Food and Pain: Oh C’Mon, Do They Really Go Together?

You can listen to the article here.

Yes they do!  And I can’t tell you how incredibly easy it is to forget that food can be causing not only your pain, but your skin problems, your irritable or low mood, your fatigue, your restless legs, infertility or PMS!  Whew……… I could go on but this article is centered specifically on food and pain.  People often ask me why I added nutritional therapy to my already established and busy practice of physical therapy.  Each profession by itself requires a ton of study, skill building, artful practice and work to keep up and stay on the leading edge of emerging information.

So why did I take on a second profession?  Because my manual therapy skills showed me that those patient cases that were the most difficult to improve with physical therapy skills had the most soft tissue tension patterns leading to or coming from their digestive tracts.  It didn’t matter what kind of high level manual techniques, stretching or exercise programs I did with this group,  they either did not improve at all or improvements were temporary at best and they would always return with the same pain complaints!

It is an advanced skill to be able to feel the relationship of the digestive tract with other parts of the body and it is because of honing this skill over many years that lead me to realize that I didn’t have the tools to fully resolve someone’s recurring pain complaints.

If I wanted to help more people with their hard to resolve pain issues, then that meant becoming a Certified Nutritionist to clearly understand digestion, food compatibility, metabolic and nutrient therapy.   I’ve been integrating that work for quite a few years now so I thought I would give you some examples of how the food and pain picture presents and how I resolved each patient’s pain.

Case #1:  Erin and debilitating low back pain!

 Erin was in her mid to late 30’s when she came to me with complaints of low bak pain that occurred about 3 – 4 times each year and when it did, it was so debilitating that she would be totally stuck in a forward bent position, couldn’t go to work and would need 2 – 4 days just to be able to stand upright, let alone be free of back ache which took another 2- 4 weeks.  Manual mechanical treatments helped as did her exercise program but none of this prevented these acute painful episodes from reoccurring.

My assessment with Erin revealed some mild digestive complaints, and irregular bowel pattern but nothing really that she felt was a problem.  My manual assessment, however, showed that Erin had tremendous tension in her lower colon creating significant restriction with her sacrum.  Her stomach and spleen tension were also strong and made me highly suspicious of a food intolerance.

My treatment plan with Erin included education and instruction about how to find her incompatible foods and to improve her digestive function with whole, real foods and a couple of supplements.  It took some time to assess the benefits since Erin’s acute episodes only happened 3 – 4 times in a year but even after 3-4 months of her new eating plan she could tell that something was different.  That first year she only had one  acute back pain episode and now, 18 months later, Erin’s back never ‘goes out’!

 Case #2:  Lynda and her annoying upper back pain!

 Lynda had upper back pain that ached and ached and was so annoying.  She got frequent massages and all kinds of mechanical treatments with chiropractic, physical therapy and rolfing.  She loved rolling on foam rollers and tennis balls to relieve her constant muscle tension that was across her upper back, mostly on the right.

Lynda had seen very good practitioners but none of them dealt with nutrition or digestive dysfunction. My exam showed that Lynda’s upper right ribs were chronically in poor alignment along with several of the vertebrae of the mid and upper back.  Her soft tissue tension pattern included the area of the liver and gall bladder.  More verbal inquiry with Lynda confirmed for me that her gall bladder function was less than optimal.  Her stools were often light in color and almost always floated in the toilet water.  She experienced a fair amount of burping after eating and more so after certain meals.

I advised Lynda to make some changes with her foods, gave her some supplements that  would enhance the action of her liver and gall bladder and specifically taught her what to look for to know that what she is doing is moving her in the right direction.  In this case, she still needed manual treatments and exercises for her ribs and spine since they had adopted a compensatory alignment over many years.

Lynda had only small changes initially but over several months with her dietary changes and manual treatments Lynda began to be upper back pain free for the first time in years!  Now, Lynda uses the first shadow of tension in this same area of her back as the  canary in the coal mine about having just eaten something that slows her gall bladder function.  She knows to stay away from that food and feels totally empowered now about being able to prevent her pain!

 Case #3:  Shelly and her big toe pain!

