by admin | Nov 12, 2017 | Uncategorized
What is Pain?
Warriors, this time we were right.
As a Doctor of Physical Therapy, I live to ask questions. When someone comes into my clinic they are rarely 100% transparent. The conversation always starts with physical pain. It is the easiest pain to talk about. They feel comfortable talking about the physical pain because it seems more tangible.
This is only scratching the surface of where I am going with them. As soon as I start weaving my Warrior web, I know there is mental and emotional health dying to come out.
This is important because understanding pain is my job. It turns out, physical pain is just a symptom of the perception of the mental, physical, and emotional pain you feel. Having low back pain can be debilitating. The pain, however, is compounded by the emotional drain, mental stress, and poor self-worth that you feel by the lack of empowerment in your life.
The Warrior way is about holding yourself accountable. Knowing that physical pain is merely a symptom of your self-worth gives you more options. Changing your behavior is the first step to healing.
I have known this all along but this weekend, a chance encounter with an adaptive athlete solidified this belief.
Phantom Limb Syndrome
At a half marathon for the Challenged Athlete Foundation I met an athlete with a below the knee amputation. He suffered from phantom limb syndrome, a neurological condition that creates severe pain for amputees in a limb that no longer exists. The pain is excruciating.
As he described his story, the pain he dealt with every morning, feeling his leg snap in half even though it did not exist, sent me on a chase to understand the neurological component of pain.
I detailed this athlete’s experience, how it relates to chronic lower back pain, and why healing goes deeper than the joints and tissues.
Pain science is important to healing. You can read the full article by clicking here.
by admin | Oct 29, 2017 | Uncategorized
Invisible Pain
There is a reason you are supposed to change the oil in your car every 3,000 miles. I am not saying I do, but at least that is what they tell you. Let’s be honest, I am not perfect. However, in my physical therapy clinic, I make this reference to my patients all the time. They come in complaining of pain, yet, structurally there is nothing wrong with their joints, tendons, or muscles. Structurally, they are completely healthy, but they are suffering from chronic lower back pain. They have tried every stretch and exercise in the book with no luck.
The reason goes deeper than the tissues and joints. It even goes deeper than movement patterns and muscle activation. The cause of their pain is inflammation of the nervous system and the compression of the nerves that run throughout your body, neural tension.
Nervous System Sludge
Your brain and spinal cord fire directions to your body through neurons. The body is filled with receptors that accept the messages, perform the actions, and then report back to the brain how the body feels. This process is happening millions of times throughout the day without you thinking about it. Stress, or any external stimulus that your body must combat, creates inflammation in the body. This inflammation is stored in the tissues. As the inflammation grows, it compresses the nerves that run through and around your joints. The result is called neural tension and acts like oil sludge clogging your nervous system. Compressed nerves block neurons from reaching their end receptors and your brain recognizes danger. The brain’s response to danger, since it wants you to be safe, is to stop you from completing that action. The easiest way to do this is send the pain signal and make that movement hurt so you do it less. At The Low Back Fix, my online rehabilitation project, my colleague Anders Varner has taken a deeper look into neural tension, its relationship to pain, how you can lower inflammation in your body.
To read the full article, click here.
by admin | Oct 29, 2017 | Uncategorized
The Brain Body Connection
It is so simple to get stuck in a downward cycle of self-doubt. You set our expectations high, aim for the top, and when the results are not exactly what you expected, you start to think you did something wrong. It was your fault and you are the failure. The mental stress that you carry throughout the day is stored in your tissues. The brain and the body are not mutually exclusive, they are partners. A healthy mind combined with a healthy body creates an empowered life of wellness.
As a doctor of physical therapy, I see the results of mental stress exposing itself in physical pain daily. Far too often, low back pain is the symptom of excessive stress stored in the body as inflammation. This inflammation wreaks havoc on nerve structures, connective tissues, and the way the brain communicates with the body. As the problem compounds, the physical pain becomes its own source of mental and emotional stress, increasing the physical pain is a vicious cycle. The brain and the body are a cohesive unit that flow together through the communication channels designed by the nervous system.
