The Livy Method Podcast - Let's Talk Taking Care of Your Changing Body with Dr. Tam - Winter 2024

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

In this live segment, Gina talks stress, sleep, squats, and taking care of our changing body with Dr. Tam, Chiropractic Doctor.If you are in the Winter 2024 Support Group, you can check out the full video here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodwinter2024Topics covered:Introducing Dr. Dickson Tam. @ IntroAfter weight loss, the body changes enough that you may want to consider seeing a chiropractor.Are you too sedentary? Why moving your body more often is essential for good health.Movement helps nourish our joints.When it comes to movement, we want to choose activities that give us the most bang for our buck.Squatting is a natural, fundamental movement with a great return for your efforts!Squats for everyone! Listen to your body and modify it as you need to work within your ability.Why it is important to choose an exercise that you like to do.Resistance and strength training our muscles become even more important as we age.Stretching is another form of helpful movement.With posture, it's important to address problem areas and work on your weaknesses for overall health.Move your body in ways you enjoy: don't make it a chore and another thing to check off if you hate it.Dr. Tam talks about how stress accentuates any of our existing physical problems.Posture as a reflection of spinal health. Do you know how good your spine is right now?How would we know if our posture is poor?Get stacked! Dr. Tam discusses how the body might look from a side view when posture is stacked.Create more awareness in your spaces to allow you to have more of a stacked posture.Sleep: let's keep it simple with a few tips from Dr. Tam.Dr. Tam shares his Five Factors of Health that we can control: diet, movement, sleep, stress, and recovery.Where to find Dr. Tam: www.thewellnessgroupaurora.comTo learn more about The Livy Method, visit www.ginalivy.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams from my 91 day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on Acast, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple,

and Amazon Music. summer runs, or playoff season meditations. Whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca.

You're going to have this ability to now reframe. Allow yourself time throughout the day to stress the fuck out. The thoughts and the feelings and the behavior cycle can start changing. Today we're talking about how to take care of your ever-changing body. Because with weight loss, we talk all the time where you can't just lose weight and have your body not notice and need your body to adjust. We talk about plateaus all the time. Or is your body getting used to your new weight, stabilizing your body at its new weight, but it's so much more than that.

And my guest today, Dr. Dixon Tam, is the perfect guest to talk about this because you literally have your hands on people all day long. You see people come and go with a variety of different issues and ailments, but when someone goes and loses 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 pounds, I'm assuming that affects everything. The way you sit, the way you walk, the way you move. There's a lot of things that are happening in your body. So I want to get into that today. Hello. Hi, welcome. Good morning, Gina. More than that, you've been in my life for the last couple of years and you have managed everything from my vertigo to my neck, my shoulders right now, I've got a shoulder.

I don't know. I slept the wrong way. Something's going on with my shoulder, my back. I've thrown my back out a few times and, and more than that, my stress and overall wellness. Um, should we start with chiropractic care and just maybe start with there and you know, why would someone go and see a chiropractor? Like, I mean, I know why I go, but why would someone consider going? Yeah, I love that. Well, thanks for having me on. Well, I mean, let's start with that, right? Like what is a chiropractor? So the big overarching idea is that we are what we call neuromusculoskeletal specialists. So what does that mean? Right? That's a mouthful. So really, we treat anything that encompasses

nerves, muscles, bones, joints, essentially on the outside of your body. Right? And you've heard me say before, I'm a doctor, but if you have the flu, don't come see me, can't help with that. But what I can help with is essentially, for the most part of my day, neck pain, back pain, hip pain, probably encompasses the large part of my day as we are spine specialists. But aside from that, I also take care of, like I said, shoulders, elbows, hips and knees, when asked to by my patients. And to follow on that, you know, why would somebody come see me, right? And I think the best answer to that is I kind of wear two hats during the day. I find myself wearing the get you out of trouble hat, where you've done something silly, you slept on your shoulder wrong, I got

