GI sensitivity and your Spine

We’ve all had our moments of over eating, let’s be honest.  Sometimes we do it intentionally, other times we are just so hungry we want to scarf down everything insight.  I’m going to share the epiphany I had during my most current “Cheat Day”. Everyone knows what a cheat day is.  You’ve been making good decisions towards your health so consistently for so long, you’re going to “treat yo-self” to the indulgences you rarely afford when your diet is on point.

I’d been eating a pretty strict diet for almost 6 months at that point and figured I deserved a day to eat the stuff that would typically be my kryptonite.   After the gluttony transpired I found myself:

In a hot sweat,

breathing very shallow, and

still feeling absurdly hungry.

Even worse was the sleep(or lack there of) I had the same night.  It felt like there was no room in my abdominal cavity for anything to move or expand.  It occurred to me then what was really happening.  My body was rejecting the garbage-quality food I ingested and was still seeking proper nutrition, which was why I was still so hungry even after that big meal.   We’ve all heard the gluten sensitivity and lactose intolerant buzz words that have been thrown around, but now I was getting a chance to clearly feel their effects.  There are a number of additional ways the components of these foods can cause cellular breakdown, but we will focus strictly on the cascade of physical, mechanical breakdowns that can happen with a reaction to these foods.

Essentially, when I, or people who are also sensitive to these foods or any other food/chemical compound, ingest the foods that don’t work well with my digestive system I get bloated.

Our gut is basically one really long tube.  Different parts of the tube(small intestine, large intestine, duodenum, colon) that all have different specific responsibilities, but all in all, are part of the tube.    When we eat things that “upset our stomach” what’s really happening is we are creating these air/gas bubbles or pockets that not only slow down the movement of whats in the tube(food:nutrients) but also causes the tube to expand.  With enough air bubbles in the tube, movement of the food inside the tube is dramatically slowed down making me feel…constipated!  The expansion of the tube restricts proper absorption of nutrients because the wall of the tube has very small holes to let good stuff in.  It’s a lot like mesh fabric, when its relaxed, the spaces between are nice and open, allowing nutrients to pass through the wall.  When that mesh is pulled tight or stretched, the openings become MUCH smaller.

That’s what’s happening on a cellular level when we get bloated, gassy, inflamed(whatever you want to call it).  Unfortunately, its effects start to restrict other physiological mechanisms in the body, breathing being the main one we’ll focus on.  There are a few different way to take in a breath.  I like to think of it as two different ways: Belly(diaphragmatic) breathing or Barrel Chested breathing.

To most successfully take a full deep breath using your diaphragm, inhale primarily through the nose and sink the diaphragm towards your feet.  This will cause your lower abdomen to fill with air as well as depress the shoulders.  Your diaphragm is a muscle that also serves as a wall for your internal organs.

For barrel chested breathing, we are typically breathing in through our mouths, primarily, and our chest cavity expands.  This also causes our shoulders to shrug and elevate towards our ears.

When you are feeling bloated or overly stuffed, the tendency is to become more barrel chested of a breather.  When that tube is fully expanded it’s really difficult and uncomfortable to breathe through the diaphragm because the diaphragm will push against the already increased pressure tube(full tummy) in order to create space for the breathe to come in.  When you are bloated/full your body looks for the most comfortable way to take in a breathe and breathing with the chest becomes the outlet.

The problem is that when we want to digest and sleep we ideally want to breathe through our diaphragm.  Taking a deep diaphragm breathe through your nose stimulates the part of your nervous system that is responsible for “wine and dine” actions called your parasympathetic nervous system. When your parasympathetic system is active it helps aid digestion and SLEEP.  The added benefits on digestion when you breathe through you diaphragm is increased muscle contraction around the gut.  This aids a mechanism called peristalsis, which is when the tiny muscles of the gut tube slowly contract to move the inner fillings(food) along the path.

