Exercise in the Heat

Labels: aerobic, aging, circulation, heat, heat shock protein, injury, myths, perceived exertion, performance enhancing modality

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Diving Women of Korea - The Haenyeo

In the previous two weeks, I wrote about the Japanese diving women, the Ama. Readers asked about the divers of Korea. Although they are sometimes called Ama divers, "ama" is a Japanese word. The Korean diving women are the Hae-nyao. Both ama and haenyao mean "sea woman." The Korean divers are also called Jamsoo, or diving lady, and Jam-nyao, or diving woman.

The diving women are a respected profession of hard work to gather food for their communities. The work is difficult and cold. The numbers of both Ama and Haenyao are decreasing every year, as the daughters who would take their mother's roles go to other work in the cities.

The first recorded Korean diving (that I know of) is from the 400's A.D. around the Chechu (Jeju) Island area. It is likely that diving had gone on centuries before that. The Haenyao historically dived all year (even in winter), and without assistance of weights or ropes to ascend or descend. They made as many as 30 dives an hour, to depths from 10 to 30 meters, at temperatures in the winter as low as 10 C.


Diving clothes varied by geographic area, with some divers wearing only a rope belt or loincloth. No fins were used to help swimming. Later when wet suits were developed, only male divers wore them. Women were prohibited protective suits by their cooperatives, since they were considered more cold tolerant to begin with, and the advantage of the suit would "accelerate over-harvesting" Later, the work became pretty much exclusive to women.

Taking many large breaths before a breath hold extends time because "overbreathing" lowers carbon dioxide in the body. Carbon dioxide signals you to breathe, so it is protective to have it build and make you want to return to the surface before you go unconscious from lack of oxygen. Hyperventilating (too many large breaths) before a dive can cause a drowning accident. The haenyao and ama practice a short hyperventilation with a distinctive whistling maneuver which was studied to find why it may not cause the problems of hyperventilation without the maneuver.

To call them "The haenyao women divers" is redundant. The word haenyao already refers to the female. I asked them what the males were called and the Haenyao laughed at me, saying that males cannot withstand the hard work or the cold, and it is known that women do better in the cold. Dr Suk Ki Hong, one of the best known researchers of immersion and the haenyao and Ama divers wrote, "The shivering threshold is elevated as compared to men, and thus women are distinctly in a better position than men to work in cold water. Undoubtedly there could be many other reasons. However these facts lead us to postulate that men could not compete successfully by virtue of their poor tolerance to cold."

Sadly, Western sport divers started writing articles and presenting lectures at dive conferences in the 1990s, mistakenly claiming women did not have better cold tolerance and had greater risk of cold injury. The myth was repeated in diving magazines, scuba classes, and textbooks of the era.

Are there male indigenous divers? Yes. I will write of them and their stories in the future. Stay tuned.

Link to haenyao museum site


Previously:

• Diving With the Japanese Ama Divers
• Japanese Ama Divers - Cold, Clothing, and Children
• The AmaSan Japanese Diving Women
• The Mermaid Stories

Related Undersea Stories:

• Living Under The Sea
• Nutrition for Endurance Swim Training
• Hyperbaric and Aquatic Medicine On Travel
• Train Exercise is Exercise Training
• Three Common Swimming and SCUBA Myths in the News Again
• Diver Down Flags - Boating, Swimming, SCUBA Safer and Smarter
• Exercise and Fitness in Decompression Sickness Risk
• Helium Speech - An Astronaut Calls the President of the United States
  
  

Labels: breath-hold diving, cold, myths, squat, swimming

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Ironman Triathlon

This is fun - this article is the 600th Fitness Fixer post.


Yesterday's post started a series on Triathlons. Triathlon races of different names, organizing bodies, and distances are held year-round. The Ironman is a trademarked name of one particular triathlon and its qualifying races.

The Ironman Triathlon is a long-distance race of a 2.4 mile swim (3.86 km), 112 mile (180.25 km) bike, and a marathon run of 26 miles 385 yards (42.195 km), continuously, in that order.

Fifteen men competed in the first Ironman triathlon in 1978. Then, it was a known "Fitness Fact" that women could not do hard athletics. Several sports of the time banned women. Magazine articles appeared regularly that women had special problems that made doing athletics more dangerous and less possible. Scuba magazines printed (and reprinted) bizarre myths by reporters, that women were physically predisposed to injury from heat, cold, exercise, and decompression. Even chapters in medical books had separate "woman sports" chapters with "proofs" such as shorter legs and less testosterone and blood volume. Currently, teen Asian girls are beating the times of big Western men from that era. Injury rates are shown to be not from gender as much as training. I am a former anatomy and physiology professor. Don't try to snow an anatomy professor about joint angles and limb length as proof of athletic prowess or injury. Future posts will dissect these myths from a physiology basis.

The name "Ironman" and related "Iron" labels are official property of the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC). The WTC hosts other triathlons around the world that are called Ironman. Who owns what name seems to change, and can get confusing. Several events formerly called Ironman no longer use the word due to aggressive trademark protection. Readers can comment to keep us current.

The Hawaii Ironman Triathlon (various alternate names) hosts the Ironman world championship and owns the race held each fall in Hawai'i. Last year's 2008 Hawai'i Ironman drew over 1700 athletes. The 2009 Hawaii Ironman will be held October 10, 2009. Qualifying races required for eligibility are held throughout the year. Several qualifiers are going on right now, this June and July.


Next - Ironman Qualifiers.

---

Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and send your own.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions.

Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail" (under trumpet) upper right.
See Dr. Bookspan's Books. See class schedules, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.

---

Ironman Finisher by Jeff Kastner

Labels: biking, ironman, myths, running, swimming, triathlon

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

How To Stay Underwater For A Month

Human beings have gotten all the way to the moon, but can't get far under the sea. In space we can wear special suits to decrease effects of pressure change and deliver air to breathe, but (in brief) the farther you go down underwater, the more these same conditions constantly change in difficult ways.

For ordinary scuba diving, divers wear a tank of regular air. A compressor squeezes ordinary filtered air into the tank, so that several times more air fits. For more time underwater than a tank allows, a diver can breathe from a special long hose from the surface. How far you can go depends on the length of the hose and the power to compress the air to the right pressure. With other specific training, you can wear a rebreather. A rebreather scrubs and reuses exhaled air instead of losing the exhale into the water (shortest description). In all these cases, the deeper and the longer you stay, the more nitrogen in the air you breathe dissolves all over your body.

When a diver starts back to the surface, pressure reduces all the way up, letting nitrogen back out. You need to come up slowly enough and not have stayed too long to be able to go directly to the surface without the nitrogen forming bubbles inside your body, part of the diving injury called decompression sickness or The Bends. Decompression sickness, and bubble formation, transit, and medical effects was a passion of my career work in physiology for many years. Still is.

On deeper dives, it works better to breathe less nitrogen. You can't substitute more oxygen at deep depths, because oxygen becomes increasingly toxic. You need a gas that doesn't make as much trouble during each depth and time. One choice is helium to replace some or all nitrogen, and part of the oxygen.

If you have lots of dissolved nitrogen or helium or other gases chosen for a long and/or deep dive, you need to stop on the way up, called a decompression stop. Where and when and for how long to stop is interesting, and the subject of research and arguments (discussions) among scientist and divers. Different Navies and commercial companies use different protocols, some known well, some closely guarded as company secrets.

For extreme depth diving for research, commercial work like oil drilling, mining, and communications, military surveillance, espionage, and "proprietary commercial interests," divers can spend time on "deco" stops, but for long dives, many stops are needed, some more than 10 hours. Doesn't work to do that, then go back to work the next day and repeat. One solution is to stay down inside the rig or habitat or other enclosure designed for that. I wrote a little of my work doing that in Living Under The Sea.

At each depth, you can only absorb a certain amount of gas. After that, no more fits. It doesn't matter how long you stay past a certain point, you have the same decompression obligation on the way up. Staying down until you are full of gas is called saturation diving. You can stay down a week or a month, then decompress once. Decompression can be done in the water, but there are problems of cold, darkness, bathroom needs, and gas supply. Another solution is inside a vehicle designed for that purpose. The decompression vehicle can be raised and removed from the water, and the divers inside slowly decompress safely. It was also experimented, to drag divers straight to the surface and throw them as fast as possible into a surface chamber to quickly compress them back to pressures at depth, then slowly release according to algorithms people back then decided were right. Tragically, some regular scuba divers heard about these two kinds of "surface decompression" and thinking it meant the water surface, managed to publish articles in diving magazines, and give lectures at dive shows, with that misinformation being widely repeated, that one could come straight to the surface after deep dives and float around in an inner tube and read dirty magazines, as the guys in the special recompression chambers did to pass the couple days they'd spend.

You wouldn't turn inside out from the huge pressure differential produced, as depicted in some science fiction movies, but it might kill you as effectively. That is a sample of what happens when reporters don't read what scientists write in their research articles, just repeat some sentences taken out of context, conclusions in the abstracts, or what someone else wrote.

Tomorrow - a fun story about NASA Astronaut Scott Carpenter in 1965. He lived 30 days underwater in SEALAB II, in the US Navy’s Man-in the-Sea Project off the coast of California. Commander Carpenter was breathing a helium mix during his surface decompression in a chamber. In tomorrow's post, hear a recording of what happens when he makes a pre-arranged phone call while breathing helium in the chamber to President Lyndon Johnson - Helium Speech - An Astronaut Calls the President of the United States.

Related stories:

• Space Walks
• Indiana Jones Rocket Sled
• Exercise and Medicine Underwater and at High Pressure
• Exercise and Fitness in Decompression Sickness Risk
• Living Under The Sea

Labels: aerospace, breathing, hyperbaric, injury, myths, scuba

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fitness Myths - How Many Legs Does a Dog Have If You Call the Tail a Leg?

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?

Four.

Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

- Abraham Lincoln

Myths! Hype. Fitness has many.

People argue over who is right about health topics, sometimes with unhealthful mental state. They argue things they have never actually seen, such as muscle fibers or blood flow or metabolism. Things they read or heard from someone else, who read or heard them from someone else, who had also not actually seen them.

Even medical books are often written by people who have not researched it themselves (in a laboratory themselves), but compiled popular consensus. Doing "medical research" does not mean "read it in a book." On April Fool's day, time to set myths straight-

Reader Favorite Fitness Myth Posts:

• Three Common Swimming and SCUBA Myths in the News Again
• Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw
• Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?
• Fixing Fitness Myths
• Fixing More Fitness Myths
• When Did Health Become Thinking Out Of The Box?
  
• Beware of Hype in Training Methods
• Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It
• Time of Death From Body Temperature?
• Forensic Science
• Exercise and Aging - Don't Limit the Patient to Limit the Pain
• Fixing Posture - No Exercise Needed
  
• Does an Exercise Ball Make You Sit Straight?

Read success stories of these methods and send your own.

Labels: holiday, myths, practice of medicine

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Do You Lose Most Of Your Heat Through Your Head?

Losing most of your heat through your head is a popular myth. Head heat loss is not the majority of body heat lost. Not even close.

Years of my career in research have been to study how the human body performs in extremes - exercise, injury states and how to prevent them, working and exercising in heat and cold, changes in air and pressure on mountain tops, and the related but different problems in space and underwater. I have lived in laboratories underwater and done experiments aboard aircraft. I have studied combat swimmers and done extreme swims with them for fun. For military research, I put men in vats of freezing water to see how we can keep pilots alive after bail-outs and how to get covert swimmers to their objective and, I found out, an entire separate topic to get them back again. Strong brave men got hazardous duty pay just to have a day with me. My life is scientific research and finding out why things are the way they are and how to make us better at surviving them. After finding out all these interesting things, I found out another thing - people still like myths more than fact. Here are some interesting facts (cool facts on cold):

Head heat loss is usually less than one-third to one-fifth of total heat loss. That means it is not the majority, which would be more than 50%. Head heat loss is usually less than 20-30 percent or so of total heat loss.

Head heat loss changes with how cold it is. The lower the temperature, the higher percentage head heat loss. Head heat loss is linear with temperature. At 0 degrees Centigrade, up to about 30 to 35% of heat could be lost through your head at rest.

Head heat loss changes with how much you exercise. When exercising at about a work rate of 50% of aerobic capacity, head heat loss falls to less than half of heat loss at rest.

Head heat loss changes if you are in water compared to air.

The heat you lose from your head is small compared to the rest of your body. Some people have bigger heads than others in proportion to their stature, so maybe they can lose a percentage more heat. To reduce heat loss, wear a hat.

All about cold, cold immersion, and scuba, try my book Diving Physiology in Plain English www.DrBookspan.com/books.
Post about body heat and cooling after death - Time of Death From Body Temperature?
All posts on myths - click the label 'myths' under this post.
All posts on aviation and aerospace - click the label 'aerospace' under this post.
All posts on cold or heat - click the corresponding label under this post.

Labels: aerospace, cold, heat, myths

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Friday - Valentine's Day Partner Weightlifting

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - don't leave your love to do weight lifting alone, lift your love:

1. Partner 1 (white uniform) stands straight and lifts partner 2 (black uniform) onto forearms.
2. Partner 1 (white uniform) does biceps curls and other lifts using partner 2's weight.
3. Partner 2 uses core and whole body strength and endurance to hold straight positioning. Partner 2 can face up, down or sideways, in each case using appropriate muscles to maintain straight position. Breathe normally.

This Fast Fitness can be done with willing friends, children, pets, and furniture.

Partner 1 uses core and abdominal muscles to stand with neutral spine rather than leaning backward, and whole body strength to support weight of partner 2.

It is a myth that you must lean back to offset a carried load. You get intense and functional abdominal muscle workout by using them to pull you forward to neutral standing position.


I once used this exercise of holding straight horizontal position (partner 2's part) while helping out a friend who is a stage magician. I filled in for his absent assistant for the floating lady illusion. I was too tall for the apparatus. It usually holds your body out flat using struts reaching from head to thigh. It reached only to my midback. I wound up holding my weight myself, from hips to feet - high above the stage - while trying to look hypnotized. More on this, someday, in another post.

Related Posts:

• Fast Fitness - Plyometric Partner Bench Press for Valentine's Week
• Friday Fast Fitness - Partner Achilles Tendon Stretch
• Fast Fitness - Dynamic Partner Balance Challenge
• Stretching With a Friend - Partner Pectoral Stretch
• Exercising With A Friend - Partner Leg Press
• Valentine Partner Pushups
• Valentine Family Exercise

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, chest, children, endurance, fast fitness, holiday, martial arts, myths, neutral spine, partner exercise, posture, strength

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Hamstring to Quadriceps Ratios Not the Answer in Knee Injury

A common myth is that injury comes from "muscle imbalance" in the thigh from too much strength in the quadriceps muscles over the hamstring muscles.

Early studies showed poor ratios of quad to hamstring strength. It was concluded that because of this, when the athlete would kick, for example, the overly strong quadriceps would overstraighten the knee, and the overpowered hamstring behind the thigh would not be able to stop the powerful straightening. The knee would overstraighten and hyperextend the joint, injuring it.

Athletes were put on hamstring strengthening training. Then they went back to kicking with the same bad habit of overstraightening as before.

The problem was simply that they athlete would hyperextend the knee. They were allowing it through bad training habits, not being made to do it by a strong quadriceps. Your muscles do not make you move. You learn though training and practice how to move in healthy ways.


What to do?
When you kick, don't fling your leg out and hyperextend (overstraighten) the knee. Control the end point position.
When you land from jumps or descending stairs, don't step down on a locked, straight knee. Control the end point position.

Muscle use is not automatic from muscle strength:

• Fixing Posture - No Exercise Needed
• Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw
• Good Life Works Better Than Bad Ab Exercise

Labels: anterior cruciate ligament/ACL, hamstring, injury, knee, leg strength, meniscus, myths, practice of medicine

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Your Muscles Are Your Orthotics for Arches, Knock Knee, and Knee Pain

David from Belgium has been a success story and valuable contributor. He frequently makes us photos and movies showing how to fix pain and unhealthful fitness using Fitness Fixer techniques. He first left a comment on a post in 2007:

"I'm training to be a yoga teacher and I'd love to teach the right things to my pupils such as good posture. Your insights are very inspirational. After struggling with minor but persistent knee pain for some years, I was diagnosed with seriously fallen arches recently. I'm not really flat-footed, but ankles that drop inwards too much. (I could clearly see that on the video my podiatrist made of me walking on bare feet). In a week I'll be getting new orthotics. Though, after reading a patient's testimony on your site I decided to try and use my feet differently. So now on my walks to and from my day job I'm trying to walk 'right'. Rolling on the entire foot, heel to toes, leaning more on the sides and using all five toes. It feels awkward though and I notice that I often forget it. I wonder if this will 'fix' my feet eventually? Anyway, thanks for sharing your knowledge!"

I replied that it "fixes" arch positioning as soon as you do it. It is natural to control how you stand and move - the whole intent of functioning in a healthy way in life, and the intent of yoga (supposedly). It seems at odds to say that yoga teaches body awareness, strength, or positioning, then let ankles slump without control, and purchase devices to do it for you. Once you understand the purpose, it will not be awkward. It is the same as any other good posture.

Since then, David has consistently made good use of these materials, and shared many success stories. He has fixed various pain producing habits for himself and his students, fixed his mother's herniated lumbar disc by showing her healthy bending around the house - Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle, and developed a new yoga system of healthier movement - Getting the Right Yoga Medicine.

• Orthotics are rigid shaped devices, fitted by prescription, that specifically move and hold your foot in a certain position.
• Orthotics are different from over-the-counter shoe pads that can help by cushioning impact.
• Orthotics do not do anything you cannot do yourself using your own muscles and sense of positioning (kinesthetics).
  
• It is a myth that only a device can move your foot and leg leg. Click the label "myth" under this post for all Fitness Fixer posts on fitness myths.
  

Try these in relaxed way:

• Stand and see that you can raise your own arches back to normal, taught in the post Arch Support Is Not From Shoes. It takes only seconds.
• Understand more with Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles?
• Make sure you are also not pronating from higher up - Healthy Knees.
• Remember, don't force. If it hurts, it's wrong. All you are doing is learning how to stand neutral, not tilted so much that you compress the joints.
  
• The concept is to hold your feet in the same healthful position that shoe supports would. It is like an ice skater holds their skates straight at the ankle, not angled.

During walking and running, a brief and small inward drop (slight pronation) occurs right after foot contact that creates part of the "spring" and propulsion. The idea is not to prevent all foot motion, but to not let the knee twist inward. You can do that with your own brain and muscles.

Check back tomorrow, Friday January 23 2009, for: Fast Fitness - Fixing Arches, Knock Knee, and Knee Pain Without Orthotics - with a short movie by David of restoring arches and knee position.

Labels: ankle, arches, feet, fix pain, knee, myths, orthotics, pronation, readers inspiring story, shoes, yoga

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - How Abdominal Muscles Prevent Hyperlordosis When Carrying

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - How to use your abdominal muscles to maintain neutral spine when carrying babies, and other things held and carried.

1. When you hold loads in front, notice if you lean your upper body backward - right-hand photo marked with red X. Leaning backward from the waist increases lumbar lordosis (hyperlordosis) which pinches the lower spine, causing aching after long standing.
2. Instead, stand upright - middle and left photo. The muscles that pull your spine forward to straight position against the load are your abdominal muscles. Upper spine angle will be a little more upright than pictured (center).
   
3. It is a myth that you must lean back to offset a carried load. You get a free abdominal muscle workout and increase abdominal muscles endurance by using them (not tightening) to change from painful to healthful standing position. Breathe normally.

David from Belgium is pictured at left. David has made many contributions to Fitness Fixer through photos, movies, success stories fixing his own pain and of his yoga students, translated many of my articles into Dutch, and has developed a healthier yoga style which he premiered at a world yoga congress last year

He did all this during the time he and wife (pictured center and right above) were expecting their first baby, arriving early last February. Thank you David and family from all of us.


Related posts:

• Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds
• Getting the Right Yoga Medicine
• Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain

Labels: abdominal muscles, children, exercise ball, fast fitness, lordosis, myths, neutral spine

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Don't Shorten Hip When Stretching Hamstring

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Get a more functional hamstring stretch, and a built-in posturally helpful functional stretch to the front of the hip at the same time.

When lying on your back to stretch your hamstrings by lifting one leg:

1. Lie flat. Keep the leg you are not lifting flat on the ground, not bent at the knee and hip, or with upper body curled and neck craned, as pictured.
2. Don't let your pelvis and hip round under you. Don't let your backside curl up off the floor.
3. Keep your hip, leg, back, shoulders, and head relaxed, flat, straight, touching the ground.

It is a myth that you must bend your knee to protect your back. If you must bend your knee to protect your back, how are you supposed to stand on one leg and lift the other in real life to climb stairs, kick, and even run and walk, without curling into bent over, old-looking, tight, injury-producing position?

When stretching your hamstrings, remember function. Why practice a position that is rounded, tightening, and detrimental to how you move when you stand and extend your legs. Get stretch by lengthening you body enough to be able to straighten out.

Send me your photos of fixing this stretch. Doing is the best learning. I will publish the photos in a reader success post to come.

Related posts:

• What Does Stretching Do?
• Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
• Better Achilles Tendon Stretch
• Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
• Healthier Hamstring Stretching
• Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?
• The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
• Good Life Works Better Than Bad Ab Exercise

Labels: fast fitness, hamstring, hip, hip stretch, leg strength, myths, strength

Permalink | 4 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Trainers Don't Exercise Enough? Functional Fitness Needed

A study making repeated news was that less than half the athletic trainers in a recent survey get a healthful amount of exercise themselves. Of two hundred and seventy five certified athletic trainers who work with athletes, only 41% themselves exercised even half an hour on five or more days a week.

The survey was conducted by graduate student Jessica Groth, now an athletic trainer. In the study conclusion she wrote that (these) athletic trainers, "…were not ideal role models in demonstrating healthy behaviors." However, the Los Angeles Times quoted Groth as saying, "By and large the results are not too bad," and that trainers couldn't exercise enough since, "We're on other people's schedules as far as practices and games are concerned. We work a lot of long hours, and nontraditional hours, as far as mornings, nights and weekends are concerned. You add in families and personal lives, and we're spread pretty thin."

The study was published in the December issue of the Journal of Athletic Training, Self-reported health and fitness habits of certified athletic trainers. J Athl Train. 2008 Oct-Dec;43(6):617-23.

Trainers making the same excuses as the sedentary for not exercising?

Lack of exercise and excuses can happen when you separate healthy movement from real life. Healthful movement and activity should not be something you have to stop your real life to "do." Changing from artificial exercises to how your body needs to move in real life is the realm of functional fitness. The Fitness Fixer, most of my research in orthopedics, the classes I teach, and our new international sports medicine academy deals with functional fitness.

Here are ways to change the myth of "exercise as separate" to movement as functional daily life. It is life-changing:

• Start with What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"
• Retrain daily movements with Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle and Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
• Many opportunities for functional exercise - Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance
• How can you exercise even when you are busy? How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending
• When can you squeeze it in? How Often Should You Be Healthy?
• Functional abdominal exercise done standing - Overlooked Ab Muscles in Overhead Lifts
  and Innovation in Abdominal Muscles and Good Life Works Better Than Bad Ab Exercise
• Another daily functional movement - Fast Fitness - Functional Agility, Flexibility, Strength
  
• What about during holiday rush? Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Thanksgiving and Healthy Christmas and Household Fitness in the New Year
• Think you can't exercise without a gym? Getting Stronger Without a Gym
• You don't need to do less exercise to prevent or rehab an injury - Exercise and Aging - Don't Limit the Patient to Limit the Pain and Autumn Yard Work - Limiting the Person Instead of the Injury Again?
  
• See the beginning of our new International Academy of Functional Sports Medicine - www.DrBookspan.com/Academy.

Labels: myths, performance enhancing modality, practice of medicine, weight loss

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Vertebral Artery Compression, Dizziness, Discs, and the Forward Head

I received an e-mail from Serbia. Miroslav had suffered eight years of dizziness from compression of the vasculature and nerves of his neck. Then he found how to prevent the bad position called "forward head" using my methods. Miroslav had previously read various sources promoting the often-repeated bad advice to bend the neck forward as a the way to make space for the nerves that exit the back of spine. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. That kind of forward bending is not a healthy way over the long term.

Bending the spine forward pinches vertebrae closer in front and farther apart in back, creating unequal pressure that over time, wedges and squeezes discs rearward and outward, like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. A disc nearly always bulges (herniates/moves/slips/migrates/extrudes) toward the back of the spine out the enlarged space, from years of the bad posture of sitting and standing with a rounded/bent forward spine.

Sitting and standing straight would make more space for the nerves without the herniating force. Miroslav also had a forward head as a regular posture, also called "straightening the cervical lordosis." He had been flexing his neck (bending forward) trying to fix his various numbness and pain, and wound up compressing verves, blood vessels and other structures.

Miroslav wrote in one of his blog posts that he was practicing Alexander technique for the previous few weeks, "as specified in Richard Brennan's book /head up and forward." After getting worse and trying various doctors and cures, Miroslav found my web site. He wrote:

"Dear Dr Bookspan,
"I have found Your articles online and they have been extremely helpful. I just wanted to say that I appreciate Your work immensely. Few last articles I wrote on http://cvelee.blogspot.com/2008/11/quick-solutions.html regarding my problem and how You have helped me. If You have time, you can catch a glimpse of them.
"With respects,
"Miroslav Cvetinov"

Here is the post from his blog:

"Q u i c k s o l u t i o n s

"I am strong opponent to quick solutions to many of our everyday problem, whether money or health related. In such manner, I didn't expect my dizziness to disappear over night without trace.

"I had it since 2000. So 8 years before, they did everything necessary to rule out other diseases : EEG, Dopler, Blink reflexes, Evoked potentials... everything clean.

"In 2007. dizziness worsened so neurologist sent me to do endocranium MRI/MRA. Totally clean: no lesions whether white MS or atherosclerotic, balanced blood flow...

"2008. I have found article from Dr Jolie Bookspan, describing forward head posture and neurological deficits. I did have extremely straightened cervical lordosis, so I qualify for FHP. I started practicing healthy head postures : head back and FLEXION.

"I always thought that neck flexion was the key to healthy disc, because it opens neuroforamen, and that that degree of neck flexion wasn't possible without FHP. But, guys, I am physics scientist, I do not know how did it miss me : head-neck system has 5 degrees of freedom. I could pull it back, yet keep healthy degree of flexion. Just think of extending back of the neck while shortening front portion of it. That compulsive strengthening of SCM muscles I did, didn't do me any good, but...

"Anyway, MY TREMENDOUS DIZZINESS DISAPPEARED IN A MOMENT!! MOMENT, not day, not week, immediately. How? I do not know! I do not care! Thanks Dr Jolie.

"I can look over my shoulder while walking now. Easily without dizziness, loss of balance and lightheadedness. This it totally new.

"I have to give credit to 2 doctors more:
1. Dear ENT Vukoja Novak - he was the first one out of many doctors to tell me that if I consider it real, organic disease and not anxiety/panic related, I should check out carotid arteries on Doppler and cervical spine on roentgen. Latter revealed disk degeneration and straightened lordosis. He was the first to point to the spine.
2. Dr Mijanović - While doing EMG, he told me that tongue is clear except huge amount of hyperexcitability and asked me to check out something serious and real. I suggested left arm, with disesthesia running in C6 dermatome. He asked me about dizziness, I told him " I do have it, a lot of it, but dear doctor, I have panic disorder and somatoform disorder. It is due to this.". After poked me with a needle in left deltoid he immediately said "I can assure you, your dizziness are due to your spine."