into some some sort of injury or an accident. And my job is to is to fix your body, right? I am a fixer. The other part of the hat that I wear, though, which I would I would argue is the the more fun hat to play is a preventative role. Right? Where when when problems are mild, when stress is mild, what my job is, is to maintain it. Right? Because for the large part, who wants to wait till they're bad before it gets fixed? Why wouldn't we just keep things good? Right? And I find myself playing both those roles on an everyday basis. So when someone comes to see you about that neck, that back, that whatever that is, what do you think is sort of, is there an underlying, like something that's perpetuating it beyond, you know, just coming to see you to fix it each week? Is there like, what's your takeaway?

I wish people would do this in between sessions or, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, the easy answer is I wish everybody would move more. I think there's, you know, especially in my world, I talk movement, right. And, and, and for the most part, shy of, you know, rarities, most people's problems come from the fact that we're too sedentary, right. Whether we sit all day, you know, we sit all day talking you know, we sit all day talking to guests. We sit all day helping people for weight loss. We sit all day, you know, being an accountant and fill in the blanks. I find most people are just not moving enough, which is part of the reason why they come and see me, right?

Because I help their bodies move better. And so if you had to ask me, what is one thing people should be doing more of, especially in between treatments with me, I, without a doubt, I'd say move more, find something you love to do and do it and move more. Can we talk a little bit more about why that's so important? Because so as you know, I went away over the Christmas holidays and it was a big walking trip. I wouldn't say vacation because there was 12 of us in our family. I took my kids. So it's more like an adventure, but we walked and walked and walked and walked and walked. I have never felt better

in my entire life. And we were getting at least 20,000 steps a day. And then when I came home, I was like, all right, let me see how many I'm doing at home and I'm like maybe doing a thousand two thousand max at home like that is it and then I'm like okay so I need to and I was going for like a walk with my daughter you know like around the block and so I was like okay how do I get this in I got you know I got started wearing my apple watch and I'm using my phone to measure and and I just wasn't doing it and then I bought a walking pad because I'm like, okay, I'm not going outside at five in the morning. So what can I do? And even then I have to walk like an hour and 40 minutes just to get like the minimum 10,000 steps in. And so was I

feeling amazing when I could walk all the time? Yeah. Does my lifestyle like allow for me to walk all the time? No, but also it's really important. So can we maybe talk about how important it is to move the body and why it's so important to move the body? Yeah. Um, I think you nailed it spot on. It's, it's so important to move your body. And then the biggest reason for that is, and, and, and, I mean, we can focus on back pain for the most part, because I think most people would put their hand up and say, I suffer from some degree of discomfort or genuine pain. The large part is because our joints don't get very much nutrition if we don't move it regularly. And when I mean regularly, it's somewhere in the ballpark between 30 and 60 minutes, right? Where if we just sit here and do nothing for, we'll call it an hour for argument's sake, our joints get no nutrition.

Unlike, say, muscles. Muscles do a good job. Muscles are typically red and they have a good job of blood flow coming in. So bring the good stuff in and the junk out. The problem with our joints is that we don't get any of that. And so if you don't move it, it kind of acts like a sponge in the sink, so to speak. And if you don't move the sponge, the water doesn't come in, the water doesn't come out, and it just sits there dirty, for lack of a better word. And the problem with that is then our joints get no fresh nutrients. And then that's where a lot of our symptoms and a lot of our pain comes

from. Right. And like you said, you know, you, you never felt better walking so much throughout the day because I would, I would bet when you were on vacation, shy of meals, maybe, right. Like how often would you really be staying in the same spot for over 20, 30 minutes, right. Cause you got stuff to do. You have places to see. Right. And then the problem is, is you're right, is we're our own worst enemy. I find where, you know, if you work any nine to five job, you've got jobs to do.

