How you can add inches to your height with incredible new technology that can make your neck longer by fixing your posture
Struggling with your posture? These new apps could help you to add inches to your neck - or simply stop you slouching.
Feline There’s a little cat meowing at me repeatedly. It’s definitely after something. Not food, not stroking – it wants me to sit up straighter. Nekoze is a free app connected to my computer’s camera that can detect my head dropping forward and scolds me when I slouch.
Get in line Over at free app Posture Pal, a giraffe called Rafi offers a friendly chirrup when the motion sensors in my AirPods give him the nod that I’m, well, nodding. They are part of a raft of posture-correcting tech – from desktop ‘sit-up straight’ reminders to electronic wearables – here to shore up the ‘wet spaghetti’ spines of Generation Slouch.
Fine line There’s certainly one between polishing your posture halo and annoying your colleagues with all this buzzy tech.
The Posture Right Intelligent Vibrating Posture Trainer (£81, kenkoback.com) is a strap-on pulsing puck that sits between your shoulder blades. When it detects any forward incline of more than 25 degrees it buzzes like a trapped fly until you sit back up. It didn’t want me to reach for my tea or bend down to plug in my laptop. Hence my being asked to ‘turn that damn thing off’.
Walking and sitting taller with your shoulders back and chin pulled in makes you look younger and more confident
Guideline Note to self: don’t wear your posture trainer through airport security – a flashing beeping device strapped to your back won’t make the best start to your holiday.
Plumb line Whether it’s the Posture Right gadget or the similar 8Sense (£82.99) or Upright Go 2 (£110, both amazon.co.uk), techy prompts are an effective reminder of what good posture should feel like. Which is? A plumb line running from the crown of your head down through your neck, chest, pelvic floor to between your feet. It’s what yogis call ‘mountain pose’. And how many slouching yogis do you see?
Online The reason for the slouch epidemic is our reliance on ‘look down’ screens, says Nadia Alibhai, This Morning’s regular osteopath. Rounding over laptops, phones and Kindles, rather than looking straight ahead at eye-level desktop screens and even TV sets, makes our heads weigh more.
Helpline This slouch epidemic is hitting neck and back muscles. ‘Your head weighs 5kg,’ says Alibhai. ‘Every degree it drops increases the effective weight. At 30 degrees it weighs 18kg, at 45 degrees 22kg.’ Tech neck is real!
Neckline Our necks are getting shorter and even disappearing, because we habitually stick our chins forward like turtles and hunch our shoulders. ‘In some people, you can’t even see their necks, because their chin is lower than their shoulders,’ says Alibhai.
Headline Elongating your neck can add a couple of inches to your height. Judging by last year’s Barbie Botox trend, achieving a long, lean neck via muscle-relaxing injections is the aesthetic we should all want. In reality, the screen-obsessed younger generation has ‘dowager’s hump’. ‘I’m seeing it much more in younger people now,’ says Alibhai.
Straight line Who doesn’t love a squashy sofa? Your osteopath! The modern kind that feel like giant marshmallows offer no support, yet for many of us, our sofa is our desk. You need to feel your sitting-bones on a firm chair – they’re the foundations for good seated posture, from which your spine should rise up tall.
Gen Z may have championed the ‘bed-rotting’ trend (where everything from work to eating takes place under the duvet) as an act of self-care, but for posture it’s a no-no.
Bloodline Take inspiration from our late Queen, says Alibhai. ‘She always sat on a proper chair, never leaning back or cross-legged. She only ever crossed ankles.’ In the end, walking and sitting taller with your shoulders back and chin pulled in makes you look younger and more confident. And who wouldn’t stretch to that?
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