When we breathe through our mouth it physiologically puts our body in an amped up state ready to attack or act.  What it also does is inhibits blood from going to the digestive tract and instead allows more blood into your muscle tissue.   This is typically very useful when we are doing high intensity workouts or training.  It helps us get a lot of oxygen to our system but does so at a cost of using extra energy.  Breathing through your diaphragm is a lot less work on the body, from an energy expenditure perspective, because you don’t have to engage nearly as many muscles in order to accomplish the full breathe.

So, getting bloated not only slows down nutrient absorption but it also can stimulate barrel chested breathing, leaving our bodies more SYMPATHETICALLY driven, making it even harder to breathe, sleep and digest.    But the dysfunction doesn’t stop there.  When we take a diaphragmatic breathe we also allow proper pumping of Cerebral Spinal Fluid(CSF) via proper, unison motion of the tailbone(sacrum) and skull.   CSF is the “blood” of the nervous system.  It helps nutrients get to the brain and other parts of the spinal column as well as move wastes out of the area for proper removal.

Conversely, barrel chested breathing disrupts that natural CSF pumping motion created by the spine.  When joints of the body stop moving properly they cause joints to compensate by moving more than they were made to.  This, overtime, is what leads to arthritis and other signs of dysfunction.  A principled chiropractor aims at re-establishing proper joint motion in the spine to restore nervous system function.  If this example sounds like you or someone you know, you can bet your bottom dollar there are areas in their spine that are no longer moving/functioning well which impedes on the brain’s ability to signal and adequately heal the body.

Something to keep in mind is that I felt these negative effects more intensely after giving my body a chance to cleanse.  I was working with a pretty clean slate.  How drastically would I react if i consistently ate these foods? I would feel a more consistent, subtle effect that, chances are, I’d get used to and never think twice about the daily headaches or chronic joint pain that they are causing.

Long story short- Eat your organic meats, veggies and fruits.  The cleaner you eat the higher your body can function on all levels.  Every 7 years or so, every cell of the 50 trillion in our body is regenerated except for the cells of the nervous system.  Therefore, you are indeed what you eat so don’t be cheap and you only get one nervous system, TAKE CARE OF IT!

Dr. Asad is a chiropractor and functional movement specialist in Walnut Creek and Concord, CA.  For additional info, FHSchiro.com.

 

 

Shin Splints – The solution

It’s always frustrating to feel like you missed an opportunity.  One of these instances in my life was when i was playing high school football.  The weird thing about it was that i never realized it was a missed opportunity until i grew older.  The opportunity or potential that i missed was due to severe lower leg pain on the front side of my legs other wise known as shin splints.  Shin splints can often be a chronic nagging injury for most and the biggest problem is that most people don’t get the proper rehab and care to resolve the problem.

Any activity that involves running at any pace can result in the pulling and strain of the muscles of the shin.  The reason for this is mainly thought to be because of tight calves.  Which is true and i agree with, in part.  The calf muscles(on the back of the lower legs) are used primarily during the “step off” part of our run or walk, meaning they are the muscles that help point your toes towards the ground, help you lift off when you jump, or even when you push-off the pedal of your bicycle.  We can typically get a good stretch to those muscles by dorsiflexing(bringing the top of the foot towards the leg).

But why does it hurt at the front of the legs if the calves are the issue?

The answer to that is simple.  Every muscle has what is called its antagonist muscle or another muscle that opposes its movement. I.e. the Triceps straighten the arm and they’re antagonist, the Biceps, bend the arm.  The antagonist to the calves are the shin muscles(anterior tibialis mm, peroneal mm).    The problem is that most people have severely underdeveloped shin muscles.  In order for the muscle to properly oppose its antagonist, its gotta be able to keep up with it!  The calves become much stronger than the shin muscles, constantly forcing the shin muscles into over working beyond their limits.  This leads to muscle spasms in the shin muscles causing all sorts of pain, especially when you walk, run or jump.

