Stretching—overstretching—can hurt your muscles. Last week I put pigeon pose on a pedestal. If you read the post closely, you will see that the yoga instructor did not introduce pigeon pose until 60 minutes of preparation. To go straight into pigeon pose would be like expecting your fingers to play the Moonlight Sonata after three weeks of piano lessons. Slowly, slowly after many lesser hip openers would you attempt pigeon pose.
This week, I bring back Julie Donnelly for some advice about stretching appropriately. She has a series of articles about preventing and healing repetitive strain injuries. Stretching can be a culprit. In this article there is a link to some materials she sells called Trigger Point Yoga. I have not tried these tools so can not recommend them from first hand experience. I have used a tennis ball placed between the floor and the knotted muscle and pressed down to release the knot. I’ve done this successfully for knotted places in the bottoms of my feet, my shoulders, and calves. I have used a broom handle and rolled along it with the outside of my thigh to release knotted T-band muscles. These techniques help. The key take-away is to avoid overstetching when the problem is a knot in the muscle. Read on….
Why do muscles cause pain? She calls this the Stretching Misconception.
STRETCHING SHOULDN’T HURT!
Have you ever felt so tight when you tried to move a joint that you decided to stretch? The odds are that you answered “yes” to that question. However, many people complain that they feel worse after stretching than they did before stretching.
Before getting into the specifics of the stretching misconception there are two words that need to be clarified. Many people confuse the word “spasm” with “cramp”. A cramp (also called a “Charlie horse”) normally involves all of the fibers of a muscle, and is when a muscle suddenly contracts totally. A spasm is like tying a knot in the center of the muscle and while it may only involve a few fibers; there can be multiple spasms throughout the muscle.
Each spasm feels like a bump when you slide your fingers deeply down the length of the muscle. These spasms normally form over an extended period of time, often from repetitive strain on the muscle fibers. Spasms are at the heart of the stretching misconception, so it is important that you think of a spasm as a knot in the muscle fibers in order to understand why it can hurt to stretch.
A muscle begins on a stationary bone, crosses over a joint, and then inserts into a moveable bone. When the muscle pulls on the moveable bone, the joint moves, however, if the muscle has a “knot” in it you can actually cause micro-tears to the fibers as you stretch.
HOW STRETCHING CAN HURT YOUR MUSCLES
Think of this analogy: visualize a strong tree with a rope tied to it. The rope is the perfect length to attach to a flexible tree without bending the second tree. You can imagine if you pulled on the rope the flexible tree would bend over, and if you let go of the rope, the flexible tree would stand up straight again. This is a simple explanation of how a muscle pulls on a bone and causes the joint to move.
However, if you tied a knot in the rope, the tree would bend. If you tied a second knot, the tree would bend even further. If you then tried to stretch the rope so the flexible tree was standing straight, you would cause the knot to get tighter and the remaining rope would have to overstretch on both sides of the knot in order for the flexible tree to stand up straight.
This is exactly what is happening when you have a spasm, or multiple spasms, in your muscle. As you stretch you are causing the knot within the muscle to get tighter, and you are also causing the fibers on either side of the spasm to overstretch. This overstretching may cause the fibers to actually tear either along the length of the muscle, or where the fibers attach to the bone at either end of the muscle. This can be avoided by simply massaging the muscle to release the spasm before you stretch.
It’s now easyto understand why the repetitive movements that you do on a regular basis will cause the muscle to ultimately shorten into knots that we call spasms or trigger points. As I mentioned, when you try to stretch a spasm you can be causing yourself potential problems, and may even tear the muscle fibers.
Fortunately there is a solution. First you need to release the spasms that are causing the muscle to tie up into a knot, and then you can safely stretch. TriggerPointYoga was designed and developed to first eliminate the spasms in the muscle you will be stretching, and then continues to give four separate session of traditional yoga poses – two for the upper body and two for the lower body. You will gain flexibility and range-of-motion without injuring your muscle fibers.
Julie Donnelly is an internationally respected muscular therapist specializing in the treatment of chronic pain and sports injuries. She has co-authored several self-treatment books, including The 15 Minute Back Pain Solution,Treat Yourself to Pain-Free Living and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome-What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You. Julie is also the co-developer of TriggerPoint Yoga. She teaches Julstro self-treatment workshops nationwide and is a frequent presenter at Conventions and Seminars. Julie may be contacted through her websites: http://www.julstro.com and http://www.TriggerPointYoga.com.
Before you sign off, let us know if you have been successful identifying the difference between soreness in the muscles caused by knots or over use? And what did you do for the knots that helped?
I had a plan for this week to bring you the information Julie Donnelly eveloped about muscle strain. and the myth that strenghthening the muscle can heal the pain. I can not find the sequel to my last posting. Stay tuned. The information may show up through further research. At least one reader was eager to hear what she had to say about that.
Instead I will tell you about my own unexpected healing from severe arthritis in my hips. I can recognize the healing because when I went to yoga on Tuesday, the instructor led us through an opening of the first shakra. The idea behind this came from her reflection about St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th. What was the pot of gold that brought good luck all about? The pot of gold found at the foot of a rainbow. Our seven chakras are energy centers in the body located along the spine. They have been associated with the full spectrum colors of the rainbow, beginning at the base, or shakra #1, Red.
We lucky humans are the pot of gold when we open, connect and release our chakras. Our primary chakra is found at the base of the spine, the tail bone, floor of our body when we sit on the ground, sits bones creating support for all the other six chakras. This is our root, where issues of survival reside. Survival in terms of money, a place to lay our head, sufficient food to sustain life. When chakra #1 is healthy, we feel stable in life, supported, able to manage. Perhaps my own sense of security around these foundation elements contributes to the lessening of arthritis pain in the hips.
pigeon pose
Our yoga instructor began her guidance with us lying flat on our backs. Layer upon layer of complexity opened the base, pelvis and hips. After an hour she asked us to find pigeon pose. I have not done pigeon pose for 8 years because of the terrible pain in my hips. This is a posture which requires the right knee to fold in front of the body, the left leg stretched out behind, the hands and arms lifting the torso to find a comfortable position. Once this position is stable (I put a block under my right hip to support it as forcing it to rest of the floor is painful), you see if you are able to rest your elbows on the mat in front of your bent knee. I was amazed that I could find this pose without pain. Two days later, there is some ache in the hips, but nothing a couple of the herbal pain relief tablets can’t handle.
