Posts Tagged ‘exercise’
Aerobic or Anaerobic Running?
Running: foot in front of foot, in such a manner that, for the slightest instant, both feet are off the ground. A simple enough activity, until you consider what is happening within the body. Often, running is considered a purely aerobic activity, good for the soul, heart lungs and body. But there is a boundary that partitions running as an aerobic and anaerobic activity: at what level does your body stop having enough oxygen to feed all the muscles, allowing them to perform without burning carbohydrates to make up the energy deficit.
Aerobic: Can you talk while you run? At this level, your muscles have enough oxygen to be energy dependent.
Anaerobic: Are you gasping for air? You are running at an unsustainable rate, trying to set a personal record. Your muscles do not have enough energy and are making up for it by burning sugar, and overproducing lactic acid.
Lactic acid: As the body burns sugar, lactic acid accumulates in the body. While lactic acid is not necessarily harmful, a byproduct of the body’s production is hydrogen, which begins to interfere with muscle contraction, causing fatigue. Your body cannot dispel the lactic acid as fast as you are producing it and eventually you will have to reduce your pace or stop altogether.
Many people are unaware that this line exists.. Chiropractic and acucpunture are about optimizing and balancing the body, to ensure you get the most out of every workout. Not only do we provide you with the knowledge of how the body and brain work, but we also help you customize a personal fitness plan that will help you achieve everything you desire.
Chiropractic helps the runner by:
Increasing balance and circulation
Ensuring alignment of the spine
Helping your body drain waste efficiently
Helping you breathe more effectively
Helps muscles grow more efficiently
Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment today.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac.
Prevent Injury from Running
The running bug bites many people who greatly enrich their lives by chasing the “runner’s high” that keeps them running further and further. But for those whose main activity is running, the impact on the legs can be brutal. Running on pavement and other surfaces is hard on the cartilage of the knees, but also the spine. Other factors such as weak orthopedic support, running on slopes, and poor running posture conspire to leave your body weakened, despite the measurable aerobic gain. At your Park Slope Chiropractor, we believe that a wariness of the dangers of running can help you find a balance between running the right amount and overdoing it.
Your spine is constructed in anticipation of living a lifestyle that includes lots of running and heavy exertion. As we age, however, the load our discs and joints can reasonably bear reduces, meaning that prevention becomes more and more important with age.
When hip flexors and hamstring muscles are tight, they tilt your pelvis forward, a position which can create pain in the lumbar and sacral regions of the spine. Running often contributes to herniated discs and degenerative disc disease, which makes it all the more important to get screened for these conditions to ensure that you are not exacerbating an underlying, preexisting condition.
Here are other ways chiropractic helps the runner stay on track:
- Stronger muscles
- Better range of motion,
- Improved coordination, nervous system regulation
Running is the ultimate repetitive stressor. Keep the balance of health in your favor by calling our office in Brooklyn at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac.
Promote Spinal Balance with a Walk
Walking your way to a more healthy life is not as far-fetched as it might feel. During a busy workweek, it is easy to get stuck in a routine that looks, at its most abstracted form, like: waking up àcommuting à working à relaxing on the couch à and back to bed, with allowances for eating. Often there is not enough time or motivation to make it to the gym; this is where a quick walk can rescue your spine on a lazy night. Taking 30 minutes out of an evening and dedicating them to a walk makes all the difference in the world: it gets your joints moving, muscles and bones strengthening, and circulation flowing. For people with back pain, the boon can be even greater. Here are some of the cut and dried benefits of a walk:
- Reduces back pain: mild endorphin release helps manage pain.
- Helps manage weight: body weight is the number one factor that burdens adult spines.
- Increases range of motion: by allowing the spinal joints to move, simultaneously making you more resistant to injury.
- Improves circulation: possibly the property that helps the most people. Walking allows your blood to get flowing throughout the entire body, bringing oxygen and nutrients to cells who have been suffering from stagnation on the couch.
