November / December 2005

The Spice of Life
Why would people from more primitive cultures typically show less degenerative changes in their spines than both heavy manual workers in western cultures and people working in offices and more sedentary roles?

Wouldn’t you think that digging yams out of the ground, carrying all your water requirements, spearing an animal you’ve tracked for hours and then lugging its carcass, building your shelter and sleeping on a makeshift mat, would be responsible for more wear and tear on your spine than sitting at a desk?

It has a lot to do with the variety of tasks and body movements performed by primitive peoples versus the relative repetitive limited number of activities performed by most people in western civilisation.

Primitive people perform these heavy physical tasks in greater variety as opposed to our typically more repetitious tasks/lifestyles. Sitting in the car or train to and from work, laying bricks, sitting at a computer all day, working the same machine for hours, etc., doesn’t provide a variety of postures and movements necessary to work and condition all the muscles more evenly. The primitive lifestyle doesn’t fatigue some muscles with overuse whilst allowing others to become weak and lax. This helps maintain good posture and stimulate better balance.

So what do we do about it?
Perhaps by closely emulating a more primitive lifestyle we could improve our muscle balance, strength, flexibility, posture and health and become less injury prone.

Here are some ideas to consider:

• Rotate activities so you are not performing the same repetitive task for too long. This might even involve swapping some of your tasks with a work colleague to increase your diversity of activities.
• Walk rather than drive where possible to work, the shops, bus stop
• Ride a bike.
• Use the stairs rather than the lift (at least sometimes).
• A sitting job? Walk around regularly and do some stretches & exercises. Ask us for some ideas.
• If you sit at work consider sitting on a gym ball for at least part of the day. This keeps your muscles more active, improves core stability and balance and allows you to exercise whilst still at the computer.
• Put a gym ball in front of the T.V. for sitting on and exercising on. (Ask us for some appropriate exercises for you).
• Choose a leisure activity with a very different posture to your working life, eg. a bending job consider surfing or swimming to straighten out and balance your muscles. If you work standing upright all day you might prefer cycling or the gym to golf.

Ask us for a specific set of exercises to
counteract your dominant work posture.

We Are Extending!
We’re excited. Yes it’s true. Champion Chiropractic Centre is extending. To provide you with even better service we are enlarging and renovating our building. This will provide easier parking, increased flexibility for appointment times and a nicer environment to receive your chiropractic care. We anticipate building works will begin in February and take a couple of months to complete. We will remain open throughout the building works and will notify you if there are any changes to the normal routine as we go.

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