What has happened over the last few years? It would be hard to pin point all the actions and attitudes that may have contributed to more pain-free mobility in my hips.
Let’s explore some possible causes of the lessening of arthritis pain.
Diet
I have a dear feiend who suffered so much from arthritis in her hips and especially one knee that she took the drastic steps to see if she could eliminate her pain. She has cut out all dairy, all grains (that’s right, ALL grains), all night shade plants which include potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. She does not deviate from this diet. She does not cheat. I eat with her often so I can testify to this. She was on a heavy duty prescription pain killer. She takes no medication today. And she is gorgeous. A side benefit.
Personally, I am not rigidly adherent to my dietary rules, but I avoid dairy (no cheese or ice cream, no milk except in my coffee), and I avoid grains, especially wheat. I do eat a mixture of steel cut organic oats, barley and rye during the cold winter months when I am going skiing or feeling the need of comfort against the weather. I eat brown rice. Raw tomatoes seem OK for my body, but those tiny red, yellow and orange peppers that I love are not so good. Roasted, they seem to be less bothersome. I am absolutely convinced that diet has a great deal to do with arthritis. If you haven’t tried the extreme measures practiced by my friend and you are in pain, by all means, give these dietary suggestions a try.
Exercise
Over-exercising does not seem to help arthritis pain. Rather too much exercise exacerbates the problem. I have been working with a new-to-me program since before Christmas. The program is the invention of JP Glassey. His three facilities here in the Puget Sound area are called Xgym. This this approach to excercise is completely different from anything I have ever experienced. Today I dressed for the day, which includes dinner and theater with friends later on. In these clothes I showed up for my 21 minutes guided workout. My wonderful trainer, Clayton, watched over me with care, encouragement and ruthless insistence while I made slow, measured progress through 5 muscle groups until there was not one more move left. Complete muscle failure. No sweating. No strain on any joint, absolutely none. No impact. Just pure muscle development. I jokingly ask for a wheel chair assist to get to my car. Doing this 21 minute workout twice a week is what it takes to change your muscle strength. Not hours in the gym lifting weights. I am not bulking up, either.
I decided to work with PJ and his trainers in order to keep my bones healthy. Bones get stronger when muscles make demands on them. A side benefit is the loss of 5 pounds of fat. The weight loss only showed up last week. Three months of fat-to-muscle conversion came first, then the excess pounds are disappearing.
If you can’t go to the Xgym, buy PJ’s book, Cracking Your Calorie Code. He describes the science behind his methods, his approach to food, exercise and dieting. He describes the five basic excercises and how to begin, plus one progression to the next level. A person could easily do these at home. I do. The only problem is that is very hard to force yourself to complete muscle exhaustion on your own. You could find a buddy.
Exercise: Part II
Walking is still one of the best ways to keep the body moving. PJ’s approach to cardio can best be described as a burst of effort. He has a couple machines that we are invited to use, however they are not necessary. Find your self a stair case and go up for 3 -4 minutes as fast as you can until you think you are going to have a heart attack. Rest a minute or less and do it again. A couple repetitions are enough. How efficient is that?
Snow shoeing along Commonwealth Creet, Snoqualmie Pass, WA
I still love walking, or snow shoeing, or cross country skiing for long steady breathing and enjoyable movement and as long as time allows, I’ll be outdoors or a long day on Wednesdays. It’s more about the forest, the quiet, the friends who share the experience than the fitness goals. PJ claims, and to look at him, it must be true, that he can maintain his level of fitness with one or two cardio moments a week along with one or two 21 mnutes muscle grouip workouts.
Attitude
Suffering from arthritis pain is a real downer. My 81 year old friend was in such pain in her apartment, she could barely get to her bed, much less get in it. Going to the bathroom was an big “ouch!” all the way. So she stopped moving. Her grandson is her personal trainer. “Grandma, you have to keep moving!” Today she’s at her doctor’s and will hopefully find out what the origin of the pain is.
Her grandson is right. The absolute worse thing you can do is sit down. Avoiding the wheel chair requires that we keep moving. My neurologist told me back in 2004, after he looked at my xrays, that if he didn’t know me, he would expect to see me in a wheel chair due to the advanced arthritis in my hips and lower back. I am no where near a wheel chair.
Without any scientific evidence to support my belief, I am convinced that listening to Peggy Cappy’s “Back Pain relaxation” cd every night as actually helped to heal my joints. She reminds us that our cells die off and new one are formed regularly and that over time, given healthy nutrition, our new cells can be healthy cells. The joints can change for the better.
So, Gentle Reader, I hope these personal experiences help you in your journey to better, pain-free mobility. If you have your own experiences to share, let us know.
How great to share with you several article about preventing and healing repetitive strain injuries. From time to time excellent articles come across my desk that are worth passing on to you. Jule Donnelly does a great job of presenting the details of the major over-strained muscles used by athletes, and even us old gals who are hiking and cross country skiing. I hope this information will help you understand a little better how to prevent and heal these injuries.
PREVENTING & HEALING REPETITIVE STRAIN INJURIES – PART 1
AUTHOR: JULIE DONNELLY, LMT
Quadriceps
Using the words “pain” and “free” in the same sentence causes people who love to exercise laugh since it seems to be a contradiction of terms, but it is not only possible, it’s easy to achieve. It is understood that exercising, or even just daily living, causes muscles to ache and will also put stress on joints.
When the pain begins you are told to use “RICE” (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) – but you don’t have the time, or you simply don’t want to rest! So, you keep going and just as you’ve been told, it gets worse, even to the point where you may need to stop your world!
