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#135 POSTURE vs FUNCTION

7/10/2014

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          Posture.  Did your mom always tell you to stand straight, don’t slouch?  I hear stories back in the day of nuns at catholic schools hitting your knuckles with a ruler if you were found slouching.  That may be a bit severe but according to the Wall Street Journal(WSJ) your mother and those nuns were not far off the mark.  The article is titled “How Bad Sitting Posture at Work Leads to Bad Standing Posture All the Time.”  In it the author states “There’s growing evidence for the health benefits of good posture, from reducing back and joint pain to boosting mood.”  Mom, the nuns, and the WSJ have it close, but not quite right.  The entire article focuses on posture, or how you look.  While how you look may be important, what is most important is how you work.  Let me explain.

            When it comes to discussing your body there are two major ways of having this discussion.  First we can talk about structure, or what things look like, the anatomy.  In the case of your spine; the bones, cartilage, ligaments, muscles, tendons, discs, nerves, blood vessels, etc.  Second, and much more important for this discussion, is function, or how things work.  In my 300,000 patient visits I have seen many young people with spines that look great, but work lousy.  Conversely, I have seen many older patients whose spines looked horrible, but we were able to get working pretty good.  And most of my patients have heard me at some point talk about my own lumbar spine, which has 3 herniated discs but works really well, thanks to my chiropractors.  But when I was disabled those 3 times, it didn’t work so well then.  And keep in mind that the first time I was disabled from my spine was at the age of 10, at which time it probably looked pretty good.  Structure versus function. 

            The WSJ goes on to review various methods to improve posture, how you look, and to reinforce the importance of doing so.  Keep in mind that the intended audience for this article is people working in cubicles needing practical advice on how to feel better.  “Think about posture while walking, getting up out of a chair or using a cellphone or tablet.”  “Roll your chest up and forward.  Sit tall through the top of the head.”  “Stretch the pectoral muscles and strengthen the trapezius muscles in the upper back, which hold the shoulder blades back.”  Things like that.  They quote orthopedic surgeon Allston Stubbs, “We see the spine and overall skeletal structure being critical to a patient’s functionality and their satisfaction with their life and health care.” 

            Structure is important, no doubt, but it is how your structure works, function, that determines the health of your spine, which directly relates to your overall health, your mobility, your mood, and your satisfaction.  So while I agree that we should all be working on improving our posture, more important still is improving how our spine functions, how it works.  You cannot measure how your spine works by how straight you stand, or how ergonomic your work station is.  We have to use the same tools I used to measure your spine in the first place; your range of motion and your Total Subluxation Value (TSV) which measures inflammation and nerve stress.  These two measurements, when combined with any known complicating factors tell us how your spine works, and, therefore, are the best tools to measure your spine as it begins to work better while using the Lindwall 3-Tool Method: 1) Adjustments, 2) Disc Pump Exercises, 3) Deep Tissue Therapy.    

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    Dr. Rick

    After writing an article per week for a year, I just kept going.  These are most of my collection.  They are written with my existing patients in mind, so some stuff may seem odd or unusual, but would make perfect sense to those who know chiropractic and who know me.  Enjoy and share!  For my personal blog visit: 

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     Hello, My name is Andrew and I am a happy, healthy one year old.  But I wasn’t so happy or healthy when I first met Dr. Rick a few months ago.  I had been having problems with my ears for four months, I couldn’t sleep at night and I was miserable.  We’d been to the doctor lots of times but nothing was helping.  In fact, all the medicines the doctor had tried seemed to make me worse instead of better!  Both the regular doctor and the Ear-Nose and Throat doctor said that if the antibiotics didn’t work, then they’d just have to put tubes in.  Now my Mom and dad weren’t about to let them do surgery on me, especially since they had been reading and learned that tubes can cause more problems than they solve.  My mom and dad did a lot of praying.  Then my mom heard that sometimes babies who have a traumatic birth like mine have ear trouble.  You see when I was born they used a vacuum extractor and forceps to pull me out.  I guess all that yanking on my head, hurt my neck.  She also heard that chiropractic care can be the answer.  Now she was skeptical because she couldn’t imagine a chiropractor helping ear infections!?!  But at that point she was willing to try anything!!  Happily, a few weeks of adjustments and my ears were all cleared up.  In addition, I no longer had a stiff neck or shoulders and my whole personality was happier.  I have to tell all babies who have ear troubles, don’t let them give you tubes until you at least try chiropractic care first.  After all, it can’t hurt and if you’re like me, you could be perfectly well with no drugs and no surgery.  In my family, we thank God for Dr. Rick, because I feel better, my mom and dad are happier and sometimes, I even sleep through the night.