How To Ruin Your Metabolism

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I know you probably didn’t wake up this morning thinking you were going to jump out of bed look out the window at a bright sunny day and say, “Hello Red Deer! Today I am going to ruin my metabolism, put myself at risk of disease and try to gain bodyfat!” Sadly though that is exactly what many people will do today.

If you are like most it’s never fun to hear the alarm clock first thing in the morning to get up and go to work. And quite possibly, if you’re like most, you certainly don’t have time to prepare a proper lunch to take to work. This means you are either: skipping lunch (maybe breakfast also), consuming processed food in a restaurant or some convenience item you thought to grab, or eating an unbalanced snack of quick ready to eat whole foods. In any of these situations you are creating metabolic turmoil. Skipping meals is an easy way to destroy muscle mass in a hurry and ruin your metabolism. The only thing worse is consuming heavily processed food that creates free radical havoc and leads to hyperinsulinemia (ongoing elevated blood glucose levels) the lovely precursor leading to type II diabetes.

The second way you will ruin your metabolism today is by remaining dehydrated. (You have no doubt already been dehydrated for days or weeks.) Chances are you will make it even worse by consuming caffeinated beverages and engaging in stressful situations from work conflict to rush hour traffic. All combined has a pronounced effect on elevating cortisol (our primary stress hormone) and reducing our ability to produce the recovery hormones like estrogen/testosterone and growth hormone. This in itself has direct links to conditions such as depression. However it is also easily avoidable by avoiding caffeine, artificial sweeteners and consuming 12+ glasses of filtered water each day.

sue adam copy 285x300 How To Ruin Your Metabolism

Adam helps Sue with another great workout!

To top it all off you will get home and simply feel you need to unwind from it all, you will be too tired to exercise (which fatigue is a symptom of increased physiological stress and chronic dehydration.) Now as the evening winds down most of us dread the coming of the next day so we procrastinate going to bed and turn to late night television or other forms of entertainment as a distraction from stress effectively inhibiting our ability to have a restful sleep. I don’t recall the exact numbers but the average person working full time accumulates hundreds of hours of sleep debt each year. Missing sleep damages our circadian health, which combined with physiological stress has a further disastrous effect on hormone production. Our body must progress through all the stages of sleep three times each night for optimal repair hormone release. If you sleep less than 7 hours and wake up at all during that time it’s safe to say you will experience the next day unrecovered. Unfortunately this effect is cumulative, so you can begin paying the debt now, or wait until you break down.

Thankfully you can’t unravel your health in just one 24 hour period, and thankfully your body is so resilient that even with everything you have already put your body through with lifestyle changes much of the damage already done can be undone. So even though unknowingly you woke up this morning determined to ruin your metabolism you now have the simple tools to alter your course in history and begin to experience increased health and vitality.

Learn to Listen: Post-Meal Evaluation

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Here is another segment from the series I wrote on Metabolic Typing in 2008, this one I wrote while travelling home from my last bodybuilding contest before competitive retirment. I was satisfied with my second place finish and my best poser award. icon smile Learn to Listen: Post Meal Evaluation

When it come to fitness and weight loss there are some simple truths, if it isn’t working you have two options: give up or find a way. Every single person reading my column or anyone who has even thought about getting in better shape better be totally committed to the later. Losing weight is frustrating, especially when it doesn’t work.

CBBFCAN8G F0906 198x300 Learn to Listen: Post Meal Evaluation

Cabel at 149lbs and his last shot at the nationals. (A title Pat has won twice he's my hero.) Photo courtesy of Glen Grant.

Right now I am 40,000 feet in the air travelling at nearly 500km per hour heading for home. With Montreal nearly two hours behind us we’re returning from this year’s National Bodybuilding Championships. I thought I was done with this sport after a disappointing 7th place in 2000 but here I am sitting and reflecting on a journey just completed.  Over the last few months I’ve pushed my body to lose more than 30lbs, quite an achievement when you don’t have above average body fat to begin with. September 6 marked my 11th attempt to master physical perfection on a competitive stage. This year I pushed it further than ever before and was a great step closer to achieving that “perfect look” that I have been striving for. I want to share with you what was different as I believe it is very important to your own weight loss endeavours.

