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Canberra Today 23°/25° | Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

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Your health reflects habits, says chiropractor Tim

“Society teaches us from a young age that we must sit down for long periods of time,” says chiropractor TIM PORTER. “We need to be aware that we don’t neglect our whole physical body.” This is a sponsored post.

“YOUR health is a reflection of your habits,” says chiropractor Tim Porter. “If you create habits for yourself that are healthy for your body, your overall health outcomes will be better.” 

Chiropractor Tim Porter.

Tim, of Enhance Healthcare, encourages people to become more aware of how their body will adapt to the habits that they create. 

For example, if people sit all day, their bodies adapt to that lack of movement, making it more likely for them to lose strength and flexibility, opening them up to increased risk of injury or back pain. 

Tim has created a free online video, as part of a series by the team at Enhance Healthcare, called the “Living with Lockdown” series in which he and his colleagues present tools to assist people’s bodies during lockdown. Tim’s video focuses on a thoracic mobilisation exercise to help reduce back pain. 

He says that the exercises in his video are based on a Japanese study on back pain from 2019 in which half the study participants were given traditional, static stretches and the other half were given mobilisation exercises, which are movement-based, designed to use more of the body in a stretch. 

The study found that mobilisation exercises are more efficient to build mobility and made a better improvement on the participants’ back pain. 

“The great thing about these exercises is that everyone can give them a try. They can give people some ideas on how to improve their back pain and help them create more movement,” he says. 

Tim lived and volunteered in Borneo for a year, before the outbreak of COVID-19, and says he was amazed to see elderly people squatting perfectly on the floor without any hip or back pain. 

“Where I was living, the locals didn’t have chairs or tables at their homes, so they squatted a lot of the time,” he says. 

“In an Australian context, if you ask a 40-year old to squat, they would generally be able to go as low as the height of a chair before getting into difficulty,” he says. 

Tim says that this example shows the importance of habits and how bodies adapt to what we ask them to do. He encourages people to move as much as they can every day, especially during lockdown. 

“We were evolved and designed to move. The issue is that our society teaches us from a young age that we must sit down for long periods of time. We need to be aware that we don’t neglect our whole physical body,” says Tim. 

Tim’s top lockdown tip? 

“Try to develop healthy habits and you will find that it shows better results for your overall health,” he says. 

Visit enhance.com.au for more. Enhance Healthcare is at Mitchell and Denman Prospect and, as an essential service, is open for appointments on 6241 6060 or book online at enhance.com.au

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