Falling is one of the top causes of life-changing injuries in older people. The good new is that most falls are preventable. There are several ways to prevent falls including keeping a clean environment, wearing well fitting shoes, and making sure any medications you’re taking aren’t causing negative side effects like drowsiness or dizziness. These are all common-sense measures that you can easily take today, but another less obvious way to maintain your balance and your independence is to do the right kinds of exercise.

If you go to a typical gym and use the equipment, you may increase your cardiovascular health, but you won’t improve your balance. One in three people over 65 will have a serious fall this year, regardless of their overall health. If you want to avoid falling, make sure you’re doing dynamic exercises. Unlike of working out on machines at the gym, doing dynamic exercises will increase your balance and stability. Any standing exercises will also enhance your balance.

What do I mean when I say dynamic exercises? In my practice, I focus on functional fitness, which means that I use mostly body weight exercises and exercises that work in three dimensions–using resistance bands, medicine balls, kettlebells, and other free-range-of-motion exercises. When I say “dynamic exercise,” these are the kinds of workouts I’m taking about. Dynamic exercises are especially useful for people for whom stability and balance is a priority. These exercises can help prevent injury more than one-dimensional (machine) exercises can.

If you’re an older person getting into exercise, make sure you respect the limits of your body. High-impact exercises and heavy weight lifting are very stressful on your body and you should try to minimize them if possible–especially as you age.

As you get older, you should also allow yourself more rest days. Working out is great, but you have to spend some time “working in”, by which I mean doing yoga, meditation, tai chi, qigong, and other forms of activity that are designed to restore energy, rather than expend it. These activities will help your body and mind stay healthy well after 50.

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People ask me quite a bit about essential equipment to your home gym.  If you know me, you know that I advocate bodyweight exercise and dynamic workouts as much as possible.  I can recommend several great, affordable pieces of gear aimed at getting yourself fit, but I want to make sure not to neglect an equally important aspect of training: recovery.  Recovery gear is just as important as workout gear, so I can’t make a list of essential gear without including some of both. With that, here are some devices I can recommend:

• TRX bands: These are great ways to diversify your bodyweight routines.  They enable you to push, pull, and turn from different angles in order to target different muscle groups.
• Kettlebells: Many people associate these with the Crossfit crowd, but you don’t have to use them with that level of intensity.  These can provide great, stable resistance for lifting exercises and they incorporate into dynamic exercises better than regular free weights or dumbbells because of their low center of gravity.
• Resistance tubing: Like TRX bands, resistance bands can be used at different angles to target different muscle groups.  Unlike TRX bands, they’re stretchy. This makes them unsuitable for bodyweight exercises, but that also means their resistance isn’t limited to the direction of gravity.  You can use them anywhere and with any intensity.

Recovery gear:

• A foam roller.  Foam rollers are very versatile gear that I use every time I work out.  When used properly, they reduce muscle soreness and decrease recovery time.  
• Massage sticks:  Like foam rollers, these decrease pain and recovery time, but they can often be used in different positions and in more targeted areas.
• A tennis ball.  Yep. Use it just like a tiny foam roller to target tightness and soreness in your muscles.
• More specialized gear: Infrared heating pads, inversion tables, and thermal lasers can all contribute to your comfort, but do what’s comfortable and affordable for you.

Spring is here, and even if it’s getting a little bit of a slow start. Every year, if you’re like most people, you get excited to start outdoor activities again after a long winter. Unfortunately, sudden bursts of physical activity after a long period of sitting still is one of the most common ways that people injure themselves.
The key to avoiding injury as you get active is to start slow getting in shape. Before you start running, walk a few days first. This is something most people do instinctively over the long term; everyone knows that as you get in shape, you can do more than you could before. It’s also true in the short term though–when you’re about to start physical activity, even something that’s seemingly not very intense, like golf, make sure you do a dynamic warm-up first. Many golfers sit in their car on the way to work, sit all day at work, sit in their car on the way to the golf course, and then hit the links. That’s an injury waiting to happen. You really want to do yourself the favor of a short warm-up before any kind of exercise.
Physical activity is so important for your overall physical and mental health, but make sure you don’t hurt yourself in the process of trying to get healthy.

