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Forward Head Posture: New Horizons Require Attention

Himanshu Mathur

Happiness is the virtue of health and for a healthy living, age is not a parameter that matters. Translation of head forward on a stationary neck leads to a very common lifestyle disorder that is forward head posture. As we are flourishing into a technologically sound era we have burdened ourselves with a lot of lifestyle based health hazards. Due to the increasing speed of development, physical activity has reduced to a greater extent thus making our lives sedentary even at our workplace. Forward head position is characterized by an extension of the head together with the upper cervical spine (C1 to C2) accompanied by a flexion of the lower cervical spine (C4 to C7). This posture is associated with weakness in deep cervical short flexor muscles (capital flexors) and mid thoracic scapular retractor (i.e., rhomboids, middle and lower fibers of trapezius) and shortening of the opposing cervical extensor and pectoralis muscles. When the head is positioned forward the upper trapezius muscles activity is significantly higher than it is when in the normal alignment, the more the patient is to have pain from overusing the muscles. Forward head posture mostly occurs by the weakness of the anterior cervical neck flexor muscles which result in tightness of the sternocleidomastoid. Eventually these muscle imbalances have further disastrous repercussions on various functions. And this lecture is an initiative to drag everybody’s attention towards sparsely addressed yet hazardous repercussions of forward head posture.