You’ve also come to realize that resting (when you do decide to rest) only lasts for a short time, and then the pain returns. The good news is you can be a pain-free; you just need to know how to find the source of your pain and then how to effectively treat it.
HOW MUSCLES CAUSE JOINT PAIN
RICE certainly works immediately after having a traumatic injury, but repetitive stress on your muscles requires treatment of the knots that are putting tension onto the tendons and joints. Getting back to basic anatomy will help to unravel the misconceptions that plague both athletes and non-athletes alike. Once you understand the logic of why you are feeling pain, you will know exactly what needs to be done to immediately release a muscle-related pain anywhere in your body.
This is NOT going to be a complicated lesson in Anatomy & Physiology, but I’ve found that a little knowledge of the body goes a long way. I’m going to put the proper names for the muscles and tendons into a parenthesis so if you want to actually see the muscles that are causing you pain you’ll be able to look them up.
I always tell the clients I work with “the most challenging part is finding where the source of the pain is located, and then treating it is easy”. This article will help you to find the source of your problem. Let’s begin at the beginning…
THE BASICS – HOW A JOINT MOVES
Movement is a simple process:
1. A muscle originates on a bone.
2. It then merges into a tendon.
3. The tendon crosses over the joint to insert into a movable bone.
4. When the muscle contracts it pulls on the tendon. The tendon then pulls on the moveable bone and your joint moves.
EXAMPLE: THE MUSCLES OF YOUR UPPER LEG
Hamstrings
All joints have two (or more) muscles that determine the degree and angle that the joint will move. While one muscle is contracting, the other muscle must relax and stretch. A good example of this principle are the muscles of your upper leg. (quadriceps and hamstrings).
The quadriceps originate on the front of your hip (pelvis), merge into a thick tendon (patella tendon) and cross over the knee cap to insert onto the front of your shinbone (tibia). When they contract normally you fully extend your leg so it becomes straight. Meanwhile, your hamstrings originate on the lower edge at the back of your pelvis; go down the back of your thigh, with the tendons crossing over the back of your knee and inserting onto the back side/top of the lower leg bone.
Consider this analogy, if you attached your pants to the front of your shinbone, and then pulled up at the waist, you would feel the pressure at your knee and you also wouldn’t be able to bend your knee. Likewise, since your quadriceps originate up at the front of your pelvis and insert into your shinbone, when your quadriceps are tight they can’t stretch and you can’t bend your knee.
For example, to demonstrate an analogy of what tight hamstrings would do, consider what would happen if you bent your leg and then attached your pants to the bottom of your posterior pelvis (the bone you sit on, at the top of your thigh) and the back of your knee, you wouldn’t be able to open your leg up straight. But, clearly, you don’t have a knee problem, you have tightness in the upper thigh (hamstring) preventing your knee from moving.
When this has happened you begin to feel stiffness and a lack of your full strength. Some therapists will tell you that you need to strengthen your thigh (quadriceps) muscles. You may also think you need to stretch your hamstrings, but stretching a spasm is counter-productive and can actually make the spasm become more complicated while over-stretching the rest of the muscle fiber.
In Part II we’ll look at the first misconception – strengthening the muscle will heal the pain.
Julie Donnelly is an internationally respected muscular therapist specializing in the treatment of chronic pain and sports injuries. She has co-authored several self-treatment books, including The 15 Minute Back Pain Solution,Treat Yourself to Pain-Free Living and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome-What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You. Julie is also the co-developer of TriggerPoint Yoga. She teaches Julstro self-treatment workshops nationwide and is a frequent presenter at Conventions and Seminars. Julie may be contacted through her websites: http://www.julstro.com and http://www.TriggerPointYoga.com.
What’s up with not getting a deep, long sleep at night? I have heard from several of my customers that falling asleep is no problem, but they wake up in the night and can’t get back to sleep afterward. Not getting a good night’s sleep is a serious concern in our modern busy world and it seems to worsen when we develop arthritis aches and pains in our later years. Read on for a thorough discussion of arthritis and sleep.
What are the health risks of interrupted, inadequate sleep?
Turning to WebMD we get a lengthy discussion about 10 things to hate about sleep loss.
In a nutshell:
1. Sleepiness causes accidents: 100,000 a year resulting in 1550 deaths. Mostly people under 25 were driving when drowsy, not to mention the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill, the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl.
2. Sleep loss dumbs you down. You just can’t think well when you are sleepy and without deep rest, your brain cannot store and catalog all the things you learned today. Nighttime is memorization time.
3. Serious health risks of chronic sleep disorders
Heart disease
Heart attack
Heart failure
Irregular heartbeat
High blood pressure
Stroke
Diabetes
4. Lack of sleep kills the sex drive. Need I say more?
5. Sleepiness is depressing. May I add that it is depressing to the sleepy person and to those who would like to play, work, and enjoy life with that person.
6. Lack of sleep ages your skin. It is the cortisol produced by stress that causes those extra lines and dark patches under the eyes. And missing sleep is stressful.
7. Sleepiness makes you forgetful. Maybe you don’t have early onset Alzheimer’s; you only suffer from poor sleep.
8. Losing sleep can make you fat. When you are sleepy, you crave fat-laden carbs.
9. Lack of sleep may increase early death. Read the report to see the study.
10. Sleep loss impairs judgment, especially about sleep. We cannot see how impaired our brain function is.
Since this is a blog about arthritis, I wanted to see if lack of sleep affected our joints. Turns out there is a vicious circle of pain and lack of sleep going on when you have painful arthritis. From a study reported in the Daily Mail about this problem,
Experts say insomnia is common among the ten million arthritis sufferers in Britain, with some estimates suggesting that nearly two in three experience trouble sleeping. However, until recently restless nights were viewed as a secondary and almost inevitable problem for people with arthritis. But now scientists are realising that this problem is a two-way street: not only does joint pain cause sleep loss, but sleep deprivation makes joint pain worse, and can even accelerate joint damage. There is growing concern that sleep disturbance exacerbates osteoarthritis (wear-and-tear arthritis) and rheumatoid arthritis (where the immune system attacks the joints), and experts believe that treating insomnia could lead to an improvement in the condition.