Foam rolling has many benefits. The technical term for foam rolling is “self-myofascial release.” Foam rolling helps break up adhesion between your muscles and the fascia, or soft membrane, that surrounds them. It also stimulates nerves in the muscles that help release muscle tension and therefore reduce pain and tightness.

When foam rolling, I like to use a roller made from firm styrofoam that is three feet long by six inches thick. Go slow, and roll each location for 1-2 minutes at a time. If you feel a painful spot, pause and rest with the foam roller right on the painful spot for 30-45 seconds. That long pause on the tight spot in your muscle will cause the stimulation needed to release the tension and relieve the pain. You can do this 1-2 times a day.

In my line of work, I’m constantly learning new things and seeking better teachers. That’s why this week I attended a symposium on how to reduce shoulder pain called “Non-operative Shoulder Rehabilitation: Current Approaches in the Evaluation and Treatment of the painful shoulder. I learned a lot, and I’m going to pass it on to you, my clients.

A big part of the functional fitness philosophy is that your body knows the best way to move, but sometimes we have to unlearn unhealthy habits in order to help it remember. One great way to do that is to repeat some of our basic developmental movements. Crawling is one of the most powerful ways to reset our bodies back to their original healthy movements.
Crawling helps us remember to breathe from our diaphragms, it promotes core strength and stability, and it engages the body in “cross-lateral movement.” These are movements that help the left and right sides of the brain knit together, allowing you not only to move with more coordination in your body, but also to learn and retain information better. Crawling is an important part of the developmental process, but not everyone spends enough time crawling as a baby–some kids almost skip right through to walking. Kids who do this are actually more likely to develop problems with learning and mobility. It’s okay if you’re one of these people, because you can reset and rebuild your brain by doing some specific crawling exercises now.
There are four basic crawling exercises. In order from most fundamental to most advanced, they are:
Commando crawl
Baby crawl
Leopard crawl
Spider-man crawl

All of them have some things in common: keep your head up and your butt low, keep a “big” chest, breathe from your diaphragm, and keep your tongue on the roof of your mouth. Other than that, they are slightly different motions.

Commando crawl:
Lie on your belly and prop yourself up on your forearms. Keep your hips low, almost flat to the ground, and drag your left knee forward alongside your body while pushing your right forearm forward, then your right knee and left forearm and so on.
Baby crawl:
On your hands and knees now, with your head up (make sure you’re holding it up above your shoulder blades and butt) drag your left knee straight forward while moving your right hand forward, then your right knee and your left hand, and so on. Make sure your knees are tracking underneath your body, inside the line traced by your arms.
Leopard crawl:
This is a similar motion to the baby crawl, but it’s a big step up in difficulty. Get into the baby crawl position, but instead of resting your knees on the ground, get up on your toes. Your shins should remain parallel to the ground, so that your body is in basically the same position that it was during the baby crawl, but propped on your toes instead of resting on your knees. Now move your right hand forward at the same time as you slide your left toes forward–keep your shins parallel to the ground. Do the alternate motion: right leg forward, left hand forward, and so on. Your knees should track inside of your hands.
Leopard crawl is very demanding, and it’s normal to spend a lot of time (months or longer) on the baby crawl before you move up.
Spider-man crawl
While this is a physically easier motion for most people vs. the leopard crawl, it is developmentally more advanced, and I don’t recommend doing it before mastering the leopard crawl.
Get in the same position as leopard crawl, and do the same motion, but this time with your knees tracking outside your hands. If this is done right, it causes your hip joints to go through a larger range of motion than before and challenges your rotational stability. If it’s done incorrectly, your pelvis will wobble back and forth, and a large part of your range of motion will come from curving your lumbar spine to the side–THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU WANT! Your pelvis should stay straight and level while your legs move from the hip.

