Spinal Health and Hygiene - Interview with Dr Ryan Wohlfert

welcome back to another episode of Christian Natural Health today I'm very pleased to have Dr Ryan wolfford with us

Dr Ryan is a certified mindset specialist certified Chiropractic Sports physician and certified Chiropractic

biophysics physician using a special a specific spinal correction protocol to

helps patients resolve chronic pain and avoid dysfunction and disease with 24 plus years of education and clinical

experience Dr Ryan has helped thousands correct their spine improve energy and Longevity eliminate dependent on

medication and make simple healthy painfree living possible welcome Dr Ryan thanks for joining us thanks for having

me Dr Lauren this should be fun absolutely so okay so first of all let's talk about why I mean I think most

people probably know but let's talk about why is it important to address spinal Health you know I know because I

talk about health all the time especially spinal health and you talk about health and Healthy Living it's

like yeah everybody knows it but everybody knows it I I should say that or you know we say

that but do they because you know knowing is doing and living and I know we're going to get into some like simple

like spinal hygiene exercises and things they can do out through you know do throughout their day and incorporate

them into their day but that's such a good question to start on because for

people to take care of their health they have to know like why why is it important right and that's essentially

what this is is you know just looking at the big picture about two-thirds of our

population now are in this spinal posture this distorted spinal posture

that it leads to chronic pain and disability fatigue even like mood problems and anxiety increased

medication use right and what's also interesting is that and this is a

connection that not a lot of people make and that's why I'm happy that you're having me on here so I can help make

this connection is studies multiple Studies have shown that

with this again this forward flexed posture that so many people are in nowadays that is screwing up their

spines it actually increases the risk of death from heart disease lung problems

and from actually all causes and we'll get into you know even when we talk about like what is it supposed to look

like and then what is this posture it's it just puts up way too much stress on your whole entire system your nervous

system your cardiovascular system your pulmonary system your gut so that's how

and why spinal health is so important because your spine should have a certain

position to it a certain shape or there's a normal range when it gets outside of that range similar to like

you know there's a similar there's a normal range for blood pressure and or should say a healthy range for blood

pressure for uh blood sugar levels for hormone levels it's the same thing with the spine and the spine is important

because it houses is you know the most important thing functionally in our body

which is well not the brain but the spinal cord the nervous system you spinal cord is an extension of the brain

so that's why taking care of your spine is so important knowing how to do it

which will'll get into the how to do the the nuts and bolts of it too got it okay so I want to um tag team or kind of

piggy back off of something you just said which was the idea that it can affect your organ function does this

have to do with the spinal nerves being compressed is that the concept or why yes like that's part of it

neurologically because the nerves are getting not necessarily compressed and pinched I mean that's a common term that

we hear like the nerves are pinched they're irritated it creates pressure changes around them same thing if if

your posture or your spine which I use spine and posture inter interchangeably because you know your

posture it's a window to the spine and nervous system function right so if your posture is distorted well you know the

spine is made up of the individual bones and the discs separating the bones and out between there you know there's this

hole right where the nerve comes out so anything that disrupts the flow and of

that nerve energy coming out of that nerve which is inside there from either

degeneration you know that hole getting smaller now that can quote unquote pincher irritate compress the nerves so

neurologically but then even physically think about what happens again most

people think of of when their posture is horrible is you know that forward flex

posture and that's what we're going to mainly focus on today because there's actually thousands of different postural

combinations that you can get into and spinal distortions I don't want to confuse everybody let's just stick with

the main ones but you know the side to side I know you had a scoliosis expert on

previously so they can you know go to that episode and learn about that but for this forward flex posture so now

mechanically and physically think about where the heart and lungs and gut are they're in the rib cage so now if we are

in this hunched over forward flex posture for prolonged periods of time

it's putting mechanical stress on the heart on the lungs on the blood vessels

so you're not able to get the air into your lungs you're not able to pump you know the heart's not able to pump like

it should and function like it should so it's both neurological from the nerves but then it's also mechanical and

