SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS : You are as old as your joints
This article is part of the "The Sustainable Developer" series
Physical activity and exercise are today's popular mantra.
Get Strong. Build Muscles. Stay healthy.
Over the years, our society have raised consciousness about the importance of being active and about exercising our body. These messages are useful.
Although exercising is important, to obtain maximum performance developers need to reach their joints, ligaments, tendons and cartilages.
Why is this crucial?
We all started life flexible. A baby can touch its heels on its head if needed.
Progressively we build tension in our body. As we grow older and older we get stiffer and stiffer, bent by life.
What is getting stiffer? Joints, ligaments, tendons and cartilages.
Ask any elderly person and they will often confirm: their pain is on the joints, tendons and ligaments. Their muscles? They work fine.
The bad news is that developers don't need to get older to show physical problems related to joints, tendons and ligaments:
Tendonitis, Dupuytrens, Carpal Tunnel, Bulge Disks, back pain, the list goes on and on. Developers can have any of these problems after some years of coding.
To get even worse, these are slow and progressive problems. It talk some years to feel pain and we should take preventive measures as early as possible.
But lets understand even further.
Joints and ligaments are vital to our range of motion. A wider range of motion influences your body positively. If I can move well, physical and mental limits are better overcome.
The joints and ligaments are so important that our body take extra measures to protect them. Guess who is the guardian keeping joints and ligaments safe? Muscles.
Among other things, muscles try their best to protect our joints and ligaments from bending or stretching over a certain limit.
That is all good but if our muscles are protecting our joints and ligaments, why we often have problems later in life?
The key is that muscles keep our joints and ligaments under a limited range of motion. Safety is the body main concern.
If we don't challenge this safety limit, year after year the range gets shorter. Toxins slowly accumulate in the joints and ligaments, and we end up stiffer and stiffer.
Now, imagine yourself as a developer Homo erectus at 90 years old.
No joints, discs, tendons or ligaments problems.
In the path to become a Sustainable Developer, we must transform our working hours into a 'health bank' for our joints, ligaments and deep tissue.
Is there a safe way to open our joints and ligaments safely ? Yes and we will explore it in the next articles. **For now, just keep in mind that you are as old as your joints. **
This article is based on a chapter of my "The Sustainable Developer" book.
Check the List of articles related to "The Sustainable Developer" here
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(*)
Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement, October 15, 2014 by Katy Bowman (http://www.katysays.com/)