Archive for June 2017
After the Workout: Activities that Make or Break Muscle Growth
What you do after the workout is important as the workout itself
Not every workout is created equal. At OFW Chiropractic we know that success improving cardiovascular health and building muscle both depend on the actions you take before, during and after your workout. It is important not to neglect a single phase; for example, skipping the warm up leaves your muscles cold as you start to strain them and injuries are a common result. But what actions can you take to follow up your workout and make sure you consolidate the hard work you’ve put in in the gym?
Let your Cells be Starved of Oxygen No Longer
Are you getting enough oxygen?
Every last cell in your body needs a constantly refreshing supply of oxygen in order to respire, repair and rebuild. Without fresh oxygen coming in, toxins accumulate and muscles often atrophy when anaerobic (read: oxygen deprived) cells die.
With Subluxation, Are you Selling your Health Short?
Are you allowing subluxation to linger?
Subluxation essentially refers to the spine moving out of alignment. The problem begins when, whether due to acute trauma or repetitive trauma over time, spinal joints move out of alignment and put pressure on the nearby nerves. You may feel pain in the back due to the nerve compression, but what you probably don’t feel is the dysfunction that accrues when this nerve is not able to send and receive signals clearly.
Muscle Tension has You all Tied Up
Muscle tension is a natural reaction
A natural reaction to mental and physical stress is muscle contraction- and when your muscles stay semi-contracted for a long period of time, pain and stiffness ensue. Furthermore, when your brain perceives mental stress, blood vessels constrict and less blood is able to flow to soft tissues including your muscles. This means less oxygen is reaching the cells within the muscle that need to perform respiration and more waste products are allowed to remain and accumulate. The byproduct of this system is pain or irritation in the muscles and this causes more stress, thus feeding back into the cycle.
Piriformis Syndrome: A Common Cause of Sciatica
Do you know your piriformis muscle?
The piriformis is small but powerful, a muscle located deep within the buttock that connects between the lower spine and the beginning of the femur. It’s function is to assist in rotation of the hip, but the piriformis is more well known for the problems it causes than for the way it assists your day to day movement. The problem is location: it just happens to sit right on top of the sciatic nerve, the longest nerve in the human body . In fact, in some people’s bodies, the nerve runs directly through the muscle. This sets up a scenario for impingement on the sciatic nerve.