Early Morning Riser

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Written by MattLopez

Category: Uncategorised

Published: 20 July 2016

Created: 20 July 2016

Last Updated: 20 July 2016

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Early Morning Riser

 

Looks like my body is beginning to get into the habit of rising in early mornings. You can’t blame me because I live close to the ocean and parks. In hot and humid Florida. During summer.  It’s relaxing  to greet the rising sun ( so long as no rains, thunder and lightning, hurricane are in the horizon). Once I ran without checking the weather and boy did it rain and lightning were so severe I won’t do that again!  Nowadays I include weather checks before running.  And also, as a PT, I don’t want to make the impression I limit all my exercises to running. I subscribe to the ‘wholeness of body’ principle. I don’t believe in ‘specializing’ in one activity only. I mix and match everything that involves cardio vascular, endurance, strength, balance, stretching, pain control or relief, injury prevention, mental/spiritual health. These are all involved in the well being of man. So  -- walking, running, swimming, cycling,  pilates, yoga, gardening/yard work, resistance training, stretching, meditation/contemplation, relaxation -- are all healthy activities for me.  Note that I refrain from using the word ‘exercise’ in my retinue because exercise is a big and daunting words for many. Exercise is associated with  time, gym, consistency, maximum effort and lots of people, let’s face it, don’t want it. Allow me to limit the use of the word and be more specific.

 

A few activities I indulge in nowadays are landscaping, beach walking, running and beginner’s core strengthening. Now,  pilates nowadays is practiced left and right and I think one has to get certified by a Professional before he can claim the title Pilates Instructor. I am not a Pilates instructor alright but I have my own ideas about core strengthening that can be similar to Pilates. Go to Pilates instructor if you have the money and resources but for me, a simple core workout will suffice. Core involves the center of the body that is most susceptible to injuries because

1. Abdominal muscles are constantly stretched and weakened by obesity (increased circumference) while back muscles are constantly contracted to keep  our bodies upright when standing, sitting or working.

2. Some conditions such as stroke, surgeries, abdominal hernia, pregnancy, sedentary lifestyle, beer belly (LOL), back injury (most common) among many can lead to core weakness or core imbalance.

3. Heavy focus on extremities (arms, legs) and chest during gym visits make people forget about core strength, and if they remember it,  tends to overdo the crunches and leg raises and abdominal/obliques/back  machines without sufficient warm ups and preparation thus leading to soreness and avoidance of these exercises.

 

These are only a few of the reasons I can think of right now that can lead to core weakness. And core strengthening is one of the most important components of whole body health. Whether you sit in your office, work  with patients, in construction, electrical or plumbing, teaching, preaching, modeling, acting, dancing, standing in retail, cooking, almost any work requires core strength. The real precursor of back pain is not twisting or bending or lifting, it is the core muscle weakness or more precisely, core muscle imbalance. We tend to overuse our back muscles and letting go of our abdominal/oblique/transverse musculature in our daily lives. Well, to keep upright, we normally use our core strength in a balanced way. But between poor posture and the kind of work we do, we tend to overuse the back muscle more than abdominal. With that said, it takes only one false move and the whole core snaps and next thing you know you are in an MD office while he orders Xrays, MRI,  pain meds and Physical Therapy or Chiropractor’s visits for you. That will start your lifetime agony of  not dependence on narcotics. Worse you may end up with back surgery.

Basic Core

The Art of Movement

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Written by MattLopez

Category: Physical Therapy

Published: 08 July 2016

Created: 08 July 2016

Last Updated: 08 July 2016

Hits: 1652

 

 

 

So I am now confining myself to my room, to abandon all the noises and disturbances outside that steal my attention and disrupt  my concentration. Now, let me see, there is a blog to work on, there are health books to review, there are ‘informative’ articles to write, anything that deals with health. One thing I found : the art of movement is important in this stage of my life. In my younger years I always thought that exercise, for it to be so, requires me to sweat and grunt and break some old time personal bests. As I am now in the middle of  the golden years of life, I am slowly realizing  that an activity doesn’t have to be a grunt work, all it needs is movement.

 

Exercise remains a must, especially the one that gets you to  age-appropriate max heart rate. However, studies upon studies have suggested that over the top exercises done constantly can be detrimental to health. Usually heavy-duty work outs don’t succeed much anyway. Soon you’d be confronted by the boredom of monotony especially when confined in a monochromatic gym. If injury doesn’t hit you first.

