Stressed?   "Boy Doc, do I have stress! "  We hear it every day.   Most people complain of stress continuously.   It’s an ongoing, nagging, health ruining scenario and modern life seems to be full of more and more stress as time passes.

Had enough of it?   Read my little story here and see if we can’t get rid of a lot of stress in a permanent manner, in a hurry.

I remember the fall of 1969 arriving in Toronto from Vancouver in what was to become my home for the next four years, the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College.

Wet behind the ears would be an understatement.   I had no idea of what chiropractic was and even less knowledge of it being the third largest form of “health care” in North America.   Third to allopathic medicine and dentistry.

I had no idea that the chiropractic college was brand new and I was part of the first freshman class, the class of 1973.   Who knew that the chiropractic profession had stayed cohesively together continuing to build and support the profession in a very private manner.  

No public monies go into our private college and we are thus able to format and ensure a scientific and philosophical course load that meets the highest government educational standards and still too meets the profession’s.

Chiropractic is a totally drugless profession.   Chiropractors believe that the body is it’s own best drugstore and doesn’t need any help to be healthy,  just remove the interferences upon it.

I had no idea at the time that the new college on Bayview Avenue in Toronto had captured the enthusiasm of the members of the profession across the great Canadian provinces and the Doctors in the field were readily monitoring and supporting the new students of which I was a part.   These doctors   wanted to produce the “super chiropractor” in their continuing desire to answer and serve societies needs.

What this meant was that the new building with it’s large and upscale rooms and equipment allowed many of the Doctors in the field to share and expound upon their personal practice experiences and techniques.   They got that opportunity during classes and many weekend study sessions over the years to come.

And they came, and they welcomed us as students and shared their philosophies and views.   I attended almost every one of these sessions for the next four years.   I took the classes got the marks and got the “big idea” finally.   It took me ages to understand the chiropractic view and angle on health and that is why it seems to be a daunting task to share it with you in the space of a few columns.

Never mind the task of sharing a new health paradigm between you and me. What about the billions of people in this world?   If they too understood the chiropractic principles of health then they could all share a little of the load getting our health back on line.   Our health?  

We are all made by the same factory.   We all share the same blueprint, the same specifications.   For our health we must respect what we are and work intelligently with what we have towards it.

Now, after more than forty years since that fateful day of arrival in Toronto I feel that it is time to share some accumulated observations.   I have mentored many chiropractic students and taught them techniques and philosophies after they graduated.   I have taught many thousands of patients over those forty years, one on one in the office, and continue to do so.   I believe in us, in all of you and your capacity to use your genius wisely.  

All of my comments here are candid in nature and not necessarily common knowledge throughout my profession.

In a nutshell this is what I am teaching every one of my patients today.   In trying various methods over and over again, at the bottom of the well boiled pot, this is how and what to do to get your health back.

Health is about reducing stress.   Historically the baths of Rome attempted this.   The masseuses of the ancient cultures, the anointments, herbs and wraps, stretching and yoga postures, music and warmth, soothing company and foods, all help to address and indeed reduce the stress of human suffering.   All of these practices are aimed at reducing stress, reducing our being “drawn up tight.”  

For “up tight” is what stress is.   Latin strictus, as in to restrict or to constrict.   A stressed body can not do the work of an un-stressed one.   Healthy everything works.

Therefore the chiropractor addresses through manipulation the up-tightness of stress as it attacks the human bony frame.  

However the “big idea” of chiropractic is that the stress we see and feel from being drawn-up-tight is going on inside as well.    Inside us, at the level where none can feel, we are drawn up tight too.   We cannot divorce our parts, we work in concord with all of the parts all of the time.

Chiropractic adjustments of the human spine and extremities allow de-stressing to reach deeply into the body’s organs, muscles and nerves.   De-stressing the deep internal tissues allows us to regain digestion and then provide a better form of blood sugar for the brain, the nerves and the cells.

How do we get deep internal stress and therefore external stress?

The fact is that we are many times more sensitive to touching things on the inside, with our intestines, than we are on the outside of our body, including the lips, nose, face, fingers and feet.

Think of our insides knowing if we have ingested a bacteria or virus.   We contact the inside with a toxin or a putrid or rancid substance and we react automatically.   We have a very old structured brainstem and it autonomically runs functions of digestion.   It too runs functions of   hunger, elimination, respiration and circulation.  

Furthermore our old and automatic brainstem and nerves run many of the functions of the face and skeletal muscles.   Automatically it paces our muscles, creeping us along the Garden of Eden grubbing for groceries.   That is what we are fundamentally for.   We go out and get food to make sugar for the old brainstem.   And we got to be quite good at it.

Now we can make great sugars from a very small gut to brain ratio.   Our small compact intestines and organs love fat and proteins and with pre digestion with heat (fire) we get more sugar making calories from the dense and concentrated foods like from other mammals around us.   We are perfect for this.   We don’t need any help just no interference.  

When we are sick and “un-healthy” we are victims of a perfect system that has been fouled.

Like getting flu from the virus, we had to be touched on the inside to have a stressful response.   By drawing-up-tight the intestines we knock out the production of sugars to the brain, nerves and cells.   We felt and responded in a sick manner.   We were malnourished and our brain shut us down due to the stress blocking the production of fuel for it to run on.

When struggling with illness the sensitive inside covering of the intestines draw-up-tight the organs.   The sensitive inside cells of our intestine and organs reacted to contact with our intestines content, they touched our “food.”   We see this in so many of the chronic disease symptoms robbing us of our health and our wealth.

Gut stress leads to weakening of the bowel walls and the “leaky gut syndrome” ensues.   From this we literally let the fecal matter of our insides pass through the weakened gut wall and mix with our blood.

Stress from touching the gut wall with particles that cause the sensitive cells to lurch and respond in an irritated or angered manner splints and draws tight the intestines.  

The stress of drawing up tight shuts down the functions of the digestion and symptoms of fatigue and malaise ensue.   Along with so many other symptoms we don’t even consider that our intestines were first hurting and crying out for help.   Silently crying for we don’t feel with the old brainstem.

So off we go to the allopathic doctor and he gives us drugs to stupefy us till the stress and spasms of the insides diminish and we “feel better.”

So far that is what the bulk of the use of “health care” is and will be unless we wake up and stop the gut stress.

Food or rather food-like-materials cause most of societies gut stress.    Our old and sensitive gut wall is programmed for the old and ancient wild.   Contacting the gut wall with proteins that are here in our diets for the first time and never before encountered by our gut wall may hurt and anger the inside tissue cells lining the wall and cause them to react in stress.

The cells of the gut wall knit protein based signaling chemistries that dictate to the immune cells whether or not to tolerate the contact of the food like materials being consumed.   Or they may make and secrete a protein called “zonulin” that causes the gut cells to part.   Remember we don’t feel this contact and ensuing reactions.  

What we later get to feel is the body reacting to the porous gut wall and to the failure to make the right blood sugar.   Then to the loss of the capacity of the brain and nerves to instruct the muscles to do work.

Subsequently we sprain and pain and take drugs.   Or make visits to the doctor’s office and use up valuable health facilities and money.

We are what we are.   We are an old accomplished species behaving in a new and unhealthy manner.   What we have found is that our gut is much more reactive and sensitive to our diets than we have ever before considered.

Top of the list of offenders are the proteins that have had the occasion to mix with oxygen and degenerate into fragments that alarm and overwhelm the mucosa.    Think hamburger or other ground up meats here.   Eliminate all of them for your health.  They program stress.

Think sensitive inside,  then think curry, chilies, cayenne, hot salsas and pepper (black, white).   Eliminate them all, all of the time to reduce your stress.

Our bodies are sensitive to corn, peanuts and red tomato sauces, raw tomatoes are OK.

And finally, all of the Arabs and Jews are right, eliminate all pork and pork products to decrease bowel and body stress.

Trust me.   Begin by wiping out these “Top Ten Terrible Tummy Troublers” from your diet.  

Soothe and regain the integrity of the inner bowels and we will soothe and regain the chemical side of our brain and nervous systems functions.  

Further get the chiropractic adjustments necessary for de-stressing structurally and a more total return of our health.