All Together Now: How Movement Matters
A quick run-down on how manual medicine therapists have tested and looked for dysfunction.
This book came out and it showed us how to test individual muscles. It was great, because now we could pinpoint specific muscles that weren't working right, and zoom in our approach there. It gave us a picture of the neurology of that muscle, and let us see if there were possible upstream (brain, spinal cord, and nerve) problems causing the muscle problem, causing the problem that the person came into your office for.
After testing muscles, we test a patient's balance. Can you touch your finger to your nose? Now do it with your eyes closed.
What about that track athlete who runs hurtles, who is getting left pain in her lower back, has been strength tested, gotten her strength back, built up a core, been to the massage therapist to work out muscle knots, and she is still getting pain?
Now, and this is new, let's look at movement. What is the difference between looking at muscular strength, balance, and a movement? Simply, testing a "movement" is testing all of the above. It is not just looking at muscle strength and balance, but the body's ability to create a symphony of action to create a fluid movement. This is no simple task. And, this is different than individualized tests — although testing a muscle's strength is a great way to start.
Well, had lost the ability to rotate at the hip, and was compensating above and below this joint. Relearning how to turn at her hip — not her back! — has been described as "weird. It's like it just won't move." Well, now she has relearned that movement, and now her pain is almost all gone.
Testing movement is exciting because results are immediate, and relearning lost movement patterns is easy. We're not building muscle here, we're building neuronal connections and timing with the brain and body that has been lost. The brain learns quick.
If you have something that hasn't responded to everything else, you might want to consider your body's ability to move. Have you lost the ability to use your shoulder the way it should, and mal-adapted biomechanics keep causing that aching shoulder pain? Maybe. It's worth a shot.
Cleaning Your Brain
I've talked about fiber and its role in helping you keep a clean digestive track. What about the rest of your body?
Over and over again I've been turned on to the principle that when you fast, your body "cleans house," so to speak. Isn't it interesting that you do that with your actual house and worldly possessions when your resources are cut off as well? For example, if your boss asked you into his office tomorrow morning and said, "I'm sorry Jim, you're fired." What would you be doing that evening at your house? What would you be doing for the next week? Gathering all of your extra crap that has just been gathering dust in the closet, putting it on ebay. Selling the four wheelers that you only use a couple of times each summer. You would clean house.
Your body does the same thing. Mark Sisson turned me on to this article (LINK). Why I like this is it illustrates what fasting does to the brain. Increased autophagy, meaning that the body's ability to kill off its own cells that need cleaning is up-regulated. That may sound bad, but its a good thing. When your autophagy isn't working, and killing off wild cancerous cells, we get cancers. Mark also touches on the fact that a substance called brain derived neurotropic factor (BDNF for short) increases with fasting. BDNF is brain fertilizer. It helps you grow new synapses, making more connections, and thereby creating a more advanced brain. Cool, eh?
Which one of your depression-era grand parents would have ever thought that starving themselves every now and then was good for them? Well, it was. So try not eating for 16 hours one time a week, and start reaping brain benefits.
About Josh
Josh holds a Doctor of Chiropractic from Parker College of Chiropractic, is currently enrolled in The Carrick Institute studying Functional Neurology, and runs a full-time practice in Farmington, NM. His interests are in neurology of movement, pain, and what a human being needs to express health. He also likes to read and write, hence this blog.
Foods That Hurt
First off, please get the new understanding that pain is not simply a brain input; pain is brain output. And there's a difference. This is a deep discussion that we can have, but I'd rather refer you to someone who did a great piece on this (DOCUMENT).
How can food relate to this?
Inflammation
Inflammation is the process that happens when you sprain an ankle. There is a chemical cascade that is set off around and at the damaged tissue, and the end result is redness, swelling, and — you guessed it! — pain.
But, what if I told you that what you eat, your chemical composition, lends itself to someone who is easily inflamed, or someone who is not. (The opposite of inflammation is rest, calm, non-irritated.)
The truth is, you can. This is the secondary link with food intake and pain.
Two Pathways: One is More Painful
Ever wondered how a non-steriodal-anti-inflammatory works? It works by shutting off an enzyme called "COX." NSAID's are called COX-inhibitors. Please look at this picture.
At the top, on the left, is omega 3 fatty acids. On the right is omega 6 fatty acids. You've probably heard a lot of buzz about "taking your omegas," this is one reason why. Your body is made of up tons of fats. In fact, most of the outside lining of cells is made up of this fat. Omega 3's have a tendency to be anti-inflammatory. Omega 6's have a tendency to be inflammatory. Why is this important? Because your body needs a balance of the two. Not too much, not too little.
It has been estimated that the human body is supposed to have a ratio around 1:1 of omega 6's to omega 3's. Most humans nowadays have a ratio closer to 15 - 20: 1. Not 1:1. That tilts the scale heavily in the direction of omega 6 saturation. That means that your cells are made out of the PRO-inflammatory molecules, which means that they are naturally more likely to get inflammed, irritated, and lead to "pain output."