 Shelly saw me in my office several years ago with complaints of right big toe pain.  Not just “my toe kinda hurts”, but “my toe REALLY hurts, I have to limp and walk on the side of my foot when it’s bad and that throws everything else off too!”
My exam of her entire structure revealed a clear cut tension pattern right to her liver!  She also appeared slightly swollen with water retention, her tongue looked very congested and she said she would get constipated somewhat frequently although tried to control this with prune juice and fiber.Of course I wanted to make sure that she had had Xrays, had seen an Orthopedist and or a Podiatrist which she had.  Her Xrays were negative and no one had a

clue what to do with her except togive her a hard flat bottom shoe so that her toe wouldn’t bend when she walked. This really didn’t allow her to walk normally at all and almost caused more back problems than it was worth!

I remembered that several of the acupuncture meridians go to the big toe and I didn’t think it was a coincidence that  my manual exam showed a congestion feeling around her liver, spleen and kidneys — all the meridians that end at the great toe!  I told Shelly that she really needed to change her diet, find her food intolerances, clean out her system and then let’s reassess the situation.  Well, that went over like a lead balloon and I never saw Shelly again………until this year when she joined my group detoxification program.  She went through the 21 day program flawlessly and looked lighter and brighter each week.  Several days after the program we talked and she told me how great she felt and oh by the way, the toe pain was gone!  She admitted to me that she thought I was nuts years before to have suggested that she improve her diet and detox her system in order to heal her toe pain!  Now she wishes she had done it then and not suffered another 2 years with a limping gait!

These are very typical examples of what I see every week when it comes to pain and how food can be a critical and often missed component to the treatment plan.  So the next time you have an ache or a pain that’s all too familiar and the help you are getting isn’t resolving it, do remember that your digestive tract may be a silent (or not) source of your pain and that you may need some help there too!

  

 

 

KNEE BONEʼS CONNECTED TO THE……..HIP BONE, HIP BONEʼS CONNECTED TO THE…………..INTESTINE? [FFYH Episode 2]

Yes, you read that right! In the human body, it’s all connected, whether by bones, muscles or other soft tissues or fluids. All bodily structures can influence each other through tension and force patterns that are created, for example, through the system of joints that the song refers to…..

 

Click below to listen to the podcast!

KNEE BONEʼS CONNECTED TO THE……..HIP BONE, HIP BONEʼS CONNECTED TO THE…………..INTESTINE?

You can listen to the article here.

 

Yes, you read that right! In the human body, it’s all connected, whether by bones, muscles or other soft tissues or fluids. All bodily structures can influence each other through tension and force patterns that are created, for example, through the system of joints that the song refers to. There are also connections between the less obvious ‘soft articulations’ as we say in orthopedic manual therapy. Examples of soft ‘joints’ would be the upper portion of the stomach or liver as it lies just under the breathing diaphragm or the kidneys that glide behind the membrane that lies toward the back of your abdomen. There are also numerous mixed connections in the body between a soft surface and a hard surface such as your brain inside the skull, or your lungs against the ribs or your intestines resting inside your pelvic bones. So it isn’t just the influence of one bone to another through the joints as you know them but actually mechanical communication occurs between all structures in the body no matter of their density.

Knee pain is probably only 2nd to spinal pain among the most common pain complaints that I see in my office. After 30 years of clinical practice you can imagine the amount of knee pain that I have witnessed and you might think the most difficult cases have been the ones that have involved the most trauma such as compound spiral thigh fractures or triple ligament ruptures. But in fact, the more difficult knee pain to solve is when there hasn’t been any mechanical trauma at all! This is actually critical information in the knee pain owner’s history and immediately alerts me to look for other structures and systems that are not functioning optimally and could be contributing to their knee pain.

Certainly, if the hip or lower back were not in good alignment, it’s a no brainer that stress and strain at the knee could result. What is less obvious and rarely considered by your doctor and particularly by your orthopedic specialist is the fact that your colon or large intestine may be the source of your unrelenting knee pain. How can that be? Well, if you can accept that all structures in the body that sit next to each other can create influential tension patterns among themselves, then you can realize that an unhappy intestine can create an abnormal tension or improper movement pattern with your hip bone which, in turn, produces strained motion at the knee.