"So, now I know. Not that it was spine, it can be cured in a moment:)"

Here is my web site post that Miroslav used: http://www.drbookspan.com/NeckPainArticle.html

These Fitness Fixer Posts explain more:

• Quick Fix?
• Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain
• Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing - More Part I
• Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix
• 14,000 Miles on a Bike - Herniating and Fixing Discs
• Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth

Labels: dizziness, fix pain, impingement, injury, myths, neck, neutral spine, readers inspiring story, repetitive strain, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Time of Death From Body Temperature?

Television crime dramas often include a scene where time of death is predicted based on body temperature and cooling rates. Is this an accurate method?

After death, metabolic processes that make heat in the body stop. The body begins cooling. Cooling and cooling rates were first recorded in 1710, when English physician John Davey first used the new invention of the thermometer in a human body at autopsy. Davey’s experiments took place in the high heat of Malta, rendering measurements only good for that environment. Later pathologists who followed Davey’s published descriptions did not place the thermometer inside the body, but in the armpit. Publications of their inaccurate information of cooling became widely popularized and passed from school to school.

Cooling does not follow predictable time intervals as once thought. Cooling is often too imprecise to estimate time since death. It turns out that the widely held dogma that body temperature drops at a precise and steady rate of 1.6 degrees an hour (later rounded to 1.5 for ease of calculation) was never the case.

Inaccuracies and things that were never true have been found to be printed and reprinted in medical books, repeated by instructors who heard it from their teachers. Be careful of medical "facts" learned in school untested.

More forensics posts on Fitness Fixer:

• Forensic Anthropology and Bone Density
• Forensic Science

For all movie and TV health posts on Fitness Fixer so far:

• Click the label "movie/media fitness" under this post.

For more on "the chill of death" (algor mortis), more forensic myths, more body and fitness myths, how to change unhealthy exercises that were never healthy, and how to have healthy activity as a natural part of your day:

• Health & Fitness In Plain English English THIRD edition - How to be Healthy, Happy, and Fit For The Rest of Your Life.

Labels: forensic, movie/media fitness, myths

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Olympic Calories for Michael Phelps and Everyone Else

I didn't intend to cover this topic until several reporters deluged me in one week. They said I must answer immediately because they had deadlines, gave specifics I must answer so they can be paid for their article (while I supply everything with no remuneration), hours I must contact them at my expense, perhaps without them knowing my time zone placing it in the middle of the night, and so on.

Two reporters seemed to want the usual myths, not corrections or understanding. In numerous interviews, I earnestly debunked urban legends and explained facts, then found their article quoting my name wasn't anything I said. With apologies to readers waiting patiently for earlier topics, here are some of the questions:

1. The reporters wanted a comment that it was uncommon or abnormal that Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps eats up to 10,000 calories a day when training. It is not a mystery. If athletes train hard over many miles, they need more calories.


2. It is not unusual to eat large quantities of food and calories, athlete or not. Eating a great deal is nearly customary in the West, certainly in the US. Many people eat many thousands of calories a day more than they burn, and so, gain weight. The only trick seems to be to get people to stop eating that much.


3. The reporters asked what special techniques are needed to get that many calories. None. Look around restaurants and grocery lines. A typical fast food entrée, with French fries and milkshake can total 5000 calories in only one meal. A "salad-bar" with dressings, sauces, and usual Western choices can start at 1000-2000 calories a plate full and go upward from there. A bag of crisps, chips, or nuts can total 1000 calories in one snack. Exercisers and dieters lulled by slick advertising add hundreds of calories with sports shakes and bars. Ordinary people can eat thousands of calories per meal that they really don't know about, plus snacks. It is not a math mystery that they eat thousands of calories per day, and have extra body weight, regardless of other personal factors.


4. Another question was what made Phelps burn such an unusual number. It is not unusual for a swimmer or other endurance athlete to burn thousands of calories. When I trained swimming for various competitions I ate between eight and ten thousand calories a day myself, swimming five to seven miles a day. I posted about the mileage in Last October in Fast Fitness - Healthier Sports Shake.


5. Two reporters asked me to confirm an item from a National Public Radio interview, that once Phelps (or anyone) stops exercise, the body stops feeling hungry, therefore, someone not exercising will eat less. Clearly, this isn't so. People can eat too much regardless of exercise. You are not a cause-and-effect automaton. Food choices and overeating habits can occur separately from exercise habits. Days I didn't swim twice a day, miles at a time, I had to remind myself not to eat the same as when training. Now that I don't train like that, I can't eat like that. It is not increased age but that I do less. No mystery.


6. No it is not hard for most Westerners to eat - they just buy the food. No special eating techniques are needed. Overeating and eating when not hungry are common. One cup of nuts is about 800 calories. I can stuff about half a cup in a brimming handful. My husband Paul, a hard working carpenter who is taller and more muscular than Phelps, but about as lanky, fits almost a cup in his giant hand. We may scoop a handful while commuting on bike to work. Other people may eat handful after handful while watching television, totaling many thousands of extra calories a week.


7. It is not true that Phelps is "pure muscle" and no one is. Hopefully they have bones, and brains, and lungs, and some skin and so on.


8. It is not true that only muscle burns calories, or gender is the deciding factor. All your cells that are alive need to breathe and eat in various amounts, male or female. That is why a fat person, male or female, uses more calories everyday to feed all the extra. A fatter person may need more calories to stay at that higher weight than a smaller muscular person, male or female. Weight loss occurs when they do not eat enough to feed it all. Add a small amount of exercise over the day to do functional daily movement. See the lifestyle links at the end for more.


9. Resting metabolic rate is not mysterious, or fixed by gender or age. A car in idle uses gas, and people also burn calories even at rest with no exercise. Just like different size cars get different mileage, so do we. Adding suitcases in a car trunk needs more gas to tote them around, even though suitcases are not motive parts. A small to average adult may burn about 75 calories an hour, depending on size, to fuel all the cells to stay alive. Over 24 hours that is about 1800 calories a day. A smaller person may need less. A larger person may need 100 an hour or 2400 a day. When you exercise you use more.
   

There were more questions, taking me days to write. Until then, click these:

• Is Your Health Food Unhealthful?
• Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money
• Lose weight through lifestyle - What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?" and How Often Should You Be Healthy? and Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle.
  
• For more on swimming and nutrition for hard endurance exercise click the label "swimming" under this post, or use the Fitness Fixer Index.

Labels: myths, nutrition, Olympics, swimming, weight loss

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Beware of Hype in Training Methods

In fitness, odd and sham training methods are repeated, often whether they are true or not. It's important to remember this. A good example of avoiding this pitfall came from Mark Spitz, who swam at the 1968 and 1972 Olympics. As of this writing in July 2008 he is still the only Olympic athlete to win a gold medal and set a new world record in each in each (individual) event he entered. In an era when other swimmers, male and female were shaving body hair, he swam with a mustache. Mark Spitz is quoted as saying,

"When I went to the Olympics, I had every intention of shaving the mustache off, but I realized I was getting so many comments about it--and everybody was talking about it--that I decided to keep it. I had some fun with a Russian coach who asked me if my mustache slowed me down. I said, No, as a matter of fact, it deflects water away from my mouth, allows my rear end to rise and make me bullet shaped in the water, and that's what had allowed me to swim so great. He's translating as fast as he can for the other coaches, and the following year every Russian male swimmer had a mustache."

Keep this in mind when you automatically believe various training techniques without thinking it through.

I couldn't get a copyright-free photo of Mark Spitz to use for this post. Readers have been asking for more pictures of Paul, so here he is, in the Hudson River:




Click and bookmark the new Fitness Fixer Index.

Labels: movie/media fitness, myths, Olympics, performance enhancing modality, practice of medicine, swimming

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Three Common Swimming and SCUBA Myths in the News Again

On Monday July 7, a news show Troubled Waters featured a story of two scuba divers who floated 19 hours overnight after they and their dive boat did not connect after a dive on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

In their television interview, the two divers told various points of the situation. Three of the concerns were common myths often repeated in scuba training.

1. They mentioned they experienced signs of hypothermia. Technically, not any chilling is hypothermia. Being uncomfortably cold does not mean you have hypothermia. Shivering and teeth chattering does not mean you have hypothermia. You can even become incapacitated by cold before becoming hypothermic. In informal conversation, the two terms of hypothermia and chilling are often used interchangeably.

2. The woman of the pair stated she had read in a book, which had a section about progression of hypothermia, that exercise is not good and can be counterproductive. They were worried that body movement would, "send blood to the muscles away from your core, and your organs" and for that reason, make them colder.

I have read the book they mention. It is a book of wonderful stories and great writing, interesting medicine, but the physiology is frequently off. As a physiologist, I notice these things. When I teach medical students in their classes, I often see that they do not want to learn physiology, they only want to learn what medicine to give and where to cut. I tell them that without understanding the reasons for how the body resulted in the situation in the first place, they will only repeat the mistakes of their teachers by giving medicines and cutting.

Back to the shivering divers floating all night, waiting for rescue. It is not always the case that exercise in the cold must only make you colder. Exercise in cold water can generate enough heat to match or surpass the large thermal drain, depending on water temperature, work load, duration of exposure, your body composition, what you are wearing, and other factors. It is true that exercise in cold water increases heat loss, but it is an important point that it does not mean that you will always cool. Whether you stay comfortable or get cold depends how much heat you keep and how much you lose. If you generate more heat than you lose, you will be warmer than when you started. When I worked on cold water immersion for the Navy, we studied body cooling in pilots downed in cold water, and how long they could survive (all volunteers, really they loved my studies). We also studied divers. Some divers sent for underwater missions during the Gulf War were overheating underwater and had to wear ice vests with their scuba gear.