You've got, you know, you have tasks to accomplish. Right. And then the consequence of that is, is that you're locked in. You're locked in for two, three, four hours every single day. I I patients tell me, Oh, you don't even know the day I had a blinked and 10 hours went by. Yeah. And so I think that's a real challenge for for a lot of us where yeah, we do have demanding jobs or lives or whatnot. And we don't put ourselves in the forefront. But the consequence of that is we end up being sedentary. There's the getting up and walking around, like, say I walk, I don't know, I'm in an office. So I go to the bathroom. Maybe

I'm like stretching a little bit. Like, is that helpful? Or is that like really not doing anything for us? It's helpful ish. And, and, and you hear me talk about it all the time where, you know, I'll use the word efficiency bang for your buck, right? Like, if movement is hard for us during the daytime, we're already not getting the required amount. And our time is limited. I always argue is why not do the thing that gives us our biggest return on investment, right? Walking around is great. But the one thing that you've heard me suggest to yourself before, and it's just that every one of my patients is that we should be squatting throughout the day and if that's that's

right and if that's you know if all we can spare is a couple seconds or 30 seconds here and there well why do something that snails pace to get blood flow into our joints right why wouldn't we do the biggest return on our investment? That's going to give us the biggest return so that we can go back to doing, you know, your nine to five focus job. Okay. So last time Dr. Tam was on with us, people went batshit crazy in the comments about his suggestion that people, I think it was 30 squats a day, 30 squats a day. If the goal would be for you to be, and I've actually, I heard in some of the comments, uh, today I was reading them. Some of you have

actually been doing this and I love this so much. And so a big takeaway for a lot of people was like, well, I can't, I have a knee issue. I, whatever. I mean, every day you're squatting down to go to the bathroom. You are kind of squatting down to sit in a chair and maybe you have to modify the way that you were doing a squat, but why are squats so effective? Is it because we're using like our bigger leg and butt muscles? Is it because of the way it's connected to our back? Why are you such a big fan of the, just a basic squat? Yeah, I'm a basic fan because one, you know, getting enough movements hard enough, we don't need to complicate things. And like I said, we squat every day, right? You use

the bathroom, you bend down, you drop something, right? We bend down to pick something up. And so if your day's so busy already, the last thing I want to ask you to do is say, okay, Gina, let's pause every half hour. I want you to go get the specialized equipment and then set up here on your yoga mat. Like, forget it, right? Like you're not going to, you're not going to get anywhere with that because you're going to think about it and you're going to think to yourself, oh, I got other things to do. I got better things to do. That's right. So we got to make the barrier as low as possible so that we can do things that we don't really want to do because we have other things on our agenda

so so the the the big reason is it's just convenience but you nailed it i mean the squat is the the most fundamental movement in our human body it uses all of our biggest joints our hips our knees it links into our lower back um right and and and what it does is again it gives us the biggest return on investment because we're using the biggest joints. Right. And I'm not saying, you know, doing bicep curls or wrist curls isn't going to give you a return, but because those joints are so small to ask them to do to create a big influence on the rest of your body and especially your back, I think would be, would be tough to do in a short amount of time. Right. And so if we're

already crunched, let's be efficient. People are literally talking about how they've been doing this. They do it when they brush their teeth, they do it when they blow dry their hair, they do it with, you know, they're, they're doing it, you know, um, just kind of like you said, you know, when visiting the bathroom, they do their squats. So do you have a tech, does, do we have to worry about, like, do we have to go hire a personal trainer to know how to do a squat? Like, I mean, squats for anyone who's not like paying attention. That's like just squatting down. If we use weights, great. Do we have to worry about whether our knees are in a certain position or sitting back? Or we just, just squat down? Do we have to get super technical about it? How long are we holding the squad? Are we just,

