Table of Contents
A dowager’s hump, more commonly called a neck hump today, is a rounding at the top of the back, where the upper spine meets the base of the neck. Most of the time it comes from years of forward head posture, not from disease, and the good news is that it responds to the right exercises and habit changes at almost any age.
I’m Margaret Martin, a physical therapist, and this is the guide I give my own clients: what a dowager’s hump actually is, what causes it, how to tell it apart from a buffalo hump, how to measure yours at home, and, most importantly, the treatment and exercises that address it.
What is a Dowager's Hump?
A dowager’s hump is a rounding or hump that develops at the top of the back, where the upper thoracic spine meets the base of the neck. Today it’s more often called a neck hump, and it’s most commonly caused by prolonged forward head posture rather than by disease. It is not necessarily associated with osteoporosis, spinal fusion, or anything sinister, but it is something a remarkable number of people worry about, from teenagers to clients past 100.
Clients come to see me genuinely concerned about their alignment, and one of the first questions they ask is: “Is what I have a dowager’s hump?”
Interestingly, it’s not a term that was much used when I went through physical therapy school, so I looked it up. A dowager is someone like Lady Grantham in Downton Abbey, a woman widowed from an earl or a prince. It’s an old English term for wealthy older widows, and the “hump” part came from what happened as they aged: their posture deteriorated, and the rounding that developed over the upper thoracic spine became known as a dowager’s hump.
Whatever you call it, dowager’s hump, neck hump, or the medical term postural kyphosis, the important question isn’t the label. It’s this: what is your posture doing, and what are you doing to correct it? That’s what this article covers.
What Causes a Dowager's Hump?
The main cause of a dowager’s hump today is habitual slouching, hours spent over phones, computers, and in soft chairs, which accounts for roughly 80% of the poor posture that leads to a hump. Less commonly, the cause is structural: vertebral compression fractures that wedge the bones of the spine, or certain medical conditions associated with a kyphotic posture.
Habitual slouching.
The modern epidemic. In an earlier era, a rounded upper back was attributed to aging, fatigue, and sometimes osteoporosis. Today the causes are our devices, our computers, our soft furniture, and frankly our laissez-faire attitude toward posture at school and at the dinner table. Children are no longer repeatedly encouraged to sit up tall; look around any social gathering and slouching is simply the normal way of being.
That matters for anyone trying to correct their posture, because the cause isn’t an event, it’s a habit. And a habitual slouch has to be habitually unlearned. This is roughly 80% of what I see leading to a dowager’s hump.
Vertebral compression fractures.
In my client population, particularly women with osteoporosis, I regularly see a structural cause: multiple compression fractures of the vertebrae. When a vertebra fractures this way, it often loses height at the front and takes on a wedge shape rather than keeping flat, parallel surfaces. Because each bone stacks on the one below it, wedged vertebrae encourage the whole spine to take on that forward-curved shape. A small number of other medical conditions are also associated with kyphotic posture.
What about the fatty pad?
The lump itself, the pad of tissue at the base of the neck, is what worries many people most, and it’s often mistaken for the cause when it’s actually a consequence. Your body is intelligent. If it has to hold up an 11-pound head that sits forward of your shoulders all day long, it will try to build strength in that area by laying down more tissue. The fatty pad is your body’s attempt to cope with forward head posture, and it’s also where the confusion with a “buffalo hump” comes from, which is worth clearing up next.
Dowager's Hump vs Buffalo Hump: What's the Difference?
A dowager’s hump and a buffalo hump can look similar and sit in nearly the same place, but they are two different things. A dowager’s hump is a curvature of the spine, the upper back bends forward more than it should (the medical term is kyphosis). A buffalo hump is a pad of fat that collects at the base of the neck (the medical term is a dorsocervical fat pad). One is bone and posture; the other is soft tissue. That difference matters, because it changes what you should do about it.
