Patients generally try to tell me in a nice way that they would like a stretch and an exercise that will forever keep their spine healthy. I'm going to partially answer that question and probably not the way you would expect.
We have two problems in America. Number one, fitness seems to be the default answer to solve most health problems. Number two, chiropractic is only good for pain control.
US track and field people did a research study with 1400 runners. Runners are generally pretty fit people. They split the group into people who stretch, and people who do not stretch.
About 16% of both groups were injured where they had to sit out at least one week. So what does that tell us? It tells us that injury rates are almost identical whether they stretched or not.
When people come to the office they are generally injured. So we have to focus on helping them get over their injury. Most people ask me about stretches that they can do to help speed up their recovery.
Almost no person ever asks me what they can eat to speed recovery.
It's similar to driving your car into a pothole. Mis- aligning the tires. And now trying to drive more and more to realign your tires and hit the pothole just right.
The primary problem is the alignment got injured. An outside force created a problem. The pothole for the tire and maybe something like a car accident for the person.
People don't want to be injured again. So here's our dilemma, do stretch or do not stretch? 60 years of research from the CDC suggests that there really is no conclusive evidence that stretching or not stretching helps a person reduce injury rates.
Many people find this hard to believe. I don't stretch. I find that my strength is lower and my golf game is Squirrley.
Now, does that mean stretching is bad? No, if you stretch, you like it, then stretching is probably good for you. Does it change your odds of reinjury, probably not. Also, almost all injuries in the spine are not to the muscles. They are to the ligaments. If you ever tear a ligament the one thing you don't do is stretch them. If you do you run the risk if creating a sloppy joint.
Ligaments are meant to be tight. They hold your body together.
For those of you who saw the movie "doctored" this is probably a pretty easy concept to understand. The health of your body, your spine, your brain, has to do with how well it functions. There were lots of stories in the movie about people getting adjusted and eating better and changing habits and even killing off parasites to increase the overall function of their bodies back to normal.
Maintaining the health of your spine is critical to maintaining your health because every nerve that goes to every cell passes through your spine. Over the years, I've seen nearly every disease condition improved in some patient with just chiropractic. Chiropractic started as a cure for deafness because the very first patient actually got his hearing back after an adjustment.
Many years ago a medical doctor named Windsor did over 100 autopsies of people who died of organ failure. More than 90% of those that died had a rotten nerve going from the organ that killed them to a part of this spine with abnormal curvature or misalignment. I don't get adjusted every week because I'm in pain.
The anatomy of the spine actually makes it impossible for you to feel all of the damage that may have occurred during injury.
So, if you want to do more then protect your health with chiropractic and drinking more water, then there is something else you can do at home that I feel is much better than stretching. I told you we'd get to the answer.
The people who walk in with the best spines, are weightlifters. This is the most common characteristic I've seen in the last 15 years that helps keep somebody's spine healthy. I should clarify, I'm not talking about doing an hour at the gym on the weight machines in the middle of the room. These are the guys who use the free weights and generally heavier weights.
If you have a spinal injury you can't go throw a bunch of huge weights on the rack and do some squats. You're going to get hurt again. You have to go to the chiropractor and get realigned first, then when you want to prevent that from happening again, you start adding free weights to your routine. You can always schedule online or send me an email if you have questions.