how low are we going? I have so many questions. Great question. I mean, and, and I mean, I'll start with, it depends. Right. And, and you're right. You know, if I'll polarize it where, you know, we have, um, you know, 40 year history of arthritis in the knees, you've got some complicating health issues. Um, obviously, you know, if as members of your program, you know, people have some weight to lose, right? So there's a lot of pressure on the knees. Yeah, sure. I can imagine a scenario where squatting is uncomfortable or the individual is uncomfortable with not just doing one or two squats, but 30 throughout the day is sometimes like it

can be daunting or seem like a lot, right? And the biggest thing I always recommend or seem like a lot, right? And the biggest thing I always recommend is, is listen to your body, right? Where our bodies are very intuitive. And I think for the most part, where we typically get in trouble is when we stop listening, right? We're just going about our day. And well, I gotta put my I gotta put my daughter in my car seat one way or another back pain or no back pain. So who cares? So I stopped listening, right? We're hopefully if you are working to add some squats in your day, you know, hopefully it's in the confines of your own office or room, right? You've got a second to take to

yourself where we can do squats many different ways, right? Like you said, we just watched you go up and down with no assistance, right? Or we can hold on to the desk in front of you, right? And take the pressure off your knees, right and i always you know tell people is there's no one right way to squat because everybody's bodies and genetics are so different the the idea is let's listen to our bodies and let's play with it right try a squat one way if that doesn't feel great on the knees great widen your feet a little bit open your feet out like a penguin a little bit, right? Stick your butt back more, stick your butt back less, right? I think there's no easier way to figure out how you should squat as an individual. And frankly speaking, if you did get a personal trainer, which would be a fabulous idea, but obviously not within everybody's means, that's what they

would be doing for you. That's what I would do for you, right? If you came in the office and said, hey, this hurts, I would say, okay, Gina, let's widen our feet a little bit. Tell me how that feels. Nope, don't like that. Okay, let's bring our knees out a little bit. See how that feels. Let's bring our toes out a little bit, right? And for the most part, our bodies change not just from person to person, but day to day, right? The way you squat today might not exactly look like the way you squat tomorrow. And that's okay because the key is not to be this technical wizard to look like you're going to the Olympics. But the important part is just to do it within your abilities. So I think sometimes you get a little caught up on technique as a barrier to, well, I'm just going to not do them at all in fears of fill in the blank. Yeah, so you're kind of incorporating squats into your movement as opposed to like exercise,

exercise. Can we talk about exercise? Like what is your favorite exercise for people? Is it like resistance training, heavy weights? Is it stretching? Is it core exercises? Would it be walking? What, what, if you could pick an exercise, what would you say? I wish everybody would do this type of exercise or is it not? I mean, I mean, it can be that simple. The hard part is I would argue most of us struggle to, to exercise enough to begin with. Right. And so I always flip that question back to you and I say, okay, well let's, let's hypothetically, I picked whatever your least favorite exercise was. If you hate swimming, I'm going to say swimming, right? The reality is if it's hard enough to sprinkle that in within our day or within our week,

why pick something that is, you know, something we dislike, right? And that's always my answer to that is, well, what do you like to do, right? Because no sport or exercise is perfect. Every sport or exercise has its faults. So to argue, I think, which is the best is reserved for elite athletes, right? If you're already working out six to seven times a week, you're very good at investing into yourself. You are this mental warrior that you don't care what you do, you will do it nonetheless. Great, then we can have that conversation. I think for I'll throw myself in that category and 99% of the population, let's pick something you'd like to do, or at least something you don't hate, and do that. And if it is walking great start there if it's resistance

training awesome and if it's tennis do that right i would i would be more concerned about okay well let's pick something you like to do and do it frequently rather than i say to you swimming and you swim once a quarter like how much good is that going to do for you even if it is the best sport hypothetically in the world right or a Or a best exercise. So that's always my answer is pick some, it doesn't really matter. Start somewhere, pick what you like to do and you'll see massive benefits from that. Okay. Love that. I mean, exercise is beneficial for a variety of reasons. What about the concept of, you know, everyone's talking about lifting weights, increasing muscle, especially as you get older, how important is that?

