Active Life Chiropractic News Sept. 2016
Time to stock up… for the entire month of September, all nutritional supplements are 25% off! Be sure to stop by to refill all of your supplements at a reduced price.
The rebound effect…is a physiological and biological phenomenon that commonly happens in the body. Once you know about it, you can use it to your advantage, once you’ve figured out how to apply it properly. Breathing is a good example. To increase your ability to inhale, force your body to exhale all the way, hold that air out a couple seconds, and then relax. Your diaphragm will pull air back into your lungs like a ball bounces when you throw it down. This is called the Starling effect. Similarly, people can hyperventilate for 30 seconds or so to increase their ability to hold their breath far longer.
Another example is consuming too much caffeine or sugar, resulting in an artificially energized physical experience. A dip in both will be experienced later on. That’s a rebound effect too. For any ‘high’, a ‘low’ will follow. In stretching you can use the rebound effect to your advantage. I used the rebound effect in rehabilitating my knee after surgery. To enable my knee to bend more, I pushed my partially bent leg against the therapist’s hand and tried to straighten it against the resistance he provided for about 30 seconds. He stopped my leg from moving and straightening. When I released the effort, my knee was able to bend quite a bit farther. Part of this mechanism is the quadriceps muscles in the thigh were exhausted from the effort of trying to straighten the leg and when I relaxed them they relaxed much more so that the leg could bend better.
Help your neck when looking down a lot at your phone... by using the rebound effect to counter the neck and upper body tension that builds up. Try this: pull your elbows behind you and pull your shoulders back too, look up and back. Hold that for ten seconds and then feel the muscles pull it all forward again as you relax. Try to do it often, like once every hour. This will counter dowager’s hump, and also help restore the openings in your neck where the nerves exit the spinal cord and go down into your arms, hands, and shoulders. This repetitive use issue is becoming a serious predicament for our phone addicted society. ‘Text neck’ can lead to shooting pains down the arms to the hands, searing painful headaches, and sometimes chest pain too.
Another simple move you can do in the car to help your neck is to push your shoulders and head into the back rest. Count to ten and release, doing several repetitions as if it were an exercise. It is an isometric move that is quite helpful to strengthen your postural muscles. If you can, tighten your abdominal muscles at the same time. This will help your low back because the abdominal muscles are essential in keeping the low back stable. That means sit-ups help both your tummy and your back.
Rebound effect can also help with the gripping mechanism in your hands. The repetitive actions of holding and using computer mouse, a game controller, a phone, or TV remote can create a problem with nerves and muscles in your hand. Some are calling it ‘text claw’ and it very much mimics carpel tunnel syndrome. Taking regular breaks will help, and the time can further be used for the rebound effect. Since the fingers are constantly gripping, to counter this, pull back the fingers, hand and wrist. Hold it with straight arms if possible for 15 seconds. You can also use a rubber band wrapped around your fingers, pulling the fingers apart against the resistance of the rubber band. Start with very little resistance or you may exacerbate the situation instead of helping it, but then you can work up to greater resistance.
What helps the front of you helps the back of you… especially when it comes to muscles. I have written before about the football team that decided to weight train the back of the leg with as much purpose as the front of the leg. The back of the thigh muscles were pushed to be able to lift 2/3rds of what the front of the thigh muscles could do. The side muscles of the leg were also strengthened and not ignored. The team was able to document a huge decrease in knee problems that first year. If you can lift an iron boot in front of you at 30 pounds, try lifting the boot in back of you at 20 pounds. This can be done easily in a gym but at home you have to be careful to bend the knee behind you without pulling the leg forward at all. Usually I tell people to lay on a piano bench or a coffee table. It is difficult to find leg weights that easily help you measure this for home workouts, but even if you just use the repetitions to help you keep the efforts of leg strengthening front-compared-to-back more balanced. It helps the knees.
