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Anterior Dominance

3/16/2016

1 Comment

 
Adam Milligan, President EQUIVITA

Chances are that if you are reading this then you have an anterior dominant posture. It's not your fault. Well, that's not really true, but it is true that you can do something about it. First though you might want to understand why you should care.

Put simply, the anterior dominant posture is the position where your shoulders are rounded forward. The cause of this position can be an imbalance in muscle strength, tightness, protection, ischemia, weakness, laziness or social acceptance. The cause is important for understanding how to best address the posture and is best determined individually, and the impacts to the body from the position are important for finding the reason why you should place the value necessary to making a difference to the posture.
​

To the neck:
When your shoulders are rounded forward more of your body weight of the upper body is pulling your head forward. If you allow your head to go with that pull then your muscles have to work a bit harder but there is not the increased tension in the neck until you raise your eyes, but looking down at the ground all the time makes it a challenge to interact with life. Keeping the eyes level with the horizon is one of the primary physical goals and to attain this position with your shoulders forward requires the neck and upper back to make some potentially drastic adaptations all of which can be summed into increased stress, tension and progressive degenerative changes.
 
To the lower back:
To counter the forward weight of your upper body in the anterior dominant posture your body will find a way to lessen the amount that the muscles have to work by placing greater amount of your weight onto the discs in your spine. In appearance the lower back in this position is flat rather than having a natural curve and the butt is tucked under. Over time this adaptation progresses from a straight/flat back to one that looks more like the letter C from the side. Again, the progressive physical changes in the spine are placing greater stress to the discs between the vertebrae which can lead to bulging or herniating them.
 
To the shoulders:
Regardless of the impacts to the rest of the body the rounded shoulder position can have negative consequences to the shoulder joint and its many muscles and soft tissues. To simplify, imagine that you are threading a needle but as you are pulling the thread through the hole in the needle gets smaller and smaller. As the space for the thread gets smaller it will become harder to pull the thread and as you continue to pull the thread will begin to fray. The space is just not large enough. This is a very simplified attempt to explain what happens to the rotator cuff muscles in the anterior dominant position. There are other tissues around the shoulder joint that also can be damaged in this position, but the rotator cuff surgical repair is so common it makes a good example.
 
As hopefully is clear from these simplified examples, the rounded shoulders posture can be the cause of many degenerative conditions of the body - conditions that sometimes are misidentified as having a cause other than biomechanics. Remember that orthopedic injuries can be categorized into one of four categories: abuse, disuse, misuse or trauma; and of these trauma is the only one that is not biomechanics in cause.
 
Understanding the role that your posture and biomechanics has in your health provides you with the knowledge to be able to choose different. This is not to imply that it is easy, just that it is within your power.
 
As always, let me know how I can help.
 
Adam
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BMI: Not the Right Tool for Any Job    

3/15/2016

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by Christopher Yeoman, Transitional Fitness Trainer

The Body Mass Index or "BMI" was devised by Adolph Quetelet and developed between 1830 and 1850. Mr. Quetlet was developing a field he called Social Physics, which would eventually develop into Sociology. The ratio of human body weight to squared height was explicitly argued to be appropriate for overall population study of general thickness. Even in its infancy, it was not meant for individual assessment of health - a fact then echoed by Ancel Keys years later (1972) in his paper Journal of Chronic Diseases.  
The BMI is used these days by health, medical, and insurers' actuary tables to determine if a person is at a healthy weight: 20-25 good, 25-30 overweight, 30+ obese. These numbers get subtle fudging to have the formula apply to all ages and sexes; placing them on a statistical chart of overall health even when this was not its intended purpose.
This once simply fictional formula of health evaluation is going to start costing some incredibly real dollars for many individuals. The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has proposed rules allowing employers to penalize their employees up to 30% of health insurance costs should they fail to meet "Health" criteria such as reaching a specific BMI.  Companies such as CVS Caremark already have "carrot or stick" policies that unfairly single out those who do not meet the BMI standard. Those who do not submit their BMI along with other information can face penalties up to $600.00 in addition to being charged higher health care premiums.  
In a released statement CVS had this to say about its current policies: "To encourage a higher level of participation in our wellness review, we reviewed best practices and determined that an additional cost for those who do not complete the review was the most effective way to incent our colleagues to improve their health care and manage health costs."
However, a new study at UCLA and published in the International Journal of Obesity is a direct response to measures taken by companies like CVS and the proposed rule changes by the EOCC. It has shown that using the BMI to gauge health incorrectly classifies more than 74 million Americans as "unhealthy" when placed into their BMI category.
UCLA researchers are led by Dr. Janet Tomiyama, who directs UCLA's Dieting, Stress and Health laboratory. Dr. Tomiayma has led numerous other studies and has found in previous research that there was no clear connection between weight loss and health improvements related to hypertension, diabetes, and cholesterol and blood glucose levels.
This current study evaluated over all metabolic health using markers such as blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol, and insulin resistance; then broke down the metabolically healthy and unhealthy individuals into their BMI stratification. 47% of the overweight individuals were metabolically healthy.  29% of the obese subjects were metabolically healthy and would be unlikely to incur higher medical expenses. These among other findings. 
​

