When your brain is sick you don't feel pain.

The reason you are able to sense pain in the first place is because of receptors located all throughout your body that transmit pain signals to the brain.  When there is damage being done to the tissues of your body you will feel pain.  When you are sick you may feel pain because of the activation of these pain receptors.  The difference between your brain and the rest of your body is the fact that your brain contains no pain receptors.  Therefore your brain can’t feel pain.  This is how a person can undergo brain surgery while they are awake and only need anesthesia for the scalp and skull cutting.  Once the brain is exposed the surgeon can poke, prode and pinch the brain with no pain being felt.

So if your stomach hurts with the flu, and your joints ache with arthritis, and your chest hurts without enough oxygen…what does your brain do when it’s hurting?  Alterations in brain lead to imbalances in the motor systems of your brain.  One obvious motor system is your physical motor system.  This is what allows you to throw a football, tie your shoes, feed yourself, and walk.  These are all motor systems.   When your brain is “hurting” or “in trouble” you can see alterations in the physical motor systems.  Your posture might be altered, your movement patterns might be dysfunctional, your head rotation or eye deviation may be skewed, or your range of motion may be diminished.  These can all be signs of negative changes in the brain that are leading to problems in the physical motor system.

Another motor system that is not so obvious is the emotional loops of the brain that are responsible for our thoughts, emotions, behavior and attitude.  Your thoughts and behavior are the result of motor functions occurring in the brain.  So instead of physical postural changes you may be noting depression, anxiety, attention deficit, or learning disabilities.

Many of the neurobehavioral problems that many children face are not the result of “Ritalin deficiency”, but rather the result of a brain that is hurting.  Much of the depression plaguing our society is not some “Prosac deficiency”, but rather a brain that is not working properly.  So to recap, when your brain is hurting you won’t feel pain, but you will manifest disturbances in your motor systems.  These can be either physical or emotional.  Chiropractic neurologists and functional medicine practitioners are well-equipped to identify and improve “broken brains”.

In our next post we will discuss some of the causes of a “hurting” and “broke” brain.  Until then go check out the Magnificent Seven Lifestyle and do something nice for your brain!

Too much sugar is bad for you. So are the multitude of artificial sweeteners on the market.

So many people, in an effort to be “healthy” or “lose weight” are turning to the sugar alternatives.  More and more people are using the artificial sweeteners on the market to try and lose weight, only to find that their weight stays on.  One sweetener that is touted on all the commercials as safe is Splenda.  However, you using Splenda could be negatively impacting your desire to lose weight, be healthy, have more energy, and think more clearly.

Sucralose (Splenda) is an artificial sweetener that is made by binding three chlorine atoms to a molecule of sugar.  The problem is when this chlorine reacts with organic materials (your body) and creates chlorination by-products that can trigger chronic symptoms like fatigue, headaches and brain fog.  Given the fact that 7 out of 10 women in the United States consume Splenda on a daily basis…this poses a big problem.

Sucralose is found in nearly 4,000 different food items.  It is found in everything from diet drinks, protein bars and toothpaste to gum, over-the-counter drugs and salad dressing.  Some research has shown that up to 70% of people that ingest sucralose will have some adverse reaction to it.

So How Does Sucralose (Splenda) Thwart Your Best Weight Loss Efforts?

If you are struggling to lose weight, then no doubt you are aware of the thyroid gland.  The thyroid is largely responsible for your basal metabolic rate, or your ability to burn calories efficiently.  If you are working efficiently then you can lose and manage weight efficiently.  Our thyroid is a sensitive gland that is largely affected by stress, toxins and malnutrition.  When we are stressed our thyroid hormone conversion is affected leading to poorer thyroid function. When we are toxic our body’s become more acidic and our thyroid function is altered.  If we are malnourished, or taking acid blocking medications which alter absorption of thyroid minerals, then our thyroid becomes negatively affected.

One absolutely essential component of proper thyroid function is your level of iodine…this is what serves as the backbone building structure for thyroid hormone.  The problem is that chlorine can compete with iodine for binding spots on your thyroid and in the manufacture of your thyroid hormone.  This means that you will alter the function of your thyroid and you can decrease your fat-burning ability by up to 40% with just this!