biomechanic oh that makes perfect sense okay so let's define what a healthy spine looks like first so can you

explain that a little bit more what do people looking for what are you trying to correct if something is off absolutely so when you look at the spine

from the front all right we want to be straight up and down like a a tall building or a tower we don't want any

shifts off to the side so how you can look at yourself with that is you want

basically the middle of your forehead you know right between your glabella it's called right between your eyebrows

going down to the middle of your chest so the breast bone and then your pubic

bone we want all of those lined up it with your feet about if you're standing with your feet about you know hip width

the shoulder width apart going right down between the middle of your feet so that's from the front now what we've

been talking about is this forward flex posture so from the side we want to make sure these points are lined up too in

the fact that you want your ear and just for simple terms your shoulder the

outside of your hip you know that bone on the on your hip your pelvic area and

then your ankle we want those in a straight line so that if we're looking at your posture externally or your spine

externally again posture as a window to the spine and nervous system yeah so

that is a a a simple way to do that so it's hard to know like just by looking

at yourself the side view you can look in the mirror and see the front view right the side VI you could take a

picture on your phone or um that's usually the easiest way to do it is you

know taking a picture on your phone yeah now if we want to actually get even deeper into what the spine should look

like because on the inside the only way to know what the spine is look like is to look inside the body just like for a

mechanic to know what's wrong with an engine it's got to get in you know open the hood so standing spinal x-rays are

actually the best way to do that so you can see all right in the neck we want

what's called a lordosis so let me break it down three even curves one in the neck one in the midback and one in the

low back y so you have a lordosis in the neck so the neck curve then the the

midback counteracting that or complimenting that going the other way that's kyphosis and the lumbar low dois

again and there's normal measurements for each of these but they're about 40

degrees they're like 40 three equal 40 degree curves okay now why these are so

important so we want it lined up like we said from the outside the inside we want these three beautiful curves and you

know God's amazing and how he designed us right it's the very first thing to

develop was our brain and our spinal cord our nervous system right and so it's like why well it's the most

important thing he knows it's the most back but to protect this most important

thing that we have our brain and nervous system the second thing to develop was

our our skull and our spine to protect it because it's so important and because

it's so fragile right so right there we know from nature okay this is a pretty important thing so when we have the the

the three equal Curves in the right position it's centered with gravity right well now it protects the spinal

cord protects the nervous system allows it to relax and deliver all the life-giving energy and communication

from the brain down through the spinal cord inside the spine through through the nerves to every single cell tissue

and organ yeah and so you know so that's one thing like neurologically just

lifegiving but these curves also provide shock absorption right they they allow

the spine to to move with gravity and move a lot easier it allows you know

you're not wasting energy and Resources by just Fighting Gravity because if you're just if you held something that's

15 pounds and I know you have kids but they're probably probably a little bit too old for this but when when they're

babies I I tell parents to do this all the time like you would hold your baby at arms length out away from you right

for a long period of time because your body be like struggling just to stay

upright but that's what we're making our body do when our head gets forward and

our you know this midback curve gets hunched over is it's like we're lifting something that's 15 20 pounds and

holding it for a long period of time so it's wearing the body out now it can't take of O take care of other issues in

the body because it's wasting the energy on just surviving in this gravity

World yep definitely and I'm reading a book right now that's called antifragile and it's talking about essentially the

concept of when there's a stressor if you're if you're capable of rebounding

in the opposite direction then you have the resilience in this particular case

it's actually getting stronger with those disturbances but exactly that idea of elasticity where your spine is

capable of absorbing shocks and you don't have that then you don't have that kind of resiliency right correct and

that's a great example and yeah now it's it's just like antifragile just like I

haven't read the book but that whole resilience part you come back stronger right

is the one of the issues is it's not like the acuteness of like how much we

do this it's it's the chronicity with which we get ourselves into these stressful positions or stressful like uh

have these stresses on our body for a period of time like whether it's physical chemical stress like the foods

that we're eating that I know you're so familiar with and then you know the emotional and mental stresses it's not

