From the article:

“Posture is really important in how it affects a golf swing,” said Dr Bridge.

“If you are sitting at a desk all day using a computer and a mouse, then your muscles and body get used sitting down, so it will have an effect on your golf swing if you go and play nine holes after work.

“It’s the same for younger players who play on computer games as their arms are locked and tight as a result.

“Posture really impacts on how you swing the golf club…”

Specific, careful training is everything. If you spend 10 hours a day, 5 days a week sitting at a desk and spend only 4 hours tottering around the golf course, is it any wonder you feel like you get worse at golf with every passing year? You’ve got to keep your muscles balanced for activities besides sitting at a desk!

When muscles in the front of your body are too tight and short, you slump and slouch.  When muscles on the right half of your body are too weak to do their jobs, you tend to slant to the left. If muscles of the back of your shoulders and neck don’t do their jobs, you end up with shoulders hiked up to your ears and a head that juts forward.

A quick assessment of your own posture gives you immediate clues to how balanced your muscles are functioning. One shoulder high? One shoulder low? Hips twisted? Head forward? It can be corrected.

You just have to take the time to do it.

Since opening Upright Health in San Diego in 2009, I’ve noticed a number of San Diego’s medical personnel coming through the doors. It seems like age and specialty don’t really matter. I’ve seen internists, med students, x-ray techs, nurses, laproscopic surgeons, cadiovascular perfusionists, radiation oncologists, physical therapists and executive level officers come in looking for ways to improve their posture and beat their pain.

For example, the surgeons often have asymmetries related to the positions they sit in for 6 hours at a time and the attendant shoulder/neck/back strain, and the docs and nurses have ailments running the gamut from shoulder/neck/back strain to knee, hip, and ankle pain and instability from sitting, standing, or running around for twelve hour marathon shifts. Often, they’ve already gone through various other treatments to try to nix their pain, but they keep coming back to the idea that their muscles are just not balanced properly from all the repetitive motions they’re doing. It just feels like the right answer!

There’s just one hitch. The medical world operates relies on evidence-based decisions (which is a good thing!), so it’s quite common for an idea as elegantly simple and unique as “fix the posture and fix the pain” to elicit a little skepticism. Sometimes they find it hard to believe that the answer that feels right is right.  Since posture alignment specialists like me don’t have any double-blind placebo studies or large scale prospective studies to point to, making the leap to come in to Upright Health can be a bit daunting.

Part of the problem is that proper scientific research is both difficult to organize and extremely expensive to do right.  Since there are so few of us out there, it’s tough to get a large scale study going that would be of any scientific validity. But what we can do is share anecdotes and case studies to help shed a little light on what we do so that people can get a sense of how sensible, logical, and to the point posture alignment therapy is. Obviously this isn’t the highest level of scientific validity, but it’ll have to do for now until someone wants to help setup and fund a study!

Until that happens, I wanted to share one of my clients’ stories (name has been anonymized for privacy):

With my training as a nurse, I’ve always been a bit skeptical of “alternative therapies.” So, when I began experiencing walking/gait issues, impacting my ability to hike, row, swim, bike and get around, I went the traditional route with scans, physical therapy, and offers of muscle relaxants and pain medications (I didn’t pursue the drugs). They didn’t work. By the time I hobbled to my 1st appointment with Matt, I was walking with a cane and sleeping at night in one position, propped by 10 pillows.Quite honestly, the visit to Matt was out of desperation because I was willing to try anything to regain my independence.

After my 1st session, I was cane-free. About 5 weeks later, I was back in my scull and rowing again…hiking and swimming, too. This is the absolute truth and not a “paid promotional.”

I’ve never written a testimonial before and I never thought I’d be endorsing something outside of mainstream medicine. But, I believe in Matt…I’ve experienced the results 1st hand. Plus, the approach at Upright Health is different than what’s offered elsewhere in the community and the right one, if you consider physiology.

