For all the things you look forward to doing in the New Year, here are the links for all Fitness Fixer posts so far.
The system does not yet keep a sidebar or other list of all post labels, so I made one for you as a holiday gift. You can bookmark or permalink this post to use in the future. Let me know links that need fixing, and missed labels. Any posts I add with these labels should automatically become included.
Look for labels with your New Year wishes. Click the label and all posts with that label will come up at once. Print and take with you
There will be new posts on new topics too, with new labels. A great New Year.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - fun challenge for body stabilization, strength, speed, and balance with a friend.
Stand facing a partner
Stand on one foot, pressing the other against your partner's raised foot.
Push, pull, surprise your partner with unexpected movement change, all while remaining balanced. Change to push toe to toe and side to side.
Reader Bernie supplied this photo. His inspiring story will be posted in January. He registered for my back pain workshop two years ago, then skipped it to do surgery instead. His doctors told him that since his pain was from structural damage, that no exercise or repositioning would help. Bernie took my class two years later. Although much of the pain was from structural problems, several of which he didn't have until the surgery, we successfully fixed the worsened structural situation.
Readers have been asking about overeating, drinking, not having time to exercise, and overstressing on the holidays. Is it unavoidable? How can you resist things that are bad for you. Of all times to mark an occasion that is meaningful to you, that marks endings and new beginnings of a new year, celebrates thanks, a rite of passage, a national day of remembrance, a day marking something holy to your highest beliefs, the reflection of a new things coming, that day is the time to be free of baggage. Of all times to do simple, healthful actions for yourself and others, this is the time.
After the fuss of the holidays, then what? After the smiles and gifts, where are happy times? Where are your resolutions? The rest of the year is also the time to check in on loved ones, sweep the floors of a shut-in, and do healthy actions. At a funeral, everyone is there helping. The next week, the survivors sit alone. On Western Christmas, cars stop at the steam grates to give mittens and treats to the homeless huddled to keep warm. The rest of the year, cars pass without stopping.
On Christmas, most of the grates are empty as the city programs sweep up homeless for day-long programs. Each year before and after Christmas I cook thick vegetable soup, bake fresh loaves, pack up, put on my Santa hat, and head out into the weather to the grates.
We know many of the guys. I make food for them the rest of the year, or we go in the convenience stores to pick up things for them when the store won't let them in. My dinners cast steam curls upward. They chuckled, "Heh heh it be Saaaan--tah." We squatted down with them and unpacked dinner. I gave out toothbrushes as presents. They smiled angelic toothless smiles. They asked me the weather report, which called for storms, but I told them it didn't smell like storms. The air smells different somehow when it is going to storm.
The photo is Paul who worked as a Western-style Santa when we helped at a center. Little girls ran to sit on his lap. So did big girls. Many men too. At almost 7 feet tall, Paul has enough knee-space for everyone.
Christmas is not over. Eastern Orthodox Christmas will be in almost 2 weeks, since the Julian calendar date of 25 December is January 7. Armenian Orthodox celebrate Jan 6. On lunar calendars, there are the Festivals of Light of Devali and hanukah. The winter solstice, Yalda, Saturnalia, Karachun, Kwanzaa, Yule, "Mother Night or "Modresnach," and Shinto Tohji-taisai are also celebrated around this time. There are festivals of appreciation, such as the Purnima. Islamic New Year of Muharram will be January 10th.
Be happy, be healthy. Is it not hard. It is not expensive. It is not stressful. Breathe. Stretch. Happy Holidays.
Like a Bonsai Tree Your terrible posture at My dinner table
The photo above shows an injurious positioning called "a forward head." A forward head position presses cervical (neck) discs outward, causes upper back and neck pain often called "upper crossed" syndrome, and can press the nerve going down the arm, leading to arm pain and hand/finger numbness. Jutting the chin upward with the neck forward can, over time, create a spondylolisthesis (vertebral shifting). Raising the arm with the shoulder rounded and the neck forward adds to shoulder and rotator cuff injury.
Check yourself for a forward head position when eating and drinking (and on the phone):
Corner of the jaw is far forward of the shoulder
Neck tilts forward
Jaw juts forward
Neck pinches backward, with high compressive force
Shoulder rounded
Don't round your back or jut your chin forward. Instead, keep chin in when you eat and drink and talk on the phone. To look upward, get the upward motion more from straightening your upper back, and not from one joint in your neck. The neck is not a hinge joint.
Don't rely on, "Keep ear over shoulder" thinking that is straight posture. You can see in the photo that the ear is over the shoulder, but the neck is craned badly.
Use healthful positioning for built-in upper body muscle exercise and easy pain prevention. Check yourself sideways in a mirror. Watch other people eating and drinking for an easy reminder. Happy Holidays.
