Feet On The Ground

by: Lake Erie Spine & Injury Center

Embrace Your Inner Wisdom

Our body can teach us important lessons if we know how to listen.  A great lesson that is easy to see once we “look under the hood” is how our bodies protect what is most valuable.  In other words, the body has its most vital organs, the brain and spinal cord, wrapped inside tough bony structures – our skull and spine.  And just like our body protects its most valuable possessions tightly, with hard, unyielding bone, it is important that we protect our most vital possessions.  And among the most vital possessions you could have is your health.

Today, however, health is often taken for granted in a way that it never has been before.  In the past, securing food, safety, shelter, and water for our bodies was a full time job – our most important, and maybe only, job.  Today there are too many other pursuits to focus on – the demands of work, family, and finances, and the pursuit of leisure and entertainment.  But what we realize when we lose our good health, is all of that can go away so quickly.

We are already full of wisdom that can guide us towards living lives with less stress.  Many times we don’t need more from what is outside of us, and simply need to recognize what we already have.  And the wisdom of the body shows that it is valuable to protect our most important possessions.  And not just occasionally, or some of the time – but ultimately it is a full time job.  Chiropractors recognize this and make their full time job protecting the function of the spine and nervous system for their patients.

“Don’t Make Your Chiropractor Say ‘Yikes!’”

Chiropractors want the best for their patients, and that means helping them avoid disastrous choices with their body.  This one is a double-whammy, and after reading you will see why.

A big postural mistake can be seen regularly driving in the car.  And that mistake is slouching in the front seat of the car while putting your feet way up in the air on the dashboard (or out the window!) instead of on the floor where they belong.  This terrible posture stresses your sacrum and low back, not to mention the upper back and neck as well.  However, the really scary part of all this is the double-whammy.

Not only is sitting in this posture not good for your body, it also comes with another real risk.  And that is in the event of a crash; or even worse, an airbag malfunction.  The speed with which an airbag deploys can reach 100 to over 200 miles per hour, a speed that brings enough force to have knocked legs clean off of crash test dummies in simulations of these kinds of crashes.  It’s even scarier when we consider over 10 million airbags have been recalled due to faulty function, even propelling metal shards on impact, making a minor crash or malfunction extremely dangerous.  So keep your feet on the ground and avoid the double whammy of benefit-less risk while riding in the car.