Our lifestyle, behaviours and habits create an environment for our body-mind unit. Healthy environments tend to create and sustain ease and unfavourable ones contribute to unease or dis-ease. The more unfavourable the environment, the higher the chances to develop pain, discomfort or dysfunction. That is why shifting from a state of unease to a state of well-being requires a gradual replacement of unfavourable behaviours and habits. These are the most common risk factors contributing to pain, discomfort and dysfunction. 

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• diet

• hydration

• stress levels

• sleep - recovery 

• dysfunctional breathing

• moving often before moving well

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Adding a positive or removing a negative?

Pain, discomfort and dysfunction can be addressed by adding a positive factor and/or removing a negative one. Knowing that both acts require effort, time and resources, what would be most beneficial?  

If you guessed that removing a negative factor has a greater and more positive effect than adding a positive one, you are right.

Dr. Craig Cook is a Physical Therapist and co-creator of the Functional Movement Systems. In his career, he has seen clients improve their balance by 20% in 72 hours with zero exercise, by simply having them remove or mitigate risk factors. He explains that when one of his clients fails a balance test and he or she “is dehydrated, eating poorly, swimming in cortisol (the stress hormone), sleeping 4 hours a night and think red bull is a meal, I would like them to fix 3 of those things and then, let me check (their) balance again” . During a livestream, Dr. Cook further explains “what you are going to see when the person is hydrated, eating, well-rested and probably with not as much cortisol (is that) boom, the conductors are working properly." Go to livestream (Min 45:40 to 51:15. I recommend you watch the whole video). 

When dealing with pain, discomfort or suboptimal function, removing risk factors is an essential concept to many fields in healthcare, including Manual Osteopathy. That is the reason why, as a Manual Osteopathic Therapist, I insist in offering tools and guidance with the purpose of helping our clients replace unfavourable behaviours and habits contributing to their condition(s). A more appropriate environment will help speed up the healing process, promote body function and alleviate some of the symptoms, such as pain or discomfort. 

When hands-on Manual Osteopathic sessions are not an option, you may still help your condition without having to leave home. We created our Home Routines page to help you in this task. We recommend you start with the ones that are easiest to manage. You can also start addressing some of the risk factors that might be contributing to your pain, discomfort or dysfunction.

Proper hydration is perhaps the easiest factor to tackle. If in doubt, talk to your physician to determine the amount of water & minerals that is appropriated to your lifestyle and workstyle. Set up an alarm to remind you of drinking a glass of water every X minutes or hours. If you work at your desk, stand up, do some stretches, go to the kitchen, go to the washroom, hung from your chin-up bar... and back to your station. Ah, don't forget to drink your glass of water when you are in the kitchen. Try to avoid bringing a sweet drink and cookies to your desk, or you will stay glued to your chair for hours! Note: It would be helpful to exclude beer, wine, soda, fruit juice, coffee, baileys and other sweet drinks from your pro-hydration list. Instead, keep them in your non pro-hydration list.

Adapting our diet to our lifestyle, work style, budget and body necessities is a must. Sometimes, an inappropriate diet can cause inflammation affecting the GI tract and numerous fascial and musculoskeletal structures in the area, leading to pain discomfort and movement restrictions (Eg. SI Joint-type of pain, hip flexors hypertonicity, low back pain and pain or symptoms associated to nerve compression in the lower extremities). If you are unsure your diet matches your body necessities, consult your family physician, a GI specialist and/or a registered dietician (see Our Partners page). 

As you may already know, sleep-recovery, stress and breathing functionality go hand by hand. At all times one affects the others. As an example, dysfunctional breathing can lead to an over recruitment of our sympathetic nervous system, with its well-known fight-or-flight stress responses. Chronic stress not only contributes to poor sleep but also lowers the immune system responses and functionality, reducing healing and increasing unfavourable inflammation. Also, chronic stress causes an increase in muscle tone that can limit the degrees of movement a person moves thorough, affecting movement patterns and reducing mobility, balance, stability and motor control. If you wish to reinforce healthier breathing habits, please visit our Mindful Breathing page.

First move well, then move often. Sometimes, exercising feels great at the moment but causes pain after. That is a very good indicator that something is wrong. In the same way supplements are not there to replace food, exercise should not replace an active lifestyle. People having a lifestyle that includes functional movement (not dysfunctional, repetitive or overuse type of movement) do not need to exercise to maintain a healthy body. On the other hand, people seating for prolonged periods of time or realising repetitive tasks definitely need to include some functional movement training into their daily activities. Functional movement will help regain the stability and motor control lost as a consequence of injury, pain, unfavourable habits or a sedentary lifestyle. Note that in this cases, a regular weight training or a weekend warrior practice will more likely contribute to injury. For more info, visit an FMS physical trainer (see Our Partners page).