Super important. And I'll definitely say because I think our society at least has gone away from lifting weights, especially like you said, as we get older, um, females, um, typically have a, um, a faster decrease in muscle mass. And these are things that will carry our function, uh, of day-to-day life, right. And not saying that, you know, cardiovascular exercise and other forms of exercise or training aren't good, but resistance training is big. There's, there's benefits to your muscles, which will help with your everyday function. Um, the, the one benefit everybody forgets that it is, is that it really helps your bones and your joints and the quality of your bones and your joints. And so you hear the word osteoporosis or osteopenia a lot, which means you have a

decrease in the quality of your bones, right? A lot of people will say like my, my, my nonna has it, or my grandmother had it and whatnot. And the problem with that is because most of us aren't getting enough resistance training and weighted training on our body. And so that's one of the big benefits that people forget is that not only do we have to worry about muscle match, which is super duper important, I don't want to not harp on that enough. But then there's also other benefits to that where if you can, like I said, you don't hate it, you don't detest it, and you can sprinkle it in. I think there's immense benefits to our health, especially as we age, like you said.

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Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. What about stretching? Because I started doing core. I used to be so flexible. I mean, I used to teach like 20 yoga classes a week in my 20s. And, you know, I'd be able to bend right down, touch my toes.

And so I've started to incorporate some stretching every day and i can i can literally barely touch my toe i'm just like i'm like i'm so stiff how important is how important is stretching oh important i think it'd be the same thing as asking me how important is squatting or moving or walking. Just another form of movement into your day. And I'll say that with a caveat of not everybody loves stretching because it's hard. It's not overly comfortable. If you asked me personally, I'd tell you it's boring, in fairness, to bend down and touch my toes. That's the honest truth, right? And and this will go back to, you know, I find it hard to make

enough, you know, add enough movement or exercise into my day. I personally, I don't care to add 20 minutes of stretching. And if you love it, or you can sprinkle it into your day, amazing, good for you, right? You've got a better schedule than I do. But the reality is if you like it or you've seen benefits with it in the past, great, love it. Add it into your day just because why discourage any more movement, right? Okay. What about if I have – so I want to talk about posture because when people are losing a lot of weight, right, I think it's a great opportunity to help your body adjust to the weight that you've lost because everything changes. The way I'm sitting in my chair changes. The way I walk changes.

But let's say I come to you with shoulder and neck issues because I'm stressed all the time and I'm constantly at my desk and on my phone and I'm sitting recording podcasts like this all day. I can feel it in my neck and shoulders. What about doing exercise specific to strengthening your shoulders or specific to strengthening your back? Is there something to be said for, we do know that we have problem areas of kind of just giving that part of our body a little bit more attention. How important is that? Very important. I'm a big believer of working your weaknesses, right? And especially when we're talking about health, right? Where I'm not talking about a baseball pitcher who wants to make their fastball even faster, right? I'm talking about health, overall well-rounded. How do I feel good so I can play with my daughter? How do I feel good so I can play with my daughter? How do I feel good so I can fill in the blanks?

And, and, and the reality of that is, is yeah, we, we should, if, if, if we're exercising, we absolutely should be working on our weaknesses because like you said, it will be immensely helpful on areas that you suffer from. Right. And so if it is neck and shoulders or upper back in that area, doing exercises specific to that would help for two reasons. One, if you can put on a little bit of muscle mass in there, the muscle will help support those joints in and around those areas, right? That in turn will improve your function. That's the easy answer. The other one is that

you're simply targeting that area to move it, right? If you already struggle to get moving in that area, well, great, if all I've got is 20 minutes, great, let's target that area. Let's move that area so that we can introduce more movement in those joints so that you can then in turn address your weaknesses and feel better. This is such an interesting conversation