If you are someone who suffers from unexplained and unresolved knee pain, your MRI scan has negative findings and you haven’t suffered any trauma, perhaps someone needs to be assessing the functional health of your intestine and asking you questions about your food choices, your elimination pattern, the quality of your bowel movements and your hydration. It’s an amazing and wonderful experience to alleviate someone’s chronic constipation, irritable bowel or frequent loose stools and find that their long standing knee pain vanishes as well.

I’ve given you a fairly simple example of a soft structure having a mechanical influence on neighboring bone structures, but in reality, it can get much more complex than that where structures at even greater distance are the source of pain, unhealthy biochemistry can be creating an abnormal environment throughout the system and invisible nerve impulses from elevated stress levels may be communicating a core message of danger. So, if you’re still trying to imagine how systems and structures far removed from the knee could actually be creating pain in the knee, it might help to remember how you felt on a turbulent flight with screaming babies or bickering teens seated a few rows away from you! What, you didn’t have a good flight? They were 5 rows away!

Lower Back Pain: Have You Really Tried Everything?

Unresolved lower back pain is probably one of the more common complaints that brings people to my office. This is no surprise since it is estimated that about 31 million people in the US suffer from lower back pain, each person taking at least 4 days off from work per year due to loss of function from back pain. Lower back pain (LBP) ranks 3rd (just after cancer and heart disease) in terms of the most expensive health conditions in the US!

I invite you to ponder these questions with me: Why are there so many people in the US who suffer from lower back pain when there is a plethora of skilled and knowledgeable body workers, complementary care practitioners and spinal care specialists? Why is there such a gross disconnect between prevalence and solution?

Has everyone who suffers low back pain been in some kind of traumatic car accident or other high impact injury that has resulted in permanent lumbosacral damage? Although the answer to this last question unfortunately includes a certain percentage of yes’s, the majority of low back pain sufferers have not had an accident or injury that preceded their back condition. So where does their pain come from and why does it continue?

As a Physical Therapist, I work with individuals who have low back pain for a variety of reasons and my greatest passion and skill is working with the group of LBP sufferers who have negative scan findings and can’t specifically account for their pain onset, why it continues or recurs or how to prevent it. If you are in this group you know that you can feel helpless and frustrated because no one seems to know how to help you and your doctor doesn’t know what to make of your symptoms or story. It often comes down to feeling that no one is listening or that nothing can be done for you. This is where having both credentials as a Certified Nutritionist and Physical Therapist equips me to evaluate and treat from a broader and integrated perspective. A thorough hands on evaluation of the musculoskeletal system which includes assessing tension patterns of the digestive tract, combined with a detailed nutritional assessment has proven to be immeasurable in value compared to either method of evaluation by itself.

It’s not unusual for me to see someone with chronic LBP who either has a history of or currently has a diagnosis of Constipation, Crohn’s Disease, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Diverticulitis or Microscopic Colitis for example. With these cases, intestinal symptoms are obvious and often life limiting. Brief education about the anatomical proximity and physical connection between the digestive tract and lumbar spine results in better understanding that intestinal problems can easily contribute to lower back pain. A more difficult LBP/digestion connection to accept is when symptoms from the digestive tract are minimal or even absent yet compromise to the digestive system exists and is contributing to lower back pain. Conditions that can have difficult to perceive symptoms yet are undermining the integrity of the low back include food intolerances, imbalanced gut flora, bacterial or parasitic infections, irritable bowel syndrome, or poor production of digestive acid, enzymes or bile for example.

As an integrated practitioner I know that unresolved spinal issues are often the end result of multiple systems, each with their own weakness, connecting to each other and producing the final compromise that is experienced as lower back pain.

The next time you are seeking care for persistent problems in your low back take note if your evaluation includes an examination of your abdomen (the front of your back) and a detailed inquiry about your food and digestive function. If your practitioner allows only your back pain to lead them on the path to solution–that path can lead to a brick wall!

DOES AUTUMN AGGRAVATE YOUR HEALTH?

