Mini Workouts While You Work

This is a repost from Millar Chiropractic Clinic Website

Mini Workouts While You Work

What Do You Eat at Work?

The vast majority of us sit throughout the day at work. Exercising regularly - even if it's just a few minutes at a time throughout the day - helps to keep a person's metabolic rate, at an optimal level and therefore the muscles continue to burn calories even while sitting. Conversely, when we sit for hours at a time without getting up to move around, our metabolic rates drop.  That is why taking short exercise breaks often throughout the day may be even more beneficial than performing a longer workout once a day - if it means you barely move for hours at a time during the rest of the day. You can help keep your metabolism revved up and your blood sugar and energy levels balanced by making an effort to bring your own healthy lunch and snacks to work. It takes some effort to prepare your own food in advance, but the benefits are well worth it. If you prepare a healthy dinner, try making a bit extra and bring the leftovers with you to work for an easy lunch.  A salad can be a simple solution, adding some grilled chicken or turkey for protein. Whole milk organic yogurt is a good choice for a snack that will satisfy your hunger longer than anything out of the vending machine. Bring zippered plastic bags containing organic cheddar or other cheese, and an organic apple, banana, or other fresh fruit - preferably something in season. Energy bars can also be a good choice for a snack at work, but make sure to read the ingredients and avoid anything with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame or sucralose (Splenda).  Ideally they should have at least 30% protein to keep your blood sugar level.

Are you like most typical office workers who sit for hours on end in front of a computer screen?  If so, probably one of the most important things you can do for your health is get up and move around every 30-60 minutes, even if your exercise break is very brief.  Fitting in exercise doesn't have to be a big interruption during your day.  Just walk around your home or office for a few minutes, or even just march in place or do a quick stretching routine.

This is also a good time to give your eyes a break.  Your eyes become fatigued when you look at something at a static distance for too long.  Make a point to look out a window if you can and focus on the details you see.  Look around your house or office and focus on items at varying distances to exercise the lens in your eyes.  Looking at trees outside and other natural surroundings are not only pleasant and relaxing, but can also help your mind be refreshed and energized.

Stand up straight, making sure your knees and shoulders are relaxed, and tighten your abdominal muscles for a strong core while you do the following stretches:

• Inhale while you sweep your arms out to your sides and then up over your head, and exhale while you bring them back down to your sides.
• Inhale while you reach one arm over your head and gently lean to the opposite side to stretch, and exhale while you return to center bringing your arm back to your side.  Repeat on the other side.
• Inhale while you sweep your arms in front of you, and exhale while you bring them back, stretching the chest muscles. 
• Keeping your arms straight out at your sides and your breathing relaxed, gently rotate your torso to one side and then to the other.
• Continue taking nice deep breaths while you roll your shoulders forward and then backward.  Then place your hands on your shoulders and circle your elbows around very slowly - as if you are drawing the biggest circles possible with your elbows - stretching out the muscles of your upper back and shoulders.
• Stretch your neck by gently tilting your head forward and back, then gently tilt your ear toward each shoulder, and finally gently turn your head from side to side.  Make your movements slow and relaxed and be careful not to push too far.  Just stretch to the point where it feels comfortable.
• Warm up your legs a bit by bending your knees into a partial squat, and then come back to standing, then up on your toes.  You can add in the arm lifts we started with, lifting your arms above your head while you raise up on your toes, and lowering your arms as you lower your body.

You don't have to do all of these during each break, unless you would like to.  Pay attention to which exercises feel good to you and which areas of your body have the most tension.  Usually just a few repetitions will be sufficient, and taking regular mini-breaks throughout the day can make a big difference. It only takes a few minutes to get your circulation going and your joints and muscles loosened up. 

Mini-exercise breaks also give your mind a rest, and you will probably find that you have renewed mental vigor and greater clarity when you get back to work.  Exercise breaks are especially helpful when you are struggling with a problem.  You may notice that giving your mind a break while you perform a short bout of exercise is just what you need to come up with a solution.

