So your arms don't swing when walking. How does that reflect on your health?
Coming right up
Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg with Wellness For Life and if you'd like to truly master
health by understanding how the body really works make sure that you
subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss anything. Arm
swinging may seem like a trivial thing it's like
what's the big deal if you swing or don't tell what it looks it's just
aesthetic you mean dancers maybe or but does it really matter for everybody yes
arm swing is one of the most fundamental patterns in the body the gait reflex is
a foundation of a lot of patterns in your nervous system it starts developing
when you first crawl so some around six months or so your body learns your
nervous system you figure out that the arm should move opposite to the leg and
that holds true for walking it holds true for crawling it's a gate reflect
it's called a cross crawl pattern and because it's so fundamental because it's
involved with so many different developments in the body it can be
devastating if this doesn't develop properly so dyslexia for example has
been associated with poor gait patterns and a lot of people with dyslexia will
actually benefit from going back to crawling from practicing the basic gait
reflex again and people who are clumsy who sprained their ankles who are injury
prone or accident prone that is also a reflection of brain patterns how well
balanced how precise is that nervous system and it all starts with a gait
reflex but where most people really start to pay attention is when we start
talking about dementia because one of the earliest signs of dementia that you
can pick up way way way before there's any memory
issues or any brain scan abnormalities it's a slight loss of gait pattern so if
you lose the arm swing if there is less of a mount of arm swing if there is less
magnitude or if there is more on one side than the other or if there's an
arrhythmic gait pattern all of those are very early indicators of
neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's so here's a
quote from New England Journal of Medicine 2002 the presence of gait
abnormalities is a significant predictor of risk of developing dementia so even
in the medical field they notice in chiropractic neurology and functional
neurology they've worked with this for decades and they know that one of the
very first things to look for is gait when you evaluate a person when you
evaluate their neurological reflexes gait is one of the very first things
that you want to look at so prevention is key though and as with everything if
you prevent it if you build up a function stronger before it deteriorates
then your chances of not having a problem is much much greater so in the
case of Parkinson's for example by the time that they diagnose the disease once
they have some stiffness and and some shuffling gait and and some speech
abnormalities even in the early stages of that they have about 50 to 80 percent
loss of the critical neurons of the dopamine-producing neurons in the
substantia nigra area of the brain so by the time they find that you already lost
50 to 80% what if you could prevent it what if you could support the body's
function as much as possible with all the other things that we talked about on
this channel but in this case more specifically by practicing
by practicing paying attention to how you're moving to what's the extent
what's the excursion of the gates and what's the symmetry of the pattern from
side to side so in order to understand a little bit more we're going to know that
the brain controls everything in the body but the brain doesn't know anything
it's not being told so the brain relies exclusively on signals and these signals
come from receptors that provide feedback so once we have lost some of
that gate pattern some of that gate arm swing movements then the brain has lost
the control over the muscle but part of that is because the brain lost some of
the feedback and now the brain starts degenerating because it is not as active
because it is not receiving information it is not sending signals out the brain
and neuroplasticity is functioning in a way that the brain is just like a muscle
if you work it out you'll maintain the strength you work out a muscle by
putting tension on it but you work out the month the brain by sending signals
to it and making the brain produce signals and gate is one of those things
so that the more precise your gate the more precise the execution the more
precise the feedback have to be and the stronger and healthier the brain cells
have to be so can you reverse neurodegenerative disease
I believe you can reverse some of the early stages I don't know to what extent
and I don't know if you can reverse some of the severe cases but I think that you
can reverse some of the earlier stages but even more importantly you can
prevent it by giving the body the signals and the nutrition that it needs
you can maintain optimal function so gate in arm swing is tremendously
important for your health it is not a small little trip
we'll deal so look around you look at the people that you care about and look
at how many people are walking around like this or walk look at how many
people who are swinging one arm and not the other
that is a brain imbalance in the early stages you can correct it but you have
to pay attention you have to do something about it and you have to be
consistent and patient if you enjoy content like this where we learn how the
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