The recent article by NPR, Flattening The 'Mummy Tummy' With 1 Exercise, 10 Minutes A Day, starts off with a sensational, grabbing title. A click bait title that we wouldn't expect from a trusted news source like NPR. But it certainly got your attention, especially if you recently had a baby and now are feeling a little weak around the core. And since this is NPR this should be safer than something random you pull off the internet, right? Well, yes and no.
With addiction, deep fractures are drawn between our mind and our body, our needs and our habits, our emotions and our actions, and in the relationships that we have to ourselves and to others. Yoga, on the other hand, is connection.
It's a great time to pay attention to how stress is affecting you. Common stressors include work, family, money, children, illness and more. Stress can impact both your body and your mind causing symptoms such as muscular pain, irritability, fatigue, and headaches. Here's how we can help...
According to CDC data, 32% of women delivering a baby did so via C-section in 2015. Some of these are elective (planned) & others unplanned or emergent. If you are one of the 32%, what can you expect following a C-section?
Do you feel like your insurance coverage gets more confusing each year? That’s probably because it does! It seems like each year there is another rule or exception to your plan but the cost keeps going up. Here at Jade, we are often asked, “how much will this cost?” The answer isn’t as easy at it seems.
Hello and welcome to the first in a series of posts designed to assist dancers in maximizing performance while achieving and maintaining wellness. This first installment is about preventing injury. Due to the high impact of an injury to a dancer’s life, a holistic approach to a preventative program is important.
We all experience aches and pains throughout our lifetimes. Often pain begins as a result of an injury or clear event. Occasionally it is difficult to pinpoint the cause of pain. Regardless of the scenario, it is common to try to ignore your pain and carry on with your life as usual. So, how do you know when you should take the next step and seek help from your physical therapist?
As a physical therapist, what I take away from the NPR article by Richard Harris, 6,000-Year-Old Knee Joints Suggest Osteoarthritis Isn't Just Wear And Tear, is the importance of life-long physical activity. Healthy habits start in our youth and sets us up for healthier aging.
Running can be such a great release from daily stress not to mention a fantastic form of exercise. Running, however, can also cause tight muscles and injuries. Here are 7 poses for you to work your way through post race or simply after your morning jog to keep your body in tip top shape for future runs and races.
A recent review by the British Journal of Sports Medicine estimates that injury rates to the lower body in endurance runners can be as high as 79%. A frequent component of treatment in returning to running involves instruction in a dynamic warm up.
Headaches are a pain, literally and figuratively. They sneak up on you, slowly making you crankier and crankier, ruining your day. Headaches are attributed to many different causes; often we say “I’m stressed” or “I need to drink more water” or even “I didn’t get enough sleep.” But did you know many headaches can be tied to our posture and muscle tightness in our neck?
Modern technology has created a lot of flexibility in workspaces. The traditional 9-5 is morphing, with more people working remotely from wherever they are. That might mean creating space at home or having a moveable setup for use in a coffee shop or conference room. Being fluid with workspaces helps people escape the problem of being stuck in a cubicle all day, but it has downsides too.
It means your “office” may be anything from a couch to an Uber. Plus, the line between work and home is becoming blurry. When we used to be able to power down at the end of the day, we now have 24-hour access to emails and texts, and often use phones and tablets for our entertainment well into the night.
If you answer is “not great,” you aren’t alone. An increase in driving, computer work, and phone use is upping the daily physical stress for a lot of us. As an acupuncturist, I see patients with a variety of issues, but one part of the body that continually frustrates people is their tight neck. Our physical therapists see this a lot too. We even joke that “text neck” is becoming an epidemic.
Symptoms mentioned include tension and discomfort, pops and cracks in the spine, head-forward posture, knots, and muscle spasms. The neck is a common storage place for mental and emotional strain: Some of us literally wear our stress with our shoulders creeping closer to our ears as energy demands mount.
Step one is to be mindful about how we hold ourselves. Step two is integrating positive habits to minimize the damage.
In terms of acupuncture, any kind of pain is considered stagnation, or blockage, in the free flow of blood and energy through the body. Solving pain conditions requires unblocking “stuck” regions of the body and keeping it unblocked. To do that, we insert small needles into the affected area, unblocking the channels and promoting relaxation of muscles, improved blood flow, and reduction of inflammation, all easing the pain.
Do not let cabin fever get the best of you. If you do not ski, snow shoe or skate, the snowy month of March in Maine is an important time to think about indoor exercise and conditioning. There are ways to keep in shape at home without a great deal of equipment or exercise expertise. If you are not already doing so, put the spring back in your step with the following exercises:
Warm up cardio: Walk or jog up and down stairs at home or work.
Mat/floor exercise:
Leg strengtheners:
Arm strength:
Before starting, please consider which exercises are most appropriate for you and do not perform any exercise that causes pain.
How to Avoid Aches and Pains
First, while snow shoveling conjures images of an aching back, for many so does gardening. Here are some tips to avoid the aching back, neck and shoulders:
Secondly, food preparation can cause some postural and repetitive strain. Here are a few tips for the kitchen:
Eat well!
Nancy
Tips to Prevent Injury
Many of us have lifestyles that do not easily support physical exercise. Yet we also find ourselves loving exercise, sports and fitness activities on the weekends. Especially during this time of year when outdoor exercise
opportunities are limitless! As a result, it is easy to end up with an injury and side-lined from the activities that help us stay fit and reduce stress.
Here are some thoughts on injury prevention:
1. Stretch. NOT BEFORE your event, but AFTER a warm up to promote soft tissue extensibility and reduce muscle and tendon injuries.
2. Training. Start training and exercise at 50-75% of what you think you can do. Slowly build up to that 100% to stay injury-free throughout the season.
3. Ice. At the first signs of pain, wear and tear, ice the affected
area.
4. Training. Yes, again! Try cross training to avoid repetitive strain injuries. Variety will promote better overall fitness while also helping you to avoid burn-out.
Finally, don't let injuries linger. If it is not consistently getting
better over the course of a week, get treatment. You will recover more quickly to get back to exercise.
Have a great summer !!
- Nancy Charlesbois PT, MT