Have you ever noticed a pattern that certain nagging health issues reappear or increase during the Autumn season?  If you have, then you’ve tuned in to the energy of the Fall season aggravating your health, let me explain how this happens. We’ve just come from Summer which has the qualities of being hot, intense, sweaty and oily.  Now we make a 180º shift into a cold and dry Autumn.   All of the aspects of Autumn energy are easy to see by observing the leaves on the trees at this time of year.  Moisture is being drawn out of the leaves and they eventually fall to the ground where they are light, crunchy and easily moved by the slightest breath of wind.  These are the qualities of Autumn:  cold, dry, light, crunchy and moving (like the wind).

We share the same environment as the trees of course and so we are subject to the same moisture depleting, cold and moving energy that occurs in the Fall.  When we already possess those qualities either as our birth constitution or as an influence from our lifestyle, and then add more of the same when Autumn arrives, that’s when we notice certain aggravations with our health.  Particular complaints that show up at this time of year include chap lips, dry skin and hair, even crusty spots in the ears and cracked fingers and heels. Constipation or sluggish bowel elimination is very common during this season. Muscle stiffness and joint irritations that can include crunching and popping and inflammations like tendonitis and bursitis can all appear due to the dryness of the tissues or joint. For the same reasons, nerve irritations like sciatica are common now as well.  Insomnia and feelings of agitation or irritability can be heightened because the mind is impacted by Autumn’s moving energy and therefore more difficult to calm.  Some of my clients actually say, “I hate the wind, I feel crazy if I am in it for too long, it disturbs me!”

We can prepare ourselves for this seasonal change and even remedy current symptoms by choosing the correct foods and actions that balance the aggravated aspects of Autumn energy.  When it comes to choosing foods that are health balancing at this time of year, simply choose those foods that are the opposite qualities of Autumn.

In other words, balancing food choices would be warm, softer, moisture rich and somewhat heavier.  Examples of this  would be hot cereal vs. cold cereal.  Soup vs. cold salads.  Steamed, roasted or sautéed vegetables with olive oil and not just raw veggies.  Cold foods like ice cream and dry crunchy snack foods are aggravating at this time and should be avoided.  It ‘s a great time to reconstitute dried fruits making warm fruit compotes and not eating dried fruit as is!  Sipping hot tea and even just hot water is actually strengthening to the digestive and immune system this time of year.

Balancing lifestyle actions in Autumn are not only about hydrating but also about lubricating the body which is why taking warm baths with calming oils or rubbing warming sesame oil on your feet at night are great to do at this time. Steam rooms are great versus dry saunas and if you are prone to sinus problems, start nasal breathing over a simmering kettle of water now!  Dry sinus membranes cannot expel bacteria and toxins.  It’s definitely the time to get more rest as your body and brain shift their circadian rhythm to shorter days and more darkness.  Your exercise should include calmer and more centering activity like yoga, stretching, tai chi, chi gong or even walking in nature.  And my favorite tip, especially if you are traveling, is to remember to fill the bath tub with hot water before going to bed and you’ll have an instant moisture rich vaporizer in your hotel room!

I have a fabulous tip for sensitive teeth which can be annoying at any time especially with high stress but Autumn is a specific time that can worsen this condition so stay tuned for that tip coming up soon!

Is Your Food A Pain In The Neck?

As a Physical Therapist for the last 30 years, I have successfully worked with thousands of people with musculoskeletal pain, but it was the patients whose pain that did not resolve that lead me to integrate my Certified Nutritionist services with Physical Therapy, and uncover the digestive tract as a source of pain that looks totally orthopedic in nature. Yes, from headaches to plantar fasciitis – it can all come from digestive dysfunction or food incompatibility. The key here is that there hasn’t been a particular injury or repetitive stress that would usually be the source of the painful condition.
If you are wondering whether you or someone you know might be experiencing this situation – see how you answer the following questions:
·    Is your pain chronic, recurrent or seasonal?
·    Does your pain still occur despite a variety of therapies tried?
·    Did your pain start and continue without a mechanical injury or repetitive stress?
·    Do you have any complaints about your digestion or elimination?
·    Do you crave certain foods?
·    Do you have reactions to certain foods but eat them anyway?

The more “yes” answers indicates that your pain may involve your foods or digestive function and that you may benefit from Nutritional Therapy.