If you’re reading this testimonial, it’s probably because you’re not sure what to do and/or you’re willing to try anything at this point. I encourage you to make the call. The results are real. You can trust Matt. I’ve shared his contact information with physicians I know so they can refer their patients. If you continue to have hesitations, all I can say is it’s a “Nike thing”…….”Just do it.” You won’t regret it.”

DB, Healthcare Executive

Share this story with a doctor, surgeon, nurse, technician or med student (did I miss anyone?) you know who’s hurting. They need to hear that posture does matter and that some well-done analysis on how to retrain the body can make a huge difference!

With that in mind, one mental technique I use for myself and with clients is one that I’m sure has a fancy name in sports psychology (but I don’t know what it is).  So let’s call it the “mental rewind technique that helps you keep making progress in everything you do.” Or maybe just “mental rewind” for short.

I saw a client the other day who I started working with almost exactly a year ago. She’s been exceptionally busy over the last year spearheading the turnaround of a large organization, but she’s managed to spend long days in high heels running from meeting to meeting, monitoring situations and putting out fires. She’s got a little bit of discomfort now and then, but she manages to keep at her very important work with minimal complaints from her body now. That may sound like nothing special, but it is/was a big deal to her when we took a moment to use the “mental rewind.”

One year ago, she was hobbling with the assistance of a cane, and wearing heels of ANY height spelled absolute physical doom.

Think she’s motivated to keep moving her body in the right direction now that she sees how far she’s come? Yup!

When I use the mental rewind for myself, I often think back to when I was 25 and found I could not wear hockey skates anymore.  No matter what kinds of insoles I used, no matter how tightly I tied my laces, no matter if I tried a different pair of skates, skates would kill my ankles and feel miserable for my arches. My feet and ankles hurt pretty much all day no matter what kinds of shoes I wore, so it was not all that surprising that my skates would be so painful.

What is surprising is that at 30, I now wear skates several hours every week on the ice without any pain in my feet or ankles (except for the friction callouses that all hockey players know!).

Am I motivated to keep pushing my body to higher and higher heights? You bet!

No matter what you’re doing, it can be helpful to pause, reflect on how far you’ve come, and celebrate the victories you’ve already won by doing whatever it is you’re doing. Use the “mental rewind” when you feel like you’re hitting a block, and use your victories as the wind in your sails! Ask yourself:

• Am I better off now than I was [6 months ago, 1 year ago, 2 years ago, 5 years ago]? AND/OR
• What can I do now that I couldn’t before?

If you’d like to share an inspiring “mental rewind,” post it below in the comments! It’s an open invitation to all those who are fighting against pain or pushing toward some other special goal: what can you do today that you couldn’t before?

These days, it doesn’t seem that way at all. At least not to me.  I’ve seen countless people in their 20s and 30s come in the door with major balance issues. And I’ve had people in their 70s come in with fabulous balance. So I don’t think it has so much to do with age as it does with something one 75-year-old client has taught me.

The older you get, the more you have to do to maintain your body.  

And it’s not JUST because you’re getting older. It’s because our lives have also gotten more sedentary. We sit and sit and sit and don’t realize what an effect it has on our bodies. Luckily, we’re starting to wake up to the problem and acknowledge that it is a problem. So you have age, which means you gotta do more to keep your body feeling good, AND you have your lifestyle working against you.

So what’s the way to combat worsening balance? Well, you can’t reverse time (there’s not an app for that yet), but you can do one thing that will help you FEEL younger.

Move! Move your body intelligently and in ways that re-awaken the right muscles the right way. That doesn’t mean you should end your workday by doing a five hundred pound leg press. It means challenging your body gently and effectively constantly.

One quick thing you can do after a long period of sitting is balance on one leg. Just get out of your chair, stand near a wall or desk, then pick up one leg and try to balance for a minute. Switch legs. See what happens. It’s not as easy as it sounds. You may find you can’t even do it for 15 seconds.  You’ll also find that it’s going to be MUCH harder at the end of a long period of sitting since the hip stabilizers often get shut down by long periods of sitting.  This little exercise throughout the day can help improve your balance and reawaken some of those poor hip muscles that you squash all day long in your office chair. Give it a shot and see what happens! As your body’s balance improves you’ll be surprised at how much younger you start to feel.

