Sonima presents episode 4 of Becoming Pain Free where Steven starts to see the effects of posture on pain relief. Follow along with him on his journey of using the Egoscue Method of Postural Alignment Therapy to eliminate his chronic pain.
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Watch episode 3 of Becoming Pain Free to see how Steven is doing in his journey to a pain free and active life. Steven is using the Egoscue Method of Postural Alignment Therapy to help him eliminate wrist and hand pain that is limiting his ability to work and play. If you are suffering with chronic pain and are ready to take the first step toward eliminating it contact me today to schedule your free postural evaluation and consultation where we will figure out why you have pain and what you need to do to becoming pain free.
Related videos/articles: Understanding Low Back Pain Forward head posture 8 laws of physical health Benefits of good posture About 1/3 of all injuries suffered by athletes are deemed "overuse" injuries. The definition of an overuse injury is: damage to a bone, muscle, ligament, or tendon caused by repetitive submaximal stress without allowing adequate time to allow for structural adaptation to take place. Examples of overuse injuries are:
This is episode 2 of Sonima presents "Becoming Pain Free" with Egoscue. (View episode 1 here) "Becoming Pain Free" is the video story of one man's journey to become pain free with Egoscue. In episode 1, Steven learns how Postural Alignment Therapy can help him eliminate his many chronic pains and allow him to enjoy being active with his wife and 5-year-old son. In episode 2, Steven learns how diet and nutrition play a crucial role in his body's health and ability to respond to posture alignment therapy. As the saying goes: We are what we eat. What we eat and drink are the building blocks that our body uses to repair and build every cell in our body (from muscle, bone, and nerve cells, to heart, lung, and kidney cells, to skin, hair, and nail cells). Our bodies need macronutrients like carbohydrates (main fuel for our brain and important fuel source for exercise), fat (excellent fuel source for daily activity and exercise) , and protein (major structural component of cells) and micronutrients like vitamins and minerals (important for normal building and function of bone and blood cells, immune function, growth, healing, and metabolism) along with water (hydrate joints and discs in the spine along with maintain blood volume and flush out waste products) and oxygen (necessary for production of energy and elimination of waste products).
Eating a diet consisting of simple carbohydrates (high calorie, high sugar, low nutritional density) and energy drinks (containing stimulants rather than real energy sources like high quality complex carbohydrates and balanced fats) like Steven shares in the video, will not give the body fuel for every day life or exercise and will not provide adequate nutrients for repairing and building cells. This type of diet will allow the body to slowly get sicker and weaker over time. Poor diet can result can be chronic pain and fatigue or even chronic sickness or disease. In order for Postural Alignment Therapy exercises to work, the body needs to have an adequate nutritional diet that provides all essential nutrients that will give the body energy to do the exercises and respond to the demands and have the necessary building blocks for new muscle, bone, and nerve cells. Easy ways to help improve your body's health is to:
I think Michael Pollan, who has written the best selling books including "The Omnivores Dilemma", "In Defense of Food", "Food Rules", and "Cooked", has some of the best, easy to follow, advice anywhere. A great place to start learning about how to eat better is his article Unhappy Meals published in the New York Times Magazine in 2007. Related articles/videos: Becoming Pain Free episode 1 East-West Breathing How Posture affects lung capacity New Beliefs about Pain 10 Things that cause posture imbalances and pain If you've heard of Postural Alignment Therapy or read Pain Free by Pete Egoscue and are trying to understand how personalized one-on-one therapy in a clinic works this video by Somina is a great starting point in understanding how therapy works. When you have any chronic pain symptoms the most important information for you to understand is what is causing the pain and what can you do about it. And when I say "what is causing the pain" I am not talking about things like "you have moderate osteoarthritis in your hip" or "you have a herniated disc at L4-5" or "you have a partial rotator cuff tear".
To find the underlying reason for the pain you have to ask the next question:
These questions help you dig much deeper than the easy answers (that are often not true at all) and get to the root cause of your pain. After asking these questions you can begin to look at your postural alignment and movement patterns to see why you were wearing the cartilage away in one hip and not the other or why you herniated a disc at a certain level. These questions, answers, and solutions take more effort than the easy ones, but the results are much better and longer lasting. If you think age caused your arthritic hip, there's nothing you can do about your age, so your only options turn into live with the increasing pain and disability as you get older, take pain medication to hide the pain, or get a hip replacement (which will limit your activities, often not relieve all the pain, and sometimes has complications). But if you ask more questions you'll discover that the reason why your one hip is arthritic is because the other hip is not helping. Strengthening the weaker hip and restoring normal range of motion to the arthritic hip might take a year but if you're able to return to your normal activities without pain and avoid drugs and surgery most people will say that's worth it! When you're ready for help contact me and I'll work with you on asking and answering these questions and finding the way for you to get well and return to a pain free and active life. Related videos/articles: What is "normal" aging? Orthopedic doctor and postural alignment specialist discuss osteoarthritis Knee joint osteoarthritis Could a simple misunderstanding really cause all my pain? Cause of back pain is never found in 85% of patients. Really!? Why? Why workout alone when you can workout together? Grab your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, friend, roommate, or teammate and follow along with Linda and John Lynch for a great 15 minute workout! This full-body workout will strengthen your core, arms, and legs and bring a smile to your face!