Lie over a bed or bench with hips right at the edge and legs dangling
Feel wonderful stretch in front hip muscles
If your lower back hurts, you are probably arching your lower back, as in the left photo, Click and read this post - Innovation in Abdominal Muscles. Correct it by tucking your hip (by flattening lower back) toward the bed - right photo.
Reader Bernie, age 80, supplied these photos. He had registered for my Fix Your Own Back Pain workshop but skipped it to do surgery instead. He returned to me in worse pain two years later. His story how we successfully fix the worsened situation is posted in:
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links and replies in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Thank you Shiny Happy Person for hosting Grand Rounds 4.13. She selected the best medical posts for this week and described them all entirely in haiku.
The solstice is here. The word solstice means "sun (sol) standing still."
Since the September equinox, the earth and sun have moved so that the sun now appears at the southernmost point it will reach. The northern hemisphere has the chilly shortest day of the year, and the southern hemisphere sees the longest day of summer. There it "stands still" before appearing to turn northward again.
Shinto and others celebrate the highest deity, the Goddess who is the Sun. Cultures around the world have traditionally marked this day with observances. It seems a good time to start a nice family activity of learning to read a map and the sky to find your way.
We live in the city and frequently see obvious out-of-towners who need directions. I enjoy stopping to tell them about the sights, sometimes guiding them where they need to go, or taking them to see fun things they didn't know about. One time, the two adults and young children didn't have the usual baffled look, just a map, a compass, and fingers pointing at the map and the air. When I asked them where I could help them get to, they replied they were locals working on spatial direction skills and map reading with their children.
They were teaching the children how to locate where they were and how to go to locations on the map. Then they walked to each place together, enjoying the sights and a day outside, developing their minds and bodies together. Intelligent, happy, active family interaction. That is fitness as a lifestyle.
All children (and adults) should know where they live and how to get back in case of emergency. They should know where help is, and where key people and places are.
Some locations to find using this key mind and body skill with your kids:
Free library
Police station
Firehouse
Local favorite museums
Fruit market
Shelters and project locations for volunteer work
Finding their own home during any trip, near or far.
Readers, add your comments on beneficial places people should know how to get to, and family ideas. Many Fitness Fixer readers are pilots, navigators, military, search and rescue personnel, law enforcement, and the combination of all of those - parents. Let us know healthy ideas to find our way.
Studies first started to report the benefit of exercise to reduce incidence of colds when looking at recreational exercisers, who reported fewer colds once they began regular running. Later research on exercise, intensity, and the number of colds, found that people who exercised moderate on most days averaged one cold, while the less active group reported over four colds in the year. Related work shows that being a regular exerciser is also associated with quicker recovery from colds.
Moderate exercise also enhances immune function during the exercise and for a few hours following it. Specific research into mechanisms has found that moderate exercise speeds various immune-function cells through the body, and increases levels of the type of white blood cell called leukocytes that work to fight infection.
A 2006 randomized clinical trial found that "postmenopausal women who exercised regularly for a year had about half the risk of colds compared to those who did not work out routinely." The women in the exercise group also reduced body weight, body fat, and intra-abdominal fat from increasing their exercise level.
Too much intense exercise may lower immune function and predispose to some infectious illness shortly after the time of the exercise. The decrease seems to be temporary, similar to the increase seen around the time of moderate exercise. There is some concern that continual, intense exercise lowers immune function for longer periods. An example often offered for this is that during the Winter and Summer Olympic Games, clinicians report that "upper respiratory infections abound" and that "the most irksome troubles with athletes are infections." The situation may be more that high numbers of young people are concentrated in close quarters. Their high general health may mean that they are unlikely have other health disorders during the short period of the Games.
It is more likely that poor nutrition and insufficient rest, added to harsh, ongoing, strenuous work or exercise, decreases immune function, not just strenuous exercise alone.
Although cold and flu germs are reported to live better in the cool dry weather of fall and winter, if you are cold, caught in the rain or snow, or out in a draft, that does not make you more likely to fall prey to them. Immunology is not my field so I can only repeat what I've read. My understanding is that these germs are all around us most of the time. They are on surfaces all over our home, and workplace. Your immune system keeps them out or eats them if they try to invade (pictured to my level of understanding at right). They don't cause problems unless their number is too high and your immune system cannot deter them. I call germs the jerks of the world - they are always there and are harmless unless conditions let them under your skin with your defenses down.
Much attention is given to disinfecting yoga mats. Give attention to cleaning up your own strength against disease:
We need to start a new trend that Health is Contagious - Make Health Catching! Stand up and stretch. Do good deeds. Go now.
