Well last year at this time, I made a New Year’s resolution for 2023 regarding being timely in writing my newsletters. I guess I am like the 91% of Americans that don’t complete their New Year’s resolutions. In fact, research goes onto show 23% of people quit their resolution by the end of the first week, and 43% quit by the end of January.
Even though I haven’t kept my 2023 resolution of writing my monthly newsletters, I have been writing manuals for my online classes that hopefully I will make available during the first quarter of 2024. The courses online are on what I do in my clinic everyday called Myomemory Advantage Transformation (M.A.T.).
M.A.T. is an integrated, general systems, and functional approach I use in my facility to evaluate client’s posture and movement that was developed by me from over forty years as a clinical physical therapist treating acute and chronic musculoskeletal symptoms and over twenty years of participating in the winter sport of ski jumping.
I find it truly ironic today that I now practice in a profession that assesses the effects of gravity and ground reaction force (GRF) on the human body and I practiced and competed in a sport that is foremost in competition with gravity and GRF. These experiences give me a different perspective on the body’s posture and movement.
That perspective in sport comes from traveling at times as fast as 70 mph down an in-run of a ski jump while in a crouched position with my arms at my side. Then launching my body into the air at take off and using the air pressure under my skis, to begin my flight. If everything went as planned, I would land again on my feet with my total body reacting to GRF.
The sport has definitely changed since I competed. The postcard below shows me competing at Lake Placid, N.Y. in 1979. Unfortunately, I did not compete at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games, but I was a forerunner.
However, I did compete for the United States Olympic Team at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria placing 30th on the large hill.
From my ski jumping experiences I learned that like birds, I had to rely on my vestibular system and eyes to maintain stability flying through the air. In your everyday posture and movements you too have to not only rely on your vestibular system and eyes, but also the body’s proprioceptive system. In other words, the neuromuscular mechanisms involving your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fascia in reaction to gravity and ground reaction force (GRF).
For you to perform the activities of your daily living, your peripheral and central nervous systems have to use the “triad” of sensory input involving the vestibular, visual, and proprioceptive systems to keep your structure upright and functioning against the vertical forces of gravity and GRF. To do this, your musculoskeletal system must be in good health.
Musculoskeletal health actually refers to the performance of your muscles, bones, joints, and adjacent connective tissues. Musculoskeletal impairments comprise more than 150 different diseases/conditions, that affect the system and are characterized by impairments in the muscles, bones, and adjacent connective tissues leading to temporary or lifelong limitations in functioning and participation.
Musculoskeletal conditions are typically characterized by pain which is often persistent with limitations in mobility and dexterity, reducing people’s ability to work and participate in society. In fact, pain experienced in musculoskeletal structures is the most common form of non-cancer pain at a cost of $650 billion dollars in healthcare and lost employment in the United States today.
The World Health Organization (WHO) refers to musculoskeletal health as the performance of the human locomotor system comprised of muscles, bones, joints, and adjacent connective tissues. Recent analysis of Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 data showed approximately 1.71 billion people globally live with musculoskeletal conditions, including low back pain, neck pain, fractures, other injuries, osteoarthritis, amputation, and rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
With the appearance of COVID-19, also called coronavirus disease 2019, a sickness caused by a virus called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2, many infected people have been suffering from what is referred to as “Long COVID.” Coronavirus is a family of viruses that cause illnesses such as the common cold, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
As mentioned, some people who have been infected with this virus have experienced long-term effects from their infection. Most recently, Dutch researchers have discovered that the persistent fatigue many patients with Long COVID have experienced has a biological cause. They found their muscles produce less energy than those in healthy patients and as in the past, the body’s muscular system is often a forgotten cause of chronic disease.
“We’re seeing clear changes in the muscles in these patients,” states Michele van Vugt, professor of internal medicine at Amsterdam’s UMC teaching hospital. In total, 25 Long COVID patients and 21 healthy people participated in the study and were asked to cycle for 15 minutes. This cycling test caused a long term worsening of symptoms in people with Long COVID.
The researchers looked at their blood and muscle tissue one week before the cycling test and one day after the test. “We saw various abnormalities in the muscle tissue of patients. At the cellular level, we saw that the mitochondria of the muscle, also known as the energy factory of the cell, function less well and that they produce less energy” said Rob Wust, assistant professor of human sciences at the VU University. He goes onto say, “So, the cause of the fatigue is really biological. The brain needs energy to think. Muscle needs energy to move.”
So why am I focusing in on this study? Well, the main reason is the under appreciated role of muscle in health and disease with our medical system. Allied health professionals in our system as well as the patients they serve, do not realize the central role muscle plays in whole-body protein metabolism and our overall health and well being.
Muscle actually serves as the primary reservoir for amino acids in your body to maintain protein synthesis in vital tissues and organs where there is the absence of amino acid absorption from the gut. Furthermore, altered muscle metabolism has been found to play a key role in the genesis and prevention of many common pathologic conditions and chronic diseases.
Two chronic diseases the aging populous of the United States faces today is Type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis. Type 2 diabetes develops in stages with the onset of the process involving a decreased ability of insulin to stimulate muscles to clear glucose from the blood. So-called “insulin resistance” of muscle is a distinctive feature of the metabolic syndrome which is precursor of diabetes.
With “osteoporosis,” mechanical force is essential for modeling and remodeling bone, processes that increase bone strength and mass. Whereas body weight and weight-bearing exercises provide a direct mechanical force on bones, the largest voluntary loads come from the contractions of muscle.
Another reason I am focusing on this study is that it showed how we need a paradigm shift in how we define, identify, and treat musculoskeletal symptoms in this country. First and foremost, we have to change from the misconception about musculoskeletal pain during exercise. In that if you experience pain during a workout, you simply need to ignore it and work through it. But if you adhere to this mantra, “no pain, no gain,” you could be setting yourself up for injury.
The value of regular physical activity to a person’s well-being cannot be denied. But how much exercise do you need to maintain health, improve fitness or lose weight? But where is the line between exercise being healthy or harmful? Unfortunately, the adage that if a little bit of exercise is good, then more should be better, still pervades in the U.S.
When you feel pain during exercise and that includes the exercises I give you with M.A.T. at my facility in treating your musculoskeletal symptoms, stop what you are doing and take stock of how you are feeling. Stop the exercise and if you think you can, try returning to the exercise, but if pain persists, then stop.
In the following months I will continue with the my “Newsletters,” but be patient with me. As I stated, I am trying to start my on-line courses during this first quarter of 2024.
Terry