In a previous column I introduced you to the concept of nutritional individuality and how oxidation can have a significant impact on the way you look, feel and respond to the consumption of certain foods. This was one of the focal points of my preparations for this year’s provincial and national events. In addition to very specific nutritional concepts there was also another method that I feel was critical to the final outcome, post meal evaluation. Post meal evaluation is a tool that will help you consider your own uniqueness further. It’s also shines further light on why nutrition may be so confusing. Our body not only responds differently based on the foods we eat but it can also vary further based on when we consume them during the day or sometimes when we allow ourselves deviation from our plan. This, in my opinion, is the biochemical relationship of food and emotions courtesy of our circadian rhythm.

Without going into too much depth, here is how post meal evaluation works. About 1-1 ½ hours after a meal record what you ate and how you are feeling. How you feel should reflect the following: do you feel full or satisfied, or are you craving something more? Do you feel an increase or decrease in energy levels? Do you feel more confident emotionally or do you feel depressed or uneasy at all? Does your stomach feel comfortable or is there any form of digestive distress?

It may seem strange to think you will even be able to discern all of these items, and initially you may not, but if you complete this diligently for a couple of weeks you will begin to notice certain patterns. These patterns can help to identify which foods make you feel the best at different times of day and even how to adjust the amounts of certain foods to produce the best result. At some point of following a regular plan you will begin to grow tired of the routine and if you are tracking your foods through post meal evaluation then you may even notice your physical feeling or response is deteriorating no matter what you eat. It may be time for a deviation. I’m convinced that at certain points it’s good both physically and emotionally to have an off day. Allow yourself to consume the foods you’ve been craving or the items you enjoy that are less than ideal for you. A big problem we face is that processed foods are designed to taste good in spite of how bad they are for us. By allowing ourselves limited exposure we can protect our bodies from their harmful effects but still attain the emotional satisfaction that will keep you committed to your final objective. The key to off days is to plan a frequency but not a specific day. I don’t recommend that it always be the same day but rather a “save for a rainy day” mentality. Personally I like to know I have an off day available for use when I need it for every 2-4 perfect weeks.

Now I know this sounds complicated but you can make it as difficult or as easy as you like. The biggest thing is try not to over analyze or justify. Choose foods that you like to eat and you know are good for you. If this is hard, seek out a personal trainer or nutritionist for help. Begin recording your meals and try to stay consistent with amounts. Focus on just one meal at a time for a few days and then the next until you are seeing some improvements. A change in feeling at one meal may affect them all which is why you can’t make a lot of changes all at once. If you are someone who has tried every popular method to no avail then these types of strategies are for you, forget general programs and think as an individual.

As a final note, my own outcome, well I moved nationally from previous finishes of 5th and 7th to a strong 2nd while being the lightest athlete in my class. I was named best poser for an entertaining performance for the second time this year, and after an 8 year hiatus from national competition I showed up in the best shape of my life affirming that my new concepts and research are heading in the right direction. I hope now that they can assist you in reaching your own goals.

May Ron Burgundy the Anchorman live on forever! Here is my award winning routine.

Metabolic Typing Just Makes Sense To Me!

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mtd p1 193x300 Metabolic Typing Just Makes Sense To Me!

One of my favourite books.

In 16 years it’s safe to say I’ve had, learned and changed a few ideas about training and nutrition. I am astounded how much you can continue to learn and how the pieces of a much bigger puzzle slowly fit into place with time. With many holes and gaps in ideas and concepts still remaining I am excited to express and implement a few more. Let me explain myself.