Osteoarthritis develops when cartilage that protects the surface of bones becomes damaged and starts to break down. The exact causes remain unknown, but genes, weight and age are all thought to be involved. Much of the pain and swelling is caused by inflammatory molecules in the body travelling to the joint.
For reasons that are not fully understood, disrupted sleep leads to increased numbers of these inflammatory markers, which further aggravates sore joints. One of these markers is called interleukin-1 (IL-1), which is made by white blood cells. One expert thinks IL-1 is the ‘primary trigger’ of osteoarthritis. Lack of sleep causes arthritis pain and visa versa.
Osteoarthritis develops when cartilage that protects the surface of bones becomes damaged and starts to break down Arthritis-Why-lack-sleep-Osteoarthritis
Professor Peter Wehling, an orthopaedic surgeon whose Dusseldorf clinic has become a pilgrimage site for sports stars seeking to prolong their careers, says even a limited amount of sleep disruption can cause the immune system to ‘go into overdrive’. It then begins to ‘flood the body with white blood cells in a vain attempt to address exhaustion-related distress’, as he puts it in his book The End Of Pain.
Many of the IL-1 producing white blood cells lodge in the joints and cause ‘discomfort and gradual erosion of cartilage’, he says. Professor Wehling warns that even one bad night’s sleep can set this in motion.
Professor Silman from Arthritis UK agrees that inflammatory compounds play a role in arthritis. ‘Sleep disturbance can change the body’s natural cycle of hormones as well as possibly adversely affecting the underlying levels of inflammation,’ he says. He agrees that IL-1 is ‘an important player’ in the development of inflammatory arthritis, but says other cytokines — inflammation-causing chemicals — may also be involved. He adds that some of the symptoms of osteoarthritis, especially in its early stages, may be a direct consequence of inflammation.
And while loss of sleep may release damaging inflammatory chemicals, it also means the joints miss out on the healing benefits of sleep.
Sleep is the longest time during which the body has low levels of inflammation and opportunity to heal. Around 15 to 25 per cent of it should be deep sleep — this equates to around 1½ to two hours every night. During this time, energy levels are restored and the immune system strengthened. But it can take up to 45 minutes of sleeping to enter deep sleep — and these deep phases seem to occur only in the first half of the night, for reasons not understood. This means that if someone is tossing and turning they may have very little deep sleep. This not only increases the number of inflammatory markers in the body, but it can also disrupt the workings of hormones vital for joint healing, says Professor Wehling. Perhaps most notably it lowers production of human growth hormone, sometimes called the ‘master hormone’ because it is vital to many processes in the body including tissue repair, weight management and continuing replacement of bone and collagen. Though human growth hormone is produced in small surges during the day, by far the biggest burst comes 60 to 90 minutes after falling asleep as we enter deep sleep.
Inflammation suppresses human growth hormone — and so deep sleep causes levels to surge.
But without much deep sleep, we may not produce enough growth hormone, speeding the decline of tissue and bone, causing it to become worn in joint areas. Furthermore, weariness makes people more sensitive to pain, and can lead to them becoming even more immobile.
Professor Kevin Morgan, director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, explains: ‘Moving involuntarily in the night can wake you up with a lightning shaft of pain and a cracking sensation. ‘This sleep disruption makes pain worse the next day, and makes a person less inclined to want to move around. ‘However, movement and activity makes joints hurt less.’
Arthritis Research UK is funding a study by King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, which aims to identify and treat the issues preventing patients with rheumatoid arthritis from being physically active and sleeping well. Around 200 people with the disease are taking part in the research, which it is hoped will lead to new techniques to tackle inactivity, sleep disruption and pain.
A similar study by the University of Washington in Seattle involving 375 patients with osteoarthritis is also being held and is due to report next year. It is examining whether targeting pain and sleep problems is more beneficial than a regimen focusing on pain alone. The researchers have hypothesised that the dual approach will have greater long-term benefits for sleep and pain, increase physical activity and lead to a reduction in healthcare costs.
Jo Cumming, head of helplines at Arthritis Care, says the charity speaks to 12,000 people a year, and 63 per cent say they don’t get a good night’s sleep.
‘It is a huge burden to bear. When GPs are considering medication or joint replacements one of the things they ask patients is whether the pain stops them sleeping,’ she says.
But Professor Morgan argues that previously GPs have considered insomnia as an unfortunate consequence of another health problem, rather than an important health problem in itself.
This has led to patients not always receiving the best treatment.
‘You have to put in a lot of work convincing clinicians that sleep problems are not just collateral damage from the main disease,’ he says.
So what can help those with joint pain achieve a good night’s sleep?
Tips include cutting out afternoon naps, using lamps rather than ceiling lights in the evening, avoiding caffeine after 3pm and not drinking alcohol after 9pm.
Professor Wehling also recommends ‘keeping a consistent bedtime and rising within an hour of sunrise’.
Avoiding midnight snacks can also help.
An estimated 50 per cent of our body weight is carried by the menisci, small pads of cartilage in the knee, so piling on the pounds adds substantially to an already considerable strain. Excess body fat can also heighten arthritis directly because our fat cells expand and produce more cytokines, which fuel inflammation.
However, a lack of sleep can lead to weight gain, which is known to make joint pain worse.
Levels of melatonin, the key hormone in regulating our daily body cycle or circadian rhythm, are also disturbed by sleep loss, and this in turn upsets the balance of two other hormones.
The first is ghrelin, known as the ‘hunger hormone’. Elevated levels of ghrelin at night can prompt people to raid the kitchen, craving carbohydrates in particular. It also causes extra insulin production, making the body store more fat.
The second is leptin, which usually helps regulate appetite, but may be disrupted by loss of sleep. Studies in mice also suggest that leptin may itself have inflammatory effects.