 

I have learned that in order to survive my upcoming senior struggles, there are a few things I must know and consider:

 

STATISTICS

 

1. The Baby Boomer (birth year  1946-1964) are rapidly becoming a large consumer of the nation’s health care cost.

2. The most common conditions ailing the boomers are: hypertension,  high cholesterol, diabetes and heart disease

3. In 1996, boomers started turning age 50 at 10000 per day. In 2006, they turned 60 at 10000 per day. Boomers represent 12 percent of the population but they take 25% of physician office visits, 34% of pharmacy cost, 38% of ER responses. A whopping 78 million Americans will retire by 2030.

4. Consider the health care cost for retirees. Life expectancy for females in US is now 81 with the last nine years of those unhealthy. For males, it is 76 with the last nine years of those unhealthy. We talk about hospitalizations, surgeries, chemos, accidents/falls, nursing home confinements etcetera.

5. The most common surgeries for baby boomers are total knee and hip replacements, coronary artery bypass and stents, diabetes and dialysis, heart attacks and strokes, spinal surgeries.

6. Heart disease is the number one cause of death followed by cancer and stroke. Tobacco use is the actual number one cause of death followed by inactivity and poor nutrition/diet, and alcoholism

These are the statistics that mirror US current boomers’ health situation both in its relation to population and cost. And I have been a witness of this in my work as a PT and as a baby boomer myself. It is not easy, let me put it mildly. It is in fact agonizing. To go through knee surgery or  hip replacement or stroke or traumatic brain injury due to a fall is easily dismissed until it happens to you or a family member. The act of getting sick and caregiving(by the family) can take its toll  on time and effort and money and worst of all, it happens when you are just getting ready to enjoy the fruit of your decades of hard work to build a family and save for retirement. With the types of patients I see everyday, the question “What is the use of success and fame and wealth and honor  if you are in daily agony or you are unable to move?”

 

The question really is this: Given that most of these ailments are lifestyle and habit driven, [versus genetic-driven] it may be prudent to pay attention to things we can do to proactively avoid or minimize them. I have been trumpeting the importance of healthy lifestyle in this web site and I certainly do my best to practice it but I do it so because I am exposed to the devastation of illness everyday in my hospital work. A lot of people don’t have that exposure. How many stroke victims do you encounter everyday? Lung cancer, amputations, heart attacks, broken bones? Majority of people haven’t even seen an unhealthy person in their well-shielded lives. Not with me. I see them everyday. I can see the darkness of hospital beds with eyes staring  endlessly  at the ceiling and listening to the ticking of the clock. I see it in the smell of a Nursing Home and the eternal  nothingness surrounded by people on wc all seemingly waiting for their deaths. I see it in the eyes of family members afraid of the new burdens they have to carry and the need to alter their lifestyles to accommodate that burden. I see it all the time and yes, it also frightens me.

 

My personal philosophy is - I don’t want to regret that if I only did this and that, I won’t get sick. I don’t want to say “if I only stopped smoking”, or “if I only listened to my Doctor”, or “if I only visited my MD earlier”, of “if I only took my medicines as prescribed”, or “ if I only exercised, quit drinking, avoided stress” and so forth I’d have a good quality of life right now. No I don’t want to go through that miserable existence. And so far, despite my diabetes, I have no health-related regrets at all. Banning any uncontrolled circumstances,  I feel quite healthy if being sick-free is the main criteria. My life is not one hundred percent disciplined but it is not careless either. I have decided, when I reached forty,  that my life will embark on a healthy lifestyle, following well-established guidelines set by experts. I quit 10 year smoking, trained for half marathons, avoided alcohol and made it my quest to maintain a BMI score that’s appropriate for my built via correct dieting. Of course I did not achieve the BMI goal but I did well with the rest. And despite all that, I was diagnosed with Diabetes type 2 when I reached 50. I was always aware that diabetes is probably one of the conditions I have to face in my future as half of my family have it. It came as a surprise though because I was hoping  my healthy lifestyle would have protected me. Well, my genetics did not.

 

But with medications, exercise and dieting, I seem to have a good control over it.

 

And let me tell you this: It is not easy. Being conscious of numbers and right food choices and proper exercise everyday can be daunting. It could be frustrating too when I thought I’ve done well but the numbers didn’t agree. So I constantly return to my drawing board to re-map my whole lifestyle program. And despite all the pitfalls,  I feel I am within the required numbers I need to maintain.

