Your muscles come in 3 forms, smooth, striated and cardiac. Smooth muscle is involluntary and is found in our internal organs (liver, stomach, lungs etc). Striated or volluntary muscle is, as it’s name suggests under our conscious control, your biceps, triceps and femoral quadruceps are all volluntary muscle,voluntary muscle is also known as skeletal muscle.  Cardiac muscles  are a combination of volluntary and involluntary muscle and this is what your heart is made out of.

When people talk about muscle micro trauma they are referring to cumulative damage to your volluntary skeletal muscle. When you get a full thickness muscle tear to a large muscle like your femoral bicep (also known as hamstrings and found at the back of your thigh) you know about it. A torn hamstring is very painful and debilitating and it even changes the shape of your leg (until the muscle recovers anyway).

When a full thickness (or almost full) muscle tear happens it stops you dead in your tracks when the strenuousness of what you are attempting is too much for what the muscle is capable of.

Micro trauma as it’s name suggests involves a small amount of muscle trauma that is only mildly uncomfortable and inconvenient if noticable at all. Micro trauma happens when you slightly push yourself too far. Micro trauma as a single isolated incident is no big deal, it is when it keeps recurring before it has the chance to heal that it causes problems.

Your muscles are actually bundles of individual fine strands called myofibrils, myofibrils to a muscle are like the individual strands of plant fibre that are braided together to make rope (except your myofibrils are not plaited). Rope works well until enough of it’s individual fibre strands break and the rest of the rope suddenly gives way.

It is kind of like this when too many of your myofibrils are traumatised, this is typically noticed when you might be strenuously working or exercising in a way that you have done for a long time without any drama when suddenly without warning you get a sudden shock of pain and your strength fails because of cumulative muscle micro trauma.

Few people had heard of muscle micro trauma before Jane Fonda was sued for damages when she showed people a method of muscle stretching   on a work out video. Ms Fonda instructed her viewers to do muscle stretches in a jerking way at the end play of the stretches that caused micro trauma.

It is not just stretching exercises that can do this, flexion (weights) exercises full of jerky/rocking movements can  cause cumulative muscle trauma. Working strenuously with repetative movements also causes muscle micro trauma.

Even if you are fully convinced that the way you exercise and play are safe and sustainable get some periodic expert advice to make sure you are on the right track and remain mindful of what is age appropriate for you. Even though sport can be a very healthy thing to do some sports create a great deal of emphasis on the repeated uses of some muscles over others. Stretch and get massaged.

Osteo Arthritis (OA) was the main subject of September’s post about arthritis, today other causes of arthritic pain will be looked at. Auto immune diseases such as Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), Systemic Lupine Erythromatosis (SLE or Lupus), Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) and Fibromyalgia (Fm) are some of the more commonly known of which.

Auto immune disease sees the body’s own defenses attack the body’s own healthy tissue, there are slightly more than eighty of them, nobody knows why they occur or how to cure or prevent them. The whole focus of treatment for auto immune disease is to manage the symptoms, in Western Medicine (WM) this is  done with anti-inflammatory drugs such as cortico steroids whilst in alternate medicine the use of diet and soft tissue therapies are more common place though anti-inflammatory herbs and mineral suppliments are also employed.

Auto immune diseases tend to be episodic in nature and they can start with quite vague symptoms such as a persistent low grade fever, fatigue, irritability, joint and muscle pain, weakness and lowered resistance to infections and allergies. The next stage  of symptoms onset of auto immune diseases can be intense and have you fearing the worst. PMR for instance can make your shoulders very stiff and sore very quickly, it affects people (mainly women) in the 50+ age group.

Auto immune diseases that produce arthritic symptoms can affect other tissues also, Lupus can inflame your skin and produce digestive problems, RA can weaken your heart and Fm (fibromyalgia) often will manifest with chronic fatigue symptoms alongside the stiff muscle and joint sensations. Self diagnosis is futile, if you get your problems properly diagnosed to begin with you can get help much faster.

Even if you get  very satisfactory relief from the medications you take there are other forms of treatment that can improve the management of your auto immune arthritis. Your ability and desire to exercise can be really tested with getting diseases like PMR and fibromyalgia, for months you may only be able to do gentle “nana exercises”, for a previously fit and strong person this can be truly demoralising, keeping your morale up can become a big issue in itself.

If you are a person who is quite happy to avoid exercise arthritis might be a tempting excuse to avoid it altogether but it is important to stay as physically active as your symptoms will allow you too because of all the benefits exercise gives you. Your circulation, posture, lung capacity and even your digestion benefit along with your muscles and joints when you exercise.

Getting expert advice on how you should exercise when you have strong arthritic symptoms is important, there will be activities that normally are no problem for you that become impossible and even embarrassing when your arthritis is acute, like a chameleon we must mentally adapt when things like this happen. Massage, chiropractic and osteopathy can all help you exercise more efficiently.

I have met several people over the years who have found low acid diets to be effective in combatting the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, if you want to go down this path figure out a plan with a nutritionist so you don’t miss out on any important nutrients when you adjust your diet.

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.