We recently posted a link on our Upright Health Facebook Page to an article in Proto Magazine, Osteoarthritis: Why Joints Fail, that discusses the modern research being done that shows that, contrary to popular belief, it’s not the running that’s doing you in.

Several studies have found that a lifetime of running—a perfect test for the “wear and tear” theory of osteoarthritis—doesn’t increase risk for the condition. In the most recent, published in 2008, researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine began tracking the health of 45 long-distance runners (average age: 58) in 1984. Nearly 20 years later, X-rays showed their joints were unaffected. “We can find no evidence whatsoever that there’s an increase in knee destruction in people who run for thousands and thousands of miles,” says study co-author James Fries, professor emeritus of immunology and rheumatology.

The rest of the article talks about various different avenues that are under investigation for the biochemical causes of osteoarthritis if you’d like to read it, but the big takeaway is this: running is not the villain. If you find running to be tough on your joints, don’t blame the activity itself.

As someone who used to be unable to walk down stairs without sharp pinching pain in my knee, let me tell you this: figure out what your body is trying to tell you and then address the problem carefully and logically!

The arrow points to Maryann's left hip where damage was being done to the cartilage. The top line provides reference so you can see how far off her hips were misaligned.

In May of 2006, I had a breast augmentation procedure done. I was 25 at the time, and I had long been self-conscious about my breast size.  The surgery went off without a hitch, and I was happy with this “better” version of myself. I have always been active and athletic, so I went right back into my exercise routine as soon as I could.

In July, only two months later, I sprained my foot jumping rope. A few months later, in November, I started to get pain in my knee, and at the base of my spine at the sacroiliac joint.  At the time, I didn’t see the pattern to what was happening. I just thought I was getting old.  I was getting lots of injuries that weren’t going away, so I just took it easy, hoping rest would make the pain go away. Eventually, in the winter of 2007, I went to try this thing called Posture Alignment Therapy to try to help get rid of the pain. The process was eye-opening. My attention was drawn to the imbalances in my body that hadn’t been there before (a hunched back, uneven shoulders, and a severe twist to the left through my whole body). I learned exercises that helped me stand up straighter and seemed to relieve some of my back and sacroiliac pain, but the relief never lasted very long. The pain started building up, and I had to take long breaks from surfing and running.

Then, in November of 2008 when I was on one of my usual runs, I was about six blocks from my house when my pelvis suddenly felt like it had slipped or dislocated. Thinking it was just a minor muscle pull, I stretched it out and pushed on with my run. After that run, my hip did not get better.

In January of 2009, I tried Egoscue again. Over the next several months, despite the postural exercises I was doing and the total break I was taking from all the running and surfing that I loved, my hip got worse.
By August of 2009, I was 27 years old, and I was in a wheel chair.

The next eight months of my life were filled with visits to every doctor and health practitioner imaginable.  I consulted with over 30 healthcare professionals including medical doctors, surgeons around the country, chiropractors, physical therapists, acupuncturists, and spiritual healers.  I had multiple X-rays, MRIs, CT scans and bone scans performed on my hip as well as other parts of my body.  In a desperate attempt to treat the pain I underwent injections and tried many different combinations of pain killers and drugs. All to no avail.

In January of 2010, I finally got a diagnosis: Femoral Acetabular Impingement with a labral tear. The bones of my hip were rubbing against each other, tearing the cartilage. This was not what I wanted to hear. What I wanted to hear was why my hip joint was grinding itself away, but the doctors weren’t interested in answering that question. They recommended I try surgery, though there were no guarantees that it would work.

Desperate for an end to the pain, I went in for hip arthroscopy in Los Angeles with one of only a few specialists in the country who could perform the procedure.

