Reader Robert Davis sent a well-written summary in last Thursday's Healthy Aging Starts Now. Here he adds about our view of aging, and improving physical skills as years pass rather than letting them slip away from lack of use:
"I forgot to mention to that this stuff has helped my instrument playing as well! Sitting straight up and relaxed makes execution of difficult passages so much easier. I used to unconsciously tense up sometimes and it made it harder for no reason. Things just seem so much easier relaxed =P
"I think aging in America is a plague the way it is viewed. I dunno if I made a good point or not (Thursday's Part I) but it seems to me that aging has a warped sense of reality to it in our country. Easy example is I was watching a clip from a dancer (pop dancer) who was in her 40s. Someone made an off the wall comment - "Well she does really good for being 45." But what does her age have to do with it.
"I just realized lately that you see this "plague" of thought that seems to be culturally conditioned that says by a certain age we should be degraded and unable to "do" things. This is how people think and it seems this is how the medical fields think. All I can think of when I see this plague is people in other countries going up and down mountains in flip flops or bare feet at all ages. Activities that would really poop out an average American, they do with ease.
"I get frustrated that we as a nation have the mentality that we must decline when you have shown me this is not true. I used to believe it, but when you turn your head slightly and see it from a better angle, it is not true. It is our lifestyle and habits that degrade. Not our age:) Change the habits, like you say and say over and over again. Why can't people see this?
"Ok I am all worked up lol.. This is why I have considered trying a different field more like yours! I am still considering it."
Mr. Davis has been making great gains in his weight lifting and healthy life using my work after first writing last year to learn how to fix a back injury from lifting. He previously sent in photos practicing various retraining drills by propping his cell phone set on timer against a paper clip and other impromptu devices. I asked if he had update photos of his progress. He replied that, "the phone that had the camera had decided to test gravity and never came out of it :( "
With his can-do ways, I think he will be sending more of his success stories. Click the label 'readers inspiring story' for many readers' stories of using my work to fix injuries and get their life back.
--- 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.
Thank You LaikaSpoetnik Grand Rounds From The Netherlands
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Thank you Jacqueline for hosting Grand Rounds Vol. 6 No. 2 this week on the LaikaSpoetnik MedLibLog and including my article Fast Fitness - Stretch For Menstrual Cramps - a quick stretching technique to ease symptoms of menstrual and other uterine cramps. On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the week. Who Is Laika?
Jacqueline is an information specialist in the Netherlands. She chose the blog name "LaikaSpoetnik" as a pseudonym because she thought of starting her blog as "a kind of an pioneering experiment." Laika is a Russian word for someone who howls or barks. The first dog to orbit the earth was renamed Laika (originally Kudryavka- "Little one with curly hair" and other names). Laika, pictured at right, flew in Spoetnik II (Dutch spelling of 'Sputnik'). Laika died soon after launch, in 1957.
Laika was not the first astro-dog. Several flew previous suborbital missions for the Soviet Union. In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev gave one of the puppies of Soviet space dog Strelka ("arrow") to Caroline Kennedy, young daughter of then U.S. President John F. Kennedy. That doggie had a cold war romance with a Kennedy dog. More puppies.
A different Grand Rounds host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic. Jacqueline went to much extra work for this Grand Rounds. I thank her. Here is her photo of the results: Related:
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of Fitness Fixer 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.
--- 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.
Fast Fitness - Second Group Functional Training Exercise: Ankle Stability and Ability
Friday, September 25, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - the second of the promised series of Functional Fitness Training (call it FFT or Bookspan Basics until we create a better name) that you can teach your teams, squads, classes, students, kids, groups, battalions, etc.
Assemble your group in neat rows. Footwear is whatever used for their sport or activity. Stand in front facing forward. Everyone sees your feet and you see each participant's feet. Tell them this Functional Fitness Training exercise is a basic, needed many dozens of times every day, for their sport or activity, and for daily life - ankle stability when rising to toes, stepping down, landing from jumps, running, turning skills, and other motions requiring ankle stability:
Tell everyone to stand straight and lift heels to stand on the ball of the feet
Tell everyone to look down at their own feet. Weight should not shift outward/sideways over the small toes. While everyone holds tip-toe, make sure each participant straightens ankles, shifting weight back over the big and second toe. Prevent teetering and turning outward.