When i went to the school’s physical therapist, they gave me shin muscle strengthening exercises, an appropriate remedy to the help balance the muscle tension, the only issue: The muscles i was trying to strengthen were already overactive and worn out!! You cannot build overactive muscles into strong muscles without first rehabilitating the muscle.  When a muscle spasms it creates stagnant blood flow in the muscle.  Blood flow is crucial to normal body function because it is what sends nutrients to areas of our body as well as removes wastes from those same areas.  Just as if you were re-building a house, the blood flow would represent bringing the lumber and other supplies in as well as disposing the used/old supplies.

Before we strengthen we must first reset the muscle’s function.  How do we do this?  We start first and foremost with restoring proper nerve impulse to the muscles and cardiovascular system through chiropractic care.  The nervous system is the master controller of the body including, but not limited to, the musculo-skeletal and cardiovascular system .   Then we retrain the muscles using compressive therapies such as foam rolling techniques, myofascial and trigger point release.  After we accomplished normal flow to the muscles we strengthen the appropriate muscles to achieve true balance and tension within the lower legs as well as the rest of the body.  If that imbalance is being caused by improper running form (true for most people suffering from shin splints) then…GET COACHED!! Yes, there is a LOT of technique associated with running and if you’re putting all your weight on your heels then you will engage some muscles(calves/anterior tibialis) more than others.   Also, you will be putting up to 3x your body weight worth of stress on your heels.

Using this protocol, you will RESOLVE the problem and feel long-lasting results allowing you to be more concerned with progressing your skills as opposed to frantically “dealing with pain”.  If you are in the East San Francisco Bay area and would like more info, visit us at http://www.functionalhealthspecialists.com or give us a call at 925-289-8011.

Move Better, Feel Better, Live Life!!

Inflammation, pH Balance, and Cancer

We now are finding out that people with chronic problems- from Fibromyalgia to heart disease – all have one thing in common.  Their body’s environment is in an acidic state.  What does that actually mean?

For those of us who are unfamiliar with the pH scale, it stands for potential hydrogen.  Hydrogen itself is considered an acidic ion, based on its charge.  The more hydrogen in the system the more acidic the environment.  The pH scale runs from 1-14, with the 1 being most acidic and the 14 being the most basic or alkaline.  A pH of 7 is neutral.  Our blood should normally be around a pH of 7.3.

A lot of processed foods, whether they be natural or unnatural, cause our body to dive into an acidic state.  Why you ask? because they contain toxins the human body cannot handle.  Let’s define what I mean by toxin: A substance, synthetic or natural, that is foreign to the human body’s evolutionary system and cannot be properly digested or disposed of.  So yea that includes tar and the other 598 chemicals found in cigarettes, but it also includes:

• Pesticides used on conventionally grown vegetables and fruits
• Any medication that is not a direct form of natural herbs (ibuprofen, aspirin, lipitor etc)
• Mercury found in amalgam fillings and fish
• Aluminum in cookware, sodas, toothpaste, deodorant, canned foods etc.
• Environment pollutants in the air we breathe i.e. exhaust, smoke, fumes, plastics, industrial chemicals etc.
• Water – chemicals, synthetic fluoride, chlorine, polluted lakes, rivers, streams, often bottled water absorbs toxins from the plastic bottle itself!Most bottled water is ACIDIC!!
• Food – herbicides, pesticides, food additives, preservatives, hydrologized vegetable protein (aka msg, vegetable oil, canola oil, sunflower oil,) etc.
• Pesticides and fertilizers we use at home
• any foods you can be allergic too-Dairy, gluten, etc.

YES, toxins are all around us.  These substances are difficult to impossible for our bodies to digest or process.  What typically happens is they put stress on the liver (the organ responsible for your body’s detoxification) then the liver will typically store those toxins into our FAT CELLS!  This is the reason, if you have ever tried losing fat, you start to bloat and feel even worse at the beginning of a new diet or exercise regimen.  When you start to take those fat cells and burn them as energy, you release those toxins back into the system which then leads to inflammation.