In 1994 when I really started to take weight training seriously, I entered my first contest that year, I somehow was enlightened about the Glycemic Index. The GI basically is a chart of foods and explains what time period it takes for them to begin to breakdown in the stomach and illicit an effect on blood sugar. As you know a rise in blood sugar causes insulin secretion controlling many major hormonal processes in our bodies. Continual consumption of processed foods which tend to be high glycemic are one of the leading causes of Type II Diabetes in North America today. So back then in my mind the intelligent thing to do was try to consume lower glycemic foods, well lower glycemic foods do not tend to be the most exciting foods on a menu. Broccoli, seeds, asparagus etc.

Some time later I continued to learn that combining protein, fats, and carbohydrates altogether greatly changes the glycemic index of all the foods and allowed for a much greater variety of foods. So my ideals shifted to educating people that it is always wise to consume these three elements together. It was about this time that I found a book by Dr. Barry Sears called Enter The Zone. The Zone was one of the many lower carbohydrate and moderate fat diets of this era. I was fond of the zone as it wrapped much of my nutritional knowledge together to where it made sense. Balance and proper food ratios with meals always comprised of some protein, carbs and fats is still likely to get many of you heading towards your goals. But then there is that other group, the group of people that seems to struggle no matter what. Many of you are probably these people, the ones constantly on the hunt for new answers.

Over the past several years we have continued to experiment, everything from high protein ketogenic diets (Atkins is an example) to low fat diets of yester year. All of them work, sometimes. Recent research is leading me in new directions. It’s very apparent that we are all individuals with very individual body chemistry and yet science and medicine is still very much a bunch of statistics. Example, when someone is deficient of say calcium we are told to supplement calcium. Well the truth is you can have two people deficient in calcium for instance and one will require supplementation of calcium while the other will need a completely different mineral to improve the absorption and usage of the calcium. The individual requiring the other mineral taking more calcium could even worsen the situation. You can imagine while I am learning more about this basis of nutritional individuality how curious I am, and how confused I am.

The last two years have been remarkable in terms of developing new knowledge about understanding the relationship of specific foods and their effects on our body. This science is called Nutrigenomics, the study of our gene response to food. Even Dr. Sears so many years ago recognized this in a quote I seen from his book, “some people can eat piles of carbs and never gain an ounce, its in their genes.” One of the best books I have found on this topic, I was so intrigued I am currently finishing their level 1 certification, is call the Metabolic Typing Diet by William Wolcott. Metabolic Typing provides testing, ideas and answers for choosing what foods and combinations you should eat to look and feel better. Together the science of metabolic typing and nutrigenomics provide strong evidence that many serious conditions such as Type II Diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome and cardiovascular disease have a strong connection to the foods we eat and can be controlled, stopped and possibly reversed if we begin to decipher our own individual body chemistry.

3 ways to Live Longer According to a Personal Trainer

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These are the three things that everyone should do: eat more often, exercise regularly, resistance training. It’s that simple if you do these three things your body will have no choice but to improve in physical condition. This isn’t a new concept I know you’ve heard it all before. Still everyday at One to 1 we continue to explain these things. Eating more often tends to be the most difficult one for people to accept.

If you are exercising regularly or eating healthy, or clean as we term it, but you are not eating at least five times a day you and the hamster running on the wheel have a few things in common. Each time we eat we kick the digestive machine into high gear, that machine is power hungry it demands energy to do its job and let me tell you digestion is not like an economy car. Digestion requires an incredible amount of energy to do its job; it is the single most effective calorie burning tool in your arsenal for getting in shape. If you want to be fit, eat all the time. I’m serious about this the more often you can eat or if you can teach yourself to continually graze the hungrier you will become, the warmer you will become and depending on what you eat the fitter you will become. Now just because I told you to eat non-stop please don’t be that person that makes the drive-thru line up extend onto the street, there’s too much of that already. Choose clean whole foods, carry vegetables with you everywhere. Throw a can of tuna or a few egg whites in an afternoon salad. Trim the fat from your red meat in the evening or try consuming fish or buffalo instead. Just make sure you eat that minimum of five times a day to really experience the easiest calorie burning workout known to man.