Dealing with atrophy… is the next biological phenomena I want to discuss. I have often written that our bones are dynamic and constantly deconstructing and then rebuilding themselves to deal with whatever stresses are recently being put upon them. Old bone tissue is torn down and new lattices are put up in that order. The osteoporosis drugs like Fosamax slow down the tearing down aspect of natural bone dynamics. For a while we think we have fooled the body and slowed down the osteoporosis tendencies of aging. In time, it has been found that the old bone needed to be torn down or it turned into dead bone. Women on Fosmax for more than two years must be taken off of it because they risk osteonecrosis, which is bone deadness. This was happening especially in the jaw bone, right where it hinges to the skull. That old saying, “You can’t fool mother nature,” held true. Weight lifting will beat osteoporosis. No drug works as well and your liver will also thank you.
In fighting atrophy for both muscle and bone, the concept to apply is to do a little more than you really need to each day to keep a little stronger than ‘just the minimum’. An example is when you sit in a chair. The minimum is to get up and down only as much as absolutely necessary, never more or less. Keep that up and over time you will start to notice it becomes harder to get out of the chair, and you flop into the chair, maybe even hear it creak as you land. To beat this, try engaging in multiple sit down, get up, repetitions at least once a day. Start with 5 and work up to 10, then 20 each day. Lower yourself slowly and gently and lift yourself up with arms helping, then with arms held up so they don’t help. If that becomes too easy, try holding a couple bottles of water and work up to a gallon jug.
Muscles will try to re-build only to the point and maybe a bit less than they have to, as if they have a little calculator and can figure out how to do just barely enough to meet your daily needs. You have to raise the bar to inspire them to be stronger than just barely enough. Knowing the rebound effect, that the front and back muscles help each other, and the problems of atrophy, you can probably think of things to do that will give your body what it needs so it is there when you need it.
Our September Fundraiser… will be on Saturday, the 24th from 9am until 1pm. Come in and receive a chiropractic adjustment or meridian balancing treatment in exchange for a donation of your choice. Proceeds from this month’s fundraiser will benefit The Little Chapel of Divide food pantry. Thank you to everyone who helped raise $293 for TCRAS last month!
The rebound effect…is a physiological and biological phenomenon that commonly happens in the body. Once you know about it, you can use it to your advantage, once you’ve figured out how to apply it properly. Breathing is a good example. To increase your ability to inhale, force your body to exhale all the way, hold that air out a couple seconds, and then relax. Your diaphragm will pull air back into your lungs like a ball bounces when you throw it down. This is called the Starling effect. Similarly, people can hyperventilate for 30 seconds or so to increase their ability to hold their breath far longer.
Another example is consuming too much caffeine or sugar, resulting in an artificially energized physical experience. A dip in both will be experienced later on. That’s a rebound effect too. For any ‘high’, a ‘low’ will follow. In stretching you can use the rebound effect to your advantage. I used the rebound effect in rehabilitating my knee after surgery. To enable my knee to bend more, I pushed my partially bent leg against the therapist’s hand and tried to straighten it against the resistance he provided for about 30 seconds. He stopped my leg from moving and straightening. When I released the effort, my knee was able to bend quite a bit farther. Part of this mechanism is the quadriceps muscles in the thigh were exhausted from the effort of trying to straighten the leg and when I relaxed them they relaxed much more so that the leg could bend better.
Help your neck when looking down a lot at your phone... by using the rebound effect to counter the neck and upper body tension that builds up. Try this: pull your elbows behind you and pull your shoulders back too, look up and back. Hold that for ten seconds and then feel the muscles pull it all forward again as you relax. Try to do it often, like once every hour. This will counter dowager’s hump, and also help restore the openings in your neck where the nerves exit the spinal cord and go down into your arms, hands, and shoulders. This repetitive use issue is becoming a serious predicament for our phone addicted society. ‘Text neck’ can lead to shooting pains down the arms to the hands, searing painful headaches, and sometimes chest pain too.
