The Key to Lifelong Wellness and Foundational Health with Wren V. McCallister, MD, Pt. 2
In this continuation of last week’s discussion, hosts Doro and Tricia are joined once again by prominent orthopedic hand surgeon, Wren V. McCallister, MD. Dr. McCallister delves into the world of foundational health, offering a comprehensive roadmap to lasting well-being. He explores the importance of sleep, mindfulness, and the mind-body connection in achieving optimal health.
Discover practical strategies to implement in your daily life and gain a newfound understanding of how these crucial elements can positively impact your overall wellness. This enriching discussion will inspire and empower you to take control of your health journey and unlock the full potential of your body and mind.
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Website: http://DrWren.io
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drwren.hand/
Quotes:
If you fix your foundational health, many conditions clear up. If you change what you eat, how you sleep, and manage stress, many issues seem to solve themselves. - Wren V. McCallister, MD
I realized there’s a way I can help people far better than anything I do in the operating room. It’s preventing them from coming back. - Wren V. McCallister, MD
If you can get yourself to consistently execute behaviors over the long term, then you can achieve just about anything you want to do. - Wren V. McCallister, MD
Show Notes:
DR. WREN MCCALLISTER: The two most common things that I deal with are what are called trigger fingers, which are locking and gets a swelling of a tendon, and then carpal tunnel syndrome, which is basically nerve compression. And there are some other sites in the body around the elbow that can be affected as well, but much less commonly. And so many of the people with carpal tunnel syndrome also have diabetes, for example, and other health conditions. So a lot of inflammation will drive it. There's a list of maybe 50 different things that are associated with it. I give a talk once and I put this slide up and it was so busy. And I said, that's the point, right? Like there's 100 different things that seem like they're associated with it. But what it gets down to is forceful, repetitive grip. So what will independent of a risk factor or something like if you're just mechanically talking about the nerve of what will drive it, forceful, repetitive, gripping with a wrist that's flexed or extended, bent so non neutral basically. So if you're doing a lot of forceful gripping wrist is bent, either bent backwards or bent forwards, that can be a risk factor. Keyboarding and typing is a little bit of a misnomer. There's a nice Danish study done where they looked at it, and there's always every study has flaws, but they found that keyboarding was not associated with carpal tunnel syndrome. There's a lot of press in there, but one of the issues was the study, how it was designed. It sort of almost selected for people who could keyboard.
DR. WREN MCCALLISTER: In other words, I know if I sit and type, you know, writing papers or whatnot for a bit of time, I'll definitely feel my hands swell up a little bit and it feels a little tight. If I do that every day, I might develop something too, but for which I can take breaks and things. So there may be that there's people that are designed or their body is able to tolerate that, and other people aren't. So everyone has an individual variability. Bio individuality could be a term, you could label it. And so some people could keyboard forever and ever have problems. Some people, they're on there for 20 minutes, they start to have issues and that could be because of their anatomy and things like that. So there's some things that are intrinsic to you that may drive it in terms of your anatomy and how your body is designed, that you're just aren't mechanically designed to do this activity. And then biologically or physiologically you can have medical conditions that can predispose you. And then most of the time it gets back to rest and recovery. Because even if you have these set ups, if you're giving yourself a break, if you're performing stretches, you can actually alleviate a lot of this. And so what can you do to prevent that? Well, you know, ergonomic adaptations and set ups during Covid, everyone kind of came out of the office, went home, and you went from these desk set ups to sitting on your couch laying back, you know, things like that. So ergonomic setups in the sense of, again, not mechanically disadvantage your bodies, but putting your body in an appropriate position to carry out functions and then taking breaks, frequent breaks, stretching.
DR. WREN MCCALLISTER: It can be just simple, as you know, stretching your hands and your hands and your wrist. There are some exercises called nerve glides which are helpful in the body. The nerve doesn't really move. It's sort of static in its position, and the tendons and muscles move around the nerve. And so one of the things that happens, either from injury or if you just spent a lot of time in a single position, is you can start to develop what we call adhesions. Or you can basically you can start to get sticky. And so if your tendons or your muscles start to kind of get sticky to a nerve, and then you try to move those muscles, it'll start stretching the nerve. And nerves do not like to be stretched. And so when they're under pressure, if you increase the length of a nerve by 10%, you decrease the blood flow by 50%. We know from studies. And so if your nerve is under pressure or like around the elbow or something, every time you bend the elbow, you're stretching the nerve. And that's causing injury to the nerve. Blood flow to an appeals. Oh I feel like the blood flow to my hands getting cut off. Well, it's not really getting cut off. But if you have diabetes, if you have vascular disease, yes, those very tiny blood vessels feeding the nerve are struggling to provide the nerve with adequate blood supply. So in a sense that's happening. But your hand won't fall off. It won't suddenly stop blood supply that's happening.
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