Finding the time or initiating the desire to walk daily is often difficult when you are at the mercy of life’s many engagements. At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture of Park Slope, we can help you make minor lifestyle adjustments that will compliment our chiropractic and acupuncture treatments on the path to achieving any health goal you have set for yourself. Call our office in Brooklyn at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment today.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac.
Acupuncture for Fitness (Part 2)
The benefits of acupuncture seem to be almost as far-reaching as the time it has endured as a healing procedure. For fitness fanatics, acupuncture has a wealth of benefits. By boosting your psychological well-being, you will perform better in the gym. After just one session, people experience reduced stress and anxiety, catharsis and general sense of well-being. In fact, the more you work out the more you can get out of acupuncture. Here are some of the other benefits:
- Muscle and joint injury rehabilitation: re-oxygenating tissues, reducing inflammation.
- Improved stamina: improving circulation generally means you will see a boost in your energy at the gym.
- Weight loss: curbing hunger, improving digestive efficiency and allowing the body to burn more fat.
- Muscle relaxation: provides a way for your muscles to recover and grow in the wake of exertion.
Acupuncture is an integral piece of our holistic approach to health at Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture of Park Slope. No one piece will be the magic ingredient by itself; instead, we would like to put all of our modalities at your disposal as part of a healthy lifestyle. No matter what your affliction or idea for self-improvement, we have tools to help. Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac.
Acupuncture for Fitness
Muscle and joint pain is a regular side-occurrence of athletic performance. This pain could begin as a byproduct of aging, derive from a genetic inheritance or result from a direct injury; no athlete wants to be sidelined by a limited muscle or joint. Acupuncture is a direct and natural method that gets to the root of the injury: thin needles are strategically entered along anatomical pathways of the body, creating micro-wounds that the body is quick to heal. In the process, the body focuses on healing the surrounding area by reducing inflammation and re-oxygenating the tissue. The endorphins that are naturally released help control pain and regulate the nervous system.
At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we know that the body relies on a balance between exertion and rest to grow effectively. A key pathway to injury is by over exerting yourself without the proper rest or nutrition. If you have overdone yourself, acupuncture is a great therapy for speeding the recovery of torn muscles or worn down joints. The body’s natural healing ability is boosted by acupuncture needling because it promotes circulation and blood flow.
For athletes of all ages looking to maximize their physical potential, acupuncture offers an advantage that is too good to ignore. If you are interested in finding out more about the potential of acupuncture for your athletic routine, call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment today.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C.
Fitness Planning
At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we practice holistic care that benefits you for an entire lifetime. Because our practice focuses on the nervous system and the biomechanics of the human body, our treatment has wide-reaching implications in overall health.
Here is a table that lists common patient goals along with lifestyle considerations that directly impact this goal.
| Your Goal | Your lifestyle |
| Pain relief | Posture, repetitive stress or direct trauma, degenerative injuries, workplace ergonomics |
| Healthy aging | Weight, mobility, healthy joints, level of activity, stiff joints |
| Improved range of motion | Stretching, posture, workplace ergonomics |
| Strengthening, muscle building and athletic performance |
Weight lifting, nutrition, overtraining, lung mechanics |
| Weight loss | Exercise, nutrition |
| Something else | All of the above |
Chiropractic and acupuncture are powerful forms of treatment that can help you achieve any personal health goal that you have set. But we cannot begin to create a personal fitness plan until we have conversed regarding your specific history and your thoughts regarding the outcome of a fitness plan. Along with all of the lifestyle considerations above comes a good dose of awareness: this is the first ingredient of change.
Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment and begin creating a plan for a future you, full of health.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac.
Exercise and Chiropractic
Perhaps in response to what has been deemed an obesity epidemic, America has become serious about getting fit. There is more information and misinformation than ever in regards to what makes you fitter or happier.
At Park Slope Chiropractic, we use exercise to help patients manage back pain and boost their well-being. Cardiovascular and strength building exercises synergize with chiropractic care to relieve pain, repair injury and make your body more resilient moving forward.
