Transcription
Translator: Hani Eldalees
Reviewer: Mahmoud Mohamed Ahmed
We have three things in common, we are all here. We all have a spine, we all sleep, and when we were about five years old and playing as children, Grandma used to shout: "Posture!" And we would all sit up straight. And this fear of Grandma shouting that word, even for the world's leading influencers, and the doctors sitting in the front row slouched now. Where is it? Dr. C, we've seen you even though you're great. So why do we do it? Because everyone in the room was slumping. Liam was backstage doing his voice all day like this, literally, doing his voice because it's comfortable. Posture is the eternal battle against gravity. And sitting like this, even though Grandma was watching, she's very disappointed in some of you. (Laughter) This is really hard. Whereas this: Oh, yes. Bring me back here, this is the good place. The thing that Grandma probably missed is that if posture is the eternal battle against gravity, then we really need to think about our sleep. It's wonderful and comfortable. And the beauty and difference between sitting and sleeping or standing and sleeping - we remember wearing a book on our heads and doing it very well - is that you are actually asleep, that's the best thing. When you feel uncomfortable in these positions, and this is really my favorite for watching TV, the second you feel uncomfortable, you move because you are awake. The difference with sleep is huge. I will share and prove it to you now. You will have everything, at some point in your life, either sitting in the back of a car and going like this, or coming to a TEDx platform and hearing someone like me talk and do this, and within ten minutes you wake up, and your neck feels like it's going to burn. Why didn't you wake up then? Is this something completely different because you are asleep? So I think it's really important to address the average human because we spend a lot of time. In fact, I met Young last night. He's very cool. And Young was talking to me about some research he found on using whole foods to reduce the chances of getting Alzheimer's. You eat for four and a half years of your life. The lady who came before and whom I would definitely not mess with, and I would not mess with her, this man was really big. But you exercise for an average of a year and a half of your life. In fact, if you add all these things up, that's the same amount of time you sleep. Now, James's first or second talk, which was exceptional. I really know that if I fail at this task, I know where I will go for a job. By law, we can sue James if he doesn't provide us with a comfortable workstation and an annual check of our line workstation. But none of you have spent any time in your comfortable chair because you are all doing this. This man here is not the average human. And this is a young man I met near Old Trafford, the right side of Manchester. (Laughter) And he is a gentleman. (Applause) Dad, this was for you. He's so upset with me that he said don't do it. He went crazy. Okay. This is a man who is now hospitalized. He had dementia, he had stomach problems, and he was hospitalized, and he was bedridden for two weeks in the hospital. And those two weeks become seven years. The situation you see him in there is fixed. This is a fixed body shape. So think about his personal care when you can't separate his legs, think about trying to swallow, his internal organs, his digestive system, his comfort, his pain. Who cares about that? He can't speak. He can't move. He can't sit. He can't bathe. And he spends 23 to 24 hours a day in bed. With very simple posture management equipment, we bring the bed to him. And look at what happens after three months. And this is not rocket science. This is very simple. If you always do this, you will never do this, and this is a really tight and terrible feeling. And I discussed the benefits for someone like this man. But the benefits for you are that it may increase your energy levels. I met a lady last night at a TED dinner who said she was a great sleeper, and then she told me that she feels exhausted every time she wakes up. It can reduce stress in the shoulders and neck. If you wake up with a severe tension headache or burning in your shoulders, it may have something to do with your sleeping posture. This happens to the majority of men. Ladies, you will be very grateful for this part. If you want to go back to your bedroom and want to stop snoring, your sleeping position might be the same thing. And the best thing is that it's the simplest of equations. You need to think about the position you sleep in. You will say, "Well, I don't stay in one position." Of course you don't. And we don't want you to. You've moved a thousand times just in the four - I need to figure this out, four minutes and something like that. So the position you sleep in, that's the program. That's what you'll be having tonight. So we will legitimately find a tangible way to improve the quality of your sleep tonight. The second part is the device, we'll worry about that next time. Now, if you suffer from sleep, which is in Manchester. By the way, we are the worst city for sleep in England. Congratulations to all of us. This is worth a round of applause because we are all still smiling, that's the best thing. In Westminster, in December, the university discussed our sleep deprivation. So in this hall, 74% of you get less than seven hours, one in two, I think, gets less than six hours in Manchester now. Definitely not enough. And every day we read a paper and read an article that says, "If you don't get 7.5 hours, your nose will fall off, you'll get dementia, you'll die early, a miserable death. Great. So anyone suffering from sleep tonight is definitely not looking forward to it. But there's nothing telling us how to improve it. So we see all these articles, all these exceptional scientists on TED, online, telling us what happens to sleep, why we need it, and what happens if we don't get it. So this is a battle between quantity and quality. Who cares about quantity? Nobody in the room is getting any of it. So let's focus on what we can do because we can't focus on it. I saw James Leanard today on TED and he said, "Get eight hours," and that's what I'll do because you might hate your partner, you might hate your boss, you might hate your children, you might have a bill you didn't expect. There are a million reasons why you won't sleep tonight. Sleep will definitely not help. Last night, I slept for about an hour. Thanks to herbs. (Laughter) And we all know the importance of sleep. In fact, you could say that sleep is the foundation of all good well-being, because you wake up tired, and you do nothing about your health. We know it recovers as we know it rejuvenates as it heals us. But the truth is, you still can't get the hours. It doesn't matter what I tell you. How much great information there is saying that if you get eight hours tonight, the world will be a great place and United will win by six goals to nothing. Anyway, back to this. What we know to be true is from a piece of conceptual evidence dating back to 1987, I think, which talks about the relationship between a neutral resting spine and the speed of healing when you have had a spinal injury. Now, if you look at this board, it's very frustrating. 