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The Wide-Ranging Effects of Anxiety

This is a repost from Millar Chiropractic Clinic website

 

The Wide-Ranging Effects of Anxiety

Holistic Chiropractic Care

Chiropractic care is about much more than bones, joints, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. The focus of chiropractic is on the musculoskeletal system, and yet the benefits of chiropractic care extend far beyond these connective tissue structures. Chronic musculoskeletal tension results in various biochemical changes such as excessive and prolonged build-up of lactic acid in the muscles - a metabolic end-product of muscular contraction. These metabolites, which are accumulating wastefully and unnecessarily, irritate local nerve endings. This nerve irritation leads to increases in local muscle tension, setting-up a vicious circle of muscle tension, nerve irritation, more muscle tension, and more nerve irritation. It is important to realize that these irritated nerves send signals to all the other parts of the body, causing increased levels of activity and unnecessary use of precious resources. When this happens, the person may become irritable, gets tired more easily, has sleep disturbances, and may even develop various diseases. Chiropractic care is a powerful healing method that positively affects many body systems as a result of addressing stresses in the musculoskeletal system.

We humans seem to be wired for modest levels of anxiety to act as a fear-arousal warning system. Anxiety can be characterized as fear, worry,  apprehension or uneasiness. Anxiety is a common psychological state in which the basic message is an internal urging to "get away from this situation". The state of anxiety is commonly accompanied by various physiologic symptoms triggered by a surge in adrenaline - including increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, and increased blood flow to the major muscle groups as the body prepares to "fight or flee".

These are all typical responses to environmental threats. The overall process is controlled by the amygdala and hippocampus, two regions of the brain's limbic system which process memory, emotional response, and spatial navigation. With frequent and prolonged anxiety states, a person may begin to respond to perceived threats as strongly as they respond to real threats. This anxiety state may persist and even become the default condition for the individual.

Those with chronic anxiety may experience chronic back pain,^1,2 chronic muscular tension, fibromyalgia,³ headaches, chest pain, shortness of breath, and heart palpitations. Chronic anxiety may cause a person to anticipate the worst, to have ongoing feelings of dread, to be constantly irritable and tense, and some may experience frightening and debilitating panic attacks. Eventually the person may become worn out from the constant drain on their inner resources and a likely outcome is depression. The person simply cannot take any more stress.

Chronic anxiety has a specific impact on the musculoskeletal system. Persistently elevated levels of adrenaline create ongoing tension in the postural muscles of the lower back and the weight-bearing gluteal muscles, pelvic musculature, and hamstrings. The long-term effects of chronic anxiety can include chronic lower back pain, sciatica caused by inflammation of the sciatic nerve, and lumbar disc disease. Of course, any of these health problems create even more anxiety for the person, creating a vicious circle of anxiety, pain, more anxiety, and more pain.

Solutions for chronic anxiety usually require a multidisciplinary holsitic approaches. Nutrition, for example, is an important factor in restoring a person's homeostatic mechanisms. Significantly reducing one's intake of simple carbohydrates - soda, muffins, cookies, cake, fast food, and even juice - will often have a substantial impact. Making sure to have five servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every day will also provide great benefit.

Magnesium deficiency is extremely common in the US and can cause or worsen anxiety.  Magnesium supplementation can be especially useful taken at bedtime, because it helps relax the muscles and can help a person feel more calm and fall asleep easier.  Magnesium can also help regulate blood pressure and cardiac function.  Good food sources of magnesium include pumpkin seeds, almonds, cashews, whole grains, and leafy green vegetables such as spinach and swiss chard.

Chiropractic care can frequently provide considerable assistance to those with chronic anxiety. By normalizing activity within the musculoskeletal system and reducing muscular stress and tension, chiropractic care helps eliminate an unnecessary source of biochemical and physiologic stress.

¹Newcomer KL, et al: Anxiety levels, fear-avoidance beliefs, and disability levels at baseline and at 1 year among subjects with acute and chronic low back pain. Phys Med Rehabil 2(6):514-520, 2010

²Hurley DA, et al: Physiotherapy for sleep disturbance in chronic low back pain: a feasibility randomised controlled trial. BMC Musculoskeletal Disord 11:70, 2010 [11 pages]

³Silverman S, et al: Toward characterization and definition of fibromyalgia severity. BMC Musculoskeletal Disord 11:66, 2010 [9 pages]

Do You Have Chronic Knee Pain

This is a repost from  Millar Chiropractic Clinic

 

Do You Have Chronic Knee Pain?

