Another study showing that obese patients who got COVID-19 had a worse outcome . COVID-19 has brought to light that the more unhealthy you are the, the worse the outcome will be for you.
Now is the time to get healthy. Start exercising! No matter what you do, it’s better than nothing. Make small changes to our diet and finally start to sleep more. These simple things can help change your life and put you on the road to health. It might not stop you from getting COVID-19 but you’ll be better able to fight off the infection.
American Heart Association analyzed data from patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at 88 US hospitals enrolled in the American Heart Association’s COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry with data collection through July 22, 2020. BMI was stratified by World Health Organization obesity class, with normal weight prespecified as the reference group. They found:
“Obese patients are more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19, and are at higher risk of in-hospital death or mechanical ventilation, in particular, if young (age ≤50 years).” say the study authors. “Obese patients are also at higher risk for venous thromboembolism and dialysis.”
If you need any help with your quest for health, call the office to make an appointment and together we can make a plan to improve your health. Now is the time to start so what’s holding you back? Pain? I can help with that as well!
Lower crossed syndrome is something I see -or a version of it- in almost every lower back patient I treat.
If one muscle is weak another muscle has to do more and becomes over worked. In turn becoming tight and painful.
I’ve heard this about 1,000 times- “I keep stretching muscle ‘x’ but it’s always tight.” Maybe it’s not a stretching problem. It could be a strengthening problem. By strengthening the weak muscles you will help “turn off the overactive muscles”.
I have not had a patient with chronic pain that had strong abdominal muscles. It’s a very common problem.
When the abdominal muscles are inactive and not supporting the spine, while the spinal erectors are pulling the lumbar spine forward, it results in something called hyperlordosis.
This means that the spine in the lower back has an exaggerated curve, which can result in accelerated degeneration of the joints of the spine.
At the same time, the hip flexors are facilitated and are chronically tight while the gluteus muscles are inhibited and have reduced activation.
This leaves the back muscles to do most of the work to extend the spine instead of the gluteus muscles keeping the pelvis level. The muscle of the back are good a stabilization and less effective as a prime mover.
The overuse causes painful and tight muscles.
Treating a patient who has a lower cross syndrome, is three parts:
The one sure thing about Covid-19 is the more unhealthy you are the worse the outcome will be if you get Covid-19.
Fat male stomach
According to the CDC: Adults of any age with certain underlying medical conditions are at increased risk for severe illness from the virus that causes COVID-19. Severe illness from COVID-19 is defined as hospitalization, admission to the ICU, intubation or mechanical ventilation, or death.
91 percent of Covid_19 deaths in Cook County had comorbidities. Comorbidity rate of Cook County victims with COVID-19 listed as primary cause of death, Mar. 16 – Jan. 1 (Wirepoints Source: Cook County Medical Examiner)
It found: “The SARS-Cov-2 infection has become pandemic, overlapping with obesity and its co-morbidities. Obesity and its co-morbidities create an unfavourable inflammatory environment that enhances the risk of severe COVID-19. Therefore, obesity must be recognised as an independent risk factor for COVID-19 severity to better define public health policy and protect susceptible individuals, including specific social distancing measures. These measures can also contribute to preventing collapse of the health care system. Further research should define proper therapeutics for COVID-19, and nutritional therapy is an essential measure for treating COVID-19 in patients with obesity.”
Losing weight and getting healthy-along with the standard practices of social distancing, mask wearing, washing your hands and keeping your hands from your face and mouth- will help you fight Covid-19!
New research has re-affirmed that weakness of one cervical muscle group is closely tied to chronic neck pain. This unit is also implicated as a provocative factor for cervical radiculopathy, cervicogenic headache, and cervicogenic vertigo.
A 2020 JMPT study re-affirmed that weakness of the deep neck flexors is common in cervical radiculopathy patients:
“Current results confirmed the presence of cervical multifidus and longus colli muscle atrophy in subjects with chronic radicular neck pain.” (1)
The deep neck flexors include four muscles that lie behind the trachea on the front of the cervical spine. The group includes the longus colli, longus capitis, rectus capitis, and longus cervicis. Due to their proximity to the spine and their short length, the muscles are primary stabilizers of the cervical spine.
If you’re experiencing neck pain contact the office! We help ease neck pain every day.