Have everyone stand flat again, then rise to toes again, this time properly without needing to adjust ankles. They should feel the difference - using leg and ankle muscles instead of letting body weight slide sideways, which bends ankles into classic sprain position - turned at the outside (inversion).
Repeat good toe-rising 10 times or any number that suits your group's need - more for groups needing higher training (or groups with poorer memory), faster for teams requiring this skill done quickly in actual use, and so on. Tell everyone they will need this for skill #3 - for stepping down and landing from jumps. This is scheduled for Fast Fitness Next week.
Watch them for good ankle stability practices throughout the team season. Reduce ankle injury from letting the ankle invert (turn sideways). Instead use muscles and conscious control to prevent inversion sprains and turns, and get leg, foot, and ankle exercise, from the many needed neutral-ankle stability needed for varies movements daily.
Each new Functional Training will show you how to teach your groups (or self) how to prevent common musculo-skeletal issues during the team season or operational theater.
Send in your ideas for a name for this program. Trainers, Drill Instructors, send in your stories of how you use them in your program.
Good body mechanics are a powerful performance enhancing aid.
--- 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.
Robert Davis, frequent Fitness Fixer success story contributor, wrote to me with observations that will encourage, educate, and help many -
"I am beginning to see an almost "plague" in our society. That plague is auto-assumption that age automatically will start to equal degradation of your body."
Mr. Davis, a young lifter, had first left a comment to a Fitness Fixer article last year asking about fixing his back injury from weight lifting. His success stories came in frequently from there, telling how he gained better health and ability than before his injury. In a recent update letter to me, he sent these insights:
" I have not mailed in a few months. However I did not want to forget what got me back to what I love. I have had no issues with my back for months now. It went from dreadful to move, to better then ever.
" It is all so simple once it becomes ingrained. At first it does seem to be a chore learning to (bend right with a lunge and) squat and all the other things to correct bad habits. However these things, with conscious repetition, become habits. No longer do I have to think about healthy movement!
" This has been beneficial not only for my back, but for all areas that were troublesome. The more I loosed up, bent correctly, and used movement correctly, the more minor problems just seem to fade away!
" I have a new mantra when I workout with weight. It is called "on the muscle" chant. Every exercise I perform I say this in my mind and concentrate all weight on the muscles (instead of making it easier by shifting weight to joints). If I feel it is too heavy and I am doing some joint crushing, I back off the weight. I do not lose anything backing off. I gain something. More strength to do the same "on the muscle". In sum, I have really really chosen healthy movement over getting in an extra few pounds with "joint/arch or whatever" assistance. It is not worth it. You will get it eventually "on the muscle!"
" One sad thing I am noticing though lately after going thru stuff myself is this. I am beginning to see an almost "plague" in our society. That plague is auto assumption that age automatically will start to equal degradation of your body. I grew up as a pre-teen/teen in the late 80s and into the 90s. I never remembered regarding people who were much older as limited. I think this phenomenon is a cultural condition based on no facts, and the massive influx of pharmaceuticals. I could be wrong but that is what I see.
" I am amazed at all the people I run across in the gym who are told to "not do this or that". I often think of my grandfather and the time period he grew up in. He was very active and working under cars and whatnot till a few months before he passed away. No one told him his age would hamper that.
" I could go on and on about this but I think particularly in America, we are in a self created plague where age is a bad thing and something to postpone. What little do people know is that healthy movement, awareness, and lifestyle help one get thru all this without having to stop what they love.
" Look at me. From a debilitating back injury to returning to what I love to do - "lift weights in the gym." I was skeptical I would have ever made it back when I got hurt. However I am kinda glad now I did get hurt as sometimes there is a gem inside what otherwise would seem problematic. That Gem was learning (from you) how to do what I love to do without worry of age or injury ever detouring me from that. I am in my mid 30s now and plan to stay on top of myself with your methods for as long as I have a passion for this(and I feel that is a very long time). After all I see the body builders in the 70s and am truly inspired to keep going.
" Thank you! I also wanted to just check in and give a little insight of what I was doing and my thoughts on things =P "Robert Davis"
--- 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.
Thank you Dr. Colin at Residency Notes for hosting Grand Rounds 6.1 this week (what happened to 5.6-5.9?) and including my article Prescription Acid-Reducing Drugs Produce Heartburn and Dependency in his selection of best medical posts of the week. The post showed evidence that "proton-pump inhibitor therapy (specific acid prevention medicine) induces the symptoms it is used to treat."
