April 2025

Updates

We are nearly done celebrating! Thank you again for all the well wishes and for joining us in celebrating Dr. Hubbel’s 65th year in practice in March. Highlights included seeing many patients at our Open House, a wonderful newspaper article by Ceciela Nasmith (check it out online - Today’s Northumberland “Cobourg Chiropractor Celebrates Mind-Blowing Milestone”), and Hubbel family visiting from Mount Forest, Ontario.

We were also very excited to share our book about Dr. Hubbel’s life and practice written by Dr. Hubbel, Debra and Ainsley Hubbel Leguard. If you’d like to read it, we have a copy available in our waiting room. We have not shared photos of the celebration online, but if you’d like a copy of your photo with Dr. Hubbel, let us know. 

Upcoming this month - we are closed for Good Friday (Friday, April 18th), but remain open on Easter Monday (Monday, April 21st).  Drs. Johnston and Leguard are attending a POWER for Women Conference at the Chiropractic College in Toronto in early April, focusing on musculoskeletal conditions across the lifespan of women. Our staff and doctors are updating their CPR course at the end of April. We hope we will never need to use those skills in our clinic, but will be prepared for any emergencies if necessary!

Capacity vs Demand

Do you ever wonder why you sometimes can hurt yourself by doing the smallest thing, like bending down to lace up your shoe, or lifting up your child in the way you always do? This comes down to the capacity of your body, and the demands you put on it. 

Capacity is another way to discuss the readiness of your body to respond to activity or stress. Your body’s capacity can change depending on many things: The quality and amount of sleep you get, the food you fuel your body with, your alcohol consumption, drug use, your stress levels, your physical activity and any chronic problems. Regular maintenance adjustments are another very important way to help increase the capacity of your body. We often find patients who “tweak” their back when they are lacing up their shoes are under a lot of stress, maybe have not been sleeping well or have ignored a minor problem which worsens over time. 

Interestingly, your ability to heal from any injury is also influenced by your body’s capacity. For example, people who have a new problem but are under a tremendous amount of stress are likely to heal less quickly than those who are less stressed. 

Demand means the activities or strain you put on your body. The way in which your body understands the demands you put on it will be different depending on the capacity your body has. This is why sometimes, something as simple as lifting a laundry basket, a job that you’ve done a million times, can hurt your back. 

These two things, your body’s capacity and the demands you put on it, are in a constant flux. Your body is not fragile or weak, or you don’t have to avoid that motion or activity for the rest of your life. Instead, you should focus on increasing the capacity of your body, by having regular adjustments, sleeping well, eating more nutritious food, consuming less alcohol and drugs, trying to maintain lower stress, and adding more movement to your life are all things that will increase your capacity.

Dr. Johnston’s daughters Alexandria and Isla show us their CAPACITY!