This distinction gets muddied because “neck hump” is used casually for both, and the two can look and feel alike to the touch. But the causes, and the right response, are not the same.
How to tell them apart:
- What it feels like. A dowager’s hump is firm, because it’s the bony contour of a rounded spine. A buffalo hump feels like a softer, though sometimes dense, pad of fat sitting on top of the spine.
- What causes it. A dowager’s hump comes mostly from posture, and sometimes from vertebral compression fractures, as described above. A buffalo hump is a fat accumulation, most often linked to hormonal factors, high cortisol (Cushing’s syndrome), long-term corticosteroid medications such as prednisone, certain other medications, or significant weight gain.
- When to see a doctor. A buffalo hump that appears alongside other symptoms, unexplained weight gain, easy bruising, a rounder face, muscle weakness, can signal an underlying medical condition and should be evaluated by a physician. A dowager’s hump from posture is not a medical emergency, but it is worth measuring (see the self-test below) and worth addressing early.
The two often travel together. As I mentioned above, when your body has to support an 11-pound forward head all day, it may lay down a fat pad in that area, and the weight of that pad can, in turn, pull the upper spine further forward, nudging the kyphosis along. Poor posture can worsen the hump, and the hump can worsen posture.
If your hump is soft, appeared relatively suddenly, or comes with any of the symptoms above, talk to your doctor first to rule out a medical cause. If it’s the firm, gradual rounding that comes from years of forward posture, the exercises and habit changes in this article are exactly what you need.
Dowager's Hump Symptoms
The most common symptoms of a dowager’s hump are a visible rounding at the base of the neck, arms that hang in front of the body rather than at the sides, shallower breathing, digestive discomfort, shoulder and neck pain, and headaches. Many of these seem unrelated to posture, and that’s exactly why most people notice the symptoms long before they notice the postural change causing them.
The first sign is often in the mirror. When your spine is well aligned, your arms rest at your sides, alongside your body. You have a small natural arch in your low back, a fairly flat mid back, a gentle arch at the back of your neck, and your ear lines up over the middle of your shoulder. As a dowager’s hump develops, that alignment shifts: the mid back rounds, the shoulders drift forward, and the arms begin to hang in front of the body instead of beside it. People often notice, and dislike, this change in their reflection well before they connect it to their posture.
- Breathing and digestion. In tall alignment, your organs have room to do their work. You can take full breaths, your ribs open freely, and your deep core muscles can engage to support your trunk and pelvic floor. As the upper back rounds, the ribs press downward and everything beneath them, a five-pound liver, your stomach, your intestines, gets compressed into a smaller space. Two complaints I hear regularly from clients with a developing hump: “I can’t seem to take a deep breath” and “my digestion isn’t what it used to be.” That same downward pressure also loads the pelvic floor, making it work harder than it should.
- Shoulder, elbow, and wrist pain. If you’ve ever seen a physical therapist for shoulder pain, one of the first things they likely addressed was your posture. Here’s why: in good alignment, the head of your upper arm bone sits in the shoulder socket like a golf ball resting on a golf tee, supported by your rotator cuff muscles. Forward-shoulder posture slides that golf ball forward off its tee, leaving the rotator cuff working at a mechanical disadvantage. Many shoulder problems, and even conditions further down the arm, such as tennis elbow and carpal tunnel syndrome, trace back to this forward posture.
- Neck pain, headaches, and jaw problems. As the hump progresses, the head migrates forward year by year, because no matter what your spine is doing, you still want to look at the horizon. That forward head position compresses the small suboccipital muscles at the base of the skull, a common source of tension headaches, and places strain on the neck and jaw. A systematic review of the research found that adults with neck pain tend to have significantly more forward head posture than those without it, and that greater forward head posture is associated with more intense neck pain. (8)
The encouraging news: because these symptoms stem from alignment, improving your alignment can improve the symptoms. The exercises later in this article show you how.
Is a Dowager's Hump Painful?
