Health & Fitness
November 2019
The Newsletter About Achieving and Maintaining Optimal Well-Being
PATIENT + PT = A STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS
These newsletters travel out every month to over 5000 current or former patients. In each letter the basic message is, “How can we help you learn to help yourself with your body’s performance and comfort?” For many, comfort and performance become a growing concern as they get older or after an injury and the question becomes, “How do I avoid what looks like more difficult times ahead with pain, stiffness, weakness and reduced ability to handle my day and life?” Believe it or not, this is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself because it indicates you are thinking about the future. Many people barely think about tomorrow in terms of what it will bring versus looking long term at what life holds in the balance. Unfortunately the rude reality is that what life holds in the balance is often what we put there. By asking the “how do I avoid” question and having the willingness to look ahead to anticipate what is to come is indicative of a person who is quite responsible and proactive in their life. Many of us have learned some of the hard realities of missed opportunity when we live without putting attention into the future. Certainly we could see how this can be without good financial or insurance plans. Keeping your health can be one of those missed opportunities as well, but the truth is our health is one of those assets in life that is not often appreciated until we are not as healthy. Seeing your health as an asset is important because it invites the question we ask for all assets, “How do I protect it?” Howyou avoid something is by being able to look ahead and recognizewhere you are heading. It is important to see when it comes to our musculoskeletal health that what we ascribe to time or aging is often not the full picture of why we hurt.
Arthritis and age are often promoted as the sole reason for our pain and yes, they are two factors to consider. However, the full picture of why our performance and comfort degrade over time also has a great deal to do with how our muscle systemperforms in organizing our motion into efficient patterns of movement. Actions such as moving from sitting to standing, climbing stairs, going for a longer walk, or lifting and carrying objects require the coordinated interactions of muscles working as a team. Where does stress land whenmuscle performs inadequately? Right, on your joints! Poorly performing muscle is often the precursor to eventual joint changes and arthritis!! Realizing that muscle is changeable, that it can degrade when not properly challenged helps one see that the bigger target for recovering lost strength, motion and ability often relates to upgrading our musculoskeletal system to perform well. And the good news on this idea is muscle can improve, it can get stronger and through the right challenges providemore control to perform better. And so, people are not as stuck in their problem as they might have thought or as it is presented in the medical world. Where the rubber meets the road in life is how our bodies perform daily in our routine tasks. It can be a bit startling to realize we actually have over 600 muscles steering over 200 bones in our body. There is nothing about life, gravity, work and imbalanced postures and injuries that lend toward promoting the efficient steering of bones by muscle over time.
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