Warum gerade ich?

When I was a young doctor, working on a big intensive care unit I had one big marvel which I did not understand. Not only I was clueless, even the senior physicians which hat a lot more experience than me did not know how to handle this problem. Patients died after a severe accident or a hugh operation even when their prognosis was very good. In such life- threatening conditions our body switches in a special metabolism mode, known as the post aggression metabolism. During this time our body metabolizes its complete energy reserves like sugar, proteins and muscles. The nutrients which get supplied externally via infusion are rejected or did even lead to an increased mortality.

Some years later I understood why the human body reacted in such a manner: During the entire evolution of mankind which took some millions of years there was never any kind of situation when we got supplied with nutrient- infusions after an injury. The modern intensive care medicine exist since 25-35 years. The only way how to survive such a life- threatening condition was to mobilize all body intern reserves to recover.

The most of the time the mankind survived as hunters and gatherers. Agriculture is a pretty young achievement (max. 11000 years) compared to the human evolution in total.

In the beginning only our muscle were available to perform the every days tasks. Later we developed some tools, used animals and machines.

Therefore the main task for our muscles was endurance and that is exactly what our body is made for.

He is definitely not created for:

Less movements

Long lasting peak performance

Sudden movements

But for enduring load with time to rest and recover. It is not random that top athletes suffer much more often from arthrosis than others.

Lebenserwartung

Es ist grad mal 100 Jahre her dass die durchschnittliche Lebenserwartung bei 48 Jahren lag.

It is just 100 years ago that the average life expectancy was 48 years.

Arthrosis is the attrition of joints which exceed their normal age. Attrition is a normal process. The exhaust pipe rusts, the tires are bald or the wheel barring is attrited. Same applies for out body but we don’t have a display which shows us that we could need an inspection now.

Similar to the wheel barring’s our joints experience attrition. Same applies for our vessels and hear valves. The most visible part of our body is the skin.

Our body has some very good self- healing mechanism which our car does not have but even them get on their limit at some degree. Therefor we can assume that it is one of the most normal things in life that we suffer from joint attrition or arthrosis at any time in our life.

Today arthrosis is characterized as an age- related attrition. But what means age related? Can we suppose that the evolution made the plan of our body to life 80 years or longer?

100 years ago the average life expectancy was 48 years. We can assume that there weren’t any or much less patients which suffered from arthrosis during this time.

In other words: Most probably there was no plan in the human evolution that our body gets 80 years or older. The evolutionary development is lags behind our life expectancy due to hygiene, medicine, diet.

The price we have to pay for this lag are diseases which are related to attrition.

There is no universal answer to this question.

Genetic disposition:

Patients suffering from a connective tissue weakness are more likely to develop a slipped disk then others.

Accident:

Luckily a traumatic overload happens not so often.

Wrong bearing:

Therefor we have to define what a wrong bearing is. Am intervertebral disk is a mechanic part of our body which is comparable to a dumper. If you apply pressure on this dumper (body weight), the pressure gets not applied even (lifting heavy loads while bending forward) or gets twisted (sidewise lifting of heavy loads) it is logical that this dumper won’t survive that long. Same applies for the intervertebral disks.

Gravity:

This force which is omnipresent and squeezes our disks.

Upright gait:

The development from the ape to the human kind which is characterized was one of the main achievements in the human evolution. But anyways due to this gait we apply much more forces (gravity…) on our disks then before.

Lack of exercise:

Enduring movements are optimal for our body because our muscles and joints want to be used in a healthy degree. Also the upright sitting is not good for our body. The best way is to change the sitting position as often as possible.

Why does the neck hurt when you are under stress?

Maybe you know the problem: In stressful situations our neck start to hurt.

Everyone knows the phrase “to keep one’s head down”.

Also in the Greek mythology there is the giant Atlas who carries the world on his neck. This is the explanation why the 1st cervical vertebra is called Atlas by the way.

When we experience Fear, Threat or Stress we react with tension of the neck muscles. It is an evolutionary learned protection reflex. In the stone age we had to cover our most vulnerable area, the neck, when attacked by animals or enemies.

During this time such situations were temporary limited but today the life threatening situations have changed into liabilities, existential fear or bulling.

Our protection reflex or our response to this situations stayed the same, we keep our head down and cover our neck and throat.

The muscles in this area are not made for long, static tension which leads to pain.