The American philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau roamed far and wide over the hills and mountains of his native Massachusetts and neighboring New Hampshire. In his masterwork, "Walden," Thoreau famously stated that we must "reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep." One of Thoreau's primary methods for maintaining such wakefulness was to explore the natural world and spend significant time outdoors every day.
Those who live in New England may literally walk in Thoreau's footsteps, rambling around the countryside in the environs of his native Concord, Massachusetts, and climbing the regional mountains of Wachusett, Greylock, Wantastiquet, Katahdin, and Monadnock. Those of us who live elsewhere may recreate Thoreau's sense of awe, wonder, and accomplishment by discovering the beauty and grandeur of our own locales, whether they be the desert landscapes of the American southwest, the sweeping vistas of the Canadian heartland, or the dense forests of central Europe. The great thing, as Thoreau knew, is to get outside, walk around, and reacquaint and reintegrate ourselves with our environment and the abundance of life surrounding us.
The exercise we obtain by adhering to Thoreau's prescriptions provides ongoing vigorous physical activity and contributes substantially to our long-term health and well-being. Such outdoor exercise can be done by anyone, including young children and the oldest of seniors.1,2 Some may want to climb actual hills and mountains, but staying right at sea level will also provide quality exercise that is profoundly beneficial. The key for all of us is to exercise regularly. Exercising five days a week, for at least 30 minutes each day, is optimal and such a program is recommended by federal governments and healthcare organizations. As well, optimal weekly exercise includes both strength training and cardiovascular activities. These two forms of exercise are synergistic in that doing one type of exercise reinforces the benefits of the other. When you engage in both cardiovascular and strength training exercises on a regular basis, you quickly make gains in the areas of strength, endurance, coordination, balance, and flexibility. As well, we may notice that physical fitness enhances our ability to concentrate, be creative, generate new ideas, and get more done.3
Regular chiropractic care is an important component of all our physical fitness and wellness activities and helps ensure that all of our physiological systems are functioning at peak capacity. Regular chiropractic care optimizes our spinal biomechanics and the flow of information through our nerve systems, and helps make sure that all the processes that keep us healthy and well are coordinated and working in harmony. Overall, regular chiropractic care helps us obtain the most from our exercise program and contributes substantially to the health and well-being of our families and ourselves.
1 Soga M, et al: Gardening is beneficial for health: A meta-analysis. Prev Med Res 5:92-99, 2016
2 Jenkins DW, Jenks A: Hiking with Diabetes: Risks and Benefits. J Am Podiatr Med Assoc 107(5):382-392, 2017
3 Schuch FB, et al: Exercise for depression in older adults: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials adjusting for publication bias. Rev Bras Psiquiatr 38(3):247-254, 2016
In a common occurrence, you bend over to pick up the pencil you inadvertently dropped on the floor. Or you bend over to pick up the soap bar that has slipped through your fingers in the shower. Or you bend over to lift a bag of groceries out of your automobile trunk. These are all daily events. But on a certain day, at a certain time, during one of these innocuous activities you suddenly experience a sharp, excruciating, grabbing pain in your lower back. You might be unable to fully straighten up after such an episode, and it might take a week or more for you to recover completely. In the meantime, you have a lot of pain and it seems as if the slightest movement causes substantial discomfort. You may say to yourself that you'll do anything to avoid a recurrence of such a troublesome injury.
Fortunately, there is a great deal that we all can do to help ensure that our musculoskeletal system, specifically the spine and the associated spinal muscles and ligaments, is well-trained and functioning at high levels. A primary cause of lower back injuries is biomechanical dysfunction, and our preventive and rehabilitative efforts are directed toward restoring efficient and effective spinal and core biomechanics.
Regular vigorous exercise is essential in any program whose goal is to optimize biomechanical function. Ideally, your exercise program includes both strength training and cardiovascular exercise. By engaging in both categories of exercise, you enhance the benefits of each. Training effects include increased heart and lung capacity, slowed heart rate, increased strength and endurance, improved balance, increased mobility and agility, and increased ability to do various types of physical work.
