Can poor posture cause pain in the arm? The answer is yes but it depends on the origin of arm pain and the other associated conditions. Arm pain can originate locally in the arm or it could be a referred pain (coming from another part of the body).
Lets look at the local reason for arm pain first. If you work on a laptop or computer or you use the phone a lot or you're into gaming and you use your hands quite fair bit, you should be specially mindful of keeping your wrist in neutral. This means that your wrist is not bent forwards or backwards. Watch this video for more details:
What happens if your wrist is in a poor posture? It can lead to different conditions such as carpal tunnel syndrome or golfers elbow or tennis elbow, etc.
Example: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome occurs when there is compression of the median nerve in the wrist area. Poor posture can lead to this compression if sustained over a prolonged period of time. This is usually seen in poor wrist postures in mums holding their babies or working on the keyboard or during gaming session.
Now lets look at referred pain. In this scenario you can have a poor neck posture while sitting or sleeping such as a forward head posture. It can possibly cause compression of the nerves that are exiting from your cervical spine, which will lead to pain or tingling numbness down your arm on the side of the compression. The area and extent of pain depends on the degree of compression and which specific nerve is being compressed.
So the answer is that poor posture can cause pain in the arm. But it can originate locally in the arm or it can be a referred pain such as from the neck. Once you know the origin of the arm pain you can address the issue accordingly and work towards self management of this condition.
If you want to know more about easy ways to self manage your arm pain, join my free community where we discuss this and similar topics in a judgement free friendly group.
If you like this blog and want to be notified about new blogs as soon as they are published, subscribe to my mailing list below.
0 Comments