Holiday Indulgence without Sacrificing your Fitness Gains
Go ahead and indulge this holiday season
Indulging is good for the soul; a single slice of pie can bring a measure of happiness that is hard to find elsewhere. But there is such a thing as diminishing returns on each consecutive slice of pie. And while overindulgence is symptomatic of the holiday season, it is always worth keeping things in perspective when it comes to your physical fitness. At Holmes Chiropractic, we are in the business of body balance- and the holiday season is a consistent challenge for the fitness of our patients. Here are some friendly holiday reminders from your chiropractor.
Carrying Your Whole Life on Your Back: How Backpacks Affect Spinal Health
Your bag is your life- make sure it isn’t killing you
Messenger bags, gym bags, huge purses, briefcases; a single unit for carrying your personal belongings is a vital component of keeping your life together throughout the day. However, we rarely put any thought into the type of bag we use or how we carry it until it is causing us back pain. When it comes to selecting a pack, functionality should be the primary consideration, not fashion. To prevent problems from developing, take a few seconds to analyze your posture when you are carrying your bag.
- Do you lean forward or slump to one side to support the weight?
- Do you struggle to get your pack on or off
- Does your back pain increaes while carrying your bag?
These simple questions are even more important for our children, who carry a bag back and forth to school every day. The developing spine is susceptible to the added pressure of a heavy backpack. The extra compression of the pack can cause changes in the curvature of a developing spine and lead to pain in the back, neck and shoulder.
Saying Goodbye to Sciatica in Houston
Why wait so long to do something about your sciatica?
The most effective way to overcome sciatica is to do something about it the second you suspect you are suffering. The earlier we catch and detect the problem, the easier it is for our action plan to address and solve the underlying problem. Letting sciatica symptoms linger, hoping they will get better by themselves, can lead you down a road of further complications as the problems compound.
How Chiropractic Helps you Deal with Sarcopenia
Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle mass
It is a natural part of aging that also makes you aware of aging. At some point in our 30s, we begin to lose a percentage of our muscle mass each consecutive year. If you are a relatively active person, the loss may be low; if you are a generally inactive person, the loss can be as much as 3-5% This is alarming because it really starts to accelerate once you reach the age of 65.
Physical Activity Makes You Feel Better
Lack of physical activity is one of the foremost problems in American society today
While we are at a standpoint of knowing that exercise is beneficial, the medical community is still at a loss as to explain how exercise causes the observed benefits. And while thousands of theories abound, we still have no definitive, commonly-accepted scientific explanation for the way exercise affects our biology to create positive changes. However, you don’t have to bury yourself in theory to realize that exercise does create positive changes:
- Exercise benefits every single part of the body
- Exercise makes you more able.
- Exercise improves mood
- Exercise increases energy levels
- Exercise prevents the onset of serious injury and illness
Exercise is the single best thing you can start doing for your body. When was the last time you hit the 150-minute-per-week goal of exercising?
How to: Stop Avoiding Exercise
It might hurt getting started
But the upside is too large to ignore. If you are feeling stiff and sore now, imagine how the problems will compound over the next 5, 10 and 20 years, right now is the best vantage point you are going to have. Hence, step one of your new exercise plan: being honest with yourself. Whatever state your back is in now, it’s not going to get any better unless you take action today.
Step two is laying down the incentive:
- Back pain makes your life harder in the here and now
- A weak back leaves you vulnerable to injury in the future
- Back pain contributes to missed work time and disability
- Back pain is expensive
Ergonomic Relaxation: Reading in Bed Without Hurting Your Back
What is more relaxing than reading in bed?
Likewise watching Netflix or television from bed is many a person’s way to wind down. But it’s no secret that relaxing in bed can cause its fair share of trauma to the spine. While we would never sit here and deny you the pleasure of recreating in bed, it is prudent to set your spine up so that it incurs the least possible damage. For the purpose of this blog, we will use reading in bed as the model activity, but the same principles can be applied to using a laptop or cell phone in bed.
Unlearning the Habits that are Hurting your Spine
When it comes to spinal health habits, everyone has room for improvement
The most ubiquitous spinal habits which cause harm include:
- Poor diet
- Poor posture
- Poor lifting technique
- Smoking
- Lack of exercise
- Overuse of technology
Many of these malefactors go hand-in-hand; for example, lack of exercise and poor diet leads to weight gain which makes good posture more difficult; overuse of technology contributes to lack of exercise and poor posture. But all of these factors lead down the same road, the one that points toward back pain. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can start exercising control over the factors that matter for keeping our spines healthy.
Using Your Pillows Strategically to Find Better Sleep
Sleeping begins with comfort
Who can really fall sleep with their knees touching and their legs stuck together? Who is ready to dream with their head sinking lower into a lumpy pillow? The first ingredient of any successful sleep strategy is comfort- comfort leads to calm, and calm leads to relaxation. This is an important transition: calmness is a working state of perfect harmony between your mental, physical and emotional states; relaxation, on the other hand, allows your body to reduce its expenditure of energy and focus on getting to sleep.One of the best ways you can get comfortable tonight is by using your pillows to better effect. Paying attention to your pillow(s) can make a big difference when it comes to falling and staying asleep; strategically positioning pillows can help you support healthy sleeping posture, promote better circulation, and prevent back pain.
A Stronger Core for a Longer Life
Why bother strengthening the core muscles?
The reasons are bottomless, but let’s boil it down to the most important few:
- Injury prevention: core stability, influenced by the deeper-lying postural muscles, is the foundation upon which all other components of health should be built. A solid, stable core will keep your body and spine resilient to injury from all movements.
- Spinal longevity: your core muscles are the most important asset you have in preventing back pain and combating spinal degeneration.
- Protecting your nervous system: your spinal cord is your central command center, the highway upon which the nervous system communicates. A strong core mitigates the compression that puts your spine under pressure and disrupts the nervous system.
- Look better: an upright posture projects confidence and confidence is sexy.