Amiri-Arimi S, Bandpei MA, Rezasoltani A, Javanshir K, Biglarian A. Asymmetry of Cervical Multifidus and Longus Colli Muscles Size in Participants With and Without Cervical Radicular Pain. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics. 2020 Mar 1;43(3):206-11.
New research shows that using the legs, particularly in weight-bearing exercise, sends signals to the brain that are vital for the production of healthy neural cells. The groundbreaking study fundamentally alters brain and nervous system medicine — giving doctors new clues as to why patients with motor neuron disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy and other neurological diseases often rapidly decline when their movement becomes limited.
Bottom line here folks: you have to move, you have to load, especially if you have a neurologic disorder and especially if you are declining in age. At the very least, throw some lunges or body weight squats into your day. Walk the stairs, don’t ride the elevator. Move. Lift. Strain.
Sitting all day in front of a computer can negatively effect your health. We sit much more than we have ever done. Sitting can effect your spine by placing pressure on the muscle, tendons, and disc. I see many patients who have pain from sitting in a bad position ( poor posture) all day.
Another way sitting effects our health is through muscle activity. When we sit our muscles turn off because the body is at rest. This leads to reduced muscle metabolism. This effects lipid (fats) and glucose metabolism and blood flow. Muscle required glucose and lipids to work.
Human physiology is not well adapted to prolonged periods of inactivity, with time spent sitting increasing cardiovascular disease and mortality risk. Health risks from sitting are generally linked with reduced levels of muscle contractions.
Standing some part of the day will help improve our health. When you stand it requires some muscle activation(contraction). Higher levels of muscle activation can improve your health.
In short, sitting all day can cause you to have poor posture and increase your risk of diabetes and heart disease.
A new study that looked at 216 people with COVID-19 found that 80 percent didn’t have adequate levels of vitamin D in their blood.
The study also found that people who had both COVID-19 and lower vitamin D levels also had a higher number of inflammatory markers such as ferritin and D-dimer, which have been linked to poor COVID-19 outcomes.
A different study found that COVID-19 patients who had adequate vitamin D levels had a 51.5 percent lower risk of dying from the disease and a significant reduced risk for complications.
Medical experts theorize that maintaining adequate vitamin D levels may help lower risk or aid recovery from severe COVID-19 for some people, though more testing is needed.
A Little Information about Vitamin D.
The major natural source of the vitamin D is synthesis of cholecalciferol (precursor to Vitamin D) in the lower layers of skin epidermis through a chemical reaction that is dependent on the SUN. Cholecalciferol is then convert to the active form of Vitamin D.
Did you know that Vitamin D is a hormone and not a vitamin. Hormones are chemicals that the body produces to control how the body is functioning. Hormone are signaling molecules that can turn on and off cells and organs .
Vitamin D is a hormone that controls blood calcium concentration and impacts the immune system. Many studies point to the beneficial effect of vitamin D on the immune system, especially regarding protection against infections.
Robust evidence suggests that vitamin D is protective against respiratory tract infections. Data from 25 randomized controlled trials from around the world demonstrate that daily or weekly supplementation of vitamin D reduced the risk of acute respiratory infection by more than 50 percent in people with low baseline vitamin D levels.
Low vitamin D levels have been associated with an increase in inflammation and can increased risk of pneumonia and viral upper respiratory tract infections. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increase in thrombotic episodes, which are frequently observed in COVID-19.
Having your Vitamin D levels tested is not a bad Idea. This way you wont be guessing on your levels. Once you know your levels it will give you a better understanding if you need to supplement with Vitamin D.
I love when a study confirms what I’ve been telling patients. I recommend fish oils to most of my patients.
This study confirms the importance of fish oils. A meta-analysis of 40 clinical trials found that supplementation with fish oil is associated with a 35% reduced risk of fatal heart attacks, a 13% reduced risk of heart attacks, and a 9% reduced risk of fatal coronary heart disease.
Specifically, the study found that EPA+DHA supplementation is associated with a statistically significant reduced risk of:
The study found that cardiovascular benefits appear to increase with dosage. The data showed that adding an extra 1000 mg of EPA and DHA per day decreased the risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attack even more. For example, the risk of cardiovascular disease events decreased by an additional 5.8% and the risk for heart attack decreased by an additional 9%.
Continue to take your fish oils supplement or even increase the dosage. It might help save your life!