Regular cardio is an insurance policy for weight loss, the weather has been take advantage of it. Running, biking, walking, if you haven’t been out there doing those things, today is a great day to start. Combined with extra meals your metabolism is going to love you for adding regular cardio exercise. 20 minutes of sustained activity at an elevated heart rate increase metabolism for hours, more calories burning just by sitting around after. You just can’t go wrong it’s like being a savvy market investor learning to compound your rate of return with the least amount of effort. With cardio just remember you want to try to keep your heart rate elevated to at least 60% of your max for 20 minutes or more, I highly encourage workouts at higher than 60% if you are up to the task for the multitude of heart health benefits. (Max heartrate = 220-age, please consult your physician first before implementing a high heart rate workout.)

Start resistance training, it can be fun, it doesn’t have to be the boring square repetitive training that most people do, and there is plenty that can even be done in your own home with very little equipment. The bottom line is take the steps to work the muscles and get stronger. Deteriorating bone density is a problem that is on the rise, as a trainer I’m hearing it from my clients more and more. Resistance training has an anti-aging effect by keeping tissues and structures healthy. As you gain strength, experience and confidence hard resistance training is also another key in your metabolic arsenal. Anaerobic training promotes muscle fiber development. Stronger muscle fibers mean more mitochondria the cellular energy producing units. More mitochondria mean additional energy production and calorie burning, ultimately this means a fitter leaner individual.

It’s not rocket science, it’s a smart investment, an investment in your own health. It’s habits that should be a part of all our lives. Start by adjusting one component at a time it won’t take long for you to see the changes that occur.

Near Instant Relief of Headaches and Much More. Information Night.

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Have you noticed our new products showing up in the gym? If not, you definitely should! We are pleased to have Young Living Essential oil products and supplements in the facility, and have already been getting rave review from clients about them. 

Jill says, “I used to get unbelievable migraines and tension headaches. I was taking a lot of pain medication etc. Advil, Alieve, Excedrin. The first time I used the Deep Relief roll on I was blown away. I put some on my neck and my forehead and within about 5 minutes my headache pain was minimizing to the point that it disappeared.”

If you would like more information on the products and what they can do to enhance your health and program, book a FREE consult today at One-to-1 Fitness!

To learn more about these awesome new products you can attend an upcoming regional meeting here in Red Deer! Join Jon Raynes, the Canadian Regional Director as he tells of some amazing research and findings showing where therapeutic grade essential oils can be used to promote your health, vitality and longevity goals. Grab a friend and bring them out to this FREE fun and informational meeting!

This is not an MLM or business opportunity meeting of any kind, just pure education on the dramatic impact of a couple of simple little things.

 

When:  Thursday July 29, 2010

7:00 to 9:00 p.m. (doors open 6 p.m.)

Where: Red Deer, Alberta, Holiday Inn, 6500 – 67 Street

Cost: Free!  First 50 people receive FREE gift! Prizes throughout event!

http://events.youngliving.com/view.faces?regionid=17&eventid=3838

A Red Deer Personal Trainer Explains Water is a Key Element to Weight Loss

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water for weight loss A Red Deer Personal Trainer Explains Water is a Key Element to Weight Loss

Red Deer Personal Trainer says, "water is critical catalyst for lasting health and weight loss."

Today’s post is a reminder from Red Deer Personal Trainer Cabel McElerry that water is a key element to weight loss. You haven’t had enough water today or yesterday but you can start correcting it for tomorrow. Our body is comprised of seventy percent water it is the single most important element to sustain life. The difference proper hydration makes on a day to day basis is enormous. Previously I’ve talked about the importance of total calories, balanced nutrition even the important role of starchy carbohydrates. Consider water to be the catalyst most recommended by Red Deer Personal trainers that brings all those other things together when trying to initiate healthy, permenant weight loss.

