MIlestones

By Shane Sauer

If July 4th, 1776 was the birth of America, then we celebrated its 245th birthday just a few days ago. A lot of things have changed for America over those years.

Now think back to your last milestone birthday. What has changed in your body since then?

As people age, they complain about decreases in strength, endurance, flexibility, hearing, vision, memory, etc. The list goes on and on. Are any of them on your list?

As these changes occur, most people just chalk it up to “getting old”. Resigning themselves to changes and feeling like they have no control over the situation.

It is my belief that you do have control over how you age. A lot of what we think of as inevitable ageing is more about unaddressed compensations than genetic predispositions.

Over the years, your body has undergone numerous stresses and injuries and it has adapted structurally to them. Your brain has created many habits to manage your lifestyle. As a whole, you are always adapting to exactly what you do. It’s the first rule of physiology! In a nutshell, it means you're getting better at the things you do. But you are also getting better at not doing the things that you don’t do.

Consider some examples:

• Reduced Movement - You hurt your shoulder when you were younger. You didn’t do a lot of rehab because it didn’t seem important. In the healing process some scar tissue built up. You stopped moving it through it’s full range because it hurt. Your brain created new movement patterns to mitigate the pain. Since you stopped using the full mobility of the joint, your body created more structural tissue to stabilize the joint in its new range. You now recognize these compensations as weakness and inflexibility.

• Vision Troubles - You take a job out of college that has a lot of computer time. You know taking breaks is a good idea, but you want to feel productive so you push through them. As you spend 8-10hrs a day, week after week looking at something 1-2 feet away, your eyes begin to adapt. You’ve gotten better at that task, but you recognize the change because you now need glasses for reading and driving.

I do want to be clear, there is a decrease in your ability brought on by ageing. BUT, I hope these examples make you realize that ageing is only a small piece of the puzzle. And that means you can do a lot to improve your future.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be diving deeper into this idea by addressing some of the most common concerns one at a time. Providing you with simple tips and tricks to postpone and even reverse some of the “ageing” you experience.