Dr. Chris Oswald, Chiropractor and Founder of the Center for Fitness, Health, and Performance
Sitting is the new smoking. How do we solve the public health implication of this? Dr. Chris Oswald, chiropractor, author, and the founder of The Centre for Fitness, Health and Performance, views health from a holistic, science-based perspective as he shares daily practices for a pain free life. His self care health model includes prevention, a collaborative interaction between health practitioner and patient, and ergonomic design.
Dr. Chris Oswald is a chiropractic doctor who owns and operates one of Canada’s leading chiropractic clinics since 1988, The Centre for Fitness, Health, and Performance. He has helped well over 20,000 patients, including many well-known professional athletes, leading-business elite, and clients from diverse backgrounds dealing with pain on a daily basis.
He received his Bachelor of Science, specializing in Human Biology & Human Kinetics, from the University of Guelph in 1984 and graduated as Doctor of Chiropractic, from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in 1988. Respected as one of North America’s leading authorities, Dr. Oswald is a regular contributor and lecturer for the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, Northwestern Health Sciences University and the Canadian Chiropractic Association and was recognized by the Canadian Chiropractic Association as one of the professions top 20 leaders under 40 years of age.
Show Notes
The three health and lifestyle categories we need to focus on for wellness in 2049. [03:33]
What’s one simple thing we can do every day to reduce illnesses, such as anxiety, depression, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis? [08:24]
Around 70% of medical procedures are not effective because it’s not customized to the individual’s issue. [9:48]
About 30% of people rushed to the ER are going because of mechanical pain. [11:20]
What’s the number one cause of back pain? [14:03]
Office Depot hired Dr. Chris Oswald’s team to scientifically determine the best type of office chair. [16:52]
Ergonomic design could lead to tremendous health outcomes and save trillions of dollars in lost workday productivity. [19:20]
What simple changes to lifestyle can everyone make to be virtually pain free? [21:40]
The magic fluid in our spine. [23:02]
How can we keep our spine healthy and pain free? [24:08]
How is technology affecting the physical health of children and teenagers? [25:00]
What’s the vital thing that students entering chiropractic school should know? [26:52]
What’s the truth behind foam pillows and mattresses? [27:56]
Transcript
Bisi Williams 0:04
I'm Bisi Williams, you're listening to Health2049.
Dr. Chris Oswald 0:07
A personal health plan has to involve a full understanding of what is right or wrong with their particular box. It has to involve easily 20 minutes of stretching before they go into their day because we're lying in bed for 30% of our lives. Most people are sitting for the rest of their lives and walking very little or moving very little. So there has to be at least 30 minutes of walking a day in everybody's life because the scientific evidence behind 30 minutes of walking a day to reduce anxiety, depression, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis, there's so much benefit just from simply walking a day versus taking pills or medicines. I think that's a big part of what the future looks like.
Bisi Williams 2:02
Let's talk about our bodies in motion. The way we move or don't move has a crucial relationship to our health and longevity. This might seem like common wisdom in this day and age. But our guest today has devoted much of his career to a deep examination of the biomechanics behind this. And in the process, he's broken new ground. Dr. Chris Oswald is a chiropractor, author, and the founder of The Centre for Fitness, Health and Performance based in Toronto, Canada. This practice is a science-based wellness collab where chiropractors, dentists, physiotherapists, and other allied health professionals work together to diagnose, treat and manage the most common issues of the 21st century. Like facial pain for example, in 2008, his team cracked the code on the underlying causes of chronic jaw and facial pain. This led them to be named the first and only satellite clinic to collaborate with Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Chris Oswald has a clear vision for the role ergonomics plays and contributing to our everyday health and wellness. I'm thrilled to have him here today on Health2049. Dr. Chris, welcome.
Dr. Chris Oswald 3:17
Hey, Bisi, great to be here.
Bisi Williams 3:19
We're delighted to have you. So our show is about the future of health and I would love it if you would take this moment to explain what health and wellness looks like to you in the year 2049.
