FOHAC News Exercise for arthritis #226a

Published: Wed, 12/04/13

Fair Oaks Health News

Welcome

December 4, 2013

Exercise for arthritis

Hi ,

How many of you have gone into your doctor complaining of pain in your back or other area only to be told "You have arthritis, you will have to learn to live with it."? The message seems to be that arthritis is inevitable and there is nothing you can do about it except take pain pills that will slowly destroy your kidneys, liver, and digestive tract. Last year alone over 10,000 people died from internal bleeding caused by over-the-counter painkillers. This was not from over dosing, but from using the painkillers properly, usually for arthritis.

Lets back up a couple steps - what is arthritis anyway?

We are led to believe that arthritis is a diagnosis of a disease. It's not a diagnosis. Arthritis is simply Greek for joint inflammation - 'arthro' is joint and 'itis' means inflammation of. So when you tell the doctor your knee joint hurts, he then translates that into Greek and says it back to you. So arthritis is only a description. The diagnosis is in finding out why your joint hurts. If you fall down and hit your knee to make it hurt, that is called traumatic arthritis. If your joints are deforming because of an autoimmune disease, that is usually called rheumatoid arthritis.

The most common type of arthritis is called osteoarthritis. This is your basic wear-and-tear joint inflammation caused by abnormal motion in a joint. It is very much like when you buy brand new set of 90.000 mile steel-belted radial tires for your car. You always make sure the installers balance the tires before they put them on your car. If the tires are not perfectly balanced they will wear out much faster and you might only get 45,000 miles use from them.

Our joints are the same. They are designed to give us a good 90 years of use. But if we do not keep them perfectly balanced they might "wear out" in only 45 years. Hip replacement anyone?

When we move a joint we are only conscious of the activity of the large movement muscles. But for every large movement muscle that generates movement, there are dozens of small stabilizer muscles that fire first to make sure that the joint tracks properly to stay in balance. These stabilizer muscles are what protect our joints to keep them from degenerating and wearing down prematurely. These muscles act without you thinking. They are for holding areas of the body steady so other areas can move smoothly without pinching or binding.

These same stabilizer muscles that keep joints moving without damage are also the muscles that adapt us to gravity so we don't fall over. They are also the muscles that respond to our feelings to create postures that communicate how we feel to others before we ever say a thing.

Stabilizer muscles are heavily controlled by both the balance and coordination centers at the back of our brain, and also short spinal reflexes that quickly protect us from falls before our brain is even aware that we have started to fall. This is a very complex and automatic system that coordinates dozens of actions all at once - much too complex for our conscious mind to handle. Maintaining all that complex neurological control requires a lot of energy, so the body economically only keeps as much of it around as we regularly demonstrate we need. What that means in a practical sense is "use it or lose it".

The nerves for movement muscles are just the opposite. The nerve pathways for movement, laid down in childhood, stay for your lifetime unless you injure them. But the coordination and balance nerves are constantly being broken down and recycled unless you use them. For instance, lying in bed for as little as two weeks can produce enough nerve breakdown and muscle loss to create impaired function for the rest of your life. Even physical rehabilitation can not bring it all back. Immobility destroys your ability to function, so keep moving.

Too many times I have seen well-muscled patients that regularly go to the gym turn out to have terrible stabilizer muscle development. Using weight machines in the gym completely avoids working stabilizer muscles. This is for several reasons. One, machines focus on isolated muscle movement to enhance maximal muscle power in contraction. Stabilization is the opposite of isolation - it is whole body integration. When a stabilizer is not working properly, it can cause the movement muscle to weaken. I see this all the time in shoulder problems where an inflamed stabilizer in the rotator cuff causes the big movement muscles of the shoulder to freeze up.

Secondly, gym owners know from experience that lots of people have weak stabilizers, and that leads to lifting injuries. Designing equipment that avoids stressing the stabilizers reduces injuries in the gym - even though it greatly increases your chances of injury outside the gym.

Thirdly, there is no cool factor in training stabilizer muscles. You can't really see them and nobody says, "Oh wow, you are so cool because you don't fall over." Maybe in a circus act, balance is appreciated, but not so much in every day life... at least while you are young. As you get older balance gets really important. Poor balance is the number one killer of people over 70 - due to complications of falls.

So how does all of this relate to arthritis? Simply put, osteoarthritis is really caused by poor stabilizer muscle tone. The only way to improve osteoarthritis is through exercise that increases the tone of your stabilizer muscles. As evidenced by my description of exercise equipment in a gym, it now becomes clear that not every exercise is good for arthritis. Specific exercises designed to improve balance, strength, and coordination all at once are what we need to help our arthritis.

Here is the trap however. Once our joints hurt we don't want to move them, much less exercise them - so we don't. This is why arthritis is considered a "normal" part of aging. It's not, but what happens is our avoidance of pain has consequences that build up year after year. Arthritis is a cumulative process, so it progresses with time and therefore aging. Our desire for comfort destroys our health and functionality - exactly as it does with diet and nutrition.

Many studies have been done proving that the right exercise can reverse osteoarthritis. A well-exercised body does not develop osteoarthritis in the first place, but even after you have significant osteoarthritis you can regain your function and capability. The pain makes you afraid of further damaging the tender joint. The trick is to learn to distinguish between stretch pain and pinch pain. When you exercise any joint it must be moved through its full range of motion and it must be exercised to its functional limit. This is what keeps a joint fully functional. The body reduces its capacity to match the demands put on it. If all you ever ask your arm to do is raise up to the level of your shoulder and never over your head, in short order that is all it will be able to do.