Working on cleansing, nourishing and balancing your body each day will help you and your thyroid function at optimal levels.  You should not only avoid consuming excess sugar, but you should also avoid all artificial sweeteners…including sucralose.

If you have used Splenda heavily in the past, then you should consider using N-acetyl-cysteine at 600 milligrams daily for two months.  This increases your levels of glutathione in the body which helps to flush the chlorination by-products out of your body.  I personally use the product Cellular Energy at 2 capsules twice daily for NAC and other nutrients designed to support the mitochondria.

By eliminating Splenda you may feel that you are experiencing less of the following symptoms:

• unexplained tiredness and fatigue
• brain fog
• nausea
• joint pain
• cramps/bloating
• diarrhea
• headaches
• dizzziness
• mood swings
• depression

So commit to cleaning out the sugar and artificial sweeteners and stop ruining your chances to maintain a healthy weight!

One tremendous example is a young man that I first saw a few weeks ago.  His primary complaint was the inability to lose weight despite changing his diet, aggressive exercise programs, and doing all he knew to do.  He was having headaches, poor energy and digestive complaints…for years!  As with all of our clinical nutrition patients we started to evaluate his metabolism and biochemistry.  Our extensive history, physical examination, and lab testing revealed a number of things:

• faulty methylation
• poor detoxification function with elevated liver enzymes
• insulin resistance
• inflammation
• exhausted adrenal reserves
• food sensitivities

So a tailored program was designed to address these issues and Jared started his Wellness Week.  In one week he noticed some significant improvements.

We changed Jared’s plan slightly and kept him with an aggressive supplement schedule, healthy exercise, and instruction in the Magnificent Seven Lifestyle.  Just yesterday we had him back in the office for his recheck to find that he is now down 41 pounds!

Not only was he down 41 pounds on the scale, but he noticed some other great improvements:

• The headaches he had been struggling with for years are now GONE!
• The digestive complaints, uneasy stomach and irritable bowel that he had suffered with for years now GONE!
• The energy that he lost and hasn’t had since the 6th grade now RESTORED!

So what was my role in all of this?  I simply had to identify the things that needed to be removed from his life and the things that needed to be added back into his life.  He did all the work.  He made the commitments.  He faithfully took his medical foods, handful of supplements, increased his exercise and improved his diet.  He consistently chose to eat only those foods allowed on his modified elimination diet plan.  When his body received the proper stimulus it was able to restore health and the weight which he struggled with for years (even struggling to lose one pound), now is dropping off quite dramatically.

I think Jared teaches us some important lessons.

• He stuck to it even when it was hard.  In the first video, he says he didn’t like the taste of the medical food.  What did he do?  Weighed out the pros and cons and did it anyway.
• He had a steep learning curve that he just jumped right into.
• His attitude has always been compliant and trusting.  Not once have I heard him make excuses, look for short cuts, or talk about giving up.  As a matter of fact, he told me just yesterday of some healthy changes he is starting on his own…without me even recommending them.  Why?  The healthier you get…the more motivate you become.

So let me ask you…is your health worth it?  Are you satisfied how you feel right now?  If not…change it!

Incorporating simple sleep hygiene tips into your life can improve your sleep and your health.

Minimize or Avoid Stimulants

• Avoid or minimize things that could be too stimulating.
• Avoid caffeine containing beverages or foods after 2 PM.
• Try to get your aerobic exercise done before 6 PM or at least 3 hours before bedtime.

Nighttime Tension and Anxiety

• Avoid reading or watching the news before going to bed.
• Avoid paying bills before bed.
• Avoid checking your financial reports or the stock market before bedtime.
• Avoid arguments before bedtime.

Sleep Planning and Bedroom Preparation

• Plan your sleep by putting it on your schedule or knowing you are planning on 81/2 to 9 hours in your bed.
• Be regular and try to go to sleep and wake up the same time each day.  This will help train your biological clock.
• Avoid getting in bed after midnight as late hour sleep is not as helpful as earlier hour sleep.
• Avoid late afternoon or evening naps.

