[Narrator] Well, Good Afternoon, and thank you for joining us for “Sitting and Your Health.”
This is a 30-minute webinar put on by the doctors at South Orange Chiropractic Center. We’ll be having a 30-minute webinar, and you’ll have the chance to ask the doctors questions at the end of the presentation.
You’ll also if you stay tuned to the very end, you’ll have an opportunity to get a very special offer. So stay tuned for that. And with that, I’d like to switch everything over to the doctors. Take it away.
[Doctors]- Hi, Dr. Steve Levine, South Orange Chiropractic Center, and Dr. Mark Roczey, with South Orange Chiropractic Center.
Right, we thought that it’s never been more timely to talk about how to stay fit while you sit ’cause more and more people are sitting on an ongoing basis and working from home, and not always having the best workstation.
And for years, we’ve always talked about lifestyle is a big part of someone’s health and wellness. And lifestyle is how you spend six, eight or 10 hours of your day, every day, and most people are on the computer, sitting at their dining room table, on their laptop or in a workstation that’s not so compatible to their posture.
So many health problems are coming from it. We’re gonna demonstrate some of the health problems, some of the structural issues.
And we’re also gonna come up with some of the solutions and some simple exercises that we’ll demonstrate that you can do with us that will make a huge difference in your day-to-day, and make you realize what some of the issues are in your spine and your posture, and how health problems can be a negative effect from sitting.
Right, so over here, we have a workstation that many of our patients are currently expressing to us how they’re setting it up in their home environment.
And right away, we know it’s not great and it’s not the solution. So we’re gonna figure out some quick tips on how to improve that.
– Right. So Dr. Mark’s gonna sit down and the first thing you notice that he adjusts the back support.
And many people have back support, but they don’t use it.
They tend to sit on the first third or two-thirds of their chair as they’re working on their laptop or their desktop.
And you might be doing the same thing. So one of the things we look at is we look at the foot placement.
We look at shoulder rolls. We look at forward head posture.
Now what happens here ergonomically, when someone is sitting like that if they’re working on their laptop.
Well, first notice the position of the laptop. Look how low it is and how the angle of his eyes. Ideally, that laptop should be as high as possible so that when he’s sitting, he can look straight at the very top of the machine.
So, can you raise that chair up? Let’s see how that looks.
Well, that’s as good as he’s gonna get, but it’s still not high enough.
Ideally, we want to see that when he’s sitting in good posture, right? His eye line should be at the top of the screen.
The top 20% of the screen should be what his eye line is, not down.
Of course, what happens is when he’s in forward head posture, what’s happening? Well, first of all, he’s closing off the airway.
So he’s not getting a good breath. And I think it’s important to breathe, don’t you? Absolutely. And he’s also crushing the discs ’cause the discs are in front.
So he’s compressing that disc. He’s cutting off the airway. The muscles in the back of the neck now are tighter. And after several hours sitting in this position, he’s gonna get fatigue.
He’s gonna get shoulder problems. He’s gonna get upper back tension because all these muscles are working.
We’re gonna show you how reversing that is gonna be so much better. The other thing that’s happening that most people don’t realize is that there’s a vertebral artery that runs up to the brain. He’s also compressing that artery so there’s less blood to the brain.
And what’s happening to his arm and his hand? You might be getting numbness and tingling because the nerves get compressed. And those nerves run down the upper back, the arm, into the hand. And some people think they have carpal tunnel when it could be a cervical brachial problem. That’s the cervical brachial plexus.
And those are the group of nerves that run right down into these muscles. So let’s go through some corrective posture.
One is ideally we wanna sit upright, okay? And you’re gonna say, “That might not be comfortable.” But let’s look at the foot position, right? So if your feet are flat on the floor, the tendency is you may not get the best posture. You tend to lean forward.
Something simple that everyone has at home could be a binder, a four or five-inch binder. It’s angled towards you. And when we put this on the floor, now we’ve got better foot position.
And it’s difficult to lean forward when your feet are up on an angle. That alone, that five or 10-degree change is gonna throw him back into good posture, where now he’s using his back support.