The surgeon repaired the cartilage and reshaped the hip socket and femur so that they would not rub anymore. Within a month, however, I was back in a wheelchair.

This was the lowest point I had ever been in. The doctors were completely unable to help me, even with this surgery.

At this point I started thinking seriously again about what I’d seen happen to my body since the implants. My body had started to rotate. My upper back had gone into an extreme hunch. My left hip had elevated. In my gut, I knew that these things had all started after the breast augmentation. The doctors I consulted weren’t on board with my theory, but I pressed ahead with what my gut told me was wrong and had my breast implants removed in April of 2010.

I continued to do my postural exercises, and within 2 months, my hip pain was gone and I was back to enjoying my life.

I battled chronic pain, and rapidly deteriorating posture and physical health, and I came out on top.  As a result, I have a unique insight and understanding of what it is like to deal with pain, physical limitations, and the devastating mental and emotional impact it can have on a person’s life.  I have dedicated my professional career to helping people who want to be proactive about addressing the underlying cause of their pain or physical limitations.   After recovering fully, and getting certified through Egoscue University as a Posture Alignment Specialist, today I am able to help people get out of pain using this unique form of exercise therapy.

From the New York Times:

…Dr. Fu told him his ligament was not torn after all. His pain was from a fracture in a long bone in the lower leg that the other doctors had also noticed was broken. An M.R.I. at the University of Pittsburgh confirmed it, showing a perfectly normal A.C.L. (Dr. Fu adds that Mr. Ganobcik’s original scans had an image that was ambiguous. He wanted a better one, to see if Mr. Ganobcik’s ligament had been partly torn and was healing or had never been torn at all. He would not need surgery with a partial tear, but he would need more careful recuperation.)

Two scans. Three doctors. Two doctors convinced he had an ACL tear and only one who figured out with physical examination that a full ACL tear was impossible. Careful rehab was all that was needed.

Another doctor, James Andrews in Gulf Breeze, Florida, has also noticed instances of the unreliability of MRI’s like this in his practice as well, and decided to test the reliability of MRI’s by taking 31 healthy, asymptomatic professional baseball pitchers. None of the pitchers had reported any shoulder pain whatsoever. None.

But the M.R.I.’s found abnormal shoulder cartilage in 90 percent of them and abnormal rotator cuff tendons in 87 percent. “If you want an excuse to operate on a pitcher’s throwing shoulder, just get an M.R.I.,” Dr. Andrews says.

Neither of doctors suggest that MRI’s are not medically useful for serious situations, it’s that they are overused and overtrusted. Just like studies that have shown that MRI’s are not reliable for finding the cause of back pain, Dr. Andrews’ study and Dr. Fu’s experience show that MRI’s are not reliable for figuring out what’s wrong when a shoulder hurts.

This should provide some solace for those out there who think an MRI can tell you why you experience pain. The results are in: they don’t.

Read the full New York Times article to read about another study on MRI’s and find out what makes doctors use MRI’s even when they know they don’t need them.

“How did you end up doing this, Matt?”

Watch this video and find out!

Special thanks to Angelo Arias, Scooter Vaughan, and Adam Hout for their camera work and shooting assistance on the ice!

Hi Matt,

Just got back from England last night. Two trans-atlantic flights, miles and miles and miles of walking, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, away from my tower (a therapy device she now owns): I did absolutely fantastic!!

I only had 2 minor episodes of achey back. The first one was our second day in Paris. Our tour to Versailles was canceled due to a strike, so we found ourselves alone in Paris for 12 hours on foot. My back was a little achey, so we stopped along the Seine and I did air bench (an exercise she learned while coming to Upright Health) against a building. The street was deserted due to it being Bastille Day. Feet slipped out from under me and I was on my butt! Tried an area where there was more traction, and my back was fine in under 2 minutes. Another day I had some minor discomfort but again, the air bench worked in just a couple of minutes. Thanks for teaching me how to take care of myself! I hope all is well with you!

~Syl

Stories like this make my day!