I see a lot of people in pain. The first thing they usually want to know is what they did to cause the pain in the first place so they can avoid it in the future. A few of them know what they did, like lifting something too heavy or being in some sort of accident. But most of the time most of the people I see do not know what caused their pain. They can identify what they were doing when the pain came on, but usually it is something they do all the time without any pain. So the question is always “What did I do?”
Well here is the shocking revelation – most of the time you didn’t do anything. The cause of the pain is not coming from a physical activity. It may come on or flare up because of an activity, but the activity is not the cause. The activity is just the last straw that gave an already out-of-balance system the final push over the edge.
Why are our systems so out of balance that we end up experiencing pain so frequently? The short answer is our lifestyle, but what does that mean? I will give some examples and answers to that question.
Lets start at the bottom and work up…our feet. Did you know that your foot has 27 bones in it and a zillion muscles to control the action of those bones? What do you suppose would happen to your arm and hand if you encased them in a removable cast every day all day? That’s right, they would atrophy and stop being useful. This is what happens to our feet when we wear shoes. Shoes are just removable casts we wear all day and take off at night. The foot muscles atrophy. First they get weak causing the heel to slip backwards and pull the toes into a curl, then the muscles atrophy away creating a high arch due to muscle loss. Without foot muscle tone we develop bunions, hammer toes, heel spurs, and a lot of foot pain.
Remedy: go barefoot as much as possible, especially on natural terrain like sand. Wear soft flexible shoes such as moccasins or “barefoot style” shoes. Do foot exercises such as the “short foot” and toe grabs.
Feet are designed to work constantly by gripping the terrain and balancing the body on uneven ground. When you take their work away, even for only a few weeks, like being on crutches or an orthopedic boot after a sprained ankle, the muscle coordination nerves degenerate. This degeneration will last forever unless you do some very active rehabilitation of those nerves specifically. I see this all the time when I test how long you can stand on one foot with your eyes closed. Good nerves allow you to balance eyes closed for 15 seconds. Most people can only last a couple seconds, demonstrating significant balance and coordination nerve degeneration.
If your feet are not doing their job, then the knees and hips won’t be able to function correctly either. “The foot bone is connected to the ankle bone” and so on.
Remedy: practice balancing on one foot with your eyes closed. Try to balance for 15 seconds. As you get better advance to standing on soft mushy surfaces and rocker boards(buy here).
Let’s check in on the low back next. Health of the low back depends on proper functioning of the back stabilizer muscles and the front stabilizer spine muscles – the multifidi and the psoas muscles. These muscles require near constant stimulation to stay in balance. When we sit, these muscles loose communication with each other because the effect of gravity is neutralized. Sitting we don’t have to use our pelvic and lower spine balance muscles to stay upright. That is why a paraplegic individual can sit up in a wheelchair. We use torso muscles to keep our upright balance when sitting. The current research tells us that our body can really only tolerate sitting for 15 to 20 minutes before low back coordinated balance is compromised.
Sitting is another new lifestyle factor. Up until a hundred years ago only a very tiny portion of the population ever spent much time sitting. In natural tribal communities sitting is unknown, as everyone squats instead, which keeps the lower spine muscles constantly engaged. In these communities low back pain is unknown unless a person suffered a fall off a cliff. Look at old time pictures of bankers from a couple hundred years ago; one of the few professions that involved a lot of sitting. Notice how they are always shown walking bent forward in a weak low back posture. Now everybody is doing the sitting thing.
Remedy: Sit on a ball or a Disc-O-Sit (buy here) to activate the core stabilizer muscles. Use an under-the-desk leg exerciser.
Another lifestyle factor that affects both the low back and the mid-back is diet. Up until about a hundred years ago 99% of the population ate a very simple restricted diet. The bulk of our food was locally sourced, organic, and free of chemical additives. The amount of food was also limited, making obesity a proud mark of wealth. Its funny how life has turned things around. Now eating small portions of food that is locally sourced, organic, and free of chemical additives is a sign of wealth, as is being thin and fit.
Remedy: eat less, eat clean.
Well there is another darker side to this picture – digestive inflammation and disease. And thanks to the viscero-somatic neurological reflex – well known to Chiropractors, but almost unknown to typical MDs – this inflammation and disease directly triggers back pain and muscle dysfunction. I see this every day. If your gut is unhappy – even if you don’t feel it – it will trigger muscle spasm and pull your back “out.” If you have ever had your back go out for no reason, this was probably the reason. This reflex applies to all the internal organs. It is this reflex that makes your arm or neck hurt during a heart attack or your low back hurt when you are passing a kidney stone. Gall bladder problems are famous for causing right shoulder pain. Pancreas and small intestine issues love to create mid-back pain. This is the stuff that got Chiropractic its start. Chiropractors would treat the internal organs by activating the reverse reflex – the somato-visceral reflex – by adjusting the spine to treat the internal organs.
Remedy: heal your gut. This can be quite involved and may require guidance and support at our office. Reduce inflammation to the rest of your organs with high absorption forms of curcumin. Eat a clean diet of fresh organic foods. If it comes in a package that can sit on a shelf, or has lots of ingredients that are not real food then don’t eat it.
Another consequence of the crappy toxic diet we have today is the development of a compromised gut lining resulting in our blood stream being contaminated by undigested food proteins. Our immune system responds by forming antibodies and activating immune cells to fight these invaders. This fight produces unfortunate side effects like migraines, joint pain, hormone dysregulation, and degenerative damage throughout our entire body. Diet creates more pain than almost anything else today.
Remedy: Go on an allergy elimination diet and learn what foods you need to avoid. Testing is available for food sensitivities also.