Dr. Chris Oswald 3:33
All right, well, thanks for this opportunity. And I would tend to say that for me, I broke it down into three different categories. One is health as it applies to the individual. The other one is health care, and how that's a shared role between practitioner and patient. And then health and ergonomics, in conjunction with design because typically, those are two things that are distant cousins. In fact, really far removed distant cousins, usually, because health in ergonomic design doesn't really come into the design cool, funky world very often.
So let's start with health as it applies to the human being. I think that knowledge is power. And we get a lot of knowledge these days from technology. So most of the time, we health practitioners don't love technology because people sit on it for too long with bad posture and hurt themselves. But the positive is that we have access to fantastic information. So we can have a grandmother in the Italian Alps, a teenager in the Bronx, and the neuroscientists at Harvard all have access to the same information. And what we say there is that the individual is then building up this crazy data bank in their brain about, what opportunities or options I have to take care of myself.
And what I think we have to help them with as health providers is help the public now discern which are the evidence-based practices that they should partake in should they have a certain condition or certain pain. Because this is the interesting part that I remember a quote out of University of Toronto's past Dean of Medicine where he said, 21% of medical procedures are proven and predictable. I mean, 79% are just hit and miss trial and error, because everybody's different, and everything works differently on everybody.
And in my world, as a chiropractor, we tend to stay the straight and narrow in that manipulation for back pain, neck pain, and headache is extremely effective, safe and evidence-based. So we tend to stay in those lanes, if you go outside of that, they get a little bit more gray. And I don't love to do that, I just stay in what works. So I'm hoping that as the future goes on, instead of us living in a reactive world like we are that we wait until we blow up, and then we fix it, we become aware of what's evidence-based, what things we should be doing to help ourselves. We look at particularly maybe our parents, our family, our DNA, what do they have wrong with them and how do I prevent that from happening to me, because genetics and environment are both strong influences on our well being. So I would tend to say, let's get away from the reactive, let's get into proactive, let's work on evidence-based driven mechanisms.
Let's think about the doctor of the future spending more time with a patient not running, and Bisi knows because she's seen me before, but there were days when we've seen 100 patients a day in the practice myself, and you're just running. Now fortunately, what we did though, was we said, we're not going to ever just jump into the hamster wheel without stopping and getting to know our patients first. So we take the time to do a proper history, to create a diagnosis, take the diagnostic imaging that was acquired, and then make sure that we produce a diagnosis or a few diagnoses, and explain them back super clearly to the patient so that we're all aligned with where we're at. And the patient then knows what my role is as their health provider, and what their role is as the patient because it's a cooperative.
I believe that if we do that, and we give responsibility back to the patient, then we can actually take a lot of stress off the healthcare system, we can maximize our patient outcomes and we can stop having burned out doctors that are just not thinking clearly, getting the right diagnosis, missing issues, and creating chronic pain problems. At the same time, we're not letting patients jump into things that aren't proven effective for their particular problem. Because the biggest issue that we have in the world today is chronic pain problems. And that means an issue or a pain that's been there for more than six months, and hasn't been broken. So in my mind is always about diagnose accurately, treat aggressively, break the cycle of pain, create understanding, because there's a ton of data that shows that if we actually understand what's wrong with us, we get better way faster, way more cost effectively and we stay out of pain longer.
Bisi Williams 8:16
That's amazing. So tell me more, Dr. Chris, about your personalized health plan for individuals, as you see it in the future.
Dr. Chris Oswald 8:23
A personal health plan has to involve a full understanding of what is right or wrong with their particular bodies, and then know where their weaknesses are. It has to involve easily 20 minutes of stretching before they go into their day because we're lying in bed for 30% of our lives. Most people are sitting for the rest of their lives and walking very, very little or moving very little.