What are some solutions to this problem?
Talk to your doctor and help him/her see that lack of sleep is important enough to work through the available medications to find one that works.
If you are like me and prefer to solve this problem through alternative methods, I have found a number of strategies that work for me. While I still wake up in the night, I can nearly always get back to sleep and return to a deep, untroubled sleep, waking up well rested.
Shaklee makes two supplements which help induce a restful sleep at the beginning of the night.
Gentle Sleep Complex swallowed all at once or made into a tea about 1/2 hour before bed along with
Stress Relief complex. Taking 2 seems to be the best amount for helping with sleep at night.
Lavender oil dabbed on the bottoms of the feet. (I know, sounds woo woo but it seems to work. You can also buy a little chimney with a dish on top for the Lavender oil. The odor wafts through the bedroom and helps with sleep.) WebMD has information about lavender oil.
There are some other oils that some people use like Rescue Remedy. You can find these oils in most stores that sell supplements. I have used a drop of Rescue Remedy under my tongue when other methods did not result in a return to deep sleep at that 2 a.m. hour.
Peggy Cappy’s sleep meditation
I also have used Peggy Cappy’s soothing voice on her mediation for back rejunvenation. I have it on an Ipod which I keep at the head of my bed. Peggy Cappy has a CD for sleep which I just ordered. I’ll give a full report when I have used it. I often begin my night listening to her Back Care CD and fall asleep immediately. I swear my back pain has lessened considerably over the years I have been listening to her. I have blogged about Peggy Cappy in the past.
Another thing I do routinely is make a note of anything I must do the following day so I know they are scheduled and I can trust that I will get back to them.
I recently discovered that my trusted Feldenkris practitioner addresses this problem with a new series/private consultations/workshops. http://www.becciparsons.com/Sounder_Sleep_System.html I haven’t taken her classes, but she is the practitioner who got me walking/sitting/standing/bending again after herniating my L5 disc in 1989. Becci Parsons has been a guest blogger for me. Please read that post for more information.
Happy Dreams,
Be Well, Do Well and Keep Moving.
Betsy
I would love to hear from you how you manage sleeplessness. Please send me an email.
Tendonitis or arthritis? Which is it? My oldest daughter (52) was feeling sprightly one morning in Ecstatic Dance and accepted an invitation to do a cartwheel and round off. Why not? She is fit, exercises daily and used to do them easily when she was a gymnast back in high school. So off she sped across the floor, executing the perfect cartwheel and round off, landing smartly on her heels, arms out in a victory pose. Immediately she felt the sharp pain in her right buttock but went on dancing. That was last August. By December she could not bear weight on that leg, on her sit bone which made walking and sitting painful and challenging. The diagnosis was a torn hamstring tendon, a rare accident usually confined to linebackers. Most orthopedists see a hand full in a life-long practice. She found one who, in twenty years, had repaired twelve such injuries. The operation was successful and she is walking, driving, and sitting comfortably again. This condition is a torn or ruptured tendon. Definitely not tendonitis or arthritis of the hip, which she fleeting believed it might be.
Tendonitis, commonly called tennis elbow, swimmer’s shoulder, trigger finger, is an inflammation of the fibrous, cordlike connective tissue that attaches muscle to bone. Tendons can withstand amazing amounts of force, but they are not indestructible. Witness my daughter’s round off. The pain of tendonitis accompanies stiffness and swelling near a joint. Arthritis presents in the same way. When you get this pain, stiffness and swelling, you usually take some anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen; apply ice and rest the affected joint. But this could be a miss-diagnosis. [information from an article in Johns Hopkins Health Alerts]
Perhaps the inflammation is actually in the sheath around the tendon. Tendons do not contain many blood vessels, so they are seldom inflamed. If you are over 50, it is possible your tendons are degenerating. The collagen that makes up the tendon breaks down, causing multiple microscopic tears. What little blood circulation there is to the tendon also decreases with age, making the healing of these microscopic tears more difficult. This degenerative condition is called tendinosis.
It is common to develop tendinosis and have no symptoms until some sudden trauma or the gradual build up of repetitive motion in work, sport or exercise. Perhaps my daughter had tendonosis compromising the tendon’s elasticity. She would not have known that she was at risk for a major trauma to the hamstring tendon.
Here’s a way to tell if your joint pain, stiffness and swelling is tendon related or bone and joint related: try taking glucosamine (Joint Health Complex by Shaklee) for two weeks. If it helps, you likely have osteoarthritis. If not, it is more likely a tendon problem.
Glucosamine has been shown in quite a few scientific studies to help with cartilage formation. Cartilage is what your joints are made of, and what arthritis attacks, so upping the rate of production of cartilage helps your joints. You feel better….if you have arthritis.
On the other hand, glucosamine will not help with collagen formation, and tendons are made of collagen. So it stands to reason that if you feel like you have “joint pain”, take glucosamine, and do not experience any relief, one very likely culprit could be your tendons. Tendon insertion points are often very close to joints and it can be difficult to tell exactly where the pain is coming from.
Taking NSAIDs (anti-inflammatories) using ice and rest can provide temporary relief for either tendonosis or arthritis, but since both are the result of inflammation, using these treatments will not help you distinguish between the two. Knowing which one you have is important if you intend to treat the condition yourself. If you take NSAIDs and they do not help, you probably have degeneration of the tendon.
This information comes from a web site http://www.targettendonitis.com/ by Alex Nordach, who is marketing his ebook (for $29) on how to treat degenerating tendons. I have not purchased this book so I can’t recommend it. If you are interested, follow the link and see for yourself.
What I can tell you about natural healing for both joint and tendon caused pain, is the following:
Acupuncture can relieve pain, stiffness and swelling.
