Here is the latest installment of “Stop Your Pain” radio with Rick Mathes. In this episode, Rick describes the Egoscue process and walks you through how to get in touch with what your body is doing right now. Great work, Rick!
QUESTION: What’s YOUR Egoscue experience? Share your story in the comments below!
Filed under: Egoscue, Health | Tagged: Egoscue Nashville, John Elder, Pain Free, Rick Mathes, Stop Your Pain Radio | Leave a Comment »
Here is the latest article linking exercise and brain function. I’ve blogged several times before about the book Spark (If you haven’t read it, get on it. Also, you can read all my posts where I have mentioned Spark HERE) and the link between the body and the brain. Now, the mentally ill are seeing some great results by getting moving, but the results aren’t just physical. Sure those with mental illnesses are seeing a decrease in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, but they’re also seeing social benefits. Those with mental illness have better attitudes about themselves and are encouraged to be more socially active. Some have even found employment when they hadn’t previously. This is a very encouraging article. I hope you find it as interesting as I did:
KEENE, N.H. (AP) — Back when he was a self-described friendless recluse, Craig Carey spent hours sitting in a chair doing nothing or driving around in his car, alone. Then a fitness program for people with serious mental illness turned his life around.
“The In SHAPE program gave me something to grab onto. I came out of my shell, I went to other programs … got a part time job,” he said. “I started to say, ‘OK, my life is getting back together.’”
Carey, 47, of Keene, was diagnosed with manic depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder 15 years ago. In 2003, he became one of the first clients at Monadnock Family Services to join In SHAPE, a program so successful that the state has won a $10 million federal grant to replicate it at the rest of the state’s communitymental health centers. The goal is to expand a program that now serves 150 people to 4,500 participants in the next five years.
The average life span for someone with a serious mental illness is 25 years shorter than someone in the general population, a gap that has been largely overlooked even though an estimated 10.4 million American adults — including about 43,000 in New Hampshire — fall into that category, said Dr.Stephen Bartels. He will supervise the program funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“It can legitimately be said that this is largest and most important health disparity in the nation that has been unappreciated,” said Bartels, director of Dartmouth College’s Centers for Health and Aging.
People with serious mental illnesses such as depression or schizophrenia are more likely to smoke and be obese, putting them at greater risk for diabetes, heart disease and other chronic disease. And medications used to treat their mental illnesses often cause weight gain or leave them feeling too lethargic to exercise.
Spending money on wellness efforts now will be less costly than expensive treatments for chronic diseases later, Bartels argues. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a sustained 10 percent weight loss will reduce an overweight person’s lifetime medical costs by $2,200-$5,300 by lowering costs associated with high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and high cholesterol. A report released this month by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Trust for America’s Health found that reducing the average body mass index by 5 percentage points in the United States could lead to more than $29 billion in health care savings in five years.
And there are societal benefits as well, said Ken Jue, who created the In SHAPE program in 2003. Some participants have gone back to work after decades of unemployment. Others have gone back to school.
“As people have become involved in the program and as they begin to improve their physical health, they develop a sense of self-confidence that really frees them up to do some incredible things,” said Jue.
Jue, a consultant to Monadnock Family Services, was the agency’s CEO in 2002 when he noticed a troubling trend.
“I was sitting in a funeral of a client of the agency … and I realized in the middle of the funeral that I’ve been to a lot of these funerals, and people were pretty young. They were in their 50s or very early 60s,” he said. “All of a sudden I said, ‘This doesn’t make sense why these folks would be dying.’”
The acronym in In SHAPE stands for “Self Help Action Plan for Empowerment.” Participants are paired with trained health mentors to develop plans that include exercise, nutrition counseling and smoking cessation. Those who don’t have a primary care doctor are assigned to physicians at Cheshire Medical Center, who know about the program and work to reinforce it. Students at nearby Keene State College help with the nutrition components, and the local YMCA provides the fitness facilities.
Those partnerships have been key to the program’s success, Jue said, and have helped integrate participants into their communities in a way that would not have been possible had the mental health agency just set up its own fitness center.
“Someone with a serious mental illness can become isolated, and social isolation contributes to their poor health status,” he said. “So I wanted this to be done in the community.”