So there has to be at least 30 minutes of walking a day in everybody's life because the scientific evidence behind 30 minutes of walking a day, as transcribed on YouTube by Dr. Mike Evans, a Canadian physician, he's shown that there's more scientific provability behind 30 minutes of walking a day to reduce anxiety, depression, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis, there's so much benefit just from simply walking a day, versus taking pills or medicines. I think that's a big part of what the future looks like. Our systems can't, especially in Canada, and I know that system well, they're burning on all engines, if you will, they're just running on steam or fumes, and they're gonna blow up. It's too costly. And again, we're not helping people help themselves. So I'd love to see that happen more effectively and I think that it will.
Bisi Williams 9:49
So you talk about how muscle pain and bone pain really have a significant impact on the economy, but also our ability to enjoy our lives and play as well. I want to get back to when you said, at the top of your vision, that 70% of medical procedures are hit and miss. Can you expand on that a bit more? I find that number staggering.
Dr. Chris Oswald 10:20
So do I, it's basically stating that 21% of medical procedures have been scientifically studied and proven in double blind, clinical-controlled studies to actually be effective. It's a nutty number.
Bisi Williams 10:37
And so tell me, because your practice is quite holistic, and comprehensive and I have to say that, as an athlete in my younger days, as a busy person who travels, etc, the notion of just living with pain was a thing that you just did. Until I met you, I didn't actually realize that you could be pain free. What is necessary to get people in society to understand that, that's not a good state of being, and that you can transfer to a state where you can move freely and actively?
Dr. Chris Oswald 11:20
Well, the things that we talked about before Bisi is that if we have a practitioner, accepting a patient based on their symptoms, aligning with what they're capable of doing for them, because a lot of times, you're still seeing people rushed to the emergency wards in a hospital, when they have back pain. That's about 30% of people that go to a hospital are going because of mechanical pain.
But what are you going to do there? You're going to rush for a CAT scan or an MRI that's going to cost the system or you or your insurance company a lot of money, and you're going to get given a pill. Really? Right. That's it? I mean, that's not effective care, that's not going to help the system. In fact, the American College of Physicians and Surgeons in November last year, made a dramatic statement that said, if someone is in acute pain, they can no longer and should no longer be given an opioid ingestible pill, or a nonsteroidal ingestible pill. They had to be given a non steroidal topical cream first for one week. And what that would do is quite likely, help reduce the localized pain or inflammation in that tissue. And it would prevent that person becoming addicted or fixated on drugs. And that's a big part of this whole picture is that people get stuck into a pain pill popping mechanism rather than, let's figure out what's wrong with the right diagnostician and again, assume responsibilities and take action for myself.
As of today, the number one global disability is lower back pain and the number four global disability is neck pain and headache. So that's crazy, these are mechanical issues that are now garnishing a lot more money for a lot more research. And to answer your question from before, not every medical procedure has a ton of money going behind it. Our cancers, our cardiovascular disease, our mental health, that takes probably the lion's share of our investment dollars for research. So every little other procedure doesn't have a ton of dollars going into collecting data.
Bisi Williams 13:44
But let's talk about that. Let's dig take a deeper dive, if chronic back pain and neck pain are number one and number four globally, what is it that you imagine we could do to help alleviate suffering from your perspective?
Dr. Chris Oswald 14:03
I know exactly what we can do. So here's the science behind back pain, what's the number one cause of back pain? Do you know?
Bisi Williams 14:15
I don't actually.
Dr. Chris Oswald 14:16
Ah, well, I will tell you. Sitting is the number one cause of degenerative back disease and back pain, sitting. And if you think about it, most people sit for 60 to 70% of their day, and most people sit in probably not the best of ergonomic chairs, couches, etc. Many people sit on stools, and especially with the pandemic that we've been through the number of patients that have come in and say I'm at my high stool at my kitchen counter on my computer all day or I'm in my bed sitting on my laptop all day working, but everybody is sitting. Sitting is the number one cause of back pain. So, what are we going to do about that? Well, let's at least tell everybody. I mean, some people coined it, sitting is the new smoking. So how come in my mind, we need to make sure that it's not just high end automobiles that have adjustability to the back support of their chairs for people, it has to be something that everybody has access to. Because it doesn't matter what demographic or socio economic group you come from back pain is pretty much universal.