Vitamins C and B Complex, plus Alfalfa help build collagen naturally, reduce inflammation and increase blood flow into the area. And I do not mean one or two tablets. 3000 mgr. of Sustained Relief C and 6 tablets a day of Shaklee’s B Complex can make a difference. I could tell you stories of people who have avoided surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome by taking lots of B Complex. Alfalfa tablets are small pea sized pills and should be eaten by the spoon full, not one by one. We are talking food. Can’t swallow that many pills? Chew them up. Shaklee’s Alfalfa tablets smell sweet when you open the bottle and taste like new mown hay with no sticks or twigs.
Whether your joint pain is tendonosis or arthritis, these supplements will help. Since glucosamine is expensive and NSAIDs mess up your stomach, check out the treatments to see what you are dealing with and then proceed with these three supplements. Their side benefits are legion.
In most of my blog posts, I talk about the various causes of arthritis and things you can do to manage arthritis short of medication and surgery. This blog addresses another cause of joint pain, tendonitis and tendinosis. I hope this refinement — arthritis or tendonitis–helps you.
If this information is helpful, please let me know.
How flexible should I be? Should you be? It is amazing to me how much more flexible I am after a weekend Yoga retreat and 3 additional sessions with the instructors; more to come. But in no way do I lean to left or right as far as the others in the class. Nor can I make my shins line up on top of each other in that bent knee sitting position. I sit for opening and closing O-m-m-ms on a rolled up blanket to gain some height.
How flexible show we be? Dr. Pierre Dubois has some ideas that may help. He begins with asking, “How do you measure flexibility? “Watching a dancer her leg to her nose is an impressive sight, and many of us can perform similar feats when we’re children. But we begin to lose flexibility as we age if we do not make a conscious effort to remain limber.
“Inactivity causes muscles to shorten and stiffen, and muscle mass is lost with increasing years as well. However, maintaining flexibility as we get older is of great importance, since it allows us to retain our mobility and reduces the likelihood of aches, sprains and falls as we age.
“How Flexible Should I Be?
“Optimal flexibility means the ability of each of your joints to move fully through their natural range of motion. Simple activities such as walking or bending over to tie your shoes can become major difficulties if your flexibility is limited. Unfortunately, sitting for hours at a desk, as so many are forced to do on a daily basis, eventually leads to a reduction in flexibility as the muscles shorten and tighten.
Dr. Dubois suggests this simple Test For Measuring Flexibility
“There are a number of different tests used to measure flexibility, but the one test that has been used as a standard for years is the sit and reach test. It measures the flexibility of your hamstrings and lower back. The simple home version of the test requires only a step (or a small box) and a ruler.
In Seattle’s Pacific Science Center, there is an interactive exhibit in the Human Body room where you climb on a bench that is set up exactly as described here. I was interested in the flexibility range presented by my own 11 teen-aged grandchildren who were with me. The ones who move a lot in sports were more flexible. I expected that. What surprised me was the lower measure of flexibility in the ones who did not move very much in their everyday school life.
“Before the test, warm up for about 10 minutes with some light aerobic activity and do a few stretches. Then place the ruler on the step, letting the end of it extend out a few inches over your toes, and note where the edge of the step comes to on the ruler.
“Sit on the floor with your feet extended in front of you, flat against the bottom step (or box). With your arms extended straight out in front of you and one hand on top of the other, gradually bend forward from the hips, keeping your back straight. (Rounding the back will give you a false result).
“Measure where your fingertips reach on the ruler. They should ideally be able to reach at least as far as the front of the step. Any measurement past the edge of the step is a bonus. No matter how far you can reach on the first measurement, do the test periodically and try to improve your score every few weeks”.
Increasing Your Flexibility
“If you find that you are less flexible than you should be, some regular stretching exercises combined with visits to your chiropractor can help to restore flexibility and improve range of motion, helping to ensure that you remain limber into older age.”
The Bottom Line
• Optimal flexibility means a full range of motion for all of our joints.
• Age, inactivity and desk-bound work environments all can cause loss of flexibility.
• The sit and reach test is a good measure of flexibility.
• If your flexibility is not what it should be, do stretching exercises every day.”
I am convinced that with gentle, persistent and consistent effort, you can increase your flexibility and that in turn can decrease arthritis pain. I’d love to hear from you, so shoot me an email about how flexible you are.
Gentle Reader,
I have a diagnosis of arthritis, osteoarthritis and spinal stenosis. I gave up yoga for arthritis about 6 years ago, as it seemed to exacerbate the pain in my hips and spine. However, when my youngest daughter Ruth raved about her 6 a.m. yoga class and the teacher, I took notice. She convinced me that Laura could instruct me in a way that would build from the core so that I would not hurt myself. Furthermore, Laura and Beattie, her partner, were conducting a yoga retreat at the hot springs retreat center in Oregon called Breitenbush. I have always wanted to go. It would be wonderful to spend a weekend with my daughter. I signed up.
Have you ever enrolled in a program only to have buyer’s remorse? My thoughts raced around my head: I can’t do yoga for arthritis. I’ll hurt myself again. How will I spend my days with no internet or telephone? (That’s right. No connectivity at Breitenbush.) I planned to take a book, attend the first hour and bow out politely.
With the right yoga instructor, yoga for arthritis is not only possible but builds strength, stamina and flexibility. That is an all-important caveat: the right yoga instructor.
I not only lasted the first hour-and-a-half session on Thursday night, but the morning two hours on Friday as well. I took the Friday afternoon session off. By 10 a.m. on Saturday morning, Ruth and I had soaked in the hot springs pools four times. I was ready to try again. Not only was I able to practice with the other 12 participants for two hours on Saturday, but again that afternoon.
And, Ruth and I took a spectacular 4 ½-mile hike through the emerald green forest surrounding the Breitenbush site. Sunday morning’s two-hour session was beautiful. I did not try handstands or back bends, but everything leading up to those poses was restorative and strong.
How do you choose a yoga instructor that will help and not hurt your arthritic joints? If you are serious about including yoga for arthritis management, I recommend you visit studios and sit in on the session labeled hatha yoga, slow-moving emphasis on arriving at the pose from a core-strengthened place. I found of the various yoga practices. If you have arthritis, I would not recommend the fast moving practices. Participate as best you can, stopping short of anything that twists or hurts.