Participants generally spend about nine months in the program, and there is always a waiting list, Jue said. Research published by Bartels in 2010 found a dropout rate of 20 percent, compared to a 25-33 percent dropout rate for healthy adults enrolled in formal exercise programs.
The research also found that participation in the program was associated with a reduction in waist size, blood pressure and symptoms of depression and an increase in physical activity, readiness to eat healthier and overall confidence levels.
Diane Croteau, 49, of Keene said the confidence she’s gained through the program has alleviated her depression and improved her health. She’s lost 60 pounds in the last year and works out at the YMCA every week day.
“When I first started In SHAPE, I was a little wary about going and exercising in front of people. But once I started, it wasn’t bad, and I got to meet a lot of people outside of In SHAPE,” she said. “It’s been basically life-changing for me.”
She and other participants said the health mentors they’ve worked with know how to strike a balance between being supportive and challenging. If a participant isn’t feeling up to going to the gym, mentors will go to their homes and take them out for walks. If someone is dealing with a medical issue, the mentors help contact doctors.
“It’s a personal relationship,” said Paula Wheeler, 68, of Keene, another longtime participant. “They offer you a lot of respect, and it doesn’t matter where you are. You can be a very in-shape person or you can be a person who really has a lot of work to do, but they’re accepting of who you are.”
While several mental health agencies in other states have used In SHAPE as a model for similar programs, the New Hampshire expansion is the first time such a program will be implemented statewide, Bartels said.
Carey was glad to hear about those plans and said he hopes others will get just as much out of the program as he has.
“You’ve got to say to yourself, ‘Do I want to be here in 10 years where I am now or do I want to do something with my life? Do I want to stay out of the hospital? Do I want to become productive?’” he said.
“That’s what it comes down to. My life isn’t perfect … but it’s a far cry from what it was 15 years ago, a far cry. And I’m very happy with it.”
QUESTION: What impact to you feel exercise has on you mentally and physically?
Filed under: Egoscue, Health | Tagged: Egoscue Nashville, John Elder, Mental Illness, Pain Free, Social Anxiety | Leave a Comment »
There is good news for those of you who are pregnant! A recent study has shown that exercising during your pregnancy is safe for both you and your baby. In addition, exercise is recommended during pregnancy, even for those of you who haven’t previously worked out.
“Healthy pregnant women who exercise should be encouraged to continue, and if a woman is pregnant and is not an exerciser, she should be encouraged to start a moderate exercise program,” said study co-author Dr. Linda Szymanski, an assistant professor in the division of maternal-fetal medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
I think the big takeaway from Dr. Szymanski is that exercise is beneficial, regardless of your previous exercise level. However, a lot of the subjects interviewed for the study indicated they were hearing the opposite message from their physicians.
“Many women say their doctor told them they should cut back on exercise, and if they weren’t exercising before pregnancy, now is not the time to start,” said Szymanski. “I think it’s just because there’s not enough data out there to assure [health care] providers that the fetus is okay.”
While this study is saying the fetus will be okay, every situation is different, and all women should consult their physicians before beginning exercise. If you have been physically active prior to getting pregnant and plan on continuing physical activity during your pregnancy, the transition will be a much easier one. That being said, I believe one of the big markers that pregnant women need to monitor while working out is their heart rate, a topic that this article didn’t touch on. A generally accepted heart rate for pregnant women working out is 140. Anything higher than that and there is a risk that the baby won’t be getting as much oxygenated blood. As with anything, listen to your body.
My wife’s pregnancies were extremely different from each other. With the first one, she didn’t workout much. With the second one, she was doing kickboxing and weights classes at the gym until about 36-37 weeks. With the first one, she battled sciatic pain, while the second one was a pain-free pregnancy. While I believe her increased activity level helped with the pain, she was also faithfully doing her Egoscue menus the second time around. If you don’t have an Egoscue menu, I would recommend picking up a copy of Pain Free for Women by Pete Egoscue. It’s an EXCELLENT source of information and includes e-cise menus for each trimester.
QUESTION: For my female readers–What was your experience with workout out while pregnant?
Filed under: Egoscue, Health | Tagged: Egoscue Nashville, John Elder, Pain Free, Pre-natal, Pregnancy, Workout | Leave a Comment »
“Want to Run Faster? Here’s How” was the title of an article that caught my eye. By blindly clicking on it, I was assuming that the author was going to give some exercises, stretches, or drills that track coaches use when working with their sprinters. My thinking was that there might be some portion of the article that you would benefit from reading.
