Ever wonder why you can’t change certain parts of your body when you exercise?

Tips for improving body awareness:

1) Start With Pressure; Notice where your body contacts the earth. For example, in this bow pose, my foot is in contact and is supporting my entire (5’10!) frame. That’s a lot of strength in that little foots. It’s all because I am applying pressure evenly across the four corners of my foot, and I am able to do this because I am cognizant of the muscular contractions in my foot.

2) Change Your Posture; Until you feel the proper activation, keep moving your body to a different position. For example, on my body, my left abdominal wall is weaker than my right, so I need a different angle to properly engage all my obliques and anterior abs. If I change the angle I am working in while engaging my left side, I get the same work done as my right.

3) Engage Your Multifidus; Remember those tiny muscles that support your spine I spoke of so lovingly last week? Yep, they’re integral in allowing you to engage all your muscles eloquently. Instead of over using the major muscle groups and getting bigger and bulkier because you lack the foundational strength of the multifidus, try working on pelvic tiles and engagement FIRST before you do any other exercise. I start my day with my multifidus pelvic tilts and ab exercises, then move on to other exercises that engage the larger muscle groups.

What do the Lakers star Kobe Bryant, the quarterback Eli Manning, the Olympic marathon runner Ryan Hall and the presidential candidate Mitt Romney all have in common?

While Plantar Fasciitis is a very common injury, the consensus on the cause and treatment remains clinically a mystery. Little is understood, medically, about overuse sports injuries in general and that’s why, as a result, they remain difficult to treat.

Most medical professionals agree that Plantar Fasciitis is, very basically, an irritation of the soft tissue that runs along the bottom of the foot, attaching the heel bone to the toes and forming your foot

Start thinking about Bone Mineral Density.

Bone Mineral Density is a cumulative history of energy availability, hormonal fluctuations, genetics, good nutrition, behaviors and environmental factors. As you get older, bone mineral density falls as our muscular infrastructure changes. When you do damage to your body, by starving/binging yourself, exercising too hard, not getting enough sleep and allowing stress to become a regular component in your life, you seriously alter your future body.

Sleep is an essential functional part of being and staying healthy. For athletes, it is a strong factor in performance. Most of the repair and strengthening in your body occurs during stage 4 of the sleep cycle–your deepest sleep. But if you don’t go through all the cycles appropriately, you won’t get to the 4th stage, inhibiting many vital functions needed to repair, restore and strengthen your body.

Stage 1: In the first stage, your muscles relax as you fall asleep.

Stage 2: Five to ten minutes after falling asleep, you enter a deeper slumber and your brain starts to produce chemicals that release hormones.

Stage 3 & 4: These are the deepest and most reparative stages. The body releases growth hormone, which helps repair bone and muscle.

REM Stage: The 5th stage of sleep is vital for pain tolerance and motor skills. It strengthens cognitive and nervous system function.

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According to the National Sleep Foundation, 75% of Americans have problems sleeping and are not getting the recommended 7-9 hours per night our bodies need to recuperate from the daily grind.

Here’s how sleep affects our system:

Cellular Repair
Repair for the daily wear and tear on the body is correlated with how much deep sleep you get. If you don’t have a regulated night cycle, you won’t get to the deepest stage of sleep that is required for release of growth hormone. These hormones shift the body’s process to anabolic–where it is able to initiate muscular repair, break down fat and stimulate cell division to replace old or malfunctioning cells.

Digestion and Weight Regulation
It is a digestion regulator, releasing hormones that break down fat to supply energy for tissue repair. Adequate sleep is required for weight management. Sleep deprivation causes hormones like leptin–a hormone that regulates a feeling of fullness–to decrease. You end up feeling hungrier without being satisfied by what you eat, causing you to eat more and gain weight.

Muscle Relaxation
During the night muscles can take a break and relax. Respiratory muscles also relax, resulting in the breathing rate slowing down. During REM sleep, muscles become so relaxed that they actually become temporarily paralyzed, called muscle atonia. When muscles are relaxed, there are less metabolites formed, allowing for additional cellular repair and replenishing.

Immunity
It keeps the immune system in check by releasing hormones that act as messengers, telling the immune system to produce antibodies, kill potentially cancerous cells and decrease inflammation.

Cognitive Function
It also enhances cognitive function by consolidating memory. Storing short term memory to long term memory occurs during sleep through the strengthening of neuronal connections.

Revive bills itself as a luxury hangover “cure” clinic, where one can lay down, put on headphones and get an intravenous solution of “whichever medications, vitamin additives, antioxidants, or additional fluids the physician deems appropriate for your unique condition and symptoms.” I called to find out just what they put into these packs that make it the $99 price tag worth our while, but have not been answered as of press time.

