The Sir Isaac NEWTON's curse

[bernard]

If we accept these sentences;

1/ stress (i.e.) involves often muscular reactions.
2/ balance involves ever muscular reactions.

Then gravity adaptation is an igniter of some chronic pains?

[bernard]

Here is an example.
Suppose that he had a back pain for a while.
What are the muscular consequences and then where is going the gravity center?

http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abdominals1.swf


flash version (http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abdominals1.swf)
html version (http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abdominals1_test.html)

You can enlarge the view by clicking on flash version!

[BB]

Hello Bernard,
Welcome back!

I agree with you completely. Another example that is easy to see is the depressed scapula position. (If you havn't noticed before, I like to use this example 8)

However, we are all subjected to gravity, but some don't develop depressed scapulas, some develop increased lumbar lordosis, some decreased, some not at all. Why?

I think it again comes back to function as well as our body type that will determine the effects of gravity on us. For example, a tall person will sit in a chair that is too short for them. They have to reach down with the arms and/or slump to rest the arms on the rests. The result is that tall people are more likely to develop depressed scapulas and problems with lumbar flexion.

To answer your question, the person will likely shift the pelvis forward along with all the co-existing consequenses for the various tissues.

Cory

[bernard]

Hi Somasimplers,

Here is my view (but not consequences) of the primary state and just when the man bent forward. The red point is the gravity center of whole body.

http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abdominals2.swf


flash version (http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abdominals2.swf)
html version (http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abdominals2_test.html)

You can enlarge the view by clicking on flash version!

[Diane]

1/ stress (i.e.) involves often muscular reactions.
2/ balance involves ever muscular reactions.

Then gravity adaptation is an igniter of some chronic pains?

Sorry Bernard, I just can't agree. I concede the first point, stress involves muscular reactions. And the second, balance involves muscular reaction. But I can't agree that therefore gravity has much of anything to do with pain. The human body has evolved to be a perfect antigravity machine. The human nervous system has evolved to be the perfect coordinator of that. I think the problem of pain is more about the nervous system's internal adaptation to the internal environment, not the external one, which includes gravity.

An analogy might be like how sailboats move. A sailboat is a perfect means by which the energy of the wind can be captured and harnessed to create movement. If all the masts are straight, and the rigging is of correct tautness, and there are no holes in the sails, and the sails are all connected to the rigging properly, the sailboat sails. If a sail is loose and flapping in one corner, or ripped, if a mast has begun to lean sideways, if a rope is too loose or too tight, the sails will be less efficient, and the wind might become more of a liability than an asset. The wind isn't the villain. It is a neutral force. The sailboat has developed inherent problems which the wind shows up as problems. (The sailboat of course, unlike humans, can't continue to adapt, evolve a response, or heal, or change any movement strategies. And the sailboat can't feel pain!)

Now, having said that, I think we can look at someone's relationship with gravity, and pick up a few clues on how they might be operating through space and against gravity, how that relationship might be improved upon, but it hasn't much to do with pain.. same as xray changes don't seem to have much to do with pain. The pain, I think, is a separate issue from the antigravity capacity of the person standing before one, although there is overlap and certainly improving the antigravity function will often affect/improve pain perception/generation/output...

However, there are people with lots of pain who seem perfectly balanced everywhere with remarkably good range of movment and strength against gravity, and there are very lopsided people who look and behave very stiffly but who seem to not be in much discomfort.

Just some early morning thoughts..
Diane

PS: By the way, your animation appears to not bend at all from the hips or back. He appears to bend just within the frame.. hmmnn.. should he not be bending around the red dot?

[bernard]

Hi Somasimplers,

Ian provided an excellent paper which is convergent with my thoughts. (See The Sound Of Silence).

Of Course, Diane, gravity adaptation and minimal stress reactions occur at the same time. It is certainly why my animation is so ugly. :oops:

Hope that the final work will be better with your help!

[Diane]

Bernard, I'm still amazed and bedazzled that you are able to make animations regardless of how they turn out! :)

My answer to your two posts above is this:

