The Fitness Fixer™

       When Fitness and Medicine Aren't Healthy, Fix It (and boy do they need it)

 

Hello, You are on the Fitness Fixer™ health column INDEX -
Close to 800 free articles by Dr. Bookspan on healthier medicine and fitness

The Fitness Fixer was awarded Best Medical Blog Finalist and Best Clinical Sciences Blog

 

 

How To Use This Index:

1. The Fitness Fixer™ was Dr. Jolie Bookspan's column on Healthline.com from 2006 to 2010. Dr. Bookspan is The Fitness Fixer™ - pioneer of Functional Exercise, Making Medicine and Fitness Healthy. Click links below the (long) introduction box for nearly 800 free Fitness Fixer™ articles.  

2. Are you a major health information source? Run or syndicate this exciting column of original research and groundbreaking innovations. After Dr. Bookspan's Fitness Fixer™ Health Authority column ended in April 2010, Healthline removed comments, all movies, and most needed graphics (of remaining photos most were moved so they don't match the text). Then they cut each article in half and put the beginning of each article at the end, obscuring meanings (and looking pretty silly). Can your site invite Dr. Bookspan to continue this important work? Write TheFitnessFixer @ DrBookspan.com to run or syndicate through you.

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Come back again and again. Use your brain and body at the same time to apply these concepts to change unhealthful fitness and medical practices back to a healthier fun life. Dr. Jolie Bookspan, THE Fitness Fixer™ is here on DrBookspan.com. For more of Dr. Bookspan's work use the jump links at page bottom. Have fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Alphabetical index follows this (long) introduction box:
Read the fun of all we accomplished, or click to SKIP to INDEX

 

What Is The Fitness Fixer™?

  • Dr. Bookspan's methods, used by the military and top spine doctors, are so successful that Harvard School of Medicine clinicians named her "The St. Jude of the Joints."  Here is the first article from August 2006 - Welcome to the Fitness Fixer

Only Available Here

  • I bring you areas I professionally studied and directly researched in the lab of my own subjects, students, and patients. Instead of repeated news, you get original research.

Top Training Methods

  • For exercisers, trainers, beginners to top athletes, and their health care providers.

Fix Fitness, Stop Pain

  • This is the place to stop pain and get your life back. I don't "limit the patient to limit the pain." Instead of restricting activities,
  • I pioneered integrating healthy movement into actual real life and sports - "functional" exercise and medicine. You do more while getting stronger, healthier, and stopping pain at the same time.

Green Fitness

  • Burn calories not coal! It's backwards to burn fuels to power artificial exercise machines.
  • We burn off human calories to make electricity. Human powered calorie burning, green power generation, litter cleanup using healthy bending mechanics, community projects, more. See fun, clean, world-healthy projects here.

Flash Mobs

  • Use these Fitness Fixers in my exciting program of #FlashFitness for healthy alternatives for your Flash Mobs. Prizes for healthy creativity. Contact me @TheFItnessFixer on Twitter

Fast Fitness Friday

  • Weekly feature most Fridays. Quick effective techniques to put immediately into practice, "one, two, three."

Contests

  • Demonstrate your skills, your knowledge, and how well you pay attention. Prizes too.

Fitness Fixer™ Hall of Fame. Readers send their success stories Fixing Injuries and Top Training using my work. Come be one

Forensics, Training and Survival from Mountaintop to Undersea, Heat and Cold. G-forces and Microgravity

  • My research in environmental physiology, forensic, work, and fun adventures.

Brain and Body

  • Mind health, emotional health.
  • Strengthening the discipline cooperation and respect that improve personal and community health.
  • Fix Myths, Fads, and Urban Legends. Get real information and understand issues to make informed decisions.

Aps

  • My Fitness Fixers are naturals for mobile device aps. Developers, be in touch.

Laughing is Healthy

  • We'll fix your injuries or double your pain back.
  • Send in your funny fitness health photos and stories. Prizes for smart fun.
  • Reader PaulJ contributed articles so funny true and good that I appointed him my Academy Director of Silly Syndromes.

Make Health Care Healthy

  • Not all exercise is good medicine. Not all medicine is healthy. We fix that.