Boy, was I surprised. The article discussed new research that shows, “The skeletal structure of the foot and ankle are significantly different between sprinters and non-sprinters.” Hmm….really?
Researchers analyzed the MRIs of 16 men (8 sprinters, 8 control subjects) and found that—not only were sprinters’ Achilles tendons 12 percent shorter than non-sprinters, the sprinters had longer bones in their forefeet.
“What’s interesting about this finding is, we don’t know whether these sprinters were simply born this way or if their bodies adapted this way due to training as they grew up,” says Josh Baxter, study author and Ph.D. student at Penn State.
Personally, I find it really hard to believe that these eight sprinters (or all sprinters, as this study is implying) were born with shortened Achilles tendons and longer foot bones. I believe that we are all born with the same general design and our bodies all follow the same design blueprint. The only major structural difference between men and women is the pelvis. Our bodies are 99.999999% the same, with the only exception being at the hip joint. The pelvis is slightly wider in women to allow for birthing, and as a result, the head of the femur sits at a slightly different angle as it travels out of the pelvis and down toward the knee joint. With such similarities in the human body, regardless of gender, it’s hard for me to imagine that sprinters and non-sprinters would differ so greatly. In addition, I think the researchers are making a very broad assessment without looking at a broad scope of subjects.
My belief is that these differences are strictly developmental. A similar study would be to analyze the muscle mass and tendon length of 16 men but this time split them into groups of professional bodybuilders and non-bodybuilders. Here’s what I’m guessing we’ll find: The 8 bodybuilders have more muscle mass and shorter tendons, while the 8 non-bodybuilders have less muscle mass and longer tendons. Does that mean that ALL bodybuilders are born with more muscle mass and shorter tendons? No, it means that their bodies developed that way. It does not mean that their shoulder joints and elbows joints are structurally different, thus enabling them to get bigger, or faster, or stronger, etc. Their bodies have simply adapted to the work they have done.
What I did like about the study was the contribution by David Jack, a Men’s Health advisor and director of Teamworks Fitness in Acton, Mass., on how to increase your speed and performance when sprinting. Check out his #1 suggestion:
Fix Your Posture
If you spend a good portion of the day sitting at a desk, your posture is most likely taking a hit for it. Your chest gets tighter, your back weaker, and your shoulders roll forward. The result: Your sprinting becomes less efficient. “So if we concentrate on our posture, it helps us unlock everything and allows our body to move in a full range of monition,” says Jack.Think of fixing your posture as knocking the rust off, says Jack. “We can try and run as fast as we want,” says Jack. “But if we can’t get our body to get up straight and get our hips and legs to extend—we’re just paddling upstream.”
Jack, I couldn’t agree more. Too many folks (athletes and non-athletes) are attempting to do things that their body just can’t functionally do because their posture isn’t correctly aligned. At the very minimum their body isn’t doing their favorite activity efficiently. They might not have any pain doing it (yet), but they could almost certainly be doing it more efficiently than they are now.
If you’re ready to attack your posture and eliminate your pain while restoring efficiency, here is a good place to start. If you have questions about what to do after getting stared don’t hesitate to call us at 615.771.8556 or email me at johne@egoscue.com.
QUESTION: Do you think sprinters are born or made?
Filed under: Athletes, Egoscue | Tagged: David Jack, Egoscue Nashville, John Elder, Men's Health, Pain Free, Sprinters Workout | 2 Comments »
I got this from a client last week and had to share it with you. When will you discover your treasure chest?
