Category Archives: Exercise and posture

Circulation and your spine

Leave a reply

Your spine is composed of 24 bones (vertebrae) with cartilegenous discs acting as cushions between them, ligaments hold the vertebrae together and muscles (multifidis) running the spine’s entire length gives the spine movement and strength. Your spine  holds you up and provides protection for your precious spinal cord that is encased within.

So how is the circulation of blood and fluids in the spine different to circulation elsewhere in your body and why is it so important to help maintain it?

Firstly your spinal discs are not naturally graced with a very efficient system of circulation, it is non-directional which means that body fluids can get into and out of the disc but it is actually your posture and the way that you physically move your back that pumps the blood around within your discs to keep them healthy.

When we age and lose body height it is mainly due to our discs shrivelling which effectively shortens the spine, the atrophied (worn) discs lose their shock absorbing qualities and the spine stiffens, these factors go a long way to explaining why elderly people stand and move the way they do.

Disc injury is a very common cause of back pain too, the walls of the disc are fibrous but the centre is spongy. When the disc becomes damaged because of disease or trauma it may bulge out one side or even completely rupture which can be extremely debilitating and painful. Needless to say being over weight does not help you one little bit when this happens and apart from localised pain the bulging disc can press against your sciatic nerve and cause pain and weakness from your hip to your toe.

If you are lucky your prolapsed disc can  go completely unnoticed, in a study on disc prolapse several years ago 70% of the people in the sample group reported no back pain at all even though scans showed a clear bulging in atleast one of their discs, most likely because the bulge was not up against a nerve. If you are unlucky even a small disc bulge can cause you alot of grief.

The types of  movement that takes place in a spine when a person does yoga or Tai Qi or Qi Gong do a fine job at moving the fluid safely around inside of our discs. As you can no doubt imagine a disc that may already be weakened might not react as well to sudden violent twisting movement particularly if you are lifting something in an awkward posture.

Disc prolapse can cause other problems too such as creating pressure on the membrane that encases the spinal cord through which cerebro spinal fluid (CSF) moves. CSF is produced in the brain, your brain literally floats in it and it  extends all the way down your spinal cord, it’s composition is plasma like, pink and sweet to taste. It protects and helps nourish your brain and spinal cord. CSF circulation is helped along by good posture as is the fluid inside your discs.

If you drink plenty of water, adopt good posture always, do the right exercise, educate yourself about how your body works and get treatment when you need it you will help your spine last as long as you do.

Circulation II

Leave a reply

Just as water stagnates when it stops flowing, your blood which is mostly made out of water starts to decompose when it stops flowing. When the circulation in your tissues (flesh and muscle) significantly slows  you have problems because the tissues have a diminished function and are not as good at repairing themselves.

Heart attacks and strokes are about as scary (and common) as circulatory problems get. If you know someone well who has suffered a stroke or a heart attack you may have noticed that even if the incident was relatively minor it really shakes people up and affects their confidence, it can really make people question their own sense of self identity and worth and make them suddenly feel very old.

One can adopt a fatalistic attitude about if your time is up there is nothing you can do about it so you may as well die doing something that you love, the only flaw in this logic is if a heart attack or a stroke does not kill you it may leave you feeling like you wish it had because there is a good chance that you will never be the same again afterwards.

Taking a bigger interest in your health is no guarantee that you won’t meet such a fate, you might be unlucky enough to have poor circulatory DNA but all that any of us can do is to minimise the risks, you wouldn’t knowingly drive on bald tyres now would you?

Heart attack and stroke rate amongst the top four killers of Australians each year, (cancer and medical malpractise make up the other two) but at the other end of circulatory disease spectrum are less life threatening but still concerning problems like how you look for instance.

A persons’ skin usually shows the effect of years of sun baking, smoking and eating fatty food but even if you don’t do any of these things if your circulation isn’t good because you don’t exercise regularly (for instance) you may not have a very good colour or lustre about your skin. The whole cosmetic industry is about how your skin looks and all the cosmetic products under the sun are a poor substitute for good circulation in the blood vessels just under your skin.

Your eye sight is very much subject to your circulatory health too, glaucoma, the number one cause of blindness in this country is most often caused by by capillary damage in your retina. Having diabetes is the number one reason why people get glaucoma, and it is not the only circulatory problem that diabetics get, capillary damage can give you diabetic ulcers on your extremities and can even cause impotence in men.

Even though diabetes is an endocrine disorder it can have big circulatory consequences, with diabetes growing faster than all other diseases more and more people will be forced into taking greater care in their circulation as well as their diet.

Your circulation really is a big deal and effects your whole body, it is yet another reason why we must exercise, eat and hydrate well and pay close attention to our posture.

The importance of circulation.

Leave a reply

The circulation of blood and lymph around your body is of paramount importance for your health, you don’t just get inconveniently cold hands and feet through poor circulation it is more involved than that.

The circulatory system is described in anatomy (structure) and physiology (function) textbooks as being a transportation system. Your bright red blood (arterial) transports oxygen, sugars and proteins to your cells and your dark red blood (venous) takes away the carbon dioxide and other cellular wastes. If you are more at home with engines it is a bit like how your fuel and exhaust system operates, any interruption to the smooth flow of fuel and waste gases causes performance problems.

So central to how we operate is circulation that all the things that make us ill or kill us do so partly or fully via the circulatory system and it is not just cell food and waste that gets ferried through our inner “canals” it is our hormones too. We all make jokes about our hormones (and those of other people) but they are really no laughing matter because without them we couldn’t grow, reproduce, have sex or many other important and interesting things.