For patients suffering from low-back pain, we utilize flexion and extension stretches and exercises that help lengthen restrictive muscles and restore flexibility to stiff regions. Core muscles are very important to support the lower back: pelvic stabilizing muscles, adductors (tendons that connect thigh to pubic bone) and the abdominals are all muscles that we promote for strengthening. We also want you to be aware of your thoracic vertebrae (encompassing shoulders and chest) and their role in movement. Learning to use the thoracic region properly can relieve much of the burden of movement from the lumbar region.
Aerobic exercise is another great supplement to chiropractic care: leaving the couch behind and going for a brisk walk has innumerable benefits including keeping muscles toned and promoting circulation.
Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment and find out how you can start using your body’s full mechanical advantage.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac.
Overtraining as a Syndrome
Listen to your body! In all aspects of life, your body’s internal monitor can be an ally or foe in your quest for health. It is always a good metric for athletic endeavor: getting in tune with your limits is important.
Your body will send sublte warning signals when you are approaching the brink of overtraining, and you should definitely know when you have overdone it. But overtraining is a syndrome: it goes against our nature to stop working out just because our body feels strained. After all, how are you supposed to build more muscle or endurance if you can’t keep going?
But at a certain point, more work stops equaling more reward. Injury and sickness accrue when you keep pushing past these warning signs.
Here are sure signs that you’ve overdone it in the gym:
- Chronic fatigue
- Depression
- Underperformance
- Aches and pains
- Feeling drained after a usually productive workout
- Personality and mood changes
- Loss of concentration
Many of these symptoms can be traced back to nervous system imbalances, which may be aggravated by too much physical stress and not enough rest. So take a day or week, if need be, off weights. Switch to light cardiovascular exercise and give your body a chance to catch up. Rest and ingest healthful ingredients and plenty of hydration and before you know it you will be back in the gym performing at an even higher level.
At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we specialize in helping people get in tune with their bodies to maximize their health. Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment today.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.A.C.
Overtraining
At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we want to encourage athletes of all disciplines to train smarter if they are going to train harder. The science and study of strength training has evolved immensely as more and more money is pumped into professional sports, creating a windfall of information for those of us who are happy to play at our own level. We can help you identify exercises and habits that may be actually working against your attempts to build muscle and endurance.
At our office in Park Slope, we want athletes to be aware of the pitfall of overtraining: when muscles are not given enough time or nutrition to rebuild after vigorous exercise.
Overtraining is a great way to injure yourself and it is entirely avoidable. With the proper attention to hydration, nutrition and rest, you will enter the gym refreshed and inspired rather than tired and ragged. This will in turn, allow you to get the most out of your exercise. For many people, a simple conversation is all it takes to catalyze an entire program of health and efficient muscle building.
Rather than fearing injury, we want you to be confident that your biomechanics are in solid order when you perform your first deadlift, which is incidentally, when performed properly, quite a good exercise for lower back strengthening. We monitor, identify and correct muscular imbalances that could be setting you up for a muscle tear if you push yourself too hard.
Call our office in Brooklyn at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment today.
Dr. Karen A. Thomas, D.C. L.Ac.
Muscle Building
Make the most out of every muscle building movement by ensuring the health of your spine and nervous system.
Muscle building begins when motor neurons send a signal to a muscle telling it to contract. The easier your brain can activate the muscle contraction, the quicker you will build muscle. This means that ensuring the nerve pathways are clear of interference is a key to muscle building. Therefore, subluxations are extremely counterproductive for a person attempting to gain muscle. Chiropractic adjustment corrects these misalignments, ensuring that your brain can activate the muscles without interference.
Overtraining is also counterproductive: weight lifting for too many reps, or at too high a weight can cause joint sprain, muscle spasm and tissue damage. If you have pushed the envelope too far, we offer rehabilitation modalities that will speed blood flow to the injured area, helping it to heal quicker with oxygen and other nutrients.
Chiropractic care provides the assistance athletes need to excel. At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we want you to get the most out of every lift while contributing to an overall body of health.
Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 today. Together, we can institute a combination of strengthening, stretching, eating and chiropractic to ensure your overall health.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C. L.Ac.