Mind Your Backs The new normal
[Music]
last year
in 2020 the way that we live our lives
was completely turned
upside down we were told that we’re not
allowed to go out
go to the gym and for many of us even go
to work
what this has resulted in is most of us
moving our bodies way less than what
we’re used to
and many of us have noticed new aches
and pains
and other problems with our bodies so
what can we do about it
well one option is to sit back
and wait for things to go back to the
way they were before
i don’t really like this option because
history has taught us that
time has a tendency to continue moving
forwards
and not go backwards of course unless
your name is benjamin button
so i think the best option is to
change what we’re doing to suit what’s
going on right now
and put us in the best position going
forward into the future
that’s why i’m here i want to show you
a few tweaks that you can make
to the way that you’re sitting and the
way that you’re sleeping
it’s very simple but it’s highly
effective and to understand
why it’s so effective and why it’s so
important we need to understand a few
key points
so the first concept we have to get our
heads around is
the fact that everything in the body is
connected
from head to toe from top to bottom
inside and out
now i know there’s a lot of you thinking
well duh that’s obvious you only have
one body
but honestly you’d be surprised what i
get to hear every single day
in my chiropractic clinic one of the
first things i need to do to figure out
what’s going wrong with somebody
is i want to know a little bit more
about their history so i’m asking them
questions about old accidents and old
injuries
i basically want to know what their
body’s been through to figure out
what’s going wrong and why their problem
just won’t go away by itself
so typically i see lots of people coming
in with
lower back pain neck pain or something
similar
and i’ll ask them these questions and
one of the
main answers i’ll get is something like
well you know what
i did actually injure my knee it was
quite bad actually
but that was so many years ago i don’t
really think that one’s relevant anymore
or they’ll say something like you know
what actually yeah i do remember i had a
car accident it was really bad actually
but i didn’t have any injuries or pain
afterwards so i think i’m okay
i don’t think that one’s related and
they don’t even realize that they’ve
just given me the opportunity to use my
favorite phrase again
everything is connected let’s say
you were to injure your knee and for
three to six weeks
after that injury you’re unable to put
weight on that knee
fully that’s going to be three to six
weeks
of you twisting your body to try and
take pressure off of that knee
that’s certainly going to have an impact
on other parts of your body
like the ankle the hip your lower back
or somewhere else
in 2019 in the nba playoff finals
klay thompson one of the greatest
shooters of all time
a member of the golden state warriors
had a
season-ending injury when he tore his
right acl
now it’s a horrible thing incredible
amounts of pain
he spent the next year and a half or so
going through surgery rehabilitation
and basically trying to build his body
back up to the point where he could play
again
and he got there only just before the
start of the season
guess what happened he tore
his achilles on the opposite leg
now is this a coincidence or
is it that his body was compensating all
that time
and eventually reached its breaking
point the threshold where it couldn’t
take anymore
i know what i’m thinking everything is
connected that’s three times for you the
human body
physically and the mind and the emotions
are also
very intimately connected
i remember when i was growing up i used
to do track and field
at a pretty decent level there were
times when i would find myself in the
top 10 in the uk
okay for my age group
and i was a long jumper so as i’m sure
you can imagine the training involves a
lot of running at high speeds
and a lot of jumping both of which are
very difficult to do
when you have a lower back pain so i was
about 14 15
going into my gcse years and i’ve got
this annoying
lower back pain that won’t go away the
reason why it was so annoying
is because it wouldn’t affect me in
trying to speed up
it was actually when i was trying to
slow down and put the brakes on
that this thing would hurt and it was
annoying so
at the start of the session i was
absolutely fine but as the session went
on and i was doing more and more reps
the pain would start to build and feel
worse and worse
so i was going into school every single
day
pissed off at the entire world and it
was affecting my relationships with my
teachers
my fellow students and even my family at
times i have to admit
and my grades at the time were actually
reflecting the way that my body was
feeling
luckily i found a chiropractor who
actually helped me with the pain and
once the pain was gone everything went
back to normal but i know that i’m not
the only one who has felt like this
even to this day when i have pain
i become a horrible person and
my better half tanya she’ll be able to
confirm this to be true
that i have no patience i have less
motivation to get up in the morning
and my energy just feels low in general
i know i’m not the only one who feels
like this we all do
and it’s absolutely natural the reason
being that your physical body
is intimately connected with your
emotions and how your mind works
like i said everything is connected even
inside
out the second point that i’m going to
argue
is that the spine is the most important
part of your body
i know i’m a chiropractor so i may be a
little bit biased
but just hear me out for a second on
this one okay so
around 4 to 12 million years ago
humans started to evolve to be able to
walk on two legs
and the difference between us and the
other primates
is that we can do all of our movements
on two legs whether we’re walking or
running
you’ll notice that other animals now
like monkeys
they will actually use their arms to be
able to move more quickly when they’re
running for example
so they’ll do some movements on two legs
but they’ll actually use all four limbs
to be able to do
a lot of their movements too in more
recent history
all of us started off as two
individual cells which found each other
lovingly inside the womb
now those cells started to divide and
multiply
over and over again and eventually after
about nine months
they formed this fantastically complex
and very unique combination of around 37
trillion cells which is what makes you
you