Now, back supports come in many forms. It could be as simple as a cushion or a rolled-up towel, where, if Dr. Mark’s sitting down, it fills up the curve of the lower back and it helps him bring his, look at his shoulder line.
The shoulder line has just changed from forward to more better, to better alignment. And his ear is in a line with his shoulders, which is where we want it to be.
And with his feet up on the binder, guess what? He can still see the screen. He does not have to lean forward.
Another option is the air cushion, which a lot of people use and that could be used behind you or sitting on it. And it’s like sitting on an exercise ball. So we can blow up the amount of air that he needs. So now he’s in constant motion. So the muscles are moving back and forth.
How does that feel?
– It’s great, it even feels good on the core ’cause it makes you support yourself, engage those muscles.
– Right, sitting on an air cushion like that will constantly work the muscles so you’ve got circulation and it relieves most back pain when you’re sitting.
Okay, anything you wanna add to that?
– No, that’s good so far.
– Okay, so to avoid some of the fatigue that occurs in your spine and in your shoulders, we wanna go through a series of exercises and you can do this with us. And they’re very simple, okay?
Remember, the first thing we wanna do is design the best ergonomic workstation we can, ’cause you’re gonna spend hours there.
But if you can get a habit of possibly at the top of every hour, let’s say you start your work day at eight or nine o’clock, nine o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 O’clock, make a commitment that once an hour you’re gonna take three, four minutes to do one of these exercises, but you do ’em continuously through the day, not just once.
This will help break up the fatigue in the arms, the back, and the shoulders. So the first thing we’re gonna do, and I’ll let Dr. Mark demonstrate it ’cause he’s such a good target, you all right?
So what do you wanna do first?
Do you wanna do arms extended?
– Let’s do arms extended in front of us.
We wanna tighten up our position, sit up nice and tall. And I love when I take a deep breath in, (inhaling)as I exhale, I wanna exert all that pressure in front of me, push out, get some wall and let go of all that stress.
And you can hold it anywhere from five to 30 seconds.
It’s a great stretch for your shoulders, your traps, your triceps. And it’s gonna open up your mid back as well.
Next, we’re gonna go over your head, great for your lats. It forces you to push up in the air, deep breath in.
You hold it for five seconds to 30 seconds and breathe out. (exhaling)Exhaling down. You can also bring the arms down at your sides and do some backward rolls.
Squeezing those shoulder blades together for 15 to 20-second circular movements. And pause right in the middle When you squeeze those shoulder blades together to tighten them up because all day we’re stuck like this.
So our idea is to focus on our posture, focus on the muscles that have been tightened all day. Relax and strengthened them.
Another great one is bringing your body all the way to the ground, you’re bending at the waist to open up those spinal discs that have been compressed all day.
If you can’t make it all the way to the ground, it’s okay, halfway is good. You don’t wanna bounce, you don’t wanna bob. You wanna hold this stretch for anywhere from five to 30 seconds.
Now, after you’ve been sitting all day, think about it, your muscles, they’ve been static. They’re stuck, they’re not limber and you get up.
Chances are, they’re not gonna fully elongate. So it’s important that you also stretch the front of your muscles. And these are called your quadriceps. The quads are easy.
You wanna just bring it up to your buttocks as best as possible. Then again, hold off for five to 30 seconds and repeat it two to three times on each side.
With just these exercises alone, you’re gonna start to reshape your muscles, elongate them, and allow your body to form a healthier posture.
One that’s really great for the calf. You can lean against a wall, your desk, and you just wanna stretch out that back leg, forcing your weight into the front leg to get a greater stretch. And again, it’s just five to 30 seconds.
And if you have any pain, any prompt, you wanna stop immediately. You reverse and do it on the opposite side.
Excellent, also, you can do some standing shoulder shrugs. Again, bring those shoulders up to your ears. Squeezing those shoulder blades together, pausing at the downward motion, elongating your traps. ‘Cause all our tension forms up here.