1. The cell is the fundamental unit of life.
2. Each cell has its own inherent stress, being comprised as it is of two merged single-cell creatures, the one that can utilize/not die from exposure to oxygen (mitochondria) and the one that surrounded it, engulfed it, and decided not to eat it but rather to provide shelter for it. They can't live anymore without each other. Fortunately they've had millenia to work out their relationship. Their relationship (for better or worse) makes multicellular life possible in the first place. Without them, we'd have no body/existance of any sort. No creatures except single cell creatures would exist. (Lynn Margulis)
3. Furthermore, every cell has huge inner stress on it in the form of water molecules battering against all its little parts. At a cell size, this feels like a constant hailstorm or hurricane (see Scientific American article on Brownian ratchets). Cells have evolved ways not just to live with this inner pounding but to exploit it.
4. All cells are exposed to gravity. On single cell creatures the effects of gravity are pretty small.
5. When you get 65 trillion cells clumping together to form a human body, the force of gravity becomes stronger... yet the cells have overcome the force of gravity in brilliant ways many times over, by having evolved into huge numbers of different species over vast stretches of time.
6. Getting from water to land must have greatly surpassed getting from 4 legs to 2, in terms of physiologic stress, in my opinion. The multicell creatures that accomplished that had to breathe a new way, reproduce a new way, and keep from drying out. Some of them gave up and went back in the water. (Whales.)
7. These accomplishments make our much vaunted widely acclaimed bipedalism seem puny indeed. What have we got to complain about stress wise? We have a beautiful efficient adaptable wonderful self repairing air breathing hoizontality defying antigravity suit that we wear, effortlessly, driven by an enormous hard drive (7 times larger than needed for an animal our size, I read recently), that can do anything with itself (olympics) by using gravity, much in the same way that each cell uses inherent Brownian motion of water molecules to help it carry out tasks. (Cells were the first tool users.)
8. I still maintain that any physiologic stress we have from being two-footed is largely irrelevant... until the hard drive fails/ major injury occurs. If no major injury has occurred, then it's the brain failing, not the body. That's when we start to "feel" gravity and its effects. That's when our infinite layers of subprogramming begin to delete themselves and we have to "learn all over again" how to walk and move (sensory-motor amnesia).

Still refusing to give in to ideas about gravity that would flatten me,
Diane

[bernard]

Diane,

I do not want to flaten you.
I clearly see that the mistake comes from my side. I try to explain muscular and gravity forces acting on body masses and you're seing only the living cells composing it. Misunderstanding assured!

Our two visions are true? but mine needs absolutely a refinement.

[bernard]

Back to the basics, Somasimplers.

Here is another way to present the concept.
It is not a body! Just a simple shape to understand that a force initiates an automatic counterforce linked to mass of an object. It is thus really the acting of gravity.

http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abdominals3.swf


flash version (http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abdominals3.swf)
html version (http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abdominals3_test.html)

You can enlarge the view by clicking on flash version!

I will enlarge the view in later animations because a body could be shown as an assembly of shapes!

[pablo]

Bernard,

You stated:

"3/ our modern life is more stressful than before and I think that stress is growing more quickly than our possibility of adaptation?"

I don't agree that modern life is more stressful than before. Before when? Before last year, before last century, last millenium? I think that for people in developed nations life is less stressful. There is less uncertainty about such things as where the next meal is coming from, will I be alive tomorow, etc. I think that perhaps we are less able to cope with stress as a result of this. Cal it stress-intolerance. But not more stress.

On the gravity issue, it affects all equally.

Pablo

[Diane]

Pablo,
I think on the whole that that's true, and you're right.. there's less "survival" stress... A larger proportion of human populations are less likely to die before the age of 40 due to
1. being killed by a wild animal
2. starving in a famine
3. dying while giving birth
4. dying from a burst appendix (pre surgery era)
5. dying from an infection of any kind, by being wounded, bitten or otherwise injured, or in war.

Perhaps people who have these sorts of issues on their minds don't devote a lot of attention to aches and pains.

Every day I feel lucky to be born into a era of human competence/culture that includes antibiotics /surgical cleanliness/ childbearing options (i.e. never had any)/ relative freedom to do what I want when I want, and little danger involved. There might be increased stress of sorts, like, what type of toothpaste should I buy, these city noises are irritating, the smell of gas fumes is unpleasant.. etc etc... job stress or financial stress from time to time (not lately), the stuff on TV every day, if I had a stroke, what would I do, how would I cope... then I tell myself to get real, there's not much to worry about, right here, right now, just be grateful, etc..

Yet all these worries are what are now regarded as stressors in today's world, creating higher levels of anxiety.. anxiety is tied to chronic pain, chronic pain is this big burgeoning problem (I'm now reading Culture and Pain by David Morris, good book, recommended by Ian..)

Seems to me that in this particular (western, soft) culture we've evolved out of real stressors (actual danger of dying or helplessly watching loved ones die) into anxiety producing behaviors/thought loops over little or nothing.

I frequently read something that reminds me that people who are in actual life threatening danger don't feel their broken arm, etc., because of all the focus they are putting on to surviving to the next moment.

Could it be that chronic pain in a culture is inversely proportional to actual dangers/threats to life and limb? David Morris would likely say it is..