Physical and Mental Freedom
The brief, “I can’t, that hurts my back,” Is the very first step in a slippery slope of tearing away your freedom of mind and body. The Warrior way is the way of freedom. Freedom of mental and physical suffering. To achieve this freedom, you must start at the base of the Physical Freedom Pyramid, start with healing the mind, body, and its communication device, the nervous system. By beginning with the nervous system, focused on the breath and down regulation, you can eliminate the inflammation created by the mental and emotional stress.
As you gain confidence, developing an understanding of tissue and joint health, strength, and conditioning will empower you take accountability for your health and wellness. The Warrior way is wellness in mind, body, and spirit. My colleague, Anders Varner, has published an article discussing the healing process in search of physical and mental freedom. The path starts with wanting to be your best self, not perfect, but showing up truly caring about your self-development. This article is mandatory ready for connecting and healing the mind and body.
by admin | Oct 3, 2017 | Fitness
“Layering strength on top of dysfunctional movement is a gross misunderstanding of the primary responsibility of fitness trainers and coaches: reducing injury and increasing longevity.”
I am a firm believer that given the opportunity, with motivation, every single one of us would prioritize our health in all of our decisions throughout the day.
We would all eat our vegetables and snack less. We would all go to the gym, meditate, and do our yoga practice. We typically need motivation to take action. Let’s, face it, this utopia or always having time,motivation, or the inspiration to start does not exist. Reality is filled with kids, work, deadlines, stress, and eating on the go. It is a miracle if we actually get the time to go to the gym or get outside to get in a workout. Even worse, when we actually do have the time, rarely do our bodies feel great. There is always some nagging ache and pain we are dealing with. Far too often, these aches and pains stop us in our tracks and the inability to prioritize our health compounds these problems. You need to create this motivation by taking action. By taking action, you will find motivation through the results. Let your body lead and your mind will follow. True leadership is about holding yourself accountable. Prioritizing your health and having options so that when adversity strikes, you have a game plan to keep pushing forward.
The Best Healthcare Is Self-Care and It Starts With You
Low back pain affects 80% of the population in the United States. There are three major culprits that lead to this epidemic:
- Sitting: The average American sits 13 hours a day. In your car, at your desk, and in front of your TV at night. All this sitting is going to be felt in one place – your low back.
- Stress: From the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, it seems like you are putting out fires. All of this stress is stored as tension in your muscles.
- POOR MOVEMENT: Your body is designed to move in specific ways. Because of problems one and two, your body has forgotten these movement patterns.
Between home and work, the gym, or the great outdoors is your haven. A time when you get to eliminate the stress of the daily grind and focus on your own health. Unfortunately, for you, the sitting and the stress pile up, and the gym is not always a place of health. Squatting makes your back hurt. Deadlifting or lifting weights off the ground feels awkward and is accompanied by some low back tightness the next day. Instead of the gym being a place of health, it has become an additional place of stress, waiting for the next injury. My mission is to create a nation of wellness WARRIORS. My program, co-created with top strength coach Anders Varner, called The Low Back Fix has compiled a list of modifications you can add to your workout to help heal your low back pain and prioritize your health. Your health affects everyone around you. If you are living with lower back pain, these tools will get you healing faster and stronger than ever.
by admin | Mar 7, 2017 | Uncategorized
I was recently asked to go on the Don Lemon show on CNN nightly news and discuss the current Marine Corps scandal of a facebook group of active duty and veteran male Marines exposing without consent naked pictures of their fellow Marines who happened to be women. I agreed to do this, and therefore have formed my opinion with thought as well as deep emotion as the Marine Corps is supposed to be part of my family. In this case and many cases prior, my family has failed me and many other few men and many women who have been the target for sexual harassment, abuse- online, at war, and in the comfort of their own country. Whats is going to take to change this?
Here are my main thoughts on the issue and how this issue of extreme sexism, group think, criminal activity should change.
Send all the Marines involved to an island by themselves and let them rot. Anyone who gets involved with exposing another human being for the sake of “getting off” can also go to this island. Yes, I realize this is an extreme opinion, but would it change things?
