Improving Posture After Breast Cancer Treatment

If you have been through Breast Cancer, following treatment you may have noticed your posture is not as good as it used to be. It is phenomenally common that posture is poor following Breast Cancer treatment, and there is more than one reason for this.

In this video I show you why posture becomes affected after Breast Cancer treatment, what poor posture we tend to adopt, how to improve your posture and what exercise we use to improve it.

Following Breast Cancer treatment, particularly straight after surgery, our chest wall (regardless of whether you have had a Lumpectomy or Mastectomy) can be tight and painful. We understandably want to avoid increasing pain, so we tend to "flex" or curve our posture forward to protect the front of our body. This posture shortens the muscles at the front of the chest wall (pectoralis muscle group), but it also impacts another major structure in our body that we often forget about - it stiffens the rib cage.

So we need to improve the flexibility of the pectoralis muscles, improve the mobility of the rib cage (and thoracic spine), but there are other reasons posture becomes affected after Breast Cancer. Women report that after Breast Cancer they feel the need to hide their new shape, particularly if you have had a Mastectomy (single or double - meaning one or both breasts removed). We get used to having breast tissue and proportionally a smaller tummy, but following treatment this shape can be quickly inverted to a flat or lopsided chest shape, and a larger tummy due to weight gain from Breast Cancer treatment (examples of weight gain include steroids, emotional eating, hormone blockers). So women tend to change their posture to "hide" this new shape. Similar to being the tallest kid in the class and slumping to make yourself shorter.

Long-term overprotection of the chest wall to avoid pain leads to deconditioning. Deconditioning simply refers to muscle wasting (atrophy) - in this case around our upper body (back and front) that are the major muscles helping sustain a good posture throughout the day. If the muscles that are supposed to be holding us up are weak AND tight, it will make it harder to adopt and sustain good posture. Many people following Breast Cancer may not have any major pain persisting after treatment is completed, but still adopt an 'overprotective posture'. So the body and brain are still trying hard to protect an area that is no longer painful.

The focus of this video is specifically improving rib cage mobility. I will do a separate video on stretching the muscle groups around the chest wall. The piece of equipment I use to improve rib cage mobility is a foam roller. They are inexpensive and can be purchased online. Using a foam roller to help improve rib cage mobility and ultimately posture is an exercise that can take as little as 30-40 seconds per day, and be performed 1-2 times per day.

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I welcome you to ask questions, participate and join me as we explore the intricacies of Breast Cancer and help YOU return to your most optimal health following surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

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