 

And because I am a Physical Therapist by profession, I am becoming more and more empathetic  with my patients who suffer complications because of uncontrolled blood sugar and concomitantly, high blood pressure and cholesterol. It is also quite surprising how many of them know virtually nothing about  controlling their numbers.

 

It is really simple yet challenging. But it is a must to find ways, even experiment, to determine that  personal fine line between controlled and uncontrolled numbers. And because I am using my body as my only laboratory, I can share what worked for me so far - and what did not. Medications are a given, once  you take them as prescribed, you are halfway successful already. The challenge really are in diet and exercise.

 

Dieting is  a personal preference. What I find effective for me may not work for the person next door. But the basic principles I follow are - reduced carbs, good proteins, more veggies, avoidance of hunger and starvation, and most of all, correct timing of food intake. Usually I splurge in the morning, take moderate lunch and minimum dinner ( taken before 7 pm preferably). Again I was not perfect in this arena.

 

The exercise part is what I have quite discovered somewhat interesting - and this is due partly to  age-factor. One thing missing in today’s  health information and data  is the paucity of literature about exercising beyond 50. Most health book bestsellers assume everyone is about to peak in their prime years. They usually appear to address a younger audience and very little detail shared with those over 50. Worse, they have a brief warning at times such as, ‘Don’t attempt this when over fifty or worse, do less of this and more of this when over fifty.’ I wish we have more and more exercise literature and research for much older boomer generation.

 

Meanwhile, this is what I found: Exercise does not need to be vigorous to be considered exercise. Exercise is much less monotonous when you block the youthful exercisers around you and establish your own pace, cadence, style, techniques commensurate to your age and to your liking. Gone are my days when I buy gadgets to measure improvements every time I work out. Gone are my days reading the latest books on improving speed, improving strides and frequency of leg turnovers. For what? Self satisfaction maybe. Bragging rights maybe. I never succeeded anyway though not in a frustrating way. I was just so happy I was able to run at least 11 half marathons in my lifetime.

 

 

I am completely changed in my approach to exercise at my age. I am finally realizing that exercise is not a race but an enjoyment/leisure to splurge on. I still run albeit slower but enjoyable while listening to an audio book imagining  someone is running beside me while telling his story. I do other activities that I did not even consider as exercise in my younger years.  Like brisk  walking or gardening or bicycling around the neighborhood. I realized these can be considered exercises as well. And with weights, I pretty much limit them to comfortable levels (without grunts) to maintain tone and definition. As far as I am concerned, exercise can be a simple movement that is sustained for a long period and if you really want to keep it beneficial, I make sure my activity involves the larger muscles - quads, has, gastrocs, lats, shoulders, core and back. These utilize more energy and can easily help you reduce weight quicker while improving body definition at the same time.

 

I will talk more about other age-appropriate activities in my upcoming blogs.

Active Sunday in Lake Worth

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Written by MattLopez

Category: Exercise

Published: 10 July 2016

Created: 10 July 2016

Last Updated: 10 July 2016

Hits: 1694

It is Sunday and  my day off. I woke up at around 6 am, immediately craving for a morning coffee. My sleep was perfect. Yesterday I finished reading the novel The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. That novel lured me into searching for the works by and about  Isaac Newton and I downloaded  two books from Kindle (almost free): The Principia and some other book about his biography. I don’t exactly recall how I ended in Scribd downloading another book entitled Solitude (A Return to Self ) by Anthony Storr. I probably saw it as an ad and it’s free with my Scribd subscription.  

 

That is  a lot of reading ahead of me but today  I was bent to do one thing and only one thing  -- I will get out there to run and watch people do their own versions of active lifestyle. I love mornings like this: there is nothing more beautiful and inspiring than going outdoors to watch the sun peek its head from the clouds releasing its rays on the roads emptied of car traffic and dominated by cyclists. Sidewalks are proliferated by people jogging, running, walking, young people, old people and people like me, somewhere in the middle. I parked my car in the space allotted for my  permit sticker, right in front of the beach. I pulled my smartphone and started to walk and then jog. This is my mode nowadays: Run and walk, run and walk. In my younger years, I used to run like the police were chasing me rendering me always on the ‘verge’ of injury in those days. Hence the run/walk approach.  My body is no longer immune, the protection of youth has disappeared so just like a car waaaay expired of warrantee, I am more delicate and susceptible (ha!) so  I am a little bit more careful and sensitive to potential injuries or worse, medical conditions due to overdoing activities and tasks. There is such a thing as over-exercising.

