I am Twisted

Well, it’s official. I now believe all of the people that have been telling me for years that I’m twisted.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, I went running on the road and aggravated a condition that had been there for years but never knew it. I went running and then a couple of days later had some aches. This is normal since I don’t run much, and it’s tough on your body, so I didn’t think anything out of the ordinary…until I got in the car.

The aches got worse while on a car trip. I was driving my wife’s car and was going crazy. Since it is not set up for me, it was uncomfortable. I was wriggling around looking for all of the seat adjustments. I found the lumbar control and extended it all the way. Still, no joy.

We arrived at my dad’s house and I was miserable. It was uncomfortable to walk now. I was limping around and complaining that I couldn’t extend my right leg out very far. Little did I know that I was so twisted that my hip was pinching my sciatic nerve and notifying my brain to demand that I stop.

The pain became more severe and wasn’t subsiding. This told me something else was wrong and I decided to do some research. I went to a chiropractor and asked him to order an x-ray and this is what we found…I am twisted.

The initial diagnosis is that my hips are out of alignment. My right hip is high and too far forward than it should be. I attribute a lot of this to how I sit at work. I will change this in order not to exacerbate the issue. Since my hips are out of alignment, this is causing a misdirection in my lower spine. The lower spine is out of alignment as well and could partly be going in the wrong direction from a 2011 bike crash when I went down on my right side and flipped over to my left. Reviewing my x-ray with the doctor was even more shocking when he said, “Oh, I see you have a little bit of scoliosis as well. How long have you had this?”

“No one has ever told me this in my life,” I stated. “How long do you think this has been there?”

“Probably since your teens,” he says.

So what am I doing for this?

  • Getting adjustments in order to correct my hips
  • Regular stretching to lengthen my hamstrings
  • Will begin yoga classes for back and core strengthening
  • Buy a different office chair (or maybe sit on a yoga ball)