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The Posture Theory
and Chronic Fatigue
The first indication that I had that posture had anything
to do with my own health problems was when I was working as a
public service clerk.
I was transferred to the cash controllers office where part
of my duties was to sit at a desk and count the daily take of
coins into piles of twenty of their particular denomination.
I noticed that after a couple of hours of starting work at
9 a.m. that I would get a vague ache in the left side of my back
at the level of my left kidney, and if I continued with that
work for another hour I would also start getting the ache in
the region of my right kidney.
A few months later I had some tests and was found to have
a stone in my left kidney.
About a year later, when I was engaged in my usual pastime
of gymnastics, I performed a handspring heels over head leap
and when my feet landed on the floor with my back arched I felt
a ripping sensation in my upper abdomen. I waited a few moments
to see if blood would come pouring from my belly, up through
my throat , and out of my mouth, but nothing happened so I resumed
my activities as an instructor without any further problems.
However in the next month or so, I started to notice that
I would get a nagging ache in my belly about an hour after commencing
my days work as a clerk. I also noted that these aches were associated
with leaning toward the desk to read or write, and that the longer
I did that work for the worse the pain got. Hence the pain was
worse on the busiest days of the week.
Within a year or two the abdominal pain was becoming more
of a problem and I was beginning to feel faint, or dizzy or breathless
as well, each time I leaned toward a desk.
I was also getting fatigue, and one night in the gym I performed
an exercise called a round off back somersault and when I landed
on my feet I felt dizzy and it appeared as if a thousand stars
were shooting in all directions before my eyes, so I stood still
and staid bent over. I then waited for a few moments expecting
to lose consciousness and collapse, but I recovered without ill
effect and continued with my activities, although in a more subdued
manner.
The problems were therefore beginning to have a serious effect
on my occupation and my lifestyle.
Unfortunately the problems were a mystery to my doctor, and
the medication that he was prescribing was not helping, as my
health continued to deteriorate regardless.
At about that time I read that an organisation called The
South Australian Institute For Fitness Research and Training
was conducting fitness training programmes under medical supervision
for various ailments. I therefore thought that I could attend
such a course as treatment and that research doctors might be
able to enlighten me about the nature of my ailments.
At the initial medical assessment I was required to ride an
ergometric cycle while attached to electrodes which recorded
pulse rate over wheel pressure and could measure aerobic capacity
with scientific reliability. The result was a fitness level of
zero, compared to a friend of mine who measured 900, and an Olympic
athletes measurement of 1200. Another person I met was a forty
year old overweight asthmatic with a measurement of 600.
At the same session my body fat was measured with calipers,
and I was told that I was all skin and muscle, with virtually
no body fat, and that I had the muscle, fat ratio of an athlete,
probably due to ten years of sport and gymnastics.
I trained at the Fitness Institute for three months and achieved
a level of 350 kpms, and increased the programme to four times
a week and three months later was still at 350 kpm's so I concluded
that I had some sort of physical impairment which was limiting
my fitness capacity regardless of the amount of exercise I did.
I trained more often again for another 3 months and then injured
my knee cartilage while playing social volleyball with the other
programme participants. My leg remained injured due to diagnosis
and post operative problems for 3 years.
During all of that time I was inquiring about my health and
studying it and writing about my conclusions, and submitting
my essays to The Australasian Nurses Journal. After several articles
had been published I met and befriended the editor, Edna Davis,
who continued to publish my articles about once every three months.
Five years later I was able to conclude that most of my ailments
were aggravated by leaning forward, including the fatigue, and
in 1980 I wrote a three page essay called The Matter Of Framework,
which I have since called The Posture Theory.
Some time later I became aware that Sir Mark Oliphant was
living in a nursing home in North Adelaide and I knew that he
was regarded as one of Australia's most respected scientists
for his involvement in the Manhattan Project which developed
the atom bomb, so I phoned him and arranged a meeting with the
objective of asking him his opinion about the theory. At our
first meeting he said that he thought the idea was interesting,
but that he was not qualified to comment on medical matters with
any authority. However he told me that he would discuss it with
some of his colleagues who were among the country's top medical
researchers and let me know their opinion. When I met him again
two weeks later he advised me that his medical colleagues also
regarded the theory as interesting but that it was not possible
to say anything other than that because that whole area of medicine
(the range of undetectable an unmeasurable ailments) was a Pandora's
box of mysteries.