that having these stresses are bad but the excess with which we have them and

the accumulation that it has it makes it hard for our body to bounce back sure

absolutely so if somebody has spinal pain well I should say if somebody has back pain how can they determine or how

can it be determined whether it's coming from the literal structure or whether it's coming from muscle or fascia or

pinch nerve or any of the rest of it how do you kind of tease those things apart

you know I mean with my background I A lot of times I I go back to the spine

and the actual structure of it like just look at the structure of it look at the posture because the muscles respond to

what the spine is doing like a lot of times people think it's a muscle problem because that where they feel the pain

sure right I mean there's disc issues right there's especially like with a disc herniation disc bulge it can

irritate the nerve so you get the nerve pain going down the leg or if it's in the neck going down the arm so that

might be easier to understand where it's okay it's a spinal problem but even when there's muscle dysfunction or if it's

fascia or if it's uh uh you know the tendons or ligaments

whatever I I always go back to what does your structure look like what does the spinal structure look like because the

muscles attach to the spine right sure and if if the spine and that's one of

the benefits of it too having this strong spinal posture is it provides leverage and efficiency for the muscles

to work and do their job because if you're like again in this forward flexed

hunched over posture well now we're putting a chronic strain on the muscle and it's constantly active right so we

can get massages all we want which are you know great I mean I use the foam roll all the time and and different

methods of that yeah but unless we're addressing and counteracting the the you know the

inward the uh distorted position of the spine where the muscle attach right it

might not be as as long lasting as we had hoped and I think we' a lot of us has experienced that like it feels good

when you rub on the muscle but then it doesn't last exactly exactly so and then

before we get into some of the exercises and spinal hygiene and all of that um talk to us about kind of some of the

basic things that you're that people do all the time like the ergonomics of their setup if they're in front of a

computer all the time or their mattress or things like that what how important are those things or how not important

are those things in terms of overall spinal Health well I especially in the world that we live in especially with

technology because I you know will point right to that how people are just holding their phones I mean this goes

right into the simple daily activities that we can do and it it's shocking to

me it is and it isn't I use the word shocking and funny is my other like word

that I use to describe sad and all the other different emotions yeah when I see people on their

technology especially their phones and it's down in their lab but if they're

sitting down it's down in their lap and they're looking down if it's on an iPad or a a laptop I mean it's called a

laptop for a reason I guess where it's you know sitting on your lap but that right there if you're in this position

for longer than 20 to 30 minutes continuously that's enough time to start

distorting and making those changes more permanent in that posture we use that as

as the measure also okay so if it's 20 minutes in this position guess what now

it's 20 minutes like for example we work up to 15 to 20 minutes of doing these different uh uh traction type activities

and we're not even going to get into that today well we might a little bit but we have to think about it in those

terms it doesn't take hours and hours of being in there it only takes 20 to 30 minutes for the ligaments to start you

know holding and tightening and getting fibrotic in that position so just how

we're like dealing with our technology and I'm not going to get rid of my phone

I'm not going to get rid of my computer this is how we can connect across the world with each other right and help

people but we have to use it in a healthy way just like food we have to use food it can either be good or you

know we can use it in in un uner or non-serving ways sure so just very

simply is pick your phone up it sounds so simple it's it's keep it

at you know I know you might not keep it at eye level but at least if you just

put your arms down by your side like your the upper part of your arms down by your side bend your elbows at 90 degrees

and keep it at least you know chest level chin level that would go a long

way to decreasing the amount of stress on not just your neck and upper back but

your entire spine sure while if you're sitting if you're standing

and some people when I when I give them this instruction they're like well that looks weird right why does it look weird

is because we're not used to it yeah right right so I'm not sure why you know

this distorted slumped posture got to be normal and not look not weird but it's

because so many people are doing it it gets confused with you know it's common but it doesn't mean that's healthy

typical sure are we just used to it no so that again that was just one thing you can do right there is that's that's

what you know to answer your question that's why it's so important your sleeping posture you know a lot of people think you know I hear this weekly