A dowager’s hump can be painful, though the pain usually shows up in the neck, shoulders, arms, and head rather than in the hump itself. Clients often ask me: “Should I worry about my posture causing pain?” The answer is yes.
As we saw in the symptoms above, forward posture leaves the rotator cuff at a mechanical disadvantage, and shoulder problems can be very painful. So can the conditions that follow the postural chain down the arm, tennis elbow and carpal tunnel syndrome among them. Moving up the chain, the forward head position that accompanies a dowager’s hump is a common driver of neck pain, jaw pain, and tension headaches.
The important point is that this pain is a consequence of alignment, not an inevitable part of aging, which means addressing the alignment addresses the source of the pain, not just the symptom.
Self-Test: How to Measure Your Dowager's Hump
You can measure your own dowager’s hump at home with nothing more than a wall and a ruler. Stand with your heels, sacrum, and mid back against the wall, bring your head back as far as you comfortably can, and measure the distance between your C7 vertebra and the wall. Under 5 cm is mild kyphosis; 5.1 to 8 cm is moderate; more than 8 cm is severe.
Researchers have sophisticated ways of measuring forward head posture and kyphosis with X-rays, but that isn’t accessible to most people. Fortunately, a group of researchers had a very clever, low-tech idea: line people up against a wall, heels, sacrum, mid back, and as much of the head as possible, and simply measure the gap at C7.
Finding Your C7
C7 is the last vertebra of your neck, and there’s a reliable trick for finding it:
- Run your index finger down the back of your neck until you reach a bony prominence that sticks out more than the others, that’s usually your first thoracic vertebra (T1), one bone too low.
- Place your third finger on the bony bump just above it.
- Now nod your head down, then bring it back up. The bone under your upper finger should seem to disappear beneath your fingertip as your head comes back. That vanishing bone is C7.
Taking the Measurement
Stand against a flat wall with heels, sacrum, and mid back touching it. Bring your head back as far as it comfortably goes, and measure the distance from C7 to the wall. For reference, when I take this measurement myself, my C7-to-wall distance is roughly a finger’s width, well within the mild range. Then compare your result (see chart below).
Mild and moderate is exactly when you want to start working on your alignment. If you wait until the severe range, the same research showed something more concerning: a C7-to-wall distance beyond 8 cm was associated with a higher rate of vertebral fractures.
One more reason this test beats the old “can you touch your head to the wall?” check: people with forward head posture would tilt their chin up, touch the wall, and conclude they were fine. What we’re actually looking for is lengthening, a retraction of the neck, and the C7 measurement captures that honestly. So many people have poor posture today that we’ve collectively lost track of what good posture looks like. This test is your way of checking in: how is my posture doing this month?
How Severe Is Your Dowager's Hump?
Stand with your heels, sacrum, and mid back against a flat wall, then bring your head back as far as is comfortable. Measure the gap between your C7 vertebra (the bony bump at the base of your neck) and the wall, and find your result on the scale below.
Mild
C7-to-wall under 5 cm
An ideal time to start. Postural exercises and daily habit changes are most effective in the early stages.
Moderate
C7-to-wall 5.1 to 8 cm
Still a very good time to focus on your alignment. Consistent work can produce meaningful change.
Severe
C7-to-wall over 8 cm
Improvement is still possible, and a measurement this size has been linked to a higher rate of vertebral fractures.
Why the wall test beats "head to the wall." People with a forward head posture can often still touch their head to the wall by tilting the chin up. Measuring the C7 gap instead captures the lengthening, or retraction, of the neck that reflects true alignment.
This self-check is a general guide, not a medical diagnosis. If your measurement is in the severe range, or if a hump appeared suddenly or with other symptoms, speak with your doctor or physical therapist.
Improve Your Posture and Bone Health
Now that you’ve measured your postural alignment, now is the time to get my free email course on osteoporosis exercise.
Stronger bones in just 7 days with my free email course.
