Daily habits: Patterns affect Movement affects Patterns...

[uppityperson]

Bodies mold themselves to be better at what they are called upon to do and daily habits can affect how you feel, how you move, how you function.

This may be a "duh" idea for some, but I deal with many people in my health care business who have functional limitations caused by daily habits. So I am sharing with you fine people on DU.

Little things can make a difference. Most of us are aware of ergonomics in the workplace, esp if you work on computers all the time. But small things can make a difference.

Examine how you are sitting. Do you sit with 1 leg under you and the other out front? I do. Over time this has caused my hips to tip sideways because the muscles on 1 side are chronically shortened. I notice that my sideways flexion is greater on 1 side than the other, and when I get low back issues it is on that 1 side.

Remember when we had telephones large enough to hold between your shoulder and ear? Yrs of doing that have caused muscles to be larger, stronger, tighter on that side for some people. When they get stressed (physically or emotionally), those "turtle muscles" have more of a tendency to spasm, causing shoulder and/or neck pain.

Do you sit with your legs tucked up under you when you read? Do you shovel your garden with only 1 foot? Fold your hands together, interweaving your fingers. Notice which thumb is on top. Now do them the other way, with the other thumb on top. Weird, isn't it?

Small things can make a difference in how you feel and how you function and while I am glad to have business, I'd prefer to work myself out of a job.

End of today's Public Service Announcement.

[trotsky]

1. Maybe a "duh" idea, but a very important subject.

Especially with the routines of modern life. Kind of a vicious circle - these motions are performed unconsciously, meaning you can make them worse because you're not even realizing you're doing it. I am lucky I guess, I do a lot of desk work (I.T.) but I am constantly shifting around. I'm never comfortable for long, so I have to change positions a lot.

[pnwmom]

2. I've often thought about how dumb it is that some of us use so many labor saving devices

down to the littlest thing (light switches, TV remotes) and THEN we need to go to the gym to use our bodies.

I'd rather use my body more during the day, thanks.

[uppityperson]

3. Cothes washing machines have saved no time

Used to be you wore your clothes longer before washing them, and spent a certain amount of time every month to wash/dry/etc them. Now we spend the same amount of time wash/dry/etc them since we don't wear them as long. Doesn't have much to do with the topic at hand, but just thinking about "time saving devices".

Had a friend tell me she was disgusted with herself that she drove to the gym to use a stair stepper thing. However, having paid to do it, she made sure she didn't put it off.

[salvorhardin]

4. I don't know about that

If you simply count the time clothes are physically in the washer and drier, washing machines and clothes dryers may well equal the time spent on cleaning one's clothes before they became commonplace. For instance, it generally takes me about two hours of serial time every week to do my laundry: 35 minutes in the washer, 65 minutes in the dryer, roughly twenty minutes to collect all my clothes together, drive to and from the laundry room, put clothes in/take out of and change between machines. However, for the 100 minutes the clothes are actually in the machines I am free to do other things, and frequently do -- wash dishes, vacuum, etc. However, without access to these devices I would easily need the full two hours to just wash the clothes and wring them out by hand in the tub.

Granted, if I was forced to do so I could probably find an old fashioned wash tub with the big hand cranked rollers for wringing out the clothes. This is what my grandmother had well into the late-1970s. It worked very well, and didn't take as long as to wash and wring the clothes out by hand but it still took much longer than the 35 minutes my clothes are in the clothes washer.

If I lived in my own home with a back yard the one thing I'd do differently is I that I wouldn't bother with a dryer, but would hang the clothes out to dry instead. This is what we did growing up and I much prefer the scent of clothes dried outdoors than in the dryer.

Also, with the ability to wash our clothing more frequently and get them cleaner (sorry, grandma's tub did not get clothes as clean as modern washing machines), we generally live in a world with better hygiene.

Finally, modern waching machines, even the cheapest Sears models, use much less water than grandma's wash tub. Of course, they use electricity so their relative impacts on the environment is probably a wash (pardon the pun).