Just a thought,
Diane

[nari]

Hello all

If we look at the modern factors that provoke stress (Bernard's) then that is true; at the same time, we have a relatively easy life with the aid of technology. Technology enables us to speed up the pace of lifestyle; without it, we might spend two hours a day in front of a fire and the rest of the time being hunter/gatherers; the Masai today might spend four hours in pursuit of an antelope to feed a family; we might get cross if we wait for 10 minutes in a checkout queue.

Isn't it all about expectations? Technology demands us to spend more, it also invites us to build huge houses and fill them with expensive stuff, own two cars and still look down disdainfully at the tradesman who earns 50% more than us. We expect to be made better if we get sick, we expect that the Government will provide for ageing parent/s, we expect that if we fall over an uneven pavement, we will be recompensed fully.
We expect not to have to look after our own, by ourselves, but someone else must be responsible, as well. Take away those avaricious and non-altruistic thoughts, and society becomes less stressed, in a way. More time to wash clothes by hand, write letters and soothe fevered brows....

Bernard, I agree with you, partly, but jails have always been busy and disease of some kind or the other has always been around. So has poverty. murder, etc...and if what you say is a fair crack of the whip (Oz for a good thing, or act), then we are stressed because we expect more of the god Perfection...gravity included or excluded...but we have not been able to define what that perfection is.

Nari

[Diane]

I hear you Bernard.
Yet...maybe things things you have listed are not so much stressors as they are things that DI-stressors, things that keep us from expressing our stress in "do or die".. these issues just nag and nag and we never get to blow out the pipes with something that is all or nothing.. so we end up cogitating and becomng depressed and worrying about what we see on TV and social problems and by association we end up "distressed" or stressed, but not able to launch a countermove. (It's illegal (apparently) for any group of individuals to do such a thing. Except Bush. Or Putin?But don't get me started on that.. :roll: )

In a baboon troop, there are dominant members and submissive members. The individuals all maintain the heirarchy, and shifts occur from time to time. Read A Primate's Memoire... Robert Sapolsky studied stress in baboon troops for thirty years, and this book is a recounting of that time. Very interesting book, for lots of reasons.

These animals have social stressors too, but they have actual life and death struggles, end up prefering life in the troop with its stressors (or distressors) to life as single vulnerable baboons on their own.

What I meant in my post above was that most of our innate animal ways of retaliating (e.g.: fighting off a tiger) when we are stressed, and thereby "exercising" our body/brain's innate capacities to keep us allive, are now blocked by our culture. (Read Peter Levine's Waking the Tiger for more about that.)

I was trying to say, I personally benefit from my particular troop, because I am what would be considered, say in a baboon troop, a weaker member. In a human Canadian troop, I can have a life that is more mine and less the troop's. So while I am potentially distressed by what goes on in the world and in my neighbourhood, I try to be compassionate about it but detached personally from it, so that it doesn't eat away at my own immune system.

Does that make any sense?
Diane

[pablo]

Bernard,

I agree that diseases linked with stress are taking a bigger toll. I don't agree hat there is more stress, more danger, than there would have been in the past. What I tried to say is that we have become less tolerant of stress, so that less stress is still capable of producing the results you describe.

Pablo

[nari]

Bernard

How much stress is too much ? How much is needed to keep us alive and functioning, and what really tips the balance for some and not others?

For instance, some people blame others' behaviour for causing them ongoing stress, and get anxious each time something untowards happens.
Others go hunting for stress (I'm not kidding!) and love the ongoing feeling of being challenged, continuously.
Most of us sit in the median strip somewhere, perhaps. Maybe there are increasing numbers of the first set in modern society, and this is what makes the difference that you. Bernard, are mentioning.
Are our frontal lobes undergoing a metamorphosis, do you think, Diane??

We should regard stress as a good thing - but the media would have us sitting on beaches with daquiris or climbing K2 - and not much emphasis on the 'in between' stuff.


Nari

[Diane]

Pablo,
What I tried to say is that we have become less tolerant of stress, so that less stress is still capable of producing the results you describe.

Hmmn. Yes. We are all becoming princesses like the one in the story, "The Princess and the Pea".. Do you think that having a brain that is seven times larger than what we need to run a body the size we have, leaves us more vulnerable? Or do you think cultural amelioration of true stress has made us soft?

[Diane]

What a great story Bernard! :) The mother was teaching down regulation by the sound of it. As far as what they were playing, war must be the top childhood game generation after generation.

[Diane]

Well... I don't know if the admonition to "I'm busy, GO!" would be very useful on the first vist. :) Might have to do some rapport building first.