Dowager's Hump Treatment
Treatment for a dowager’s hump combines two things: hands-on techniques from a qualified manual therapist, and changes you make yourself, to your sitting posture, your daily habits, and your exercise routine. If you’re in the early stages of postural change, you can accomplish a great deal on your own. But the further along the changes are, the more a skilled clinician adds.
What a Manual Therapist Can Do
I’d love to tell you that you can fix it all by yourself, and in the early stages, you largely can. But I’d be doing a disservice to myself as a clinician, and to all the other skilled therapists out there, if I said you didn’t need our help.
A manual therapist, a therapist who works with their hands, has many techniques available once they see what your body specifically needs, including:
- Myofascial release to address tightened soft tissue that holds the rounded posture in place.
- Therapeutic taping to cue and support better alignment between sessions.
- Specific vertebral mobilizations, targeted movements for vertebrae that have been stiff for a long time.
These approaches work together: there is a great deal you can do while you’re looking for the right clinician, and while you’re working with one. That’s what the rest of this article covers.
Fix Your Sitting Posture First
Sitting is where most modern posture problems are made, and the single most important variable is one almost nobody checks: the height of your knees relative to your hips.
When your knees sit higher than your hips, it is very hard to sit up straight. Elevated knees tilt your pelvis backward, which flattens the natural arch in your low back. Once that arch is gone, the rest of your back wants to fall forward, and your head follows.
The fix is to alter the surface you’re sitting on so your knees drop below the height of your hips:
- Raise the chair, or sit toward the front edge of the seat, so your knees fall below hip height and your pelvis can tilt forward.
- Add a wedge under your sit bones, a rolled-up blanket works, or an inflatable fabric-covered disc cushion placed under the pelvis to encourage that forward tilt.
- Get out of soft sofas and chairs that don’t offer proper support.
Every one of these adjustments works toward the same goal: restoring the small arch in your low back so your vertebrae stack up and your head can come back over your shoulders.
Posture While Driving (and Flying)
Car seats, and airplane seats, are often poorly designed for the human body, so you have to recreate good support yourself:
- Bring your own lumbar roll. Cars often come with built-in lumbar supports, but they’re rarely positioned where your body needs them. Deflate the built-in one and use your own. Plenty of companies make small lumbar rolls, but a rolled scarf, spare mittens in winter, or even half a paper towel roll tucked into the small of your back works just as well.
- Then use the rearview mirror trick. Once you’ve set your best tall sitting posture, adjust your rearview mirror to match it. From then on, the mirror is your posture reminder: if you can’t see behind you anymore, you’ve slouched back down.
Should You Use a Brace for a Dowager's Hump?
A brace can help a dowager’s hump in the short term, as a reminder, but it should not be a long-term solution, because a brace does the work your muscles should be doing, and muscles that don’t work get weaker.
Working on good posture is genuinely hard, so people often ask me: “Can I just use a brace?”
- As a reminder, yes. Anything that gives you a kinesthetic nudge when you slouch has value: a posture brace that becomes uncomfortable when you round forward, therapeutic taping that you feel pulling the moment you slip, or a wearable posture reminder that vibrates when you slouch. Your slouch is your comfort zone, and you need something to pull you out of it. In my experience, the younger you are, the faster you adapt, but it can take up to three months of consistent reminders before tall posture stops feeling like effort and starts feeling good.
- As a crutch, no. Use the tool only for short periods, during the parts of your day when you know you slouch the most. A brace is exactly that, a brace. It holds you up, which means your muscles don’t have to, and with prolonged use your muscles get weaker, not stronger. The real work runs the other way: lengthen the muscles in front, strengthen the muscles in back, which is what the exercises below are for.
There is a role for braces, particularly when pain is involved, but use them under a clinician’s guidance, and use them short-term.
