Integrative Health Blog

We are now fully into the New Year and one of the more common resolutions of the year is to take care of our health. We want to be more physically fit and have more energy.  This usually means more exercise, stretching and better eating/sleeping habits.   So, we whole heartedly jump into action. Unfortunately, our body may not cooperate.  During this process of getting a healthy body we may experience feeling achy or even horrible in our body.  Sometimes it disappears as your body gets used to the new demands, but sometimes it won’t go away. 

Why is that?  There must be some secret sauce to physically being healthier.  Sad to say there is not. Each person has their own unique formula for getting better.  In order for our physical body to feel great it has to improve the structural function and be balanced biochemically.  In this article I am going to focus on the physical body. In order for us to move the way we should and feel great we need a combination of mobility and stability working together so the body can properly perform.  Now this is not secret sauce - but I will say if you don’t have this then your body is going nowhere fast! And it is likely breaking down. 

What is Mobility and Stability?  

Where do you start when you want to work on your aches and pains on your own?

This is the start of a 3 part series on how to address your body’s pain and dysfunction from a very simple approach. It has all to do with posture!

Posture relates to the spatial positioning of the head-shoulder-hips/pelvis-knee-ankle from the side and backside of your body. The backside view is the relationship of body segments to the horizontal plane, in this case the floor. Level shoulders, level head and level hips are the key. From the side it is the relationship of body parts that are in line with one another. If we drew a perpendicular line on the side of the body it should intersect the ear, shoulder, hip and ankle regions through the middle. These both would be labeled correct posture.

When there are asymmetries to the ideal/correct posture it creates compensation in our body which can create muscular, tendon, ligament, joint and nerve issues.

Let’s look at your posture. Posture is what your body looks like from the side and the backside.   Here are some positions that you may have seen in your own posture:

I am a Type 1 diabetic and have always had a hard time with my blood sugars and with weight. 

I’ve tried low carb eating, watching glycemic index foods, tons of exercise: cardio and weight training.  They all have had a positive effect on me, but I could not sustain it because I was not getting the result that I was expecting.  The rewards of all the hard work were not enough.  Yes, my blood sugars were better and my weight would drop anywhere from 5-10 pounds over a three-month period.  But those rewards were not enough. 

So, I would slowly start slipping back into habits that were not optimal for me.  I would revisit these things over and over during my diabetic life.  I always thought this is what I will be stuck with as a diabetic: retaining weight due to insulin use and blood sugars that would never be absolutely controllable.

Then came the pandemic and I had a lot of free time to work on the things that I had always wanted to do. Two things I specifically focused on were my guitar playing and my diet.   One of my patients follows the ketosis diet.  We spoke for awhile and I decided that I would try to do this because I had the time to prepare meals and I needed to do something different.  Well…9 months later I am down 33 pounds and my daily blood sugars and A1c are the best they have ever been. Near normal in fact! This was amazing to me.  I thought to myself, why is this diet now so successful for me? 

On the one hand it is the diet, but there was something else- and here is my conclusion:

Definition: Text neck is a term commonly used for a repetitive stress injury where excessive texting or mobile device use is believed to be the primary cause.

Smart phones have really changed the way we live life.

With a tap and a swipe, we have more ways to connect and we have access to amazing amounts of information. Our ability to connect- with people, work and the world- has made our lives easier, yet at the same time harder.  As a whole,  people are spending an enormous amount of time on phones and computers. This can creates pain in the neck and upper back, headaches and, at times, jaw pain.  In combination with a society that is overworked, stressed out, has low physical activity and minimal body awareness- this creates an ideal situation for a body that is not healthy and more prone to pain.  As a chiropractor, “neck pain” is one of the most common complaints I hear from of my patients.

But we can’t escape the smart phone! So, with all this use of a smart phone and looking down more than we ever have, that must mean text neck is for real and the cause of neck pain, right?

Yes.... and no. Let me explain.

Human beings tend to overcomplicate a lot of things. 

Many of us are guilty of thinking that anything worth achieving requires a lot of time and effort.   For example, if we want to lose weight, we must go on a complicated diet program designed by some famous doctor or health guru on the best sellers list.  Or, if we want to gain muscle, we have to work out every day for hours.  On the other hand, we think if it's easy it’s probably too good to be true or it won’t help, yet many of us want "easy" in this complicated, busy world.  The bottom line is, whether easy or hard, the basics of a healthy life need to be adhered to.  What are the basics?

• Healthy eating habits: Eat fruits, vegetables, proteins, minimize sugars

• Rest/Sleep: Get 8 hours of sleep per night, take naps and vacations

• Low stress levels: Minimize stress by setting boundaries at work, meditate and be grateful

• Hydration: Drink enough water (64 oz./day minimum) to sustain life in your body's tissue

• Personal: Do things that make you feel fulfilled, incorporate things that are your passion and inspire you

• Work: Do something that provides for the necessities in life, but also makes you feel like you are helping others or contributing to a greater good

But, there is one more important thing you must do for health and that is-

Every one of us is probably experiencing some type of pain or medical condition in our lives, and some are more difficult to treat than others.  Some resolve quickly, like a cold or sore muscles after a good work out at the gym. Other issues may continue to fester for years, or even decades, with no resolution in sight.

In the search for answers to unresolved pain or health issues, we may go from doctor to doctor searching for a solution, or we may decide it is something we can handle on our own.  Some of us never start the search for a solution because we make excuses (age, work, time, stress, money) and don’t make the time to take care of ourselves. At any rate, we will never get resolution to pain or health issues by looking for just one answer, unless we happen to be very lucky.  With over 17 years of practicing chiropractic care, I have observed that three main factors influence unresolved pain and chronic health issues. Each area needs to be explored so that the root cause(s) can be addressed and you can begin to heal.

After a big storm everybody has to go out into the cold and do hard labor. Shovelful after shovelful of wet, heavy snow is thrown onto a big pile so we can get to our cars, get the kids to school or even just open the front door.

Unfortunately, shoveling snow is not a normal movement for us and can result in injuries we should not ignore, but many of us do. As soon as the pain hits, we start to get those loving reminders from our spouses to go have it looked at, but most of the time it falls on deaf ears. Some ibuprofen, Tylenol, heat and rest is what most people do. Then a week later you may be feeling OK. If it doesn’t go away most people continue to tolerate it until it resolves on its own or turns into something worse, and that can be a mistake.

As a physical medicine doctor of 15 years I have seen a lot of patients that have presented with  various levels of pain and musculoskeletal problems.  Some as simple as low back pain as the result of shoveling snow, to as complicated as having Lyme disease/low thyroid/ chronic inflammation/ shoulder pain all layered on each other, never knowing what is the real cause of their physical pain. 

Somehow, in any of these cases, there needs to be a point where the basics of physical health are incorporated into daily living. Along with proper treatment, this will set the foundation for healing and get a patient back to a better state of health from when they first came in.

In sports, when a team is doing poorly many times the coach will take the team back to  drills they learned as a kid to reinforce the basics of the sport.  This allows the team to return to "the basics" of being successful and winning games.  The same thing has to happen when restoring the physical body to the way it is supposed to move and feel. 

What are basics for health?