By John Douillard, DC, PhD
We have come to appreciate muscle soreness as a humbling reward for a good workout. If you are out of shape, starting a new fitness program or just an occasional jock, you are probably well versed in the morning after hobble. Stiff legs, an achy back and arms that cannot lift the phone are the not so subtle reminders of yesterday’s enthusiasm, or not. Is soreness still the price we have to pay to feel and look good?
No pain, no gain may well have been the fitness credo of our past, but is it destined to be a part of our future. When a muscle contracts, a waste product called lactic acid is released at the contraction site. Under normal circumstances the lactic acid is reconverted into glycogen and reused for energy. If the exercise demands are excessive, the body will be unable to reconvert the lactic acid fast enough and direct it into the blood stream for removal. The problem is that much of the lactic acid is left in the muscle. This lactic acid build up can do much more damage than just a little muscle soreness, particularly if the experience is repetitive.
If the muscle is congested with waste products, then it will not be able to get the proper fuel supply necessary for normal function. Muscles use blood for fuel and if the spigot is off, the body will be forced to manufacture a kind of tissue that does not use blood for fuel. This is commonly called scar tissue. Scar tissue in the muscles is technically called myofibrositis and will change how a muscle functions. Normally muscles are elastic and attach around a joint leaving it supple with ample blood supply and mobility. When scar tissue is laid down in a muscle, it loses its elasticity and becomes ropelike, pulling rigidly on a joint compromising its blood supply and natural range of motion. In this scenario, the muscles and joints will get stiff.
Tendonitis, which is an inflammation at the muscle-joint junction, and bursitis, which is an inflammation around the joint, or even arthritis, which is when the joint itself is inflamed, are all caused by a progressive accumulation of scar tissue in the muscles and joints. What's worse is that the body has a difficult time removing all the accumulated lactic acid and in time, scar tissue can build up in many of the body's muscles and render the whole body stiff and even painful. We have come to accept this as a part of the aging process but we do not realize that when the body loses blood supply, not only do we get stiff, but this is the first step in the disease process.
There are many treatments for the accumulation of blood lactate in the muscles and resultant pain and stiffness. First I would like to discuss how we can prevent this accumulation during exercise with a simple breathing technique. When the muscle is unable to reconvert lactic acid on the muscle site and shunts it into the blood stream for removal, the body will respond to this process as an emergency and start to breathe faster. This happens to all of us when we get out of breath - huffing and puffing as we walk up a hill. When we are forced into more vigorous exercise, it is normal to open our mouths and take deep fast mouths breaths as an attempt to remove carbon dioxide waste from the body.
When we breathe this way, the body is activating stress receptors in the upper lobes of the lungs, indicating the body is in an emergency state due to this exertion. It is much like if you saw a bear in the woods you would take a quick, gasping mouth breath, which would trigger and emergency chemical response that would save your life. In emergencies, anything goes. Degenerative stress fighting hormones are released with disease producing free radicals as waste products. We easily recover from such events, but with a stressful life that produces the same chemistry and cumulative exercise stress that causes lactic acid build up the body is soon the break down.
In the lower lobes of the lungs we find nerves receptors exactly opposite the stress receptors of the upper lobes. Calming and repairing parasympathetic receptors predominate in the lower lobes of the lungs, with an average of sixty to eighty percent more blood supply there as well. Clearly, activating these lobes during exercise would remove more waste more efficiently without triggering a degenerative emergency response. With a little practice, this can be accomplished with nasal breathing.
The nose is designed first and foremost as a breathing apparatus with turbines called turbinates that turbo-charge the breath and drive it deep into the lower lobes of the lungs. Although breathing through your nose during exercise takes a little getting used to, once the rib cage opens from deep nasal breathing, the body learns how to handle higher and higher levels of stress during exercise without the upper chest stress response that causes soreness and degenerative chemistry in the body.
Use the comfortable rhythm of nose breathing - inhaling and exhaling deeply through the nose, as a monitor during exercise of how much exercise is good for you and how much more is potentially harmful. As soon as you have to breathe through your mouth during exercise, the body is under stress, and lactic acid waste products are accumulating in the muscles and blood. The result is fast breathing and muscle soreness. It might take some time to get used to nasal breathing during exercise but the benefits are worth waiting for. In the end, you are going to breathe 28,000 times everyday for the rest of your life. Quite simply, how you breathe will either send a message to your body that your life and exercise are a disease producing emergency that you have to recover from or a rejuvenating experience that makes each day better than the next.
Exercise Tip: Go for a walk and breathe through your nose both during the inhale and exhale. Count how many steps you take for one complete cycle of inhale and exhale. Maybe you will take four steps on the in breath and five steps on the out breath. This is a total of eleven. Keep trying to breathe deeper, longer and slower as you walk and breathe through your nose. Your steps per nasal breath goal (exhale steps + inhale steps) is twenty-one.