One of the chief fatty acid scientist, William Lands, was frequently hired on as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies who were then just beginning to make the ibuprofens and Aleves that we are so familiar with today.
"...you can change the kind of [inflammation] signaling in your body by changing the kinds of fats that you eat.
... He [Lands] always told the companies that nutrition would regulate the availability of prostaglandins [molecules that signal inflammation] too. And their answer was always the same: There's no way to make money on nutrition. Lands said the same thing about nutrition to john Vane when he met this very famous pharmacologist on a trip to Vienna. "Yes," he remembers Vane replying, "but you can't patent that [nutrition]."" - Queen of Fats. (2006) Susan Allport. pp. 99-100
This same truth is available to you now. Want to stop popping an aspirin every morning before heading to work? Try limiting the inflammatory foods you eat, those foods rich in omega-6 fatty acids. Here is a list (LINK). Then, add an omega-3 supplement to your diet while increasing your food intake of omega-3's (usually fish, sardines being one of the best — I know they smell nasty... think of it like medicine), and see the change in pain.
It’s All In Your Head
"Stop whining, it's all in your head."
Maybe your mom told you that when you were being a little... bratty. Maybe later on in life you had some really tough challenges that you couldn't get over, or that people couldn't explain, so they told you "it's all in your head."
Have you ever thought about the absurdity of what people mean when they say this statement?
First, it is all in your head. Everything is in your head. Everything is processed and experienced in that mushy pink stuff resting between your ears. But when people say "it's all in your head" it's supposed to somehow make what is happening to you less real in some way. That makes no sense. They'll say, "It's all subjective, we need some objective stuff to go on." How is that possible when it comes to your head? It filters and skews everything.
Second, people dampen it down when it is in your head. "It's just placebo," they'll say, when you get a crazy result from something they don't understand. Well... so? I had a great friend who once told me "I'm willing to pay for placebo." He wasn't be facetious, he was telling the truth. He recognized placebo as a power we should exploit, not something we should right off. We should realize that all obstacles must first be overcome in the mind if they are going to be overcome in "reality" (I put quotation marks in that for a reason).
Instead of getting downtrodden when someone says "it's all in your head," thank them instead. They're pointing out an important fact of life. And once you realize that "it's all in your head" you become not so helpless afterall.
About Josh
Josh holds a Doctor of Chiropractic from Parker College of Chiropractic, is currently enrolled in The Carrick Institute studying Functional Neurology, and runs a full-time practice in Farmington, NM. His interests are in neurology of movement, pain, and what a human being needs to express health. He also likes to read and write, hence this blog.
YOU Are A Professional Athlete
... yes, you.
I love working with athletes. No, I LOVE working with athletes. Athletes possess a different attitude than most when it comes to health care, to my role at what I do and about how they view their body as a whole.
Athletes realize that their performance is dependent upon the state of their body. They know their paycheck depends on their body. As a result, they usually take better care of it. Athletes are often the weirdos eating salad for breakfast, saying they can't go to that party because they need their sleep. Who are these weirdos?
Here's a secret: We are ALL professional athletes. We all use our body to make a living, to bring something to the world, to "perform." Wether its on the field, or sitting at the desk working on a novel, you're using your body. How amazing this endeavor is is directly dependent on the state of the vehicle — no, the gift! — which is your body. Want a better profession? more money? Try working on and taking care of the thing that performs that profession. If nothing else, you'll be healthier. :)
About Josh
Josh holds a Doctor of Chiropractic from Parker College of Chiropractic, is currently enrolled in The Carrick Institute studying Functional Neurology, and runs a full-time practice in Farmington, NM. His interests are in neurology of movement, pain, and what a human being needs to express health. He also likes to read and write, hence this blog.
What Patients Are Paying For
I frequently have to fill in info about myself and my style of practice as I do various paperwork for our clinic. One's company has to explain his or her product, and in the healthcare industry the product often ends up being the doctor. This isn't egotistical, it's just the truth. In healthcare, a patient isn't only paying for your ability to write a scrip, or educate on a certain exercise, or interpret a certain tests results; the patient is paying for you, the doctor. They're paying for your sense of humour, the way you listen to them, the way you crack a horrible joke to break the ice that usually comes with visiting a clinic, even the way you dress and the way you smell, they pay for your humanity.
The truth is, this just isn't in my field, I think it is across the board. Watch this video, it is inspiring and saddening at the same time. Then ask yourself the question: How are you bringing your humanity — your uniqueness that no one else can mimic — to the world? How are you putting your personal stamp on your existence? Fight those things that de-humanize what you bring to the world. Technology is great (I'm using it right now), but it's not a substitute for you.
About Josh
Josh holds a Doctor of Chiropractic from Parker College of Chiropractic, is currently enrolled in The Carrick Institute studying Functional Neurology, and runs a full-time practice in Farmington, NM. His interests are in neurology of movement, pain, and what a human being needs to express health. He also likes to read and write, hence this blog.