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Assuming you spend lots of your day at a desk, in just a few related postures, you'd do well to think far more about mobility than you currently seem to be. Ru

Assuming you spend lots of your day at a desk, in just a few related postures, you'd do well to think far more about mobility than you currently seem to be. Running and lifting are both great, but running is pretty repetitive and uniform and gets moreso the better you get at it. And lifting that most people explore is usually focused on increasing power (and/or bulk) in a just few major muscle groups. And all that is really great, but if you're feeling achy and stiff, those aren't aimed very well at the problem. Think about stuff that's more dynamic and varied: dance, pilates, yoga, gymnastics, martial arts, rock climbing, etc. If you take any of those seriously, they all have deep progressions with high skill ceilings that can hold your interest and create the same kind of feedback loop of pride and accomplishment that you probably find in running and lifting already. If you're near a big city, you might also be able to go a little further into the massage and movement world with practices like rolfing, alexander technique, or feldonkrais. These are more passive and induce less progressive/permanent change, but can provide a radical change to the way you feel. Meditation can help, too.

rapjr9 2y ago
>rolfing, alexander technique, or feldonkrais Wikipedia says these are considered alternative medicine and there is no proof they affect health (and probably no proof they don't either). Trying more dynamic types of motion seems like good advice as it would affect a wider range of muscles. Perhaps isotonic exercises that pit muscles against each other to get muscle tensions/development in balance. This recent NY Times article on the idea of "good posture" affecting back pain and health suggests there is no scientific basis for that, another great example of people in the past just making stuff up and it has become fake "knowledge": https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/science/linker-posture-science.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/science/linker-posture-sc... Possibly forcing your body into an unnatural posture could cause back pain. Take a look at your posture when working (record yourself with a video camera). It is very common for people working with computers to hunch forward for hours, peering at the screen. You can counter this with a timer to remind you to stretch or by enlarging fonts on the screen so you can more easily read the screen from a distance. Hand pain can be caused by computer mice/trackpads/keyboards. Muscle tension seems like a cause worth exploring from your description. This can be related to anxiety or stress, so working on the sources of those could help in relaxing and reducing that muscle tension and any side effects from it. If your work keeps you in one posture for long periods of time possibly that could result in one set of muscles becoming larger than the muscles that counterbalance them, which makes it easier to damage the smaller muscles (you think you are strong, but you are only strong in one direction). The most basic thing to do is pay attention to what your muscles are telling you, when do they start to hurt and what were you doing prior to that? Can you feel the pain increasing and are you doing anything that might be causing that? Which specific muscles are hurting, and what motions cause those muscles to be used? Vibrators can help relax muscle tension. So can sex. Expert advice can be valuable, some causes of pain have physiological sources; comments from people on the internet may represent valid experience, but may not necessarily apply to you.
- swatcoder 2y ago
  FWIW, it would be unusual to have a practitioner refer to any of those things as a form of medicine, alternative or otherwise. I'm sure you could find examples of them doing so by scouring around enough, but it's not the norm. I'm not familiar with the wikipedia articles, but they may be being maintained by people with a chip on their shoulder and a lack of real-world exposure. That happens often. Some people get really weird about unfamiliar things and the feel duty-bound to write critically about them from a shallow and biased perspective. In any case, rolfing is essentially just a specific form of (very) deep tissue massage and the other two are roughly equivalent practices in body awareness and paying attention to how one moves. They're common in performance studies (acting, dance, etc) but have lost the attention of the broader public over the last few decades and so you won't find them as easily as you do (say) yoga studios now. All three are, ultimately, soothing experiences and generally provide immediate relief of acute tension and pain, but that's no more a claim of "medicine" than it would be to suggest someone might help to breathe deeply, lay in a dark room for while, or take any other kind of massage (as the OP already suggested they do).

rapjr9 2y ago

>rolfing, alexander technique, or feldonkrais Wikipedia says these are considered alternative medicine and there is no proof they affect health (and probably no proof they don't either). Trying more dynamic types of motion seems like good advice as it would affect a wider range of muscles. Perhaps isotonic exercises that pit muscles against each other to get muscle tensions/development in balance. This recent NY Times article on the idea of "good posture" affecting back pain and health suggests there is no scientific basis for that, another great example of people in the past just making stuff up and it has become fake "knowledge": https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/science/linker-posture-science.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/science/linker-posture-sc... Possibly forcing your body into an unnatural posture could cause back pain. Take a look at your posture when working (record yourself with a video camera). It is very common for people working with computers to hunch forward for hours, peering at the screen. You can counter this with a timer to remind you to stretch or by enlarging fonts on the screen so you can more easily read the screen from a distance. Hand pain can be caused by computer mice/trackpads/keyboards. Muscle tension seems like a cause worth exploring from your description. This can be related to anxiety or stress, so working on the sources of those could help in relaxing and reducing that muscle tension and any side effects from it. If your work keeps you in one posture for long periods of time possibly that could result in one set of muscles becoming larger than the muscles that counterbalance them, which makes it easier to damage the smaller muscles (you think you are strong, but you are only strong in one direction). The most basic thing to do is pay attention to what your muscles are telling you, when do they start to hurt and what were you doing prior to that? Can you feel the pain increasing and are you doing anything that might be causing that? Which specific muscles are hurting, and what motions cause those muscles to be used? Vibrators can help relax muscle tension. So can sex. Expert advice can be valuable, some causes of pain have physiological sources; comments from people on the internet may represent valid experience, but may not necessarily apply to you.

swatcoder 2y ago
FWIW, it would be unusual to have a practitioner refer to any of those things as a form of medicine, alternative or otherwise. I'm sure you could find examples of them doing so by scouring around enough, but it's not the norm. I'm not familiar with the wikipedia articles, but they may be being maintained by people with a chip on their shoulder and a lack of real-world exposure. That happens often. Some people get really weird about unfamiliar things and the feel duty-bound to write critically about them from a shallow and biased perspective. In any case, rolfing is essentially just a specific form of (very) deep tissue massage and the other two are roughly equivalent practices in body awareness and paying attention to how one moves. They're common in performance studies (acting, dance, etc) but have lost the attention of the broader public over the last few decades and so you won't find them as easily as you do (say) yoga studios now. All three are, ultimately, soothing experiences and generally provide immediate relief of acute tension and pain, but that's no more a claim of "medicine" than it would be to suggest someone might help to breathe deeply, lay in a dark room for while, or take any other kind of massage (as the OP already suggested they do).