We know inflammation to be the reason our ankles swell when we sprain them and this is very helpful for us because it stops us from further injury as well as letting us know there is a problem that needs to be addressed.  But inflammation can be affecting the rest of your system as well, it’s just a lot harder to recognize it when it’s in your gut or the vessels of your heart(until of course, it’s too late).  Inflammation is the key factor, we now know, in the underlying reason for heart disease!!  Not cholesterol or natural fat you get in your diet!  Our bodies need fat and cholesterol!  Cholesterol is the base for every hormone in your body, without proper hormone regulation you can suffer from any and every ailment known to man!  Hormones dictate the way we sleep, the way we eat, the way we regulate our blood pressure, the way we build muscle and so much more.   Cholesterol and fats are absolutely essential to a human’s well-being.

The interesting fact is that most other countries don’t have a lot of these same issues because of one main principle-they keep things natural!  From the way they raise their food, the air they breath, and the purity of the water they drink.  We eat so much processed food in the US and UK that our bodies are being bludgeoned with toxins on a consistent basis, which leads to chronic breakdown and chronic disease like diabetes and cancer!  We fail to see that conventionally grown crops or genetically modified crops can all be considered processed!!

Cancer patients and people with other chronic illnesses all have acidic systems.  We much often focus too heavily on the “cure” for cancer instead of the prevention.  Why? because there is a lot more money to be made in finding a cure and much more work in preventing it from happening in the first place.  The higher the pH reading, the more alkaline and oxygen rich the fluid you are testing will be. At a pH of 7.4 cancer cells become dormant and at pH of 8.5 cancer cells die.  So how do we fight cancer?  with proper nutrition, exercise and a fully functioning signaling system in the body.

The Brain is the master controller of the body, every health profession knows this, but i am one of the few health professionals that actually practices with this as the main concept and driving force.  In its essence, cancer is uncontrolled cell growth.  Whether that growth is in one spot(benign) or within the blood(blood runs through all parts of the body, when cancerous cells are in the blood they can travel ANYWHERE, we classify that as Malignant). We have cancerous cells growing in our bodies on a daily basis, all of us!!  Our immune system and signaling system can typically program those bad cells to apoptosis(cell death), thus curing us of cancer.  This is known and is our body’s default mechanism.   When the brain cannot connect to a particular part of the body, it is unable to signal those bad cells to die.  Those cells keep growing and growing until we feel it affect us.  That’s when we go to our MD and are taken by surprise when we learn we have CANCER.   So what changed?  What did we do wrong to allow those cells to keep growing?  What did we not do to allow those cells to keep growing?

Like any other monster, cancer needs the appropriate environment to live in – an acidic one where its enemy(our immune system) is unaware of the lurking danger.  We can change the acidic environment with our diet.  We can improve the signaling by making sure the brain and rest of the nervous system is communication full force, 100%, on all levels.

The diet part can be fixed with the help of someone educated in Metabolic Typing, my guru, Nathan Brammeier(nathan@crossfitadventure.com), is awesome.  For someone near your neck of the woods, contact us and we will help you find someone.

The signaling part is what i SPECIALIZE in! I make sure your nervous system is 100% in tact and free of any block or interference to allow your body to connect the signal from Brain to Body and Body to Brain.  Just like any other bodily system, it’s a two-way street.  I perform a non invasive procedure to allow your Brain to communicate to the rest of your body so you can function at 100% and tackle anything that comes your way.

For more on how call or contact us at 925-289-8011 or http://www.functionalhealthspecialists.com.

Supplements-Good, bad, necessary?

The business of supplements had become a HUGE industry.  But are they really effective?They can be.  My stance on supplementation is this:  If you have the right diet for you, supplements are obsolete. Something i have argued with some of my good friends about on end!

Remember when you come down with an illness or symptom, look to the Farm-acy before the Pharmacy

The only caveat is that most people are terrified of cleaning up their diet so the only way to get essential nutrients and minerals is to have supplements that help fulfill those needs.  So into the world of supplements.  A lot like how pharmaceutical companies will infiltrate medical schools to gain relationships with future doctors that can help increase that company’s profits, the same is partially true in my experience with supplement companies and chiropractic.  After all they are a company, and companies have 1 main goal-Make Money!  So there is some bias.

