When I see things like this, it makes my blood boil just a bit. But people will fall for it, just like they fall for every goofy unscientific gimmick. So educate yourselves. Think about what’s going on here. If someone has kyphosis (hunch back), shoulders rounded, and head forward, this bracing system is quite the opposite of what you want to do. You can’t walk around the rest of your life with a brace on your body to fix a problem anyway. What you do with this brace is actually turn OFF the muscles you need to engage to improve the problem. If somebody I know buys something like this for kyphosis, I’d tell them to put it on backwards; in front of the chest. That’s what would help the problem. Then, the person would have to engage rhomboids, trapezius, infraspinatus, supraspinatus, and maybe even latissimus dorsi to resist the hunchback.

But do you know what? People do this all the time. And doctors even prescribe such things. Worst case, think of a cast or sling. Yes, if you have a fracture or a pin in something to hold you together, please isolate and stabilize. But for nearly every other situation, you wouldn’t want a cast. The dysfunction that you have will only get worse from inactivity in that body part. Its why doctors try to get you out of a sling or cast as soon as possible. That’s how problems like frozen shoulder happen. Immobility is not a good thing.

But even simpler, think of orthotics. When you put a prosthetic lift in your shoe like arch support, what it does is discourages the arch from actively engaging. This is the opposite of what you want to do for a foot problem. Instead, do toe curls, towel scrunches with your toes, drawing pictures in the sand with your foot, walking on textures like cobblestones, and even heat. These will heal your problem. What you don’t want to do is splint it off and not use it. And by all means, if you want to slow the process of healing, use ice. I even know health professionals who still encourage the use of ice. Ice is definitely going to cause you problems. It slows down metabolic processes, it slows circulation, and prevents lymph and healing agents from doing their job.

What we need first is to educate. No more rolling IT bands. No more bracing or orthotics. No more RICE (especially the Ice part of it). Think for yourselves.

I overheard a conversation the other day that I had to bite my tongue on. The biggest critics of new (but really old) ways of dieting are registered dietitians. I think more freshly educated dietitians are getting better. But the old school FDA food pyramid based dietitians are so far off the mark. I don’t want to get all conspiracy theory on you, but the FDA is in direct cahoots with the USDA. The reality is, we have a lot of trade in grains (corn, soybeans, wheat), so what do they put as the basis of the pyramid? Yep, grains!! And these could be at the root of obesity, diabetes, digestive disorders, cancers, and a host of auto-immune diseases. Yet what do they say?; "a bran muffin a day keeps the doctor away." So wrong!! I did bite my tongue since I didn’t want to offend. This person’s dietitian followed the low-fat, no meat, pro-grain ideas of old, which means they don’t have a clue about a host of current research literature. We just saw this report on eating meat. I think the bias that comes from the FDA and USDA is finally being overshadowed by lots of truth in science. Much of what we do is hearsay and traditional garbage. Its not based on science.

Think for yourselves. Always question what you read. Have a keen eye for real scientific literature, not what is regurgitated in popular health magazines. Most of those editors are not scientists and don’t have a clue how to interpret scientific literature.

And by all means, don’t fall for these hokey fix-it-quick devices. They are only preying on your gullibility to get your money.