I was recently interviewed on Dr. Scott Mills’ podcast, The Full Body Fix. You can subscribe to it on iTunes or click the image above for show notes. We dive into the topic of when your aches and pains are more than just aches and pain and where to look when traditional body work isn’t fixing the problem. Enjoy.
During the first trimester visit, many medical practitioners will tell pregnant women not to lift more than 15 lbs until 6 weeks after the birth of their baby (maybe). I truly believe these practitioners are doing what they think is best, but unfortunately, they are missing the mark for the vast majority of women under their care.
The positive intention here is that there are a handful of women who should not be lifting more than 15 lbs due to an impeding medical condition. I also believe there are a handful of women who do not have sound movement patterns and lifting more than 15 lbs resulted in a preventable injury (prevention being the right coaching not necessarily the lifting itself). So, to reach the widest audience with medical advice, practitioners speak to the lowest common denominator and continue to recommend not lifting more than 15 lbs during pregnancy.
- The activity of exploiting genetic material experimentally without regard to accepted ethical standards, or for criminal purposes.
- Do-it-yourself biology, a social movement in which individuals and organizations pursue biology and life science with tools equivalent to those of professional labs.
- What you get when you combine biology with hacking. It’s a way for individuals to effectively “hack” their bodies to achieve certain goals. Sometimes, this hack is as simple as taking a nootropic supplement every day to boost your cognitive ability.
Whatever fits your definition of biohacking is up to you, hopefully it isn’t the criminal end game. But if you want amazing health and performance expression, it all comes down is the basics. You don’t need to hack anything. You already possess the most amazing blueprint and access to quality building materials to create sustainable longevity and a phenomenal quality of life. You just have to follow some basic guidelines. You need to biohack your biohacking.
I’m an avid semi-competitive-worker-outer. At almost 38 years old, I can say I’m the fittest over all I have ever been in my life and there are is still lots of room for improvement.
One of the things I see repeatedly at the gym is people constantly stretching, smashing, and rolling the chronically tight muscles. I’m not one to offer advice unless asked. That’s why I write these posts. You will come across it when you’re looking for information that pertains the post’s topic.
When someone does finally approach me, I make sure to get one point across.
The Body Never Does Stupid Stuff!
If you have a chronically tight muscle, it’s happening for a reason. If you have high blood pressure, it’s happening for a reason. If you have cancer, it’s happening for a reason. The reason isn’t because the body is stupid. It’s because the body has been trying to adapt to all the stupid stuff we put it through to keep us going. At some point, those silent adaptations becomes a screaming alarm to stop and slow down.
Tight muscles are no different.
When you walk on an icy sidewalk, you instinctively activate muscles and ‘tighten’ them to make sure you walk more carefully and avoid falling. But have you ever walked on an icy sidewalk and when you’re inside, you stop and stretch out? Not at all.
If you’re a runner or competing in the CrossFit Open with nagging shin splints or plantar fasciitis, you probably think I’m nuts saying your pain from injury is all in your head. What I’m getting at is this, ‘is your brain cheating on you?’
One of the key characteristics of shin splints and plantar fasciitis is that you are using the big toe to cheat your movement and cover for some other movement or body part not pulling its weight when you are running, jumping, or lifting. Your shin splints or plantar fasciitis is a symptom of a different problem, most likely one between the ears.
You may be thinking, “But my big toe and brain aren’t anywhere near each other.” Stay with me on this. If you don’t think your big toe and brain are connected, read on.
If you’ve never had shin splints, then skip to the next section. If you HAVE had shin splints, you know how painful, debilitating, and frustrating it can be to treat and recover. What I want you to do is STOP TREATING YOUR SHIN. Your shin is not the problem. It’s the symptom. If you really want it to stay a nagging injury, keep competing and covering the pain with some caffeine and NSAIDS. [Read more…]
Many times when people undergo treatment for something, they experience getting worse before getting better. I’m not talking about the obvious chemical poisoning like with chemo therapy. I think most people realize why they get worse before getting better. It’s literally poison.
What I’m talking about is when you start doing things that are good for you; adding purity and sufficiency into your life.
To understand this, you have to look to the nervous system. The nervous system coordinates EVERYTHING in your life. Every second of every day your nervous system is organizing life to keep you functional and going. It doesn’t matter if you’re awake, asleep, happy, sad, drunk, or in the middle of running a marathon.