Bedroom Air Quality

• Use HEPA or other types of air purifiers / filters to clean the air in your bedroom.
• If you smell mold or a musty smell have your bedroom checked or cultured for mold with culture plates.

Light, Noise, Temperature, and Environmental Issues

• Turn down the lights in the room you are in 15 minutes before going to bed.
• Use dark window shades or consider a set of eye shades to cover your eyes.
• Make sure your sleeping area is the correct temperature range (not too hot or too cold)
• Avoid sleeping near electric fields.  Try to have your head at least 5 feet away from electric fields, if possible.

Supplements

• Consider taking your magnesium and calcium before bedtime.
• Consider 1-3 milligrams of melatonin two hours before you want to go to sleep.

Do you have some other sleeping tips that work well for you?  Please leave them in the comments below.  Give the sleep hygiene tips some time to work and you can begin experiencing improved sleep!

Poor sleeping habits leads to higher inflammation and increased risk of chronic disease.

There can be numerous underlying causes for sleep disturbances.  Let’s spend a moment reviewing some of the most common and obvious.

(1) Stress

Stress disrupts your sleep.  It does this by a variety of mechanisms, but one of the simplest is the effect stress has on melatonin.  Melatonin is the hormone secreted by the pineal gland to help you fall asleep at night.  Babies have high levels of melatonin and is one reason they sleep for hours each day (and the reason we use the phrase sleep like a baby for deep sleep).  Melatonin is manufactured from serotonin, which you have probably heard of as the “feel good” neurotransmitter.  Stress depletes your levels of serotonin.  So if your serotonin levels are low, not only will you be anxious and depressed, you will have problems making melatonin and getting a good night’s rest.

You can measure your stress response with a salivary hormone profile called the Adrenal Stress Index.  Take these two case studies for example:

In these two examples you see that the midnight sample of the cortisol is elevated.  Both of these individuals have experienced sleep disturbance problems.  The key is to manage the stress appropriately, decrease the cortisol burden and improve the manufacture and conversion of serotonin into melatonin.

(2)  Blood Sugar Dysregulation

This problem really ties into the stress problem as well.  Typically if I hear a patient say that they can fall asleep but wake up later at night and have a difficult time going back to sleep, then blood sugar drops and spikes should be considered.  Your brain requires a constant steady supply of fuel…glucose.  If you are insulin resistant or have reactive hypoglycemia then you can experience these sleep disturbances at night.

(3)  Detoxification Challenges

Meridian therapy (acupuncture) introduces a concept of the horary cycle.  This is a time when organs have their natural “high” points and natural “low” points.  Your body naturally detoxifies at night when you are sleeping.  If you are consistently waking up between the hours of 1-3 AM this may indicate a stressed out liver and detox system.

So Why Is Sleep Important?

Sleep is vital to allow for repair of body damage from normal everyday life.  It allows the body, brain, and mind a chance to be rejuvenated.  There is a lot going on when you are sleeping!  While you are sleeping there is an intricate cascade of healing events.  When you don’t sleep your body becomes inflamed.  Inflammation is the underlying process to the development of every known chronic disease…including cancer, obesity, heart disease and neurodegenerative disorders.  If you are taking strong anti-inflammatories for joint pain, muscle pain and body aches…yet you aren’t sleeping properly…you will not be able to quench the fires of inflammation effectively enough to reduce your pain.

In upcoming posts I will share with you some tips you can use for improving your sleep hygiene and lowering your risk of sleep-deprived inflammation.

In this video presentation I will share with you:

• The four questions all patients ask

• My answers to these questions

• Some facts and figures about health care costs that will blow your mind

• A pivotal point in my life that shaped me into the doctor I am today

• A call for you to become more aware of the importance and value of your health

In this video presentation we will show you:

1. The mess our current food supply is in.

2. Rules you can use for healthy eating and health promotion.

3. Simple ways to test for food sensitivities.

4. How to perform the healing elimination-provocation diet.

Watch this presentation to look at:

1. The 3 robbers of your health and wellness

2. The 7 symptoms that show stress is affecting you

3. What to look for is you suspect toxin exposure is ruining your health

4. Identifying the clues of malnutrition

5. 7 steps you can start today to regain your health

6. 5 things you can do to restore a foundation for health…all for less than a coffee from Starbucks

Like a gas gauge, some people wait until they are "full of pain" to finally start working on their health.