Real Life - Functional - Lifestyle

  • We make daily life into built-in health and medicine. Functional fitness and medicine.
  • If you have to stop your life to "go do exercise" how can that be exercise as a lifestyle?
  • Building healthy biomechanics into regular dally actions builds strength, calorie burning, and joint stabilization into real life.
  • Using healthy body mechanics to do things that benefit others makes daily life into built-in physical, emotional, social, and environmental health.

Bookspan Basics™

  • I designed quick group skills that put health back into basic human movement.
  • With good attention, you can learn and teach them to your groups, kids, teams, classes, & battalions,
  • Also good for teaching exercise in the park, and adding to your existing exercise classes.

Join Research Studies

  • Students of exercise and medical sciences, researchers, smarties, get ideas here then contact me for interesting beneficial studies you can do for school under my supervision.

I Don't Repeat News, My Readers and I Make News

  • My Academy teaches healthy sports medicine, and provides classes and instructor training, community health programs, more. Our Academy Awards reward world health initiatives. Formally, we are the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine - AFEM. Informally, we call it the Fixa U™.
  • Readers created such far-reaching projects from my work that I awarded them positions as project directors of my Academy.
  • Peggy Santamaria taught healthy movement for paid job positions for developmentally disabled adults. She is our Director of Developmental Abilities.
  • Stuart Wood taught healthy digging methods for a water reharvesting program, and an after-school program for kids that teaches healthy movement is fun. I appointed Stuart as my Director of Community Projects.
  • Annie Fetter is extending our method of understanding and applying skills to daily life for baseline ability and health, to teaching math.   We are developing more innovative group health programs.
  • See these projects and more on my Academy Honors page: http://drbookspan.com/AcademyStudents.
    .

Fitness Fixer Reality Show

  • Readers, Take The Fitness Fixer™ and the Fixa U™ on the road. I am looking for the right people who successfully use my work for their own health, to take these innovative methods to families and communities.
  • Film short structured clips of yourself doing simple sincere makeovers like a traveling knight. Examples: Retrain healthy movement and integrate strength health and weight control into people's daily work and home lives, school programs, teaching digging mechanics at community gardens, municipal water reclamation projects, for day laborers, office workers, and others.
  • Heal the world one makeover at a time through good work like the Lone Ranger, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, The Dog Whisperer, The Nanny, Weed Dating (social networking through group gardening events) and Pay it Forward wrapped up in one.
  • Intelligent caring real life is more fitness than yelling while heavy people trudge with bad mechanics on treadmills.
  • Networks - are you interested in making my trademarked work your next hit show? It's right here

Twitter

  • Quick updates, class dates, more reader successes, contests, invitations to World Health projects, more. No chatter, just useful info: www.Twitter.com/TheFitnessFixer Follow TheFitnessFixer on Twitter

Copyright and Reprint Instructions

 

A

Abdominal Muscles - What Do They Have to Do With It All? - You May Be Surprised:

 
"Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that,
those who have the best stomachs, are not the best thinkers." - Voltaire

Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine - AFEM.  Dr. Bookspan's Academy. Making Medicine and Exercise Healthy for People and Communities™:

Academy Projects - Incredible Projects Readers Have Created:

Achilles Tendon:

ADD/ADHS:

Aerobic:

Fitness Fixer and DrBookspan.com are the *HOME* of Happy Mitochondria!

Aging - It's Not Aging that Causes Exercise Injury - Check Bad Biomechanics and Bad Stretching:

Healthy Aging:

Altitude, Aviation:

Ankle Sprains:

Anterior Cruciate Ligament:

Arches:

Arthritis:

"I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis
and I don't deserve that either." - Jack Benny
Awards:

 

B

Back Pain - "Mystery" Lower Back Pain, SI Joint, Lordosis, Pain When Standing, Walking, Running Lifting Overhead:

Balance and Agility:

Biathlon/ Duathlon:

Biking:

Blood Pressure:

Bobsled/ Bobsleigh:

Books:

Bookspan Basics - Good body mechanics are a powerful performance enhancing aid:

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person."
- Mother Teresa

Breath-Hold Diving:

Breathing and Lung Function:

"I went to see Pavarotti once and I'll tell you this much, he doesn't
like it when you join in."