These benefits are enhanced by incorporating dynamic warm-up activities in your exercise routine.1 A dynamic warm-up prepares your body to do vigorous exercise. Activities such as jumping jacks, squats, lunges, gluteus bridge, and the grapevine literally warm-up your muscles and joints and prepare your musculoskeletal system for your exercise session. As well, core exercises such as the plank, leg lifts, leg crossovers, and pushups train your abdominal muscles and back muscles, helping ensure you have a strong "center" from which to initiate all of your exercise activities.2,3
Getting regular chiropractic care helps ensure that you're obtaining the most benefit from the time and effort you spend exercising. By detecting and correcting spinal misalignments and removing sources of nerve interference, regular chiropractic care helps make sure that your spine is working properly and that your nervous system is free to effectively control and coordinate all your other physiological systems. In this way, regular chiropractic care helps you and everyone in your family exercise at peak capacity and enjoy ongoing health and well-being.
1. Asadi A, et al: The Effects of Plyometric Training on Change-of-Direction Ability: A Meta-Analysis. Int J Sports Physiol Perform 11(5):563-573 2016
2. Hoppes CW, et al: The efficacy of an eight-week core stabilization program on core muscle function and endurance: a randomized trial. Int J Sports Phys Ther 11(4):507-519, 2016
3. Bullo V, et al: The effects of Pilates exercise training on physical fitness and wellbeing in the elderly: A systematic review for future exercise prescription. Prev Med 75:1-11, 2015
Summer Sports
In the summertime, everyone's thoughts turn to the outdoors. We want to get out in the sun and have some fun. Some people do exercise outdoors, such as running, walking, and biking, all year long regardless of the weather.1 For others, summer's warmer temperatures make activity outside the house or the gym more inviting, and tennis courts, basketball courts, soccer fields, and baseball diamonds become filled with younger and older athletes, all looking to bounce, hit, or kick a ball around with their friends and opponents. Other summer activities include surfing and rollerblading, and although these activities may also be done year round, many people prefer to get their boarding and blading in when temperatures are subjectively more conducive.
Summer sports provide substantial personal satisfaction as well as health and wellness benefits. Any exercise, after all, is good exercise. But exercise needs to be done in context. For example, if you haven't done any type of exercise since last summer, attempting to play three sets of tennis your first time on the court will likely lead to trouble, specifically, a strained muscle, sprained ligament, or worse. Similarly, trying to run up and down a basketball court or trying to leap to snag a sharp line drive during a baseball game may cause an immediate problem if you are out of condition.
The best course of action is to re-engage in summer sports slowly, a little at a time.2 Even better, of course, is to participate in a consistent program of regular vigorous exercise throughout the year. Federal and healthcare professional guidelines recommend doing at least 30 minutes of vigorous exercise five days a week. Engaging in an ideal program of cardiovascular exercise, strength training, and core exercise on a weekly basis provides a level of fitness that supports all types of summer sports.
Here’s why:
Strength training enables your body to bear heavy loads throughout full ranges of motion of various joint structures such as the ankle, knee, hip, and lower back.
Cardiovascular exercise increases the amount of blood your heart pumps on each beat and trains your lungs to take in more air on each breath.
Core exercises enhance your body's ability to support loads under suddenly changing three-dimensional forces such as twisting, pivoting, bending, and lifting.3
Regular chiropractic care supports all of your exercise and sporting activities, in addition to strengthening your immune system and optimizing the functioning of your nerve system, your body's master system. By detecting, analyzing, and correcting spinal misalignments and other sources of nerve irritation, regular chiropractic care helps ensure that you and your family will enjoy a summer filled with enjoyable activities. As well, regular chiropractic care helps ensure long-term health and wellness for you and your family throughout the year.
1Bezerra P, et al: The influence of winter and summer seasons on physical fitness in aged population. Arch Gerontol Geriatr 76:80-84, 2018
2Evans EW, et al: Promoting health and activity in the summer trial: Implementation and outcomes of a pilot study. Prev Med Rep 10:87-92, 2018
3Coulombe BJ, et al: Core Stability Exercise Versus General Exercise for Chronic Low Back Pain. J Athl Train 52(1):71-72, 2017
When time is spent in an office or indoors day in and day out, some can lose that connection to the outside world. And that loss of connection can lead to higher stress levels and more health ailments without even realizing it. But when that the gap between office life and outdoor life is bridged, quality of life - and health - improves.