--- For more, click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute. Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
Photo of cold microbe toy by dantc Photo of AntiViral cat by surekat
Fast Fitness - Stabilization During Speed and Directional Change
Friday, December 14, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - a fun, real-body skill to improve stabilizing your spine, knee, ankle, and foot (and hopefully everywhere else with good positioning) while having fun. Have a pillow fight standing on one foot:
When one partner has to touch down, change feet.
When the other loses balance, game over.
Swing fully without letting your lower back arch on the swing. Keep neutral spine.
No score, just the big desire to practice again and improve functional balance, stabilization, and have fun from movement.
To practice this solo, swing a pillow on your own. Use a progressively heavy object, such as a ball on a rope, dumbbell, kettlebell, and any household item. Breathe. Have fun.
Thank you Dr. GC George for compiling this week's Grand Rounds 4.12 at his medical blog Odysseys of George, adding his own beautiful underwater photos.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a post on a medical or health blog that collects the host's selections of the best medical posts of the week. Thank you Dr. George for including my post Fix Neck, Play Hockey, Use Brain, Fun Life, and saying, "If all this reading has caused you to develop neck pain, Jolie Bookspan has some tips to fix the pain."
In Monday's post on Swimming and Pulmonary Edema Part I, Katharine, an Ironman Triathlete, told of having pulmonary edema of swimming twice this year and asked if warm up or fluids were involved. US Open Water Swimming also interviewed me about pulmonary edema. Here are some things they asked.
1. What is pulmonary edema and why should swimmers know or be concerned about it?
Edema means too much fluid accumulation. Fluid suddenly fills the lungs. The left side of the heart is not pumping properly. It can cause you to have to stop a race. It can sometimes cause serious illness and death.
2. Is it more likely to occur in cold water?
It seems to be more likely in cold water. It has occurred in surface swimmers and scuba divers in both cold and warm water. Cold is only one of the several proposed causes.
Causes or contributors seem to be things that increase cardiac preload and afterload, including immersion in water, cold water, heavy exercise, negative pressure breathing (like breathing with a snorkel, and swimming with the chest below the surface and even the slight elevation of the head to breathe in), and drinking too much water or other fluids before swimming. Don't drink lots of water before swimming.
3. What are the signs and symptoms?
Unusually shortness of breath (not just fatigue) and coughing bloody froth. No chest pain.
With a stethoscope you can hear rales, an abnormal rattling breathing sound. Chest x-rays show the classic pattern of pulmonary edema. When blood oxygen in the arteries is checked, arterial O2 may be lowered.
4. Do wet suits provide any measure of protection against PE?
Difficult to say since it has occurred in people with and without wet suits. I haven't seen charts where the numbers of each predisposing possibility, like protective garments and temperature, were compared.
5. Can medical personnel easily detect PE?
Pulmonary edema is not subtle. The person is usually gasping and spitting pink froth, and asking for help with a worried look.
A swimmer who develops shortness of breath and cough in a race may have something else like exercise induced asthma.
6. What is the first aid if PE is suspected?
Get them out of the water. Sit them up to elevate the head, if conscious. Give them 100% oxygen by mask, and get them to the emergency facility.
7. If PE is untreated and the athlete continues to the race/swim, what could happen?
Depends how serious. Symptoms can resolve on their own or they can get worse. I wish I knew the future for them, but it's like other injuries. There have been deaths. We wonder how many people who suddenly went under were not drowning but developed pulmonary edema. We have no way yet to tell. Drowning also produces pulmonary edema (after the fact). Repeat cases of pulmonary edema can occur in the same person.
Interestingly, the frothing pulmonary edema occurs in racehorses after hard races. They are blowing bloody nose froth all over, but veterinarians have reassured me that the horses are fine. Any readers who are veterinarians, please tell me more. If a person is frothing, get help.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
"I am an Ironman Triathlete and have recently experienced symptoms of swimming induced pulmonary edema on two occasions this year and am trying to find as much information about this condition as possible. I have a background in swimming and have not experience this phenomena until recently. In both instances, my breathing became labored and fluid built up in my lungs during the early stages of a competitive triathlon swim.
"The most recent instance of what I suspect was 'SIPE' (Swimming Induced Pulmonary Edema) was on July 22nd at Ironman USA in Lake Placid. After the swim portion of the event, I had to be taken to the hospital as I was unable to breathe and was coughing up a 'pink frothy foam.' I felt normal within 24 hours and have still been able to continue to train as normal –initial ECG and Echo tests of my heart are normal, as well as a lung scan and x-rays of my lungs, throat and sinuses.
