Use it or Lose it - efficiency may be hurting us

The body is generally governed by the principle of use it or lose it. The body is about efficiency and conservation of resources.  Why would it spend a lot of energy and resources building muscle if don't use it? Why "waste" a lot of energy and resources filling bone tissue if we don't load it?  This also means that if we only do the same certain tasks in our routine we will lose capacity to do novel tasks.

Those things we do once a year will become more challenging and more likely to cause injury. This is why it hurts so much after pruning the garden once a year.

The aging process changes a lot of things about the body that amplifies these changes and makes us notice the deficiencies a lot more.

"Useit or lose it" relates to most all parts of our body including lungs, heart and brain.

So to prevent loss of function, loss of movement and strength it means we have to do things regularly, and full body movements to gently increase capacity. Things like TaiJi, QiGong, Yoga are great as they get us to go through a wide variety of movements that we wouldn't otherwise have call to do in this modern world we live in. Many sports provide this benefit of varied movements also.

What are you going to do today to prevent further decline?

• Take the stairs get off one floor early.
• Park a bit further from work to get a little extra activity.
• Spend a few minutes gently stretching.
• Do a brain teaser
• Start learning a new skill

Be warned that if a body has an issue, injury or disease already more care needs to be taken to prevent injuries while working to improve the body. So don't overdo it.

If you have already found that your capacity is reducing, you might benefit from some input from a professional to advise you on how to safely get back to full form, and maybe better than you have been for a while.

Our practitioners have years of experience in helping people with improving function.
So give us a call to help get you moving better and feeling better.