Nice Curves

You may think a good looking person has nice curves; but this isn’t really what I’m referring to.

All mammals have a similar spine actually. A neck, middle back, low back, and tailbone. For our purposes here, we are going to refer to the human body. Are you human? Okay great, you are.

Your spine has smooth flowing curves. A “C” curve in the neck, a reverse “C” in the mid- back and a “C” curve in the low back. The mid-back is longer too. These are often referred to as your Cervical, Thoracic, and Lumbar spines. We sometimes refer to the neck and lower back curves as a lordosis. The Thoracic or Dorsal Spine is a kyphosis. In other words, the “C” opening in the opposite direction.

Technically, the thoracic curve or kyphotic curve is at the level of your chest and mid-back whereas the neck and low back have a lordosis and are above and below.

The are three main things really needed to keep those curves or improve those curves. They are: Chiropractic adjustments, postural exercises, and traction. You also should always be aware of your posture; knowing that regular poor posture means your spine inside of you may take on that bad alignment.

Correcting one’s curvature in one part of the body will help the other curves a bit as well. For example, fix the neck and the mid-back spine will benefit. Sometimes correcting the neck spine can correct the low back also.

The cervical spine is approximately 20-35 degrees, the thoracic curve is usually 20-40 degrees, and the lumbar curve is 40-60 degrees.

So why do we have those curves. First, to withstand the forces of gravity, next for ideal motion, and lastly so the nerves exit the spine with no unwanted pressure. When our spine is more straight than it should be we get a lot of unnecessary pressure. You may think you would be taller but probably not.

With pressure on nerves you are asking for trouble. Your head would most likely be out forward. Your mid-body wouldn’t move right, and you would constantly have low back pain.

Simply, the pressure just from gravity would give you pain. It’s always pushing down on us. It’s that force that holds us on earth. The moon has no gravity. Think off all those videos you’ve seen of astronauts on the moon where they bounce around.

Work at keeping good spinal alignment because when things are out of line, just that gravitational pull can put some extra pressure on the body.