Are you and your patients moving well, moving often, moving naturally?

As COVID has brought many challenges, especially to the small business community, COVID has also brought to light the realization of how important resilience and adaptation is to maintain a long and healthy lifestyle, to not only withstand the challenges, but to thrive.

In our conventional medical paradigm, we rely on markers such as blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight to assess our general health.

As many people step into functional lifestyle management, then the conversation turns to managing these markers with natural supplements and other complements to conventional care, stress management, etc.

It is becoming clear we must and can continue to go beyond, and fortunately, we have the tools to do so through functional movement- basically, move well, move often, move naturally.

I get it. One would not often think of dispensing this type of information from the pharmacy counter…and as I have seen so many change their perception towards nutraceuticals and stress management over the last 20 years, I feel confident that functional movement will be a pillar to our growth, and the health of our communities.

Sure…we have physical therapists, chiropractors, yoga instructors and other practitioners of physical medicine, and…moving well, moving often, moving naturally is the foundation of health, and we are poised to be leaders in this evolution.

With the advancement of the longevity sciences, the quest to live longer and live better, has made very strong correlations to our musculoskeletal fitness. Do we have pain with movement? Are there issues with our flexibility, balance, muscle strength, and coordination? 

Research shows us that over the past 70 years, as a society we have lost movement functionality in line with the rise of lifestyle diseases such a cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, diabetes, cancer and more. This is further complicated by diet, stress, and other lifestyle issues.

Think about it…we are dispensing medications, recommending supplements, and ignoring foundational, functional movement which has a direct impact.

Ponder these thoughts about yourself, or your customers walking up to your counter:

• Can you touch your toes? What might seem like a basic task, the ability to bend over in a sitting position and touch your toes might be correlated with the risk for heart attack or stroke. Inability to perform this simple task could mean that your arteries have lost flexibility and become stiff and rigid.
• How’s your grip strength? Grip strength is now being used to understand adults’ risk of heart and lung disease, cancer and overall mortality. Grip strength has shown a stronger association with cardiovascular disease than blood pressure and physical activity.
• The ability to sit down on the floor, then get back up using as little support as possible (no hands), or inability to do so with ease, may predict how long someone is going to live.

Beyond these longevity factors, how about addressing how we are functioning day in and day out and what does that mean to you. Are you able to pick up your grandchild? Can you raise the suitcase to the overhead compartment on an airplane by yourself? 

 Injury prevention is a key factor in our quality of life. Strengthening balance and coordination for fall prevention, and if one does, how to reduce the risk of major injury.

Get ready, because here at Functional Pharmacy we will begin to intimately tie together functional movement with nutrition, mindfulness, and breath, addressing lifestyle factors such as diet, sleep, and stress that must be addressed to support a healthy musculoskeletal status, thus ultimately healthy living.

Stay Tuned!

More great stuff to come…feel free to reach out with any questions that you have, and

Happy New Year!

Rob