Pretty well everything works better if you have good circulation, at the “big” end of your circulatory system  the heart pumps your blood through your blood vessels and the rising and falling pressure in your chest when you are breathing is what pumps (at a much slower rate) the lymph around your body. Lymph is partly identical to blood but is straw coloured and clear (not unlike urine) and blood is red and is thicker, both are very important to our survival as is the “tubing” that channels it, our lymphatic and blood vessels.

At the “small” end of the circulatory system are our capillaries, many so fine and narrow that microscopic red blood cells can only float up them in single file. If our largest arteries and veins (eg aorta and vena cava) are the super highways of the body the capillary beds are the lanes, driveways and internal roads of our homes, factories and shops, all the little things that make the big things work.

All of the advice and explanations that are offered in these pages relates to and affects the circulation. If you have a reasonably good imagination and reasoning powers it is easy to get an idea how things like smoking, dehydration, poor diet, flabby muscles, droopy posture and lazy lungs might not help you have good circulation.

This article relates to most of the other blogs written in bodywork, even those offering Chinese medicine perspectives on human emotion because our emotions and thoughts can effect our circulation too. If you are often angry and have a bad heart it is like you have one foot in a coffin and the other one on a banana skin, it is a dangerous luxury to have both.

If you think that you may have a circulatory disease don’t self diagnose see a doctor and think of all those tiny rivers inside of us as a beautiful wilderness that is worth protecting.

Men and Massage

Leave a reply

Most if not all of the massage therapists I know have a predominantly female clientelle, the same applies to the acupuncturists, osteopaths, naturopaths and chiropractors I know.

Women not only seem to be bigger users of Alternate Medicine they also are more likely to be a member of a gym. Add to this these often quoted Australian average life expectancy statistics: men who never marry live till 58, men who are married live to 78, women who marry live till 81 and women who never marry last on average to 85. Men are more likely to suicide than women and are more likely to die due to accidental and violent causes than women.

Women seem to be better at looking after themselves than men. In the 20 years I have worked in alternate health I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard a female client tell me they wished they could talk their husband/ father/ son/ boyfriend/ brother or male friend into having a massage because they give every sign that they really need one.

So why is it us blokes are less willing than women to take better care of ourselves and do things like get a massage?, Is it possible that men have a higher threshold for denial that something is wrong with their body than women?

Are men more likely to use a muscle relaxant like alcohol to salve their pain? Does it have anything to do with the length of men’s working hours leaving less time for things like getting a massage or exercising regularly?  All of the above may be partly true.

Probably one of the most amusing reasons that some of my female clients tell me that they cannot convince their men to get some massage is that they do not like the idea of another man touching their body. Some men feel that female massage therapists are not physically strong enough to give a good massage, creating the dilemma that it is gay to get a massage from a man and a waste of time to get one from a woman. While it is true that more male than female practitioners of massage do deep tissue work I have had numerous massages over the years from masseuses who gave satisfying deep massages.

It is not in the best interests of either remedial massage therapists nor sex workers to ambiguously advertise themselves, you are highly unlikely to “accidently” find yourself in brothel if you are looking for a therapeutic massage. There is a big difference between bodywork and sex work.

If  you are a person who is not particularly proud of how you look without a shirt on get some massage where you can leave your clothes on, Chinese, Thai and Japanese massage is usually performed that way, if this is a concern for you just ring and ask.

Men need and benefit from massaage (and all those other therapies listed above) just as much as women do. The next time a woman in your life suggests that you need some massage consider it because she may be right and may then tell you at a later date “I told you so!” when you really do fall in a heap.

If you don’t want to pay for a massage then Self Massage.

Aging- your Muscles and Joints

Leave a reply

As we age our bodies go into decline, if we are smart though we will prepare for it with making appropriate lifestyle choices. Even if you have pushed your luck with drinking, smoking and not exercising you can improve on what’s left if you really want to. Whenever I say this to one of my massage clients I always think about a former businessman and client “T”. T retired at 60 overweight, flabby and short of breath from years of long boozy lunches and no exercise at all. Rather than carry on his self destructive path into retirement he got fit, very fit, much to the amazement of his friends he created a physique many 20 year olds would like to have.

What you need is a plan, even if you have been very fit in the past the same activity now may injure you, this is what T did. As cartilage wears down, our joints can’t absorb shock like they used too, even worse if you have had a cartilage injury that has never been that good since. Our joints don’t bend and straighten as they should when the adjacent muscle, ligament and tendon have weaknesses and have scar tissue also .

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common musculo-skeletal condition which affects about 8% of the population over 55,  polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) affects people in the 50-70 year age group, adhesive capsulitis (Frozen Shoulder) affects people in 45-55 demographic, rheumatoid arthritis usually starts in the 40-60 year age group and osteoporosis is most often diagnosed in the 50+ age group. This is far from a definitive list of all the painful things that can slow you down and make you groan when you get out of bed of a morning and even a fit person can suffer from them but fit people recover faster and better.

The body requires some mild impact activity to help maintain bone density but high impact can cause you problems. This might be the difference between walking and running or between running on the road or on grass.

Massage and Self Massage, like good exercise are things we need increasing amounts of as we age if we wish to remain able bodied.

I worked in a nursing home for about 15 months and it left quite an impression on me, all those stiff bodies taking short shuffling steps. We think of this as normal because it is so common but it isn’t. I have personally known elderly people who are still flexible, energetic and mobile, they are not common but they do exist and are living proof that taking care of yourself does make a difference.

Part of the problem is that many health professionals only get to see old people who are sick, they never get to see the healthy ones. This creates negative expectations about aging, that sickness and weakness are synonymous with getting old. A person can be healthy and old for a long time before they decline, if everyone else gives up on you it is tempting to give up on yourself too….please don’t.

If your joints and muscles are getting stiffer please investigate the possible ways others can help you and you can help yourself. Think about what you love doing most and what you have to do to keep participating. Try some Self Massage.