Actually, here are some of my deeper thoughts on this scandal/issue that must be addressed…..
First, the Marine Corps and all military services are a small entity of society. All its members are pulled from our civilian ranks at some point. What has happened with the face book group and nude pictures recently is NOT new news, and honestly is a direct result of how we see women in our society- sex objects, less than, weak, not as powerful, easy to abuse. Most boys are raised to be macho, brave, and are trained to think throwing, jumping, being like a girl, or beat by a girl in anyway is stupid , weak, and not acceptable. Most girls are raised to feel more fragile, in need of more protection, and not brave. If a girl does beat a boy in some physical battle, she is seen as heroic, if she loses it is seen as typical.
It is no different in the military, just more exaggerated as there are far few women in the military than men. It has been ok for a very long time to undermine, put down, and see women as the weaker gender (and I am not talking just physical). Look at the battle of the integration of women into combat roles. The Marine Corps drug their feet for a while before they accepted this change. With the group think mentality that is STRONG in most military services, the domination, degradation, and mentality of putting a seen weaker gender down is the norm. When this does NOT happen it is an amazing thing. Unfortunately few leaders have taken initiative to actually make it a priority to change this way of thinking.
#1: Changing this sexist mentality towards women must start with how we raise our children. You better believe I will raise baby Larson to respect women and see them as an equal.
Second, this current episode of online criminal activity is due to a lack of troop welfare in the military, specifically the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps takes mission accomplishment seriously, yet troop welfare not so much. Last year, the Marine Corps and all other services integrated women into all combat arms units. This integration has not been easy. This is history in the making, yet the Marine Corps has not taken it seriously and fought tooth and nail to not have this integration happen.
Inevitably by not making the integration of women priority, such as having specific training’s Marine Corps wide on the importance of equality, counseling individual Marines and units on the Code of Conduct and creating space to work on the integration of women was and is a huge mistake. The Marine Corps and even our society still does not fully respect the abilities women have to make a company or unit successful. Studies show having women in executive or leadership roles lead to more diversity which also lead to higher performance and increased return on equity.
Despite the success women bring units and companies, the most important thing to think about is women are human beings; human beings who want to serve their country, company, or provide for their family like everyone else. If the Marine Corps truly did care about the human beings they say they are making into leaders, then they MUST put the well being of their Marines first. I would hope that the Commandant of the Marine Corps General Neller has personally reached out to every woman who was exposed in this latest criminal activity. If not, he is NOT brave in my book and has no regard for the human beings who fight and work for him.
#2: The Marine Corps – like our society – needs to make equality and the care for the human beings, more specifically the women, who represent them a priority. If they do not do this, they will continue to fail and hurt the very people they promised they would take care of.
Third and final point, I am personally saddened and feel betrayed by my own family -o the Marine Corps. These 30,000 men in this facebook group have no excuse (and PTSD is NOT an excuse). I am a health professional who works with those who have PTSD and mild traumatic brain injuries from their time in service. Unless they have a frontal lobe dysfunction or level V on the Rancho Los Amigos TBI scale of function then there is absolutely no reason for this behavior. As a matter of fact, someone with a PTSD, depression, service connected disabilities other than what I have mentioned previously have no excuse. They have full control of their ability to demean others and do ignorant and hurtful things.
#3: Having PTSD is NOT an excuse. I am personally saddened as the Marine Corps is a part of my family.
Sadly, the young women exposed will suffer severely with or without the comorbidity of PTSD due to this gross act of injustice. So what about these women? Has the Marine Corps reached out to them? Has there been extensive effort to get these women the MENTAL health care they deserve? If not, the Marine Corps has failed yet again.
While this latest episode of injustice is NOT surprising to me, I do believe change can happen, but at the motivation must come from God or faith, bravery, and the respect for human kind at its core.
Photos/ References:
1. Little Girl: http://bit.ly/2mjYYRH
2. Business Insider Article: http://read.bi/1V19GU7
3. Woman at Conference Table: http://bit.ly/2n42PRi
Women in Iraq/Afghanistan: http://bit.ly/2ncfTDo
