TheGoodDoctor’s BodyBlog

Hi Guys, the good doctor here again putting down his latest blog

Today rather then talk about my own training (will talk about that later in the week), I want to talk about problems, both lifestyle and gym related, that i see in my office on a day to day basis.

There are three problems i see within my office every single day, these being, obesity related back pain, joint pain related to chronic inactivity and muscluar problems relating to chronic muscular weakness.

And all are preventable.

Yet, often i have encountered TREMENDOUS difficulty trying to educate my patients on the need to eat right, be physically active and improve strength.

Let me give you a scenario: Mr smith comes into my office, and he is massively obese. All of a sudden, as if overnight, his lower back, hips and knees (all weight bearing joints) are aching. X-rays reveal degenerative changes caused by years and years of chronic stuctural stress and inactivty. When i explain to Mr smith the need to reduce his body mass as it is causing this problem, the response i’d get was

"But this has never happened before"

And this used to cause me great difficulty, because when someone has been overweight for half of their natural life without pain, it is difficult to try to convince them otherwise that their weight had now become a problem.

What i typically do now is use this scenario: (a little overdone, but it gets the point across)

"Do you know someone who has suffered a heart attack?"

"Yes" (in this day and age, nearly everyone knows someone who has had a heart attack)

"Did they suffer from chest or heart pain before"

"No"

"But one day, their lifestyle caught up with them and they had a massive problem, right?

"Yeah, i guess so"

"So lets take your lower back now, you have provided 20 years of unwanted strucutral stress without noticable difficulty, now all of a sudden, it has become a big problem, this is due to your current weight and lifestyle, do you understand what i am saying?"

"Yes"

But people dont know. Truly, for some poor individuals ignorance is bliss. I had a patient present to my office this week over 100 pounds overweight insisting (and he was serious) that he was in good shape and going to live to 100!! The man could barely even STAND UP without breathing like Darth Vader!

And this is a worry because it happens all over the world. But at the same time, every single day i have inspiration to keep strong and active. I tell myself, well, i can end up like this guy out of shape, weak and in pain, or i can make a commitment to training and keeping active to keep strong and healthy for life. Trust me, in my position, I dont see how one could EVER allow themselves to be inactive!

 A lot of my patients are gym junkies, and then come to see me because they know that i practice what i preach. One of my rules of thumb is to never give a patient an exercise i am not doing or wouldn’t otherwise do myself. To me, that is just hyprocisy.

On the gym front, some of the most common injuries i see are:

i)Rotator cuff injuries

ii)Abdominal and core weakness

iii) Knee injuries

For core stability, I do a lot of core tracking exercices, simply for ease of execution. In short, there is far less that can go wrong with a bridging type exercise in my opinion then other available options. I dont recommend sit ups or crunches for my patients anymore, simply because even though i explained to them how to do it correctly, too many were doing them wrong and actually exacerbating existing lower back pain.

The other exercise i try to avoid is a lunge. Now there is nothing wrong with a lunge, its a great exercise when done with correct form, the problem is there is just too much potentially that can go wrong with them. 90% of lower body, weight training related injuries seen in my office are due to lunges, and i swear, perhaps 95% of people in my gym do them with incorrect form. Again, a great exercise but i try to steer people away from that one simply because its better to avoid potential problems. Besides, there are plenty of other exercises they can do

Well, gotta go, a boy has to eat (turkey sandwichs with tomato, lettuce, onion and fat free mayonaise………yum!) Stayed tuned for the next blog from your favorite chiropractor, the good doctor.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 8:06 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.