 

From Lake Avenue Road to Lantana - that is my route -  I directed my strides on the sidewalk, passing a few runners saying Good Morning and meeting other runners who are surprisingly cheerful, perhaps it’s the weather and this early morning is like the only respite we will all get for the remaining dayy. In about 3 to 4 hours, the temperature is forecasted over a hundred degrees. So we all sort of take advantage of the cool morning.

 

 

After finishing running 5 miles, I was pleasantly surprised by the quiet shore of Lake Worth Beach. Soon I found myself charging towards it, with its  tepid water and virtually calm waves. I did my little sprints of breaststroke and freestyle, roughly 10 yards each way back and forth, yeah, I haven’t swam anywhere for almost a year now. It’s a great, great morning swim. As usual, I don’t let this pass in this digital and social network age without posting videos and pics on facebook. That’s life. I know. I want to post this in this blog for my own inspiration. Seeing these will keep me active. That’s my goal.

 

 

The Hobbyist

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Written by MattLopez

Category: Relaxation

Published: 20 June 2016

Created: 20 June 2016

Last Updated: 20 June 2016

Hits: 1417

 

One thing that rattles me most of the time is this desire to learn something,  then spending time to learn it but never applying it. For example I would attend a PT continuing ed on Manual Therapy and sure I’d learn Manual Therapy right there, and imbued with desire to make use of it on patients, I go back to my workplace to....well.... never apply it  because it is unnecessary or contraindicated to most of them. Why would you apply Manual Therapy on a recent heart attack patient? So years go by and I forget the whole skill.

 

This is usually the predicament of people like me who are over-curious about anything and everything yet don’t have sufficient time to indulge in them. What do I do in this case? I try to enjoy the learning while at it. Then I move on, learn other more interesting  things, and (this is important) :  document what I learned. Documentation is important in a hobby like computer programming and skills like  Manual Therapy. Without documenting, everything is forgotten after days, weeks, months and years.

 

There is so much to learn  that keeping abreast or becoming an expert on anything is almost impossible. I feel like living in an Attention Deficit world. Knowledge and information come and go so swiftly that by the time you  understood the basics of one thing, another thing springs up somewhere. Wasn’t it wonderful when intellect was new and primitive? When Plato and Socrates had all the time to contemplate about everything around them? Heck, this modern world provides  no chance to do that. You work, check emails, facebook, twitter, prepare for work, eat, work, back to gadgets and social networking,  watch news,  keep up with TV shows,  keep up with reading, exercise and by the time you’re done, it is time to sleep to wake up and repeat the whole thing  the following day.

 

I was just talking  with my friend about this earlier.  I said, people like me can never succeed in our endeavors because we need to work to survive. Gone are the days when amateur artisans got ‘sponsors’, today we call them grants but these are meant for the ones deemed ‘qualified’. I can never be qualified as an artist or scholar or specialist. Heck no. I am always at the beginner’s level. I guess the only solution to that is to be happy doing what I do and define it as a hobby. I don’t want to take hobbies too seriously because that is what they are - hobbies. These are meant to pass the time productively, usually to keep one’s mind occupied, at peace and happy. And that is what my computer programming is all about, my blogging, my reading and exercising.

 

Life after 50 should no longer be a life of searching. At this age, one must already know his place under the sun, to pursue what he thinks he can realistically accomplish and abandon the ones he cannot. Grappling with things that he likes to do but are too difficult or time consuming to ‘specialize’ in them should be categorized are hobbies. And people have all sorts of hobbies. A  hobby however can become destructive  when it consumes the person, I know that feeling. An old man still dreaming of writing the greatest poem or novel of all time; an elderly  working on a painting that will become a masterpiece someday; a man in his 50s  looking for a first marathon win, are examples, and I am not saying those lofty goals are  impossible, but know the impact of effort and stress and fatigue that such endeavors entail. Sure you can -  if you have the best of health  --  pursue any goal  but for the majority of humanity, that particular goal for a hobby could mean self-destruction.  I say chill out,  lower your expectations. You might still accomplish what you want to accomplish but don’t kill yourself over it. That is me talking without the voice of encouragement and motivation and inspiration but I am erring towards the side of  realism. There are things we have to accept.

So this is the way it goes as we mature. We enjoy whatever we can enjoy, be good if we can, be great if possible but at the end of the day, we want to live our lives the most natural and graceful way. And be happy.