Bras, Breast Weight, and Your Posture
Many of my clients ask me about bras, something I don’t have a lot of personal experience with. But I have worked with many large-breasted clients, and the mechanics are real: the extra weight of the breasts places significantly more demand on the mid back.
It’s demanding enough that some healthcare systems will pay for breast reduction surgery for some very large-breasted women, because of the chronic mid-back and neck pain it causes. I’m not an advocate of breast reduction, but there is a role for it if that’s a challenge in your life.
For most women, the answer is simpler: find the properly fitted bra for your body. I’ve had many large-breasted clients invest real time and money in that search, and when they finally found the right bra, it made a remarkable difference, in their pain, their posture, and their daily life. If breast weight is part of your posture story, that search is worth making.
Best Sleeping Position and Pillow for a Neck Hump
The best sleeping position for a dowager’s hump is on your back with as little pillow as possible, just enough to support the natural arch of your neck. Side sleepers need the opposite: a fuller pillow that fills the space between the shoulder and neck. In both cases, the goal is to keep your head aligned with your spine rather than propped forward.
Your pillow matters more than most people realize. If you wake up in the morning, or during the night, with your neck pain worse than when you went to bed, your pillow is almost certainly one of the contributing causes.
If You Sleep on Your Back
When you lie on your back with good alignment, the only thing that truly needs support is the small arch at the base of your neck. Your head itself doesn’t need a pillow at all.
If you have a forward head posture, however, your head won’t comfortably reach the mattress, and the more forward your head is, the more pillow you’ll need to fill that space. Use the smallest pillow you can that still supports your neck, and never place the pillow under your shoulders.
Here’s the catch: if you always fully support your forward head position, your spine never gets the chance to stretch and gradually lengthen back toward better alignment. Sleeping on your back is actually an opportunity, a third of your day when gravity can gently work for your posture instead of against it.
The classic Hollywood bedroom scene, two big, fluffy pillows stacked high, is terrible for the average person. It puts you right back into the same head-forward position you hold all day over your phone and computer, and your spine never gets to elongate.
Can sleeping without a pillow help a neck hump? For back sleepers, yes, provided your alignment allows it. If your head comfortably reaches the mattress with just your neck supported, sleeping without a head pillow gives your spine hours of gentle elongation every night. Don’t force it if your head isn’t comfortable going all the way flat yet it: use the smallest pillow that works and reduce it gradually as your posture improves.
If You Sleep on Your Side
Side sleeping changes the equation. Now you want a fuller pillow, one that fills the gap between the point of your shoulder and your neck, keeping your head level rather than tilted down toward the mattress. For most people that’s roughly the height needed to line your chin up with the middle of your breastbone. A second pillow placed between your knees and ankles keeps your hips and spine aligned as well.
Set up this way, you can wake up with less pain, and stop reinforcing all night the forward head posture you’re working to correct all day.
Dowager's Hump Exercises
Effective dowager’s hump exercises follow a sequence: first release the muscles that have tightened from forward head posture, then stretch them, then work on opening up your chest and mid back. Trying to stretch a muscle that’s full of tender points is frustrating, it simply won’t let go, which is why the release work comes first.
Step 1: Release the Sternocleidomastoid (SCM)
The sternocleidomastoid, the rope-like muscle running from behind your ear down to your collarbone and breastbone, gets particularly tight with forward head posture. You can see it stand out on your neck when you turn your head. Here’s how to release it yourself:
- With the opposite hand, find your pulse at the side of your neck.
- Replace your fingers with your thumb, and push away from your pulse, you never want to massage over your pulse anywhere in your body.
- Turn your head slightly toward that side, and the muscle will come right into your thumb.
- Grab the other side of the muscle with your fingers. That gentle squeeze is all the massage this muscle needs.
- Work your way up the rope-like muscle toward your jaw, then back down again, always staying away from your pulse.
