With the help of “Internet celebrity’s magic weapon”, is there a cure for hunchbacks?

Hunchback is a problem that people of all ages are worried about. Can a correction belt help you to have a straight posture?

When it comes to hunchback, many people will immediately think of the image of Prime Minister Liu Luoguo. In fact, hunchback is a common spinal deformity, which is a morphological change caused by thoracic kyphosis. The normal spine is S-shaped when viewed from the side, with four physiological curves, namely cervical lordosis, thoracic kyphosis, lumbar lordosis, and sacral kyphosis. When various reasons cause the physiological kyphosis of the thoracic spine to increase, hunchback is formed.

Causes: Passive or active The causes of hunchback can be roughly divided into two types: passive and active. What is passive? Simply put, it is thoracic kyphosis caused by disease, and the individual can only passively accept this deformity. Common causes include ankylosing spondylitis, vitamin D deficiency (which can cause rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults), Schulman's disease (juvenile hunchback), mucopolysaccharidosis, osteoporosis, etc.

Another type of hunchback is called active or habitual type, which is caused by personal reasons. For example, students who often lie on the table to do homework, office workers who sit for a long time in the office, people who like to play with their mobile phones and drive. It is mainly caused by bad posture. After sitting for a long time, you will subconsciously stretch your neck forward, relax your waist and abdomen and move backwards, which will cause your back to become more and more hunched over time.

Correction belts have become a "net celebrity". There are many kinds of correction belts now, but the principle is to improve posture through external force correction. Merchants will tell you that correction belts can adjust the strength balance of the muscles on both sides of the spine and maintain the normal state of the spine, thereby achieving the purpose of correcting scoliosis and hunchback. Some correction belts even add a lot of cool elements, such as smart monitoring, angle sensing, vibration reminders, etc., and they seem to have been covered with a high-tech coat.

Judging from the before-and-after comparison photos provided by most manufacturers, the effect is very obvious. Especially for those students who often lie on the table to do homework, in the eyes of their parents, the correction belt is simply a magic weapon for curing hunchbacks. For a time, many brands of correction belts have become "Internet celebrities" for curing hunchbacks.

Is it reliable to correct hunchback? There are two types of hunchback: passive and active. Passive hunchback, such as hunchback caused by diseases such as ankylosing spondylitis, forms a rigid bone deformity in the skeletal system of the spine, just like a crooked tree that has grown for many years. Even if a correction belt is used, it is difficult to correct the deformity, so it has no correction effect. If you really want to correct it, you need to start with the cause of the disease, and often surgery is required in the end.

For active kyphosis, since the spine has not yet formed bone deformities, the main problem is muscle imbalance, so it is a soft kyphosis. It can be recovered by adjusting the posture, and the use of correction belts has a certain effect at this time.

Does the effect get better the longer you use it? Since the correction belt can correct active kyphosis, does it mean that the longer you wear it, the better? The answer is no.

The movement of the spine in all directions is coordinated and controlled by multiple groups of muscles. For example, when we do back extension, the back extension muscles will contract and the flexor muscles will relax, and vice versa. We must first understand a concept: posture correction requires active training and strengthening of weak muscle groups, and passive stretching and relaxation of overexerted muscle groups.

Long-term hunchback posture leads to imbalance of flexor and extensor muscles of the spine. We need to strengthen weak back extensor muscles, such as erector spinae, latissimus dorsi, trapezius, etc. Muscles are used or lost, and they are very "smart". Once they can "save effort", they will immediately "go on strike". If you wear a hunchback correction belt for a long time, the back extension of the spine will mainly rely on the correction belt to maintain, and the back extensor muscles will "work without effort", and muscle atrophy may occur over time. This will lead to a situation: when the child wears the correction belt, his back is straightened; when the correction belt is taken off, the back collapses again.

In other words, the body being bent back to the correct position by external force (correction belt) does not mean that weak muscle groups are exercised, nor does it relax tired muscle groups. Long-term wearing will reduce the opportunity for muscle exercise, which is not conducive to spinal health. Correction belt is only a temporary solution. Correcting bad posture still depends on strengthening exercise and strengthening back muscle strength.

Scientific exercise can also correct hunchback. Here are two very simple and effective exercises to correct hunchback:

1. Flying Swallow Spreading Wings: Hold your hands together, place them on your hips, tilt your head and neck back, straighten your waist and back. Slide your hands far away and stretch your back as far as possible, feeling that your hands and the back of your neck and waist are in opposition, and hold for 10 to 20 seconds.

2. Chair back stretch: Sit upright in an office chair, relax your feet and spread them shoulder-width apart, stretch your arms back and hug the chair back, press your buttocks against the chair back, slowly push your chest forward, feel the expansion of your chest and the contraction of your back, hold for 10 to 20 seconds. Slowly return to the initial position, pause for a while, and repeat 10 to 15 times.

Is the correction belt useful for "Liu Luoguo"? In 1958, the tombstone of Liu Yong ("Liu Luoguo" himself) was knocked down, and archaeologists had no choice but to temporarily excavate the cemetery. Experts excavated a human skeleton in the cemetery and found that the length of the tomb owner's leg bone was 75 cm. And from the overall bone test results, it was found that Liu Yong did not have a hunchback. After precise measurements by the archaeological expert group, it was calculated that Liu Yong's height was about 190 cm. It can be said that Liu Yong was a tall, mighty and handsome man.

Why is Liu Yong said to be hunchbacked? Many experts and scholars believe that Liu Yong was afraid of affecting the emperor's majesty. Because later generations speculated based on the length of the dragon robe, Qianlong's actual height should not be higher than 175 cm. When facing the emperor, Liu Yong tried his best to hunch his back, so he was called "Liu Luoguo". Since the cause of hunchback can be attributed to active type, Liu Yong's early wearing of correction belts would still have some effect.