3. The last myth is a popular one. I am a scuba instructor and have heard this one repeated often. The two divers mentioned that the woman of the pair was menstruating and that there were sharks in the water. The woman said, "I'm shark bait is what I'm thinking." Diver researcher Dr. Carl Edmonds found that Australia's shark attack tracking system reported nine times more shark attacks on men, even though there was an even number of male and female swimmers.

Menstrual blood does not attract sharks. Neither does menstrual blood attract grizzly bears during camping trips, cause wine to sour as stated in ancient religious writings, or cause wings to snap off airplanes, as pilots insisted in the 1920's. The term man-eating shark, for now, remains.

I explain these myths and more about swimming and diving physiology, underwater and in heat and cold, in the book Diving Physiology in Plain English.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Do You Lose Most Of Your Heat Through Your Head?
• Fitness Myths - How Many Legs Does a Dog Have If You Call the Tail a Leg?
• Time of Death From Body Temperature?
• Beware of Hype in Training Methods
• Lower Back Pain From Swimming and SCUBA - Parts I and II
• Exercise and Fitness in Decompression Sickness Risk
• Getting Fitter in 50 Degrees
• Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw

Labels: cold, menstruation, myths, scuba, swimming

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fixing Posture - No Exercises Needed

A widespread myth is that to fix posture you must strengthen sets of muscles.

After spending time and money on strengthening exercises, people often wind up as stronger people with the same poor body position. The fallacy is that strengthening does not create movement. You do that yourself.

A physician wrote me that he has hyperlordosis from surfing, and is "working" to fix it. He had spent much time waiting for the exercises to "work." What he missed is that surfing does not cause it, and how you stand can be fixed there and then by deliberately, volitionally changing how you stand. How? Try Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds.


In the comments to the post Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking, a Division I athlete wrote:

"Thank you. I am a D1 athlete and have been struggling with back pain/extreme tightness when lifting and playing in the same day. I have known I had bad posture while running/walking for about 4 years, went to physical therapy for it, and still haven't changed it. I kept waiting for a certain exercise to suddenly "fix" me. Duh, what fixes me is ME CHANGING IT. Shocking."

When certain muscles are tight, it can feel normal to stand badly. Even though it is popular to talk about tight hamstrings changing posture, that is mostly an issue when sitting. When standing, two tight areas are most common, chest and front hip:

• Tight front chest muscles make round-shouldered position feel normal. Round-shouldered positioning keeps the front muscles shortened, in a cycle of shortening and tightening. The upper back muscles over-lengthen. This is why the most common stretch of pulling an arm over the front of the body is usually counterproductive. To fix anterior (front) tightness start with understanding and doing the pectoral stretch, described in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain and stop promoting an already overstretched posterior shoulder with The Stretch You Need The Least.
  

• Tight front hip muscles make standing badly feel normal. The front of the hip is pulled downward, tipping the backside outward in back. The lower back increases in inward curve in a painful posture called swayback or hyperlordosis. Many people stand this way without knowing it because they think standing with the hip tilted forward in front is normal or "cute." Much of modern conventional "fitness" encourages this unhealthy, unattractive bad posture.

Hyperlordosis is a major hidden factor in lower back pain. People may undergo months, even years of treatments, adjustments, shots, medicines, therapies for discs, sciatica, facet pain, and other pain without knowing or changing the cause - allowing a too large an inward curve to the lower back.


The photo at right demonstrates an over-arch in the lower spine, the hip tilted forward in front, and a forward head while doing an activity supposed to be for health.

It seems impractical to do "fitness" in unfit ways - practicing unhealthy positioning, shown in the photo ->

Moreover, tilting the hip forward reduces the Achilles stretch and reinforces bad movement habits. For a more functional Achilles stretch try Better Achilles Tendon Stretch.




Hyperlordosis is not a medical condition or unchangeable anatomy. It is simple bad posture that you can allow or change right as you stand. Neutral spine is not pushing the hip forward, just moving it enough to make it level. See a short movie in the post Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds. To stretch the front hip, try these:

1. Fast Fitness - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch.
2. Change the common ineffective way to stretch the front of the thigh and hip with Instantly Better Hip and Quadriceps Stretch
3. and Stretch While You Strengthen Legs.
   

Watch other people when they exercise, walk, and run. See how often you can spot the unhealthy overarched lower spine. See what to look for in the post Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It?

Remember that stretching the hip and shoulder, and anywhere else, will not automatically make you stand right. You do that yourself using your own muscles and brain. Free exercise. Free fix.

Labels: fix pain, lordosis, lower back, myths, posture, practice of medicine, stretch

Permalink | 4 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Exercise and Aging - Don't Limit the Patient to Limit the Pain

A Reuters news item last week reports that "baby boomers" are accumulating wear and tear injuries, and they should consider cutting back on amount and type of exercise they get.

The article points out that contributors to injuries are biomechanics, poor flexibility, and "pounding" or stomping down unnecessarily hard when running, jumping, walking, etc. Even with that knowledge, the news report goes on to say the answer to reduce injuries is to cut back activity. In Sunday's Fitness Fixer post, Forearm, Upper Body and Hand Exercise, I wrote that it is not a healthful or useful solution to "limit the patient to limit the pain."

The Reuters article quoted a foot and ankle podiatrist saying, "It is really important that people continue to be physically active, but they need to think logically about how to remain active as they age… Probably when you start getting into your 40s and 50s, the half marathon is a great alternative (to full marathons). Or, if you did two or three marathons a year, cut it back to one a year or opt for 10K or 5K runs." The podiatrist himself is a marathoner. He stated, "Having run 25 marathons, it was hard for me to cut back."

I would suggest looking at biomechanics, poor flexibility, and "pounding" first, before telling someone to stop doing what they love:

• Biomechanics - Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
• Flexibility - What Does Stretching Do?
• Pounding - Walk Lightly - Shock Absorption for Happier Joints

I have some exciting developments about getting you information on Exercise and Aging. Will announce soon.

Labels: aging, fix pain, impact, injury, myths, running

Permalink | 3 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw

The post Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It? showed the common and painful bad posture of standing with too much inward curve in the lower back, called swayback and hyperlordosis. A reader mailed me an article about gluteal muscles and asked what gluteal muscles have to do with it.

The article shows one kind of hyperlordosis, with the hip pushed forward. The drawing at right shows that hip-forward hyperlordosis position (right figure) compared to neutral spine (left figure). The article stated that the hip-forward posture was due to weak gluteal muscles, and that strengthening the muscles would fix the bad posture. The article gave a strengthening exercise of lying on your back and squeezing the "cheeks" of the backside together as if squeezing a coin between them.

Knowing muscle action will help you know why it doesn't work that way:

1. Your gluteal muscles are muscles of your backside. One function is to pull your upper leg backward, for example, when walking, to pull each leg behind you. The distance between the back of your hip and the back of your upper leg shortens.
2. If you use your gluteal muscles while standing (not tighten them, just use them to bring about movement) your hip will push forward. That is the opposite of correcting a hip that is forward in bad posture.
3. Squeezing the "cheeks" of the gluteal muscles together is training a different movement direction than either pushing your hip and leg forward or back.
4. Another fallacy is that tight gluteal muscles pull the hip so that it pushes forward into bad posture. It is true that tight hip muscles in front will change the tilt of your hip. People with anterior tightness cannot easily bring the leg behind them, which hurts stance and gait. Gluteal muscles cannot get that tight unless you have tetanus. Gluteal tight enough to push the hip forward a few inches would be so tight that you would not be able to sit down. You would tear your backside like splitting your pants.

The key point is that strengthening a muscle does not make it move your body or change your position. If you strengthen your arm, for example, your arm does not automatically wave around or raise over your head. Your arm only moves when you make it move. Strengthening your gluteal muscles will not move your hip for you. Even if strengthening did make any body part move on its own, gluteal muscles would cause a forward hip, not correct it.

Think of asking a dog to shake hands with you. If you want the dog to move his paw up to shake your hand, you do not strengthen his leg and paw. You train the movement and the voluntary desire to bring about the action.

Standing, walking, and running in hyperlordosis is a major cause of lower back pain. Some people stick the backside out in back and others tilt the upper body back with the hip thrust forward. Both increase the inward curve of the lower back and painfully pinch the lower back structures. Although some fitness information and advertisements represent overarching as attractive, even something to deliberately do, it is an unhealthy and weak posture, making it unattractive and undesirable.

Strengthening muscles is good and helpful and fun and healthy, and so on. Strengthening gluteal muscles or any other muscles will not automatically make you stand in healthful position. Stronger muscles do not make you move. You can change to healthful position right now without strengthening. These posts show how:

• The post Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds shows a quick movie.
• Prevent Back Surgery shows places to look for overarching and why it is so important to prevent it.
  
• Neutral Spine or Not? shows two kinds of hyperlordosis to watch for, with links to photos how to stand in neutral spine.
  
• For a stretch for the anterior hip: standing - Hip Stretch While You Strengthen Legs and lying down - Fast Fitness - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch
  

When you hear that you need various strengthening exercises to correct posture, think of shaking a dog's paw.

Labels: abdominal muscles, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, myths, neutral spine, posture, practice of medicine, running, strength, walking

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Does an Exercise Ball Make You Sit Straight?