By adding in simple garden tasks or small DIY home improvement projects to your to-do list outside of work hours, you can go back to reclaiming that connection. It can also help ease stress, keep you active and limber (garden yoga anyone?), and even improve your mood. Who could use a little mood booster?
When one puts down their smartphones and picks up a spade and some gardening gloves, you not only give your mind a rest, but your body a rest too. Think of how your body reacts and responds when you’re scrolling through updates on your phone or computer? How is your posture? Are you tensed up? By setting the phone down and doing something more soothing - like most gardening tasks - you can effortlessly reduce the tension in your body and work on posture and body awareness.
While gardening doesn’t seem like exercise, digging, planting, weeding, and other garden activities take some level of physical exertion. And, over time, stretching and strength can be improved through simple gardening tasks. What’s best about most small DIY home improvement tasks, like gardening, is that you can change your exertion level depending on the needs of your body -- it’s a hobby you won’t have to complete give up as your body ages.
With any level of physical exertion, one should make sure that they are taking the necessary precautions to prevent injuries. The increase in physical exertion through gardening and small projects may not feel like a huge change all at once but being aware of how to avoid injury through resistance training and proper alignment can help in the long run.
Proper chiropractic care, such as regular spinal adjustments, developing muscle balance, ensuring pelvic alignment, etc can help prepare one’s body for any level of physical exertion. That way the stress relieving properties of gardening and home improvement won’t be lost to injury. By educating yourself on the preventative measures one can take through chiropractic care, you can enjoy all of the health benefits of the outdoors!
Our shoulder joints have the greatest range of motion of any of the musculoskeletal joints in our bodies. The shoulder joint is really two joints, the glenohumeral joint between the arm bone (humerus) and the shoulder blade (scapula) and the acromioclavicular joint between the acromion (a bony projection off the scapula) and the collarbone (clavicle). The glenohumeral joint is a ball-and-socket joint and the acromioclavicular joint is a gliding joint.
Acting together, these joints enable the shoulder to achieve a full 360º of motion in both the frontal (side to side) and sagittal (front and back) three-dimensional planes. The important caveat is that this extensive freedom of motion comes with a price: the shoulder not only has the most mobility, but is also the most unstable joint in the body.
The glenohumeral joint may be easily dislocated, most typically by a fall on an outstretched arm. The ligaments of the acromioclavicular joint are easily sprained and the joint itself is easily dislocated. Acromioclavicular joint injuries may be described as "AC separations". Overall, injuries to the shoulder joint are common, most frequently experienced by people participating in exercise activities and sports and by older people as a result of a fall.
The shoulder joint has built-in protection in the form of the four muscles comprising the rotator cuff, the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis.1 The rotator cuff muscles participate in all shoulder joint and upper arm motions and provide stabilization to the shoulder as the joint moves through three-dimensional space. But the rotator cuff muscle group is itself subject to injury (muscle tears) and degeneration as a person ages of the tendons that attach the muscles to the shoulder and arm bones.
Thus, the shoulder joint needs additional protections to maintain its structural integrity and mechanical performance.
In days gone by, people did demanding physical work every day, automatically providing training and resilience to the anatomical components of the shoulder. But in the 21st century, with the decline of the farming and manufacturing sectors and the rise of the service economy, most people no longer engage in actual physical work. As a result, most of us require regular vigorous exercise to maintain physical fitness and good health. With specific respect to the shoulder, upper body strength training exercises will help provide the necessary activity and mobility to ensure ongoing functionality of our shoulder joints. 2,3
As well, obtaining regular chiropractic care helps ensure that our spines are working properly, providing effective mechanical support to our shoulder joints, and that our nerve systems are working at high levels to coordinate all the physiological activities necessary to our long-term health and well-being.