Because of this constant contraction of joint capacity with time, the process to push that limit back out to full capacity means pushing into the resistance the joint has built up since you last used it. That is uncomfortable - overcoming resistance always is - physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. When you overcome that resistance it will produce a stretching discomfort, which is good. But when that discomfort turns to a pinching pain, then you have gone too far and now are causing injury. If you go even further, you risk a tear or cartilage damage. We don't want that, so exercising to heal arthritis requires you pay very close attention to what your joints feel like. There is no goal of a certain number of reps or amount of weight or amount of time. The goal is to move that joint into the resistance far enough to restore mobility and to build strength without producing any damage.

This annoys people who want a clear routine with clear goals that they can meet and feel they are doing things right. Sorry, you don't get to have that with arthritis rehabilitation. Every moment of the exercise has to be evaluated and you may need to stop at any time. The only goal is to push through the stretch pain and resistance to the edge of your joint capacity. Speed is not important when doing this, but using a variety of speeds improves how well the brain hooks up to the area. Likewise using a variety of light free weights while moving the joints produces the constant variety the brain needs to build a good connection and integration for the nerves that control the joints. Especially good is using weights that are flexible that provide a stability challenge.

This brings us to the other half of rehabilitating arthritic joints - stabilization. Stretching and strengthening your joints is excellent, but more than anything your joints need to be more stable so they won't pinch and bind during normal movement. I will focus the next newsletter on this half of the arthritis exercise rehab. For right now you want to start stretching out your tight joints gently to as much of their full range of motion as possible without causing any pinching pain. Do this every day and bit by bit your joints will get more limber.

Until next time,

David

New Products in the office!

Organic Cacao Butter Chips

So you can make the yummy chocolate pie in today's article I have gotten into my private stash of organic cacao butter to make it available to you in small quantities - just enough to make 2 pies... only $7. Cacao butter is also the base I use when I make sugar free chocolate candy - as highlighted in previous newsletters.

Super Blend Sugar - Half the calories and none of the toxic fructose.

Many of you have asked for a sugar replacement that can be used exactly like sugar - well here it is! Normal sugar is dextrose combined with fructose. We now know that it is the fructose that causes the metabolic syndrome damage to your body, so I invented a sugar that is half dextrose and half erythritol - completely eliminating the toxic fructose. I put in just enough stevia extract to balance the sweetness to equal regular sugar. So here you go, the closest thing to healthy white sugar that actually acts like sugar - and it only has half the calories to boot! Only $10.95 for 4 cups - 26 ounces.

Attention - We are getting a new roof put in over the next week, so the office may be a bit confused.

New!

Memory Strengthening Program

Free Symptom Questionnaire to diagnose causes for memory problems available at the front desk - just ask for it. With this we can find out what is needed to improve your memory. After the questionnaire you take the memory test to determine how bad your memory is getting to be and to give us a way to measure improvement as you correct the underlying causes.

Ultrasound Physical Therapy

Now available in the office

Tuesdays and Fridays

On the Wire

Its never too late to start exercising

As part of an aging study results released recently show that those who take up exercising after retiring were three times more likely to remain healthy than those who did not do regular exercise. I have seen cases of older folks confined to using walkers take up exercise an in a few years were able to run marathons. It is amazing what exercise will do for you.

Exercise

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"Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."
~ James M. Barrie

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Exercise makes your brain grow

During exercise your brain secretes a substance called BDNF which stimulates the growth of new neurons. Current research shows that exercise fights dementia. It also helps fight age related muscular atrophy. So exercise is powerful medicine for your body.

Exercise and brain

"Work is love made visible."
~ Kahlil Gibran

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Antibiotics are 'not for snot'

This is one of the catchiest med-speak phrases I have seen in a long time. 95% of sinus infections are either fungal or viral so antibiotics are completely worthless. Patients demand their doctor do something for their sinus misery so doctors have been giving everyone antibiotics for years with the result of the development of super bugs resistant to antibiotics. So the new official phrase is antibiotics are "not for snot"!

antibiotics

"Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert."

~ Bertie Charles Forbes

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Our address is 9725 Fair Oaks Blvd.

Finding the new location is very easy. Coming from highway 50 up Sunrise Blvd, you turn left and go up a block. We are on the right hand side - the building just past the Subway Sandwich shop. If you are coming down Sunrise from the Mall area then just turn right on Fair Oaks Blvd and up a block on the right.

If you are coming from the Roseville area you could come down Sunrise Blvd, but that is a long trek. It is probably shorter time wise to come down Auburn Blvd - San Juan Ave like you have been for the Sunset office, but instead of turning left at Sunset, keep going straight 3 more lights to Fair Oaks Blvd and turn left. Go down 2 lights to New York Ave, go through the intersection, and immediately turn into the turn lane once the center divider ends. We are on the left.

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"This article appears courtesy of Fair Oaks Health News, offering natural and healthy solutions for body, mind and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.fairoakshealth.com"

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About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years. He began experimenting with medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis. In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education. Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic. He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice.
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health.
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities.
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth. The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework. Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Fair Oaks Healing
& Arts Center
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