1.78 billion people suffer from some form of chronic pain. 60% of those with chronic pain suffer from depression. Imagine waking up in chronic pain. You'll be in a very bad mood, and you won't get any sleep because everything hurts. You don't get any sleep, everything hurts, and you're in a bad mood. This is a cycle we are all in. I can't tell you to get your hours of work. That's not good enough. So when you leave tonight, don't worry. You don't have to go and buy a bed that costs ten thousand dollars that flies you to the moon and spins and whatever else, or lavender spray, or a smartwatch that doesn't really tell you that you had a great night's sleep. If you drink a bottle of whiskey tonight, you'll have a great night's sleep, and the best thing about sleeping posture is that it won't cost you anything at all tonight, and I'll share how to do it. As you know, I work with complex neurological patient groups. But when we realized that these people had no voice and no one really cared about people sitting in voiceless beds, we went to meet a large number of athletes. And just before Tokyo. This is one of the athletes I met, Katie Marchant, a bronze Olympic champion, and unfortunately she was out of Tokyo. But she came to me because she was at the Velodrome on the road. Seven hours a day, and she was complaining of knee pain. "Really, right sacroiliac joint stiffness, hip," I think, she said. And her shoulders were hurting, but she said it was all due to the bike because of course, if you're a cyclist, you need to spend your days like this for aerodynamics, which you can't do much for your back or neck, I think. It had nothing to do with her bike at all. If you look at this position, which I will show you, sorry, in the front row, the second you put one leg over the other, you have now put yourself in what we call a provocative position. (Laughter) So, research conducted by a very smart young man named Doug Cary from Australia, talks about the fact that if you go to sleep in a provocative position, you are more likely to wake up with increased pain symptoms. But let's not even go with references or worry about any silly clinical words that none of us, including myself, really understand. When you put one leg over the other, this hip becomes diagonal now, and so does my knee when I sleep, and this, by the way, I feel "comfortable," and my shoulder will drop forward. And now I'm planting my face. So if you actually look at the picture, you will see that Katie had right knee pain because she was pressing it in bed. Her stiff sacroiliac joint code came because she was twisted like a salted pretzel. And I think you can see what's happening with the neck. And all she had to do was remember that if she had worked with James, she would have gotten a comfortable chair, and if she had just put a pillow between her knees or ankles and wanted to fill that space, she would have looked exactly like that picture. So this is not a real experiment because her freedom failed. What is the position you sleep in? Because I doubt you sleep in a provocative position. A provocative position, by the way, is a position where your knees touch the bed. So if you're a fan of therapy, this is the only way to sleep because it's comfortable, don't forget that every pregnant woman who went to the doctor and found out she was pregnant and pampered, the doctor said, "It's time to move to your left side." They all did it. So you can't just. There are only two positions I recommend, and I recommend this based on our healthcare experience, because these two positions are what we put our patients in for 2 to 4 hours at a time. There is a big difference between our patients here. One, as you can see, is supported, and we maintain good body shape and maintain a person's body, internal organs are working, and lung capacity is nice and beautiful. And this is a terrible thing to watch. These men cannot speak. So you guys have moved 100 times in the 12 minutes I've been talking. These people are placed for 2 to 4 hours and they can't tell you they're uncomfortable. And no one knows how to do it. None of you have the slightest idea how to sleep properly. So we've named them the Soldier and the Dreamer. Very simple. Just remember Grandma. She's shouting at you now. Stand beautifully and straight, and shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles. And the sitting position, I think we were there. Beautiful. Yes, this is actually better. Anyway, these are the only two positions you can control. The two you can control when you sleep. What happens next is anyone's guess. And I'm not here to maintain a unique posture. In fact, if you sat like this for my entire talk, which some of you did and you didn't have to, you'd get a point. This is really hard, actually. That's why. Yes. Just there. So maybe there's a way to reverse this cycle. Because if you suffer from chronic pain or if you suffer from insomnia, you will definitely suffer from your mental health. So if you wake up tomorrow with less pain just because you put a pillow between your knees and ankles and didn't look like a twisted pretzel, you might wake up with less pain. If you wake up with less pain, you'll be in a better mood, and you might sleep a little better. In this room, you will either be taking care of someone you love, like Celia, the lady who was taking pictures and who will then go straight to see her mother. She hasn't seen her in two days. Or my father is there. Dad, how many times have you been to the GP this week with Grandma? Five. There you go. Because at some point in your life, you will be taking care of someone you love. Or like my wife, you will be taking care of someone like me your whole life. But the point is, this will affect us all. It's not about how old we get, because if my dad has a bad night's sleep, he'll be in a bad mood when he goes to see Grandma. I would like to dedicate this talk to the memory of my uncle who slept with COVID and never woke up. And although we know that sleeping posture can save lives, we are actually more interested today in moving forward and saving your spine. Thank you very much. (Applause)