HOW TO Maintain Healthy Spine Curves For A Pain-Free Life

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

00:00 How does Healthy spine curve look like
02:40 Exercise 1 – Neck retraction
04:00 Exercise 2 – Bruegger’s Reset
06:02 Exercise 3 – The Bridge Exercise

Hey, folks, Dr Clayton Roach here with my buddy “The Spine”, and I want to talk to you about a concept about curves in the spine. So are curves bad in the spine, right? We always talk about misalignment and curves and usually with a negative tone, but it really depends how you’re looking at the spine. If you’re looking at the spine from straight on, just like me right here, a curve would not be good. If your spine is curved this way and this way, we usually call that a scoliosis. Not good. And that’s why we have to detect those young kids so that they don’t grow up to have worse scoliosis when they grow up. Now when you’re looking at the spine from the side, total different story. We have four curves and their natural curves and they need to be there. There’s a curve in the neck, which is similar to the curve in the lower back and this green area called the lumbar spine. They both go inwards. There’s two curves that go outwards, middle back in the blue area and then the lower back in the sacral area, the orange area right here. So those curves are super important. Why? Well, two reasons. They absorb shock. One from gravity and two from ground force. Because we’re standing on this planet. There’s gravity pushing us down, and there’s ground forces pushing up on us. These curves act like a shock absorption and also like a spring, so that you’re able to absorb that shock and not have these discs in between. Right there. These discs, if you’re not absorbing the shock because you’ve lost these curves, these discs are going to start to narrow. We call that degenerative disc disease. DDD, triple d degenerative disc disease.

So what you want to do is you want to maintain those curves. Because over time, because we sit at a desk and we do all these things that really we shouldn’t be doing for prolonged periods of time. And we don’t do anything to combat that stress. We start to go from here, to no curve in the neck. And that is not good, right? Because we need those four curves from the side. We don’t want curves from front to back. So what do we do to maintain those curves? I’m going to give you three things you can do. How many? Three. We’re going to start with number one. We’ll go to number two. We’ll go to number three. And these are things you can do every single day again. Dr Clayton Ross from Roach Chiropractic Centre. Here we go with the postural exercise.

Number one to maintain the neck curve, the one that allows you to have your head over your shoulder. Let’s dive in. All right. This first one is to maintain the curve in the neck. One of the reasons we lose this curve is because we lose the strength in our deep flexor muscles in the neck, and that allows the curve to flatten out. So this one here is called a neck retraction exercise. I’m going to go right up against the wall here so you can see my movement.You are going to bring translate, bring back the head. But you are not going to do this. You’re bringing your entire face and head backwards. So it’s called neck retraction. So if you picture your chin as a line here. The chin is never moving up from that line. It’s just gliding along that line. So straight back and you’re gonna hold that for five seconds. Release. Five seconds and release. What that’s doing, it’s contracting the muscles on the front. And at the same time, stretching these muscles in the back of the head. So that way you’re not going like this because you’re gonna be like this all day long. So we need to bring your head in the opposite direction. Stretching these muscles, contracting these deep neck flexors, which allow you to keep that curve. So again you’re going to do this five second hold. And I would do ten repetitions. Do this at least once a day. And that will maintain that beautiful curve in the neck.

So here’s the next exercise for the middle back curve. This is the one that comes out. So you don’t want to come out too much. Because then you look like you have a kyphosis where you’re hunched forward. Like a lot of, unfortunately, seniors that haven’t taken care of their posture, they’re really rounded. You also don’t want to have a flat mid back. That curve is super important. It’s there for a reason, like I said, to absorb the shock. So here’s a good exercise. A good postural reset exercise called the Bruegger’s Reset. So you can do this one at work very easily. What you’re going to do is you’re going to take a second. You’re going to sit up on the edge of your seat. You’re going to roll your shoulders back. You’re going to bring your chin forward, which was part of the first exercise we did make sure the head is over the shoulders. The next is the key thing. The next thing is the key where you’re going to externally rotate your shoulders and bring your thumbs outwards. Okay. So what this is going to do. It’s going to bring your pecs into a lengthened position contrary to what you are all day long. So you’re going to roll your thumbs outwards into external rotation. Translate the head backwards retract and you’re going to count to 15 to 20s. So you’re going to stay in this position. Take deep breaths in and then you’re going to relax. You’re going to do it again for 15 seconds. And I’m going to recommend you do this three times. So three times 15 second hold in this bruegger’s position. And this way you get to open your chest. You get to breathe in. Because guess what? When you’re like this all day long, you’re shallow breathing. And when you’re shallow breathe, you don’t supply the muscles with the energy, the oxygen that the muscle needs. So the muscle contracts chronically. And now you’ve deprived the oxygen, the muscles of oxygen, which tends to accentuate that bad posture. Exercise number two to maintain that mid back curve that comes out.

So here’s the last step maintaining the lower back curve. So the lower back curve is the same as the one in the neck. It goes inwards. So we’re talking about this curve right here the arch in your back. So how do you maintain that. We’re going to give you this beautiful bridge exercise. So very simple. You’re going to accentuate the curve in your lower back. And you’re going to bring your hips up so that everything is in a straight line from your knees to your shoulders at the end. At the top, you are going to hold that for about 3 to 5 seconds and let it go. But the key is to not let it touch the ground. So you’re going to go back down. You’re going to come back up again. Hold for about five seconds and then bring it back down without touching. And I’m going to get you to do ten of these three times. So total you’re going to do 30 bridges. Sounds like a lot. As you do it you’ll start to build the strength. As you build the strength, you’ll be able to maintain that curve in the lower back, which is essential if you don’t want bad posture and low back pain. So again, just a simple bridge. You’re up five seconds and you bring it back down, ten times, three sets. So three times 10/30 total bridge exercise. Take care. Have a great day. Dr Clayton Roach with Roach Chiropractic Centre. See you soon.