as I'm having it with you because I think people think exercise, they gotta do HI HIIT classes. They got to do a whole yoga class. They got to do this. They got to do that. They got to do all these things. And what I'm hearing is like, okay, so move your body in a way that you enjoy, right? Because then you're more likely to probably move more, you know, maximize your efforts by getting in those squats because that's your foundation and it's so important. And then help strengthen your weak areas. That's an interesting way to kind of look at not just moving your body, but exercise. And I think if you're just doing that, then that's going to help, especially as your body's making so much change and you are losing weight to

create strength and stability. What about stress? I know you deal with people who are stressed all day, every day. How does stress impact not just our health, but our physical bodies? Yeah. I mean, well, let's, let's narrow that down with, I know when you say stress, right, you're talking about psychological stress or mental stress, right? Pressure. I'm talking about the stress, that feeling on the weight of the world on my shoulders. You know, when I have a particularly stressful week, you already know. You just put your hands on me and you're like, okay. That's right. Yeah. And I think, you know, it can't be said enough how much stress plays a role into our problems, right? And I always say is stress

typically does not create new problems in our bodies, physically speaking, but what stress does is that it accentuates our existing problems. So if you already have, you know, upper back and neck pain and from sitting at the desk all day, well, if we throw in an extra stressful week, we'll see those pains go through the roof because you've already had an existing problem. We'll call it out as, let's say a three out of 10 humming all the time. Well, now that's a six out of 10 when we add the stress in. Right. And I think there's this myth that, you know, all of a sudden, you know, stress comes along and then all these new problems show up. And my rebuttal to that is

always, well, probably not. You probably had it humming just a little bit in the background and you've been too busy or too preoccupied to deal with it. Well, now the stress is forcing you to deal with it because it's cranked up the volume on that. So what about stress and inflammation too? Because you're always talking about how this is inflamed. We talk a lot about inflammation around here. Um, cause it really sidetracks the body from being able to focus on the basics like weight loss, especially. So what about stress? Is it, does it make inflammation work worse? I'm thinking about so many people who have a sore neck or shoulder or whatever, and they're doing all these things to eat healthy and focus on getting the scale moving. Meanwhile, they're walking around in pain,

their body's inflamed. How much does stress affect that? Tons. And I think when, you know, when you say inflamed, right, I think for the regular person, we kind of use pain or dysfunction and inflammation synonymous, synonymously, which is okay. And if that's what we mean, then yeah, absolutely. The, the stressful will really aggravate our existing pains and problems, right? So if we're walking around busy, busy, we'll add in some stress there and it'll worsen it tenfold without it out. What about our posture? I don't want to go there, but because you know, mine sucks. Mine's the worst. What kind of impact does that have on our bodies? I would imagine even like on our digestive systems, just everything.

Yeah. And I love talking about posture because posture, similar to your weight, I find is a very, very good representation of how well your spine's doing. Right? very good representation of how well your spine's doing, right? It's a representation of how good is your spine right now, but also is a good representation of how well do we really take care of our bodies, right? Do we sit all day doing podcasts hunched over on our phone, where maybe we could do better in taking care of our bodies? Or are we active all the time? We're sprinkling in squats throughout the day. we're never in the same position for more than, you know, 30 ish minutes throughout the day, right? I think posture is both a reflection of how well our spine is doing,

but also in what positions do we do we put ourselves in? And I always find myself answering the question of, you know, how do we get better posture? How do I get there? Right. And I think a lot of the times it's a twofold answer, right? Where, like you said yourself, I mean, seeing somebody like myself is step one. That's the easiest example, right? Coming in for an adjustment is magical. It makes an immense difference on your posture and how good your shoulders feel so that you can get into a good posture, right? That's step one is I think for most people listening right now is, is my suggestion is always try to get into a good posture, try to retract your shoulders. How does that feel?