Another simple move you can do in the car to help your neck is to push your shoulders and head into the back rest. Count to ten and release, doing several repetitions as if it were an exercise. It is an isometric move that is quite helpful to strengthen your postural muscles. If you can, tighten your abdominal muscles at the same time. This will help your low back because the abdominal muscles are essential in keeping the low back stable. That means sit-ups help both your tummy and your back.
Rebound effect can also help with the gripping mechanism in your hands. The repetitive actions of holding and using computer mouse, a game controller, a phone, or TV remote can create a problem with nerves and muscles in your hand. Some are calling it ‘text claw’ and it very much mimics carpel tunnel syndrome. Taking regular breaks will help, and the time can further be used for the rebound effect. Since the fingers are constantly gripping, to counter this, pull back the fingers, hand and wrist. Hold it with straight arms if possible for 15 seconds. You can also use a rubber band wrapped around your fingers, pulling the fingers apart against the resistance of the rubber band. Start with very little resistance or you may exacerbate the situation instead of helping it, but then you can work up to greater resistance.
What helps the front of you helps the back of you… especially when it comes to muscles. I have written before about the football team that decided to weight train the back of the leg with as much purpose as the front of the leg. The back of the thigh muscles were pushed to be able to lift 2/3rds of what the front of the thigh muscles could do. The side muscles of the leg were also strengthened and not ignored. The team was able to document a huge decrease in knee problems that first year. If you can lift an iron boot in front of you at 30 pounds, try lifting the boot in back of you at 20 pounds. This can be done easily in a gym but at home you have to be careful to bend the knee behind you without pulling the leg forward at all. Usually I tell people to lay on a piano bench or a coffee table. It is difficult to find leg weights that easily help you measure this for home workouts, but even if you just use the repetitions to help you keep the efforts of leg strengthening front-compared-to-back more balanced. It helps the knees.
Dealing with atrophy… is the next biological phenomena I want to discuss. I have often written that our bones are dynamic and constantly deconstructing and then rebuilding themselves to deal with whatever stresses are recently being put upon them. Old bone tissue is torn down and new lattices are put up in that order. The osteoporosis drugs like Fosamax slow down the tearing down aspect of natural bone dynamics. For a while we think we have fooled the body and slowed down the osteoporosis tendencies of aging. In time, it has been found that the old bone needed to be torn down or it turned into dead bone. Women on Fosmax for more than two years must be taken off of it because they risk osteonecrosis, which is bone deadness. This was happening especially in the jaw bone, right where it hinges to the skull. That old saying, “You can’t fool mother nature,” held true. Weight lifting will beat osteoporosis. No drug works as well and your liver will also thank you.
In fighting atrophy for both muscle and bone, the concept to apply is to do a little more than you really need to each day to keep a little stronger than ‘just the minimum’. An example is when you sit in a chair. The minimum is to get up and down only as much as absolutely necessary, never more or less. Keep that up and over time you will start to notice it becomes harder to get out of the chair, and you flop into the chair, maybe even hear it creak as you land. To beat this, try engaging in multiple sit down, get up, repetitions at least once a day. Start with 5 and work up to 10, then 20 each day. Lower yourself slowly and gently and lift yourself up with arms helping, then with arms held up so they don’t help. If that becomes too easy, try holding a couple bottles of water and work up to a gallon jug.
Muscles will try to re-build only to the point and maybe a bit less than they have to, as if they have a little calculator and can figure out how to do just barely enough to meet your daily needs. You have to raise the bar to inspire them to be stronger than just barely enough. Knowing the rebound effect, that the front and back muscles help each other, and the problems of atrophy, you can probably think of things to do that will give your body what it needs so it is there when you need it.
Our September Fundraiser… will be on Saturday, the 24th from 9am until 1pm. Come in and receive a chiropractic adjustment or meridian balancing treatment in exchange for a donation of your choice. Proceeds from this month’s fundraiser will benefit The Little Chapel of Divide food pantry. Thank you to everyone who helped raise $293 for TCRAS last month!
