Everyone recognizes exercise as a way to improve health and lose weight, but few people realize how important it is to ensure that their bodies are well prepared for it. Failure to do so will allow undetected limitations to cause chronic pain and injury. For this reason, it’s critically important to assess your capacity to exercise safely and address any identified limitations before they lead to significant problems.

Chances are that you have at least one physical limitations that you’re not aware of, and if you choose to exercise without identifying and correcting it, you may very well end up with one of today’s many common complaints and end up worse off physically than if you never exercised at all. Such complaints include pinched nerves or bulging discs in the neck or lower back, tendinitis or bursitis of the knee, hip, shoulder, or elbow, and more generally, an increased risk of chronic pain and acute injury. By making an effort to assess physical characteristics such as your posture, range of motion, and balance of strength, and by including corrective measures in your exercise routine to improve any identified limitations, you’ll greatly increase your resistance to pain and injury and improve your physical function.

(more…)

Is your quality of life being limited by chronic knee pain? If not, wouldn’t you like to reduce the possibility of this limitation? In either case, the information below will help you build strong knees that are resistant to pain and injury.

I dealt with the frustrations of chronic knee pain for about 4 years and sought the help of several specialists without making much progress. This is unfortunately a familiar case for many people. I knew that I must have been doing something to cause the pain and realized that the only way to truly resolve the problem was to figure out what it was.

After finally getting closer to the root of the problem, I made significant improvements and am now able to climb stairs, walk long distances, exercise, and play tennis without knee pain. It’s very satisfying to say the least and I hope that the proceeding information will help you achieve similar results.

(more…)

Despite how much we depend on our feet every day, few of us give much thought to their complexity or importance. Nearly everything we do involves some form of walking or running and it’s our feet that are responsible for absorbing the resulting ground impact and keeping us upright. Ironically, the shoes we wear to protect our feet inhibit their natural function, and in turn, can promote muscle and joint problems throughout the body.

Our Amazing Feet

The foot contains more than 20 bones, 30 joints, 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments, and 200,000 nerve endings. In fact, the feet contain a quarter of the bones in the human body, and as such, deserve more of our attention.

(more…)

Many people who have desk jobs spend a large majority of their day sitting. This is major factor in the pain related disorders that are so common today.

Posture is Important

There are hundreds of muscles in the human body. Most of them are connected to joints and are arranged in ways that oppose each other. This is what enables a joint to move back and forth in opposite directions. Poor posture promotes imbalance among these muscles and causes uneven tension on joints that often leads to painful problems.

(more…)

Television commercials can be downright deceptive and literally bad for your health. Enormous amounts of money are spent on ad campaigns with one purpose in mind – getting you to spend money. Serious effort is put forth to make these ads connect with you emotionally, and in many cases, the connection is harming you.

I rarely watch television, but as a big tennis fan, I’ve been watching the Australian Open. The deceptive marketing power behind the commercials I’ve been seeing is sickening. In just the past week, I’ve seen repeats of three misleading drug commercials for the same product – Bayer Aspirin.

(more…)

I’m sure you know exercise is good for you, but do you know why?

Most people have a vague idea but aren’t entirely sure. It doesn’t take much thought to realize exercise was a major part of our evolution, and as such, it makes sense that it’s an important aspect of our health and well being. Just like most animals, we had to hunt for food, defend ourselves, and flee from danger. The levels of fitness and skill that these activities required are comparable to those of a well trained modern day athlete.

(more…)

If you’re frustrated by joint or muscle pain that you can’t seem to get rid of, I have a possible solution for you that just may get rid of it for good. Nearly everyone experiences chronic pain at some point in there life and conditions such as tendinitis, bursitis, and arthritis are often given blame when the cause is really nothing more than a muscle knot. Most people are told to take pain killers, rest, or even do physical therapy, but the pain often persists. In some extreme cases, the misdiagnosis even leads to surgery that isn’t needed.

As shocking as that may sound, we all have some level of joint damage, and if you go to a doctor with a painful shoulder, knee, or back, chances are they’ll find some damage and recommend surgery. However, depending on your level of damage, there are likely to be many people functioning extremely well and pain free with the same amount of damage. While surgery is sometimes necessary and can make significant improvements to your life, it’s also performed a lot more than it needs to be and can make your life a lot worse.

(more…)