"The problem has only occurred in 2 out of 4 triathlon’s I have been in this year – and both instances occurred at approx. the 750m mark of an open water swim.
"It doesn't seem to be a common ailment so I’m trying to gather as much information on SIPE as possible from anyone who has studied it. I'm primarily trying to find out how to prevent it from happening. I am fine in training in the same 'open' cold water as I race it, so why is it happening on race day... Perhaps not enough of a swim 'warm-up' and an immediate elevation in HR... that along with added fluids in the days leading up to a long distance event such as an Ironman."
Warming up does not seem to be related to developing pulmonary edema. Why pulmonary edema can happen with swimming, what fluids have to do with it, and what to do, follow on Wednesday - click Swimming and Pulmonary Edema Part II .
Fast Fitness - Upper Back, Shoulder, Triceps, Arm, Wrist, and Hand Stretch
Friday, December 07, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - nice stretch for hands, upper back, and everything in between.
Stand with your back about a foot from a solid surface
Reach upward and backward to place both hands on the wall, all fingers facing downward
Press, lifting upward, keeping the stretch in your chest and upper body.
Vary the stretch by straightening elbows more.
Do not pinch your spine backward like a soda straw at the lower back, which increases lordosis (causes hyperlordosis). Tuck hip to neutral to stop compressive pain in the lower back. Here is how.
Breathe. Smile. Feel good stretching your upper back out of forward-rounded posture.
This is the first part of a great reader story. Mike has been fixing many things. Pain started with a local radiating pain, then became much other pain. Mike looked for something to fix the first area, then ably used other techniques.
Mike writes,
"I'm sorry it's taken so long to write back. Along with teaching and family time I've been taking a graduate class and I've just finish my final project for the class. Now I have time. Here goes.
"Back in 1983 I developed a deep pain and spasms in my right buttock along with radiating pain down my leg. I had been running 40-90 miles per week as a high school and college cross-country/track/road runner. For the past 20+ years this pain has come and gone every week while lying down, walking, and mostly sitting, making it very difficult to work at a desk, sit at a class, and drive. I've assumed it was a type of sciatica and read and tried everything I could for relief.
"The only temporary relief I found was in cycling, which stopped the pain for up to 48 hrs after rides, so I ended up cycling for 20 years, including racing for a team for 2 years. All that cycling caused other problems including a slumped, impinged shoulder from a separated collarbone in a crash, tight hip flexors, allergies from all the car exhaust and desert riding, and too many close calls from SUVs with drivers calling, texting etc. in heavy traffic. I was eating far too many simple carbs for energy on these intense rides. I stopped cycling to improve my health, decrease my risks of collisions, and to save money on all that equipment.
"The pain and spasms in my rear and down my leg increased in frequency and duration. My shoulder was not improving despite a month of visits to a physical therapist. Through searching in the internet I came across Dr. Bookspan's Fitness Fixer and books in early 2007. The logical stretches and strengthening moves worked much better than anything I had tried before. One time during a long class my rear and leg were killing me, so I applied a stretch (I learned from one of the books) while sitting in the chair without anyone knowing. The pain went away for the rest of the class. (Since applying Dr. Bookspan's shoulder retraining) my shoulder rarely bothers me and I've gone months without any pain in my rear and down my leg.
"I've also been enjoying Jolie's books for the sections on nutrition, spirituality, mental focus and general health and exercise advice. Working on all the parts at once seems to help the individual parts even more. I'm now working on walking comfortably without orthotics (it's getting better) and figuring out why my left knee and right hip pop so much. I'm very fortunate that I'm without pain now though, thanks to Dr. Bookspan's advice.
"I've attached some photos of the (hip) moves and stretches that work for me. Thank you! Mike "
Just as I was uploading this post today, Mike wrote me:
"Just wanted to let you know that my wife had a lot of pain and tightness in her hip yesterday from squats without warming up enough and possibly poor technique. She was very uncomfortable in any position, even lying down. I showed her how to do the hip stretch that worked for me, from your book, and it IMMEDIATELY, stopped the pain and tightness and she still feels great the next day! Mike"
I asked Mike about his statement, "I stopped cycling to improve my health." His story will continue, I hope next week.
To prevent knee pain when rowing any craft or machine that uses foot bracing, foot wells, or other foot counter-force, do not push off the ball of the foot, pictured above.
Keep your heels down. Push off the whole foot, feeling the push-off through the heel. You will feel the more muscular strong push in the thigh and hip muscles, and the effort will shift off the knees. You will also get better stretch for the bottom of the foot, called the fascia.
Keep heels on the floor when doing leg press exercise and half squats for weight lifting and daily bending. Get more leg and hip muscle use and built-in Achilles stretch.
The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