And I know you guys are at home. You have your kids, you have your work, you have so many things going on, and that tension is immense. So that’s a good way.
One other one I like that I do quite often myself is I’ll put my hands behind my back. Interlace my fingertips, and I’ll push all the way down to the ground, exerting that pressure towards the floor, and allowing my shoulders to drop down as my head is forward.
Take a deep breath in, and as I exhale, stretch it out even more. Hold the stretch for five to 30 seconds.
Right away, even with that breathing, it’s a good tip to retrain your lungs, bring more oxygen into your body, which is essential to health and wellness.
Excellent, one other stretch that we’d like to do is the YTWLs.
We’re gonna go all the way up to the sky and we wanna bring our shoulder blades as close as we can together.
As we’re going down, we’re gonna go into our Ys, our Ts.
Then we’re gonna bring those elbows right into our flanks.
Our Ws and hold that position, it might be hard.
And then bring it down to an L. Keep those arms way out at your side, squeezing your shoulder blades together the entire time.
Good information guys, we hope so, excellent.
– Okay, so as you’re sitting in your workstation throughout the day, most people don’t realize one of the critical nutritional aspects of keeping those muscles and that spinal structure, very, very functional.
And we have approximately 660 muscles in our body. They are 82% water.
Most people don’t realize that they’re not drinking enough water during the day. Water is good because it gets all the systems working. It hydrates those muscles so you could have less spasms, less tension.
And the right formula that we’ve been told from the American Academy of Sports Physicians is half your body weight in ounces. So if I’m 200 pounds, it’s 100 ounces a day, 150 pounds, it’s 75 ounces a day. So do the math, start drinking early. And if you say that’s too much water, well, what happens is you’ll just end up going to the bathroom a little bit more, and it’ll force you to get up and out of your workstation.
So hydrate often. It’s an important aspect of every nutritional program, every diet program, every sports management program is all about staying hydrated. So, you know, when you’re going to work and the workday, make sure you have your water jug set up and you’re sipping it throughout the day.
– All right, and it’s also important to set a timer for yourself. Every 45 minutes, you gotta get up out of that chair. You gotta do these stretches to wake up your mind, your body and allow those muscles to become invigorated with more laxity. So that’s a great thing.
If you have a timer, everyone has an iPhone, you could just set it for 45 minutes and take a pause. And trust us, you’re gonna come back to your workstation.
You’re more empowered to do more. And that’s gonna allow you to be more productive at home while at the office.
– So let’s do a quick recap:
We’re gonna sit in good posture. We’re gonna have our low back support, I’ll put the low back support. We’re gonna have our feet propped up on something. We’re gonna bring the laptop in as high as we can.
And this way, even if you’re at the dining room table, if you have to put a couple of books underneath it, if you’re working on a laptop, it’s also good to get a separate keyboard so you’re not leaning into it.
And if, you don’t have to, you can hook up a larger screen so you’re not looking into a small screen like we have here.
So you got foot posture, you got back support.
You wanna get the posture lined up. We wanna have our glass of water so we’re properly hydrated. Remember, when you have good posture and the head isn’t going forward, you can breathe better, have better circulation to the brain, less pressure on the discs, shorter, more relaxed muscles.
If you’re slouching on a daily basis and you’ve got that forward head posture, you’re causing nerve pressure and nerve interference. If you’re gonna have a habit of slouching for six or eight hours, and we see people coming into the office. They’re coming in like this. And I can tell they’ve been on the workstation for hours.
So how you do anything is how you do everything. So we wanna make sure that you’re doing the right thing at home. One of the things we recommend is what is the effects of how I’ve been sitting all day?
What are the effects of how you’ve been doing week in and week out, month in and month out, especially since you’ve been working from home, and maybe working at home for the next several months?
Well, we recommend doing a complimentary nerve checkup. And the scan, if you can look here, and tell me if this lines up. All right, many people that are patients here have had the scan done. Green is a mild irritation, blue, moderate, red, severe.
How is your scan gonna show up?
