According to one Harvard Business School professor and researcher, Amy Cuddy, your posture makes a big difference to your performance in business. If you cross your arms or legs or slouch to make yourself look small, you’ll literally feel small.

If, however, you pose in ways that make you seem larger — chest out, arms and legs open, relaxed — you’ll get a big boost:

You pose powerfully; you perform better; you feel more confident and powerful; then you perform even better. At the same time, people respond to that confidence and performance boost and give you feedback that further elevates your feelings of confidence and power.

So good posture isn’t just good in the short term, it’s also good in the long term. The more you are able to hold your body comfortably in postures of power, the better you feel mentally and physically, the more you reinforce better performance, and the better you feel mentally and physically!

For those really interested in the nuts and bolts and for a few extra insights, read the rest of the article on posture at Inc. Magazine’s website for more on the details of how posture affects your testosterone and cortisol levels.

So let’s talk about the two main points, see just how wrong her advice is on the second point, and see what information you can use to help keep yourself healthy, happy, and pain free:

1.Sitting is bad for you.

• Yes it is.
• It does bad things to your blood, your brain, and the rest of your body.  Muscles atrophy when you sit, fat deposits in your brain and blood, and you end up feeling like crap. The more you sit, the more you find it hard to do other activities until you get to the point where you can’t do other activities. Move around as much as you can. Gretchen recommends getting up once every twenty minutes and walk around for at least two minutes. That sounds good and is an okay start for most people to start breaking sedentary habits.

2. Stretching is pointless and/or bad for you.

• In her interview, she makes it sound like there’s no point to stretching. She claims that your level of flexibility is genetic and that you can’t do much to change it. She then goes on to talk about how her hamstrings have gotten tighter over the years and that that has made her a faster runner.
• Pause for a moment and think about that. If flexibility were purely genetic, why would her hamstrings get tighter? Could it be because she doesn’t stretch? Ask anyone who’s ever done serious stretching, and they will tell you that they have had to hold stretch positions for at least a minute (if not longer) to really feel like their body responds. And they have to do it on a consistent basis to get long term change. This is a basic reality of stretching. This does NOT mean that stretching does not improve flexibility. It means that the kind of stretching most people are doing doesn’t do much to improve flexibility. I typically have people holding stretches for about a minute, and some stretches go on for several minutes.
• She also makes the point that stretching before athletic activities is counterproductive and claims that doing 30 second stretches actually makes your muscles get defensive. Your brain is tricked into thinking you’re about to tear muscles, so defense mechanisms kick in that reduce your performance potential.
• In some ways, this is true. Short 10-30 second stretches are TOO SHORT to do much good and will make your muscles get defensive. In addition, most people you see stretching usually hold stretches for around 5 – 10 seconds, which is even WORSE than a 30 second stretch. But if you stretch your body properly and address your unique muscle imbalances, you can actually help yourself run, walk, swim, etc. more efficiently and with lower chance of injury because your joints are moving correctly. That means your stretches have to be held long enough to create the proper change you’re looking for, and you need to be doing stretches that actually correct imbalances that you have (as opposed to the multitude of quick stretches that exacerbate most athlete’s issues).  I also talk about this in this video on “When is a good time to stretch?” 

If you haven’t listened to Stand Up, Walk Around, Even Just For ’20 Minutes’, I do encourage you to give it a listen, but make sure you listen between the lines and keep the above points in mind! There’s a lot of rightness in the interview, even if her points on stretching aren’t quite as right as they should be.

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!

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!

According to a growing body of evidence featured in a recent article in the NY Times, acetaminophen may greatly increase the risk of getting asthma.

For instance, a study published in The Lancet in 2008 examined information collected on more than 205,000 children from 31 countries as part of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, known as the Isaac study. The 2008 analysis found that children who had taken acetaminophen for a fever during the first year of life had a 50 percent greater risk of developing asthma symptoms, compared with children who had not taken the drug. The risk rose with increasing use — children who had taken acetaminophen at least once a month had a threefold increase in the risk of asthma symptoms.

A study published by British researchers in 2000 using data from the Isaac study found that the prevalence of asthma increased in lock step with sales of acetaminophen in the 36 countries examined. The more acetaminophen used in a country, the greater that country’s prevalence of asthma.

The causal link hasn’t yet been firmly established, according to the article, but randomized trials are under way to see just how safe acetaminophen really is.

Says one doctor quoted in the article when talking about how to use acetaminophen responsibly:  “We should be reserving paracetamol for very high fevers or for major pain relief,” he said.

If you or someone you know is  using acetaminophen for “major pain relief” to handle a chronic pain issue, you may want to weigh the benefits of short term relief against the possibility of long term breathing issues.

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!

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.

