One Thing Justin Beiber Taught Me in 2016

Are you a Belieber? I certainly am. But not in the way you might think.

I “beliebe” Justin has horrible forward head posture after seeing that police profile picture that became famous not that long ago due to his accentuated head position and his childish behavior.

I admit I did laugh at first but I also realized something else much more troublesome about that photo.

Unfortunately, Justin Beiber’s profile image is not unique. His extreme forward head position is a very common and very scary problem plaguing millions of people around the world.

In today’s tech crazy world, people are attached to their cell phones, tablets, kindles and laptops nonstop. It’s unlikely this will change anytime soon, in fact it will only worsen. Go just about anywhere and you will see at least half the people communicating on one of these gadgets even when in the company of others.

It doesn’t even stop there since this poor head position is commonplace when driving a car or sitting in front of our home computers.

I’m no different, my cell phone goes everywhere with me and I drive several miles per day in my car.

So why is technology quickly destroying our posture, namely our head posture?

The answer is that a majority of us use poor body position while engaging in cell phone or computer activities and while driving. Our head is typically in a forward leaning position or on many occasions looking downward.

This is commonly known as Forward Head Posture or FHP.

This position all by itself isn’t necessarily bad since our body is designed to move in many different positions but we begin to cause some serious trouble when this is repeated and sustained for hours per day.

With repetition, this head movement is rapidly hurting our neck muscles and cervical spines. Without getting too technical, we have created a huge imbalance in the muscles that support the head. The muscles on the anterior or front of the neck called the sternocleidomastoid and scalene muscles have become over used. Because of this dominance, they have tightened up.

In contrast, the posterior muscles of the neck (like the upper trapezius) have weakened from inactivity. Since everything is connected in the body, you can imagine the kind of domino effect this has on other things like the shoulders, pectorals and mid-back.

The good news is that you are in good company since 99% of America either uses a cell phone, drives a car or sits for hours at a computer every day. We are in this fight together.