Chiropractor - Peabody
215 Newbury Street
Peabody, MA 01960
978-535-6155
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Posts for: December, 2011
The Truth About Exercise
It is okay to hate exercising. It can be tedious and boring and it takes up precious time. When we recommend and educate our patients with good exercises we know that exercise is about as much fun as brushing your teeth. And like brushing your teeth you won't drop dead if you don't exercise each day.
But over the long run it pays off in two big ways: Stability and endurance.
Day to day activity for most people involves certain muscles that get strong from working, taking care of the kids, house work, yard work and sports. Unfortunately these daily activities almost always leave out certain other muscles. the 'stabilization muscles'. So when we give exercises to you we give stabilization exercising, because that helps maintain muscle balance. We give you exercises to strengthen the unused muscles; the muscles that don't get used as much in all your daily work.
Many people have hard jobs, or their work keeps them busy and on their feet for hours each day. When they get home they feel tired and as if they have had a a long tiring 'work out' from their day. And they have. But even these people have not exercised all their important muscles. And this is also true of people who get home from work and then get involved in hobbies, sports, house work and yard work. The stabilization muscles still don't get involved. So we give you our exercises to strengthen your stabilization muscles, because they are the 'under-dogs' that just don't get used as much as our day-to-day muscle groups. And one of the best things about strengthening your stabilization muscles is that they not only help you have better posture and recover from your injury more quickly they also make it much harder to get re-injured.
Will your job, your sports, your housework, your yard work, or your hobbies ever be enough to let you have muscle balance and stabilization without doing these exercises? No. But if you think you are the exception can find out quickly enough. Just try our stabilization exercises, and if they all feel easy; you are one of the very few people whose job, sports, housework, yard work, or hobbies have resulted in great muscle balance, good posture and stable ability to avoid injury.
The second type of exercise we recommend is also important for our long term health, endurance exercise. Or aerobic exercises. We don't mean aerobic as you may think of it as wearing leotards or taking a special class. All we mean by aerobics is that you are doing something that makes you huff and puff and have to breathe through your mouth. If your 'aerobic' activity does not force you to breathe through your mouth it is not an aerobic exercise.
Aerobic exercise is anything that forces you to breathe through your mouth. It could be dancing, bicycling, running, or fast walking. And for best results you must do it for 30 minutes at least 4 times each week. Aerobic exercise helps you in so many ways including your heart and your ability to stay active as you get older. Here is why:
Your heart and your lungs have a measurement called 'maximum capacity'. This means what is the hardest activity that you can do and for how long. As we get older it is common for all of us to get weaker muscles including a weaker heart muscle. But aerobic exercises will slow this down and keep our heart and lungs stronger longer. If all you do each day is walk eventually that will be your 'maximum effort' and that will be your maximum capacity. And that means that just walking around will make you huff and puff and feel out of breath. How many older people have you seen breathing hard just to walk from one room to the next, or to walk up a flight of stairs.
Regular aerobic exercise will insure that you can walk room to room or climb the cellar stairs without huffing and puffing. You will stay be able to stay active and younger longer. Nothing else will do that.
The Gift by Dr Ellen Blomerth
If someone gave you a gift that took them 9 months to make, that they put alot of effort into (their heart and soul), and then even after they gave you the wonderful gift, they or someone else spent even more years helping you use that gift... Do you think you might appreciate it? Would this gift be precious to you? Would you want to take care of it so it would last a long time?
It gets even better. This gift comes with all sorts of special features, each one similar to other gifts like it, but unique to the person the gift was made for. It has all sorts of cool automatic functions that you don't have to program or reset all the time. These features will even run, and give you all their benefits with you knowing how they do what they do. This really cool gift will help you appreciate music, and art, and sports if you want, companionship and love if you so choose, good food and the whole range of human experiences. It even runs on things found in the environment so you don't have to keep buying batteries for it. Sound interesting? Do you think you might enjoy one of these gifts? Well you do own one. We all do! I hope you are enjoying it, and also appreciating it so that gift that someone worked so hard to give you will last you a long time and give you years of pleasurable use.
Of course I am talking about our bodies. In the day to day course of taking care of my patients and teaching them about the proper care and feeding of their own unique special gift that is their body, I often find myself trying to find ways to communicate the value of what they own. Because everybody we know owns a body, we tend to take them for granted. Often we don't really appreciate what our bodies can do until after we lose some function for a time, then get it back. In my business, where I take care of a lot of backs, most patients agree that other people do not understand how disabling a back injury can be until they have suffered from one themselves. And all people with bad backs are very happy when they get back their full function. The same can pretty much be said or any body part or function.
I sometimes use this gift analogy to explain another good reason why people need to make taking care of their body one of their priorities. Telling them how bad they could feel or what they won't be able to do if they don't eat right or do their exercises only works for those people who have experienced bad pains and don't want to go through that again. Motivating people to exercise by explaining how it will make them look better, or more sexy only works for those who care if they look better or sexy.
However, there are lots of people who make pretty much everyone and everything else more important that taking care of themselves. Their health is sinking fast while they feel trapped in a world where they can't take the first step towards better health because the dog must be taken to the groomer and their child's 20 different projects must be overseen in infinite detail, taking every minute of their frazzled day.
Maintaining good health to care of this wonderful gift that we were given, is often just a case of balance.
- Balancing the demands on our time (is volunteering for one more project just because someone asked you to, really the best use of your time)
- Balancing when and ow much and what you eat ( we are all different as to what is best for our own personal chemistry)
- Balancing adequate and restorative rest with healthy activity, work and recreation. And balancing the needs of our body, (making sure it will give us long term, pain free service with minimum stops for repairs) with meeting the needs of our families and work.
Learning how to balance goes a long way towards appreciating the gifts we have been given and then taking care of ourselves, for longer, healthier lives.
If you have children, you know how much effort goes into raising a child. Wouldn't you like to think that your children will one day appreciate that effort and take care of themselves? Well the main way children learn about such things is by observing what their parents do. So if you put everything and everyone else first and don't take even a little time to care for yourself, that how would children learn that it is important to care of themselves when they get older?
How does chiropractic fit into all of this? Discovering and teaching you the unique needs of you body so that you can properly care of it is just one of the wellness services that we offer. We try to help when you hurt, or when something isn't working right. And we encourage you in your efforts to find that balance in all aspects of your life. Coaching and encouraging your efforts rather than judging. Supporting and working with you rather than dictating care. Teaching and explaining rather than confusing or ordering.
As you set out your goals and aspirations for the New Year, I hope that you find my gift analogy useful in thinking about how you might approach you life differently. And if you would like Blomerth Chiropractic to work as part of your health care team, just give us a call. We appreciate working with or current patients, enjoy welcoming back old friends to help with new or ongoing issues and look forward to meeting new people to help care of all those unique and wondrous gifts we were all given and are learning to appreciate.
The first step towards better health is to call for an appointment, call 978-535-6155 right now while you are thinking of it, and before you forget!