Healthline staff helpfully sent in photos of sitting at work on an exercise ball. Both photos show obvious slouching and forward rounding.

A ball does not make you sit upright or prevent unhealthful, uncomfortable sitting position. You can sit upright or not. It is not the ball, but you, that determines what you do with your own body.




A ball that is too high will even prevent you from sitting close enough to the desk, so that you have to lean over forward to reach the surface.


Use common sense and your own muscles for simple, comfortable, healthful habits.






Photos courtesy of Healthine.com staff. Please do not try these bad postures at home. Healthline staff are trained professionals.

Labels: exercise ball, fix pain, myths, posture, sitting, upper back

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fixing More Fitness Myths

On April 1st, I covered some fun fitness myths and how to change myth into healthier exercise. Today continues with more fun ways to get more exercise and reduce injury at the same time:


Heart Health

Myth - Anger has no health effects. Instead, turn contempt and anger for others to healthy dialog with:
Healthier Heart.

Understanding How "Sticking Out in Back" Isn't Neutral Spine:

Start with this one to see what overarching the lower back means, and how correcting it lets you do more in healthier ways:
Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain

Then try Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine to visualize how you simply tuck enough to make the belt line level when standing, not tilted. A small inward curve in the lower back remains when you shift to neutral spine, but not large enough to cause degenerative pinching on the facet joints, the joints of the lower spine.

Then feel the difference of tucking until neutral: Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique

and Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain

Here is how to try it during squats: Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending

Here are some abdominal exercises using these principles: Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain

Here is what it looks like not to use abs:
What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link
What Does It Look Like to Not Use Abdominal Muscles?
and Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain.

Abs and Tightening:

Myth - Pressing navel inwards to tighten abs is the way to strengthen your abs or fix your posture. Fact - tightening will not move your spine out of unhealthy position and it impedes normal fluid motion:
Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine.

Exercise Injuries

Myth - Exercise injuries are usually overuse and aging.
Fact - Simple misuse is easily fixed: Why So Many Aerobics Injuries? and What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"
A recent injury survey by US military revealed that 62% of American injuries in Iraq are occurring in the gym. Welcome to the Fitness Fixer tells more.
Some top docs say the military press should be avoided. I think it is a functional exercise and can be done in ways without upper body injury: Safer Overhead Military Press.

Dispelling Myths about Circulation and Massage:

Keeping Thai Massage Healthy Part III - Should You Do "The Blood Stop?"
Making Thai Massage Healthier Part II - Avoid Snapping Elbows or Knees Backward
Changing Thai Massage to Be Healthier Part I - Avoid Pressuring Lower Back Discs.

Sitting and Rising:

Myth - The way to sit and rise from a chair is to lean forward and stick out in back. Here is a way that uses muscles more:
Get Better Exercise From Your Chair
and
Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?

Dispelling the Myth That The Best Ab Exercise Means Crunches, Leg Lifts, and Bending Forward:

Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think
Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique
Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain.

Knee Pain:

Myth - to avoid knee pain you must avoid impact activities or exercises that bend the knees. Here are ways to do all you enjoy and get stronger healthier knees:
Understanding positioning and impact: Healthy Knees.
For full squatting to the heels: Save Knees When Squatting
For half squatting for bending and exercise: Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending.

Backpacks and Back Pain:

Myth - Carrying the weight of backpacks makes your back hurt. Fact - You can change the source of the back pain by how you carry the same pack:
Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain
and
Carrying Schoolbooks Is Not the Cause of Back Pain.

Back Surgery:

Myth - surgery is necessary to avoid later problems. Fact - Studies have now found that is it not true that you necessarily risk future consequences if you do not have surgery. Surgery itself can be a source of later trouble:
Fix Disc Pain Without Surgery
and
Studies Say Back Surgery Not Needed.

Squats:

There are medical people who say that squats are bad for the back and knees. I believe that healthy squats make daily life and exercise healthier and smarter, and can prevent much back and knee pain:
Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle
How Often Should You Be Healthy?
Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending.

Cause of Disc Degeneration and Herniation:

Myth - Vertebral discs just go bad without warning, from small provocations like a sneeze or reaching or from aging, so it doesn't matter what you do. The good news is that discs are not soft "jelly donuts" as often described. They are tough like truck tires. It takes years of the same, specific, problem to break them down and move them out of place. See the mechanism:
Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix

Then see examples during daily life:
The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
and How Often Should You Be Healthy?

Brain Damage:

Myth - knocks to the head are funny and harmless. In reality, long-term damage may be common and serious. This has far reaching implication for law enforcement, domestic violence, full contact sports, and extreme entertainment:
Rocky IV and Head Injury.

Sitting and Back Pain:

It made headlines when researchers seemed to say that sitting up straight was wrong. Here is what they really meant:
Don't Fall for "Don't Sit Up Straight."

When you exercise for health, are you sitting in unhealthy ways? Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

and here are two for more comfortable sitting:
When Did Health Become Thinking Out Of The Box?
and Exercise and Stretch for Long Travel Sitting.

Upper Back and Neck Pain

Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth

Myth - All neck stretches fix neck pain. Fact - there are some stretches that increase neck pain:
Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too
and The Stretch You Need The Least.
Here are stretches that work better:
Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain
Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain
Nice Neck Stretch
and Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch.

Dispelling the Myth That Any Exercise or Stretch is Good For You:

The Stretch You Need The Least
Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?
Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending
Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs
Healthier Hamstring Stretching
and Better Achilles Tendon Stretch.

Is More Calcium is the Answer for Bone Density?:

Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones
and
Collapsing Astronaut Gives Healthy Reminder.

Making Peace

I have taken many classes where the teacher claims their exercise system gives focus and calm, then they lose all their concentration if a student arrives late, if a phone rings, or if the class next door is too loud. These posts give things to try instead:
Which Ancient Exercise Gives Focus and Concentration?
Exercise Common Sense Discipline
The Story of the Black Belt.

More myths - Fixing Fitness Myths

Labels: abdominal muscles, circulation, facet joints, holiday, knee, lordosis, massage, myths, nutrition, squat

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fixing Fitness Myths

"The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except which is worth knowing." - Oscar Wild

April 1 seems to be a day to notice, more than usual, if things in the news are not facts but April Fool. On other days, urban legends and other stories are still popular, sometimes more popular than what is really going on.

The observation that the Earth is flat seemed obviously true at one time until we had more information. It used to be a taught as a medical fact that the cause of epilepsy was masturbation. When I was in school, one of my medical books stated that you don't need to eat calcium since you can "get all you need from your bones." It is true that you pull calcium from your bones when you don't eat enough, although with unhealthy results.

The post Forensic Science told of two crime-science myths, often still taught in forensic books and popularized in television shows, which were never true. Following are more posts hoping to replace myth with information, so that you can get stronger and do more, without the injuries or restrictions in activity that are part of many fitness or injury rehab practices.

Feet and Ankles

Myth - You need tight shoes for support. Fact - tight shoes can deform toes and prevent healthy muscle use:
Are Your Shoes Too Tight?
and Healthy Toe Stretches.

Myth - All ankle stretches prevent sprains. Fact - Some may enhance predisposition to ankle sprains:
Unhealthy Yoga Ankles.

Myth - Following an ankle sprain, bracing must be continuous since no exercise can restore the area. Here is another way -
How To Treat Ankle Sprains and Prevent Them
and
No More Ankle Sprains Part II.

Dispelling Myths of Orthotics Use:

Myth - Only orthotics can place your arches in neutral position. Fact - your own muscles can often do the same:
Arch Support Is Not From Shoes
and
Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles?

Dispelling Aging Myths - That respiratory function only declines with age:

Do Breathing Exercises Work?

Dispelling Aging Myths - That you only get weaker with aging:

Getting Stronger is for Everyone
What I Learned at the Aging Conference
Better Balance by Christmas
Conference on Aging Dec 2, 2006 in Midtown New York.

Dispelling Nutrition for Exercise Myths:

That weight gain with aging is primarily lower metabolism: Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money

or that Healthy eating is difficult or expensive:
What Medical Students Told Me About Nutrition.

Myth that you must eat much protein to get muscles:
Get Muscles for Christmas

Myth that acid prevention drugs are harmless:
Stomach Acid Drugs May Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures

Myth that food marked "Health Food" means it has to be healthy:
Is Your Health Food Unhealthy
and Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food

and the myth that it's healthy for children to eat junk food:
A Little Good Exercise, a Lot of Bad Food - Overweight Still No Mystery.

Myths that only gyms and weights can improve your strength:

How to get natural exercise is in Rocky IV and Healthier Exercise,
Getting Stronger Without a Gym
Exercising With A Friend - Partner Leg Press
Don't Confuse Exercise With Real Fitness
Healthy Toe Stretches
Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener
and Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise.

More to come for smart, fun, healthier ways to get exercise.

Labels: aging, ankle, arches, arm, balance, breathing, feet, fix pain, forensic, holiday, leg stretch, myths, nutrition, osteoporosis, partner exercise, shoes, sprain, strength, toes, yoga

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?

A commonly repeated phrase in fitness training and programs is "neutral spine" and "tuck the tail" for healthier lower spine posture. Many people know this, repeat this, teach this, write articles about it, then jut their hip too far out in back and overly-arch their lower spine, doing just the opposite, when they squat, bend to pick things up, sit in a chair, and exercise (photo at left).

