The Brain needs Movement

Your whole body and its physiology are designed around movement. In fact, even the most basic organisms have a system of detection “a nervous system” and system of locomotion. These are there to either take them toward nutrients and a sustaining environment or away from predators and threats.

While all your trillions of cells make you a highly complex multicellur organism your whole body, its organs and their workings (physiology) are essentially doing the same thing: Keeping your nervous system alive, so it can move you toward food and away from threats.

In a human embryo the first organ we can see developing is the Neural Tube, even before the heart starts beating! This is the early nervous system and will control and regulate every function in your body. Wow! As the embryo grows into a foetus and then us, the nervous system continues to grow and develop. The main nerve circuits like breathing, control of heart beat and reflexes are “pre-wired”. The other pathways contain trillions of “unprogrammed” potential and tentative connections. These connections are either “embedded” and “expanded” or are “pruned”, depending on whether they are stimulated or not. This stimulation comes primarily from … wait for it …. movement, interaction with and in the environment. So it’s really this movement and stimulation that creates and re-creates the wiring and connections within your brain and spinal cord (nervous system).

Hopefully now you can appreciate how crucial movement is for the development of a competent nervous system, especially during early childhood. But it goes further than that. Learning new movement patterns help us to make new nerve connections and has been shown to improve cognition and memory in the elderly. (Learning a new language also helps but skills that require learning new movements seem to be particularly beneficial)

Likewise practising and repeating a movement helps to keep both old and new nerve pathways intact. The more you practice the more “hardwired” the circuitry becomes. When I was a kid I played a lot of tennis and other racket sports. Those movement patterns are quite ingrained and I’m confident that when I pick up a racket again I’ll be able to hit the ball but I’m also quite sure my direction and accuracy will be way off. But with practice and repetition I will be able to improve … by firing up those old pathways (and probably some of my old bad habits). I also know that if I don’t play or practice, my shots, movement and anticipation will all decrease again. It is just like aerobic fitness “Use it – or – lose it!”

We now know that the nervous system tells our body how and when to move, but it turns out that when we flip it on its head, our brain and spinal cord actually need the stimulation of movement, to tell it at what level to operate. In and around all your joints you have lots of little sensors that detect things like movement, tension and pressure. These sensors (proprioceptors) send signals to your brain to tell it where each body part is in space. These signals are very important for balance and control of limbs. When these sensors stop sending signals to your brain, like when you sit down for more than about 20-40 minutes, the brain slows (down-regulates) your metabolism and decreases alertness.

Ever sat at your desk and looked down at your watch and thought, “I’ve been sitting here for 2 hours and have only a typed handful of lines?” Your sitting, or rather your lack of movement, has decreased your mental alertness. The opposite can be seen if you watch someone on an important phone call, they can be seen pacing up and down, literally “on their toes” ready, engaged and highly adaptable.

In short:

• Movement is crucial for developing and maintaining a healthy nervous system.
• Movement improves and maintains nerve pathways that can help mental function and memory.
• Lack of movement changes the way your brain and body function (in a bad way).

Take Home:

Get moving and keep moving thoroughout your day. Break up your sitting hours by standing up every 20-30 minutes then move your limbs and spine. (Chat to me about our Posture Up programme)

 “Movement both function and expression of life”  Dr Timothy Wood

I used to love the research process. I loved the order. Where others found the stats boring, I found “crunching the numbers” fun. Putting meaning to these by interpreting the results, “Wow, what a privilege!” I published several papers and presented these at International Conferences. I liked the prestige that came with this. I admit, it stroked my ego.

I’m not actively involved with research these days. I still read articles every week and follow trends in Health Care science. But I’ve become somewhat disillusioned by it. Why? One of the reasons is it takes the patient experience out of the equation. The outcome must be isolated, numbered and variables removed. The reductionist model doesn’t really fit practice, because we are the variables. Wellness Care takes into consideration the whole person. The quantitative scientific process gives us glimpses of what might be going on, but it can never tell us the whole story. We design elaborate studies with more and more complex statistics (I have to believe these will give me the answers without always understanding how they work, but that’s a whole other essay) to help us get insight into what or how things might work. Where does that leave the client or patient? Nowhere! Because they aren’t interested in being a number and they probably won’t fit the criteria for the study and even if they did – they will have variables that can’t be measured or even known. Even if they were an exact fit for a particular trial they might be the 10%, 20%, or 30% that didn’t respond like the rest.

From my experience as both practitioner and clinical scientist all patients want is: “to be well”. For some this is just getting out of pain, or being able to sit on the floor and play with their grand-kids and for others its being able to train for some epic physical challenge.

This is the part I like about practice: the variation within, the uniqueness of the person in front of me. The idea that flipped a switch in a 12 year old boy’s brain 32 years ago, “I can help people by working with the frame of the body and support the healing process without drugs or surgery!” is still alive in me today. So, having studied all those years, learned all these skills and helped thousands of people, what inspires me now?

Finding out what drives each person to seek their version of health; helping people identify their wellness goals; physically playing a part in their healing; educating; inspiring and motivating each patient or client to reach their health goals. In short: optimising their life experience through true health & wellness.

So, what started as blog about the limitations of science in practice, turned out to be a piece about my practice journey so far. Thank You Science for your contribution, Thank You passion and opportunity and most of all Thank You to all the patients and clients who have allowed me to be part of their health journey.  — Tim Wood