What Sort of Movement?

I may be talking about the spine here, but in the end the same is true for so many joints in your body.

They are meant to move. They are built to move.

And they are meant to move through their full range of motion every single day.  This has many benefits on not only the spine, but the body and mind as well.

The old adage, ‘If you don’t use it, you lose it’ applies here.  If you don’t move your spine through its full range of motion daily, your range will slowly decrease over time.

Your muscles become shorter and your joint capsules contract and become less flexible.  This leads to a stiffer spine, less able to do the things you want and less able to withstand the stressors we put on it on a daily basis.

Movement and Your Spinal Discs

Another reason movement in your spine is important is because of the discs in your spine.

Each spinal segment or vertebra in your spine has a disc in between them.  This disc acts as a shock absorbed between the bones whilst allowing for movement and flexibility.  The interesting fact about discs is that as adults they no longer have a blood supply.  They don’t have the benefit of fresh healthy blood coming in to give nutrition and take wastes out. Then how do discs stay healthy then?  The answer is through movement.  That’s right!

Movement helps the discs to absorb nutrients and expel wastes through movement itself.  So, if you don’t move your spine, the ability of your discs to get what it needs decreases, leading to a stiffer spine compounding on top of a spine that is already not moving enough.  This is another reason movement is so important to the spine.

Neurological Nutrition

Furthermore, another very important part of movement is the ‘neurological nutrition’ it gives your brain.  Your brain has a map of all the joins in your body, helping your joints have proper control.  When you have problems with movement, or don’t move enough, this map in your brain starts to have holes in it.

Think of the map as a puzzle.

If you’re missing pieces, you won’t see the full picture.  Likewise, without regular and correct input from the spine to the brain about its movement, problems are more likely to start.

This ‘neurological nutrition’ is called proprioception.   The receptors in your joints send information via the spinal cord to your brain which helps with proper motion, joint health, and helps to wake up your brain.  This neurological nutrition also has the ability to dampen pain or stress signals that travel along the spina cord.  This is another of the benefits of regular exercise and movement.

So how do you get the movement your spine needs?

So how do you get the movement your spine needs.

The easy answer is exercise.

Do a regular spinal exercises to put it through its full range.  If you want to learn more of these exercises, you’ll find many of these in other blog posts and videos on this website.

In my office, I can also set up an exercise program that you can learn and monitor from an app called Physiapp.

The really cool thing about it is, not only do you get videos and explanations of every exercise, we can monitor your progress together. You can also communicate with me through the app if you have any questions.

In the end, find a physical activity you enjoy as well and do it regularly.  It could be walking, tennis, yoga, Pilates, swimming . . . whatever you enjoy.  If you do and do it right, your spine will thank you.

Video – What is the most important nutrient for the spine?

If you would like to learn about joints that can predict the weather, click here.