Can you even do it? Right. And I'd like to think the answer is no. So getting some help is obviously step one. So that is okay, great. Now we can get into a good posture. And then step two is maintaining it, right? Let's set ourselves up. Now we can get into a good posture. And then step two is maintaining it, right? Let's set ourselves up. Let's put ourselves in a good position. Let's

get a good chair. Let's set our desk set up to a good height and our monitors to a good height so that we are then able to hold it and keep it. Okay. So you helped me a lot with this. If I miss a session with you, I can feel my back, just get whatever, like it's out. I know because I am hunched over. I'm not putting in as much effort as I should. You come and adjust me, but obviously what I'm doing on my own is so important. What is, what is, when you said retract your shoulders, what do you mean by like that? What is a good, if I'm sitting here, like I can feel like I can feel my one shoulders hurting. And so I'm sitting like this. And so I immediately try to, is it, is it rolling our shoulders back? Is it sticking my boobs up? Like, is it my tummy tight? What is like, what's good posture? Is it this?

Cause I'm like, I'm not, I'm like this. I'm always rotated forward. So should I try to walk around like that? How do we know right now, how do people listening and watching, how can they tell if their posture sucks or if it's good or not? That's a good way to put it. I think the easy test is where are your shoulders sitting right now? And do you have to put effort in keeping them square with your body? I think for them, for most of us, I'd like to think, you know, when, when our posture is not great, you know, you can feel the shoulders roll forward. You can see the head roll forward. Right. And, and,

and the best example I use is if we look at ourselves from the side, we should be what we call stacked, which means all of our joints in our backs at one on top of another. Yes. Our spine has a little bit of curvature, but from a little bit of a nerdy perspective here is that's the most what we call biomechanically efficient, right? Where if we stack the building blocks one on top of another, perfectly on top of another,

your body doesn't have to work that hard to hold it upright. The hard part is when we bring everything forward and further away from our center of mass, that's when our bodies have to work really hard to keep ourselves upright. You know, Gina, I have a little one. And the best example is giving her a bath, right? And the thing that everybody struggles with and every parent can, can, can appreciate this is how do you give your kid a bath? You're, you're, you're leaning over the, the bathtub, you're hunched over, you know,

your kids away from you, they want to play, they're a little squirmy, they're soapy, they're slippery, right? And you're just super rounded over, reaching away from you. I mean, I could paint that as probably the worst posture right um because of how unstacked your body is of keeping one on top of one another right so i think the the easiest self-assessment is is are you stacked are you sitting one on top of another is your head forward or is it sitting perfectly in line with your spine from a side profile and and and if it's not my my my follow-up to that is can you get into a good position is are you just set up poorly right like do we just need to make modifications to your setup so that you know if we bring your chair back a little bit your monitor up a little bit

get your phone out of your lap yeah is that better or if you physically cannot even get into that position if i if i if i grabbed your shoulders and I tugged on them and I pulled them back to rest up against the chair, can you even sit comfortably? And unfortunately, the answer is no. I think we're a little bit clinical, so to speak, and we need some help. We need some help from somebody else,

like a chiropractor, to help you be able to achieve that. Like right now, me sitting with my shoulders back is incredibly uncomfortable. I'm not going to sit here all day like that because it hurts. And of course, that's why I go and see you. So how do we, I mean, yes, go see someone, but there's got to be some middle ground there. What about those things you see on like the shopping network or whatever that you can put them on your back, the little electrode things or like the, I don't know, like strap things that you wear, but like, is there something that, like, do those, are those worth getting, or is it just being mindful, and maybe putting a sticky note at your computer to remind you to sit

up, or when we're walking, are we rolling our shoulders back and down, like, what's the, what's the middle ground there, what are things that we can do? Yeah, I think you nailed it about just trying to create more awareness in your surroundings. The sticky note works great. A work setup ergonomic assessment would be really beneficial to figure out is our monitor at the right height? Is our chair set up to your height and size um and and and positioning of your job i personally i'm not a fan i'm not a fan of the braces um i think i saw a comment pop up there that they are uncomfortable and and i think that's the the root of it is when we look at the research um not only are they uncomfortable because it feels like you're

