Walking Arm Swing Predicts Dementia

So your arms don't swing when walking. How does that reflect on your health?

Coming right up

Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg with Wellness For Life and if you'd like to truly master

health by understanding how the body really works make sure that you

subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss anything. Arm

swinging may seem like a trivial thing it's like

what's the big deal if you swing or don't tell what it looks it's just

aesthetic you mean dancers maybe or but does it really matter for everybody yes

arm swing is one of the most fundamental patterns in the body the gait reflex is

a foundation of a lot of patterns in your nervous system it starts developing

when you first crawl so some around six months or so your body learns your

nervous system you figure out that the arm should move opposite to the leg and

that holds true for walking it holds true for crawling it's a gate reflect

it's called a cross crawl pattern and because it's so fundamental because it's

involved with so many different developments in the body it can be

devastating if this doesn't develop properly so dyslexia for example has

been associated with poor gait patterns and a lot of people with dyslexia will

actually benefit from going back to crawling from practicing the basic gait

reflex again and people who are clumsy who sprained their ankles who are injury

prone or accident prone that is also a reflection of brain patterns how well

balanced how precise is that nervous system and it all starts with a gait

reflex but where most people really start to pay attention is when we start

talking about dementia because one of the earliest signs of dementia that you

can pick up way way way before there's any memory

issues or any brain scan abnormalities it's a slight loss of gait pattern so if

you lose the arm swing if there is less of a mount of arm swing if there is less

magnitude or if there is more on one side than the other or if there's an

arrhythmic gait pattern all of those are very early indicators of

neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's so here's a

quote from New England Journal of Medicine 2002 the presence of gait

abnormalities is a significant predictor of risk of developing dementia so even

in the medical field they notice in chiropractic neurology and functional

neurology they've worked with this for decades and they know that one of the

very first things to look for is gait when you evaluate a person when you

evaluate their neurological reflexes gait is one of the very first things

that you want to look at so prevention is key though and as with everything if

you prevent it if you build up a function stronger before it deteriorates

then your chances of not having a problem is much much greater so in the

case of Parkinson's for example by the time that they diagnose the disease once

they have some stiffness and and some shuffling gait and and some speech

abnormalities even in the early stages of that they have about 50 to 80 percent

loss of the critical neurons of the dopamine-producing neurons in the

substantia nigra area of the brain so by the time they find that you already lost

50 to 80% what if you could prevent it what if you could support the body's

function as much as possible with all the other things that we talked about on

this channel but in this case more specifically by practicing

by practicing paying attention to how you're moving to what's the extent

what's the excursion of the gates and what's the symmetry of the pattern from

side to side so in order to understand a little bit more we're going to know that

the brain controls everything in the body but the brain doesn't know anything

it's not being told so the brain relies exclusively on signals and these signals

come from receptors that provide feedback so once we have lost some of

that gate pattern some of that gate arm swing movements then the brain has lost

the control over the muscle but part of that is because the brain lost some of

the feedback and now the brain starts degenerating because it is not as active

because it is not receiving information it is not sending signals out the brain

and neuroplasticity is functioning in a way that the brain is just like a muscle

if you work it out you'll maintain the strength you work out a muscle by

putting tension on it but you work out the month the brain by sending signals

to it and making the brain produce signals and gate is one of those things

so that the more precise your gate the more precise the execution the more

precise the feedback have to be and the stronger and healthier the brain cells

have to be so can you reverse neurodegenerative disease

I believe you can reverse some of the early stages I don't know to what extent

and I don't know if you can reverse some of the severe cases but I think that you

can reverse some of the earlier stages but even more importantly you can

prevent it by giving the body the signals and the nutrition that it needs

you can maintain optimal function so gate in arm swing is tremendously

important for your health it is not a small little trip

we'll deal so look around you look at the people that you care about and look

at how many people are walking around like this or walk look at how many

people who are swinging one arm and not the other

that is a brain imbalance in the early stages you can correct it but you have

to pay attention you have to do something about it and you have to be

consistent and patient if you enjoy content like this where we learn how the

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