Your nervous system is organizing and coordinating how to best respond to temperature change, oxygen levels, heart rate, pulse, neurotransmitters, nutrient assimilation, waste excretion, communication, and thousands upon thousands of other stimuli each and every second of the day. All this is happening subconsciously; you don’t have to think about any of it. All this is happening while you’re consciously reading this post.
Pretty freakn’ amazing, right? As conscious as you are of life’s busyness, if you had to juggle what your nervous system juggles consciously, we would all be in a mental wards or no one would live past the age of 5 because we would probably forget some major function to coordinate.
The more we add more stimulus from physical, chemical, and emotional inputs, the more our nervous system has to juggle. No wonder people can’t concentrate, can’t sleep, and medicate themselves to ‘just keep going.’
I’m a couple weeks late to the ‘New Year, New You’ talk and hype. I have done this purposely. You have gotten it and are getting it from every media source. The majority of the messages these past few weeks and every time this year is that ‘YOU SHOULD DO SOMETHING to better your life.’ This year, I want you to focus on NOT DOING.
In my 5 pillars, I discuss that most people are running from bears on a daily basis. The ‘bears’ are stressors physically, chemically, and emotionally. These stressors are things categorized as Deficient and/or Toxic to sustain health.
One of the biggest Toxicities we have in life is being busy. If you ask my staff, I hate the word busy. I cringe when people say, ‘I know you’re busy….” Busy means to be ‘foolishly active.’ My 1 and 3 year old are busy and that’s ok. Their role right now is to experience life and the world around them for the first time. They have no responsibilities to provide for themselves or our family.
Busyness has become a weird standard of measure of our attempt to keep up with the Joneses. It’s a currency gaining more prestige than the latest iPhone, car, or NFL games attended. The more I meet with people, hear their story, examine them, analyze lab work, and schedule them, busyness might be the #1 bear attack that causes the 5 pillars, which led them to their condition they are seeking help. We try to cram more things into the same amount of time each day, often looking back at the day wondering what we actually got accomplished.
The solution? We feel we didn’t accomplish that much so it means we have to do MORE. Since we can’t add time to our day, we have to add speed. The top reason for speed is to obtain things you don’t really need to impress people you don’t really like.
The point of exercise and training is to break the body down. Your workout is actually doing damage. This damage is essential and intelligent to you getting stronger, faster, quicker, and more efficient. The only way the body gets better is through challenges.
The problem is that many think it’s the workout that creates the magic. The actuality is that it’s the recovery that is key. Most people might workout 30 minutes. That leaves 23 1/2 hours to recover.
Reassess these 3 common practices that put a damper on your recovery and ultimately your performance.
Caffeine
Many consume coffee pre-workout to boost their performance. It’s essentially a performance enhancing drug. There’s no denying that coffee boosts energy. Just ask the 54% of Americans over the age of 18 who consume coffee daily. It’s also no mystery that kids consume caffeinated beverages like energy drinks and such, which would drastically raise that 54%, if you included the entire population.
The problem is that this habit may boost short term performance at the expense of longevity, injury prevention, and recovery. If you ever have lab work, usually there is a panel that lists out the type of white blood cells. You will see these as neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils.
Monocytes are cells that clean up inflammatory damage as well as debris from destroyed microorganisms. They differentiate into macrophages and play a huge role in tissue repair whether you are injured, you are sick, or you have been training hard. Without monocytes, muscles would not be able to heal after training or injury.
Cortisol and adrenaline (hormones released during times of stress, which can be physical, chemical, or emotional) lower macrophage activity and count. In essence stress lowers your immune system. Your immune system stimulates inflammation. Caffeine is a direct hit to the adrenals, causing release of cortisol and adrenaline, lowering your healing inflammatory response triggered by your immune system.
Think about this way. If you’re running from a bear, it would not be efficient if you had to stop to cough, sneeze, or dig a hole and pop a squat because you’re fighting the flu. It also wouldn’t be conducive to your survival if you rolled your ankle and it ballooned up and caused you to be immobile. Ever get injured during the heat of competition but not realize it until it was all over? That’s the cortisol and adrenaline kicking in to keep you surviving. Caffeine is a stress on the body.