Water is a key element in digestion and absorption. Many vitamins and minerals cannot be absorbed without sufficient water present, the range of vitamin Bs and vitamin C are two examples of water soluble vitamins. Proper hydration can have a dramatic effect on the way we feel in terms of mood and energy levels. Chances are you may be among the seventy-five percent of North America that is chronically dehydrated. According to Robert O. Young, PhD in his book The pH Miracle it’s not unusual to lose two percent of your body water in an hour of exercise. He continues to explain; that two percent drop can result in a measurable decrease in performance. A further drop in body water can lead to physical and mental fatigue and a dramatic decrease in muscle strength and the capacity for work. By the five percent mark you will likely experience dizziness, drowsiness, impatience and headaches. Too drop further your heart can begin to race and you may collapse. All this may occur with as little as a seven percent drop in body water.

If you haven’t already interrupted your reading to get a glass of water you should do so now. Proper hydration begins with the minimum recommendation of eight glasses of water per day. Remember this is a minimum to sustain reasonable hydration, if you are already dehydrated you will need much more than this for a few consecutive days to attain a level of proper hydration. As a personal trainer my recommendations are for the average individual who exercises on average three to four days per week to try to consume one litre of water for every eighteen kilos of bodyweight. Its best, if possible to try to consume quality water such as water processed by reverse osmosis or that has been filtered by some means to remove a number of the impurities we may be faced with in normal tap water.

I challenge you for the next week to consume water based on these recommendations and see if you feel better. Be forewarned the first few days you may just make a few extra trips to the washroom as your body adjusts but you will appreciate it later. Until next time.

Do Carbohydrates Have Self-Esteem Issues?

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Over more than a decade of personal training in Red Deer I have seen so many fads come and go it’s ridiculous, however one argument rages on, are carbohydrates the bad guys?

If there is any macronutrient to suffer low self-esteem issues, carbohydrates are surely it. I’m not sure how they got such a bad wrap but it’s safe to say that should not be avoided like the plague like many people seem to think. If you want to know why you will want to check out an article I wrote a long time ago but have recently re-posted on a revised edition of my first website from when I started personal training in Red Deer.

Click to read: http://fitnessfx.com/2010/05/12/are-carbohydrates-evil/

You're Eating Mutant Food…and it's Been Exposed to Harmful Radiation

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TMNT You're Eating Mutant Food...and it's Been Exposed to Harmful Radiation

Genetic modification and food irradiation sound like something fromt he movies but are very real.

I always preach to our clients that I think our food quality is terrible and getting worse. The more books, columns and journals I read the more shocked and disgusted I am at the state of even the unprocessed items in the grocery store. It’s not really surprising that one of the biggest health and weight loss trends of the last couple years is cleansing and detoxification because with all the unwanted elements we are unknowingly consuming our bodies are undoubtedly overloaded.

Today’s post will make a strong case for taking the time, effort and attributing dollars from your budget to consider switching to as many organic products as possible for the health and safety of your family. What follows is discussion of three common practices currently in place in North America used in the growth and production of fruits, vegetables and our commercial meats.

Genetic Modification – Likely not shocking or a surprise that genetic modification is being used to produce “better” or perhaps just more food for a growing world population. However this science is so new scientists still don’t fully understand the implications of genetic modification. Scientists are splicing genes from bacteria and even insects into different plants to produce crops that are more resistant to certain pesticides or common pests plaguing optimal harvest. As of now genetically modified organisms (GMOs) do not have to be identified on food labels. There is no specific amount of research that has been completed to identify the safety of these new food items. In some cases violent allergic reactions have been reported. An example from “How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy” is a soy bean that was modified from genes from a brazil nut to make it tastier. This may cause an adverse reaction in someone with nut allergies but would not be identified on the label. A study by Arpad Pusztai on potatoes showed that GM potatoes contained less protein, starch and were associated with abnormal organ development in the rats used in the study.

