Feeling your age: Connect Chiropractic
“If you would seek health, look first to the spine.” – Socrates
Ageing is an inevitability, yet the rate at which it occurs certainly is not. We all know 40-year-olds who look and function like they’re 60, we all know 60-year-olds who look and function like they’re 40.
Why is that? “We are all a representation of our life experiences, and in response to these experiences our body responds physically. It could be exposure to prolonged stress, a sedentary lifestyle, poor diet, significant emotional stress, bad posture, or very physical work environments,” explains Dr Matthew Wild, of Connect Chiropractic, in Ferrymead.
“The most common and obvious response the body makes to these ‘threats’ is to protect itself, almost as if the body is adopting a ‘fetal position’. Our muscles are recruited to tighten up, and our joints are ordered to lock down. Hence the feeling we get is a feeling of tightness and stiffness, a feeling we all associate with ageing,” he says.
“How many times have you heard someone say, ‘When I get stressed, I really feel it in my neck and shoulders.’ Or have you noticed people who have a sedentary lifestyle often complain of low back and hip issues?”
Dr Wild says that by the time people start experiencing pain, the problem has been building up under the surface for a while. “It starts with muscle tightness, reduced range of motion, stiffness and then once it crosses a threshold that’s when the brain ‘rings the alarm’ and gives you pain. “It’s like the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Pain is the way our brain tells our conscious self that there’s something we desperately need to intend to. The worse the dysfunction, the stronger the symptoms.” That’s where a chiropractor can help, he says.
“A chiropractor’s main focus is the spine, how it moves and how it affects the nervous system.
“When a chiropractor makes an ‘adjustment’, they are working to restore normal function and movement of the spine. When your body has been in a ‘protective’ state leading to pain and dysfunction, the best thing we can do is to get things moving properly again.
“When your spine moves properly, it heals better, it’s better connected to your brain, and there is less reason for your brain to ‘ring the alarm’ and give you pain. If everything is moving and functioning the way mit’s supposed to, there’s no reason for your brain to give you pain.”
Whether it’s purely just to move and function optimally, or there is a pain that won’t go away, seeing a chiropractor is a great place to start.
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