Crawling is a surprisingly effective way to build up your strength, and the more challenging variations give you quite a workout. Sometimes you need to get your body back to basics to move forward. This type of resetting exercise can make your other workouts safer and more effective

PEMF: Breakthrough in Pain Management

Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy is an emerging therapy that has lots of support from the medical and science communities.  It’s known to promote tissue healing and has been used for a long time to help knit bones together in stubborn breaks.  Recently, they’ve been adapted for other therapies.  They were featured on Dr. Oz recently, so I did some of my own research that I put together for you here:

Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields: What are they?
Pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) devices create resonating electromagnetic force fields that can act on the body’s cells to promote healing and pain relief

What are they good for?
PEMF devices are used to promote healing.  They’ve been shown to work for helping broken bones fuse back together, and also to reduce pain, swelling and edema (fluid buildup and pressure) for soft-tissue damage, such as post-surgery damage.
A 1995 study showed the following benefits:

• Decreased pain
• Increased range of motion
• Reduced inflammation
• Reduced muscle loss after surgery
• Faster functional recovery
• Faster healing of skin wounds
• Enhanced capillary formation

How do they work?
PEMF devices increase the production of nitric oxide in the affected area.  This increases blood flow and reduces inflammation where the device is aimed.  Increased blood flow and reduced inflammation combine to promote healing much faster than the body can do on its own.

Are they safe?
PEMF is not known to have any side effects whatsoever.  Your doctor may not know about PEMF therapy, because they are not required to learn about PEMF in medical school.
Your doctor may also hesitate to recommend PEMF because they associate “magnet medicine” with quackery like magnetic shoe inserts.  However, several PEMF devices are FDA approved to treat post-operative pain and to help heal badly broken bones.  PEMF may also help with more day-to-day pain like arthritis, low back pain, and chronic joint pain.  In Canada, there is an over-the-counter device approved for exactly those uses.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask me!

I was recently asked how to avoid germs at the gym. When I go to the gym, I make sure to carry a small, pocket-sized spray bottle of natural sanitizer. I make sure that I use natural sanitizers without toxic chemicals. I spray it on my hands or the equipment every so often.

One way that I avoid germs is to avoid using machines. I focus on bodyweight and freeweight exercises mostly for fitness reasons–these exercises promote stability and muscle balance–but another reason to go with them is because even if there is some equipment involved (weights, bands), there’s much less contact with it than with a machine exercise.

Never use the water fountain at the gym, always bring your own water to drink. If you use a treadmill, don’t hold on to the bar. If you see someone cough or sneeze, walk away while holding your breath so that you don’t breathe in the germs. Whatever clothing you wore at the gym, you want to change out of it as soon as possible and get into clean clothes.

The gym is a germy place. It’s easy to protect yourself, but you have to be consistent and protect yourself.

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Thruway rest stops, airport bars, fast food–for some people, these are guilty pleasures of the road. If you’re traveling a long way for the holidays, make sure you don’t succumb to those temptations. If you plan ahead and eat well on the way, you’ll feel much better when you get there and have a better time with your friends and family.

If you’re flying, I’m assuming you bought your ticket weeks or even months ahead of time, so that should give you plenty of time to pack a lunch. I am a real stickler for clean, raw food. I also eat organic whenever possible. When I’m traveling, I make sure to pack raw food energy bars, and that’s mostly what I eat when I’m in transit–on the plane, at the airport, whatever.

The food that’s served on planes and in airports is almost always loaded with preservatives, salt, and additives. It’s also often high in fat and sugar, but I’m mostly concerned with the quality of food more than its specific macronutrient profile. Sugar is okay if you’re getting it from organic fruit, fat is fine if you’re getting it from extra-virgin olive oil, but at an airport you’re pretty much stuck with burgers, wings, fried odds and ends, and melted cheese on bread in one form or another. If you must, must eat something from an airport restaurant, get a salad with a simple oil and vinegar dressing. Your body will thank you later.

If you’re driving to your destination, pack a cooler with healthy food, along with fruit, nuts, and filtered water to keep your energy up on the road. Do not eat junk food at highway rest stops. Sometimes if you’re lucky you can get a salad or a yogurt parfait, but you really can’t be sure what has been added to that food to make it shelf stable. If you have to, you should go that route, but ideally you should eat healthy food from home whose ingredients you recognize.

When I arrive at my destination, I find the closest grocery store–preferably a Whole Foods or other natural food store, and stock up from there. You will enjoy your trip more if you actually feel good and have the energy to do the things you want to do.

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