If you are a Type A competitive person used to high achievement goals (that would be me), you need to monitor your progress in a class very carefully so as to not over do. The personal triumph of the weekend retreat at Breitenbush was to opt out of the Friday afternoon class without feeling like a failure. I needed to rest my body in order to benefit from the rest of the weekend.
Open heartedness and acceptance are two attitudes to cultivate as you find a yoga practice for arthritis. Leave your judgments at the door and listen to your body.
I have posted information about Peggy Cappy many times before. She is a Public Television personality and yoga teacher who works with older people. Her videos and especially her CD mediation for healing the arthritic back are part of my daily routine.
The joy of practicing in a room full of other people over the weekend reminded me how much I have missed breathing, moving and meditating with others. I loved the group experience so much, I have been to one of Laura’s and Beattie’s Seattle classes and I plan to incorporate their practice in my week.
Do not settle for less than a careful, hands-on instructor if you want to use yoga for arthritis. It could get you into trouble. I wish you luck in finding a good instructor. Let me know how it goes with yoga if you already incorporate this modality in your arthritis or other health management.
Be well, Do well and Keep Moving
Betsy
BetsyBellsHealth4U
206 933 1889
betsy@hihohealth.com
The first few moments of a hike and I confess, I do not feel like one of those Grandmas on the move. I feel every twinge in my ankles as they wake up; in my knees as the right one clicks ominously; in my left foot where the old neuropathy pain can flair up. After about 20 minutes and everything works like a well oiled machine, a steady climb or descent. There is no snow to speak of in our Snoqualmie Pass, so the ski bus was called off for the second week. Three of us went hiking on the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River. It was a beautiful day for us Grandmas on the move and we loved it.
Down in LA, the Trust for Public Land installed a fitness zone in a neighborhood park. Here is what they found when they went back to check two years later: Grandmas on the move.
Get your self out there and keep moving. It makes a difference. I have the choice of not moving when these twinges tell me my legs, joints and muscles are not working they way they did 50 years ago. Sure, I have severe osteoarthritis and spinal stenosis. These diagnosed conditions might give someone license to sit down. Years ago, my neurologist told me I should be in a wheel chair, if my x-ray images were to be believed. He said my bones were not good enough to operate. “Get strong, Betsy. Let your muscles carry you.”
These grandmas on the move have figured that out. I hope you can find a way to do what they are doing.
Here is a suggestion list of beautiful ways to remember someone’s birthday, anniversary, special achievement or goal with a simple gift for a healthy life. Your friends and family will know how much you care when you give one of these gifts for health.
TO SLIP IN WITH A CARD
*180 Pomegranate Tea Stick(s) with a Girardelli Chocolate Square with a little note to “enjoy this gift of energy” and to “remember to enjoy all antioxidants all year-long.”
*Energy Chew(s)with a little note to “enjoy the energizing treat of Olympians.”
*180 Drink Mix Packet with a little note “a gift of healthy fast food this busy season.”
FOR GUYS
*Performance Sports Drink (Orange or Lemon-Lime), 180 Snack Bars, and Joint & Muscle Pain Cream along with a sports bottle, football, soccer ball, a signed ball or signed photograph.
*180 Snack Crisps (Sea Salt or Barbecue or both) in a basket circled with ribbon along with some movies or a subscription to NetFlix, etc.
*Basic-H2with a sponge in a bucket filled with car magazines. Add Scour Off Paste for the tires and tough spots.
*ENFUSELLE Sun Screen, Performance SportsDrink (Orange or Lemon-Lime), and ENERGY CHEWS with golf stuff, ball, gym bag, etc.
*180 Meal Bars with brochures for hiking trails, bike routes, fishing holes, etc.
*Herbal Blend Multi-Purpose Cream with some nice slippers and/or cute designer sox. Include a note about how the cream soothes sore tootsies year round. You can even refrigerate it to cool feet in summer.
*Cocoa Energizing Soy Protein with the recipe for cocoa soy-peanut butter “energy balls” and a festive container full of them. Or Instant Protein with a container of fruit or chocolate dessert bars made with it and the recipes.
*Travel Bag filled with ENFUSELLE Products along with travel magazines and/or a video of a fun destination.
*180 Snack Bars wrapped in a see-through colorful net and tied with ribbon
*ENFUSELLE Shower Gel, ENFUSELLE Hand & Body Lotion, and Bath Sponge in a pretty shower caddy or with a set of monogrammed towels.
*Basic-H2 Sample rolled in the sheet called “How to Use This Little Bottle of Basic-H2,” tied at each end with festive ribbon with a card that says, “My gift to you is a gift to the Earth, too! Enjoy!”
*A bottle of VIVIX with a bow and a nice calendar with a message about having a “youthful” year.
*Vitalizer with a picture of the kids or grandkids or great grandkids. And add ENERGY CHEWS with a gift of gym membership.
*Herbal Blend Multi-Purpose Cream with some nice slippers. Include a note about how the cream soothes sore tootsies year round–refrigerate it to cool in summer.
*NUTRIFERON with ear muffs and HAND & BODY LOTION.
UNIQUE GIFTS
*Stress Relief Complexwith tickets to something fun for “stress relief” or add VITALIZER with a map and a shaving kit or cosmetic bag for traveling.
*EZGEST and Stomach Soothing Complex with a coupon for a supply of ice cream for someone who usually can’t eat it…or with a coupon for dinner out at a restaurant known for 4 Alarm chili, or Mexican food, or spicy Indian cuisine, etc.
*SHAKLEE Sun Screen SPF 30 with sun hat, ball cap, sunglasses, or picnic basket.
*180 Turnaround Kit or Lean & Healthy Kit to start the new year right, along with a funky calendar, and a coupon for a shopping spree for clothes in 90 days.