Food Irradiation – This item was fairly new to me, I think I had heard it mentioned at a prior time but never paid much mind. I must say now I am astonished that this even happens and with a quick google search you will find the specifics and endorsement of this practice on the Canadian government website. Food irradiation was developed or first promoted decades ago as a necessary means of destroying bacteria such as salmonella, listeria, and E coli. As referenced from “The Ecologist’s Report” June 2001, food irradiation has been heavily promoted by the US Department of Energy(DOE). The DOE feels food irradiation to be a good means of producing a commercial market for spent military and civilian nuclear waste, thereby reducing disposal costs. The radiation dose approved by the US FDA for meat products is nearly 150 million times more than a standard chest x-ray, 150million! If this doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable maybe the icing on the cake will be a study performed by India’s Institute of Nutrition in the 1970s. The results of this study indicated that feeding rodents freshly irradiated wheat produced chromosomal abnormalities and mutational damage. To top it all off I can’t even tell you how to accurately determine which foods have been irradiated other than that the broad list includes: most meats, most fruits and vegetables, wheat and flours, eggs, herbs, and spices. It makes a strong case for incorporating more organic products into your lifestyle.

Consume Organic Items Where Possible – If the above wasn’t enough to convince you a study conducted on children in Washington state showed that out of the test group only one child did not have significant amounts of pesticide present in his or her urine. That child happened to be on an all organic diet. So between genetic modification, irradiation and harsh chemicals it’s not hard to see why toxicity is becoming the norm and sickness and disease is on the rise. Unfortunately just making the decision to switch to an organic lifestyle isn’t clear cut and easy without a little extra education. An organic product is produced without many of the means of modern farming: pesticides, fertilizers, chemicals, hormones etc. But there is a grey area in identifying organic products. For something to be truly labelled as organic it must be grown under conditions that have not been subject to any of the above mentioned practices for a period of four or more years. However the new organic farmer within this four year period can label their product as organically grown even though it may still suffer some of the residual effects of the prior methods. So even shopping for organic products can be tricky, a little education and a keen eye can go a long way. What is great to see is there are more businesses catering to these growing concerns making an organic lifestyle more practical and accessible to the typical consumer, and though these products may cost a bit more, so does health care. You really can’t put a price on a long healthy life.

Caloric Cycling for Weight Loss

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If you haven’t seen by now my beliefs as far as nutrition are pretty linear. Consistency is key and ratios are critical, however, every once in a while though I do utilize an additional or alternative strategy. This alternative route is not out of this world different but it is different enough that it just may be a good fit for those looking for a short term solution to ridding themselves of that winter spare tire.

Through the years I’ve reviewed a good deal of research regarding the body’s ability to adapt to different situations and how adaptation may lead to a progress plateau. Our metabolism constantly regulating shows great signs of adaptation in as little as 72 hours. Using this 72 hour window we can force our body to consume additional energy while it’s trying to adapt to a new environment, by the time it adapts we trigger our next change. This is a system of calorie cycling. It’s not fancy but when applied correctly it can be quite effective.

The easiest way to implement this idea is using a seven day or one week rotation. Start on a Saturday with your normal amount of calories (this should be at least a minimum of 10-13 times body weight) Consume this amount of calories for the duration of the weekend. It should be all good and clean food and balance is important as we’ve discussed in previous columns. When Monday arrives remove 10% of your calories, equally from carbs and proteins. Monday through Wednesday will remain the same. For Thursday and Friday we’ll cut even more calories, an additional 15%. This time 10% of total calories should be reduced from carbs while the other 5% from proteins. On Saturday we start over at the highest amount. This is important because keeping calories reduced for extended periods will only slow down our metabolism. The idea is that we keep the body adapting and using more energy as a whole. Your weight will fluctuate a little on the higher days but just remember it’s a cycle, two steps forward, one small step back.

This would be a very basic form of calorie cycling. Used intermittently calorie cycling can be an effective way to get through tough road blocks or lack of progress in your personal fitness and weight loss program.