Bisi Williams 15:36
Okay, Chris, this is fascinating to me because people who run a business, you say, the number one gift that you can give to your staff is a good chair. If you think about and yet, the chair is probably the most expensive item that you would have to purchase, I mean, chairs, good chairs cost quite a bit of money. Now, I'm not knocking the dollar. But I'm going to this thing, the next place I'm going to go, if our in our daily life, we sit a tremendous amount. And then, the few bits that we walk around, we go to sleep, and now we're lying, and the beds that we lie on, don't support us as as well. And I'm wondering, based on the statistics that you've given us, and the evidence that you've said, the amount of poor chairs, poor sleeping material, the lack of ergonomics in our every day furniture that we need to live and work and play is flawed, I think that's the biggest health and business opportunity on the planet. And why are we not pursuing the science of this?
Dr. Chris Oswald 16:52
Well, it's funny, so two years ago, I was hired by Office Depot in the US head office, to be the official ergonomic officer, so that we could evaluate the evidence behind sitting, sitting on yoga balls, sitting on stools, sitting on ergonomic chairs, and the benefits of sit stand desks. And my team went through 178 scientific papers, and it was determined very clearly that stools are very bad for your back. Yoga balls are very bad for your back, ergonomic chairs that have adjustability with lumbar support, height adjustments, as well as armrests that would go up and down, or in and out were extremely valuable in reducing pain and the sit stand desk opportunity, having a desk that went up and down or standing half of the day and sitting half of the day, had dramatic benefits. Get a load of this in adolescent kids and college-aged kids, the cognitive functioning and academic performance went up, productivity went up, pain in the back, neck, shoulders, and upper back went down dramatically.
There's so much evidence, but they like any other company, that is a Fortune 500 company running in all directions, they couldn't even, as they hired me to give them quotes from scientific papers that they could take to legal to actually make the claim that was supported by evidence, so that there was no issues with the claims they were making for the products they were selling. But they couldn't even get the information onto paper to get it out to the public. They were so swamped with lack of people, lack of order, just like every other big company is.
So I think that these types of forums that you've created, and I've created are really great opportunities for us to teach people that we created a good, better, best situation. So you said the dollar is a driving factor when it comes to ergonomics, but is it really? Because you could buy a $200 chair that has an adjustable seat for up and down height. And some armrests that go up and down and you could put a $40 back cushion that gives a little lumbar curve support. And you could be okay. And ergonomic chairs have improved dramatically in their price positioning, a custom ergonomic chair can be $500 to $1,500. Now that's a decent chair.
Bisi Williams 19:20
But you know, Chris, I think what you're getting to is actually not the money, to me from a public health standpoint, what you're suggesting that's going on leads me to believe that not only do health practitioners and wellness practitioners need to do better in their communication, I feel like designers also have a role in terms of understanding the material and the body that the object is actually in service to something that we use every single day and how it helps us function and be vital. I'm curious, let's just play a game, imagine if we had, let's just pretend it's public policy that the design of beds and chairs, need to meet a certain standard to enable wellness. So if poor ergonomics is the new smoking, the public health implications of this are kind of mind blowing that for very little intervention, we could have a tremendous health outcomes that would actually take away the strain from emergency wards and hospitals.
Dr. Chris Oswald 20:49
Yes and the system itself, trillions of dollars in workdays lost productivity, all the other implications that go along with chronic pain. You don't have to miss work, because of back pain even though you thought at one point in your life, that was just the norm. Most people felt the same way. But the this is massive. I mean, the data is showing right in front of us, that ergonomics lessens back pain, adjustability lessens back pain, standing up, sometimes through the course of the day reduces back pain even more. And I love like you just said the design community is so cool and ergonomics have always been thought of as like, it's just ugly. I mean, I guess it's comfortable, but it's just not cool. But yeah, if you bring the two together, that would just be mind-blowing for me and I think the rest of the world.
