Videos

YouTube Video UCRSPxfMziDFt14M7Ot_GmHQ_e8KYyXpnhwg

I got to know Mike this past summer while volunteering at Lyndhurst's Mt Carmel Feast. Mike is fascinating. He's a WWII vet, turns 98 in October 2023, he exercises every day, and is seemingly healthy and active.
As a Longevity Chiropractor, I figure we can all benefit from some of his wisdom and habits. I was intrigued to sit with him and pick his brain a bit!

Longevity Podcast with fit and active 97 yr old WWII vet: Michael J. Cassizzi

$I demonstrate the safest tricep/elbow extension strengthening exercise called a "kick back" which is elbow extension, BUT performed with your shoulder in neutral anatomical position which is the key!!! There's many other ways out there to strengthen your triceps (elbow extension), but most of them come with a cost because they can jam your head forward further contributing to faulty posture: forward head, hyperkyphosis, anterior head carriage, dowagers hump, etc. I also demonstrate a safe way to stretch your tricep muscles which I call, "The Tricep Doorway Stretch." This will allow you to increase your mobility and range of motion in your shoulders/upper arm, and elbow. The beauty of this particular stretch is that my body maintains neutral spine / anatomical position, so I am not promoting posture deterioration that happens with age. Posture decay/deterioration also gets sped up in human beings for a variety of reasons, such as: slouching, sitting on the floor, standing the wrong way, and very commonplace is that many human beings exercise incorrectly. There are many resistance training and stretching type exercises out there that are risky because they put your body in a compromised position because they are promoting bad/faulty posture. This is counter productive to our longevity and health span. There are mainly two adversarial things that happen to our body if we are living life with faulty posture/alignment. 1) FIRST: We tend to suffer from more muscle spasms / aches and pains, etc. because our body is not designed to handle the loads of our own body weight and the exterior loads that are put upon us while we try to accomplish ADL's (Activities of Daily Living), such as driving, cooking, cleaning, walking, prolonged sitting/computer use, forward bending and squatting to lift objects off the floor, and reaching up over our heads to grab and object, etc. Our heads weigh approximately 10 lbs, so if we have forward head type posture which can be checked by having someone look at your side profile. (Our ears should be in line with the center of your shoulders when you are standing upright). Many of my past patients / clients have suffered from on again, off again: neck / upper back / shoulder blade type pain and many of these types of patients had some type of forward head / faulty type posture befalling them. Think of your 10 lb head as a balcony which should be positioned directly above your neck so your ears and shoulders are in alignment. If it isn't then your upper traps, upper, mid back, and posterior neck muscles are called upon to handle a much heavier load because your alignment is out of balance. So the point of doing these type of exercises that I demonstrate is that they will only promote neutral alignment and should help people with faulty/ poor posture- alignment to improve over time. 2) SECOND: The rate at which we become arthritic tends to speed up. We all become arthritic as we age. It's called degenerative arthritis! There are many other types of arthritides out there that are even more serious than the basic type of degenerative arthritis (osteoarthritis) that we are discussing, but for the purpose of this description we will not get into those. So getting back to the SECOND adversarial thing that happens to the body when your living life with faulty posture / alignment. Arthritis is an umbrella term that's made up of a bunch of characteristics that can be seen on an X-ray or MRI such as: formation of osteophytes (bone spurs), joint space narrowing, articular surfaces of bones are no longer smooth like when we were kids, they can show irregularities and/or sclerosis, and the formation of sub/cortical cysts. Pay close attention to the first arthritic characteristic that shows up on X-ray & MRI called a BONE SPUR (aka OSTEOPHYTE). Bone Spurs are formed by something called Wolf's Law. Wolf's Law states that bone will lay down new bone along the lines of stress where abnormal loading is placed upon it as a protective mechanism. If bone spurs did not form, than stress fractures would most likely be more common. However bone spurs as most of us know, are not a good thing because they get in the way and can pinch nerves, pinch the spinal cord, they can cause weakness, numbness, loss of movement, they can cause stenosis which is the narrowing of a tunnel with which a nerve passes through which is exactly how they pinch nerves! Look up central canal stenosis! These are some of the many important reasons why it's imperative that we exercise in a smart fashion that promotes proper posture/alignment instead of in careless ways which can further speed up postural decline which has a harmful effect on our physical well being, etc.$

Do more of these for less shoulder & neck pain!