Lower Back Pain Relief 6 plus Recommended Remedies

and your wellness advocate wellness talk is a show that goes over the latest in health healing nutrition and fitness it is always a pleasure and an honor to have you guys with me today I know you could be doing a lot of other things but I'm glad you're hanging out with us and checking out what we got for you some say the advice is worth what you pay for it let me know what you think today we're gonna have one big topic today normally I do a lot of little smaller topics but today I wanted to focus on one specific thing and that is back pain I'm gonna talk about back pain I'm gonna talk about my experiences with back pain because what people don't realize is that back pain back pain around the world is actually still debilitating it's actually the number one reason why people miss work and it's such a problem in society especially nowadays because we're sitting down all the time where you know in front of computers we're hunching over phones we're you know just have bad posture in general and I was a huge victim of this obviously but I changed that so I'm gonna today I'm gonna approach it a little bit differently but I'm really gonna get into the weeds on it and first of all I'm gonna tell my story so exactly my journey through back pain what I had to deal with all the pain I was dealing with and what I found out about it who I spoke to all those types of things I'm gonna take you through my journey through the years and then I'm also gonna tell you about how I managed it and how I've been pain-free for the last 10 to 11 years literally pain-free where I could have you know had surgery or something like that and ended up being literally pain-free and did it all on my own so I'm gonna tell you exactly how I did that but also I'm gonna tell you what I had what I was diagnosed with and then also on top of that I'm gonna piggyback and and do an excerpt from an article and this is from dr. Josh Axe and it's lower back pain relief six plus recommended remedies so we're gonna go through that article as well it's a great piece and it has the six plus remedies and I'm actually gonna add to it so it's gonna be it's gonna be more than six because I'm gonna add my piece to that but at the end of this whole talk here this whole discussion I'm gonna lay out the case for those of you who really want to take charge of back pain take charge of your structural health in general and how you can do it different ways you can do it again this is coming from a guy who is not a doctor by the way who is not a chiropractor by any means I don't have a degree in those types of things just so you know that but this is just experience this is experience of what I've dealt with of what I've learned and also the training that I received from chiropractors as well and hopefully some of this stuff can help you guys who are again or dealing with any kind of serious back pain debilitating back pain all that type of stuff and I hope you kind of can get something out of this so that's what we're gonna discuss today it's really gonna be focused on this I've talked about back pain before on this show but I've done small segments on it I have actually talked to some doctors on this show about it and but I really didn't really deep dive deep into what I dealt with so I'm gonna go through that I think hopefully this helps you guys out you know in your own journey so that's what we're gonna be discussing today of course go to check out all the articles that you know we put on there including this article as well and make sure you like share and subscribe as always you know because it's you know I do this show for you guys I do this show to try to help and and give back and give you my experiences and you know it's not always pleasant I know I'm not always the greatest speaker on this show I'm actually far from it I get that believe me and I would not be surprised if you guys go running from this show but you know what we I do have a lot of faithful listeners and I appreciate all you guys who donate and all you guys who support us in every single way so it's really really appreciated as always alright so before we dive in of course want to make sure we give some love to our sponsors so of course we're gonna talk about one of our big sponsors here and that is wellness resources my favorite supplements and by the way I'm gonna talk to you about wellness resources supplements in terms of what you can use for your back pain and inflammation as well so wellness resources as you guys know they manufacture well you know well more than 95 plus superior quality nutritional supplements that deliver the most absorbable nutrients in optimal amounts to make the true difference in your health since 1985 they've used only the highest quality nutrients no chemical additives the same nutrient forms used in research and enough of a nutrient obviously to be beneficial this attention to 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just to maintain yourself so again it's 25% off their daily supplements so check them out it's my vitamin resource calm and it's wellness resources supplements check them out alright guys so let's get started on our discussion this week and again we're gonna address back pain and I'm also by the way I didn't mention this before but I'm also gonna talk about the nutrition piece to it and what nutrition that I used what anti-inflammatory nutrients that I used to help me with my back pain issues as well because again it's a it's about having a comprehensive approach that's really what this is all about so let's talk a little bit about my story first so you guys know kind of my you know you get the frame of reference of what my journey was and then I'll kind of you know weave in a few different things in there so growing up I was I was an athlete I was I played baseball I played you know basketball not well baseball was my main thing played basketball not that well I did play football pretty well those are my three main sports but did a lot of everything um I also played a lot of you know I played tennis here and there big into martial arts martial arts when I was younger you know 10 11 12 years old I did about five or six years of martial arts heavily into that so but through those years obviously dealing with all the other chronic stuff