Most supplement companies will publish research on the efficacy and purity of their supplements.  The proverbial pill to swallow here is that most companies will highlight their benefits, there’s an obvious bias there.  So try to find a supplement company with independent research done.  Even in some of those situations, the supplement company and research companies are actually under the same corporate umbrella.  the same concept works for pharmaceutical companies and some agriculture companies as well.

But nonetheless supplements can be a great way for some people to get those needs fulfilled.  Vitamins and minerals are completely essential to the body.  There have been numerous studies that show extremely high doses(100k+ iu’s) of vitamin c, given intravenously, to cure cancerous tumors in human beings!! This is not the same as oral vitamin c supplements, which most of us end up sending down the toilet.  It always struck me odd that my father, who has been a diabetic for 30+ years, would finish “dropping the kids off at the pool” and after the flush i would find a pill, in its complete form, at the bottom of the toilet bowl.  Clearly it was not serving its purpose.  Whats the point in taking a daily vitamin if your body is not absorbing it?  It’s a sign that the gut is not absorbing nutrients properly.  So the problem wasn’t that he didn’t get enough of a particular vitamin or mineral in his diet, but rather his body wasn’t absorbing it properly.  A problem that many of us unknowingly suffer from with one vitamin/mineral or another.

These chronic deficiencies can cause longstanding issues.  On the flip side, having too much of a particular vitamin/mineral can have an equally deleterious effect.  This link is a good start to seeing the connection.  http://itoldyouiwassick.info/2011/03/06/common-causes-of-mystery-symptoms-%E2%80%93-part-3-%E2%80%93-vitamin-and-mineral-deficiencies/

Many vitamins need certain other minerals or components in order to properly digest or absorb.  For instance, vitamins A, D, E and K are all fat soluble vitamins.  If you take these separately or in a multivitamin and you aren’t eating fats, you wont absorb them very well.  Vitamin D is essential for proper calcium absorption, so if you are taking a calcium supplement without vitamin D3, you’re not helping your situation.

Fish oils are a huge craze now as well.  Why? They provide the body with essential fats called Omega 3 fatty acids(FA).  Omega 3′s help promote proper brain function and are anti-inflammatory among other things.  There are also Omega 6 and Omega 9 fatty acids.  Omega 6 FA are typically found in just about every processed food and oil(canola, vegetable, soy, corn etc.).  Omega 6 FA promote inflammatory pathways of the body(see “My food journey” to learn more about the damage caused by inflammation).  The typical ratio found in the average American living in the early 1900′s was anywhere from 1-4:1  omega 6:omega 3.  Nowadays the average American’s ratio is anywhere from 17-24:1 overwhelmingly in favor of the Omega 6 FA.  So how do we change that?  Not only by increasing the omega 3′s, but DECREASING omega 6′s!! Someone with the proper Diet can achieve the 1:1 ratio in today’s world, WITHOUT SUPPLEMENTS!  But for those who can’t, supplements surely help.  The main concept is again to find a pure supplement.  We recommend anywhere from 1-4 grams of combined EPA and DHA-the active ingredients in fish oils, varying on your lifestyle.  Also making sure that the source of the fish oil is from a small fish(mackerel, sardines) because smaller fish consume less toxins than bigger fish(remember the food chain, big fish eat a lot of smaller fish, making them much more toxic.)  To find your ratio of omega 6:omega 3′s and for more information on what supplements are right for YOU contact your local functional medicine specialist.  My specialist is Nathan Brammeier in Concord, CA. Nathan@crossfitadventure.com.

All in all the only way to find out what you’re deficient in is to get tested for it.  The next question is why you are deficient in that particular nutrient?  Is it not in your diet or is your body not absorbing it?  This is how you fix the problem instead of putting a bucket under the leak in the roof, if you catch my drift.