[bernard]

Sure :wink:

[bernard]

Hi Somasimplers,

Here is a new essay about stress and changes occuring with gravity?

http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abd05.swf


flash version (http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abd05.swf)
html version (http://www.somasimple.com/flash_anims/abd05_test.html)

You can enlarge the view by clicking on flash version!

I hope that you're following the story?

[Diane]

Hi Bernard,
I saw the trunk shorten, front and back, lats and psoases, and the neck accommodate itself to the new center of gravity. That could be SMA more than gravity, no? :)
Nice movie!
Diane

[Diane]

Hi Bernard,
But Diane, SMA (Sensory Motor Amnesia) is a functional problem.
Yes, I would agree with that. I would add that it and not gravity, per se, is more responsible for the body succumbing to the constant of gravity, rather than gravity itself.
Stubborn me.:)
Diane

[Diane]

Hi Bernard,
I promote that the new posture is the bed of the next stress reaction and then, little to little, it is hard to restore without an exterior help the original one?

I think the body does tend to adapt to itself as you have described. So doing work that is horizontal (i.e. giving the body a different gravitational load to work with, as in somatics,) will help it unravel itself.

But I still don't think gravity is the culprit, rather it is the body's adaptation to gravity that falters. Should we blame air for asthma?
:),
Diane

[bernard]

Diane,

You're right! But I wanted a guilty component and because gravity is a fate, I decided (in memory of Sir Isaac) to give it some importance.

[Diane]

OK, I accept that I won this pingpong game! And the title of the thread was clever Bernard.
:)

..and your last animation IS brilliant.

[bernard]

Thanks,

It was just bones, I'm preparing some envelope to them, completing our complex nature of Human Beings.

[bernard]

Hi All,

I saw an interesting emission from the BBC last week on the cable.

It was about time and aging.
In fact, there was 2 emissions, a movie that shows the effects of time on tooh growth in a child. very impressive.
A young girl changing to a Grand-Ma.
A woman, pregnant and her metamorphosis.

The second explains the difficulties and explanations about the making of the film.

1/ the tooth growth was done with a child of a dentist. many, many difficulties with the young boy. He wasn't really happy for the pictures.

2/ the scond was made with three generations, a daughter, her mother and the mother of this one. Technology used the morphing to produce a smooth changes.

3/ the last one was perhaps the most difficult for the director! They planed to take a picture every 15 days. It worked fine for the 5 first months but they cheated after because the effect, in contrary was ugly.
They thought that natural changes were only visible on the belly! And it will be easy to take a picture at the same place and let this woman walk. Wrong!
They were amazed that the complete posture, walking, standing were too. :wink:

One again, computer was used to show a pretty transformation.

[bernard]

I found that one relevant to the future adults they will?

Patient Educ Couns. 2004 Aug;54(2):133-42. Related Articles, Links


Sitting habits in elementary schoolchildren: a traditional versus a "Moving school".

Cardon G, De Clercq D, De Bourdeaudhuij I, Breithecker D.

Department of Movement and Sports Sciences, Ghent University, Watersportlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium. greet.cardon@rug.ac.be

This study evaluated differences in sitting habits in the classroom between the project "Moving school" and a traditional school in 8-year-old children. Twenty-two children, since 1.5 years involved in the project were compared to 25 children in a traditional school. Making use of the Portable Ergonomic Observation (PEO) method, it was observed that children from a traditional school spend an average of 97% of the lesson time sitting statically, from which one-third with the trunk bend over 45 degrees. In the "Moving school" this posture was replaced by dynamic sitting (53%), standing (31%) and walking around (10%), while trunk flexion over 45 degrees was nearly not observed. Children from the "Moving school" also showed significantly less neck and trunk rotation. Additionally, accelerometric data showed significantly more physical activity in lessons of the "Moving school". Rates of self-reported back or neck pain did not differ significantly between both study groups. Results show that sitting habits are more favourable in a "Moving school". Further research is needed to study the impact of implementing "Moving school" concepts in traditional schools on sitting habits.

PMID: 15288906 [PubMed - in process]

[bernard]

Eur Spine J. 2004 May 27 [Epub ahead of print] Related Articles, Links

Anterior thoracic posture increases thoracolumbar disc loading.

Harrison DE, Colloca CJ, Harrison DD, Janik TJ, Haas JW, Keller TS.

Ruby Mountain Chiropractic Center, 123 Second Street, 89801, Elko, NV, USA.

