My public education didn’t teach me anything about my body other than the mandatory Family Education class, which didn’t focus on how my body worked mechanically, but what it takes to get pregnant and how to avoid it. Given this less than stellar introduction on how my body works, it doesn’t surprise me that as a society, we learn to ignore our bodies unless there is an obvious problem. We expect it to simply work, no matter how badly we treat it. Our bodies have an amazing resiliency, even when nutrition isn’t optimal or if we want to stay up all night. Barring chronic insomnia, we “catch up” on sleep debt because our bodies override our minds and simply shut everything down.
Fortunately, our medical system is outstanding for treating crises and emergencies. Novel diagnostic technologies emerge each year. Nevertheless, when we experience a health crisis, we relinquish control of our bodies to the medical experts because we are completely unprepared to make decisions about our bodies – hence the necessity for medical advocates. But seriously, how can someone know how your body feels better than yourself? Sure, you may not have the expertise to transplant an organ or perform cataract surgery, but you can measure or sense whether your body responds to a prescribed medication or procedure.
Given that we aren’t adequately educated about our bodies to make medical decisions for ourselves, let’s examine another topic, preventive care. In the case of cancer, it’s been drilled into us that “early detection saves lives”. Why? Because when tumor growth becomes too advanced and spreads to other organs, treatment options dramatically decrease. Survival statistics for patients with advanced tumors hasn’t improved for decades because the disease becomes much more complex to treat and the drugs to treat these tumors haven’t improved significantly to control tumor growth much less eradicate it. Medical intervention for late-stage tumors becomes supportive instead of curative.
But what about other health-related areas like heart or metabolic diseases? What can we do to prevent heart disease or high blood sugar? We can keep tabs on our diet, lifestyle, and schedule annual checkups. But do we make time to do that, or do we wait until something doesn’t feel right? I like to think that if we ignored our cars as much as ignore our bodies, there would be a lot more cars sitting by the side of the road.
Besides averting major organ failure, how much attention do the rest of our bodies, the joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments, or mental health receive? We know we want to stay active, and by that, I don’t mean running a sub-five minute mile. I mean the movement we depend on for everyday life such as walking in our neighborhoods after dinner, to the café or a favorite restaurant down the street or to and from our cars at the grocery store without thinking twice about it. We’ve been led to believe that once a person reaches a certain age, his/her body will not move as well, or surgical intervention will be necessary to allow movement. We don’t appreciate our self-taught ability to move until we cannot move freely.
When a joint is injured or there is muscular pain, what is our go to? We can take analgesics or use ice to numb the pain and decrease the inflammation while hoping to continue doing whatever we were doing. Our highly vigilant and adaptable nervous systems will quickly alter our movement pattern(s) to prevent further damage, especially if that joint is weight-bearing or the muscle is involved in self-propulsion. The joint can be surgically repaired, if necessary, the requisite physical therapy completed, and we get on with our lives. But when the injured joint heals how do we return to a sustainable way of using our bodies? Why is this important?
Unless there are genetic abnormalities or congenital disabilities, human movement development is a very long process that doesn’t require language nor is it hard-wired as it is in other animals. We teach ourselves how to move because we want to see something, physically respond to a voice or to our environment, go somewhere or reach for something, and we want to be self-sufficient. So how does each one of us learn how to move when we are born with a C-shaped spine that isn’t ready to support weight in a gravitational field that is constantly pushing us down?
Babies extend and flex their spine to create the 4 curves of the human spine so by the time they come up to sit, their spinal curves can distribute and support their body weight evenly without unnecessary muscular effort. They lift their heads to extend and strengthen the neck and extensor muscles in their backs so these muscles can support upright sitting. They learn to use their skeleton and external surfaces to support rolling and crawling. They develop their kinesthetic sense in three-dimensional space to keep their heads centered and upright for sitting and crawling. Standing is a long sequential empirical process of focused, dynamic learning. When toddlers finally stand, they have a kinesthetic sense of their center of gravity, are perfectly balanced without having to tighten their core muscles and can breathe freely. As they add movement and continue to grow, there are new movement learning curves to conquer. They are so in tune with their bodies that they will not move or use a movement pattern that requires unnecessary muscular effort or doesn’t feel balanced and effortless. Contrast their “survival mindset” with our popular “no pain, no gain” belief.
When a joint or muscle is injured, our nervous systems automatically keep that weight-bearing limb away from a supporting surface to prevent reinjury and avoid pain. To do this we use muscular effort to oppose gravity, which consumes a lot of energy in a gravitational field. If the injury is to the ankle, every joint above the injured ankle is affected. The uninjured leg has to do more work now too. If there are other injuries to the same weight-bearing limb over the course of decades, each small adaption is additive and eventually the overused “good” side develops problems. As we become more and more unbalanced, we engage more muscles to “hold” the unbalanced body upright. If these muscles are used to support and move the skeleton, the entire body becomes stiffer, and we subtly sacrifice our mobility incrementally over time. It’s like stepping on the gas and brake pedals simultaneously albeit with different degrees of force. Eventually, when the forces are equal, the result is no movement.
Can we stop this? Yes, but it requires a preventive mindset and not a crisis mindset. A crisis mindset is the belief that one day you will need a hip or knee replacement to walk to your front door. A preventive mindset is you ensure your future mobility and quality of life by correcting your movement pattern(s) after an injury heals to rebalance your whole body so you don’t overuse and wear out a weight-bearing joint(s). The crisis mindset supports the belief that older adults will need major joint surgery followed by a long, painful rehabilitation period to be mobile, if the surgery is successful. The preventive mindset is just the opposite, but it takes work to unlearn ignoring our bodies, to learn to listen again, and to trust your body’s intelligence.
If we accept the notion that preventive care applies to our entire body and not just our organs, the logistics of venturing outside the conventional limits of allopathic medicine are a bit more complicated. Although health insurance companies understand active people are more profitable to insure than sedentary people, they must also realize that active people get injured and provide financial support towards their full recovery. This means they support alternative therapies such as Osteopathic Manual Manipulation, Feldenkrais lessons, Acupuncture, Therapeutic Massage, Sound Healing, Healing Touch, Reiki, etc., to promote and ensure overall health and wellness which will ultimately be more cost-effective in the long run.