If a spot feels fine, move on. If it’s uncomfortable or even somewhat painful, you’ve found a tender point. You can’t hurt this muscle by squeezing it, but keep the intensity to about 5 out of 10. Return to it throughout the day, ten or a dozen gentle squeezes, several times a day, until the tender spots are gone.
Step 2: Release the Suboccipitals with a Ball
The small suboccipital muscles at the base of your skull get very tight from forward head posture. When you try to stretch your neck and it just won’t let go, trigger points in these muscles are often why.
Lie on your back and place a small ball at the very base of your skull, resting your hands over it. Then move gently: turn your head ever so slightly side to side, or add a small nod to reach the muscles toward the sides. You want just enough pressure to feel a gentle release at the base of your neck.
Step 3: Chin Tuck
Once those muscles have released, stretch them with a chin tuck: draw your chin down toward the ground (you’re still lying on your back) until you feel a lengthening in the muscles at the base of your skull.
Before the Next Exercises: Set Your Alignment
The remaining exercises open up the front of your body, and if you’re tight, your low back will try to “help” by arching as your arms move back. Before you begin, make sure the space in the small of your back stays constant throughout each exercise. A small rolled towel, about the size of your hand, placed under your low back gives you feedback that your spine is holding its best alignment.
Check your head, too. If your head tilts back when you lie flat, fold towels under it until you reach your best alignment, but no more towels than you need. Extra height just puts your head back where it’s been for too long. The idea is to get a tiny, sustained stretch while you do the exercise on top of it.
Step 4: Open the Chest (Pec Minor)
Forward posture pulls the chest muscles, particularly pec minor, into a shortened position. To open them:
- Lie on your back with your hands up by your ears.
- Breathe in. As you exhale, bring your upper arms and forearms down toward the mat.
- Inhale as you return, exhale as you lower again.
The breath isn’t decoration: exhaling as your arms move back helps keep your low back from arching into the space your tight chest is trying to give up.
Step 5: Arm Reach
Reach one arm (or both) behind you overhead, lengthening the whole time while your spine stays straight. You can do it as a slide along the floor or as a free overhead reach, whatever feels best. Keep the towel support under your head as needed. Anything that opens the front of your body helps restore lost mobility through your mid back.
Step 6: Angel Wings
Also known as “angel in the snow”: lying on your back, press your arms down as though making an indentation in snow, then slide them up overhead. Keep your chin tucked and the small space in your low back unchanged. Slide up only as far as your arms stay in contact with the floor, the moment you lose contact, that’s your range for today. Then slide back down.
These are a few of the postural exercises from Exercise for Better Bones that will help you improve your posture. Consistency matters more than intensity: small doses, done well, several times a day.
How Long Does It Take to Fix a Dowager's Hump?
Expect the correction of a dowager’s hump to take on the order of a year to a year and a half of consistent, conscious work, not days or weeks. You didn’t get tight overnight, and you didn’t develop poor posture overnight, so don’t expect to get straight overnight either.
Here’s the analogy I offer my clients. Imagine your forward head posture as the thickness of a book, say your head sits roughly 550 pages forward of where it should be. If you’re diligent, consciously working on your posture and alignment every day, you might bring your head back by about one page per day. At that rate, over a year and a half, you’ve worked your way through the whole book.
If you’re after quick results, one page a day feels painfully slow. But look at it the other way: if you’re in your twenties now, you’ll still be in your twenties when you have beautiful posture, and a whole different outlook on how you feel and how your body looks and moves.
One more reason not to wait: the longer poor posture is left, the harder the correction becomes. Harder, but still possible, at any age. The exercises and habit changes in this article are how you turn those pages.
Get Started: Take My Free Osteoporosis Exercise Course
Ready to start turning the page on your bone health? My free course walks you through the first steps.
Stronger bones in just 7 days with my free email course.
FAQs
Is a dowager's hump reversible?
In most cases where the cause is posture, yes. A dowager's hump can be improved and often substantially reversed with consistent exercise and habit change, though it takes months, typically a year to a year and a half. Where the cause is structural (vertebral compression fractures), the goal shifts toward preventing further progression and improving function.