So what is this N.E.P. Syndrome that robs health and vitality from those that have it?  What signs and symptoms should you be aware of to know if you are suffering with the N.E.P. Syndrome?  Let’s take a closer look.

Understanding the N.E.P. Syndrome

This stands for “Not Enough Pain” Syndrome.  Too many people put their health on the back burner because they aren’t in enough pain to do something about it.  How many warning signs in your body have you ignored because, quite simply, they don’t bother you enough?  Many treat their health like a gas gauge and when they are finally full of enough pain then they will seek medical care.  They don’t realize that have walked a long journey towards disease, ignored the road signs, and now want to have everything back to normal immediately.  It doesn’t work that way.  An ounce of prevention, truly is worth  more than a pound of cure.  

Why N.E.P. Syndrome Is So Dangerous

We are drowning in the noise of stress, toxins and malnutrition that are stealing health away from us.  Very few do what it takes to quiet the noise around them and begin listening to the signals that their body is providing.  Chronic aches, mild sleep disturbances, anxiety, mild depression, and irritable bowel are signs and symptoms that things aren’t as they should be.  This isn’t a sign you need the latest designer drug…it’s a sign that your body is out of balance.  Unfortunately, many will choose to wait until these problems turn into much larger problems: gallbladder attacks that require surgery, heart attacks that require life-saving interventions, depression that robs peace each day, gastrointestinal disturbances that lead to colon cancer, or hormonal imbalances that lead to breast cancer.

Have you ever slipped and fallen on the ice, hurt you back working around the house, or noticed you can’t quite turn your head as far as you used to?  After a few days the pain lessens, you pop some pain pills to ignore the problem, and carry on about your business.  You are slipping down the slope created by N.E.P. Syndrome.  You are compromising function, damaging soft tissues, increasing microtrauma to your muscles and ligaments, and accelerating the degenerative process in your joints.  These are warning signs that if ignored can lead to chronic myofascial pain syndromes, torn rotator cuff muscles, chronic headaches, and advanced degeneration in your spine that severely limits your motion and daily activities.

N.E.P. Syndrome is so dangerous because it causes you to put off things that require attention today.  It allows the little problems that are well managed with conservative measures to grow and fester into big problems.  It forces the diagnosis of cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes.  Had you heeded the warning signs you could have changed the path you were on.

Recovering From N.E.P. Syndrome

Current medical care does a great job managing acute disease processes: strokes, heart attacks, broken bones, etc.  However, we are failing in the realm of what affects most of Americans and that is chronic disease and accelerated metabolic aging.  Our current insurance-driven healthcare system with care dictated by the pharmaceutical injury places you on a track where you are forced to only receive care when the scales tip to overt disease.  So many people are told that they are “not quite diabetic”, “not quite high cholesterol”, “not quite hypothyroid”, but to come back in a year when it is worse and then they can start medications.  Sound crazy?  I hear about it every single day in my practice from my patients.

Why is it that someone can go for their annual exam every year and be told they are “perfectly healthy” and then in the next moment told they have colon cancer, or breast cancer, or have suffered a heart attack?  It’s because they ignored the signs and current medical training does not take into account the function of the whole body.  

You need a guide on your journey that can educate you to the warning signs and show you the risk factors in your health.  There are many valuable assessments that can be used to find out exactly where you are on the spectrum of health.  Many of these are functional tests…designed not to only identify disease or pathology…but to identify dysfunction.  Why is this important?  It is because dysfunction precedes disease!  

Our mission statement was designed to help people like yourself recover from N.E.P. Syndrome.  We are here “to restore hope and health in individuals not enjoying wellness by guiding them through cleansing, nourishing, and balancing their bodies.”

Why don’t you start taking charge of your health today!