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Improving Marathon Performance

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Marathons are on the rise and people are striving to improve their marathon performance. If this is you or you know someone who is into extreme sports, you will love the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.

Flying through the book because I couldn’t put it down and talking with a good friend and fellow 100 Year Lifestyle Chiropractor, Dr. Dan Traxler of Connect First Family Chiropractic in Sterling, VA, has inspired me to challenge myself with running longer distances. I recently signed up for the St. George Marathon in October. This being my first marathon, I’ve been constantly researching everything I can about how to improve my performance and decrease my chances of injury. So far, I’ve come up with two things, and I believe they are the most important two things anyone training for a marathon, ultramarathon, iron man, etc. should consider; sleep and chiropractic care.

We all know sleep is important, whether we’re training hard or just doing our normal routine, but I think we fail to realize just how important sleep actually is for athletic performance. Studies have shown an increase in sprinting speed by 9% among basketball players who slept two extra hours each night. Their shooting accuracy also improved.1 Imagine carrying these benefits over to running and how your time will improve! It might be difficult to get an extra two hours of sleep every night while you’re training, but even increasing your sleep the week leading up to the event can boost your race-day performance.

A reduction of time spent sleeping reduces your reaction time, regardless of what sport you play or participate in. Just one night without sleep can reduce reaction times by up to 300%.2 If you’re training for a race and you’re also a student studying hard for finals, a CEO running a company, or a mom just trying to keep up with daily life, make sure you’re getting at least eight hours of sleep each night to keep your reaction times on point.

You might think the strongest predictor of sports injuries would be how many hours you practice, and you’d be in the majority. However, studies have shown that sleep is actually the biggest predictor of injuries.3 Without adequate sleep, your body doesn’t have enough time to regenerate cells needed to heal and protect your body. Without adequate sleep, your reaction times are slower, as previously discussed, so you can’t stop an injury as it’s about to occur. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep to keep you healthy and off the sidelines as you train.

Another benefit of getting enough sleep is improved growth hormone regulation. Growth hormone is vital to sustaining athletic performance as it aids in muscle repair, muscle building, and bone growth. Almost 75% of growth hormone is released during sleep.4 Getting a regular seven to nine hours of sleep each night guarantees the production of growth hormone and your ability to recover so you can keep up with your training schedule.

Sleep is something most people understand when it comes to athletic performance. Something that not many people understand is how chiropractic care can help athletic performance. Chiropractic adjustments balance the body while also enhancing the function of the nervous system, the master control system of the body. The nervous system controls everything; the thoughts we think, our hearts beating, digestion of our food, breathing and muscle contraction. Studies have shown that after a single adjustment, athletes had stronger muscle contractions measured by EMG technology.5 By maintaining a healthy nervous system as a part of a healthy lifestyle, your muscles will be bigger, faster and stronger. Imagine how having faster and stronger muscles will improve your athletic performance!

There you have it. If you’re looking to increase marathon performance, or any other athletic activity, adequate amounts of sleep and chiropractic care are two things you can implement immediately. To find a provider near you, click here. Good luck on your training endeavors!

  1. Mah, C., Mah, K., Kezirian, E., & Dement, W. (2011). The Effects of Sleep Extension on the Athletic Performance of Collegiate Basketball Players. SLEEP, 34(7), 943-950.
  2. 5 Areas Sleep Has The Greatest Impact on Athletic Performance. (2015, September 23). Fatigue Science.
  3. Milewski, M., Skaggs, D., Bishop, G., Ibrahim, D., Wren, T., & Barzdukas, A. (2014). Chronic lack of sleep is associated with increased sports injuries in adolescent athletes. Jouranl of Pediatric Orthopedics, 34(2), 129-133.
  4. Sleep and Human Growth Hormone. (2019, May 8).
  5. Keller, T.S., & Colloca, C.J. (2000). Mechanical force spinal manipulation increases trunk muscle strength assessed by electromyography: A comparative clinical trial. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 23(9), 585-595.

Painful Days, Sleepless Nights

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Pain can ruin your life. Whether it comes and goes in an unpredictable fashion or whether it is constant, having to manage and deal with pain on a regular basis can be exhausting. As pain becomes chronic, the joy of living disappears. Pain can take many forms including headaches, neck or arm pain, back and leg pain, stomach pain, sinus pain, and literally any or every other part of your body.

Pain that comes and goes, rollercoaster pain, is tiring and frustrating. You can’t plan your life because you never know if you are going to hurt. Before you know it, the pain, or the medication you may take to mask the pain or sleep, begins to control your life.

The challenge of this rollercoaster pain is that many people only take care of themselves when the pain reaches a point of severity that you might consider a crisis. The typical protocol in this situation is to stop your life, deal with the crisis through quick fixes such as a couple of chiropractic adjustments, or popping a bunch of pills to get some immediate relief. When the relief comes and you can rest, you are so excited to feel better that you stop taking care of yourself until it hurts again.

Here’s a little secret: in most cases when the pain is gone, the cause of the pain is still there. If you want to get off the rollercoaster you must continue doing the things that will give your body a chance to heal itself even though you feel better.