Treating Chronic Pain With Chiropractic

Chiropractic care is an essential part of a broad-based approach to the treatment of various types of chronic musculoskeletal pain. Medication alone is never an effective solution to chronic pain because it does not address the underlying causes of the problem. On the other hand, if biomechanical issues are a component of the overall cause, chiropractic care is able to provide a great deal of benefit. Chronic musculoskeletal pain often has its origins in spinal misalignments. These restrictions in spinal joint mobility may be due to long-term postural problems or to an old injury - often a motor vehicle accident or fall, or perhaps a severe back spasm that was triggered by bending-and-lifting and never completely healed. If spinal misalignments persist, other structures begin to compensate. Sacroiliac joints and ligaments get tight. Hip joints will eventually lose some mobility. Knee and ankle motion are compromised, and eventually chronic back pain, hip pain, and/or knee pain develops. Chiropractic care addresses the cause of these many problems by analyzing, identifying, and correcting spinal alignments. As the biomechanical function of your spine improves, so does the mobility of all other weight-bearing joint such as your hips, knees, and ankles. As a direct result of chiropractic care, chronic pain begins to reduce and resolve.

Chronic knee pain is well-known for being difficult to treat successfully.  People with chronic knee problems often become discouraged as they consult specialist after specialist - rheumatologists, orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists and others - often with little to no improvement.  The lack of progress becomes more understandable when one realizes that typical evaluation and treatment are directed at the symptoms rather than the cause. But, as is also the case with most other pain syndromes, it is usually most beneficial to address the underlying biomechanical problems instead of the trying to cover up the symptoms.

Poor biomechanics are at the root of many chronic knee problems. Of course, it is important to rule out various other diseases and orthopedic conditions which can also cause the same type of ongoing pain. The most likely of these possibilities need to be considered and ruled out before establishing a diagnosis of biomechanical knee pain. Osteochondritis dissecans, a torn meniscus, and synovial effusion are all frequently encountered in persons over age 40 with chronic knee pain. Rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and ankylosing spondylitis are a few rheumatologic conditions which may result in sporadic or chronic knee pain.¹

When these medical entities have been eliminated as possibilities, a biomechanical causation becomes likely. How does a person develop "faulty biomechanics"?  The majority of us have never received effective instruction in how to use our bodies properly. We sit and stand in all sorts of unsound postures, slumping, slouching and just generally giving in to every available force of gravity. We stand with all our body weight on one leg or the other, neck and shoulder muscles gripped tightly and abdominal muscles sagging and protruding. When we sit we slump down, stressing the lower back with poorly tolerated mechanical forces, and many of us regularly sit for hours with legs crossed, stressing the knees as well as the hips and low back.

Over the course of a lifetime, our bodies have continually tried to adapt to a range of inefficient and stressful postures and habits. But eventually no more adaptation is possible.² The result is that muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints eventually break down and fail. We experience this failure as pain. And once this type of pain has started, it is not going to go away unless the underlying causes are corrected. Specifically, the person's biomechanics need to be restored closer to normal.

Correction of posture takes time and can only be accomplished gradually. The key is to learn what to do, learn how to do it, and to be working on posture every day.³ The most important thing is to begin. Three basic biomechanical corrections are as follows: (1) When standing, be sure to have your weight over the balls of your feet and to have your weight evenly distributed on both legs. (2) Activate your deep abdominal muscles by visualizing an "inner lift". (3) Have straight lines of force running down your legs (rather than lines of force crossing at your knee, creating torsion and tension). Visualize "straight energy" flowing from your hip sockets, straight down through the center of your knees, straight down to your feet, between your first and second toes.

Visualizing and implementing these three biomechanical corrections on a daily basis represents the first series of steps toward improving knee mechanics and reducing chronic knee pain.

If you have an area where you can safely walk barefoot - ideally in soft grass or on a sandy beach - this can be very helpful for restoring proper biomechanics to your feet, knees and hips.  If you are allergic to bees and/or other insects, walking barefoot is probably not worth the risk.  But if you're not and you have a safe place to walk barefoot, you should notice the benefits from even a short barefooted walk, as your body often easily begins to adapt a more natural gait. 

¹Yusuf E, et al: Do knee abnormalities visualised on MRI explain knee pain in knee osteoarthritis? A systematic review. Ann Rheum Dis 70(1):60-67, 2011

²Suri P, et al: Low back pain and other musculoskeletal pain comorbidities in individuals with symptomatic osteoarthritis of the knee: data from the osteoarthritis initiative. Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken) 62(12):1715-1723, 2010

³Bennell KL, Hinman RS: A review of the clinical evidence for exercise in osteoarthritis of the hip and knee. J Sci Med Sport 14(1):4-9, 2011