wearing a backpack all day right everybody's traveled or gone hiking or something where you have a backpack on all day. That's added stress into our body, let alone the existing stress we already have. But let alone is when we look at the research is the research doesn't really support it into its uses on helping improve our posture. And then if anything, it actually might fatigue you a little more exactly like you would if you wore a backpack all day. So personally, I'm not a big fan of those braces. Now here's the million dollar caveat is I always have the person that says, well, it helped me, right? I tried it. I didn't ask you before I bought it, but you know what? It's great. Right. And this is one of those things where, because we're all created so differently, because all of our bodies are so different and our genetics are so different, where if you are the person who's tried it and feels an improvement with it, great.

Don't change a thing. Don't listen to me. Regardless of what I say or the research says, if you've tried it and it works, amazing. Keep it up. The one thing I will say is if we're starting with the blank slate not my first recommendation that's for sure okay good to know i'm cognizant of time i only have a few more minutes with you so sleep it seems like i fucking hurt myself in my sleep these days forget about exercising you're doing anything like just sleeping i'm pulling something

how important is there tips for that for body positions, sleeping the pillow? Should I change my pillow? Should I get one of those body pillows? Like the pillow, the pillow question. I love it. Um, I think this is a revelation. Sometimes when I say this is, you know, a lot of times, you know, we're asked, what type of pillow should I get? Do I need this schmancy one? Right. And I think the million dollars is let's not overcomplicate things, but what is the job of our pillow? Let's start there. Right. The job of our pillow is to fill the space between our ears to our shoulder when we are sleeping on our side. That's it. And so because most of us are

obviously not of the same size, all you need to do is find a pillow that fits the shape between the side of your head and your shoulder. Not overly complicated. And I would say for the most part if you uh we don't need anything fancy okay um yes um we'll maybe we need to switch a pillow if we've lost a ton of weight our bodies are changing tons absolutely and and at the end of the day i always say is trust yourself right similar to anybody who's gone couch shopping before i always do the same joke is you know you, if that couch is the one you're going to buy before both cheeks hit the seat. Right. Everybody sat down and before they even get comfortable, they go, no, not for me. Right. And I think pillows and mattresses aren't all that dissimilar in that, you know, if all it's supposed to do is fill the fill the space in our shoulder, well, great, lay down on it, try it. And if you're comfortable, I think that's a, that's a great starting point. Okay. Amazing. Final question. Your, your tips for good health. Yes. Um, uh, that's a loaded question. That's not an easy one. But I always like to focus on what we call the five factors of health. These are the five factors that I think we can control, right?

If you've if you've talked to me before, you've heard or heard from me before, you know, my big control what you can control, right? There's tons of factors in our life, like my daughter being sick that I can't control, right? Nothing I can do about it, right? Problems of being a toddler, right? But the five things that you can control are your diet, which I think if you're listening to this podcast, you're already working on so good for you. Exercise or movement, sleep, managing your stress, and then your recovery. So how do you choose to take care of your body? Do you see a chiropractor? Are you getting regular body work? But if you can focus on diet, exercise, sleep, stress, and recovery, and make improvements on any one of those five, I think you're going to start to see immense improvements into tips on improving your

body. I love that. And we need to do a whole segment on recovery. We have Dr. Paul who comes on. He talked about it's not so much the stress. It's your body recovering from the stress. Dr. Dixon Tam, thank you so much for your time today. I know you're a super busy man. If you are looking to reach out to him, find him, book an appointment with him, except in my time slot, I'm not giving it up. You can find him at thewellnessgroupaurora.com. Thank you so much for joining

me today. Thanks for everyone. Until next time. Thank you. I know you got a jet, so I'm going to let you go. Thanks. We'll see you soon. Thanks, Gina.