A LETTER TO COMMUNICATE MY APPRECIATION
Dear Mr. Egoscue,
I’ve been planning to write you for a long time. John Elder from the Franklin, Tenn. center told me a few years ago that you don’t mind hearing from people. I feel that I walk around with a treasure chest because of the healing I’ve experienced because of your methods. I’m a residential house painter meeting different people every week. Two or three times a week I find myself trying to convince people to use your methods. I’ve been told several times by the customers that I should be your salesman because I”m so sincere. Truly I am a salesman for your product because these last six years have been the best for my physical health since being a young man. About six years ago I couldn’t get out of bed because of back pain. A friend came by and laid your book Pain Free on the bed beside me, he didn’t say a word. I read the first three chapters as you recommended, before I did any of the E-cises. Then I began the back stretches and steadily improved. My back pain was relieved then I started the neck E-cises. I had injured it badly in 1968 with a head to head impact during football practice. My teammates’ helmet split in the middle. I couldn’t feel the earth with my feet after the blow, my friends helped to get me out of the uniform and into my regular clothing and drove me home. My mother sat up with me all night and I gradually came around. I know now that I was very fortunate. My teammate went to the hospital and he made it through it also. They said the impact of our helmets sounded like a shotgun blast. I’ve heard crunching sounds in my neck since that day and always neck pain. My neck pain is greatly reduced as I’m writing this to you. I know this is nothing to what you endured from your injuries in Viet Nam. Thank you for serving. I was in the lottery and received a high number. I’ve felt guilty at times for not serving. I have two sons in the Air Force at this time. One of my sons Caleb, recently was awarded a silver star and a bronze start at Pope Army Air Field on September 23, 2011. He was brave and exposed his body to fire in the attempt to make contact with his peple. He is an Air Force combat controller. I’m grateful that he lived through his tours knowing that some of his friends did not.
I could write a pamphlet about being physically bankrupt and how chapter 13 in your book delivered me. I’m almost 62 years old and I’m in better physical health than I was 20 years ago because of the treasure I found in your book. I find it so sad that most are not willing to try. It’s like they’re in a stupor of hopelessness about their conditions, or so dependent upon their doctors they don’t think for themselves. I’ve given away 20 or 30 copies of Pain Free and encouraged many to go to Barnes and Nobel in Chattanooga, Tennessee to purchase one. I hear people complain of pain continually.
Two or three years ago I started having numbness and tingling in my left arm. It became so bad that at times I couldn’t hold a paint brush or drive with my left hand. I contacted John Elder in Franklin, Tennessee and asked him if I could visit just once because I couldn’t afford many trips and visits. He was very kind and accommodating to my situation. My wife and I visited, he looked at me, gave me a menu and was comforting with his communication with me. I started the menu right away and in two weeks the numbness and tingling left and has not returned. I’m very grateful. Mr. Egoscue I appreciate what your knowledge has done for me. My wife also now stretches regularly. If you need a salesman besides, what I’m doing now, I’m your man. My children wish I would stop climbing the high ladders. I could not do what I’m doing now without the knowledge I’ve learned from you.
Sincerely,
Gary
QUESTION: How did this testimonial speak to YOU, and how will your testimonial change lives?
Filed under: Egoscue, Testimonies | Tagged: Egoscue Nashville, John Elder, Pain Free, Pete Egoscue, Testimonial | Leave a Comment »
As I’m writing this, it’s the middle of the afternoon. How many of you are feeling tired? Perhaps you’re fighting off a headache, or maybe your joints are starting to stiffen up a bit. It’s time for a change! Watch the following video and do the e-cises in order. You’ll feel better for it…I promise! If you’re at work, don’t be self-conscious, get your co-workers involved. They’ll thank you for it!
QUESTION: After doing the e-cises, what was different?
Filed under: Egoscue, Health | Tagged: Egoscue Nashville, John Elder, Motion Break, Pain Free | Leave a Comment »
Credit: AP
While airlines haven’t sprung for designated yoga areas in the cabins of their planes, airports are paying attention to the demand. Yoga at 30,000 feet might still be a ways off, but if traveling has your body in a bind you can now unwind before taking off from San Francisco International Airport in the newly added yoga room. This “retreat” in the middle of traveling chaos just opened in January and boasts mirrored walls and yoga mats but no instructors.
According to a recent AP article:
Airport officials believe the 150-square-foot (14-square-meter) room with mirrored walls is the world’s first airport yoga studio, said spokesman Mike McCarron.
SFO officials say the idea came from a passenger who checked out the newly remodeled terminal last year and told Airport Director John Martin it was lacking one thing: a yoga room.
Martin, a long-time yoga practitioner, agreed. Airport managers spent $15,000 to $20,000 to turn the storage space into the yoga studio.
So, if you’re flying through SFO at any point during the year, give the yoga room a try. But let’s turn it into an Egoscue room!
QUESTION: What are your thoughts on the SFO yoga room? Would you use it?