One day, while walking along a city street I met a friend
of mine, Clive Thelning, who was blind, and who I had befriended
some years earlier when I was studying group psychology at The
South Australian Institute of Technology, and I asked him what
he was doing. He had completed the Certificate Course, and went
on to do a Psychology Degree, and was working as a psychologist.
I told him about my essay and he said that he knew Tony Sedgewick
who was the head of The Fitness Institute where I trained, so
he suggested that I approach him with the view to arranging some
research on the subject.
At a subsequent meeting with Tony Sedgwick I outlined a potentially
useful training and research programme for reliably and scientifically
assessing the aerobic capacity of people with persistent fatigue,
and asked him to discuss it with his research staff to see if
they were interested.
At a further meeting he advised me that his staff were fully
committed to other projects and invited me to run the programme.
I told him that my health problems would impede my capacity
to do such a project properly, and added that I thought I was
not able to do scientific studies unless I had medical qualifications,
and that I didn't know how it would be funded. He then advised
me that he had some medically qualified contacts and that I could
approach them with the view to forming a committee to satisfy
all the requirements of administering such a course, and he gave
me the name of a politician who I could approach for funding.
A committee was formed and a very small government research
grant was obtained so the programme was established.
I then approached a journalist named Diane Beer who wrote
several articles for the Adelaide newspaper called the "News"
inviting people with persistent fatigue to attend the course.
After three years 80 people had been assessed as having aerobic
capacities of 100 to 1200 kpms with variable responses to training
from those who did not participate, to those who trained but
did not gain much in fitness, to one who trained for nine months
and participated in a small marathon (about 6 miles).
My own health problems stopped me from continuing the recording
and reporting of the statistics in programme, but there was also
conflicting data which I couldn't account for. i.e. I expected
all fatigued participants to have low aerobic capacity, but some
had normal or high levels, and I didn't understand how that could
be so at the time of making my initial report. However, about
5 years later I drew the conclusion that those fatigued people
who had low aerobic capacity possibly had a fitness disorder
(a disorder of exercise metabolism), and those with a high aerobic
capacity must have had a sleep disorder. (In the English language
the word fatigue has two meanings: more commonly it means physical
exhaustion, but that same word is also used to describe tiredness,
therefore, if you recruit people with fatigue into a training
programme, then you are likely to get two totally different types
of volunteer, those who become readily exhausted by exertion,
and those who are always drowsy - you would also find some overlap
and confusion of both symptoms in the same individual).
Another five years went by when I was diagnosed with cancer
and given two months to live with no hope of a cure. The cancer
had spread to most of my lymph glands, and was in my blood and
bone marrow.
I did not think that I would be able to study and cure cancer
in two months, so I decided to occupy my remaining time by writing
about posture and health, and if sitting at a desk aggravated
my health problems it wouldn't matter because I would soon be
dead anyway.
The task did aggravate my health problems and caused some
damage as I wrote one sentence, or one paragraph, or one essay
at a time. After about 6 years I discovered that standing and
typing on a computer screen positioned at eye height caused much
less problems than sitting and leaning forward to write at a
desk.
The book continued to increase in size at about 150 pages
per year and 8 years later in the year 2000 when my cancer was
cured by a stem cell transplant, I completed it as the 1000 page
11th edition.
Over the years several editors have commented critically on
my writing style as being an unusual collection of sentences,
paragraphs, and illustrations, but I have noticed the advantage
of spending a lot of time thinking, and a small amount of time
writing. The following research project results were submitted
to several medical journals in 1983 but were not accepted, with
one editor advising me apologetically, that it would need to
be submitted in the appropriate medical format before being publishable.
I have decided to present the results in rough form on this web
page 24 years later in April 2007. M.B.
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