C

Cancer:

Celiac:

Chest Stretch - Restore muscle length to stand without round shoulders:

Children's Health - Good for your child, or family members who act like one:

"The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice.
They just want quiet." - Bill Cosby

Christmas Fitness - Staying healthy and sane:

Cleaning Products - Make your own healthy items quickly, cheaply, easily:

Cold Science and Thermal Medicine:

Colds and Flu:

"A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea."
-- Jules Renard

Contests !    Win Prizes Have Fun:

Crunches - Never Need Them Again:

 

D

Depression:

Diabetes:

Digging/Shoveling Biomechanics:

Disability/Ability:

"Inexperience is not Inability"
- Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum), The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
(when I was a kid I wanted to BE Illya Kuryakin)

Discs/ Sciatica Can Heal:

Diving, Scuba and Decompression Medicine:

  • Check each topic of Scuba and Decompression Medicine separately below.

Drugs and Medicines:

"One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.”
- Sir William Osler (Canadian physician 1849 – 1919)

E

Elbows:

Exercise Ball - How to get past the hype:

Extension Exercise and Supermans - Prone Extension Exercise Debate:

  • A summary of how and why the exercise called "supermans" have components that can be used well or badly are in the comments of Fast Fitness - Stronger, Straighter Upper Back (the Healthline company that I used to write for changed format. They removed the comments, mentioning they may restore them in the future. Comments were great and polite questions from readers and included my many replies. Let Healthline know if you want them back and to restore them)

F

Facets, Facet Joints and Facet Pain

Fast Fitness - Want it fast? One change for the better - 1, 2, 3 - each Fast Friday:

  • Healthline removed all my lables so we can no longer group all articles of the same topic, like Fast Friday Fitness. Check this index or me personally for individual fun things to try. I had written a Fun Friday Feature - hundreds over 4 years appearing each Friday - of fast, effective, sports medicine techniques, one each week, to make training safer and show you how to do more.

Fibromyalgia:

Fitness as a Lifestyle - How to Get Real Life Functional Exercise:

Food and Recipes:

Foot Drop:

Forensics! What Do Forensics Have to Do With Fixing Pain? Click to Find Out:

"Never argue with 7 men when all you've packing is a 6 gun "
- Col Sherman Potter, 4077 MASH

Functional Exercise and Medicine:

G

g-FORCE and ACCELERATION science:

"You can't keep a good scientist down"
- Doc Emmett Brown, scientist in the movie 'Back To The Future'

Gardening:

"Charming villains have always had a decided social advantage over
well-meaning people who chew with their mouths open." - Miss Manners

Gluteal Muscles:

  • Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw
  • Fast Fitness - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch - see the comments section in the discussion of reciprocal inhibition about why gluteals do not flex the trunk or hip. (The Healthline company that I used to write for changed format. They removed the comments, mentioning they may restore them in the future. Comments were great and polite questions from readers and included my many replies. Let Healthline know if you want them back and to restore them)

Green Fitness:

"The obscure we see eventually.
The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer."
- Ed Murrow

Grip Strength:

Groin Pulls:

"The only good thing about being imperfect is the joy it brings to others."

Group Fitness

H

Hall of Fame - Fitness Fixer readers using these methods for healthy happy life:

Man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life,
misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which
have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.
-- Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French Writer

Halloween Fitness - Healthier tricking and treating:

Hamstrings - Why stretches more often cause back pain than fix it and what to do instead:

Handstands - Why they're great, easier to do than you think, helpful for fitness, and fun:

Headache, Dizziness:

Heartburn:

Heart Rate and Exercise Level:

Heat Science and Medicine:

Hernia:

Hip Fracture:

Hip Strength:

Hip STRETCH:

Holiday Fitness - Fun healthier holidays and life events:

  • See individual holiday by name

Hyperbarics

Hyperlordosis (SwayBack, Overarched Lower Spine). Why It Hurts and How to Use Neutral Spine In Real Life:

"The men the public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars;
the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."
- HL Mencken

I

Iliotibial Band:

Independence Day - 4th of July in the US:

Inversion Tables

  • Mentioned in the comments of: Fast Fitness - Upper Back, Shoulder, Triceps, Arm, Wrist, and Hand Stretch (the Healthline company that I used to write for changed format. They removed the comments, mentioning they may restore them in the future. Comments were great and polite questions from readers and included my many replies. Let Healthline know if you want them back and to restore them)