In The 100 Year Lifestyle Paradigm, we call this the Critical Transition. The Critical Transition is critical because it is when you commit to being consistent with your chiropractic care and healthy lifestyle regardless of how you feel so that your body can regenerate. This takes time.

This is like the person who finally reaches their goal weight and decides to continue eating healthy and exercising rather than reverting back to old habits that caused them to gain weight in the first place. Staying consistent when you feel better is life changing. This is the Critical Transition.

The same is true if you have acute pain. No matter what part of your body has been affected, acute pain comes suddenly with incredible suffering and inconvenience. Many people who have this type of pain will often say things like “I felt twinges there before ” or “periodically I would feel a _______.” These may be signs that an acute crisis is looming and there is an underlying cause you should address.

Chiropractic care is very effective in helping people eliminate both rollercoaster and acute pain by working with your body’s innate ability to heal regardless of how you feel. Nerve interference can cause pain in any body part as well as contribute to all types of health problems. It can also exist without pain and lie dormant for decades until your body completely breaks down.

Don’t let this happen to you. Too many people have said these powerful words, “I am in so much pain I can’t even sleep. Please help me.”
Pain doesn’t have to control your life anymore. Through this New.You. campaign, we encourage you to take a new approach to taking your pain away and then make the Critical Transition to Lifestyle Care.

A New You is only a decision away. Make the commitment to you. You will be glad you did.

Body or Health Conscious

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Are you Body Conscious or Health Conscious

Unfortunately, too many people are concerned about how they look and not necessarily about their health. Perhaps you do not know the difference between being body conscious or health conscious. The following information will help you understand this critical difference as it relates to the following topics:

Eating Fats

If you are body conscious, you will not eat fats out of fear of adding fat to your shape. If you are health conscious, you will eat a moderate amount of healthy fat because hormones, nerves and cell membranes require fat to function properly.

Eating Sugar

If you are body conscious, you believe sugar gives you energy to workout and if you work out more, you can build larger muscles and look better. If you are health conscious, you know that energy from sugar is temporary, empty calories. You’d rather eat natural whole foods of complex carbs for sustained energy.

Sleep
If you are body conscious, you believe that you will get enough sleep to keep circles from forming under your eyes. If you are health conscious, you recognize that sleep is essential to re-boot your system and rejuvenate your body.

Lifting Weights

If you are body conscious, you lift weights to create larger muscles for a “hard body”, muscular look. If you are health conscious, you lift weights to gain/maintain strength and structural integrity.

Aerobic Exercise

If you are body conscious, you believe that if you do cardio today, you can have dessert and/or eat whatever you want today. If you are health conscious, you believe that if you do cardio today, you will improve your heart strength, your endurance and create a strong heart to serve you for years.

Doing Yoga

If you are body conscious, you may think, “How does yoga help with my body shape? It is a waste of time”. If you are health conscious, you know that yoga centers, stretches and strengthens you from your core. It calms you and helps keep you balanced.

Chiropractic Care

If you are body conscious, you believe that you will go to a chiropractor to help alleviate an ache or pain, so you can workout and look better. If you are health conscious, you know that you will go to a chiropractor to alleviate an ache or pain and continue to utilize care to keep your nervous system working at its best. Like eating healthy foods and exercising regularly, it keeps your body functioning at optimum levels.

So Which are You?

Body Conscious or Health Conscious? Are there any changes you know you need to make? We are here to support you to be the healthiest version of you possible.

Contributed by Dr. Jordan Plasker, 100 Year Lifestyle Licensed Affiliate in Montvale, NJ

I Just Woke Up With It

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Do you know someone that woke up with an injury or illness and attributed it to sleeping? It is not uncommon to hear people say something like, ‘I just woke up with it.’

While sleeping in awkward positions may trigger aches and pains in the morning, there are usually underlying conditions that are the cause of the problem.

Jacob Riis, esteemed reporter and colleague of Theodore Roosevelt once said, “look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

The same principle holds true with your health, including the health of your spine and nerve system.

Spinal injuries known as subluxations, for example, can occur during the birth process, when a child is learning to walk, from childhood falls, toxicity and stress just to name a few. This condition can lie dormant for decades and suddenly show up one morning because the way you slept was ‘”the straw that broke the camel’s back.” And if the nerves are involved your entire body could be affected.

Your nervous system controls the function of every cell, tissue and organ in the body and adapts you to your environment. Brain function,heart rate, digestion, elimination, movement, strength, stamina, the ability to focus and adapt are just a few of the daily functions of your nervous system.

Research shows:

– 8-10 mm of pressure, the weight of a dime, can reduce spinal nerve transmission- CU

– Nerve compression can exist without pain- Spine.

– After only two weeks since an injury, the nerves begins to degenerate- T. Videman, MD

Other lifestyle habits that can affect your spine and nervous system are overeating, poor nutrition, slouching, excessive drinking, taking prescription or non-prescription drugs, or sitting too much.

Because it only takes a small amount of pressure to injure a nerve and a little bit of time for the degeneration to set in, regular chiropractic check-ups should be a priority.

Don’t wait until you ‘feel it’ because you may not have pain at first. Schedule an appointment today to begin enjoying your sleep, waking up refreshed and getting back to living your ideal 100 Year Lifestyle.

Article contributed by Emily Plasker, BA.