What can we be sure of when it comes to intravenous solutions? Though this “clinic” is presumably “run” by registered nurses and overseen by a licensed physician, typically this means the person administering the IV is not a registered nurse or physician. And, as for a hangover cure, an IV bag of D5 and water—what they give you at the hospital for dehydration–is a bag of dextrose 5% (sugar) and water.

That’s like me handing you 4 vitamin waters and charging you $100. My advice would be to save your money, get some vitamin water and make sure you sleep enough that your body can recuperate.

CoreFit Focus: Orthobiologics

Orthobiologics are substances that orthopaedic surgeons use to help injuries heal more quickly. They are used to improve the healing of broken bones and injured muscles, tendons, and ligaments. These products are made from substances that are naturally found in your body. When they are used in higher concentrations, they may help speed up the healing process.

Healing Process:

When you injure a bone, muscle, or tendon, there is bleeding into the injured area. This bleeding is the foundation for the healing response. It provides a way for healing factors to reach the injury site.

In addition to bleeding, there are three factors necessary for healing. All three are orthobiologic substances. They include:

• Matrix. This can be thought of as the house in which the cells live and where they will thrive and eventually make bone, tendon, or ligament. Matrix material is conductive. This means it can form the building blocks that help fill bone gaps.
• Growth factors. These are the many different kinds of proteins necessary for cells to work during the healing process. Some proteins help speed up the healing process, while others help to control it or slow it down. These elements are much like the vitamins that we take every day to try to improve our health and body function.
• Stem cells. These are special cells in your body that can turn into other types of cells. During the healing process, stem cells are called to the area of your body that needs repair. Factors in the area influence the stem cells to become repair cells. Note that the same stem cell that repairs bone can also repair a tendon or ligament.

Matrix (Conductive Material)

This x-ray shows a broken shinbone (tibia) with a large bone gap, or void. A metal rod has been placed down the marrow cavity of the bone to help hold it together.

The matrix, or conductive material, provides housing for stem cells while they grow into mature cells. If stem cells do not have a house to grow in, they cannot develop into repair cells that can heal bone, muscle, tendon, or cartilage.

When someone breaks or fractures a bone, the healing process begins. As long as most of the bony substance is not lost, stem cells should be able to make new bone and promote healing. If, however, a significant portion of the broken bone is lost, a large gap may result. This can happen if the bone crumbled, or broke into several pieces and went through the skin.

Under these circumstances, the gap must be filled with matrix, or conductive material, to house stem cells. There are several types of substances that may be used for this purpose.

Bone Grafts

Bone grafts are often used as matrix material. There are two types of bone grafts.

Autograft. A bone graft can be obtained from the patient. This type of graft is called an autograft. Many different bones can be used to supply the graft. Grafts are most commonly taken from the iliac crest, which is part of the pelvis.

Harvesting a bone graft requires an additional incision during the operation to treat the injury. This makes the surgery take longer and can cause increased pain or risk of infection after the operation. Although autografts have been used with good results, some people may experience pain at the donor site for some time.

Most autografts are harvested from the iliac crest of the hip.

Allograft. One alternative to taking the bone graft from the patient is called an allograft, which is cadaver bone. An allograft is typically acquired through a bone bank. Like other organs, bone tissue can be donated upon death.

This drawing shows a microscopic view of bone matrix material and the type of holes needed to house stem cells.

The use of allografts has grown because it avoids the risk of pain at the donor site. There are risks and benefits for both types of bone grafts, which your surgeon will discuss with you.

Growth factors are found inside bone in low concentrations, and in other parts of your body. They can be produced in higher concentrations through genetic engineering.

A lot of work is being done using genetic engineering to help with medical problems. Genetic engineering has made great improvements in making bone heal faster and better.

Genetic engineering can produce large quantities of a needed element in its pure form. During the genetic engineering process, signals inside a cell are altered in order to change the cell’s function. To help with bone healing, cells can be turned into factories that produce growth factor proteins.

Of all the types of cells, stem cells have the greatest potential for promoting healing. As discussed above, stem cells are immature cells that are influenced by their surroundings. When brought to an injury site, a stem cell can develop into the kind of cell needed to help in healing – bone, muscle, ligament, and cartilage.

Stem cells can turn into muscle, tendon, bone, or cartilage.

Because of the healing capabilities of stem cells, doctors have developed ways to bring stem cells to an injury site faster and in greater numbers. The first step in this process is to retrieve the stem cells. This can be done by harvesting them from the patient, or through a stem cell donor program.

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• Ibuprofen use prior to or during exercise, hampers the ability of muscles to rebuild themselves after exercise

• Frequent use of ibuprofen, causes higher overall levels of bodily inflammation

In America, the average athlete has been trained to think that an ibuprofen will heal any injury. In fact, 70 percent of