In his "Clinical Corner" he introduced my post with the words, "…to put the right information out there is a challenge. Here are some fine efforts." Thank you Dr. Colin.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you Residency Notes for the time and hard work of collecting and featuring our posts this week.
--- Read and contribute your success stories of Fitness Fixer 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.
Three years ago, Merlene's closest friend died. Merlene, who is 74, lost all motivation. Because she was not exercising, she gained a lot of weight. This is where Ivy came in...
Ivy from New Zealand, frequent success story contributor, wrote me in August about her neighbor Merlene:
"You will be pleased that I have a new lady under my wing so to speak. I lent her your book "How To Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs Or Surgery." Along with giving her advice she tells me that it has changed her life which pleases me."
I wrote to Ivy to ask her if Merlene would be comfortable telling us more on what she did, so others could try it too. Ivy replied:
"I encouraged her to walk again. At first it was difficult, she had difficulty breathing. I noted that she was walking flat footed and taught her to lift her toes. She complained of back pain - I showed her how to lie on her stomach and lift herself up on her elbows before getting out of bed in the mornings. She has now learnt to put her spine into the neutral position. Re her breathing, I showed her how to breathe deeply. She told me that she rolled her neck every day in a circle - she now does the trapezius stretch plus pectoral stretch instead.
"Instead of bad bending, she does squats and lunges while making the bed, doing the vacuum cleaning, going to the fridge and the like, plus gardening.
I checked in with Ivy a while later to make sure all was still improving, and gave her questions to ask Merlene so I could make sure all was well. Ivy wrote again:
"Today I visited Merlene and asked her some questions. She is stronger, breathing has improved, she is more flexible, can walk further, the back pain has improved immensely. She hasn't weighed herself yet, however, is hoping that there will be a weight loss when she weighs herself next week.
"She finds your books "How to Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery" and your Stretching Smarter book very helpful so I left them with her so that she can refer to them.
"She also tells me that your books along with my help and advice has changed her life for the better. She has lost that negativity and feeling positive about life again.
"Merlene is a very quiet, private lady so I try to treat her in a gentle way. She comes from another country and I gather that life has been very hard. She is so enjoying what she is doing. Most important is the fact that she trusts me plus she is very happy you are doing this article.
"Merlene is happy for you to use her name. Re the photo and title (of the article) she would rather it was your choice. "Hugs Ivy "
How to Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery and Stretching SmarterStretching Healthier, and others, on www.DrBookspan.com/books.
--- 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.
Fast Fitness - The First Group Functional Training Exercise, Good Bending for Back and Knees
Friday, September 18, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - the first of the promised series of Functional Fitness Training (call it FFT or Bookspan Basics for now) that you can teach your teams, squads, classes, students, kids, groups, battalions, etc.
Assemble your group in neat rows so you can see each participant, and they feel the self-control of the neat rows. Stand in front facing sideways so everyone can see you in profile view. Tell them that the first Functional Fitness Training is a basic move that is needed many dozens of times every day, for their special sport or activity and for daily life - good bending:
Tell everyone to keep both heels down on the ground while they bend their knees and crouch about halfway down
Tell everyone to look down at their own feet and pull their (bent) knees back until they can see their toes. Tell them if they cannot see their toes because their knees cover their toes, their knees are too far forward (left).
Have everyone stand and bend again, this time properly without needing to adjust knees back over feet (right). They should feel the difference - using thigh and hip muscles, instead of sliding weight forward onto the knees.
Repeat good bending 10 times or any number that suits your group's need - more for groups needing higher training (or groups with poorer memory), faster for teams requiring this skill done quickly in actual use, and so on. Then put items on the ground they use for their sport or work and use the new good bending to retrieve. Replace on ground with good bending, and retrieve with good bending. Repeat for the number suited for your needs.
Tell everyone that this is how they can bend for picking up all their gear (except medical or tactical reason not to). Watch them for good bending practices throughout the team season. Reduce back injury from bad bending, get leg exercise, burn calories, and build strong bones from the many free built-in squats daily.
Each new Functional Training exercise will show you how to teach your groups (or self) how to prevent common musculoskeletal issues that arise during the team season or operational theater. Send in your ideas for a name for this program. Trainers, send in your stories of how you use them in your program.
Good body mechanics are a powerful performance enhancing aid.
--- 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.