that I talk about on this show as well but you know especially playing a lot of football I played high school baseball but playing a lot of rough football okay especially the rough to hand touch and stuff like that as well but again always an athlete always in you know very good shape and stuff like that but I took a lot of hits took a lot of hits you know fell on the floor a lot you know you know hit my back a lot all those types of things so you know I had some injuries I had a busted leg at one point when I was about 17 years old and stuff like that so I was you know I had a lot of injuries busted up but again still played still you know did what I had to do then obviously music came into my life and in my mid to late teens and for those of you know my story I was a drummer and you know played professionally played for many many years as a drummer and stuff like that so that was that was a whole nother side to my you know my my career and my life in general just music became a huge passion for me but anyway so through those years especially into my 20s maybe mid to 20s coming out of college and all that I started to experience lower back pain I've noticed now this was I mean think about it I'm maybe 24 25 something like that and I'm experiencing lower back pain not sure what it's from and you know so it was kind of weird but I kind of you know just went through it I said okay maybe I had some back injuries or whatever maybe some old nagging injuries and that type of thing now one of the things you realize when you're a drummer and you're playing especially when you're playing rock music you're you know you're jamming out and you're you know you're just bouncing up and down and stuff like that and we used to and back in those days we were playing for hours on not only were playing gigs that were about an hour an hour and a half in different clubs and stuff like that but practicing and rehearsing we were sometimes we would practice for seven or eight hours that's how much we were jamming and I noticed them during those years I had terrible posture while I was playing I was literally hunching my back while I was playing now you're again I'm jamming and I'm and I'm really into it arching but I'm hunching my back and I noticed the more I did that the more pain I was in so you know eventually it just the back pain got worse and worse as the years went by so I said you know I was saying to myself I wonder how what I can do to try to you know deal with this issue so through those years you know I'm you know it didn't help that I was that I was you know schlepping gear back and forth as well you know a lot to a lot of these gigs and stuff like that so now we're looking at late 90s early 2000s so I decide you know what I'm gonna start to try to do something different so I figured I try to get into yoga so I get into yoga and I start really heavily getting into yoga I actually fell in love with yoga I thought yoga was great because it it made me feel amazing when I did it you know after I had a yoga session so I got into power yoga I got into a stanga yoga stanga yoga you're literally doing it for an hour and a half okay and you know I started doing yoga I figured yoga would help me with this and maybe correct my back and what I noticed through those years of doing yoga I noticed that the pack the back pain was getting worse and that was really weird to me you know that even with all this yoga without that I was doing that the back pain was getting worse because you always think okay maybe yoga would help but that you know it was actually getting worse which is very very weird by the way as an aside I went to a yoga studio in the city this was in New York City by the way and this is Patabi Joyce who was the leading master of and the inventor of a stanga yoga came from India and he actually did a class for about two weeks in the city and I signed up for it because I was so excited to actually see that he was the guru he was in his 90s or late 80s when he did it at that time this was actually a week before that this was the Sunday before 9-11 I'll never forget it okay the Sunday right before 9-11 2001 so I took that class with him it was an amazing class and when they you know when they do it they do they do those adjustments for you they they literally like put you in these positions that you never thought you could be in so but it was it was an amazing experience but anyway so I'm doing yoga through all those years and I noticed my pain is getting worse so through the 2000s now I'm working now I'm working my day job in the city and I'm doing gigs on the weekends through those years okay and doing some small tours on the weekends and doing all these different types of things having success on that end and one day while I was you know went to get up in the morning to go to work in the morning after I just did a gig the night before and I couldn't get up I literally my back was like frozen I was in such pain that I literally could not get up from the bed it was it was it was like a really bad spasm okay that was one prop so I knew there was a problem I literally had a colon to work and say I can't get out of bed it took me like half the day to get out of bed literally so I knew there was a problem there then anybody who who has worked in New York City and has taken the subway especially during rush hour you know that you're packed into these subways like sardines so I would be packed into this subway and I would be in such pain because I was dealing with sciatica okay anybody knows what sciatica is this is pain that runs down the you know one of your legs so it's coming from the from the lumbar spine all the way down your legs and the more I would be standing on the subway because now you're packed in the subway and everybody's standing I was in such pain and I'm trying to deal with it I refuse to take anti-inflammatories I refuse to take pain medication because I knew that once I started on pain medication that it would be the cycle that I would have to keep doing it so the only saving grace with me that would happen on the subway is that when somebody got up and I got a chance to get that seat I would sit down now when you sit down it flattens everything out the nerves open and you feel better so the pain would go away when I would sit but if I was standing on a line