Each day you try this you will see improvement, and soon what you could not do when you started nose breathing, you will do effortlessly. Your exercise will now remove and convert lactic acid efficiently without out the age old muscle stiffness. Also as you learn to breathe efficiently, you will be able to exercise at a higher level, but again as long as you are breathing through your nose, you will not be breaking your body down in the name of building it up. It is also well understood that when the body is not responding to the exertion as an emergency it will burn non-emergency fuel - fat - rather than sugar more efficiently.
Currently there are many nutritional supplements that can prevent lactic acid build up and muscle soreness. My favorite for this is botanical medicine called Boswellia serrata. Boswellia is a gummy tree in mountainous India. The bark and gum are used in a wide variety of conditions, however primarily used as an anti-inflammatory associated with muscle and joint pain.
The boswellic acids in the tree resin counteract the effects of leukotrienes that are responsible for free radical damage, auto immune responses, and inflammation. It is a clinically proven alternative to anti-inflammatory and anti-arthritic drugs without the common side effects: high blood pressure, gastric irritation, heart palpitations and ulcers.
Another botanical medicine that is indicated for exercise stress and muscle soreness is called ashwaganda or Winter Cherry. Ashwaganda is a small evergreen shrub that grows to 1.5 meters tall. It is found in dry areas of India and as far west a Israel and is now being cultivated in the United States. The word ashwaganda literally means "the sweat of a horse," indicating that one who takes it would have the strength and sexual vitality of a horse. It is a well known adaptogen that tones and normalizes bodily functions and renders the body more resistant to stress. The established active constituent is a number of steroidal lactones that are together called withanolides. The withanolides will affect the function of both the nervous system and musculoskeletal systems ability to handle exercise stress.
Some reports have shown that taking boswellia together with ashwaganda and ginger can enhance its effects for fighting muscle and joint stiffness and soreness. In one study at the Government Medical College in Jammmu, India, nearly 70% of arthritic patients experienced good to excellent results against stiffness and pain.
MSM, or methylsulfonylmethane, is probably the hottest nutrient on the market today for muscle soreness. It is a substance than occurs naturally in the body and in small amounts, the food we eat. MSM was created in the wake of years of DMSO research. It is the non toxic cousin that penetrates the cell wall and enhances blood supply deep in the bodily tissues. Its toxicity is very low, similar to that of water and salt. It is a sulfur derivative and the only reported complaints were with people who are allergic to sulfa drugs. Otherwise it well tolerated at high doses of 1000 to 6000 mg per day depending on the severity of the condition. In some cases at high doses it can cause diarrhea and some sleeplessness if taken at night. So start with 1000 mg per day and build up. It is effective for moving blood lactate and scar tissue out of the muscles and relieving muscle soreness. It is also a very effective anti-inflammatory and pain reliever that helps by not masking pain but by reinstating the lost blood flow which is in many cases the cause of muscle soreness and pain.
John Douillard, D.C. is the author of Body, Mind and Sport and is the former Director of Player Development for the New Jersey Nets. He is in practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information call 303.516.4848 or 866.227.9843.
Further Information
http://www.lifespa.com/article.asp?art_id=36
Showing posts with label athletics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label athletics. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
An Athlete's Guru
Reprinted from Delicious magazine - by Kathleen Finn
John Douillard, an Ayurvedic physician, helps athletes attain peak performance. At his LifeSpa in Boulder, Colo., he teams up Ayurveda and exercise to tailor programs based on individual mind-body types.
John Douillard wants to get the word out that exercise can be fun. He’s not selling a fitness video or new running shoes. He wants people to know about Ayurvedic fitness, which isn’t just exercise, but a lifestyle."Ayurvedic fitness is tailor-making a lifestyle and fitness routine according to your body type. When you’ve accomplished that, daily life becomes more enjoyable," Douillard says in he latest book, Body, Mind, and Sport (Harmony).
Douillard, 38, who holds a doctorate in chiropractic, is also an Ayurvedic physician trained in India. Ayurvedic is the predominant healing system in that country. Ayurvedic physicians work primarily from an individual’s mind-body type, which is determined through lengthy questionnaire and discussion. From here, practitioners prescribe specific diets, exercise and lifestyle routines according to each patient’s individual constitution.
From an Ayurvedic standpoint, Douillard sees health and fitness together as a lifestyle. "People tend to separate the two, whereas fitness can be a way of life. It all ties in with other Ayurvedic recommendations – following the right kind of diet for your body type, eating in a relaxed state, going to bed early, and in general, respecting the cycles of nature," he says.