Bisi Williams 21:40
Right, sexy and smart. And so if I take that further, let's imagine it's 2049 and are we 100% pain free if we incorporate ergonomic design into our lives? And a little bit of stretching? Do you imagine that we could do that?
Dr. Chris Oswald 22:03
I believe that in 2049, we can be virtually pain free, mechanical species, if we do those three things. I think that practicing a bit of mindfulness, from a mental health perspective is important because there is the notion that stress can act on our weak links within our body's joint system, that's still part of who we are as humans. So staying relaxed is good. But it's hard to know these days, because so many people, where does our stress come from? There's lots of different reasons. But I think that pain is a big driver of our stress levels as well. So as you just said, walk, stretch, sit on something better, sleep on something better, and you're probably going to feel a heck of a lot less pain and way more equipped to deal with what life throws at us just normally and naturally.
Bisi Williams 23:02
So I have a question for you because you mentioned something, there's this vital fluid that's in our spine. What is this magic fluid and what does it help us do? And when we don't take care of our muscular and skeletal system, what's going on?
Dr. Chris Oswald 23:22
Well, this is a great one, the answer to your question, nutrient laden fluid is the fluids within our body that actually can, when we rest at night, we lie down in a good healthy, neutral state, we're not all curled in a ball or twisted in funny shapes, we take the pressure off our spinal joints and the rest of our joints. And this nutrient laden fluid, magically seeps back into our cartilage and our other structures so that we revitalize, rejuvenate, wake up the next day feeling the same, feeling good, but what happens is, here's the issue today when you're walking along the street and you're looking at everybody, what are they doing with their heads?
Bisi Williams 24:05
Oh, they are bent over their phones.
Dr. Chris Oswald 24:08
Right, bang on Bisi. So if you flex the spine, flex, lean forward, it means you push the nutrient laden life-giving fluids out of our discs and our joint spaces, creating aging, degeneration and pain faster than anything that we do to ourselves day to day. So then, when they sit down, the average person does what, sits straight or slouch?
Bisi Williams 24:38
Right, they slouch.
Dr. Chris Oswald 24:39
Exactly, so then you're putting yourself into a C curve, or a slouch, as you said, and you're pushing that fluid out. So you're creating more degeneration and this is what we see as health practitioners that years ago when I started in practice almost 34 years ago. Seems like yesterday.
Bisi Williams 24:59
Yes, it is yesterday.
Dr. Chris Oswald 25:00
Thank you, makes me feel better, that we would take X rays of the teenagers that would be injured and they had very little degeneration or wear and tear on their spines. But now, those teenagers look like the 60 year olds of 30 years ago.
Bisi Williams 25:16
Come on.
Dr. Chris Oswald 25:17
I swear to you Bisi, the amount of degeneration and wear in these kids these days that aren't moving, that aren't stretching, that aren't walking, that are sitting in poor postures, that alone is destroying their systems. So again, what we're doing is, if we let technology take us over, we become degenerative beings a lot sooner, we become painful beings a lot sooner, and we become a demand on the system a lot sooner. So that's why it's important that if you do these things, and you're physically active to some degree, you can see and feel your mental and physical well-being improving, but being aware of that immediately creates habits of positive action going forward. So I believe we just have to get people to realize the importance of posture, to realize the importance of a morning stretch routine, and a 30 minute walk routine and I think that we can change the world going into 2049.
Bisi Williams 26:27
And I think that that high touch right is also preventative. That makes sense. And so looking back 30 years, if you were talking to yourself today, and we were in a time capsule, what would you tell students entering into the chiropractic profession today that you think is vital for them to learn and understand.
