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Decompression
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| Chiropractic Care Promotes Flexibility, Balance, and Coordination |
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Flexibility, balance, and coordination are innate human
functions. These abilities add beauty to the forms of our physical
actions. We instinctively admire the grace and skill of professional
athletes, men and women who have achieved very high levels of
flexibility, balance, and coordination. Many of us have permanent mental
images of stunning sports moments we've witnessed, when human beings
have performed extraordinary feats using these inborn, yet highly
trained abilities. Not all of can become professional athletes, yet we all can function at the peak of our own capabilities. Chiropractic care helps us do this. By ensuring that our central mechanism of flexibility, balance, and coordination - our spinal column and core musculature - is functioning at maximum efficiency, chiropractic care helps us achieve high performance. Overall health, creativity, and physical abilities are all enhanced by chiropractic care. |
Did you know that your spinal column's spongy intervertebral
discs (IVDs) comprise 25% of this segmented structure's entire length?
Did you know that an adult's spinal column is approximately 24-28 inches
in length? A little quick math shows that the total height of your
spinal discs is approximately between 6 and 7 inches. But most of us
don't get to enjoy the maximum height, springiness, or shock-absorbing
capabilities of our spinal IVDs.
Why is that? Another fact known to anatomy students is that IVDs
begin losing their total water content at the early age of 2. If you're a
young adult, that water-losing process has been going on for 20 years.
If you're older, tack on a couple of decades. But this is a natural
process. Whether we like it or not, our body parts are not built to last
forever. They are designed to keep us healthy and fit for about 150
years (another little known fact). What's not natural is the sedentary
lifestyle associated with living in an economy driven largely by the
service sector.
Until very recently (75 years ago or so), most adults worked at
jobs which required physical labor. Employment in agriculture and
industry required actual work using one's body. Those jobs had a
built-in exercise component, all day, every day. In contrast, 21st
century jobs require a lot of sitting. For many jobs, workers are
sitting all day, every day. When you're sitting or standing in an
unchanging position, the relentless force of gravity bears down on your
spine at a steady, never-changing rate of 32 ft/s2. The
long-term result on one's spinal column is compression. Natural
water-losing forces are unopposed and your spinal discs just keep
getting thinner.
We need to reverse these trends. We need to find ways to pump our
discs back up. We want to regain the health of our spinal discs, regain
lost stature, and be able to stand up tall, achieving our full
physiological height. We need to identify and engage in decompressive
activities, activities that will restore fluids to our IVDs.
Fortunately, a highly decompressive set of activities is readily
available and has been in use for thousands of years. Yoga is a system
of exercises that provides a broad range of health benefits including
spinal decompression.1,2,3 In fact, done correctly, all yoga
exercises (known as postures, poses, and asanas) result in spinal
lengthening. The key is to make the yoga posture active, constantly
engaging, working, and lengthening your core muscles while you're doing
the pose.
Regular yoga classes (even once a week may be sufficient) will
lead to noticeable benefits, including a sense of being taller. The
spinal decompression obtained through regular yoga practice will help
increase your flexibility, balance, and coordination. Yoga can be done
at home. The only equipment needed is a rubber mat. The long-term payoff
is big, in more ways than one.
1Jeng CM, et al: Yoga and disc degenerative disease in
cervical and lumbar spine: an MR imaging-based case control study. Eur J
Spine 20(3):408-413, 2011
2Williams K, et al: Evaluation of the effectiveness
and efficacy of Iyengar yoga therapy on chronic low back pain. Spine
34(19):2066-2076, 2009
3Goncalves LC, et al: Flexibility, functional autonomy
and quality of life (QoL) in elderly yoga practitioners. Arch Gerontol
Geriatr 53(2):158-162, 2011
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