The Life of a BrOT

Have you ever experienced lower back pain or just back pain in general? If so, you are totally not alone. It is speculated that almost 80% of the adult population will experience low back pain at some point in time. This pain is a result of the repeated daily stress placed on your back from poor posture, faulty body mechanics, stress, lack of flexibility, lack of muscle tone, and a plethora of other things! It is important to teach clients about proper posture and body mechanics to reduce their risk of injury, to help them perform simple ADL's, to ensure proper lifting techniques, and to increase their mobility in their everyday lives. Improper body mechanics can limit mobility and cause injury, resulting in pain and in turn limiting peoples' ability to perform ADLs. Conversely, proper body mechanics can allow people to perform ADLs with maximal efficiency and mobility, and reduced risk of injury in doing so. These are just a few of the reasons and examples that proper posture ...

          The advertisement that I thought of for this post aired around March of 2019. It was a trailer for the movie Avengers Endgame. This trailer really excited me for the movie and the end of a movie era that spanned over 10 long years. Every time I re-watch the trailer I get chills, a huge grin, increased heart rate, sweaty palms, and get invigorated to watch the movie. One part of my nervous system that is being activated when I watch this, is my sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is a part of the autonomic nervous system that can bring out a "fight-or-flight" response in our bodies when we perceive danger or an increase of external stimuli that we normally do not encounter. When I am watching this movie trailer all of the input I see goes straight to my amygdala, which is responsible for perception of emotions, and then triggers my hypothalamus to release hormones in my body. The hypothalamus is like the brains server when it come...

            The story, “Man from the South,” was very intriguing and kept me on my toes as I was reading it. Had the soldier lost the bet and lost his pinky finger, his world would have been forever changed. He would have lost a great deal of grip strength as a result of his pinky finger being chopped off. While the soldier would still be able to perform pinch tasks by using his thumb, index, and middle fingers to pinch and grab things, he would have a hard time grasping objects with the entirety of his hand. For example, he would have a hard time grasping an ice-cold cylindrical glass of beer and he would have reduced grip strength when it came to grasping the pull-up bar to perform a necessary exercise for the navy fitness test. Also, say the soldier loves to play golf when he is off duty, without the grip strength of both pinky fingers around the grip of the club, he would not be able to swing at full speed with the same amount of accuracy as he could b...