Sangwan S, et al: Stabilizing characteristics of rotator cuff muscles: a systematic review. Disabil Rehabil 37(12):1033-1043, 2015
Heron SR, et al: Comparison of three types of exercise in the treatment of rotator cuff tendinopathy/shoulder impingement syndrome: A randomized controlled trial. Physiotherapy 103(2):167-173, 2017
Abdulla SY, et al: Is exercise effective for the management of subacromial impingement syndrome and other soft tissue injuries of the shoulder? A systematic review by the Ontario Protocol for Traffic Injury Management (OPTIMa) Collaboration. Man Ther 20(5):646-656, 2015
A book cover may not necessarily tell the whole story and may not accurately portray the nature of the contents within. Publishing companies pay high salaries to their marketing staff to create cover copy that will entice prospective buyers to make a purchase. But many times the book itself does not live up to the hype. Similarly, fitness clubs and weight loss programs promote their services by pitching the ideal of slim, well-toned members; happy, young people whom you would be unlikely to ever encounter during your actual real life.
Commercial pitches typically focus on the superficial characteristics of whatever is being promoted. The well-worn guidance in advertising states, "It's not the steak. It's the sizzle." But in terms of health and wellness, what's happening on the inside is what counts. It may be personally gratifying to look good, but being buff does not by itself guarantee good health.
Many cautionary tales demonstrate the accuracy of this assessment, including the untimely demise in his early 50s of a renowned long-distance runner and best-selling author of a book that celebrated the running ethos. Ensuring long-lasting health and well-being is an ongoing process and requires commitment and dedication. The general components are: healthy nutrition, regular vigorous exercise, sufficient restful sleep and a positive mental attitude
It is likely that at various times, most of us will fail to fulfill one or more of these requirements. The key is to acknowledge that sometimes other life concerns take precedence and return to our healthy lifestyles as quickly as possible.
By incorporating healthy lifestyles in our daily activities, we train our bodies to work efficiently and effectively. The long-term result is optimal levels of health and wellness. When we eat nutritious foods, exercise regularly, and obtain necessary rest, all of our physiological systems obtain the resources they need to function well and work in harmony with every other system.
An additional support to achieving ongoing health and wellness is getting regular chiropractic care. Regular chiropractic care helps to ensure that your nerve system, your body's master system, is on the job and coordinating all of your body's internal functions that help to keep you well. By detecting and correcting spinal misalignments that are sources of nerve interference, regular chiropractic care helps you and the members of your family be healthy and achieve wellness and your other life goals.
1Griffiths K, et al: Food Antioxidants and Their Anti-Inflammatory Properties: A Potential Role in Cardiovascular Diseases and Cancer Prevention. Diseases 2016 Aug 1;4(3). pii: E28. doi: 10.3390/diseases4030028
2Saragiotto BT, et al: Motor control exercise for chronic non-specific low-back pain. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2016 Jan 8;(1) doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD012004
3Nowakowski S, et al: Sleep characteristics and inflammatory biomarkers among midlife women. Sleep 2018 Mar 30 doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsy049. [Epub ahead of print]
Good spinal alignment means good biomechanical health. Essentially, your spine is the biomechanical center of your body. Your legs are connected to your spine via two large and strong pelvic bones. Your arms are connected to your spine via your shoulder blades, ribs, and numerous strong muscles and ligaments. Spinal alignment supports the functioning of all these associated components. When your spine is in line, then all of your body's mechanical abilities, such as bending forward and backward, twisting and turning, and walking and running are able to be performed at maximal levels.
In addition to the importance of spinal alignment for physical performance, spinal alignment is also a key factor in the functioning of all of your body's physiologic systems. In other words, spinal alignment is a critical element in obtaining and maintaining good health.1 Specifically, your spine houses and protects your spinal cord and 31 pairs of spinal nerves, the lengthy cord-like extension of your brain and the primary branches extending from that main trunk.