*Orange and Lemon-Lime Performance Drink Canisters with a walking audio like Dr. Weil’s. (Remember that mixing the two flavors gives you a tropical flavor!)
*Performance with gardening things like a hat, cotton gloves, and/or kneeling pad. You could add Joint & Muscle Pain Cream, and Basic-H2 as a safe bug repellant, an invisible glove, as fertilizer, and more.
Here we are in a New Year. I hear murmuring around me about changes in eating, in exercise, in work habits. People everywhere seek balance in their lives, which seem to be uncontrollably hectic. We interrupt ourselves and forget what we hoped to accomplish in the next hour. There is no peace.
This time of year solutions abound. Your favorite person on Facebook asks everyone to comment on their resolutions and past successes. The radio and TV, pod casts and news articles have the answer if you would just listen, please. Of course, I am going to recommend a better diet, one with supplements. Ha! It just could be that digestion is the key to health.
Years ago I learned a very important lesson that relaxed my need to save the world all by myself. Food, diet and nutrition are one small part of the total health picture. A wise woman, Angela Arriens, lectured on the 8 common threads across all cultures that lead to a health filled life. As a cross-cultural anthropologist, she knew what she was talking about from years of research.
It turns out that our diet per se is only one/eighth of the picture. Other factors–exercise, spiritual practice, friends and relationships, music and color (art), and deep rest are the aspects I remember to this day, 24 years after hearing her speak. What a relief to know what a small part I might play in advising someone’s health picture. My supplement program is not the key ingredient to a healthy life, just one aspect.
Having said that, I want to suggest that digestion is a key to health, one of the most important aspects of nourishing our bodies. We can eat whole foods and never contaminate our bodies with junk food, but if we don’t have a functional digestive system, we may still miss the nutrients we need. If you struggle with acid reflux or bloating and gas after eating, perhaps your digestive system needs some fine-tuning. If you suffer from arthritis, joint pain, or are developing spinal stenosis and osteoporosis, it could be that your nutrients are not doing their job in the body.
Goal of Digestion
Take whole foods and turn them into energy and nutrients to allow the body to function, grow, and repair itself. When we swallow food we have chewed in the mouth, the esophagus carries the mass to the stomach. The first potential problem is the esophageal sphincter, or trap door that opens to let the slurry of food pass into the relaxed upper stomach. If the food is well-chewed, broken down evenly, the weight will easily open the trap door and the mass will pass into the stomach, letting the sphincter close behind it.
Chew your food well to aid this process.
Problems occur when we swallow chunks of food and the sphincter explodes open to let the material pass. Gas results. Flow back of acid results. In time, the sphincter wears out and doesn’t close firmly or quickly.
In the stomach, an acid excretion further breaks down the food into the nutrients that can be absorbed by the tiny cilla in the small intestine. The stomach must be acidic to do this job or food continues down the digestive track un-dissolved and its nutrients are not absorbed.
When people feel discomfort from the escaping acidity up the esophagus into the mouth, called heart burn or acid reflux, the go-to remedy is an antacid. This might give a feeling of relief but the nutrients that need to be broken down into their absorbable components remain unavailable to our system. Antacids neutralize the acid the stomach provides to break down food.
Ideally, the stomach breaks down proteins. When this is not functioning as designed, a better intervention is to increase the stomach acid by drinking warm water and lemon juice first thing in the morning. Not coffee. And chew, chew, chew until the slurry that drops to the esophageal sphincter gently pushes the trap door open.
If there are foods that are hard for you to digest like dairy or refined carbohydrates (cookies, crackers, breads, cakes), the cruciferous foods—broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, or legumes—beans, you might need digestive enzymes to hit the stomach first thing before a meal to help break those things down. (This is where Shaklee’s EzGest comes in handy, Take one before each meal.)
Most of us do not feel the peristalsis—muscle action of the small intestine as the slurry passes on down. When functioning normally, the digestive acids in the intestines break down starches, proteins and carbohydrates. Nutrients are absorbed into the body all along this passage as they become dissolved. Certain vitamins like the 8 different B vitamins become absorbed in specific areas of the intestines whether the B’s come from foods or supplements. When not functioning normally, we feel gas and bloating moving down the intestinal track, often producing pain and even severe discomfort.
Finally, the pancreas introduces pancreatic acid to break down starches, fats and protein and the liver produces bile acid to further break down fats.
Alcohol is absorbed into the blood stream from the stomach. (Eating grapes and other high sugar content foods seems to have the same quick absorption rate for me, but I know there has to be some breakdown beyond the stomach acids. Still the same rush alcohol brings happens with these high sugar foods.)
The most common drugs prescribed by the medical profession and purchased over the counter are meant to correct mal-functions in this digestive process. They often eliminate the discomfort that occurs when the acids do not stay where they belong but they weaken natural digestion. It is possible to return your digestive system to a drug-free, comfortable state. It takes changing your eating habits. Since digestion is the key to health, you’ll be glad you did.
Changing your digestive process may be the key to losing weight along with the other benefits. Many of us take on the goal of getting to our healthy weight by summer time. The Shaklee 180 Turnaround is an excellent program to help you on your way. It could be that dealing with the digestive issues will make all the difference.
Remember, just losing 10 pounds will ease up on those aching joints, the arthritis in your knees, hips and feet. Could better digestion help? Didn’t we say that digestion is the key to health?
Let us know your solutions to the struggles you have with digestion.
The rope is the perfect length to attach to a flexible tree without bending the second tree. You can imagine if you pulled on the rope the flexible tree would bend over, and if you let go of the rope, the flexible tree would stand up straight again. This is a simple explanation of how a muscle pulls on a bone and causes the joint to move.
If you then tried to stretch the rope so the flexible tree was standing straight, you would cause the knot to get tighter and the remaining rope would have to overstretch on both sides of the knot in order for the flexible tree to stand up straight.
“Watching a dancer her leg to her nose is an impressive sight, and many of us can perform similar feats when we’re children. But we begin to lose flexibility as we age if we do not make a conscious effort to remain limber.