At his comfortable Life-Spa in Boulder, Colo., Douillard integrates Ayurvedic teachings with modern exercise. "I try to find out what this person’s body is trying to heal. Ayurveda doesn’t speak the language of disease. It speaks about what your body can heal. What is your body working on right now, and how can Ayurveda enhance that?"
Boulder is once again home to Douillard, who had a chiropractic practice here in 1986. During this period he left for a three-week vacation to India but returned one and a half years later. While visiting a family there, Douillard was invited to stay and learn Ayurvedic medicine. "To be taken under their wing and be taught this ancient system of healing was the opportunity of a lifetime. Ayurveda is a very private family tradition in India with teachings handed down from generation to generation," he relates.
While studying in India, Douillard met Deepak Chopra, an Ayurvedic physician and Western-trained endocrinologist, who invited him back to the United States to work at his Ayurvedic clinic in Lancaster, Mass. Douillard accepted and ran the clinic from 1987 to 1994.
There, he immersed himself in the practice of Ayurveda, performing pulse diagnosis and learning the art of Panchakarma (therapeutic treatments involving massage and deep relaxation). In mid-1994 Douillard opened his own clinic in Boulder, where he, his wife, Ginger, and their three children currently live.Before his foray into the ancient healing system of India, Douillard was a Hollywood stunt man and professional triathlete who was accustomed to the rigors of intense training but now views exercise as a stress reducer not a stress inducer. During his tenure as a competitive athlete his interest in Ayurveda was piqued. He was torn between the heavy-duty training mindset of triathletes and the Ayurvedic philosophy of "less is more". "Our society’s fitness philosophy operates under the misconception that we must break our bodies down in order to build them up," he maintains. "Yet, studies show this style of exercise isn’t productive. What we get from this is increased free radical formation and suppressed immune system function."
"There’s no way to know how much exercise is good for you and how much is harmful. The right level of exercise gives you a real enjoyment of what you are doing, so you look forward to it and most importantly, it doesn’t limit you," Douillard claims.
You can reach a happy medium, he says, adding that competition and challenging training can be accommodated. "The body’s potential is unlimited. You just have to know how to access it or the body will reject it. If you want to run marathons, you can do it, but you can do it in a way that you take the composure and calm with you. It’s like being in the eye of a hurricane," he says. "The bigger the feeling of composure, the more dynamic activity you can support."
Relearn to Breathe
Creating this eye of the hurricane involves two important elements: nose breathing and yoga. Nose breathing, also called yoga breathing, during activity keeps you in that "zone," according to Douillard. The zone he refers to is the peak performance, or "runner’s high," that athletes achieve when mind and body become one. "As soon as you take emergency (short and shallow) breaths, the breath can’t support the eye of the hurricane anymore. Your body responds as though it’s in an emergency," he states. "That’s why there are now 10 million fewer people exercising than three years ago. People say they don’t have the time to exercise, but the real reason is they don’t like it. If you enjoy something, you make the time for it. Yet, it’s possible for people to reach a measurable level of comfort that can be reproduced each time they run, ride their bikes or play basketball."
"I use exercise as a tool to teach people to deal with all kinds of life stress from a composed perspective. Exercise teaches you how to maintain composure. You can retrain yourself using physical activity as a tool to deal with real life stress, and you’ll become more calm under other stressful situations."
Douillard has taken his message across the country, giving clinics and lectures on creating the zone, yoga breathing and making exercise an integral part of people’s lives, not a punishment. He also lectures and works with athletes of all levels from high school tennis players to professional bike racers. Well-known clients such as Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova sing his praises for the added dimension he’s brought to their games.
"My overall goal is to teach people how to live in a more enjoyable and productive way. I want to give people a different model for success, which would be to really enjoy the process of life. This means not looking at the clock and wishing your day or week away just so you can get to the next thing but really enjoying being in the present," Douillard explains. "The way people live now limits productivity. Just like the eye of the hurricane, the bigger the eye, the faster the wind. The calmer we are while under stress, the more productive we can be. Less is more in the long run."
Further Information
http://www.lifespa.com/article.asp?art_id=22
John Douillard, an Ayurvedic physician, helps athletes attain peak performance. At his LifeSpa in Boulder, Colo., he teams up Ayurveda and exercise to tailor programs based on individual mind-body types.
John Douillard wants to get the word out that exercise can be fun. He’s not selling a fitness video or new running shoes. He wants people to know about Ayurvedic fitness, which isn’t just exercise, but a lifestyle."Ayurvedic fitness is tailor-making a lifestyle and fitness routine according to your body type. When you’ve accomplished that, daily life becomes more enjoyable," Douillard says in he latest book, Body, Mind, and Sport (Harmony).