Researchers at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Illinois found that undergraduates who were posed in “expansive” positions — arms extended and one leg casually crossed over the knee — scored higher on variables measuring their sense of power, abstract thinking and willingness to take action than their peers posed in “constricted” positions, with hands under their thighs, dropped shoulders, and feet scrunched together.

via To Nab That Job, Check Your Posture – Health News – Health.com.

That’s right. Physical positions of constriction actually constrict you mentally and emotionally. Your ability to think creatively and take action decisively are hampered by your inability to position your body properly.

This is something you can easily test on yourself. In fact, you’ve probably already tested it on yourself.

If you walk into a room with your shoulders rounded, your head and neck jutting forward, and your tail tucked under, how do you feel? How “in control” do you feel of a situation when you’re in that posture? If you feel out of control and a little fearful, it’s not a coincidence.  In fact, if you are able to adopt a more expansive, powerful posture (and many successful business and salespeople know this), you can change how you feel.

…power poses change functions in the endocrine system. Testosterone levels increased in both men and women, and levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) declined after subjects had been placed in “expansive” body postures…

You can actually position your body for less stress.  How’s that for a cheap stress-reliever? How much of a benefit would that be for you when you’re trying to make a sale or land a promotion? How would it change your life to be able to relax at the end of a long day just by positioning your body properly?

Well, not only does your posture affect how you feel about yourself, it affects how others feel about you.

When you see someone walk into a room in a constricted posture, what is the impression you get of that person? How likely are you to willingly take instructions from someone who looks like they are too balled up to even breathe properly? How likely are you to hire someone who looks like they’re a frightened, wounded animal? Not too likely. And that’s the point this study makes:

…job seekers and frustrated middle managers trying to get ahead during the recession might want to size up their body language before asking for a new position.

Though muscle imbalance might keep your body from speaking the language you want it to, it’s important to remember that you can retrain your body to be able to reduce stress, expand your creative mind, and help you take decisive action.

A fiery lady named Lorna came into my office a few weeks ago at the behest of one of my other clients to see what could be done about her shoulder.

After months of shoulder pain, weeks of PT and promises of surgery, I went to see Matt. After just one session with him I can tell I have found the road to recovery. Matt is very patient and encouraging. After a few more sessions I think I might even be able to challenge him to a hot game of hockey!!!

When Lorna walked in, she was unable to lift her left arm out to the side beyond about 30 to 35 degrees from her body. She physically couldn’t do it. It hurt. She also couldn’t lift her arm out in front of her beyond about 40-50 degrees without pain in the shoulder joint. An MRI by a  doctor showed an old rotator cuff injury which seemed too old to be “fixed” as well as signs of bone spurs within the shoulder joint.

So the doctor told her that if physical therapy didn’t help, she should consider surgery to clear out the bone spurs.  After several weeks of rotator cuff strengthening exercises and some painful attempts to restore ROM, she was no better off than when she had started.

But after one session at Upright Health, Lorna dramatically improved.

What ended up helping Lorna regain her range of motion in her first session with me? Restoring the proper alignment of the rest of Lorna’s body. She had a very strong asymmetry between the left and right sides of her back that was causing her whole torso to rotate. Her ribs were rotated, putting the shoulder blades into an odd position that did not allow for full range of motion.

With a few preliminary exercises to restore some balance to the back muscles, she regained some motion in her shoulder joint, and with a few other stretches, she was able to bring her hand up over her head to point at the sky. And all it took was just over an hour of postural work (versus more than 3 weeks of physical therapy).

So the lesson is that even if an image appears to tell you something, it might not. If medical images were fully, 100% conclusive, the doctor wouldn’t even have bothered telling Lorna to try physical therapy. If the bone spurs had really been the cause of her lack of range of motion, then no amount of rotator cuff strengthening would remove those bone spurs.

The trick was that the lack of range of motion was coming from the twisting in her back — NOT from the bone spurs, and all you needed was your low-tech eyeballs to see the problem!

“In a 1994 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a group of researchers imaged the spinal regions of ninety-eight people who had no back pain or back-related problems. The pictures were then sent to doctors who didn’t know that the patients weren’t in pain. The result was shocking: the doctors reported that two-thirds of these normal patients exhibited “serious problems” such as bulging, protruding, or herniated discs. In 38 percent of these patients, the MRI revealed multiple damaged discs. Nearly 90 percent of these patients exhibited some form of “disc degeneration.” These structural abnormalities are often used to justify surgery, and yet nobody would advocate surgery for people without pain. The study concluded that, in most cases, “the discovery by MRI of bulges or protrusions in people with low back pain may be coincidental.”

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, Page 162-163

There is also this brilliant gem in the same book:

“Forget about your MRI. What it’s showing you is probably not important.” ~Dr. Sean Mackey, Professor of at Stanford School of Medicine and associate director of the hospital’s pain-management division.

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, Page 163