inside my brick and mortar office yeah where somebody comes in and says I must have slept wrong uhuh right I'm uh more

of of the philosophy that it's what we're doing during the day

that you know not necessarily our sleeping and how we're sleeping but it's it's the actions and the postures we're

taking throughout the day and also our even our nutrition our you know our our other Healthy Living practices that when

we sleep a lot of times these things kind of come out the next day you know

very rarely do we eat and I'll go back to nutrition as an example we don't eat ice cream one day and wake up 20 pounds

heavier the next morning right so it's an accumulation of the stresses and

sometimes you sleep and yes if you're sleeping on your stomach and you know

with your head turned and not in a good healthy position for the spine yeah that can cause PRS in the necks and problems

there too yeah yeah interesting so you're really not of the opinion that the mattress makes much difference it's really about what you're doing

throughout the day no no I I believe the mattress does I'm I guess I was more with the postures that you're sleeping

in oh I see yes there are healthier postures but if you're if you're sleeping propped up on pillows that's

not great for mattresses I do like more of a firm mattress ideally again we're

already let's get into it here like sleeping wise because that's a big question I get is what mattress or how do you sleep what's the best position to

sleep in sleeping on your back is actually the healthiest position but not

propped up on pillows right I mean you might just want to roll up a towel and put it underneath

neck and there's those those uh you know pillows that have the orthopedic pillows

which have the waves in them and helps to support these Curves in your spine

but you don't want them too thick and here's where the the the Nuance comes in

is I I sleep on my back and on my side it's hard to find a pillow or a

support that addresses both right sure right so basically on your back you want

more of a like a thin you don't want much of a anything underneath your head and neck on your side you have to have

something or else you know if I'm sleeping on my left side I'm going to be tipping down there so you need some type

of support and I I don't have a specific recommendation for people like get this pillow right they have to find that one

for themselves that that can do both right where basically what they're looking for

is something to support the natural curves to reinforce it as opposed to and staying there all night got it got it

and just like if you're lying down you want the those same points lined up too ear shoulder hip ankle same thing if

you're laying on your side sleeping we want to you know straight line from here

from the middle of your head to your breast bone to your pelvis a lot of times people put a pillow or something

between their legs so it doesn't cause stress on their low back gotcha okay and

so for people's like desk setups aside from the the phone and all of that so is

it also screen eye level hands uh I mean hands are slightly different than all of

the rest of this because that's a little bit moreal but same concept of like what are what are your typical ergonomic

recommendations for a desk setup beautiful because I mean I'm at my standing desk right now you know I I

very rarely sit at my stand I don't ever put it down it's just easier this way

but yes whether you're sitting or standing you want eye level you know the the screen about the the top third of

the screen right at eye level right okay hands and shoulders relaxed when you're

sitting at your desk I would love people to get into a habit of not even leaning

against their desk chair to almost train themselves to to to use their own power

to sit up because no matter how great your desk chair is right it's you're

still sitting you still want to get up and around and I

almost I I don't want it too comfortable because if you're too comfortable then you're going to sit there for longer and

longer periods of time inste of getting up and moving around so again just these little little things but it I haven't

really found a chair that like all right this is the perfect one it's when we're

sitting whether it's driving or sitting at our desk or at our at our kitchen table we want to sit on our butt cheeks

evenly not shifted off to one side or the other not hunched over as well uh

obviously but those are the the markers we want our feet on the floor if you're too short to have your feet on the floor

put something underneath that your feet can sit on I don't mind your knees being

slightly lower than your hips when you're sitting that's actually okay okay

and if you ever wanted to really get into this go into it like having a kn in desk chair a kneeling chair I highly

recommend those interesting but those you have to watch out for like pressure on your knees too so it just depends if

you have knee issues where the issues are sure and then arms resting like what 90 degree angle on the table thing okay

yes just relax shoulders um and we can even go over some different exercises

you can do at your desk to just help to re restore uh the the proper posture and

counteract it with a couple of minutes we can do that let's go there so what are recommend one of my

favorite is well I I'll I'll piggyback both of them I'll give you the easier one and then the the more challenging

one okay is so you're sitting at your desk you put your hands on your knees

right sitting up straight so it's like you're grabbing your knees and you're gonna pull your knees right pull your

knees with your hands they're not moving anywhere but what that does is you're going to stick your chest out

essentially pulling your shoulder blades back arching your low back as you do this and then NE look up okay you can do

that for five to 10 seconds and do those Reps for about a minute or you can you

can hold it for maybe 15 to 20 seconds but I like shorter hold times sure in doing reps because one it helps to

increase the circulation going throughout the spine and the muscles of the spine too right so that's called

like just a extension exercise sitting extension exercise okay another one and

this one is one of my favorites and this directly counteracts this right hun

posture and it's hard for people to do because of that right now this one again sitting down is more ideal than standing

up but you you clasp your hands together put them behind your head and

neck right okay and what you do is there's different uh uh uh checkpoints

so you want to raise the chest up so it's like you're right squeezing you know sticking your chest out and up

taking your elbows back okay and then pushing your head back into your hands

without those collapsing got it okay so that's like a thoracic extension

exercise so you can again oh man if you do this for like a

minute and then you go back you just feel I mean just doing that I can feel

the blood flow sure yeah now if you really wanted to take into a more of a Mobility

exercise those same things and now you rotate ah okay side to side yeah but you

don't want to lose the chest up elbows back head back position because what

happens a lot of times is they'll start rotating and then the elbows will go like this right okay so it's it just oh

man yeah just like that every go ahead five seconds at a

time each time as well like 5 Second in that one I mean I would say you don't even have to hold it for five seconds

it's more of just holding for a second okay and doing that for again 10 reps or

so uhuh okay excellent very cool and so what else in terms of just trying to

overall maintain a healthy posture or maybe get back to a healthy posture you gave us some great ideas anything else

yes yes I love that because you led right into spinal hygiene or what I call spinal hygiene to maintain right just

like you know dentists want people to brush their teeth and floss and we have dental hygiene do it every day usually

twice a day well it's the same thing with the spine and just like brushing your teeth is not time consuming takes

two minutes to do same thing with spinal hygiene exercises like basically we want to take the spine all the different

joints of the spine in their their maximum range of painfree range of

motion every day at least once a day okay so very simple you know we can we

can bend side to side we can Flex down and extend up and then we can rotate the

joints the spine right so very simple and if they go to my website they can

download the spinal hygiene mini class which explains all of these but just

it's like you're take your spine head and neck and

I I do them separately for the head and neck but your spine side to side again 10 reps in each Direction yeah you can

rotate 10 reps in each Direction perfect up and down like the cat Cow exercise

you can do that 10 reps Terri that would take you two minutes to do just to keep

the spine moving now obviously if somebody has asked you ois or fractures of the spine they got to watch out for

excessive rotation or ex extension that's why it's always painf free you go

in the the the decreased range of motion first you find that just get used to it

find that point and then you can build on that and so this um I know we're

gonna talk about this at the end but could you say real quick what your your freebie is the the the course that you

just mentioned so you can get the this is a different thing the spinal hygiene mini class which I just mentioned but

then also the posture mini course is actually a a the the

postural uh module of a course that I did and just showing you how to evaluate

your posture right okay posture and Spine and then different and based off of that what exercises to do and how to

do them sure perfect excellent so um for people that have chronic back pain and

they go get MRIs and imaging and all the rest of the stuff how often in your experience are the findings on there

like they've got spinal stenosis they've got um you know Hern disc all of those things how often are they the cause of

the pain and how often are they incidental findings uh versus you know

yeah you know that's because what is the there's a study that came out years ago showing that I think 60% at least 60% of

people walking around that don't have even any back pain have if they did an MRI on them they have signs of yeah they

find something right so it just depends on what symptoms that they're feeling sure but that even gets into you know

being in the field that I am it is definitely related more often than not

when they're feeling the symptoms but you know there also gets into the the brain aspect of it right of you know the