In the absence of external forces, the largest contributor to intervertebral disc (IVD) loads and stresses is trunk muscular activity. The relationship between trunk posture, spine geometry, extensor muscle activity, and the loads and stresses acting on the IVD is not well understood. The objective of this study was to characterize changes in thoracolumbar disc loads and extensor muscle forces following anterior translation of the thoracic spine in the upright posture. Vertebral body geometries (C2 to S1) and the location of the femoral head and acetabulum centroids were obtained by digitizing lateral, full-spine radiographs of 13 men and five women volunteers without previous history of back pain. Two standing, lateral, full-spine radiographic views were obtained for each subject: a neutral-posture lateral radiograph and a radiograph during anterior translation of the thorax relative to the pelvis (while keeping T1 aligned over T12). Extensor muscle loads, and compression and shear stresses acting on the IVDs, were calculated for each posture using a previously validated biomechanical model. Comparing vertebral centroids for the neutral posture to the anterior posture, subjects were able to anterior translate +101.5 mm+/-33.0 mm (C7-hip axis), +81.5 mm+/-39.2 mm (C7-S1) (vertebral centroid of C7 compared with a vertical line through the vertebral centroid of S1), and +58.9 mm+/-19.1 mm (T12-S1). In the anterior translated posture, disc loads and stresses were significantly increased for all levels below T9. Increases in IVD compressive loads and shear loads, and the corresponding stresses, were most marked at the L5-S1 level and L3-L4 level, respectively. The extensor muscle loads required to maintain static equilibrium in the upright posture increased from 147.2 N (mean, neutral posture) to 667.1 N (mean, translated posture) at L5-S1. Compressive loads on the anterior and posterior L5-S1 disc nearly doubled in the anterior translated posture. Anterior translation of the thorax resulted in significantly increased loads and stresses acting on the thoracolumbar spine. This posture is common in lumbar spinal disorders and could contribute to lumbar disc pathologies, progression of L5-S1 spondylolisthesis deformities, and poor outcomes after lumbar spine surgery. In conclusion, anterior trunk translation in the standing subject increases extensor muscle activity and loads and stresses acting on the intervertebral disc in the lower thoracic and lumbar regions.

PMID: 15168237 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

[bernard]

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2474/4/23

[bernard]

Wooow!

Canada + France = +1!

To our knowledge no association has been made between pain sensation and the deterioration of the postural control mechanisms.

[BB]

This article appeared in the latest JOSPT. Pretty important findings! They looked for a difference in posture between subgroups of people with and without LBP. Differences were present!


September 2004 Vol.34 No.9

Differences in Measurements of Lumbar Curvature Related to Gender and Low Back Pain


Barbara J. Norton, PT, PhD, Associate Professor and Associate Director for Postprofessional Studies, Washington University School of Medicine, Program in Physical Therapy, St. Louis, MO;
Shirley A. Sahrmann, PT, PhD, FAPTA, Professor, Washington University School of Medicine, Program in Physical Therapy, St. Louis, MO;
Linda R. Van Dillen, PT, PhD, Assistant Professor, Washington University School of Medicine, Program in Physical Therapy, St. Louis, MO



Study Design: Cross-sectional.
Objectives: To test the assumption that postural alignment and gender have a bearing on the specific type of low back pain (LBP) a person manifests.
Background: Measurements of static sagittal lumbar curvature are used by clinicians in the management of patients with LBP, but no investigator has reported differences in curvature related to specific categories of LBP.
Methods and Measures: We used a computer-interfaced, 3-D, electromechanical digitizer to derive curvature angles for the region of the spine between T12-L1 and S2. Trained clinicians examined the subjects and determined their LBP diagnoses. We used t tests to examine differences in curvature between women and men, those with and those without LBP, and those in 4 different categories of LBP. We used x2 to examine the relationship between gender and LBP category.
Results: Lumbar curvature angle (lordosis) was 13.2° larger for women than for men (t = 6.74; P<.01). There was no difference in lumbar curvature between people with undifferentiated LBP and people without LBP. There were differences in lumbar curvature between people in various categories of LBP, for example, subjects in the lumbar-rotation-with-extension category had 8.4° more lumbar curvature than subjects in the lumbar-rotation-with-flexion category (t = 2.16; P<.05). Based on the frequency distributions, there was a significant relationship between gender and LBP category (x2 = 10.19; P<.01).
Conclusions: Measurements of lumbar curvature should be expected to differ between men and women and may be related to different types of low back pain. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2004;34(9):524-534.

[bernard]

Thanks Cory,

I think that differences are already impressive in the lumbar spine.
I did not found the 4 classes of LBP just 2, perhaps (2 man + 2 woman).

In this article, I found a very interesting fact, too. Some minor (almost invisible) are already engaging painful states.

I'll dig that one!