PHW Newsletter - Edition 2

A Word from Dr. Anne

The Power of Movement

Imagine for a moment that a new drug came out that could help alleviate your pain, improve your diabetes, reduce your cholesterol, lighten your depression and anxiety, improve sleep, build muscle, and lose fat. We would all want to take it, right? Incorporating movement in our lives does all of these things...and more! It’s not always easy finding time to “exercise”, per se, but there are a lot of creative ways you can prioritize adding movement in your day.

1. Start somewhere.

Incorporate movement in small ways: walk over your lunch break, take the stairs instead of the elevator, or park far away in a parking lot so you have further to walk into a store. The more you move your body, the easier movement will become.

2. Ask for help.

If you aren’t sure what to do for exercise, seek out resources, whether it’s a local gym, YouTube exercises, or an accountability partner. Everyone starts off by not knowing what they are doing. That’s okay! Your PHW provider can help guide you if you are unsure what is right for you.

3. Build strength.

After the age of 30, if you aren’t working at it, your body starts losing muscle mass. With each passing decade, it gets harder to put on muscle. People who have poor muscle strength have greater issues with balance and stability leading to falls and injuries. Muscle is also the engine for metabolism. As you lose muscle, your risk for metabolic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease increases. At PHW, we have two great resources to help you annually assess your muscle strength and stability:

• DEXA scans – Two DEXAs per year are included in your membership. This scan is one of the most accurate ways to measure lean muscle mass and can help you assess if you are adding or losing muscle year over year.
• Functional Movement Screen – This assessment is used to evaluate basic movement patterns we need in order to form more complex movements.

4. Find hobbies that involve movement.

In the region of Okinawa, the number of people that live to be over 100 is much higher than populations in the rest of the world. What is one of their secrets? Gardening! They spend hours a day tending their gardens. There are plenty of hobbies many of us enjoy that also add movement into the day: gardening, hiking, dancing, rock climbing, cycling, paddle boarding, and martial arts.

If you are starting a new movement routine, the most important thing is to not give up! Embrace the challenge of something new! Relish the feeling of your muscles and body being sore from doing something hard. Keep making small, incremental changes. They will add up over time.

“Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits