In this 6‑minute daily health update, Dr. David Koivuranta of the Toronto Neck and Back Pain Clinic shares six recent research findings and practical health tips. He explains how body‑mass‑index extremes increase recurrent fall risk, how a diverse vegetable intake reduces asthma symptoms in children, how regular physical activity raises the nociceptive flexion reflex threshold (dampening pain responses), and briefly mentions studies linking concussions to problematic behavior and breastfeeding to infant allergen sensitization. He then discusses a sex‑based musculoskeletal pain gap that widens from age 11 to 20, emphasizing that both lifestyle choices and paramedical therapies (chiropractic, osteopathy, massage, acupuncture, physiotherapy, personal training) can mitigate pain progression. Throughout, Dr. Koivuranta stresses that staying near an ideal body weight, eating varied vegetables, staying active, and seeking early treatment are key to maintaining health and preventing future discomfort.
Chapters
Hello everyone, it's Dr. Dave. Hopefully you're doing well, enjoying your week. Welcome to Wednesday, you made it, that's awesome. Coming at you on behalf of the Toronto Neck and Back Pain Clinic with your daily health update for Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021. Post-Groundhog Day indeed. I'm gonna share with you 6 areas of health and wellness today. Somewhere around this video, as always, you can read through all 6 of those different health areas we touch on. If you'd like a copy, you can call us, email us at the clinic, or DM us on social. We'll be sure to get get that to you. Not going to treat, diagnose, prevent, or cure any illness or disease with our time together today. However, I promise you I will always share with you whatever is the latest and greatest in the research and literature when it comes to these 6 areas of health and wellness. And I also promise you that by tapping in, tuning in, uh, plugging into some of this information on a daily basis, you will create some momentum in your life that will support those healthy choices you're making every day, and it will help create those great experiences you're looking for in all areas of your health in some way, shape, or form it must. So good on you for being here. Body mass index, a measurement they use to determine if we're close to our ideal body weight or not, is in some way, according to the Osteoporosis International Journal, January 2021, linked to recurrent fall risk. And the summary of it is if women are either overweight or obese based on their BMI, or men are underweight based on their BMI, they have an increased risk for recurrent falls in comparison to adults who have a body mass index in the healthy range. So that healthy range typically is 20 to 25. Above that is overweight or obese, especially if it's even higher, and under that would be underweight— increased fall risk. So of course it's good to stay as close to your ideal body weight as possible. Again, based on the research and literature, you're less likely to have health incidents, but surprisingly also linked to recurrent fall risk. The Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, uh, report, January 2021, looked at dietary assessments of 647 children, and it found that those who consumed a greater diversity of vegetables in their diet were significantly less likely to experience asthma-related symptoms. So another good reason to eat more types of vegetables. Include those in, in great variety, uh, in your diet. Get as many multiple nutrients as those vegetables provide as possible and make sure you're getting upwards of 6, 8, 10 servings of those vegetables a day. Doesn't hurt. They're low in calories typically if you choose the good ones or the right ones and chock-full of those nutrients. And that's what we want. And they're also very filling because of their fiber typically. So you feel satiated, satié, whatever that word is. The satiety is greater with those foods because of the fiber. You'll feel more full. Calories are low and the nutrients are dense, and that's what you want. What we want to avoid are nutrient-poor, calorie-dense foods that sometimes don't even make us full and will just make us hungrier. Is a recipe for disaster when it comes to our nutrition, right? But not just because of weight, um, and how we look, but also because how we feel and because of how our body functions. And in this case, may have a role with asthma. Physical activity affects the pain reflex, according to the European Journal of Pain, December 2020. There's something called a nociceptive flexion reflex, the NFR, that allows for painful stimuli to activate an appropriate withdrawal response. Researchers measured that nociceptive flexion reflex threshold in 58 healthy adults and observed that the reflex was dulled in those with a physically active lifestyle, while those more prone to sedentary activity exhibited a much lower NFR threshold. So once again, that reflex was dulled in those with a physically active lifestyle, while those more prone to sedentary activity exhibited a much lower NFR threshold. Um, yeah, interesting. I'm a little bit lost in that statement because it sounds like the same thing, um, but it seems that the appropriate response or a better response would occur if you're physically active, while those who are not, uh, may not have the appropriate withdrawal mechanism or reflex from pain. Um, we should look into that one. Let's dive that one a little bit further. Um, concussions and problematic behavior were talked about by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, January 2021. You may want to look at that correlation in the written version somewhere around the video, as well as breastfeeding affecting some allergens according to the International Breastfeeding Journal, January 2021. You can take a boo at that in the written format as well. And finally, boys, girls, and the musculoskeletal pain gap is talked about in the European Journal of Pain as well, the same one that had that redundant statement, I think. But, um, maybe it makes more sense when I go back and look at it again. This is from January 2021. 2021, they did analysis of data from the Prevention and Incidence of Asthma and Mite Allergy study and revealed that age 11, 14.2% of boys and 17.4% of girls experienced musculoskeletal complaints in either the low back, arms, or legs. However, by age 20, young women are more likely than young men to report musculoskeletal pain, 37.9% versus 22.1%, and they are more than 3 times more likely to have a persistent pain. So the pain gap is the difference, much closer when they're younger at age 11, but significantly a broader gap by the time they get to age 20. However, what I saw in that particular statistic is the fact that in those 9 years from age 11 to 20, both men and women, statistically significant increase in the amount of musculoskeletal pain. And if we made a casual observation about that, and if you are out walking the earth and trying to enjoy yourself, yourself actively engaged in living, then it is very difficult to probably make it through life unscathed. Um, some of the activities we engage in can be challenging, although sometimes positively challenging, sometimes overly challenging to our bodies. But also, accidents do occur. We may get injured, we may be sore, but we may not always seek treatment or improvement for those things because the pain goes away. However, a problem, some dysfunction, some habit or pattern could be left to remain there and create problems in the future. And, uh, when we're younger, our body's potentially more resilient, more supple, and, uh, has less cumulative habits, patterns, and trauma exposure. And on the neurological and biomechanical level, it makes a difference. However, after the age of 20, especially when our joints and some of the tissues lose their blood supply and become fully dependent on movement to get their waste out and their nutrients in, uh, our evolution of, uh, understanding and feeling our biomechanics is different. So, uh, there could be a multiple— there are multiple factors involved in that progression of noticing that pain throughout life. So everybody seems to ache a bit more as time goes by. It's very common, not necessarily normal, and there are ways to improve it, improve it. And lifestyle choices will definitely make a difference with that, as will certain forms of treatment. And of course, paramedical treatments such as chiropractic, osteopathy, massage therapy, acupuncture, even personal training, athletic therapy, uh, and did I say physiotherapy as well? They all— and there's probably a couple that I missed— have some merit and benefit, and it wouldn't hurt at some point. And the sooner rather than later is always better in order to try and recover some of that function, keep those statistics down with the likelihood of having that almost natural amount of musculoskeletal discomfort that we may acquire over time to be less than it would be if we didn't seek out some care and attention. You can do a lot on your own, but just like brushing and flossing the teeth, it does not hurt to see the hygienist to get that plaque off the teeth to avoid those cavities and especially the gum disease later on in life. And same with your joints, muscles, your physical body. There are therapists out there who can do the same based on their modality to make sure that things don't build up and cause problems. Alright, so that's your great message for Wednesday. Hope you enjoyed it, and Thursday and Friday are coming, along with another wonderful weekend to look forward to. So we'll catch up with you tomorrow with your next daily health update. Look forward to chatting with you then. Take care.