within the first 20 days after
fertilization so after these two cells
have met each other in the womb your
spine your brain and your nervous system
are pretty much fully formed a few days
later is when the heart is actually
going to start beating and working
so yes i would argue that the spinal
column
is actually more important for the human
body than the heart itself
otherwise why would it be there first
back pain
is extremely common even more so in the
last year
in my experience but the numbers don’t
lie
so let me throw some at you now and of
course
different people will experience
different levels of severity of pain
but back pain is the number one leading
cause of disability in the uk
with lower back pain in particular
accounting for around
11 percent of the total disability
population
that costs the economy around 500
million pounds every single year which
yes is your taxpayer money
and one in five people will have to go
and see their doctor every single year
because of some kind of musculoskeletal
problem that number is actually
even higher in the adult working
population
so what this tells me is that it’s
something likely
all of us will have to deal with at some
point so wouldn’t it be much better if
we knew why it was happening so we could
know what to do about it
of course it would so let’s keep this
super simple
i just want you to remember these three
things
number one when it comes to the human
body the structure
is going to determine the function
that’s going to be
from a macro all the way down to a micro
level yes even the
chemistry in your body is going to be
determined by
the mechanics of individual molecules
and atoms fitting together
to create an effect number two
the body is self-healing and
self-correcting
to an extent the other body is
intelligent so it can fix a lot of
things for itself
but there’s also some things which it
can’t fix for itself
and as long as your body is alive it
will try
everything that it can to be able to
better itself
point number three is probably the most
important one so you might actually want
to get out your pen and paper and write
this one down
when it comes to the bone structure of
the body the thing
that you can’t fix for yourself is when
a bone
goes out of place in a direction
that there’s no muscles or combinational
muscles
that can pull that bone to replace it
back
into its optimal position it just makes
logical sense right
there’s two things that we all do every
single day and night
which can potentially put your body in a
bad position
i’m talking about the way that we’re
sitting and the way that we’re sleeping
we do both of these things for about six
to eight hours
every single day so together that makes
up
about two-thirds of your 24-hour day so
it’s very important to be doing these
two things really well
everybody remembers the story of
goldilocks and the three bears right
well
just for a moment i want us to all
forget about
the fact that this young lady was
committing multiple crimes
when she broke into the bears family
home
ate their food used their stuff before
escaping out the window
and fleeing the police resisting arrest
this is how i remember the story she sat
in the first chair which was too hard it
was uncomfortable
and she felt like she had to wiggle
around to get comfy she couldn’t sit
there for long periods of time
she then sat in the second chair which
was too soft and this was uncomfortable
but in a completely different way
she felt like she was slumping she then
sat in the third chair
and it felt just right now
we do actually have a sweet spot when it
comes to sitting
which is going to keep your spine in its
most optimal conditions
maintaining those curves that we talked
about earlier on
and it looks a little bit like this
you’ll notice how
the top of the knee is slightly lower
than
the hip you’ll notice that the pelvis
as a whole is got a slightly forward
tilt to its position that’s what allows
you to maintain the curve in your lower
back
and you’ll also notice that the screen
the top of the screen
is at or slightly above your eye level
sitting like this is going to allow your
body like i said to maintain its natural
curves
so it will stay upright without you
having to try
or put in any effort whatsoever so you
can sit for long periods of time
without having that nagging achy feeling
where it feels like you have to
roll your shoulders like this or try and
stretch out your neck like this
if you’re sitting in a seat which is too
soft the opposite is going to happen
your pelvis is going to tilt backwards
and it’s going to reduce that curve in
your lower back
forcing you into a slump position and
this is ultimately why sitting on your
sofa or sitting on your bed for long
periods of time
is usually going to have you feeling
different and new
aches and stiffness when you stand up so
then goldilocks went to go upstairs to
lie down in bed
i’m assuming that she was tired from all
the trespassing that she was doing i’m
not sure
she slept in the first bed the pillow
was too high
it was uncomfortable for her she
couldn’t get to sleep
she slept in the second bed the pillar
was too low again it was uncomfortable
but in a completely different way
couldn’t get to sleep again then she
went to sleep in the third bed and the
pillow was just the right height
she fell asleep so fast and so deeply
that she was there when the bears got
home
and that’s how they caught her
red-handed before she escaped out the
window
again when it comes to sleeping you’re
looking for that sweet spot
the height of the pillow is going to be
the thing
which allows your spine especially your
neck
to stay in a neutral position now when
your spine is in a neutral position
your nervous system and your brain are
able to relax and
unwind and that’s how you get your nice
deep sleep
if your pillow is too low for you you’ll
notice that your body during the night
will want to roll forwards and it might
stay there for a while
before rolling onto the opposite side
and it might toss and turn throughout
the night throughout those three
different positions if the pillow is too
high
then your body is gonna roll backwards
and yes your body is literally that
intelligent
that is gonna try and fix itself even
when you’re asleep completely
subconsciously to summarize
the most important things is finding the
sweet spot
when you’re sitting and when you’re
sleeping just like goldilocks did
now i know there’s some of you out there
thinking there was a third thing that
goldilocks did
when she ate the porridge of the bears
and maybe we’ll talk about nutrition
next time
thank you