Does practice make perfect….or permanent????

How adaptable are you and your children?

Chances are…VERY!!! Good news, right? Perhaps…

The human body and nervous system has an amazing capacity for adaptation. Whatever we teach it, it has the capacity to learn, respond and move. Pretty amazing stuff!

If our bodies are so amazing then why are more and more people, children included, experiencing headaches, neck and back pain?

In addition to sitting at work and school, there has also been a huge increase in the number of hours we spend slouched over laptops, gaming devices or cell phones. When the head juts forward, instead of resting balanced over top of the shoulders, the joints, muscles and nerves in the neck and upper back will become over stressed and sensitized. In fact, for every inch forward, you can count on doubling the amount of stress these structures have to bear. Repeated day after day, this is sure to end in headaches, neck or back pain!

Technology may be partially to blame but the real culprit for the increase in these problems is repeated poor posture!

Great news though! With a few small changes these problems can be minimized or eliminated altogether!

Optimal Sitting for Gaming and Computer Use

• Sit up straight with the shoulders balanced over the hips, and shift the pelvis forward so you are balancing on your sitting bones
  
• Feet flat on the ground
• Roll the shoulders back and then down
• Look straight ahead and keeping the chin level, draw the head over the shoulders

This may seem difficult and feel awkward at first but remember…practice makes permanent!

Well, it was not quite a thousand miles, BUT I am very proud to say that I completed my first official half marathon race on the weekend!!!

It was a cool blistery start Sunday morning but running along the Toronto waterfront was an amazing experience. It was fantastic to see so many people participating (22,000) and many more lining the course to cheer people along the journey. Just when your thoughts began to focus on something that was beginning to hurt, or you contemplated wanting to stop, somebody along the route would call out your name and cheer you onward. What great spirit from a great town!

My goal for this race was simply to cross the line. After months of running, a couple of minor injuries and a few lapses in training, I made it! What a great feeling it was! Surreal, really. Four months ago, even though I signed myself up for the half marathon training group (the only group available on a Tuesday night!!!), I really had no intention in competing in the goal race. Early on I struggled to complete the 7 and 8km runs and couldn’t fathom tripling the distance. Why did people love this so much???? I found it hard to understand. Each week though I went back and just kept putting one foot in front of the other. Soon 7kms became 12km, and then 20kms. I even remember hearing myself a few weeks ago utter,” we are only doing a short 12km run today”. Again, surreal. Much thanks goes out to all of my new running buddies that supported me along the way…one step at a time.

There have been many lessons learned over the past few months. One thing that has been reinforced is just how utterly amazing the human body is. It is an incredible machine that is capable of accomplishing so much, usually much more (or maybe sometimes less!) than our minds want to believe.

Sharing information is something that I love to do with my patients and I have been thinking about writing for some time now…..so this is where it begins…with the very first step!

Please stay tuned and check back for new posts and updates. The first few will likely be running related as the long Sunday training runs over the past few months gave me great opportunity to observe the gait, mechanics and injuries of a large group of runners week after week.

If there are any health related topics you are interested in or would like covered, please feel free to email us at info@oakparkwellness.ca

Until the next time,

Dr. Andrea