A book cover may not necessarily tell the whole story and may not accurately portray the nature of the contents within. Publishing companies pay high salaries to their marketing staff to create cover copy that will entice prospective buyers to make a purchase. But many times the book itself does not live up to the hype. Similarly, fitness clubs and weight loss programs promote their services by pitching the ideal of slim, well-toned members; happy, young people whom you would be unlikely to ever encounter during your actual real life.

Commercial pitches typically focus on the superficial characteristics of whatever is being promoted. The well-worn guidance in advertising states, "It's not the steak. It's the sizzle." But in terms of health and wellness, what's happening on the inside is what counts. It may be personally gratifying to look good, but being buff does not by itself guarantee good health.

Many cautionary tales demonstrate the accuracy of this assessment, including the untimely demise in his early 50s of a renowned long-distance runner and best-selling author of a book that celebrated the running ethos. Ensuring long-lasting health and well-being is an ongoing process and requires commitment and dedication. The general components are: healthy nutrition, regular vigorous exercise, sufficient restful sleep and a positive mental attitude.

It is likely that at various times, most of us will fail to fulfill one or more of these requirements. The key is to acknowledge that sometimes other life concerns take precedence and return to our healthy lifestyles as quickly as possible.

By incorporating healthy lifestyles in our daily activities, we train our bodies to work efficiently and effectively. The long-term result is optimal levels of health and wellness. When we eat nutritious foods, exercise regularly, and obtain necessary rest, all of our physiological systems obtain the resources they need to function well and work in harmony with every other system.

An additional support to achieving ongoing health and wellness is getting regular chiropractic care. Regular chiropractic care helps to ensure that your nerve system, your body's master system, is on the job and coordinating all of your body's internal functions that help to keep you well. By detecting and correcting spinal misalignments that are sources of nerve interference, regular chiropractic care helps you and the members of your family be healthy and achieve wellness and your other life goals.

1. Griffiths K, et al: Food Antioxidants and Their Anti-Inflammatory Properties: A Potential Role in Cardiovascular Diseases and Cancer Prevention. Diseases 2016 Aug 1;4(3). pii: E28. doi: 10.3390/diseases4030028
2. Saragiotto BT, et al: Motor control exercise for chronic non-specific low-back pain. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2016 Jan 8;(1) doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD012004
3. Nowakowski S, et al: Sleep characteristics and inflammatory biomarkers among midlife women. Sleep 2018 Mar 30 doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsy049. [Epub ahead of print]

Our shoulder joints have the greatest range of motion of any of the musculoskeletal joints in our bodies. The shoulder joint is really two joints, the glenohumeral joint between the arm bone (humerus) and the shoulder blade (scapula) and the acromioclavicular joint between the acromion (a bony projection off the scapula) and the collarbone (clavicle). The glenohumeral joint is a ball-and-socket joint and the acromioclavicular joint is a gliding joint.

Acting together, these joints enable the shoulder to achieve a full 360º of motion in both the frontal (side to side) and sagittal (front and back) three-dimensional planes. The important caveat is that this extensive freedom of motion comes with a price: the shoulder not only has the most mobility, but is also the most unstable joint in the body.

The glenohumeral joint may be easily dislocated, most typically by a fall on an outstretched arm. The ligaments of the acromioclavicular joint are easily sprained and the joint itself is easily dislocated. Acromioclavicular joint injuries may be described as "AC separations". Overall, injuries to the shoulder joint are common, most frequently experienced by people participating in exercise activities and sports and by older people as a result of a fall.

The shoulder joint has built-in protection in the form of the four muscles comprising the rotator cuff, the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis.¹ The rotator cuff muscles participate in all shoulder joint and upper arm motions and provide stabilization to the shoulder as the joint moves through three-dimensional space. But the rotator cuff muscle group is itself subject to injury (muscle tears) and degeneration as a person ages of the tendons that attach the muscles to the shoulder and arm bones.

Thus, the shoulder joint needs additional protections to maintain its structural integrity and mechanical performance.