More than 30% (20.7 Million) of normal weight individuals are actually unhealthy based upon other health data.

More than 2 million individuals of obesity type II/III individuals are actually metabolically healthy.
​

"There are healthy people who could be penalized based on a faulty health measure, while the unhealthy people of normal weight will fly under the radar and won't get charged more for their health insurance," said Dr. Tomiyama. She added that employers, policy makers, and insurance companies should focus on "actual health markers."
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What's Your Why?

3/11/2016

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By Carla Fox, Transitional Fitness Trainer & Yoga Teacher

In his most recent blog post, Transitional Fitness Trainer, Drew wrote about considering the things that help us stay on course in our fitness plans. I’ve been mulling that over, and put together some thoughts that sparked curiosity in the ongoing exploration of motivation and adherence.


There exists a yoga practice for which you get up at 4am to meditate and do yoga. It’s called Sadhana, which translates to Daily Spiritual Practice. When you actually do it, it is awesome. Here’s the thing, a lot of the time, when 4 am rolls around, you think, “Naaahhhhhh, tomorrow is really a better day to do that.” Or “I have so many other things to do today. If I do this now, it will make me so tired.” One of my elder teachers reminded us that at his age, he has slept through more Sadhanas than we’d ever had opportunity to do, so to ease up on the self pressure. One of my other teachers reminded us that you’re a different person when you wake up to your alarm in the morning than you were when you decided last night to get up at 4am to do yoga. The person who crawled in bed excited to move and meditate is long gone. They were both right.

Do you remember that Nike commercial from a few years back? It was titled “Pillow Talk”; a woman is getting out of bed before six AM and her pillow and blanket speak to her seductively (a la Barry White) about how soft and comfy they are. As she puts her feet on the floor and picks up her running shoes, they remind her she had a salad last night, “Baby, you don’t need to run, you had a salad last night. A salad!” And off she goes, running.

What makes you choose your course? What makes you wake up and want to be the person who had those ambitions last night. What’s your Why, and are you willing to continue choosing it again and again? Don’t worry if it’s vain or you think it’s dumb, that just doesn’t matter. In the moment you decide to get out of bed to run, or whatever your current wellness commitment is, it doesn’t matter if you’re driven by fear, love, accountability to another, integrity, belonging… doesn’t matter if your reason is physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or social. If it’s YOUR reason, it is more likely it will work.

We could simplify this and draw a connection to other things we do all the time. What makes you brush your teeth? Might get skipped from time to time, but certainly not for long periods of time. For all sorts of reasons. Breath, not wanting dental work, getting to keep one’s teeth. Fitness? Same thing.

I don’t know what the Nike woman’s Why is. Mine works out to be that whether it’s my daily spiritual practice or my lifting schedule, these are the things that empower me to feel like myself the way I truly enjoy feeling. There are gaps, sometimes longer ones than I like, but I always consciously choose it again. Which is a special empowerment all its own, like coming home to what is mine.

There are little mental tricks, think about what you like that is adjacent to your fitness plan. Is it the new shoes? Is it the coffee you have afterwards? Is it that you enjoy the company of the other people in the gym? Is it that you like the way things burn when you work them? Is it that you like to find your edge? Now, cling to those things and your Why with all your might and inspire your ass to do the things you know you need to do. Your longest term relationship is with yourself. It sounds like a platitude, and it’s also true. What you choose to do for yourself in the realm of fitness are some of the things that help keep that a thriving relationship.

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    EQUIVITA

    This blog is written and updated by the staff that support EQUIVITA. Individual blog posts are the thoughts of the staff member that submitted the post.  The content of these posts often support the thoughts and ideas of our organization, but do not always(and we scarcely use definitives) reflect the same thoughts or ideas of the organization as a whole.

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