When your spine is out of alignment or misaligned, the small ligaments that hold the vertebras together and the small muscles that move those bones become irritated and inflamed. Left undetected, this soft tissue inflammation can affect the local spinal nerves, leading to nerve irritation. The resulting nerve interference disrupts the flow of information between your brain and the regions of your body supplied by the irritated spinal nerves, potentially resulting in loss of function or abnormal function of affected cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems. Nerve interference may cause muscle tightness and pain, as well as signs and symptoms of conditions affecting your gastrointestinal, immune, endocrine, and cardiorespiratory systems. Overall, spinal misalignment and nerve interference may be involved in causing a wide variety of conditions and disorders affecting the musculoskeletal system and other systems of your body.2,3
Regular chiropractic care plays a primary role in helping you and your family maintain high levels of health and well-being. By detecting and correcting spinal misalignments and sources of nerve interference, regular chiropractic care helps optimize spinal functioning. As well, by directly addressing nerve interference, regular chiropractic care helps information flow more freely between your brain and the rest of your body. As a result, all of your physiological systems receive and transmit more timely and accurate information regarding metabolic status, need for nutrients, and other requirements. In this way, regular chiropractic care helps us achieve more complete physiological performance and attain higher standards of overall health and wellness.
1Wieland LS, et al: Yoga treatment for chronic non-specific low back pain. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2017 doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD010671.pub2
2Coulter ID, et al: Manipulation and mobilization for treating chronic low back pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Spine J: 2018 doi: 10.1016/j.spinee.2018.01.013. [Epub ahead of print]
3Yeganeh M, et al: The effectiveness of acupuncture, acupressure and chiropractic interventions on treatment of chronic nonspecific low back pain in Iran: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Complement Ther Clin Pract 18, 2017
What is so good about an apple? Is it the color, ranging from ruby red to pale pink? Is it the crunch? The sweetness? Or is it, instead, a combination of all of these qualities, plus the natural goodness derived from the apple's secret ingredients — phytonutrients? If this were a multiple choice quiz, the answer would be "all of the above". Importantly, in addition to possessing numerous appealing physical qualities, apples contain an abundance of health-promoting biochemicals known as phytonutrients.1,2 These specific organic molecules are derived not only from apples but many other fresh fruits and vegetables, and help power the immune system, protect against cancer, maintain healthy eyes, and assist cells in clearing out metabolic waste products such as free radicals.
An apple may be considered one of Nature's abundant miracles, and all fruits, vegetables, and grains may be regarded in the same light. Fresh produce, including grains, are nutritious in that they provide us with vitamins, minerals, and raw materials for energy. As well, these foods help us attain and maintain optimal levels of health and well-being by furnishing us with a broad range of power-packed, almost magical chemical sequences, the phytonutrients, that assist each and every cell, tissue, organ system, and physiological structure do its job in the best way possible.3
These are some of the reasons why "an apple a day" is so important to good health. One could also add "an orange a day", "a tomato a day", "a squash a day", and "a serving of broccoli a day". Overall, a healthy lifestyle includes eating at least five servings of fresh fruits and vegetables each day. Good nutrition helps support our other healthy lifestyle choices, including doing at least 30 minutes of regular, vigorous exercise each week and obtaining sufficient restful sleep. The time and effort we spend in consistently achieving these healthy lifestyles help us reap the substantial rewards of a lifetime of good health.
As well, regular chiropractic care helps us put everything together in the arena of long-term health and well-being. By detecting and correcting spinal misalignments and areas of spinal dysfunction, regular chiropractic care helps ensure that the nerve system, the body's master system, is working at peak capacity. In this way, regular chiropractic care helps ensure that all other physiological systems, including the cardiorespiratory, gastrointestinal, and endocrine systems, are doing their jobs effectively. Regular chiropractic care helps us get the most out of our commitments to a healthy lifestyle and helps our families and ourselves achieve high levels of health and wellness.
1Kashyap D, et al: Fisetin: A bioactive phytochemical with potential for cancer prevention and pharmacotherapy. Life Sci 194:75-87, 2018
2Gammone MA, et al: Prevention of cardiovascular diseases with carotenoids. Front Biosci (Schol Ed) 9:165-171, 2017
3Ghosh N, et al: Chronic Inflammatory Diseases: Progress and Prospect with Herbal Medicine. Curr Pharm Des 22(2):247-264, 2016
Young peoples' bones stop growing by approximately age 20, somewhat earlier in women and somewhat later in men. Long bone growth, that is, in the arm, forearm, thigh, and leg, ceases later and smaller bone growth, that is, in the hands, feet, and spine, ceases earlier. In essence, you're as tall as you're going to be by your mid- to late teens, and at the latest, by approximately age 20 or so. A great deal of a person's height is comprised of the length of her or his spine and approximately 25% of the length of an adult human spine consists of the thickness of the intervertebral discs.
