ur bodily health. We injure and break down our spinal health as we bend over our smartphones to read or send text messages, play games, watch videos, or read notifications from our multiple apps.

Even more, we slump at our computers for long hours, sit at the wheels of our cars, slouch at our desks, sleep on multiple pillows, and rest on the couch with our heads propped up watching our flat screens. This chronically forward-bending lifestyle is now known to break down our spines and maybe ruining our health.

This might sound alarmist, but it's true. While many people are aware that a sedentary lifestyle is not healthy, many people today-regardless of whether they live sedentary or active lifestyles or anything in between-are adapting to a technology-focused way of living that can physically break down our bodies and cause pre-mature aging. Technology is causing us to use our bodies in ways that put us into forward-flexed, head forward, shoulders rounded postures for prolonged periods of time that are changing our bodies and health for the worse. More and more teenagers and young adults are now showing up in doctors' offices with the kind of spinal degenerative disorders and health problems that in former times were only showing up in much older people. Our bodies were not designed for this way of living. We are built to move. We're meant to use our strength, be dynamic and in motion. Movement helps our bodies heal injury and disease. Being in motion stimulates our brains. The normal, optimal structure of our spine and frame is designed to help us survive against the toughest of environments, the forces of gravity.

Our spine is the foundation of health and strength in our body. You will learn how a healthy, normal spinal structure allows life energy in the spinal cord to nourish all the organs with healing energy, giving us a stronger, more youthful body. You will also learn how the prolonged forward-bending postures can weaken and break down our spinal posture and structure, and how that causes premature degeneration of our spine and tension stress-like stretching a rubber band-to our spinal cord. You will read research that details how this prolonged tension stress on the spinal cord can cause detrimental effects to our organs, including the lungs, heart, digestive tract, and more. This can also adversely affect our immune systems.

If our immune system weakens, which is the system in our body that fights disease, you may experience anything from colds or flus to allergies, to autoimmune diseases, which can progress to cancer. In addition, poor posture can lead to other, even more serious problems. With a distorted spinal structure causing increased sympathetic stress, overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system leads to a decrease in the activity of the immune system with a resultant susceptibility to infection.1 Today, 8 out of 10 Americans have back pain, which means at least 80% of the population is suffering from unhealthy posture, which may or can potentially lead to disability and disease, and may even be life-threatening. I wrote Back to Health to bring awareness, choice, empowerment, and a plan of action to you, so that you and millions of others may live a better life. You have the choice to become aware that how you use your body and spine can determine both the quality and quantity of your health and life.