Is It Health Care to Miss Top Healthy Practice? - Doctors Don't Exercise
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
According to work published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (December 2, 2008 with several follow-ups) a survey of 61 hospital physicians, "found that only 21 percent get the recommended 30 minutes of moderate exercise at least five days a week." The results for physicians was lower than the percentage of the general population. Results for physicians was less than half the percentage "of the overall population in the same age group who claim to meet this goal."
The doctors blamed, "lack of time, lack of motivation, and lack of workout facilities." However, the study checked physicians with a gym at their hospital and found they, "didn’t fare any better than those without."
This is not like someone who knows healthy practices but makes a conscious decision to live their life differently by choice. This is like a mechanic who drives an unsafe car because he has no idea how to keep it in good running condition or has faulty knowledge and performs practices that make it run worse.
The mindset that you must stop your busy day to get exercise is the core of the problem. The idea that you stop your life, then go "do health," then resume your unhealthy life, is not health as a lifestyle, it is not health care, and it results in many people feeling they cannot take time away from their "real life" in order to exercise because health is not their real life. The practice of medicine should not be procedures to "do" to counter poisonous lifestyle. My colleague Dr. Tom Kessler calls that, "committing medicine."
There is no need to go to a gym to get exercise. Healthy lifestyle means how you move and live all day, and would yield much healthy exercise just by changing movement habits of the same bending, lifting, standing, sitting, and other daily life to healthier ways. The following Fitness Fixer resources show how.
Click this for more on the topic, plus links to specific articles how to change to exercise and health as a lifestyle - Trainers Don't Exercise Enough?
--- 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.
Thank you to the blog Suture for a Living for hosting Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 52 this week and including my article Exercise in the Heat in the list of best medical posts of the week. Suture for a Living writes:
"Dr. Jolie Bookspan, The Fitness Fixer, reminds us that it’s still hot in many places and a chance to learn the several overlooked medical benefits of exercise and heat and improving heat tolerance. Take her advice when you Exercise in the Heat."
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts and reminding readers to listen :-)
--- 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.
Teachers, coaches, parents, babysitters, trainers, and others have asked me for retraining drills to do with their sports teams, exercisers, and regular school classes.
I will start a series of short articles, one topic per article.
Each will have short instructions that work for group training.
Teams can practice them before each training session, or incorporated into their other exercises.
These will be retraining exercises that school teams and athletes can use to reduce sprains, knee pain, back strain, and other common musculoskeletal issues that arise during the team season. All are basic movement needed for every day activity and real life changed to be healthy - Bookspan Basics.
Each topic can be taught in a short lecture, hopefully within 1-5 minutes, then everyone can try the drill.
This new curriculum is part of the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM)'s Youth Division programming. If your team is changing to healthy ways, you can be a part of this program, which includes certification, awards, teacher training, and other fun - click Academy. There is no charge to participate. This is for health.
Send in your ideas for a name for this program. Trainers, send in your stories of how you use them in your program.
--- 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 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.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - custom portable fitness tea, quick and inexpensive, no need for hot water:
Put clean (or filtered) water in your own healthy bottle.
Poke a teabag in the bottle. The tea will brew on its own in a short time, no need for hot water.
Choose your favorite tea or experiment to find your favorite. Mix several together to make your custom brew - for example mint and lemon (all non-caffeine), or ginger plus green (half and half), or green and black tea together (extra interest). Or a whole bunch of flavors.
This makes a fresh drink, no preservatives or coloring, no hype or purchased throw-away bottles. It easily transports with you to work, school, gym, exercise, and biking.
Add water to make more throughout the day. At the end of your day, remove the bags and wash the bottle for another custom tea tomorrow.
Future posts will cover making your own teabags from loose tea and preparing herbal teas from flowers.
--- I make posts from fun mail and success stories. 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.
---
Image by Akibubblet via Flickr. No derivative works.
"Thanks so much for your help. "I wanted to let you know that I have had a herniated disk in my lower back for eight months. Had physical therapy & injections, but still needed medications-pain pills, etc. I never experienced so much pain in my life. I came across your website & articles & starting doing what you recommended, & within days I have been feeling great & have reduced the pain medicine because I don't need it.
"I know now that I was doing the wrong exercises in the past- too much bending forward & back. Didn't really know that this exercising technique (bending, stretching forward, arching) is incorrect. It sure is!!!!
"I really like the hamstring stretch - putting your leg on the wall. This is terrific. I feel so MUCH BETTER....