If you have questions on where to begin, please call the office. Not only can Dr. Steve get you on the right track with supplements but we have them for sale.
The following information is from a great book meant for the non-physician to help resolve their own back problems. The book is by Stuart McGill PhD and is called “Back Mechanic: The Secrets to a Healthy Spine Your Doctor Isn’t Telling You.”
I highly recommend the book if you have suffered or are suffering from low back pain. The end goal is to remove the stressors and spare your spine with proper movement and strengthening exercises.
“Many back pain sufferers would experience a huge breakthrough in their recovery if they only realized that is was their flawed movement patterns that kept them pain-sensitive. Much like a scab forming on our skin, our backs are constantly trying to patch and health themselves. We, however, by continuing to repeat harmful movement patterns in our daily lives cause re-injury. We are essentially “picking the scab.” It is unreasonable to expect the body to heal if we continue to provoke it in the same way that led to the original injury. Continued provocation of pain sensitizes the nerves so that the pain is triggered with even less stimulation. Remove the provocative motions and we can find the solution.
Here’s how pain sensitivity works: people increase their sensitivity through repeated stressful and painful loading. These muscles and joints are loaded with sensors: pain sensors, pressure sensors, force sensors, chemical sensors. Some detect carbon dioxide; some detect pain, some sense histamine for inflammation. Human joints are packed with sensors that relay position and movement information to the brain. These signals travel along the sensory nerves. Along the highway of nerves, there are checkpoints or “gates,” at junctions. According to the Gate Theory of Pain, the idea is, to flood the checkpoint with “good information,” in other words, signals associated with pain-free movement. In this way, there is no more room for the pain signals as they are crowded out.
Try this: close your eyes and find the tip of your nose with your finger like in a roadside sobriety test. You are using kinesthetic sensory organs that run throughout your arm to navigate. These sensors alert the brain as to the position of your forefinger in relation to your nose. The sensation of this simple pain-free motion dominates the information traffic on your sensory nerves with feel-good kinesthetic sensory information that identifies position, length, and force. Finding and repeating pain-free motions in your back will cause the remaining painful activities to hurt less. Read the previous sentence again – it really is that important.
By discovering and engraining positive movements for your back, you will find that the pain often dissipates and then disappears entirely. This is because when we remove pain triggers and stop “picking the scab” we give our tissues a chance to rest, heal and regenerate. Simultaneously our sensors for pain are actually being desensitized. Master this, and you have mastered your back pain.
For those of you that have a known type of injury, a name to attach to your condition, your personal recovery strategy should always begin with avoiding the aggravating posture for your unique spine is key to getting yourself back on track.
Various symptoms of back pain have a distinct and known cause (although this information is not widely known making this book uniquely valuable). Injuries can be avoided if we avoid the injury mechanism itself. Here’s a recap of some pain avoidance strategies, as well as an introduction of some that will be discussed later. The knowledge in this chapter will provide the foundation that will help you:
Locate and eliminate the cause of your pain- get an appropriate assessment that provides a specific diagnosis ( you will be able to obtain your own by reading chapter 6).
Increase your consciousness around what movements and postures cause you pain.
Develop replacement postures and movement patters that enable you to function pain-free.
Stabilize your torso, core, and spine to remove painful spine joint micro-movements.
Develop a daily exercise plan that includes walking.
Mobilize your hips
Learn to create power at the ball and socket joints (hips and shoulders).
Learn exercises that are based on patters of movement: push, pull, lift, carry, lunge, squat, etc.
Make healthy spine choices when sleeping, sitting, or engaging in more demanding activities.
You’re on your way to learning the secrets of a pain-free lifestyle! Let’s make it happen!”
Decreased sleep duration is associated with obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease
Controlled laboratory studies have shown that decreased quantity and quality of sleep negatively affects glucose regulation and alters food intake and energy balance.
Experimental sleep restriction alone or in combination with misalignment, and decreases in sleep quality negatively affect glucose regulation. Sleep curtailment alters energy expenditure, weight regulation, gene-expression, and inflammatory cytokine levels.
Below is a cool chart from the study. It’s amazing what a lack of sleep can effect.
this image is from the study.
Besides eating right, exercising and chiropractic care, getting 7-9 hours of sleep a night is necessary for a healthy life style.