In days gone by, people did demanding physical work every day, automatically providing training and resilience to the anatomical components of the shoulder. But in the 21st century, with the decline of the farming and manufacturing sectors and the rise of the service economy, most people no longer engage in actual physical work. As a result, most of us require regular vigorous exercise to maintain physical fitness and good health. With specific respect to the shoulder, upper body strength training exercises will help provide the necessary activity and mobility to ensure ongoing functionality of our shoulder joints.^2,3

As well, obtaining regular chiropractic care helps ensure that our spines are working properly, providing effective mechanical support to our shoulder joints, and that our nerve systems are working at high levels to coordinate all the physiological activities necessary to our long-term health and well-being.

1. Sangwan S, et al: Stabilizing characteristics of rotator cuff muscles: a systematic review. Disabil Rehabil 37(12):1033-1043, 2015
2. Heron SR, et al: Comparison of three types of exercise in the treatment of rotator cuff tendinopathy/shoulder impingement syndrome: A randomized controlled trial. Physiotherapy 103(2):167-173, 2017
3. Abdulla SY, et al: Is exercise effective for the management of subacromial impingement syndrome and other soft tissue injuries of the shoulder? A systematic review by the Ontario Protocol for Traffic Injury Management (OPTIMa) Collaboration. Man Ther 20(5):646-656, 2015

In a common occurrence, you bend over to pick up the pencil you inadvertently dropped on the floor. Or you bend over to pick up the soap bar that has slipped through your fingers in the shower. Or you bend over to lift a bag of groceries out of your automobile trunk. These are all daily events. But on a certain day, at a certain time, during one of these innocuous activities you suddenly experience a sharp, excruciating, grabbing pain in your lower back. You might be unable to fully straighten up after such an episode, and it might take a week or more for you to recover completely. In the meantime, you have a lot of pain and it seems as if the slightest movement causes substantial discomfort. You may say to yourself that you'll do anything to avoid a recurrence of such a troublesome injury.

Fortunately, there is a great deal that we all can do to help ensure that our musculoskeletal system, specifically the spine and the associated spinal muscles and ligaments, is well-trained and functioning at high levels. A primary cause of lower back injuries is biomechanical dysfunction, and our preventive and rehabilitative efforts are directed toward restoring efficient and effective spinal and core biomechanics.

Regular vigorous exercise is essential in any program whose goal is to optimize biomechanical function. Ideally, your exercise program includes both strength training and cardiovascular exercise. By engaging in both categories of exercise, you enhance the benefits of each. Training effects include increased heart and lung capacity, slowed heart rate, increased strength and endurance, improved balance, increased mobility and agility, and increased ability to do various types of physical work.

These benefits are enhanced by incorporating dynamic warm-up activities in your exercise routine.1 A dynamic warm-up prepares your body to do vigorous exercise. Activities such as jumping jacks, squats, lunges, gluteus bridge, and the grapevine literally warm-up your muscles and joints and prepare your musculoskeletal system for your exercise session. As well, core exercises such as the plank, leg lifts, leg crossovers, and pushups train your abdominal muscles and back muscles, helping ensure you have a strong "center" from which to initiate all of your exercise activities.^2,3

Getting regular chiropractic care helps ensure that you're obtaining the most benefit from the time and effort you spend exercising. By detecting and correcting spinal misalignments and removing sources of nerve interference, regular chiropractic care helps make sure that your spine is working properly and that your nervous system is free to effectively control and coordinate all your other physiological systems. In this way, regular chiropractic care helps you and everyone in your family exercise at peak capacity and enjoy ongoing health and well-being.

1. Asadi A, et al: The Effects of Plyometric Training on Change-of-Direction Ability: A Meta-Analysis. Int J Sports Physiol Perform 11(5):563-573 2016
2. Hoppes CW, et al: The efficacy of an eight-week core stabilization program on core muscle function and endurance: a randomized trial. Int J Sports Phys Ther 11(4):507-519, 2016
3. Bullo V, et al: The effects of Pilates exercise training on physical fitness and wellbeing in the elderly: A systematic review for future exercise prescription. Prev Med 75:1-11, 2015