Related videos/articles: Egoscue partner workout Cardio core workout Straighten before you strengthen How shoulder posture affects running performance Top ten posture myths Do you get headaches, neck tension, shoulder or upper back pain? Have you had sinus issues or problems with vertigo or dizziness? Do you get jaw pain or has your dentist said you have TMD or TMJ? Have you heard of forward head posture or text neck and think you might have it? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you probably have misalignment of your head and neck. Your head is supposed to be balanced directly above your shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle from the side and supported by a smooth S-curved spine. From the front your head should be squarely positioned over level shoulders and hips, and knees and feet that point straight ahead. When you have chronic head or neck pain your doctor will often offer a diagnosis. Many of these diagnoses are of unknown cause (scoliosis, torticollis, thoracic outlet syndrome), blamed on "normal aging" (arthritis, stenosis, disc degeneration, disc herniation), or said to be caused by an injury (disc herniation/rupture, thoracic outlet syndrome, torticollis), while others are known to be caused by poor misaligned posture (text neck, tension headaches, TMD). In reality, all of these symptoms in many if not most people are directly related to poor posture and the resultant compensation that happens because of it. Imbalances in any of the load bearing joints (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders) can cause the spinal column to lose it's vertical alignment and natural S-curve, which will throw the head out of good postural alignment. When the head moves forward (forward head posture), tilts laterally, rotates, or moves out of alignment in any other way, it can cause a multitude of issues including: neck pain, shoulder and upper back pain, headaches, dizziness, balance issues, breathing issues, and sinus congestion and pain. You might be diagnosed with text neck, TMJ or TMD (temporomandibular joint disorders and pain), cervical stenosis, cervical disc herniation or rupture or degeneration, thoracic outlet syndrome, scoliosis, arthritis, cervical dystonia or torticollis, or tension headaches. Regardless of the diagnosis the most important thing to figure out is the underlying cause of the problem, which in cases not involving traumatic accidents is often misaligned or poor posture. (But even in cases of car accidents, neck curvature and head position can predict severity of injury from whiplash.) Check out this great image that shows the relationship between neck posture and whiplash injury. Misaligned cervical vertebra, characteristic of forward head posture, are caused by misalignments of the pelvis and lumbar and thoracic spine. These misalignments cause over time wear and tear of the tissues of the neck which can lead to cervical arthritis, stenosis, disc herniation or degeneration, and overworked muscles of the neck and upper back that lead to shoulder, upper back, and neck pain along with tension headaches and breathing issues. When the head tilts our of balance (forward or down, to the left or right, etc) the inner ear and sinuses are affected because they both work on principles of vertical and horizontal alignment with gravity that keep the fluids working correctly. This misalignment of the fluid canals with gravity can cause balance issues, dizziness, and sinus congestion and pain. The exercise video below by Sonima.com and narrated by Pete Egoscue contains a series of postural alignment exercises to help correct a misaligned head and neck and relieve associated symptoms. Let me know how the routine works for you in the comments section below. Being a mom is a rewarding yet hard job. A study found that mothers will spend on average 27,250 hours in their lifetime shopping, cooking, and doing household chores - that equals 1,135 days of their lives!! 72% of moms with children over 1 year old work, and those moms with a full-time job will spend 13 hours a day between work and household chores.
Things that keep mom busy:
That doesn't leave a lot of time for exercise! The solution? Get in exercise whenever you can and wherever you are. This workout video by Sonima.com and Pete Egoscue is 15 intense minutes of exercise you can do in the living room, backyard, or park and can be done all together or in 2-3 minute parts. Next time you are fatigued and tired and ready to plop down on the couch and zone out to Facebook, try this workout and notice how much energy it gives you. Leave your comments below. References: Fun mothering facts Busy mothers Related videos/articles: Children's postural alignment Fun family workout Pete Egoscue on infants and alignment Children's declining fitness Text neck Osteoporosis is being diagnosed more often and at younger ages than ever before. In fact, between 1990 and 2000, there was nearly a 25% increase in hip fractures worldwide. Europe and the Americas accounted for 51% of all fractures which is a hugely disproportionate amount. Why is this?
