Your Movement Diet

with Dr. Whitney Haase

This blog is going to combine two of my absolute favorite things:

Movement and eating.

I was recently working with a patient who was surprised at how much better she felt after performing the exercises I had recommended for her at her previous visit (they were McKenzie press-ups for her low back pain). When she asked why the exercise was so helpful, I explained the effect of her exercise with the following analogy:

If you are deficient in a nutrient, like Vitamin D or iron, you may start feeling weak and fatigued. If you get tested for nutrient deficiencies, the lab results will tell you which nutrient is too low, and then you can start taking a supplement to correct the imbalance. As your levels get back into the normal range, your symptoms will improve. Sounds great!

Just like nutrient deficiencies, many of us often have movement deficiencies. Just like a whole-food-based diet will keep your body feeling its best, a full-spectrum movement practice will keep your muscles and joints feeling their best. Our joints need to move through their full range of motion regularly to be happy — that means no pain for you!

Most of us have desk jobs, so we spend lots (i.e. WAY too much) time sitting. Sitting all day long is the movement equivalent of a highly-processed, nutrient-void diet. Our low back, hips, and knees stay in the same position for hours at a time, day in and day out. Our joints were not made to stay in one position — they were made to move! — so they become deficient in a particular movement, and they let us know by feeling stiff and signaling pain.

Since we use the SFMA and McKenzie Method in our office, I watched her go through lots of motions at her first visit. That movement assessment (like a nutrient lab test), told us which movements were “deficient.” Because I knew which movements were abnormal from my assessment, I knew which movement supplement (corrective exercise) to give her to get her low back feeling better.

As a postpartum mom, I feel like I’m hungry all the time, so it’s no surprise to me that I used a food analogy to explain her improvement. I continued to think about the analogy the following day, and I realized it was more applicable than I originally thought.

When someone has a poor diet, we don’t want them to endlessly take supplements to fill in all their nutritional gaps — we want them to make a lifestyle change and START EATING BETTER. By switching to a balanced, whole-food diet, we significantly reduce the need for supplements.

When someone comes to see us for back pain, I don’t want them to rely on their “movement supplement” for eternity either — I want them to develop a well-rounded movement practice! The exercises that we provide can help to fill in the holes in your movement diet while you work on making the necessary lifestyle changes. But eventually, when you have the movement basics down, you shouldn’t need to do those exercises like you did when you were hurting.

I’ve had a number of chiropractic patients who admitted to me in the last few weeks that they haven’t been very good at doing their exercises at home. When I asked how her new fitness program was going, one woman said, “Great! I’ve been adding in belly breathing, bracing, and hip hinges, and my back feels so much better. But… I haven’t been doing my exercises.”

I told her the end goal of me giving her those exercises was to incorporate them into her daily life — NOT just for her to sit on the floor day after day cranking out reps.

She was happy that she’d been doing the right thing, and I was thrilled that she was able to successfully switch from taking a “movement supplement” to improving her “movement diet.”

If you spend most of your time sitting (hint: almost all of us do!), check out our video for our seated mobility flow! You can take almost every joint in your body through its full range of motion — and it’s a great movement supplement to get started with.

If your joints or muscles feel tight, stiff, or painful, let us help you! We can help you to feel better now AND help you continue to move and feel better long after you leave our office.

If you have questions, please reach out to us! Call or text your questions to (402) 256 6683 or shoot us an email!