Grace and I spent last Friday morning training on new screening and treatment protocols for people with poor posture and poor movement in their low back and neck and shoulder region. It was fascinating and we are excited to share these tools with our patients over the rest of the year. While at church Saturday night I noticed the ENORMOUS mobility challenges afflicting the older population today in North America. The sad reality is that unless we work at it our posture and mobility will decline as we age. Use it or Lose it as they say. Mobility aids such as canes and walkers are VERY COMMON tools in the older population. The good news is that the SPM model is the secret that can restore and maintain amazing health and mobility for a life time. A decline in mobility as we age is common but not normal. Don’t assume it is a normal part of aging. This would be analogous to heart disease and cancer being more common as we age but not normal and inevitable.
S stands for Segment. This means that when a specific joint in your body, especially the spine, loses its normal motion or mobility this starts a disease process which eventually leads to poor health and mobility. This could be a joint in your neck, low back, ribs, ankle or shoulder. A specific, powerful chiropractic adjustment is often the first step to healing. Assessing the need for segmental treatment is within the specialty of chiropractic. Maintaining proper segmental movement is a necessity for good health.
P stands for Posture. As in the picture above we all intuitively know when someone has good or bad posture. Assessing the presence of poor posture and then correcting it, again, is an area that chiropractic and our clinic is very good at. Having a severe forward head posture for example has been shown to be a predictor for many severe health conditions and even early death because of the effects on the nervous system and vital organs. Having a reversed or straight neck or right head shift, again, needs to be corrected for optimal health to be achieved.
M stands for Movement. The final component is also critical for abundant health. This is called FUNCTIONAL MOVEMENT. We need to have proper mobility, strength and power in the specific joints in our body. The foot, knee, low back and neck should be STABLE while the ankle, hip and thoracic spine should be MOBILE. Remember that in my issue with my low back pain (read previous newsletter) my low back core was mobile but did not have strength and stability so I was constantly injuring it.
These 3 components are connected to each other but are also very independent. For example, we see that most clients come in with all 3 components being affected. We could also see people for example with good posture but poor segmental motion and poor functional movement. We could also see people with great segmental movement and functional movement with horrible posture. If you are a chiropractic client in our office you should already understand where you stand with S and P (if you don’t know just ask me). If you want to learn more about your level of functional movement M in your body then sign up for one of our MOVE WELL workshops. Dates TBD.