Hi, everyone.
It's so nice to be back with you with another biblical prescription for a life.
Well, this week I thought about bringing you
something that struck home for me, a personal story.
But before we do that, I want to show us a text that might help you this week.
This was by a prophet, Micah,
who lived in the time of Hozier that worked in the northern part
of the country, and Isaiah, who worked in Jerusalem,
where Micah was a prophet that worked in more Sheth Gath
and his ministry was to the poor and downtrodden.
And one text that I really like that
I want everyone to consider memorizing
and I want to share with you, is Micah 68?
He has shown you.
Oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require you
but to do justly to love mercy
and to walk humbly
with your God?
The biblical prescription is walking movement with God.
As you move with God, you will experience
less pain in life.
Well, I want to tell you a little bit what happened to me.
If you, whilst been going on for several months,
I actually noticed that my shoulder,
my right shoulder, I wasn't able to do the things I wanted to.
And for a while I thought, Well, maybe I pulled a muscle
or something went wrong in the shoulder capsule.
So I said, Well, I'm just going to rest it for a while.
Well, I rested it for a long time.
Didn't seem to be getting better.
I said, I'm a type working with some anti-inflammatories
that didn't seem to help.
I was afraid to move it much, and at night I wasn't able to sleep
well because it was causing pain and I actually started not being able
to do things that I like to do.
I really couldn't throw anything very well.
I did protect myself from certain positions.
Even reaching up real high for something would cause me pain.
Well, man, something was wrong.
So I made an appointment with my friend, who's an orthopedic doctor.
I was afraid that maybe something was wrong.
Like, you know, I had pulled something or broke a tendon or,
you know, had something wrong intrinsically with the shoulder
that might need surgery or repair on my brother.
Not too long ago, I pulled something, broke something.
He had to have surgery, and I was concerned
that maybe I would have to have surgery.
Maybe something just got old and snapped in my shoulder.
Well, I went to my doctor friend and he examined.
He says, No, you know, I think this is a problem.
I think this is functional, huh?
Functional
something that I was doing that caused this to happen.
Was it something that was torn or part that was broken
into something that I wasn't doing,
which was a function of how I was living?
So he sent me to an excellent physical therapist,
and this physical therapist helped me a lot,
and I realized that what what was causing
my problem was, I wasn't moving my arm.
I was sitting at the desk a lot doing computer work,
my range of motion, my right arm was compromised.
And as it did this, I had a condition called Capps Colitis,
where, you know, it froze in a position.
And just by not moving, it was putting pressure
on my nerves because it was in an abnormal position.
And the nurse was actually causing my pain.
So I've been involved in physical therapy
for over four weeks now and I've learned some very valuable things.
You probably already know these, but I realize the importance of stretching
and I wanted to share how important stretching is with you.
Simple things like moving my head and holding a stretch from right
to left up and down.
How this helped my nerves that led to the cervical spine,
have more freedom, have less pressure on them.
And then I went through a host of shoulder exercises
up, down, in, out all around,
and they actually did something to help loosen my shoulder up called needling.
Well, I'm glad to say after four to six weeks of physical therapy
going to it and learning about moving and stretching,
I realized that I wasn't stretching every day.
Parts of me weren't moving as they were designed to move.
And this was actually compromising the nerves that ran to these areas.
They were having pressure on them.
My spine wasn't as good, my posture wasn't a good,
and this was causing me to have pain in my shoulder area that moved here
that I really thought was something that was torn.
So I was happy that I didn't have to have surgery, but
it just helped me realize the importance
of stretching, the importance of moving.
You know, we've talked about exercise important and moving all those part,
but also stretching range of motion of all of the tissues.
That's why I did some research this week and I wanted to share you
some things about stretching.
But the big point today is I want everyone to think about stretching,
moving all the parts as much as you can if you need a little extra coaching.
I would recommend physical therapy, but there's a lot of classes on stretching.
I think this is very important, especially those of us,
that certain same positions for multiple hours
or might work on computers, or we just might not be doing this.
So there's a really good article that I wanted to share with you,
and it might be a little bit technical, but some of the points were very good,
and this was written by Lynn Kravitz,
and he is at the University of New Mexico.
But basically, flexibility is the intrinsic property of muscles
and joints to go through a full range or optimal range of motion.
That's what's called flexibility.
And if you don't do those things, things
happen in the body that aren't good.