Tilting the hip too far outward in back overly-arches and hyperextends the lower spine - photo at left and left drawing below.

Hyperextrending the spine, creating too much lordosis (hyperlordosis) can result in unhealthful compression on the spine joints called facets, and on surrounding soft tissue.

Overarching shifts your body weight onto the spine joints and compresses them in a bent-backward position, eventually increasing back pain and joint damage.

Another issue is that if you cannot squat without sticking out in back or leaning your upper body far forward, it is a sign that your thighs are weak, your Achilles tendons are tight, you are not using your ab muscles, your balance is poor, or all four.

Why do so many programs teach to stick far out in back? It is well known that the opposite problem of tucking too much and rounding forward (lumbar flexion) contributes to back pain. People hear this and assume that the opposite, over-arching backward, will counteract that. They exaggerate the arch.

Overarching often initially seems to "work" because you can lift more since you shift some of the work from the muscles onto the lower spine (and sometimes knees).

The muscles do less, so it seems easier. Competition lifters use it to lift more, regardless of the pain and injuries it causes later on.

It is trend-breaking news to say don't stick your backside out too much to squat, and instead use neutral spine, shown in the right-hand drawing. I know. It goes against what fitness organizations and pop-science exercise books teach. I know. Try this to see for yourself:

• Stand upright with feet side-by-side, comfortably apart.
• Face both feet in the same direction as your knees.
• Bend both knees, keeping both heels down on the floor and over your feet, not sinking inward or bowing outward.
• Look down and see if your knees cover the sight of your toes.
• If you can't see your toes because your knees are forward blocking the view, pull your knees back (keeping them bent) until you are still squatting but can see your toes.
• Keep your upper body as upright as you can.
• Now, here is the point about the lower back - notice if you tilt too far out in back, pinching your lower spine backward like a straw. Overarching may be habit, or that you don't have the leg strength or balance, or your Achilles tendon is so tight that your heels come up from the floor. Instead, tuck the bottom of the hip under, just enough to bring the spine to "neutral." A small inward curve remains when you have neutral spine, but not a large one - Right-hand drawing.
  
• Raise your upper body to be more vertical, while staying in the squat.
• Notice how you have to use far more leg and hip muscle, and the pressure of holding your body weight comes off the lower back and knee joints.

Use healthy bending for all bending. Neutral spine helps squats for exercise, to pick up clothes from the floor, to get pet dishes, look in the refrigerator, get the laundry, pick up the kids, to sit down in a chair, and so on. You will get a far better workout for your thighs, keep weight off the joints of your knees and spine. It is healthier to squat upright than bending over forward to pick things up. It is not healthier to cause the opposite problem by overly-arching and pinching the spine back (increasing swayback).

Another point in spine health and exercise is not to "tighten" or clench your abdominal muscles to squat or lift. It is not healthy or useful to tighten muscles for movement. It is trend-breaking news to say "don't tighten." I know. It goes against what fitness organizations and pop-science exercise books have been teaching. I know. Tightening is not what supports your back. Moving your spine out of unhealthy over-arched position, explained in this post, to a more neutral position is what "supports" (you hold your spine in place) preventing pain and injury. Using the muscles to stop unhealthy position, and hold healthful position is how you support your back - not by tightening.

• The previous post explains tightening - Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine
• Also don't need to tighten gluteals - Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw
  
  

Fun effective exercises, without tightening or the forward bending of crunches or Pilates that causes so much back pain:

• Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think
• If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This
• Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique
• Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain

Have fun being part of this big and healthy change in fitness.

Labels: abdominal muscles, achilles stretch, lordosis, lower back, myths, neutral spine, squat, strength

Permalink | 12 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine

Tighten your neck! Sound comfortable? Tighten your legs and walk around! Sound sensible? Yet, many popular exercise programs have insisted on the erroneous practice of tightening abs. I have written articles, posts, and books on why this is not beneficial and what works your abs better. At last, it is making headline news. The biggest name in spine research, Dr. Stuart McGill, has published that "drawing in" the abdominal muscles, also described as "press the navel to spine" is detrimental to health of the lower back, and that tightening the abs impedes normal movement. In Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2007 Jan;88(1):54-62, authors Grenier and McGill conclude, "There seems to be no mechanical rationale for using an abdominal hollow, or the transversus abdominis, to enhance stability."

This week the headline news of British newspaper "The Daily Mail" followed up with inquiry into the incidence of back pain and injuries using the "drawing in" technique: Is Pilates bad for your back? (A minor note - they accompanied the otherwise good article with an incorrect photo depicting the opposite concept of back extension, not the unnecessary contracted abdominal tightening, which was the point of the article.) Pressing and tightening the abdominals has been an incorrect assumption made into ritual in the fitness industry for many years. However it is not the way your abdominal muscles work to do anything helpful to you.

When you bend your arm, you don't tighten your muscles to do it. In fact, you shouldn't want to. You just move your arm bones using your arm muscles. Abdominal muscles work the same way. You use them to move the body parts they attach to. Voluntarily. Strengthening or tightening won't make them move automatically. You may have a strong arm, but it isn't held up in the air automatically - only when you move it there. Strong, or even tight, abs will not automatically support your back. Moving your spine into healthful position will:

• Abs attach from hips to ribs. When you don't use your abs, your ribs lift up and the front of your hip sinks down increasing the inward curve or arch in your lower spine (left-hand photo of the pair). This inward curve is called lordosis and also hyperlordosis and swayback.
• Note how the belt line tips down in front (left-hand photo).
  
• The lower back aches after long standing because you are letting the weight of your upper body slump down on your lower back. People with the bad habit of overarching often feel they need to lean over forward or sit to relieve the pain.
  
• Instead, to correct the source of the pain, tuck the hip under (not push it forward) to lift up the beltline in front (right-hand photo). Lower the ribs to level. The action is like a thrust or pelvic tilt or crunch standing up just enough to straighten, not round forward.
• The muscles that move the ribs and hip to healthier position happen to be your abdominal muscles. Standing properly (right drawing) gives a free built-in ab workout, with no tightening and no forward bending; just functional use of the abs to hold your spine in position during all you do.
  

Click this for a description of what abdominal muscles really do:
What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link

and this for the x-ray view of arching and fixing the arching:
Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain

These posts show how to use abs when standing and moving in daily life:
Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain
Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain

These show you how to get better, more functional abdominal exercise than tightening or crunches and other forward bending:
Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think
If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This
Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique
Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain

Using your abdominal muscles to move your spine out of injurious over-arched position and hold healthy neutral position during ordinary daily life and during all the exercise you do is good exercise - without tightening. The book that started the sea-change in understanding abdominal use and functional exercise is The Ab Revolution™, No More Crunches No More Back Pain.

Labels: abdominal muscles, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, myths, neutral spine, strength

Permalink | 16 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Arch Support Is Not From Shoes

The previous post showed how the best ankle support comes from your own ankle, leg, and foot muscles. Pronation (flat, sagging arches) is rarely just the way your feet are made, or something you can't prevent. You may allow ankles to bend inward or outward, or you can prevent sagging and easily hold your ankles in healthy position, no differently than not letting your posture sag anywhere else.

It is commonly taught in gyms, medical schools, aerobics certification programs, and footwear stores all over the US, that shoes or orthotics are necessary to hold your arches in position. That is a fallacy. The needed support should come from your own foot muscles. How do you do this?

• Stand up with both feet parallel, pointing straight ahead.
• See if your arch slumps downward, pressing your arches against the floor (left photo). In most cases, there is nothing wrong with your arches, but simply because you allowed it to slouch.
• If you use the muscles on the outsides of your ankles and legs, you can gently shift your weight more evenly to get your body weight off your arch (right photo) and stand straight. Don't tilt completely to the side or stand on the sides of your feet, just shift enough to lift your arches from the floor.
• Having arch support is the same as having neck support by using your upper body muscles to stop slouching. Pull your chin inward gently right now to remind yourself of this.
• Remember, don't force. If it hurts, it's wrong.
  

All you are doing is learning how to stand neutral, not tilted too much in or too much out. Both can compress your joints. The concept is to hold your feet in the same healthful position that shoe supports would. It is like an ice skater holds their skates straight at the ankle, not angled.

Support your feet by holding position using your own muscles, not a shoe 'straight jacket' that lets ankles atrophy and doesn't let toes move, stretch, and straighten.

More on foot and ankle health:

1. Healthy Toe Stretches and Unhealthy Yoga Ankles
2. My web site page Inspiring Patient Stories for a first-hand account of a patient who fixed a lifetime of pain and pronation by stopping the cause - letting ankles and feet sag. By holding healthy positions during your normal day, you can get free, built- in exercise for your feet and ankles, and better health.
3. The book, "Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery" for how to have healthy arches and foot support.

It shouldn't hurt, or take commercial products or machinery to just stand up straight.

Labels: ankle, arches, feet, fix pain, myths, orthotics, pronation, shoes

Permalink | 4 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Don't Fall for "Don't Sit Up Straight"

An article getting much attention in news and blogs carries the headline, "Don't sit up straight." Many people have been overjoyed to read this. The news articles state that recent studies say not to sit up straight due to the pressure it puts on the spine. But this is misleading.

The studies don't mean, "don't sit up straight." They mean, "don't sit vertically." They say that leaning back reduces compression on the spine. The articles I have written about healthy sitting are in line with these studies, and say to lean the upper body slightly back - less vertical vector, means less direct axial loading. You still need to prevent rounding your back when leaning back, shown in the drawing at left.

