Chronic pain isn't always about getting older it’s often the result of years of poor posture, uneven movement, and small habits that add up over time. Things like sitting too much, lifting the wrong way, or only training certain muscles can gradually lead to discomfort.
Taking steps to improve posture, build strength evenly, and move better can make a big difference. With a few simple changes, it’s possible to ease pain and feel better day to day.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:01 – Chronic Pain from Repetitive Use
01:10 – Weak Glutes & Tight Hip Flexors
02:00 – Lifestyle Posture = Chronic Problems
03:30 – Maintenance vs. Treatment
04:40 – Daily Habits That Damage the Spine
06:35 – Myth Busting: “Don’t Lift with Your Back”
07:40 – Building a Resilient Spine
08:40 – Discs Herniate from Weakness
09:45 – Why You Should Get Adjusted While Exercising
10:50 – Lifetime of Poor Posture = Chronic Pain
11:45 – One-Sided Sports = One-Sided Problems
13:00 – Avoid Symmetry-Killing Exercises
14:20 – Don’t Blame Aging—Blame Long-Term Imbalance
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] Alright, so I got a question the other day about chronic pain from a ballet dancer. She's been And we were talking about just the things in the body, the things that hurt the things that always, you know, go wrong and things like that. Um, and a lot of this is due to the maintenance that we, that we keep on the body and the things we do. So for instance, um, she's a dead belly instructor. So she teaches and so she uses one leg to do a lot of her teaching. And she has more issues in that hip than she has in the other one. And she's, like I said, she's been dancing and teaching for 20 years. And so she's asked me, she said, why is it always here? It's like, well, because you use that one more than you use the other one, and it's, we have to do obviously more maintenance and more function around it. Um, she brought her boyfriend in who was having issues in his low back. His low back is set up where, um, he has a weak glute, and a hypertonic. Ilio so as so that means is the one of the muscles in the butt isn't doesn't pull as much as it should all the time. And then the one on the front in the groin is tight more often than it should be, which is very, very common for the vast majority of people because we sit all the time. So the muscles and the front of the pelvis get shortened and the ones in the back get stretched out. And so it destabilizes the pelvis. He has this issue on this one side.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:42] And so as we reset it, she was like, what are we going to do about, you know, how long is this going to stay? And it's like, well, it's not going to say very long. He's going to have to do exercises and stretches and get adjusted on a more regular basis to keep this where it needs to be. That's just standard maintenance on the body. And so when people come in all the time and they're like, I have this issue in my neck or I have this issues in my low back. These are some of the things that we see all the time and this kind of bleeds into a question that we're, I'm doing an interview today on text neck and that type of thing. The positions that we hold ourselves in the things that we do on a daily basis are either going to build our strength and our resilience and our endurance up, or they're going to break us down. If you spend all day down here, working on a laptop or on a cell phone, Chen really close to the chest or ears over your shoulders. It creates a giant amount of strain on the upper back, the neck, and the base of the skull. So what this is going to end up doing is over time is everything gets tighter and tighter. The muscle that you're here is going to get tighter, the back of the neck, the whole deal. What ends up happening is it blocks off lymphatic drainage. It blocks off a blood flow, you know, makes the disks tighter, makes everything tighter, producing more waste. And so we have more headaches, sinus issues, lymphatic, drainage issues, things like that. We have more congestion. We had more, you see more sore throats and things like because things aren't draining So people will come in and we'll get them adjusted. They're like, ah, I feel so much better. Great. And then they come back in a couple, you know, same time, sometimes the same week they'll come back and they'll be like, Oh, it's, it, it it's back. It's like, well, it never went away because the problem that you're using, the problem you have is that the issues in your spine are being created by your lifestyle, uh, you head down, rolled forward, high stress, those sorts of things are creating these issues.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:32] So. It's not that you need to look at, you know, your exercise, your chiropractic, your massage, something that you do to fix a problem. It's something that's you're doing to maintain function while the problem you have isn't going away. And the problem that these people have is that they're putting themselves in positions that are damaging to the body. Uh, some of the stuff can't be, can't me helped because I'm like, you can't tell people to stop working on a laptop. You can get a monitor and raise the monitor up so that your head is back and you're open a little bit more. And that's beneficial. But we're always going to have these issues. And so you kind of have a couple of different choices. Um, and I see this all the time and I feel like I haven't addressed it nearly enough and this question kind of helped out. Well, you know, when are you done with chiropractic? You're done with Chiropractor, because since you're dead, because it's part of the maintenance you've got to do, when have you done eating right when you're done? Like you've get like there, there is no, there is no well, I'll eat right for a little while. And then I can go back to eating the trash and I'll still feel okay. When are you down stretches and exercises and things like that? You're never, you're not like either you do the maintenance on the body or you have chronic issues. Chronic pain from the number one issues you have from not doing the stuff you need to do. And a lot of times we can offset these things. So I talk about, you know, getting that monitor up so that instead of being like, yes, no, we're back up like this. You know, those are big changes that you can make that are really, really beneficial. I'm getting adjusted, getting massage.