K

Knee Pain:


L

Labor Day:

Lactic Acid:

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion.
I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do
afterward." -- Kurt Vonnegut

Laugh:

"Given a choice between two theories,
take the one which is funnier." - Blore's Razor

Leg Stretches :

  • Search on each part in this index, for example, hip, hamstring, foot

Levator Scapulae, Trapezius, Neck/Top of Shoulder Stretch:

Lordosis (normal small lower back inward curve) and hyperlordosis (too much inward curve) the painful overarching that causes much mystery lower back pain:

  • See the topic of Hyperlordosis above, and neutral spine, below - restoring normal (slight small) lordosis which is neutral spine

Lung Function and Breathing

Lunge:

 

M

Martial Arts - Healthier Training and Mindset:

"I prefer to speak at prisons,
because no one walks out in the middle of my speech."
- Archie Moore, former boxing champ

Massage:

Medicine - the Practice of Medicine:

"Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day;
wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit."
- Elbert Hubbard

Meniscus (knee cartilage):

Menstruation:

Mental Fitness:

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
- Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychologist

Metabolism - now and throughout aging:

Military Fitness:

"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music."
- Groucho Marx

Military Press:

Mind:

"I can't give you brains, but I can give you a diploma."
-- the Wizard of Oz

Movies and Media - Fitness in the Movies and Television:

"Movie music is noise. It's even more painful than my sciatica."
- Sir Thomas Beecham (celebrated British conductor)

Myths - Sure are plenty of MYTHS in exercise and medicine:

"Beware! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place;
leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader
originally leaped there when a stick was held.
There's your law of precedents; there's your utility of traditions;
there's the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth,
and now not even hovering in the air! There's orthodoxy!"
-Herman Melville writing in Chapter 69 of Moby Dick;
through the eyes of Ishmael after the whale carcass has been set adrift.

 

N

Neck Pain:

Neti Pots:

Neutral Spine and Hyperlordosis. What are they? Why Do They Matter? How to Use Neutral Spine In Real Life:

New Year Celebration Fitness - Health for many cultures and traditions:

Ninja:

Nutrition:

  • See "Vegetarian" and "Weight Loss" below, and "Food and Recipes" above.
"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep
voting on what to have for dinner." - James Bovard
 

O

Olympics:

Orthotics and Shoe Inserts:

Osteoporosis:

 

P

Paralympics:

Partner Exercise - Don't leave your loved one to exercise, lift your loved one. (Sorry that the helpful photos I made for these were removed (or resized to be out of frame) when Healthline updated the site):

"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man,
and I hate people like that." - Tom Lehrer

Patellar Tracking:

Pectoral (Chest Stretch) - Restore muscle length to stand without round shoulders:

Perceived Exertion:

Personal Responsibility:

"I've been trying for some time to develop a lifestyle
that doesn't require my presence." - Garry Trudeau

Personal Training - Functional body mechanics area powerful performance enhancing aid. These should be the basics you teach clients, petients, and students FIRST to use for all healthy movement to follow:

Planks and Pushups:

Plantar Fasciitis:

Plyometrics:

Posture:

Practice of Medicine - see Medicine, above

Pregnancy:

Pulmonary Edema/ Oedema:

 

Q

Quick FIx:

R

Recipes:

  • See"Food and Recipes" above

Reciprocal Inhibition:

  • Fast Fitness - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch - see the comments section in the discussion of reciprocal inhibition about why gluteals do not flex the trunk or hip. (the Healthline company that I used to write for changed format. They removed the comments, mentioning they may restore them in the future. Comments were great and polite questions from readers and included my many replies. Let Healthline know if you want them back and to restore them)

Reflux and Stomach Acid Medicines:

Repetitions of Exercises

Rowing

Running:

"Tell the truth and run"
- Proverb

S

Scapula

Sciatica

Scoliosis

SCUBA:

Sedentary Lifestyle

Shoes:

Shoveling/Digging:

Shoulder Pain, Rotator Cuff Injury, Impingement:

"I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks."
- Steve Martin

Sitting:

Skin Products:

Sleep:

