Townsville Bowen Therapy – Buckle in, it’s time to drive
You get in, you sit down, you turn the key and off you go. You’re in a temperature controlled environment, you’ve got the cruise control set and you’re on the highway…how can this be bad for your health? Well, for the occasional road trip it probably isn’t, but over a period of days or weeks…or years, the physical damage the road and your car can do to your body can – and almost certainly will – mount up. Get out of the car feeling numb? That’s trouble brewing for your circulation or spinal cord. Get a pain in your back after hitting an unexpected pothole? You may now have a spinal compression injury that is going to nag at you for months. Sore neck? Sore head? Tension and fatigue is building up…and something is going to give.
Just like sitting in an office chair for eight or ten hours, sitting in a car seat for the same period of time is entirely unnatural for the human body. And then add in the continuous vibrations, jerking and bouncing and your body is now doing something evolution never prepared it to do. For starters, most of our natural motion and impact is meant to pass through our feet and legs…these are a our natural shock-absorbers when walking or running that largely isolate impact away from our vertebrae, discs and spinal cord – all of which are susceptible to popping out of place with too much ‘jiggling’.
The trouble is, in a car, none of the up and down impact motion is passing through our legs to soften the blow – instead, the seated position exposes the spine directly to the same (or even worse) impacts our feet are meant to deal with. Our tailbone and pelvis are both exposed to sudden and violent forces that can be transferred to the lower spine…or even all the way to the neck which is trying to hold a wobbling and bobbing five kilograms of head in place. The simple fact is, neither our skeleton or muscles are prepared for this, which means, if you drive far enough, or long enough, you are going to incur a spinal injury of some sort.
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