If there’s a problem in the spine or the nervous system, would you rather find out sooner or later? We always think it’s better to be proactive. That’s why we’re doing this workshop, so we give you the tips and the exercises to do.
But if you’ve never had a nerve scan, or if you had one, and you wanna check-up, it doesn’t cost anything. It never costs to talk to the doctors. We’re here to help you get the results you want in the timeframe that you want it so you can be the best you possible for yourself, your family.
And how you do things today will determine your health years down the road. Remember, we’re all gonna hit that hundred-year mark at some point, what’s the quality of life gonna be?
And if we’re spending hours sitting in a poor workstation, we need to stay fit while we sit, do your exercises and…
– Stay hydrated, keep mobile, and keep a reminder that you’re in charge of your health.
So we appreciate you. And we’re here for any questions.
[Narrator] Absolutely.
– And thank you for viewing. And we look forward to your questions. Have a wonderful day.
[Narrator] We have a couple of questions here. One of the first questions is about the water.
“Is it just water that we’re supposed to be drinking or does tea, coffee, juice, any kind of liquid count?”
– You know, it all counts, but water is the most essential. Our cells crave it. So if we’re drinking tea, which is caffeinated, any type of coffee or any type of caffeinated beverage, that’s gonna be robbing the cells. And unfortunately, it causes you to void any type of liquid that you consume. So if you’re having a cup of coffee, you need a cup of water.
You have to increase it one-to-one. So water is the most important. You can always add some cucumbers to it, fruits to it, to enhance the flavor. But in the end, water is what you need. And water is the most essential.
[Narrator] Okay, a follow on question to that. One of the audience members asks, “What about decaf herbal teas?”
– That’s fine. That’s actually, you can keep going ahead with it. And that would absolutely aid the body in getting the right hydration.
[Narrator] Okay perfect. The next question is about you guys mentioned that every 45 minutes we’re to get up and do these stretches. How long are we supposed to stretch for?
– Well, I think I showed you about five or six stretches. You could do about those five or six, 30 seconds each, two to three times. And that would probably last you between five to eight minutes. And that would be enough for the day, excuse me, for that part of your time.
[Narrator] Okay, great. One last question here we have. And we also have [for] folks looking at the video, we have the information here how to call to book for your complimentary scan. You can call the number right there. You can actually email us as well with any questions that you have after this webinar is over.
The last question we have here is, “You demonstrated with a binder to put your feet on. Is a box okay, or does it have to be a slanted sort of contraption under the desk?”
– A box would be fine as long as it’s elevated. And as Dr. Levine said, you wanna be at least eight to 10 degrees above your normal 90-degree knee bent, having your knee bent that 90 degrees.
So just elevated a few degrees above it. So a box would be fine. Think about a shoebox. The size of the shoebox would be adequate.
So, unfortunately, if you don’t have a binder, which is the most comfortable, then you would have to choose a box.
[Narrator] Okay, okay, that is great. And if anyone is interested in booking the scan, do they just call in? Are there certain times that they have to book the appointment?
[Mark] Absolutely, you know what? We have a staff of 10 over here. They can call at any time. If we’re not available, busy with patients, just leave a message and we’ll call you back promptly. We’re always here for you. And my staff is great at answering the phone and getting back to you immediately. Just say that you saw us on the Zoom conference and mention that you would like to come in for that complimentary thermal scan and we’ll be happy to serve you.
[Narrator] Excellent, excellent. That looks like all the questions that we have for today. Are there any final words, doctors, before we end the webinar?
[Mark] Yeah, I think we summed it all up, you know, I always say to each and every one of my patients, if you have a question, if you have a concern, we’re a phone call away. You can always reach out to us and we’ll find that answer and solution to your lifestyle and the goals that you’re looking for.
[Narrator] Great, and with that, we just wanna thank you very much for joining us for the webinar today. Again, if you have any questions, you can contact the office. And of course, contact us to have your free thermal scan. Thank you so much for joining us today and have a great rest of the day.
[Mark] You too, thank you so much.