It is not "sitting straight" that is the problem. My article Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix shows how rounding the spine forward under your body weight mechanically opens space between the back of your vertebrae, and pushes your discs outward, over years, into this space. The article reminds:"Pull your chair in closer to the desk, and lean your upper back against the seat back." That way you can lean back without rounding. You don't need to be vertical to be straight rather than rounded.

The article The Cause of Disc and Back Pain shows a photo of someone sitting vertically - head is above hips - but they are rounding the spine forward, putting unhealthy pressure on the discs and soft tissues. They need to straighten their sitting to reduce the outward force on the discs and the overstretch on the muscles and supporting tissue.

The "Don't Sit Straight" study, and subsequent reports of it, missed that you have less vector force on your spine while sitting vertically at 90 degrees if you don't also round your spine, than if you lean back as they say but round your back. You can lean back and still pressure your spine by rounding. Look at the drawing, above left. The person is leaning back, as the study reports you should do, but the person is also rounding the lower back. This is one of the most common slouching there is. It is more pressure and more unhealthy than sitting vertically but not rounding.

Healthy sitting is simple when you understand, not just memorize a bunch of strange rules. More posts about healthy sitting to come. Until then, straighten your spine by not rounding forward. Move your chair in closer, and lift your upper body up to lean your upper back against the seat back. Yes, that does make your spine straighter - in a healthy way.

Books:

• Chapter on healthy sitting in - Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery
• Several chapters on healthier positioning during all life movement - Health & Fitness THIRD edition, How to be Healthy Happy and Fitn For The Rest Of Your Life.
  

Related Fitenss Fixer:

• Does an Exercise Ball Make You Sit Straight?
• Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
• Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
• Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix
• Back to School - Healthy Sitting
• Fast Fitness - Contest: What Does It Take To Sit Upright?

Labels: disc, fix pain, lower back, myths, posture, practice of medicine, sitting, upper back, wrist

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Carrying Schoolbooks Is Not the Cause of Back Pain

A recent BBC news article echoed the common idea that children are getting back pain from carrying their books. However, carrying books is not the cause of the pain.

The article continued how children often require "physiotherapy" for their pain. Common programs in physical therapy involve strengthening. An important thing to understand is that carrying your own things would be more strengthening than lifting little weights that often weigh less than the books.

The article mentioned how one of the schools is trying to raise money for more lockers so that children will not have to carry their books between home and school. While physical educations programs are being increasingly cut, and children are getting less exercise, fewer physical skills, and are gaining weight, people still think it is too much exercise for children to carry books.

It is not the backpacks that hurt the back. It is carrying them with poor positioning that pressures the spine. Carrying books, even heavy books, with good positioning would be healthy and good exercise, not a cause of pain. By contrast, pulling a rolling carrier or bag on wheels while bent over in unhealthy ways can cause the same kind of pain.

One common poor positioning when wearing a backpack is rounding the upper body forward or slouching to the side to offset the weight of the pack. These poor positions are the same that create pain when sitting poorly at a desk, which is another source of the children's pain. If you stop hunching forward or sideways when carrying a backpack or other loads, and stand straight, the pressure on the spine shifts from the spine to the core muscles. It is free exercise.

The second major pain producing bad habit when carrying a backpack is leaning or arching backward - allowing the lower back to increase the inward curve (overarch). Backpacks do not make you arch your back. It is you who allow yourself to be pulled backward by the weight. If you straighten yourself and not slouch backward, the compression on the lower back stops. The muscles that pull your spine forward to reduce the backward lean are your abdominal muscles. You would have a free abdominal muscle workout. The action of pulling yourself straight instead of arching backward is the same movement as described in Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain.

Posts to come will show how to easily carry loads, books, and backpacks so that instead of compressing and hurting your back under the weight, you get free exercise that makes you stronger and healthier. The answer is not to stop carrying books, then go to a gym or physical therapy center to lift weights. It is fitness as a lifestyle to move and get healthy exercise from your daily life, including carrying your own things in healthy ways.


Photo by Sarvodaya, Creative Commons

Labels: abdominal muscles, disc, fix pain, lower back, myths, posture, upper back

Permalink | 8 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth

A news report in the MMD Newswire echoed a prevalent but luckily, false belief, that breasts cause back pain. The good news is that means you do not have to be forced into back pain, and there are things that you can try quickly to relieve it yourself.

Many of my patients who come to me with upper back pain say that their doctor or other health care practitioner told them the reason is the weight of their breasts. I show them how they can stop the pain by checking and correcting other factors that are the real underlying cause.

One of the biggest mistakes in science is confusing correlation for cause and effect. There are so many people with back pain that it is easy to blame anything happening at the same time, like having breasts or a big belly in front, or carrying backpacks in back, or groceries on the side.

1. Men have the same or higher incidence of the same upper back pain.
2. Women who are smaller, or have had breast reduction and double mastectomies can have the same pain.
3. If straps are binding or cutting into your neck, that can obviously be uncomfortable, so check and fix that.
4. However, the specific cause is not the breasts, since men and smaller women can get the same kind of pain.
5. If you round your shoulders, spend time with the upper body bent or rounded forward, or have a forward head, the shifted weight is a common contributor to upper back pain.

Look at the photo, above left. Letting your neck tilt so that your ear is forward of your shoulder, as in the photo, is called a forward head. It is not the normal tilt to the neck. It is a weak and injurious bad posture. The angle of the jaw should rest comfortably above the center-shoulder. The forward head is the source of a surprisingly large percentage of upper back and neck pain. The classic distribution of this pain is across both shoulders, up the neck, down the upper back, sometimes causing numbness or tingling down the arm. Do you have a forward head? Here is a quick test:

• Stand comfortably with your back against a wall or doorway.
• Touch your heels, your behind, and your upper back against the wall.
• Does the back of your head touch easily?
• If your head is forward of the wall, it is likely that you have a forward head.
• See if you have to crane your neck to bring your head back to the wall.
• See if you round your shoulders
• Check if you lean back to try to straighten up. Straightening should come from the upper body, not by increasing the inward curve of the lower back (hyperlordosis), which can hurt - Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain.
  

If you have to force or crane your neck back to touch the back of your head to the wall, or you lean backward to try to straighten, you are too tight to be straight. That means you may walk around all day, and exercise, and sit, and do all you do with bent forward positioning, which can cause pain.

Often, people who think they "stand up straight" find that they are straining their beck and shoulder back, which causes upper body pain. The problem is that they are too tight to stand with healthful position. Strained straightening and the many postures that are mistaken for straight but are not will hurt as much as slouching.

If you did the wall test, see if you are slouching forward from the forward head, or from the upper body, or both. See if you have to lean backward to straighten up. See if it is an effort to stand roughly straight, instead of normal comfortable muscle length. Those are more causes of pain, mistaken for the size of the chest. In posts to come I show two quick techniques to lengthen the front chest muscles to let you stand straight easily and comfortably. Then you will not have a forward head or rounded shoulders:

1. Here is the first thing to try to restore resting muscle length to make standing straight possible and comfortable: Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
2. Here is the second - Nice Neck Stretch
3. Try those two gently, with the aim of restoring ability to straighten out comfortably, then use the straighter position, so bent forward position does not hang on your upper back muscles, making them hurt. The stretch does not fix the pain - using them to be able to straighten out during the rest of the day is the key.
4. To help unround a rounded tight upper back, gently experiment with Fast Fitness - First Morning Stretch and Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch
5. Check if you spend much time rounding or bent forward - Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
   
6. Check to see if you lean back instead of straightening - Neutral Spine or Not?

The idea is, that no matter your size, use your own muscles to prevent uncomfortable positioning. By restoring healthier upper body positioning and use, you will get built-in back muscle exercise all day. Standing straight instead of allowing your upper spine to compress under your weight will stop your pain plus give free calorie burning exercise.

If you find that lifting your chest with your hands takes the strain away, then you can do the same with your upper body muscles. It is free exercise to use your muscles to prevent your own body weight from squashing you. Pull your chin inward and shoulders back in a relaxed way by unrounding the upper back. Then weight of your head and upper body will not pull forward on your upper back muscles, making them ache.

The same applies to carrying a grocery bag, a child, or any load. Don't slouch under the load, use muscles to keep healthy comfortable position.

Fitness Fixer reader Ness left a comment on the post Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain:

"I am very large breasted and have always been. It's a very difficult thing to find a comfortable bra. For the past few months, I've been having upper back pain. I felt like I needed to "crack." Every night I complain, and nothing works!

"Except this. haha, you have NO IDEA how pleased I am that this "fixing upper back and neck pain" stretch works.

"Now, I'm not going to pretend that I think I'm perfect now because I've been sitting straight for about 10 mins and it is starting to get a little tiring.
"But, I don't feel ANY pain.
"I'm amazed.

"Was that it?? Really my DDDs have nothing to do with it???"

See the wall test - How Doctors Use The Wall Stand.

No exercise is more important for your joint health than holding up your own body weight, no matter what or where it may be. Your size does not force you to slouch. It does not require long or repeated treatments or sessions or teams of professionals.

I run classes for motivated, bright participants who want to empower themselves - see my web page for CLASSES - www.DrBookspan.com/classes.

There is specific helpful information in my replies already here to the many reader comments below this post. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here in the comments below.

Labels: chest, fix pain, myths, neck, posture, shoulder, upper back

Permalink | 20 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment