Submitted by Dr. Daryl Bourke

I think if you asked the average person if they thought that tight muscles were a major health issue they would think the cheese had slipped off your cracker. They would correct you and tell you we need a cure for cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, etc. While they are correct, those cures are years away, so let’s go back and look at the effects of tight muscles or lack of flexibility. First of all, do you know anyone who gained flexibility as they grew older? Do you know that a sedentary lifestyle or an injury to a joint causes the muscles to tighten up; the tightening of the muscle causes pain. Do you know how many people die from the complications of using NSAID’s like aspirin for joint and muscle pain every year as compared to deaths from cancer, heart attack and stroke? I live in British Columbia, Canada, where if you have a sore back or knee you could wait for 6- 12 months for an MRI, and if you need joint replacement surgery, well that’s at least a year away. So what conditions are associated with lack of flexibility? 80% of people will experience back pain in their life, the majority of people will experience joint pain from Osteoarthritis and may require joint replacement therapy. The advent of the PC computer has caused a spike in the incident of headaches and back pain. When the elderly use NAIDS for joint pain one of the side effects is dizziness, which can result in falls and a possible broken hip, I am not even going to talk about gastrointestinal bleeding associated with ASA.

Proper treatment of musculoskeletal injury such as Far Infrared Therapy (FIRT) in combination with other natural treatments would be a good start. The use of pain killer will give short term relief but cause long term problems. Read the other articles on this web site written by a specialist in musculoskeletal pain and explaining how FIRT decreases pain, increases endorphins, relaxes muscles, increases circulation and reduces inflammation with no side effects.