from the patient’s experience it may seem like a negative experience with patients saying “I know I have bad posture” or “my Physio has said my posture is terrible”.

The key aspect of assessing posture is firstly:

• Does it have any impact on my pain?
• Is it causing me some discomfort when I am in this posture?
• Is or has my posture changed and, therefore, can I do anything to stop it from getting worse?

There are some medical conditions that may have an impact on your posture and may be causing pain, these include; osteoporosis, ankylosing spondylitis and progressive scoliosis. At JYphysiotherapy we perform a thorough assessment and will refer you back to your GP if we suspect any pathological cause to your pain.

When looking at posture we firstly need to consider that the real ‘white elephant’ in the room is that we need to be moving more frequently. Is it that you have a problem with your posture because you get pain after 2 hours of sitting in front of your computer, or is it that you are spending too long in one position.

Here at JYphysiotherapy we offer solutions that make a difference. We give ergonomic advice, if needed, and we can also visit your office to offer a full assessment.

We also make sure that you are moving more, such as taking walks at lunch time, and we also provide you with ideas to build up your postural strength, which will ultimately help you develop an optimised posture.

Clinical Pilates is a great way to address postural strength

Please get in touch if you wish to discuss further.