If we look at America for example:
What is it that causes more people every year to get osteoporosis? Why is it that America and other westernized countries have much higher rates of osteoporosis than less developed countries? I believe it has to do with our posture. Americans have terrible posture which is getting worse all the time. Children, teenagers, and young adults have worse posture than any generation before them. Our bodies work on this wonderful principle called “vertical load”. This means that our bodies are designed in a manner where each of our major joints are designed to stack vertically one on top of the next. Shoulder over the hip, hip over the knee, knee over the ankle. Our posture should look like this: Not this: When our joints are aligned vertically, gravity is applying a constant force down through our bones, strengthening them. This is happening whether we are sitting, standing, running, skiing, or golfing. But if our joints do not line up vertically, then gravitational forces are not having this positive effect on our bone density and can even start to have a negative and degenerative effect over time. The answer to the mystery of why our bones are getting weak is very simple: because our posture is indeed weak and misaligned. When we realign our posture our body does what it is designed to do: increase our bone density. And it does this without the need for drugs such as Fosamax, Actonel, Boniva, Didronel and others that all have negative long term effects on our bone structure and overall health. Wouldn’t you rather do it the natural way? I know I would.
If you would like a free postural evaluation and personalized discussion about your body, bones, and overall musculoskeletal health contact me today. At Oregon Exercise Therapy I specialize in helping people just like you relieve pain, restore function, and rediscover your bodies amazing ability to function pain and limitation free no matter your age. As much as I love blues music, being a musician and playing music doesn't have to hurt. Studies have shown musicians experience musculoskeletal pain at a higher rate than non-musicians, but this does not mean playing a musical instrument is bad for the body. Your body is designed to play a guitar, violin, saxophone, piano, or the drums pain free. Playing an instrument can be thought about the same way as playing a sport - each instrument, just like each sport, places specific repeated stresses on the body. With repeated playing the body will adapt to the demands placed upon it and adjust. These adjustments can be adaptations in muscles, bones, connective tissues, blood vessels, nerves, etc. The body is such an amazing stimulus response organism and it will adapt to what you ask it to do. Repeatedly throwing a baseball will strengthen the muscles involved in the throwing motion and increase the range of motion of the shoulder joint. This is a normal and natural response of the body to movement/demand. But when a person throws hundreds of baseballs daily with one arm and not the other, the body starts to become imbalanced. Now not only is one arm stronger and exhibits a larger range of motion than the other arm, the rest of the body starts to compensate for this imbalance. The dominate shoulder might drop down and forward which rotates the same side hip forward and twists the knees and feet out of balance. This is a recipe for pain and injury up and down the body. The same imbalance patterns happen when someone plays an instrument repeatedly. Playing a guitar right handed will lead to the right shoulder rotating forward and up and will cause internal rotation of the right arm. The left shoulder will drop back and down. The right scapula will abduct (protract) as the left scapula adducts (retracts). Playing a violin will lead to many of the same imbalances as playing a guitar. The woman below will end up with imbalances in her neck, shoulder, and back muscles from the repeated demands of playing the violin. These imbalances can lead to neck, back, shoulder, elbow, wrist, or hand pain and injury. Being a drummer can also lead to postural imbalances and eventual pain or injury. Common imbalances created by drumming are forward head posture, thoracic flexion, lumbar flexion, and rounded shoulders. Whether you play baseball or guitar the key to becoming pain free is the same: balance the body. Restoring postural alignment and balance will both relieve pain and future prevent injuries. The first thing you need to do is identify your postural imbalances and then figure out what specific exercises/stretches will restore proper strength, flexibility, stability, and position to the muscles and joints. As function is restored, your posture will return to balance, and allow you to play pain free.
If you would like a free postural evaluation contact me today. I will help you understand the relationship between your dysfunctions (what's not working), compensations (what's taken over instead), and your pain (the resultant symptoms). Then we can formulate a plan to get your postural alignment restored and you can return to playing pain free. Related articles/videos: Sports and the blame game Functional posture warm-up for tennis How shoulder posture affects running performance 10 design perfections in the human body Tennis elbow - why tennis isn't to blame |
About Matt WhiteheadI'm an Egoscue Institute® certified Postural Alignment Specialist (PAS) and Advanced Exercise Therapist (AET), certified personal trainer, PatchFitness performer, ultra trail runner, mountain biker, dad, music lover, environmentalist, and wanna-be slam dunk champion. I will be providing you with the latest posture exercises to help you live, play, and be pain free. Archives
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