"Also, when you get copies of the Abs book, please let me know. "Have a great day Dr. Bookspan!!!! Laraine"
A herniated disc is an injury, not a condition or disease. It can heal. You do not have to live with it. You can go on to being able to do more not less.
Discs are living parts of your body, not like a tooth that once broken cannot heal. Most of the time, injured areas can heal, if you let them. Bulging areas can reduce. Dried discs can rehydrate. Each night as you sleep, discs replenish fluid. They plump back up a bit. That is part of why you are taller each morning, than in the evening. They can do all this if you stop the causes that injured them.
Doing surgery, adjustments, treatments, massage or yoga does not stop the cause of disc injury. Common exercises add to injury. Not all exercise is medicine. Then it is no surprise when pain does not stop, or stops but returns, or the next disc herniates after fixing the first one.
Changing unhealthy movement habits that degenerate discs and push them out of place means moving in healthy ways for all you do, not just for sets and reps in a gym. You can do all the "reps" of back exercises in the world. If you return to bending and standing in injurious ways all day around the house and workplace, it is no surprise that the exercises and treatments did not fix the pain.
Click the following for simple ways to stop causes of disc injury. Get the overall concepts, don't bog down on details. I see people in gyms following trivial, exacting "proper form" for exercising, while missing the whole point of healthy bending and lifting or how to apply it to general motion all day.
--- Read success storiesand contribute your own 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 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.
Prescription Acid-Reducing Drugs Produce Heartburn and Dependency
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
In a study of acid-suppression drugs, healthy adults with no previous symptoms developed
"heartburn, acid regurgitation and dyspepsia" after a course of the drugs. Forty percent of 120 volunteers taking anti-heartburn drugs called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) had a rebound increase in gastric acid secretion, resulting in acid levels above their starting levels.
Study - "Proton-pump inhibitor therapy induces acid-related symptoms in healthy volunteers after withdrawal of therapy." Gastroenterology. 2009 Jul;137(1):80-7, 87.e1. Epub 2009 Apr 10.
Gastroenterology is the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute. A comment appearing in the Journal stated there is, "Evidence that proton-pump inhibitor therapy induces the symptoms it is used to treat." Gastroenterology. 2009 Jul;137(1):80-7, 87. McColl KE, Gillen D.
PPI drugs for gastrointestinal symptoms are highly prescribed. Study authors stated, "This might lead to PPI dependency and thus have important implications."
In the previous Thank You to Grand Rounds, I noted that several prescriptions drugs are known to cause increased symptoms, rebound, even the original problem - Thank You Grand Rounds 5.50, Medicine & Technology.
It is becoming known that PPI drugs do not prevent the source of the problem, so may not be needed in the first place. It does not seem necessary to start a course of drugs that perpetuates your symptoms, even causes the problem itself. The Fitness Fixer article Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures explains more.
This is nice because three previous Grand Rounds rejected this article, even though their themes included health care reform and medical safety.
Dr. Kim wrote, "The Fitness Fixer talks about some common medications that may cause musculoskeletal pain (and you just thought you were getting old)."
He makes a common caution, "Don't ever stop taking any pills before you get a chance to speak with your healthcare provider." Why is this? Several prescription drugs not only can produce unwanted effects when you take them, but when you stop - causing withdrawal, rebound of the original problem, or changes in body chemistry or function.
Check better ways before turning only to prescriptions. Learn ways to make your life healthier to avoid needing them.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
--- Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - 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.
Want mind and body? ChessBoxing is a sport from Germany that combines "the number one thinking sport with the number one fighting sport." Fighters go 6 rounds of chess and 5 of boxing in 11 alternating rounds. ChessBoxing decision is by checkmate or knockout.
Competitors must have an ELO chess rating of 1,800 or above and have fought a minimum of 20 real boxing matches. (Elo rating, named for creator Arpad Elo, is one of several chess rating systems.)
Click the > arrow to watch a short video of ChessBoxing.
ChessBoxing origin is attributed to cartoonist Enki Bilal from his 1992 novel Froid Équateur. Dutch artist Lepe Rubingh was inspired by it to hold a live tournament
ChessBoxing spokesman Bill Schneider says, "The most difficult part of the game is making the transition from the ring to the board. “Your pulse is not a problem, but the adrenaline certainly is. It makes you want to play a far more attacking game of chess than you ordinarily would, and that often leads to mistakes.”
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