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:03] Those two things are so hyper critical to long-term functional maintenance. I can't, I can emphasize them enough. Uh, when you're doing the adjusting piece, You know, we're sending giant amounts of information from all the muscle, spindle fibers, all your joints, all your ligaments and tendons and muscles back to the brain that says, Hey, here's where these things are. This joint's not moving, right? This muscle's twisted. This thing's not where it's supposed to be. And so the brain can kind of reset those things. Uh, and we had get those things from your everyday life. If you sit and you drive for a while and say your pelvis thing like this, it's sitting like this because we've got one leg forward and your pelvis is pitched and that type of thing. If you sit all day long the front, your, your hip flexors are shortened, making them tighter so that when you stand up, you feel it tight in the front, but you also feel it in the low back because it's not, it has, it's been positioned one way for so long that it's just gotten tight. And then how often you've been over and touch your toes and you've leaned backwards to offset that, that tone without that tension that you're building your musculature. Most people don't ever do it. The other thing that we see over and over and ever again is people who've hurt their low back. Doing, picking something up, uh, you know, the one of the big ones I see outside of kettlebell swings, which is, I have an issue with, uh is people going to Sam's or Costco and getting cases of water and they pick these cases of Water up and then they rotate and they send down their car. I see more damage to backs from that than pretty much anything.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:36] And it's funny because people think about it and they're like, well, I guess I can understand. Here's the thing. So like the waters I get, you know, you get 18 liters, uh, one liter jugs. So 18 liters. So it's 18 times 2.2. So you're looking at, what is it? 39 right at 40 pounds. So you, you're bending over, you are picking up this 40 pounds, but how often do you lift with your back? You know, everyone's taught you again. Things, the medical industries have taught us and the things that governments taught us, there's 100% wrong, almost designed to make you get injured and hurt. It's like, don't lift with your back. There is no way you can lift without using your back or engage your core. Your backs part of your core, there is zero chance that you can lift anything without using you're back. So instead of stupid insane things, like don't live with your back, you should live with you're all the time. You should train your back? So one of the things that I always tell people to do Is to bend over and touch your toes a couple of times a day. So like do three sets of 10, a couple times a day. Once you get used to your own body weight, because remember when you pick something up off the floor, like a toothpick, I've had people come in and they're like, I picked a toothpick up off of the floor and I threw my back out. How much could that toothpick of weight? And I'm like, well, in my case, that two thick weighs about 140 pounds. Like what Mike, you don't lift up the toothpick. You bet. You pick up everything from your belt buckle up. And if you bend over straight, the amount of force that's on your low spine is ridiculously high. So what you want to do is bend over and touch your toes a whole bunch. So three sets of 10, a couple of times a day shouldn't take you very long, but get full extension. So stand all the way back up. When you, when you come back up, once you get used to that, now pick up some weights like light ones, three to five pounds. Because remember if you have two, two, five pound weights, you're holding 10 pounds.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:23] So do that for a while and build yourself up. Usually I'll have people build up until they're holding 25 or 30 pound dumbbells. So that means 50 or 60 pounds. People go, well, why would, why would anyone need to be able to do that on a regular basis? Well, I just told you, like if you're picking up cases of water from Sam's or Costco, they're anywhere from 35 to 45 pounds. And so if you doing that on regular basis, if you, if you exercising with that amount of weight on a regular basis your body is now used to it. It is now not some, not a force that's put in the spine. The spine is too weak to handle. And we had that conversation about disks, disk only herniate for one reason. A force is put in a spine. The spine's too weak. To handle the spine fails. Well, if you exercise on a regular basis, like, like I said, a couple times a day, we'll take you three to five minutes to do this. Now your spine is strong enough. You've done the maintenance on it to maintain its function. So that doesn't get injured. So you don't have chronic pain. Now, anytime that you're working out, especially if it's a new workout program. So like this one, which counts as a workout program, you need to start getting adjusted while you're going through it, if you change your workout, you've got to start going to see a good Cairo and get adjusted. And the reason for this is that what ends up happening is that as you're tightening and strengthening these muscles, especially if you're doing it bilaterally, so you're working on both sides of the body, both sides of the spine, what ends of happening is if one gets a little tighter than the other one, it starts making radical changes.