In my case, I trapped some nerves because I wasn't moving
the full range of motion that I needed to move every day.
In his article, he reviewed a lot of different flexibility studies,
but flexibility has been shown
to decrease as much as 50%
in some joints as we get older, and that would include the shoulder.
That's what happened to me.
Some of the spine movement decreases, and of course, if the lower spine is
compromised, the nerves that go to the leg might be compromised.
Bad things can happen.
We can have lots of pain in our pelvic area, down in our legs,
lower back pain and a researcher named Buchwald.
Or he thought that the gradual deterioration in cell function
in cartilage, ligaments, tendons
and muscles with age is why we we lose this.
And you've heard the old saying, if you don't use it, you lose it.
Well, that was that was a part of his hypothesis.
But as we get older, things get stiffer.
However, another researcher named Bassi
showed that this loss of motion can be minimized
with regular stretching and range of motion exercises.
And that's what I want to encourage you to do.
If you don't use it, you lose it.
We don't want you to have unneeded pain, and just in a short period of time,
I found out that my increased ability
to move my shoulder joint cause me to have less pain.
I had more mobility, and when I did, the more mobility.
It took pressures off nerves that were causing pain.
My range of motion increased so I could do things like throw a baseball again.
I could hit some golf balls again.
I sleep better at night because there wasn't have pain.
My oxygen delivery to my muscles and my cells improved,
as well as metabolism of waste that improved.
And one of the things that movement and stretching will help you over time.
It will help decrease the risk of falling down.
As we get older, our fall risk increases
and the more we stretch, the less likely will fall as we get older.
So I want everyone to think every day to improve your health about stretching.
Now, here's some interesting questions that I took from Dr.
Kravitz Kravitz's article How long should you hold a stretch?
Let's say when you're when you're moving, how long should you chose it? Well, it
says that you should hold a stretch.
You know, you can feel it.
There's a stretch there for up to 15 seconds,
as much as 30 seconds, so you can feel that range of motion.
Hold it.
You know, 15 to 30 seconds is maximized,
at least at least five to ten seconds.
Now what are the optimal repetitions?
Should you hold a stretch?
Well, an article that came out in 2006, it says two
to four repetitions is optimal.
Some people do more.
Some people do less.
For instance, looking at this 1001 hold that stretch.
Therefore, you can feel it in the neck right here.
Hold it.
Do that two to four times.
That should help you.
Now, another question is how often should you stretch all the body parts?
Well, a minimum is two to three days per week.
That's a minimum,
but hopefully the optimal would be to stretch every day of the week.
Different joints work.
Them all go.
To a range of motion, there's many different places
you can learn about this physical therapists are excellent.
Here's
another good question they ask Stretching will heat
before you stretch, will that help you do a little bit better? Yes.
If you can put some heat on a joint,
it helps your stretching exercises, whether that be in the shower.
I tried to put a little of this mineral heat on it a few times.
That helped it, very much
so anyway.
Stretching. Here's another good one.
What is the best flexibility method?
And they looked at 27 peer reviewed studies
on all different, and this says there's no clear best method.
In fact, there's many different ways you can do this, but I say
the best one is one that you will do on a regular basis and stick to it.
Well, I just wanted to share with you
a little bit about the importance of stretching.
You either move it or you lose it, and I want you not to lose it.
So keep thinking about stretching.
If you're having a lot of pain, it might be because a nerve is being
compromised because you're not going through your range of motion.
But before you start any stretching program, especially if you're having pain,
you might want to check with your professional.
That will help make sure nothing is ripped or torn,
or you don't have a bicep that's ripped from attending or something like that.
That would be very important, but I'm going to ask a question before we close.
Did you remember the text? Myka 68?
He has shown you, man, what is good and what does the Lord require of me
to do justly, to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God?
That's a great biblical prescription for less pain.
Well, if you like this video, give it a thumbs up or leave your comment.
Share it with your friends.
We want
to continue to give you information that will make your life better.
But most importantly, that will point you to the big picture.
And in this ever changing world, things are happening fast.
We need to stay close to Jesus, and he will bring us
into our right relationship with God through the Holy Spirit.
This will reveal God's will for us in our lives.
And as we walk on that path for life, we don't have to worry about the past.
It's done.
The future is unpredictable, but we just have today,
and what we want to stay with is to do justly
love mercy and to walk humbly with your god.
So don't forget to stretch a little bit today.
I'm Dr. James Marcum, wishing you the best of health.