Posture Correction Hospital

Don’t rush into it blindly. 90% of the institutions on the market with the banner of “posture correction hospitals” are not formal medical institutions. If you really want to solve the posture problem, you must first distinguish whether it is postural or pathological, and then find a regular department accordingly. Don’t be fooled by the Internet celebrity package.

Last week I picked up a 22-year-old female college student at the orthopedic clinic. When I read the Little Red Book, I realized that her rounded shoulders and forward head were "upper cross syndrome". The "posture correction hospital" downstairs said that after 3 courses of treatment, she could return to her "right-angled shoulders and girlish back". I was so excited that I spent 8800 to apply for an annual card. My neck hurt so much that I couldn't lift it up three times. I came to take a picture and found out that it was just a posture problem caused by lowering my head to browse my mobile phone. However, the "bone setter" in the institution who didn't even have a medical certificate forced me to diagnose a cervical facet joint disorder. The physical therapy alone cost less than 2,000 yuan, and I still had to recover for half a month before I could go to work normally.

It's interesting to say that the "posture correction hospitals" on the market now want to find faults with everyone's standing posture: standing with a bulging belly means anterior pelvic tilt, backpacking with shoulders that are high and low means high and low shoulders, sitting for a long time means waist fatigue and core weakness. If you ask anyone in the past, they can list seven or eight kinds of problems for you, and a correction package ranges from a few thousand to tens of thousands. I really want to talk about professionals. There are two different ways of thinking about how to deal with posture issues in the industry. No one is right or wrong, but the people they are suitable for are different.

The view of traditional orthopedics is very practical: as long as you have no pain, no functional limitations, and no organic deformation of bones in the X-ray. To put it bluntly, if you feel tired when sitting with a slumped waist, you can straighten up with all your strength, and your height is not more than 2cm shorter than when you are lying down, then it is not considered a disease at all, and there is no need to spend a lot of money to correct it. Don't sit for long periods of time, lower your head to check your phone, and run and swim more. As your muscle strength improves, your posture will naturally be in good shape.

Doctors in the rehabilitation department will be more concerned about the long-term risk of strain: For example, for people who have long-term head extension, the cervical spine bears three times the weight of the normal posture. Now that they can bear it at a young age, they are prone to cervical spondylosis after the age of thirty; and for people with long-term forward pelvic tilt, the lumbar spine curvature becomes straight, and the probability of low back pain is 40% higher than that of normal people. If you intervene and adjust early, you can indeed avoid a lot of suffering.

But no matter which view you agree with, it is not the turn of those "posture correction hospitals" without medical qualifications to treat you. I have helped friends identify many such institutions, and the most reliable judgment criteria are really very simple: when you enter, first look to see if there is a "Medical Institution Practice License" hanging on the wall, and if there is a "Rehabilitation Medicine Department" or "Orthopedics" category in the diagnosis and treatment project. If not, no matter how good it is, American chiropractic, Japanese fascia correction, Russian posture reset, it is essentially a massage parlor with a nice decoration. It is really broken for you, and you can't even find the credentials to protect your rights.

There are also those who don’t take X-rays for you when they first come up, but take a standing photo of you from the front and side, draw a few lines for you on the 3D model on the computer, and say that your scoliosis is 15 degrees and your pelvis is rotated 3 degrees. You can just turn around and walk. True scoliosis requires taking anteroposterior and lateral X-rays of the entire spine and a doctor's palpation to confirm the diagnosis. It is either stupid or bad to be able to determine the degree just by looking at a standing photo. A parent brought his 12-year-old child to us before. He was told that the scoliosis was found to be 20 degrees at the "Posture Correction Hospital" and that he had to pay 50,000 yuan for one year of correction. We took a picture and found that the child only tilted his body when doing homework, with only an 8-degree physiological deviation.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that all posture issues don’t need to be taken care of. If you can't straighten your back when standing or sitting, have pain when you move, or even have numbness in your hands and feet, or if a teenager is diagnosed with scoliosis exceeding 20 degrees, or has congenital skeletal abnormalities, don't go to any correctional institution. Go directly to the orthopedics or rehabilitation department of a regular hospital to register. The plan the doctor will give you is 10,000 times more reliable than the Internet celebrity package of those institutions.

As for the issues that many people struggle with, "round shoulders don't look good" and "legs that are not straight look short in photos", to put it bluntly, they are all appearance anxiety caused by marketing. I have seen too many girls forcefully push the muscles of their shoulders and neck into fasciitis in order to have right-angled shoulders that look good in photos. The gain outweighs the loss. If you really need to adjust, take 20 minutes a day to expand your chest and practice plank support. Once your core is strong, you will naturally stand taller and taller. It is much better than spending tens of thousands of dollars to pay IQ tax to a "posture correction hospital".

Oh, by the way, a final reminder: It’s okay to go to an institution for relaxation. Don’t let them crack your neck and waist. You may feel happy when you hear a “pop”, but in fact, the small joints have already been broken, and you will be the only one who hurts by then.