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:44] Joints don't move as much, um, or they don't of it all. Other joints move way too much. And so we end up having stress issues on the both sides. It's where you start having more and more and more problems. So getting that adjusted. So it's moving properly while you're training the musculature to move this far, carry this load, rotate this way, do these things is going to be super, super important to your long-term function. I see people every single day who are in their forties and fifties and sixties who have chronic pain. Because of the way that they live their life and the maintenance they do or don't do. So again, like looking leaning over, staring at laptops or cell phones or things like that, damaging the neck, um, you know, picking things up, you know? And without training a low back and damaging the back sitting for a long period of time without exercising the musculature that, that helps reset the body to its standing up position. These are the things that over time we start seeing people in here and they're like, well, my neck and my back and my hands, my feet, The, the long-term function on this needs to be addressed as we go along. So one of the things that we see, God, I see this every single, literally every single day, multiple times a day. Well, if somebody who comes in and goes, I was a gymnast, I was a cheerleader, I, was a football player, I wasn't baseball. I was soccer. I was whatever. I was this thing in high school and now I'm 30, 40, and I'm really broken.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:11] Like it was because of the sports, not really. It was because you didn't do the maintenance. Around the sport while you were going through it to maintain proper function. And then after the sports, you just didn't do anything to reset all that stuff. For instance, soccer players have a lot of issues with the low back hip and, and pelvis, usually on one side, which is their kicking side. Cause most soccer players, when they take big kicks, like goalies specifically will kick with one leg. Um, they'll kick, they kick harder. They'll kick more. They kick more with one leg than the other one. And what ends up happening is that that tightens musculature on one side. Gets, it's a, it gets a joint set on one site. That's more movable than the other side. More, more fun, more hypermobile than the other side, and so it sets up this dichotomy where this one moves, you know, 50% as much as it should. And this one is 125% as much as it should, and they're like, I don't know why my back's always hurt. t know what my hips or my knees. I don t know where my, you know. This side always hurts. Was because we, we have an uneven set of function on the, on the body. You can reset that. It's not super difficult to reset. The older you get, the longer you've done it. I'm going to have my 40 and 50 year old soccer players and they're always messed up because no one has walked them through, Hey, you got to move the other leg more. You got to do these exercises to reset and maintain everything. But that's one of those big things.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:32] So if you are, if you're exercising, this is one of the reasons I tell people never to do bench press with a bar or squat with a bar or things like that, because. Over time, you're going to develop this range of motion that is not incongruent with the way the body was designed to function. And it's going to give you problems long-term. So as you're starting to do your stuff, you, you know, kids in sports, you're in sports you're sitting there working on your laptop, whatever it is, you need to start kind of evaluating the forces are going into your body and what you're doing to compensate for those. Or when you're 50, 60, 70, 80, you going to have significant issues and you're not going to want. And she's like, Well, it's just because you're getting older. No, it was because you spent 10, 20, 30 years telling your body to do something that was not congruent with where, how it's supposed to functionally move. So if you're trying to avoid chronic pain, get in with somebody who can start designing stretches and exercises, things you can do to offset the damage that you give yourself on a daily basis. Otherwise you're going to have these issues. That's just how it is. You've got kids in sports, make sure you have somebody kind of. Redesigning in offsetting things. Think of golf, like come high, right, low left.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:45] So you're doing this, this swing like this all the time, you hit thousands of balls and you come in and you're like, I don't know why my back's all messed up because you're used to rotating one direction a lot all the time that you don't rotate the other side. And so the musculature gets those changes. So these are some of the things that, you know, I know normal people don't think about, but I think about all day long. So this is some of that information that you're Oh! So when you go through your day, be like, how much do I sit versus stand? How much do a sit versus walk? How much do you know? Yeah. How often do I bend over and touch my toes? You think about that? Like how, like in the past month, how many times have you bent over and touched your toes? And then you're going to ask yourself, you're gonna find something in the ground and bend over, and pick it up. And you're like, I don't know why that hurt my back. Cause you never do that motion. You never do. That thing. So these are some of the things that you kind of start thinking about if you're worried about long-term chronic pain, if you see your parents, your grandparents, you know, hobbling around, having issues, think about that as you kind of go through that, if you need some help with that, grab a hold of a good, you know functional, you functional chiro, somebody who works on these things, come see us, we'll kind of put those things back together and give you those exercises, kind of offset all that stuff, but keep that in mind. That's one of the big questions I get all the time is why do I hurt? You know, I didn't hurt 10 years ago. Why do I heart now you've built up and developed the motions or the lack of motions that are creating a lot of the problems that you have. So walk through that. There's lots of changes you can make. But that's one of those big things on chronic pain. If you guys have any questions, you can accept questions at Chalmerswellness.com or drop them in the comments. Thanks for your time.
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