Dr. Chris Oswald 26:52
I would still say that the human connection, building the human relationship, and then ultimately trust, having the ability to touch, feel, as well as, talk to and teach is extremely powerful. And knowing that you have those tools as well as the academic knowledge, you can make a massive impact on human health and well-being especially knowing that low back pain is number one global disability and neck pain is number four. I think that I would strongly encourage them to go down that path and say that there is very likely to be an abundance of work for you going forward as you help cultivate and help people transition more into a preventative self care health model.
Bisi Williams 27:38
That's a fantastic message. Thank you. So Dr. Chris, I'm just curious, is there anything in your field of work as a chiropractor and an entrepreneur that people would find surprising?
Dr. Chris Oswald 27:56
That's a great question. I am so glad that you asked me Bisi because I am blown away and became blown away in my research in the build of pillows, mattresses, beds, etc., when it came to foam, because most people that come to see me say I have a foam pillow. But a foam is not a foam is not a foam. There are so many types of foam. Okay, there's standard foam, there's high resistance or resilience, HR foam, and there's visco foam. And these are typically levels from poor to great. Okay. And honestly, I would say to you, here's the clincher though, a lot of these foams are not made in the types of facilities that you or I would feel comfortable with at all.
Here's the deal, because when we first got into the ergonomic world, we got into it in 2004 and we created our own foam because all of the other foams, we learned were being made in facilities in let's say in places that weren't, again, made public to us over here in North America. We thought some of these products were being made in Sweden or Europe or North America, but they were being made in different places that weren't of the best quality. So then we learned Okay, what does that mean? Well then let's look at the ingredients of foam. And you would be so surprised with the toxic level of chemicals that go into foam creation in poor facilities. So this is why people were coming to us with a pillow and they say I have a foam pillow but it stinks and it stinks for three months and I'm sucking up all these toxic chemicals. That's not good. And they're coming to us saying this pillow I really liked it a month ago, and then it's flat as a pancake today. What's going on?
Well then we started to go through ingredients, density, cellular structure of foam and we did more and more research to the point where we got to this group, and they actually found us, from Belgium that had been in business for like 68 years in foam. And these people have created infant safety rated foam. So literally, there's no off gassing, there's no smell, there's no toxicity coming off of that type of foam. And that's what we use in the creation of our products. And, again, if I told you that most of the foams that are in your average department store are standard foam, and that's like the lowest of ends of foam, it's not designed to hold up people. A lot of them are coming from offshore manufacturing, which means that they're again, just that much less equality. So we were blown away by it, if people knew what we knew, it would wake them up significantly to really doing their research about just running out and grabbing a box compression ship mattress online, that's a reasonable price in their minds. Because we really feel that this has been the biggest downfall of the industry, they're pushing beds out in boxes, for example, with really poorly made foam, and they don't have enough density to support a human, they actually contribute to the bad back problems that we're having in the world today. So that's that's a big, big, big topic of discussion for the next show.
Bisi Williams 31:31
Well, I'm actually kind of flabbergasted because it had never occurred to me that my pillow might be toxic, and are off gassing considering the location close to the brain, the olfactory system and breathing. That is another topic for another show, you've really opened my eyes, Dr. Chris to a whole world where things that we think are just everyday natural, are not. The amount of design and science that's required to keep us healthy and well and moving in our built environment is actually quite staggering. And I don't think we've really spent a good deal of time as lay people and/or professionals thinking about the things we do the most in our lives, i.e. sitting and sleeping, and how just on a daily basis, poor chairs, poor beds, poor pillows, for design of cars, and seating really has a huge impact on our life.
Dr. Chris Oswald 32:45
I think you couldn't have said it better.
Bisi Williams 32:47
I have to say that I'm really looking forward to the future when we have systematically designed better chairs and beds and things that will keep us healthy. Thank you for your illumination today, Dr. Chris.
Dr. Chris Oswald 33:02
You're most welcome. Thank you for this opportunity.
Bisi Williams 33:05
That was Dr. Chris Oswald's vision for health and wellness in the year 2049. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe, rate, review and tell one friend about us. Thanks for listening. I'm your host Bisi Williams, take care and be well.