Intervertebral discs (IVDs) are cartilaginous structures, composed of a gelatinous center termed the nucleus pulposus and thick fibrocartilage bands encircling and supporting the inner ball bearing–like nuclear material. Together, the inner and outer structures create a hydraulic mechanism which adapts, moment by moment, to mechanical forces, primarily those of gravity, impinging upon the human form. The intricate design of the IVD helps to distribute outer mechanical forces efficiently, so that no single physiological component is required to support an excessive force or weight. Thus, IVD integrity is essential to normal human activities, and appropriate maintenance of the IVD cartilaginous structure is necessary to help ensure effective performance.
Obtaining sufficient water is the primary nutritional requirement of intervertebral discs. Therefore, drinking four to eight glasses of water each day will greatly assist in supporting one's function as a physiological machine. As well, physical activity is needed to help pump fluids into the IVD cartilage. When one is sedentary, as most of us are during the large majority of our waking hours, IVDs progressively lose water content over the course of the day. Dehydrated IVDs may lead to diminished spinal range of motion and increased stiffness, which may in turn cause muscular inflammation, neck pain, and low back pain.
Thus, we want to be sure we're taking steps to keep our IVDs healthy. In addition to engaging in regular exercise and drinking enough water, making sure we get regular chiropractic care helps support the integrity and efficient functioning of our intervertebral discs and the workings of our spinal columns as a whole. By detecting and correcting dysfunction of spinal intervertebral joints, regular chiropractic care boosts the functioning of IVDs, increases the mobility of the spine in all three dimensions, and optimizes spinal performance. By participating in healthy lifestyles and getting regular chiropractic care, we help maximize our health and well-being now and into the future.
Spring is arriving. The days are getting longer, the air is fresher, and the sunlight is brighter. Flowers and bushes are beginning to bloom. Tree sap is running and there are new baby animals in the world. In short, the world is being renewed and, if we choose to, we too can actively participate in this process of rebirth and rejuvenation.
We can get with nature's program, in a sense, by paying greater attention both to what's happening around us and what our bodies, our instinctive and intuitive selves, are telling us. For example, it's pretty likely that no one's inner physiological self is telling him to eat at a fast-food hamburger place every other day. It's pretty likely that no one's inner bodily compass is telling her to remain sedentary all day long, working all day, staying at home the rest of the time, and never going to the gym or doing any other form of exercise.
On the contrary, our bodies know what's good for us. Without any conditioned responses to get in the way, we would accurately notice our inner inclinations and respond appropriately. For example, in the wild, one never encounters an out-of-shape bird or squirrel. Rhododendrons and roses are never tired or fatigued. Lilacs and lilies never appear listless or depleted. All these living entities get their nourishment directly from the environment. All these living entities are constantly exercising throughout the day; flowers and plants by aligning themselves with the rays of the sun, following the earth's daily rotation, and birds and other animals by engaging in food-collecting, play and preening activities from dawn to dusk.
But humans have mechanization and labor-saving devices. In consequence, we no longer are required to engage in exercise to do our work and obtain sufficient nourishment. As well, in Western societies, we have vastly more food choices available than do our plant and animal friends. It's very easy for us to go long stretches of time without engaging in any vigorous exercise, and it's very easy to make food choices that appeal to our cravings rather than to appropriately reasonable nutrition.
Importantly, we have the ability to realign with nature's imperatives and, in the process, dramatically enhance our overall health and well-being. Such realignment includes eating a nutritious diet, including at least five servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every day and adhering to a weight-maintaining calorie limit of approximately 2000 calories per day for moderately active females and approximately 2500 calories per day for moderately active males. Doing at least 30 minutes of vigorous exercise five days a week is another critical component of our process of getting healthy. As well, obtaining regular chiropractic care helps ensure that our bodies are functioning at peak capacity and able to derive maximum benefit from the good foods we're eating and the time we're spending exercising. Regular chiropractic care ties together all our other health-promoting activities. Your family chiropractor will be able to provide expert guidance and recommendations regarding achieving optimal health and well-being.