the the the neural programming of pain in the brain in these pain centers if

you will so I mean in my experience I I I know that the studies and what they

show but then when we get an MRI or take X-rays and it's showing areas of

degeneration or arthritis sure it is related to that but what's interesting is sometimes we find people that you

know they come in with low back pain and we find more damage and postural

distortions and spinal dysfunction up in the neck versus the low back right which

you know that can be even a mechanical thing too because of how the nerves and

the spinal cord is affected up here and if you think about the spinal cord like a hose you know the main faucets right

up here in the brain so now if we put a kink in the hose here right and that hose goes all the way down your back to

your legs it can affect that too no that's a that's a great question and

just because some has like a finding on an MRI doesn't mean okay you have to

have pain it's that's not always the case right interesting so and if they do

like let's say it it appears that there is a correspondence between what you find on the MRI um how often do you find

non-invasive techniques like some of the things that you're describing to be beneficial enough that they can avoid

injections or steroid injections surgery all of the rest of that pain meds

yes oh very common but we have to address the underlying structure we have to address what is causing it in the

first place right right and I know you're a big fan of the root cause is what is in I go back to Lifestyle what

is you know we can do all we can for them and with them and showing them what these exercises and how to adjust their

lifestyle and showing them different traction techniques to help reform the the the position of their spine and

addressing their nutrition but if you're not going to change the lifestyle we can do that for

a course of care sure and it's going to be successful but it's just a matter of

how can you maintain that how you know are you going to maintain that not that

you know because we've I believe most people listening to this have heard oh once you go to the chiropractor you got

to keep going back which is I always I always laugh at that one because you

know one one of my saying is you don't have to anything you just have to deal with the

consequences of what you do and don't do one of my examples I give is you don't have to pay taxes and people say yeah

you do no you don't you just have to deal with the consequences if they find out it's the same thing with our health

you don't have to eat healthy you don't have to get your spine adjusted and we want to teach you ways to keep it that

way I'm G to do Spinal Rehab and spinal hygiene for the rest of my life because that's what we started off with is

realizing how important it is is I realize how important it is you know when I was 13 years old I had my first

migraine headache and that's when I started seeing a chiropractor and I won't go into the whole story yeah but I

mean I saw how that led me to not taking any drugs and never being on drugs and

never will be on any drugs I already put that in my mind that I'm never gonna you know I'm gonna find a way in my

lifestyle whether it's through you know obviously my spine nutrition uh uh

exercise mindset spiritual growth to make sure my body is not holding on to

those stresses that's causing it to break down right yeah yeah that makes sense so what have I not asked you that

you want to make sure that you leave with our audience well and we've we've touched on

it but I just want to one of my ethos is bog it's be your own

guarantee okay and with the help of God obviously we that's that's without

saying that's you know because when I say that like well what wait a second I I thought you were a Christian and you

know we we want Jesus's strength and yes exactly but we have to do the work all

right that he put us there for and if you want you know to live a healthy

active painfree drugless life then you have to be your own guarantee for the

things that you do for your body and put into your body and that includes you

know what you're doing to your spinal in spinal health because I know how that the spinal Health can translate into

what you're you're putting out there in the world how how you're presenting yourself to the world because it unlocks

the you know the the mo the biggest power that we have in our body which is the brain and nervous system so if we

can unlock that then with these simple that's the LA next thing I want to say simple and consistent practices that

little by doesn't you have to be little by little it can just lead us into that painfree

active drugless I can't reiterate that out drugless life and and that's my goal

and that was one of the things I said at the beginning with this spinal posture it leads to increased medication use

with that distorted spinal posture that's been shown with research too like with opioids and painkillers and even

over-the-counter drugs yeah absolutely that makes sense so where can people go to learn more about you and to get

access to some of your courses uh yes so go to drwolf for.com I'm sure you'll

have it in the in the notes link directly to that so if you want to download the spinal hygiene mini class I

definitely recommend that and then also uh the posture retraining mini course

fabulous all right well thank you so much Dr Ryan this has been very educational I appreciate it thank you

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