Douillard, 38, who holds a doctorate in chiropractic, is also an Ayurvedic physician trained in India. Ayurvedic is the predominant healing system in that country. Ayurvedic physicians work primarily from an individual’s mind-body type, which is determined through lengthy questionnaire and discussion. From here, practitioners prescribe specific diets, exercise and lifestyle routines according to each patient’s individual constitution.
From an Ayurvedic standpoint, Douillard sees health and fitness together as a lifestyle. "People tend to separate the two, whereas fitness can be a way of life. It all ties in with other Ayurvedic recommendations – following the right kind of diet for your body type, eating in a relaxed state, going to bed early, and in general, respecting the cycles of nature," he says.
At his comfortable Life-Spa in Boulder, Colo., Douillard integrates Ayurvedic teachings with modern exercise. "I try to find out what this person’s body is trying to heal. Ayurveda doesn’t speak the language of disease. It speaks about what your body can heal. What is your body working on right now, and how can Ayurveda enhance that?"
Boulder is once again home to Douillard, who had a chiropractic practice here in 1986. During this period he left for a three-week vacation to India but returned one and a half years later. While visiting a family there, Douillard was invited to stay and learn Ayurvedic medicine. "To be taken under their wing and be taught this ancient system of healing was the opportunity of a lifetime. Ayurveda is a very private family tradition in India with teachings handed down from generation to generation," he relates.
While studying in India, Douillard met Deepak Chopra, an Ayurvedic physician and Western-trained endocrinologist, who invited him back to the United States to work at his Ayurvedic clinic in Lancaster, Mass. Douillard accepted and ran the clinic from 1987 to 1994.
There, he immersed himself in the practice of Ayurveda, performing pulse diagnosis and learning the art of Panchakarma (therapeutic treatments involving massage and deep relaxation). In mid-1994 Douillard opened his own clinic in Boulder, where he, his wife, Ginger, and their three children currently live.Before his foray into the ancient healing system of India, Douillard was a Hollywood stunt man and professional triathlete who was accustomed to the rigors of intense training but now views exercise as a stress reducer not a stress inducer. During his tenure as a competitive athlete his interest in Ayurveda was piqued. He was torn between the heavy-duty training mindset of triathletes and the Ayurvedic philosophy of "less is more". "Our society’s fitness philosophy operates under the misconception that we must break our bodies down in order to build them up," he maintains. "Yet, studies show this style of exercise isn’t productive. What we get from this is increased free radical formation and suppressed immune system function."
"There’s no way to know how much exercise is good for you and how much is harmful. The right level of exercise gives you a real enjoyment of what you are doing, so you look forward to it and most importantly, it doesn’t limit you," Douillard claims.
You can reach a happy medium, he says, adding that competition and challenging training can be accommodated. "The body’s potential is unlimited. You just have to know how to access it or the body will reject it. If you want to run marathons, you can do it, but you can do it in a way that you take the composure and calm with you. It’s like being in the eye of a hurricane," he says. "The bigger the feeling of composure, the more dynamic activity you can support."
Relearn to Breathe
Creating this eye of the hurricane involves two important elements: nose breathing and yoga. Nose breathing, also called yoga breathing, during activity keeps you in that "zone," according to Douillard. The zone he refers to is the peak performance, or "runner’s high," that athletes achieve when mind and body become one. "As soon as you take emergency (short and shallow) breaths, the breath can’t support the eye of the hurricane anymore. Your body responds as though it’s in an emergency," he states. "That’s why there are now 10 million fewer people exercising than three years ago. People say they don’t have the time to exercise, but the real reason is they don’t like it. If you enjoy something, you make the time for it. Yet, it’s possible for people to reach a measurable level of comfort that can be reproduced each time they run, ride their bikes or play basketball."
"I use exercise as a tool to teach people to deal with all kinds of life stress from a composed perspective. Exercise teaches you how to maintain composure. You can retrain yourself using physical activity as a tool to deal with real life stress, and you’ll become more calm under other stressful situations."
Douillard has taken his message across the country, giving clinics and lectures on creating the zone, yoga breathing and making exercise an integral part of people’s lives, not a punishment. He also lectures and works with athletes of all levels from high school tennis players to professional bike racers. Well-known clients such as Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova sing his praises for the added dimension he’s brought to their games.
"My overall goal is to teach people how to live in a more enjoyable and productive way. I want to give people a different model for success, which would be to really enjoy the process of life. This means not looking at the clock and wishing your day or week away just so you can get to the next thing but really enjoying being in the present," Douillard explains. "The way people live now limits productivity. Just like the eye of the hurricane, the bigger the eye, the faster the wind. The calmer we are while under stress, the more productive we can be. Less is more in the long run."
Further Information
http://www.lifespa.com/article.asp?art_id=22
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