Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer WNYC. All this week, we're ending the show with some short take closer looks at some of the tricky new health challenges that have come up during COVID living and offering some solutions. We've picked five different topics to end the show with one each day, based on what we've been hearing from you and seeing around the internet.
Yesterday, we talked about your pandemic skin and hair care, and now we're going to tackle stretching and other exercises like what to do if you can't get outside for a workout and how to alleviate your work from home, neck pain? Also, get ready because we're going to do a desk stretch or two on the air in this segment in just a minute.
Joining me to break this down and lead us through this stretch is Dylann Craig who's a doctor of physical therapy, DPT, owner of Impact Physical Therapy, and director of Sports Medicine and Fitness at The Well. Hi, Dr. Craig, welcome to WNYC.
Dylann Craig: How are you? Thank you so much for having me on.
Brian Lehrer: Are you noticing certain kinds of issues becoming more common among your patients? Is it neck pain, something else in particular, if they're spending a lot more time at home, especially working at home? What are you seeing?
Dylann Craig: Absolutely. Traditionally in my clinic, I do a lot of outpatient orthopedics and I always treat individuals who have headaches. Typically, that percentage of my caseload is usually around 10 to 12%. More recently, so many of my clients have had headaches that are originating in their cervical spine or their neck. That percentage is up to almost 35% at this point. We're definitely seeing very specific changes go on in people's health.
Brian Lehrer: Now last fall, the New York Times reported on a study that used data from over 450,000 users of a step counting app. It says that the average number of daily steps that people take went down 27% just by the end of the first month of lockdown. What are some of the exercises that you can do at home, if you can't get out for those walks or those runs, or you don't have a treadmill or an elliptical, and you want to take those steps, that signify minimum movement that people should have during a day?
Dylann Craig: That's a really good question. Obviously, we're very limited in terms of what we have available to us. You have to do bodyweight movements. If you're looking to do cardio, really the best thing to do is a version of high-intensity interval training, which is going to get your heart rate up and down at home. You can find them on YouTube or you can really-- You can stop at your local, favorite gym to actually get access to some of those. Or what you could do is some bodyweight movements such as a squat, a lunge, basically just getting up and bearing some weight through your lower body. Moving your joints through their full range of motion is incredibly helpful. It counteracts that decrease in step count that you'll have.
Brian Lehrer: All right. You've brought us some desk stretches. Let's get into it. Listeners, you can follow along. The only advice starting out is just to make sure you're comfortably seated. First up, Dr. Craig, you're going to lead us through a neck stretch. Take it away.
Dylann Craig: All right. Everyone listening, I want you to sit up very tall and sit up very upright. Almost like there's a little string attached to the top of her head and it's getting pulled all the way up. What I want you to do, we're going to stretch the left side of our neck. Let's grab the bottom of our chair with our left hand. Okay. Keep that shoulder depressed. I want you to bring your right hand up overhead and I want you to gently provide pressure on your head as you bring your right ear towards your right shoulder and I want you to hold.
Brian Lehrer: You're holding and Juliana can see me doing this on Zoom as she engineers the show from the station. You're holding, you're pressing down with your left hand and you're tilting your head to the right, correct?
Dylann Craig: Absolutely right ear to right shoulder. Your left hand is on top, on the left side of your head and you are pulling extra. I want you to feel a big stretch on that left side. Then you want to-- [crosstalk] Exactly, the left side of the neck. Now you want to go directly to the opposite side. Let's move that left ear to that left shoulder. Basically switch sides. Then you want to bring your left hand on the top of your right head and move that left ear towards that left shoulder? You want to feel that big stretch throughout the entire right side of your neck and hold it.
Brian Lehrer: I've never done that stretch before. It feels really good. Should stretching feel good generally? Or should you start to feel some tension with it?
Dylann Craig: It's normal to feel a little bit of tension and it's okay to push just a little bit far, but if you feel any pain, you should never stretch into a painful range.
Brian Lehrer: Next up you brought an upper back stretch for us. How do we do it?
Dylann Craig: All right. Absolutely. This one feels great. What I want you to do is I want you to reach both of your arms all the way out in front of you and I want you to clasp your two hands together. Interlace those fingers for me. Now, I want you to bend forward ever so slightly and I want you to push those two hands all the way out as far away from your body as you can, and push, push, push, push, push far. Try to relax the mid and upper back as you do that and just push all the way forward and I want you to hold. You should feel your shoulder blades stretching away from each other.
Brian Lehrer: Your arms are going out. Your shoulder blades are stretching away from each other, but your head is going down and you're feeling the stretch of the back of your neck?
Dylann Craig: Exactly. You can bend your head gently forward, but you really just have to push those hands as far away from your body, as you can going to feel that nice stretch in that upper back.
Brian Lehrer: Cool. That's another one that feels really good. It's really funny. Listeners, you can't see it, but I'm doing it at home. Juliana is doing it at the station, working the board and we're watching each other, do it on Zoom. All right, let's see. We're going to run out of time after one more down the back, lower back rotation real quick.
Dylann Craig: All right. Sounds good. I want everyone to sit up, right, keep your feet flat on the floor. Basically, I want you to twist to one side at your core, try to keep your hips, your knees, and your spine all tall. If you want to position your hands behind your head and place that left hand and your right knee to support that stretch. Basically, if we're going to stretch the left side, put the left hand on the chair, put your right hand on your left knee and twist, twist that body, twist that body, twist that body.
Brian Lehrer: You're moving your head towards the back?
Dylann Craig: Very good. Absolutely. You want to twist that whole spine. You should feel like you're ringing yourself out and twist. Very good. What you do on one side, always do on the other. Now I want you to do the same thing. You're going to twist that body all the way towards the right side
Brian Lehrer: Three great stretches. We're out of time. Tell me one thing. How important is it to hold the stretches for a certain length of time? We have 10 seconds.
Dylann Craig: Research show is 30 seconds to one minute is how you actually improve range of motion and improve muscle length. Any shorter, you're not really doing the right job.
Brian Lehrer: Dylann Craig, doctor of physical therapy, owner of Impact Physical Therapy, and director of Sports Medicine and Fitness at The Well. This was A, so much fun, and B, you just made a lot of people out there if they were playing along at home, feel so much better. Thank you very, very much.
Dylann Craig: Thank you.
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