Chiropractic & Muscle: Use It or Lose It!

Chiropractic is all about motion. So let’s just consider some facts about motion and muscle – strength, mass, and loss:

• In older and young men, just 2 weeks of immobilization significantly reduces leg muscle strength, aerobic capacity, and leg lean mass (especially in young men). Peculiarly, 6 weeks of retraining was able to increase but not 100% rehabilitate the strength. Researchers point out that young men who couldn’t use their legs for 2 weeks lost a third of their leg strength. That puts them on par with a 40-50 year old man in terms of strength! (1) What would a McHenry young man think of that? What would McHenry older men think of that?
• Listen up, young McHenry folks. Young people lose more muscle mass. More physically fit folks lose more muscle mass. Older folks lose half the amount of muscle mass, but they start out with less, too.  Further, it takes three times the amount of time of inactivity to regain the lost muscle mass. (2)
• Sadly, with age comes a decline in total muscle mass. Now, young men have about two pounds more muscle mass in each leg than older men do. And after two weeks of immobility, the young men involved in the study lost 17 ounces of muscle, on average. (3) McHenry young and older men alike are sensitive to muscle mass loss.

Muscle mass and strength is so easy to lose yet so hard to get back! McHenry men and women can relate to that!  In this study, cycling was the rehabilitation method. It wasn’t enough though to regain all the original muscular strength. It was good enough to help regain lost muscle mass and get back to a former fitness level.  But weight training is key to get muscle strength back.

BONUS McHenry CHIROPRACTIC CARE TIP: Spinal manipulation is recently shown to improve multifidus muscle thickness after just 3 sessions of spinal manipulation over a 7 day period. (4) So don’t skip your McHenry chiropractic visits! The spinal manipulation using Cox Technic protocols is gentle, relaxing and effective!

So use it or lose it. McHenry chiropractic care is meant to keep you active. Inactivity isn’t your friend. If it comes from an injury, you just have to deal with it for a time. Be ready once you’re better - or get back from that really lazy vacation away from McHenry! - to exercise. Contact OrthoIllinois Chiropractic for some appropriate exercise moves if you’re just starting to exercise or ready to rehabilitate or if you’re dealing with back pain or neck pain. As your McHenry chiropractic center, OrthoIllinois Chiropractic is here to remind you to “use it or lose it!”