Small changes lead to BIG improvement
It seems spare time is a rare commodity now a days. If you are like me, you run the gauntlet between work, maintaining your home, the kids’ school, soccer practice, hockey practice… and on and on. Then in the midst of this, terrible people like myself, have the nerve to ask you to find the “time” to look after your own health!
SO… I’ve decided to make this blog entry of about some simple recommendations that you can easily incorporate without eating up too much of that precious little free time that you have each day. Most people want to do the right things to keep them healthy. It just becomes difficult to KEEP doing these things! The following are general recommendations that I suggest to patients all the time, regardless of their reasons for coming to see me.
In osteopathy, we study that we are a functional unit. Anything that you can do to help any part of you (or your life) will positively affect all other parts. The French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Blaise Pascal is quoted as saying “Little things console us because little things afflict us.” Most people who I see in my practice have injuries/problems that are the result of little things accumulating over time, until their body can no longer accommodate. We often begin treatment by addressing one area of tension, which affects another area of tension, which is related to another area of dysfunction… and so on. Each bit of function we give the body back improves the overall function and lessens the burden of any remaining dysfunction. Homecare is the same! There is no perfect exercise for you if it is an exercise that you don’t do. Initially, the best advise if you want to maximize the results of your treatments with us, or generally do something positive for your health/condition, is to incorporate one (or two) of the “little things below”. Once that one thing becomes routine, try one more.
“The little things…”
1. DRINK… and not caffeine or sugary drinks. Water. But be realistic. If you currently drink zero glasses a day, don’t start by trying to drink 8. Start by increasing your intake by an extra glass or two a day for a week or two. This will allow your body to adapt to the fact that you are giving it more water. For the first few days you will pee more. Stay with it and once your body adapts, I promise the problem will disappear.
2. SLEEP… we have no problem telling our kids that they have to get enough sleep while we stay up until midnight watching American Idol and The Biggest Loser! If you are suffering from an inflammatory condition one of the most important things you can do is get enough sleep so that your body has time to heal. Research indicates that people who get fewer than 6 hours per night of sleep have higher blood levels of inflammatory proteins.
3. EXERCISE… I recently read a great line in a textbook written by Laurie Hartman, DO that I agree whole-heartedly with, and often share with my patients. He says he “prefers exercise to exercises”. I think this is great advise given that many people come to me every day looking for what “exercise” they should do or what “exercise” they should stop doing. For the vast majority of people, particularly those with chronic insidious onset complaints, just getting out and adding some amount of mild to moderate activity in your day is far better than any one exercise or type of exercise alone. Walking for example, is something almost everyone can safely incorporate into their daily routine regardless of your physical condition and receive health benefit from. According to an article published in the Harvard Health News walking can strengthen bones, strengthen the cardiovascular system, and perhaps most importantly clear a cluttered mind. Not to mention a little fresh air and shot of the sunshine vitamin.
4. EAT… I mean eat differently, in most cases. There few things that you can do to “shoot yourself in the foot” more when coming for treatment than continually eat foods that are perpetuating a cycle of inflammation in your body. The food (and drink) you put into your body is all that your body has to fuel your activities for the day. It is also all your body has to begin to rebuild and heal injured tissues. A consultation with our Naturopathic Doctor, Dr. Colin Huska, ND, is a good way to find out if specific foods are creating a problem for you (or of course if there are certain foods that you should be eating but are not). This is obviously more of an “involved” item than a simple change for you to implement. However like everything else you can start simple like decreasing (or eliminating;)) the amount of refined or process foods you eat!
5. BREATHE… Diaphragmatic breathing is a simple “exercise”, or routine you can practice before going to sleep every night. Amanda Crewe, RMT has written a great article for this website (which will be published soon in this blog section) on the thoracic diaphragm. But briefly, the diaphragm is our primary muscle used for breathing. It is a muscle that when not working well recruits help from all the upper back, chest, and neck muscles that are so frequently areas of complaint for our patients, and when overused in breathing, lead to the prototypical shoulders in the ears posture so commonly seen. Diaphragmatic breathing is something we are born doing naturally but un-learn later in life from slouched postures, abdominal inflammation and pressure imbalances, and stress. Diaphragmatic breathing exercises can be Googled or one will be posted on this site in the near future. Conceptually they are easy to do. Practically they take some practice, so be patient. Proper functioning of the diaphragm is related to normal muscle tone of the mid back, neck and shoulders, proper digestion, proper functioning of all abdominal organs, normal expansion of the chest and lungs, the relaxation of the nervous system, to mention just a few. I have said many times that if I were only allowed to treat one anatomical structure, regardless of the complaint, I would undoubtedly choose the diaphragm.
As the year goes on I will expand upon some of these thoughts, as well as add others, so please check back regularly. I challenge you (especially if you are a current patient of mine) to try to incorporate one of the above simple changes. I promise if you can pick something simple and do it until it becomes routine it will be of more benefit to you than any workout tape or fad diet you’ve resolved to try this year!
Carl.
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