too long or if I was standing on the subway too long I was in severe pain in severe sciatic pain that's how bad it was so finally I said okay got to get this checked out so I go to I go to the doctor he gets a referral gives me you know brings me to specialists but blah blah I get an MRI get an x-ray do all the tests so finally I meet with the specialists and he looks at my x-rays and he says well he says I could see why you have the pain this is why he says well there's a couple of things going on here number one you have a fracture that must have that you must have had years ago that healed so first of all that was one of the most surprising things that I dealt with that I actually had a fracture that healed and I didn't know I had a fracture so how do you not know that you have a fracture good that's a good question that was number number two he tells me you have what we call spinal stenosis so what is spinal stenosis spinal stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal column that puts pressure on your spinal column causes pain okay he says so I'm like oh great so I mean this is some you know I'm thinking spinal stenosis is something that people or you know over 60 get okay but yet I'm you know I'm in my 30s now my late 20s early 30s and I have this these problems so he says the good news is that you are in excellent condition it's all right I was in good condition I wasn't again an athlete and you don't you know I'm not gonna recommend surgery because you're young and you know you're you're you can you can fix this or at least you can manage this so he recommended pain management and and physical therapy okay so I said okay thank you very much and I didn't want to do it so I said I'm not gonna do physical therapy I don't want to do pain management but I got to figure out what I'm gonna do so now we get into 2008 2009 somewhere along those lines for I was still doing yoga still in pain so at one point I said to myself okay maybe I should stop doing what if I what happens if I stop doing yoga and let's see what happens you know maybe I should stop it maybe yoga is actually hurting me so I stopped doing it I've just as a trial just to see what would happen and sure enough the next few weeks that I stopped doing a yoga the pain started to go away so I realized one thing that the yoga itself something about doing yoga and maybe forcing myself into these positions was not the right thing for me to do it's not the right thing for my body so I stopped doing the pain started to go away and I started to focus more on strength training and you know just doing that's where I bought a total gym and I started really focusing more on that and you know getting my back stronger and and you know just really and I used to do bodybuilding way back in the old days when I was about 20 years old so I got back into that and little by little my pain started to go away it didn't go away fully but it went away enough to where it was bearable and I was able to function and and you know do these things again so that started to help me and now I'm gonna continue my story but I want to I want to talk a little bit about what I was dealing with and my diagnosis and what the issue was so I want to talk a little bit about spinal stenosis and exactly what it is okay for those of you who may be dealing with it or you know you I mean or you're dealing with some kind of degenerative problem okay so spinal stenosis is a great great little presentation by dr. John Bergman who is a great chiropractor by the way he talks about it but basically again it's a narrowing of a spinal canal it commonly occurs in the neck and the lower and lower back it can put pressure on the spinal cord and the nerves and again my problem was the lower back this was this was the big issue here okay now in the United States 200,000 cases per year are typically diagnosed of spinal stenosis now again typically it's older people all right that's typically because again they they considered a degenerative problem but I had it so if you look at it for those of you who are just listening I'm I'm showing some presentations from again dr. John Bergman who has a great great presentation on this just showing the difference between a normal spinal column and a stenosis spinal column against the gnosis just means narrowing you can get stenosis of different things but spinal stenosis is just specifically um stenosis of the spinal column so if we go through just a couple of the slides now if you take a look at some of the symptoms the symptoms are pain obviously in the back in the legs in the thigh and then the buttocks you also you know and I was getting again pain in the lower back and I was getting that sciatic pain down my left leg we have numbness we have muscle weakness of normal walking and or cramping and then in you can even get and this is when you gets more severe impaired bladder and bowel control okay and then what they say here is the causes are age-related wear and tear mostly affects people over 60 which is what you would think right and it says most spinal stenosis occurs when something happens to reduce the amount of space available within the spine such as an overgrown of both of bone osteoarthritis and bone spurs herniated disc thickened ligaments and spinal injuries okay so that's just a little bit of background of what I was dealing with in terms of spinal stenosis and again you know maybe some of you may be dealing with that or maybe you're dealing with herniated discs or any kind of just spinal you know issues and stuff like that or maybe a deviation of the spine that's another thing you can be dealing with so that is what I was dealing with okay and then I learned a few things through my journey because I actually started to see a chiropractor as well and I got to you know got to talk to chiropractors and kind of start getting into the spine and just in general anatomy of the body to start getting into that type of stuff but you you you learn a lot of things about the human body you learn how that how the actual body works and how you know a pain in the spine can affect so many other things and this is what I talk about on this show all the time right when you look at the human body as a whole when you look at it as a whole everything affects everything else just like I talked about in nutrition right you take a supplement that supplement affects many different enzymes many different proteins in your body if you take a pharmaceutical drug that pharmaceutical drug even though it affects whatever it is that you're trying to deal with whether it's pain inflammation or whatever it is but it also affects other things because you sometimes get side effects that means that that side effect is coming out of something that the drug was affecting besides the pain itself so again everything affects everything else your walk the way you walk you know whatever pain you're dealing with it's all interconnected from your you know your spinal cord your nervous system all the way up into your brain so we've got to look at healing we've got a human look at the human body as a whole system and this is what I talk about all the time so before I get into the rest of my story so let's let's get into this article which is a great article from dr. Josh axe and it's lower back pain relief six plus recommended remedies so let's dive into this so you know I think there's gonna be a lot of information here that's gonna be very helpful for you guys so again we have the causes and risk factors for any kind of back problems okay and and back pain they say here you know postural problems including spinal abnormalities such as ruptured disc bulging disc and herniated disc obviously these back problems can cause a spongy the the gel filled cushions right in between which is in between the vertebrae right these interconnecting interconnecting rings okay that are discs all right the these can you know it can really cause pressure on these dicks you have to remember this is like 30-something interconnected rings in there very very tough these these rings of of discs in between the vertebrae okay other things that can cause a muscular strains and weakness possibly fractures again my issue okay and then you have a compensation right when you're walking there could be a compensate compensation in your body poor form when exercising overtraining is another thing right sports related injuries we have in flexibility wearing non-supportive shoes obesity and lifestyle factors pregnancy emotional and psychological stress that's a big one a lot of people don't realize that their back pain come from stress okay also lack of sleep sleeping in an uncomfortable position and sleeping on a poor poorly made mattress and as many many other things that can contribute to back pain but those are just some of the main causes now again globally back pain is one of the most common causes for missed work about eight point two percent of American adults have chronic severe back pain and studies show that back pain symptoms tend to come back also Americans spend roughly 50 billion with a B each year to help diagnose treat various lower back pain symptoms okay so let's look at some of the natural remedies now so we're gonna go through the first six remedies that are in this in this article and then I'm gonna give my two cents I'm gonna finish my story and kind of round everything out here okay so the first remedy that you know I would definitely recommend here is the chiropractic adjustment and other post postural adjustment so regular chiropractic care adjustments have proved to be a very effective at helping provide lower back pain relief especially if you combine it with other things like exercise like was massage therapy and soft tissue therapies great stuff okay those some articles here are some studies especially a journal of the North American Spine Society and the Journal of the American Medical Association found evidence that spinal manipulations were safe and effective drugless forms of professional treatment I would absolutely recommend a chiropractor because they have the knowledge of anatomy they have the knowledge of how the body works as a whole now a couple of things with a chiropractor I would recommend make sure that they're taking x-rays before x-rays and after x-rays huge huge huge because you got to know what you're dealing with okay and again this is just common sense and this is again stuff I've learned from my own chiropractors that I've studied with and that I you know that have helped me okay so before and after x-rays are huge so make sure if you're gonna seek out a chiropractor ask them about x-rays and taking those before and after x-rays extremely extremely important okay and make sure that they are looking at the causes okay and they're also looking at a comprehensive approach not just the adjustment but a comprehensive approach also other things to factor in as far as lifestyle but chiropractors very very important so definitely find a chiropractor near you and do some research on them I think it's extremely important number two regular full body exercise exercising regularly including doing both cardio and aerobic exercises and strength training can help reduce back pain by increasing flexibility helping you maintain a healthy weight reducing inflammation improving posture and reducing muscle compensation and weakness okay so regular exercise extremely important again because you get you get in the blood flowing you want that blood flowing in and out of those those that tissue in and out of where the vertebrae are in and out where those discs are now one of the things you realize again when it comes to vertebrae because vertebrae and and the discs issues right that's your very common issues of obviously along your spine that are going to cause pain your discs right those interconnecting rings in there have a terrible blood supply they rely on movement in order to get the nutrition in order to get the the discs to be lubricated okay they rely on moving you've got to move so if you are not moving if you are not exercising if you're a couch potato if you're just laying there you know you're not gonna get that that that blood supply to the discs those nutrients to the discs and what's gonna happen those discs eventually dry up they dry up and that you you're you have a tendency for more pain more inflammation they tend to wear down as you get older okay this is why you shrink in height by the way as you get older okay but you got to move you got to move you got to get them just like joints I talk about joints all the time joints are hydraulic they rely on fluid to get the nutrients in and out the same thing joints and your discs hydraulic they need fluid they need movement so you got to move exercise is a good you know part of this and again if you're if you're in a lot of pain and you can't necessarily exercise start small start doing some small things but first I would recommend obviously you know checking out a good chiropractor okay or seeing a specialist whatever you can just to kind of get the diagnosis and then work from there number three soft tissue therapy soft tissue therapies help to treat the underlying causes of back pain such as poor posture muscular compensations and weakness through manipulative hand-on adjustments these therapies also can help turn on muscles that have been turned off due to past injuries and therefore eliminated eliminate added stress on painful parts of the back or legs so there's different types of soft tissue therapies okay you have active release technique which is like a dip deep tissue massage you have dry needling which is a treatment that involves a very thin needle being pushed through the skin in order to stimulate a trigger point you have acupuncture again a holistic technique that stems from the traditional Chinese medicines again dealing with the thin needles into the skin you have cupping therapy and you also have the neurokinetic therapy a type of natural therapeutic system that has the goal of correcting learned movements and muscle functions within the body that can contribute to poor posture joint tenderness and muscular pain now again you guys have to do your research on all of this stuff okay I haven't done all of this stuff this is just the things that have been shown to work in many instances of back pain not everybody's gonna have the same outcome keep that in mind okay so you have to find what works for you and this is why I'm doing this because I'm giving you the guys the options but also telling you what worked for me and then you guys can take the information see if it works for you and if it works for you great or find out what works for you and then discard the rest or pass it on to somebody else that may be dealing with the same type of issues okay just keep those things in mind number four prolotherapy for chronic injuries and tissue damage prolotherapy has been used to treat back pain for more than 50 years according to a report by the Cochran database okay basically this therapy uses platelet rich plasma and sometimes stem cells taken from your own body that contains growth factors and help heal damaged tissues okay prolotherapy treatments work by naturally promoting a minor inflammatory response near damaged connective tissue promoting regeneration and the growth of new healthier tissue in the process so that's prolotherapy again you know dive into it check out to see if this is something that could work for you number five and this is where we're talking about the comprehensive approach to this number five it seems simple and people don't realize it but it's it's fundamental the anti-inflammatory diet that's also a part of it because you can do all these therapies okay you can do all these type different types of therapies but if you are not eating an anti-inflammatory diet or at least doing your best to get into to get those anti-inflammatory antioxidants in you're not gonna get the resolution that you're looking for okay so things like high fiber foods obviously okay lots of water for the lubrication okay you know the eight glasses of water a day okay dehydration by the way a lot of people don't know this dehydration can contribute to back pain collagen collagen is one of the most you know abundant proteins in our body but collagen supplementation is an effective remedy for osteoarthritis and joint pain and all these types of things potassium potassium-rich foods okay potassium reduces swelling and is an important electrolyte in terms of muscular function and nerve functions so get those potassium-rich foods you got the avocados the bananas the coconut waters the leafy green vegetables you know all those types of things that contain a lot of potassium make sure you're getting that in and then next is omega-3 fatty acids right if you're looking at the food sources you're looking at wild-caught fish you're looking at flaxseeds which are high in omega-3s obviously these are anti-inflammatory and then you want clean proteins so again anti-inflammatory diet as much as possible that's gonna help you you'd be shocked at how this will help you you have to get those in okay and then number six this is where we get into the supplementation piece right so you know on top of the anti-inflammatory diet and all the other things that you're doing take a look at supplementation so we want to take a look at the top choices which would be again fish oil the omega-3 so aside from eating the salmon or the wild-caught fish those types of things high doses of fish oil about 2,000 milligrams a day that's also EPA and DHA extremely important in terms of this okay because remember fish oil is anti-inflammatory. Turmeric you want to at least start out with about a thousand milligrams a day of curcumin if at all possible that is the ingredient in turmeric so again a curcumin supplement great for that anti-inflammatory next proteolytic enzymes okay the big ones are bromelain and papain okay so about 500 milligrams you know three times a day bromelain is found in pineapples great and enzyme that is anti-inflammatory helps reduce swelling next we're looking at magnesium magnesium about 400 to 500 milligrams a day the reason why magnesium works and I've talked about it on the show before because man magnesium is a relaxation mineral mineral it's an and it's a it's kind of a natural muscle relaxer okay helps to reduce the stress helps to reduce overall stress by the way kind of gives you a relaxation effect but it helps to also reduce or relax the muscles then we have essential oils like peppermint great for this to help to cool inflamed joints and help to reduce back pain and then we have things like capsicin now capsicin is there's creams that contain capsicin but capsicin is the ingredient that's found in chili peppers okay or cayenne peppers but if you get it as a cream it can actually be applied topically and help to at least reduce some of the symptoms or some of the inflammation that you may be getting with back pain or different types of pain what you know in whatever area in the body but again it's capsicin that's CAPSAICIN capsicin so those are the six recommended things that you could take a look at on the natural side in terms of you know in terms of back pain okay now again you have to remember that you know there could be many reasons for the back pain that you are dealing with but it's very very important that you know you really want to address it the best way you can you know obviously if you are working with your doctor if you are an anti-inflammatories from your doctor if you're getting physical therapy or whatever or even if you have to go into surgery you got to do what you got to do okay but if you are not there yet are you looking for some other kind of remedies that you know that may be better for you then check out some of these things okay now I'm gonna add my piece to it just so you guys can understand where I'm coming from in terms of what helped me so now we go back to about 2008 well maybe 2010 something like that so I stopped doing yoga my back pain gets better doesn't go away oh you know all the way but it's getting better I'm doing some strength training right but I'm still feeling pain as I get up in the morning I'm still getting some spasms I'm still getting still dealing with some pain you know playing gigs carrying gear you know back and forth travel doing all these things it's wear and tear on the body obviously you know so then about 2011 I'm I'm you know I'm following some you know I'm doing I'm working with people now on the nutrition side as well on the side you know I'm starting to work with a lot of people and helping them get the nutrition side I'm still in some pain and then I was following a doctor many of you may know him his name is dr. Mercola he is a you know one of the most famous doctors the world one of most controversial doctors in the world he's these he's had he's had for many many years the number one health website in the world I don't know if it's still that way but he they tried to cancel him a lot but that's a whole nother story but anyway he was doing an interview and he you know I was watching some of his energy did an interview with a gentleman named dr. Eric Goodman and I was passively listening to this interview and dr. Eric Goodman was talking about a program that he had come up with now dr. Eric Goodman for those of you who don't know is a chiropractor okay who you know interestingly enough has suffered from severe back problems and was always looking for a way to heal himself so dr. Eric Goodman came out with this program called foundation training and he was explaining it on dr. Mercola show so I'm passively listening to it and all of a sudden I'm listening to what dr. Goodman is saying and he was coming out with some concepts that I never heard before he was talking about the posterior the posterior chain of the body he was saying that the posterior chain of the body is the core of the body a lot of people think of the core as just the abdominal muscles right there you know and I understand why but he was focusing on the posterior meaning the posterior the back muscles the glute muscles the hamstrings the calves all those muscles in the posterior side of the body that actually hold you up that actually people that a lot of even bodybuilders ignore a lot of people who work out ignore and this this is the place in the body where you get a lot of imbalances because a lot of people who do strength training tend to build up the front right they tend to build up the pecs and the arms and the shoulders and you know the lats and the shoulders and the traps and all these types of things but a lot of them neglect the back they neglect the hamstrings they neglect all these types of things so you get this imbalance in the body so he was talking about strengthening that so he had this program called foundation training that strengthened the posterior chain of the body and it was these simple exercises that you do for 10 to 15 minutes a day that strengthens that part of the body and he says that he found absolute relief and now he was working with thousands of people that all found relief so I was like that's interesting because this program I can do for 15 minutes a day it's geared towards people with back pain or whatever kind of pain they're dealing with and I can do it and move on okay this intrigued me and I kept going back to yoga which when I was doing yoga for about 10 years and I said it's a little bit similar to yoga in in terms of some of the postures that they had but it was done it had a different weight it was something different about it so I they had this 12-minute video on YouTube at the time and I watched them do this video and it was 12-minute video was very easy so I said you know what I'm gonna try it I'm gonna start doing it so I start doing this 12-minute video and it was one of the hardest things to do for me and this is how I knew that I had very weak back muscles because my lower back muscles I couldn't even I could barely hold the postures in this and the postures were very very simple the main posture for this is called the founder and I could barely hold the founder so I knew that I was onto something because I was sweating as I'm doing this thing and I'm like I don't understand how a simple posture like this can be so difficult so I started doing this every single day 10 you know 12 13 minutes and lo and behold the pain started to go away I just realized the pain was going away and I was I just felt better and I felt better and literally like a month into it I'm like I have I woke up I had no pain for the first time in a long time I had no pain so I said okay this is something so I dove into foundation training eventually I got he had a DVD I bought his DVD he had a book I bought his book and I really started to dive into it started doing it regularly he started coming out all different types of videos I started doing it and it completely changed everything this foundation training I will tell you it is literally changed it to the point where 10 years later 10 to 11 years later that I've been doing it I've been pain-free I mean it has been unbelievable so for those of you who don't know about I'm going to explain a little bit about it but first I want to play a video of a gentleman who is one of the master foundation training trainers in the in the system his name is Jesse Salas I had him on the show by the way so if you're interested in if you if you guys didn't check out that show you can type in foundation training on the on the website or Jesse Salas and his episode will come up I had him on the show I interviewed him about foundation training but I want to play a clip of what he said I asked him to I asked him to talk about what foundation training is and what the science behind it is and what it does and basically like a minute and a half and he did a great job on this so I'm gonna play this clip for you just so you kind of can understand what the idea behind what foundation training is and then I'll go into the rest of the story so check this out this is Jesse Salas from a previous podcast that I had him on it has is this combination that's a beautiful adjunct for any active human person in pain or person just going I want to take better care of myself because it's combinations what Eric's put together that help realign your posture and position to counter modern lifestyle but in the process of the exercise we're doing a lot of isometric contractions which frame it's not sure what that is we're making your muscles tense tense up and and contract but without moving but there is combinations of eccentric contraction so we're lengthening a lot of muscles out to what would be considered almost like an end range if you will so we're kind of tensioning and lengthening the body out challenging it in these precarious positions that have a way of decompressing is how we refer to it but taking pressure off of the joints and the nerves and the the discs of the spine and you were putting that pressure back into the muscle so I know he said a lot there but what you realize about a program like foundation training is exactly what he said it's it's just makes so much sense okay what we what you're doing you're doing a few things with a program like this you the act of simple exercises that they have you doing in foundation training is designed to do a few things it's time number one to strengthen the posterior chain to strengthen those spinal muscles okay because remember you have the muscles that surround your spine right and they protect your spine okay if those muscles are weak the spine is gonna be weak and that's actually gonna be can be a cause of pain now what I've realized when I was doing so much yoga when I was doing the up dog or you know the Cobra position I was hyper flexing my lower back and when you have a weak lower back and you're hyper flexing it you are actually you're actually making things worse you're actually creating a problem there that's what I did that's what I was doing I was hyper flexing it and I had very my muscles were very weak so what foundation training does is it strengthens those muscles that's the first thing is because you're holding these static contractions okay it seems so simple but you're holding them you're strengthening the muscle number two you're decompressing the discs you're decompressing everything okay so you're you're in this position to the point where you're actually decompressing it and then number three there's there's another concept which is extremely important called called decompression breathing so it's this deep diaphragmatic breathing you're doing in through the nose and out through the mouth while you're holding the posture what is that doing that's relaxing the the the whole the nervous system and letting the decompression happen and actually filling those spaces with air filling your lungs with air but filling also those spaces with a decompression breath that you need to kind of calm down the nervous system calm down the pain kind of bring down the inflammation it's an amazing thing okay and again it's a simple program that you do 15 10 to 15 minutes a day now just as a disclaimer by the way I'm not affiliated with foundation training at all I don't get any money for talking about it okay I've only had you know Jesse Salas on my show to talk about it and that's it okay I don't I they're not they're not a sponsor of this show or anything like that I'm just talking about this because I love the program because it exists it's just it changed my life to the point where I was able to play sports with my daughter I was able to run around do all the activities that I'm able to do what pain-free pain-free and it's just simple with these exercises that that I'm able to do this okay it's just very simple exercise to do but you got to do them consistently that's the key if you're gonna look at a program like this you have to do them consistently so that's my that would be my seventh key if we look at the six keys or the six remedies in this article that we talked about that would be the seventh one check out foundation training again you can go to foundation training calm you know check out they have they have a great membership there you can actually become a member and get all their videos you can order the book you can you know get their videos you know streaming they actually have a whole streaming section or now or you can just check out YouTube go to foundation training on YouTube search foundation training check out some of those videos see if that worked for you but I'm telling you one of the best things I did was was use this foundation now what did I do so I coupled that with the anti-inflammatory diet okay that was number two right so all the antioxidants fruits and vegetables old things number three the of these supplements okay the omegas the tumerics right the vitamin C's all these things right all these anti-inflammatory so now we're looking at a comprehensive approach okay I did all these things so it was you know the foundation training was great right plus the food plus the supplements and then before I went to a chiropractor chiropractor helped me to adjust and and to kind of decompress everything so again comprehensive approach to all this and I did this on my own remember I'm not there's nothing brilliant about what I did there's nothing magical about why you did but I figured it out on my own and foundation training just happened to come into my life exactly when I knew so that's what I did that's literally what I did and then what I realized