Why sitting is so bad for you: the neurology in a nutshell

By Dr. Paul Rankin

Recently I have been asked repeatedly why sitting is so bad for you.  Most people seem to think its a problem of conditioning or of cardiovascular health.  And while sitting does no doubt  impact on your fitness, what sitting really does is impact your brain.

Here is a quick and simplified explaination that I use in clinic with my patients.

First, most of the input to our brain comes from the joints and muscles of our bodies.  This input is increased greatly when we stand and weight bear.

Second, standing upright is an active process.  That is every second of standing occurs because our brains are overriding underlying primitive reflexes that made us flex forward while we were developing.  Think the fetal position.

Third, our ‘automatic’ nervous system is divided into two parts.  The sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.  The sympathetic system operates under stressful times.  It turns off our digestion, growth, elimination and repair functions, and tuns on our muscles, cardiac and respiratory systems.  It gets us ready to run or punch.  Think fight or flight.  Our parasympathetic system does the opposite.  It is responsible for repair, digestion, and elimination.  We should be operating in a parasympathetic way 80% of the time and in a sympathetic way 20% of the time.

Fourth,  the input to our brains from standing goes to other areas of the brain that help turn the sympathetic systems off, allowing the parasympathetic systems to repair and heal us.

So, when we sit we turn off the input to our brains.  This means we stop being actively upright, so the muscles of our backs get weak, and the muscles of our shoulders, neck, chest and laps get tight.  So our posture changes, our heads go forward, and we start to get back into the fetal positions.  Our tight necks and chests make it difficult to breathe, our heart rates go up.  And our sympathetic systems are not turned off.  This means we do not repair, digest, eliminate or grow correctly.  Here think about chronic diseases such as chronic fatigue, and irritable bowel, and degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and cardiovascular problems like heart attack and stroke.

While I know that I have over simplified in this blog post, what I am trying to get across is that there is a neurological component to sitting that connects poor posture to poor health and chronic diseases.

Chiropractors are experts in detecting this connection between poor posture and poor nervous system function.  This is the good news.  You can do something about this.  If you sit too much, and are concerned about your health now and in the future, come and see me.  We will work out a plan for you to correct your posture and get your nervous system working as it should!

Too Many Diets! Dietary Principles According to Chinese Medicine

By Dr. Paul Rankin According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) there are four paths to health.  These include proper exercise, mental attitude, rest, and diet.  Diet is so important in TCM, that it is said that in all diseases diet must be looked at first.  So, let’s take a brief look at Diet according to TCM. In effect, foods can be thought of as weak herbs.  Foods, like herbs, have specific energetic qualities such as being hot, warm, dry, neutral, cool, cold, dry and damp.  So if you are cold, a warming food would help you, or if you have dryness, a moistening or damp food could help.  Also, like herbs, foods have specific flavors that have a direct relationship to internal organs in TCM.  For example, salty flavors most strongly affect the kidneys and too much salt can damage the kidneys function.  Likewise, eating too much of any one food, like taking too much of a specific herb, or an incorrect food or herb, can cause imbalances in the body.  Imbalances then lead to illness. A useful way of picturing the digestive system as understood by TCM is to picture a pot with a fire under it.  The pot represents the stomach, and the fire represents the other digestive organs functions of ‘cooking’ or digesting the contents of the pot, that is food and drink.  Just as water can douse a fire, too many damp, wet, or cold foods can put out your digestive processes.  Likewise too much spicy or dry foods, or simply that 3rd course of your favorite meal, can cause your pot, or stomach to overflow.  It is easy to see how symptoms such as bloating and heart burn could be linked to cold and damp, and spicy foods respectively.  So according to TCM, the best foods to eat are the ones the will encourage the fire to burn evenly, and won’t cause the pot to overflow.  Following this line of thinking can lead us to some ideas that are different from traditional western ideas of proper diet.  For example, can you think of a colder, wetter and rawer meal than a salad straight out of the fridge?  This could surly put your digestive fire out!  Ah, but now I can imagine some of you are reading this and saying, “This is not true, I feel great after I eat my salad”, or “I can’t get enough hot sauce”.  And I don’t doubt you!  Here we come to the real strength of dietary recommendations according to TCM.  Every person is different!  It all comes down to your individual constitution and TCM diagnosis or pattern.  In other words, what is right for you may not be right for some one else.  There is no one diet fits all.  As an example of this, a person’s heartburn might be caused by too much heat inside, and hot sauce would make it worse, or another person’s same symptom of heartburn might be caused by her lack of energy in her stomach, and she needs the hot spices to help wake up her digestive system. Here we have the same symptoms, heartburn, having totally opposite dietary recommendations, because the cause of these two people’s symptoms is completely different.  Only by putting your symptoms in the context with the rest of your body can a TCM practitioner give you proper dietary recommendations. So the purpose of the remainder of this article is this.  If you are healthy and want to remain that way, I will give you some general recommendations, and if you are currently experiencing some health issues you should still follow the basic recommendations but know that there are specific recommendations that you should also be following.  In other words, the following is advice for a healthy diet according to TCM.  There may however be additional recommendations given to an individual based on his or her health concerns by a practitioner of TCM. The Basics Eat widely and diversely, mostly vegetables and grains, especially rice, with small amounts of everything else. Eat moderately and chew well. It’s helpful to drink warm water or tea with meals. Use a wide variety of spices moderately in cooking. Eat organic when possible, and avoid artificial additives and preservatives. Eat freshly prepared foods and within 24 hours of being cooked. Diet Principles Eat mostly cooked foods. (Raw foods take more energy to ‘cook’) Favor soups and stews.  (They are most like the contents of your ‘pot’) Avoid chilled, cold or frozen foods and drinks with meals.  Eat them sparingly between meals.  (Cold foods put your ‘fire’ out) Avoid sweets.  (They damage the digestive system) Avoid excess dairy, meats (especially pork and beef), nuts, eggs, oils, and fats. In closing remember that diet is probably the easiest way that you have to help yourself and your health.  These basic recommendations are just that.  Both people and foods have specific attributes.  The specific nature of one food might be extremely helpful for one person, while aggravating another person’s condition.  And so once again, it comes down to knowing the individual person’s TCM pattern in order to know which diet to follow. For an individualized TCM diet recommendation, please contact Dr. Rankin at dragonbone.  Let us help you to eat your way to better health.  Bon Appetit!