Filed under: Egoscue, Health | Tagged: Egoscue Nashville, John Elder, Pain Free, SFO Yoga Room | 2 Comments »
Let’s be honest, now that we are a couple months into 2012…how are your resolutions going? By now the gyms are starting to clear out and folks are losing their motivation. And one of the biggest reasons folks have for not going to the gym is that they don’t have time. Does that sound familiar? I know it does to me! I struggle to carve out time to swim, bike, run, or lift weights…especially when I don’t have a race that I’m training for!
But what if I told you that you could get all the exercise you needed by working out for only 10-20 minutes, and just a few times per week. NOW do you have time to workout?
Welcome to interval training. High-intensity interval training, or “HIIT”, is designed to impart a high demand on the body, but in short amounts of time, with each interval lasting somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds.
A recent study revealed that in as little as two weeks, both unfit study volunteers and cardiac patients selected to participate in the study showed improvements in their overall health and fitness. After six weeks, HIIT “produced similar physiological changes in the leg muscles of young men as multiple, hour-long sessions per week of steady cycling, even though the HIIT workouts involved about 90 percent less exercise time.” In addition, the cardiac patients’ results were equally intriguing.
The results, published in a recent review of HIIT-related research…showed “significant improvements” in the functioning of their blood vessels and heart, said Maureen MacDonald, an associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster who is leading the ongoing experiment.
I have personally done interval training and love it. It’s quick (less than 10 minutes), it’s easy (a lot of the time you can do it in the comfort of your own home without any equipment), and it’s a major challenge. I was exhausted (but in a good way!) after each of the interval workouts.
If you have questions about interval (or “burst”) training, I’d recommend you contact Nathan and Jenni Oates, who train clients through their company BURSTClub.com. They actually start their clients out with burst sessions that last about three minutes! How amazing is THAT? Not having time is no longer an excuse.
QUESTION: What is YOUR favorite type of exercise? Have you ever tried interval or burst training?
Filed under: Egoscue, Health | Tagged: Egoscue Nashville, Heart Disease, John Elder, Pain Free | Leave a Comment »
Hollywood legend Bill Murray has been around golf forever and is known for his portrayal of Carl Spackler in the 1980 box-office hit, Caddyshack. While Murray got to play a want-to-be golfer on the big screen, he also gets to channel his inner-Jack Nicklaus on the links in real life and even won the 2011 AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach. One of the things he attributes his success on the golf course to is Egoscue. Bill has been a client of the Method for several years and recently told Oscar Gonzales from Egoscue San Jose about his Egoscue experience what what an impact it has had on him. Great job Bill and Oscar! Keep up the great work.
QUESTION: What is YOUR Egoscue testimonial?
Filed under: Athletes | Tagged: AT&T Pro-Am, Bill Murray, Egoscue Nashville, John Elder, Oscar Gonzales, Pain Free | Leave a Comment »
If you remember a couple of weeks ago I blogged about my next challenge, Tough Mudder Georgia. I’m happy to say that I’m officially a Tough Mudder, and I have the orange headband to prove it!
For those of you who don’t know what a Tough Mudder is, it’s hard to explain. It’s part half-marathon, part insane asylum, part boot-camp (the military kind, NOT the kind you find down the road at your local gym). It’s cold (think “four-hour-ice-cream-headache” cold), exciting (15-foot jump into a lake, anyone?), wet (water EVERYWHERE), muddy (mud EVERYWHERE), miserable (40 degree temps with 25-35 MPH winds), and fun (despite all of that, we had a BLAST) all rolled into one. It’s a challenge to both your physical strength and your mental stamina all at the same time.
We started out cold, we ended colder. We started out energized (thank you 5-Hour Energy!), and ended exhausted. We started out dry, and ended soaked. But most importantly: We started…we finished. As a team. I couldn’t have done it without Brian, Dino, Graham, and Winston there by my side. Thanks to Collin and Bjon for videoing and photographing the whole thing! We made some memories this past weekend. Ones that will be with us for a lifetime. Here’s a glimpse of what we went through (click on the first picture to pull up a slide show):
QUESTION: When do YOU plan on signing up for a Tough Mudder?
Filed under: Athletes, Egoscue | Tagged: Egoscue Nashville, Georgia, John Elder, Pain Free, Tough Mudder | Leave a Comment »
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