Is a dowager's hump caused by fat?
Usually not. The lump can include a fat pad, but that pad is typically a consequence of forward head posture rather than the cause. The body lays down tissue to help support a head that's carried too far forward. A soft hump caused primarily by fat (a "buffalo hump") is a different issue and should be checked by a doctor.
What's the difference between a dowager's hump and a buffalo hump?
A dowager's hump is a curve of the spine (kyphosis) and feels firm. A buffalo hump is a fat pad (dorsocervical fat pad) and feels softer. A buffalo hump is often linked to hormonal or medication factors and, especially if it appears suddenly or with other symptoms, warrants medical evaluation.
Can sleeping without a pillow help a neck hump?
For back sleepers, it can. If your head comfortably reaches the mattress with just your neck supported, going without a head pillow allows gentle overnight elongation of the spine. If your head can't yet lie flat comfortably, use the smallest pillow that supports your neck and reduce it gradually.
How do I measure my dowager's hump at home?
Stand with heels, sacrum, and mid back against a wall, bring your head back as far as is comfortable, and measure the distance from your C7 vertebra to the wall. Under 5 cm is mild, 5.1 to 8 cm is moderate, and over 8 cm is severe.
How long does it take to get rid of a dowager's hump?
Plan on roughly a year to a year and a half of consistent daily work. Posture is a habit, and unlearning it is gradual, but improvement is possible at any age.
Can I fix a dowager's hump without a physical therapist?
In the early stages, you can accomplish a great deal on your own with the exercises and habit changes on this page. The more advanced the change, the more a manual therapist adds, but self-directed work is valuable both before and alongside professional care.
Margaret Martin
Further Readings
![back brace (posture aid) for perfect posture [melioguide]](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB2aWV3Qm94PSIwIDAgMTAyNCA2ODMiIHdpZHRoPSIxMDI0IiBoZWlnaHQ9IjY4MyIgeG1sbnM9Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cudzMub3JnLzIwMDAvc3ZnIj48L3N2Zz4=)
References
- Hyperkyphosis definition from spine-health.com. https://www.spine-health.com/glossary/hyperkyphosis
- Suwannarat P, et al. Hyperkyphotic measures using distance from the wall: validity, reliability, and distance from the wall to indicate the risk for thoracic hyperkyphosis and vertebral fracture. Arch Osteoporos. 2018 Mar 12;13(1):25.
- The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook — Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief. Authors: Clair and Amber Davies. 3rd edition.
- Katzman WB, Vittinghoff E, Lin F, Schafer A, Long RK, Wong S, Gladin A, Fan B, Allaire B, Kado DM, Lane NE. Targeted spine strengthening exercise and posture training program to reduce hyperkyphosis in older adults: results from the study of hyperkyphosis, exercise, and function (SHEAF) randomized controlled trial. Osteoporosis International. 2017;28(10):2831-2841. doi:10.1007/s00198-017-4109-x
- Greendale GA, et al. Yoga Decreases Kyphosis in Senior Women and Men with Adult-Onset Hyperkyphosis: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 28 August 2009.
- Cho J, et al. Upper thoracic spine mobilization and mobility exercise versus upper cervical spine mobilization and stabilization exercise in individuals with forward head posture: a randomized clinical trial. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders. 2017;18:525.
- Shih HS, et al. Effects of Kinesio taping and exercise on forward head posture. J Back Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation. 2017;30(4):725-733.
- Mahmoud NF, Hassan KA, Abdelmajeed SF, Moustafa IM, Silva AG. The Relationship Between Forward Head Posture and Neck Pain: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Curr Rev Musculoskelet Med. 2019 Dec;12(4):562-577. doi:10.1007/s12178-019-09594-y. PMID: 31773477; PMCID: PMC6942109.
Comments