Sleep, Fixing Uncomfortable Sleeping Positions - Articles with comments and my replies that address fixing uncomfortable sleep positions (the Healthline company that I used to write for changed format. They removed the comments, mentioning they may restore them in the future. Comments were great and polite questions from readers and included my many replies. Let Healthline know if you want them back and to restore them):

Space Walks and Space Science:

Speed:

"If everything is under control, you are going too slow."
- Mario Andretti (world champion racing driver)

Spirit - Strengthen Spirit as Daily Mindset:

"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
- Abraham Lincoln

Sport Drinks and Fitness Water:

"Men have become the tools of their tools."
- Henry David Thoreau

Sport Specific:

Standing - Pain With Long Standing:

Squat:

"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
-- General George S. Patton

Stomach Acid, Reflux, and Stomach Medicines:

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine
but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame,
in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease." ~Thomas Edison

Stretches - Use These Four Every Day:

Stretches - Retrain Key Stretches:

Stretching Smarter:

Stretching Tests:

Surgery:

Swimming:

Supermans - Prone Extension Exercise Debate:

  • Summary of how and why the exercise called "supermans" have components that can be used well or badly. See the comments of Fast Fitness - Stronger, Straighter Upper Back  (the Healthline company that I used to write for changed format. They removed the comments, mentioning they may restore them in the future. Comments were great and polite questions from readers and included my many replies. Let Healthline know if you want them back and to restore them)

 

T

Taxes:

Tea:

Tests and Measurements:

Tightening Muscles is Not Functional or Helpful to Exercise:

Thai Massage:

Thanksgiving Fitness -  Food, Preparations, Sharing Thanks:

Toes & Feet:

Transversus Abdominal Muscles, Using an "Abdominal hollow" not Healthy Or Necessary:

Trapezius, Levator Scapulae and other Neck/Top of Shoulder Stretch:

Travel Medicine:

Triathlon - also see Biathlon/ Duathlon, above:

U

Upper Back Pain and Ergononics

V

Vegetarian and Vegan:

Videos!    Most Less Than a Minute Long. Learn Key Concepts and How to Apply Them:
Short visuals for stretches, strengthening, learning neutral spine, ankle rehab, more. This was a free "wiki" DVD project of many shorts. I previously had several dozens of movie in my Fitness Fixer articles on Healthline.

  • NOTE:  The Healthline company has removed all my movies since they discontinued my column early in 2010. You may just have to come to class or a personal sppointment.
  • I plan to continue this feature on my personal web site. Readers and students - Send in yours! I will personally e-mail you with free movement skills analysis, and you will be a role model for others. Make your videos short and fun. Silent is best for World appeal. Add fun music if you can or short captions to help.

 

W

Walking:

Warm Up:

Weight Lifting:

Weight Loss:

Marty McFly: "Whoa, this is heavy."
Dr. Emmett Brown: "There's that word again; "heavy". Why are things so heavy in the future?
Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?"
- Movie, Back to the Future

Wilderness Medicine:

"Utility is when you have one telephone; luxury is when you have two
and paradise is when you have none."

Work of Breathing:

Y

Yoga, not Dogma:

"Dogma is the sacrifice of wisdom to consistency"
~ Lewis Perlman

Yoga - Transfer healthy movement to daily life:

Yoga - Make Poses Healthier:
Prevent Yoga Injuries:
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Photo Credits for Photos in the Index Title Bar

Bones on a Bike: Photo by MoToMo. Fitness Fixer story using this photo in A Reader Asks About Osteoporosis and Walking Lightly.
Astronaut Space Walk: Photo by TopTechWrite, Creative Commons. Fitness Fixer Story in Collapsing Astronaut Gives Healthy Reminder.
Sprained Ankle : Photo by Justinoberman. Story in How To Treat Ankle Sprains and Prevent Them.
Jumping for Joy: Photo by BingBing. Story in You Can Fix Your Own Knees.
Running Leg. Photo by wickye.
Parcours (Parkour) jump. Photo by Tatiana Sapateiro. Story in Parcours - Old Fun Is New Exercise.
Crutches in Trash: Photo of "milagro" (miracle) by Daquella manera. Story in Inspirational Ivy II - Beating Foot Drop and Sciatica, and Getting Healthier.

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Science is a wonderful thing
if you don't have to earn your living at it,
said Einstein.
He was smart.



Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
- Howard Aiken

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