through this whole journey especially with training with chiropractors and stuff like that asking them questions and really kind of diving into chiropractic and how they look at the body you realize how the body actually works you realize that you have this spinal column right you have these vertebrae you have these nerves that come out of the vertebrae right but you also have specifically you have these receptors you have these receptors that are along your spinal column right they're called mechanoreceptors and their job is to send messages there's tablets to send it to send messages it messages you have them all the way going up to the brainstem and it sends messages to your brain and you have these sensors you also have these these these sensors in your spinal column also sending messages back and what do they do they send messages to your brain because remember your brain doesn't have two eyes to see where you are and it gives you it tells your brain where your body position is at any given time it's called proprioception so if you have a trauma if you have some kind of deviation in your in your spine okay what does that do those sensors now tell your brain that there's a deviation so now your brain is telling you your brain is being told that your body is out of whack okay so what does your body do your body's gonna do everything you can to adapt to the situation because that's what your body does your body is an adaptation machine so the muscles on the sides of your spine are gonna do everything they can now they're actually gonna increase in tone they're gonna increase the force loading on there to try to correct the problem and this is one of the reasons why you many times will get spinal problems where you get this is where you get these where you get these these spinal tense pain and these spasms and these things like that one of the reason not the only reason okay but at the end of the day you realize that a lot of problems come from the spine whether it's the cervical spine the lumbar spine okay I had lumbar stenosis okay but a lot of people have cervical stenosis right where it comes from the neck right a lot of headaches come from that a lot of people don't realize that okay many headaches come from a cervical problem so and another thing is you remember you have these nerves that come out of the spinal column right these nerves all correspond with different areas of your body your heart your lungs your digestive system so if you have spinal problems you have deviations it can affect your lungs it can affect your heart in terms of palpitations in terms of arrhythmias it can affect your digestion so all these they can affect even anxiety you can have anxiety issues because again it's part of your central nervous system right you have the you have that that sympathetic and parasympathetic central nervous system right you have both systems one is for the fight-or-flight the other one is for rest digest and repair and if you're if you're constantly dealing with pain or a deviation or something like that you're gonna be in a more of a sympathetic tone so understand that body position walking your gates all these types of things have a lot to do with your health if your body position is off it's gonna throw a lot of other things off and this is where I go back to the comprehensive approach where many times a pain in the foot or pain in the ankle if you haven't had an injury may not necessarily be in the ankle or the foot it could be because of the knee it could be because of the hip it could be because of the lower back or even the neck it throws the whole thing out of a line that's how your body works it has to be aligned if it's not aligned this is where you get problems so again something to take a look at something to take a look at something to get assessed so again obviously go get your x-rays go look at it go talk to a chiropractor go get an adjustment if you need to do whatever you can but assessments are extremely important remember that mainstream medical is not gonna look at that they're gonna look at pain in the knee is a pain in the knee pain in the lower back is a pain in the lower back okay but if you're dealing with some kind of pain or you're dealing with some kind of deviation understand that your walk could be off your gate could be off everything could be off and that throws off a whole bunch of other things so again comprehensive approach okay so things to take a look at okay again chiropractor anti-inflammatory diet supplements okay different types of therapies foundation training exercise all these types of things you can do as a comprehensive approach for yourself to take the responsibility and eventually get yourself out of pain if at all possible okay if you can avoid surgery do it because surgery tends to be a 50-50 thing they actually have diagnoses for failed surgery okay so that's my two cents again not from being a chiropractor being a doctor or anything like that's just my two cents from going through it and today because of those decisions that I made I am pain-free from having severe spinal lumbar spinal stenosis okay having a fractured back and if you look at my x-ray you would wonder why how the hell this guy's even walking but I'm doing it so just my two cents of things that we've discussed today I hope this helps you guys out a little bit things to take a look at just know that there is hope out there for you guys who are who are who have back issues it's not just a getting older thing it's not it's not just that I'm getting older and I might have degenerative issues no okay a lot of times it's caused from a trauma okay trauma think about that think back to a trauma that could have happened that could have changed the whole thing right so just some things to take a look at and I hope this guy hope this really really helps you and you know again do what you guys think is right take this information in look it over see if it's good for you and if it is great use whatever you can if not pass it along alright guys so I hope this helps you I hope you got a lot out of it I want to thank you for joining me as always I know you guys can be doing a lot of other things I appreciate you as always make sure you take care of yourselves make sure you take care of each other and as always control your health have a great week