It's Not NORMAL to Live Each Day With Pain

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There are certain things we do like clockwork. Generally we have our teeth cleaned every six months and book our next appointment after each cleaning. We change the oil in our vehicles at steady increments and don’t wait to run out of gas before we fill up. And most of us see our physicians annually in an effort to ensure our bodies are functioning optimally. And still it seems many of us may be a little confused about maintaining the physical performance of our bodies; particularly when it comes to our ability to move, perform and live without pain. Having been a personal trainer in Red Deer for more than twelve years I have encountered literally thousands of people that seemingly believe it’s normal to have a certain amount of physical pain in their lives as they age. From sore knees, elbows, hips and shoulders; to day to day back pain and headaches; many people feel this is an acceptable sign of aging.

I hope today, together we can break this paradigm. It’s not normal to live with pain, especially where serious injury is not a factor. Injury or not with some basic understanding of how our body works to move; chronic pain can often be reduced, eliminated or prevented altogether.

massage%20pict%20Tuina It's Not NORMAL to Live Each Day With Pain

Massage is a key treatment for improving the health of soft tissue.

Soft tissue needs maintenance just like our teeth, cars and our internal organs and immune system. What we think of as the skin that covers our muscles and the muscles themselves is actually an elaborate system of multilayered tissue. The layers of tissue from the outer layer of the muscles (known as the fascia), the independent muscles in each group, and the layers of the skin are actually all designed to move freely over one another. Over time, lack of increased circulation and movement to different areas of our body, (primarily from in-activity involving these areas) allows adhesions to form that prevent these tissues from moving freely. A good example of this is pinching your skin. Someone very fit will often be able to pinch (just their skin without much if any fatty tissue) and have a lot of mobility of the skin when compared to someone not as fit. The fit person would have less impingement of their facial layers.

When our facial layers become impinged or are unable to move freely our body compensates by altering our patterns of movement, our posture, and joint alignment. Any and or all of these inevitably lead to pain and injury. As society continues to develop more conveniences our lifestyle habits provide more repetitive in-activity and ultimately the day to day pain that many people experience.

Here is what you need to know in order of priority to live a pain free life:

1)      Treat soft-tissue impingement regularly. Massage therapy is one of the best treatments available to break apart facial adhesions and increase the mobility of the facial layers. The results of treatment are almost immediately notable. The problem with massage is most of us don’t use it enough. If you are currently experiencing day to day pain that is not related to a specific injury I highly recommend discussing treatment with a qualified massage therapist. A couple treatments in the same week followed by regular treatment 2-3 times per month will likely have significant and immediate impact on how you feel. Ongoing treatment in this fashion will almost certainly eliminate and prevent further pain throughout life.

2)      A body in motion stays in motion. This simply means we need to move on a regular basis and if you don’t use it, you will lose it. Exercise is essential if you want to live a long, enjoyable pain free life, and when used with regular massage therapy goes a long way to guarantee prevention of pain. 30 minutes of steady motion of any kind (the more of your body in use the better) each week will be an acceptable minimum.

3)      Maintain joint alignment. This recommendation is the most broad as it may be controversial with a number of people. People in general, active or not will likely experience some joint misalignment, the hazards of our complex internal structure versus gravity. Joint misalignment can often be improved with regular stretching, something that none of us ever do enough of. Ten minutes of static stretching per day (broken into 2-3 minute increments) will have a tremendous impact. A more direct approach would be to also work with a reputable chiropractor. Now not everyone is comfortable with a chiropractor, and even though I have worked with chiropractors most of my life even I am not comfortable with them all. I would recommend meeting with one before a consultation before ever receiving an adjustment and I would also recommend using a chiropractor who avoids using aggressive velocity adjustments.

If only everyone educated themselves and used these three services and therapies with the same type of regularity we do the dentist, lube shop or our physicians the world would be in a lot less pain.

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