From:TheBahamasWeekly.com
You and Your Back Pain - Part 6 (Stomach Stress)
By Dr. Brian G. Blower, DC
Aug 25, 2010 - 9:39:38 AM
The phone call the other day
from my daughter away at college was wonderful to me. Glad to
hear about her youthful experiences I held the receiver closely pressed
to my ear. After awhile she said she had been ill and that she
was so happy to now be back in the swing of things. Then she passed
me over to her room mate and we chatted along easily like old friends.
Finally the story of their “illness” came out.
Apparently a few weeks ago
the two of them were invited to a barbecue at one of their friends places
down the hall. Both my daughter and her friend are fans of mine
and have adopted their health paradigm centered on stress-less
nutrition only for themselves. However this particular night when
they got to their friends apartment his patio barbecue was one of spicy
peppery meats and sauces. As young people will more often go along
with the crowd rather than be seen as different they dug in and helped
themselves to the fare.
They put their fatigue of the
next morning down to the lateness and the wine the previous night, but
when that day passed and on the following day it was still difficult
to get up and get going they thought they may have been experiencing
a passing flu. With backaches and stiff necks they both went to
work at their part time jobs with the “I’m not here to-day” mental
sensations many of us experience and put down to stress and fatigue.
My daughter’s roommate is a nursing student and studies hard, clearly
wanting to be a health professional. She remarked that there were
no fevers or changes in their systems that supported food poisoning
or any other illness. Then she said it dawned on her, they had
been victims of eating food-like-materials that promoted immune system
assault just by touching the intestinal surface and the symptoms were
from their own cells stressing and trying desperately to clear up what
they were interpreting as foreign invaders threatening their very survival.
It was the spicy barbeque foods that had them so severely physically
shocked.
I knew she was right in the
diagnosis. But how does it work and how is it that so many of
us eat those spicy tomato sauce products often and don’t seem to be
affected by them? Awareness of injury in the gut is more readily
seen and acknowledged as having acutely happened to those of us that
enjoy long periods of health from a cool and soothed organ system.
Overwhelming negative changes
in thinking, unusual physical sensations and health loss from eating
food-like-materials that injure becomes undeniable only to those that
first have awareness of what it is like to not be internally stressed.
“You don’t know what you don’t know until you know what you didn’t
know.” It’s kind of like “you had to be there to appreciate
it.” Many of us are constantly suffering internally but don’t
know it. Or we have labeled ourselves with “irritable bowel
syndrome, gastric reflux, hiatal hernia” or some other term to satisfy
a need to put a name on the symptoms.
The fact is that the parts
the old brain is running don’t get to be felt by the new brain we
are conscious with. We can be in great internal distress with
a part of us and not know it. Remember we are like a chain being
only as healthy as the weakest link. We always degrade in our ability
to do work to the lowest level of our systems.
To summarize You and Your Lower
Back Pain we know that we are a whole, not a series of parts independent
of one another. We know that we are governed by an old and constant
automatic nervous system located in the floor of the head and inside
the central canal of the upper five spinal neck bones. Connecting
the brain stem here in the upper spine with the “Roman Road” the
central nervous system influences each and every cell of our body.
The reaching of the old established brain stem through the central nervous
system and cranial nerves coordinate fulfilling nutritional needs via
the organs and mechanical needs via the muscles. Muscles work
to carry parts and to smoothly guide the motions of our limbs which
then gather and place food next to the organs to fulfill our hunger
needs. We “hold on” and “bring in to sniff and lick” to
“make blood” and that helps guide decisions of whether or not what
we have brought close to us is food.
Our body works best when none
of its parts are stressed and therefore lowered in their ability to
function. Stress is a normal reaction to a stressor. Our
defense against eating stressors are the senses including touch for
shape, size and texture. Then when potential foods are brought
in close by our limbs we see, smell, listen and taste them to help further
in choosing whether or not they might be a stressor. Our first
childhood experiences with food will dictate how and what we will do
to “thrive” for the rest of our lives. Changing these early
lessons in a positive manner is a lifelong journey of intellect and
finally wisdom.
The stomach gets all of the
chosen food potentials first. Our species like so many others
thrives on its stomach. Great generals know that battles are won
and armies travel on their stomachs. Stomach stressors greatly
reduce survival chances in our species. Stomach stress in response
to eaten stressors is the single most common cause of lower back pain.
How does the stressed stomach
create the foundation for lower back health failure and consequent lower
back pain? Remember our babies and how the first thing every one
of them does upon hitting the surface of our planet is breathe?
Then remember that the second thing every unstressed healthy baby does
is hold onto that breath and while his chest muscles and ribs are splinted
tightly he then pushes and wiggles his neck and head about looking for
mothers nipple. The driving forces behind every healthy one of
us are to first breathe then feed to thrive. The one-two essential
for health is to first breathe deeply and then force our face to find
and feed on a diet nourishing enough to thrive with.
Our great and wonderful body
remains sensitive to stomach stressors from its first to its last breath.
In the earlier parts of “You and Your Lower Back Pain” we learned
that the muscles of the chest respond to the “lung” meridian.
The parts of the lung meridian include the rib, chest and shoulder muscles
which splint the chest wall tight along with the diaphragm. The
inflated splinted chest provides the first part of our capacity to do
work with the neck, arms, trunk and legs. Our grasping thumb evolved
to help us feed to breathe.
Every organ system within us
has evolved specific muscle groups to help it share its part of the
load of the whole body. The muscles of our stomach system are
those on the front and forward sides of the neck. Stomach family
muscles come off of the top first few ribs and go up to the front and
sides of the vertebrae of the neck. These muscles reach up to
the third bone from the top of the cervical spine. These front
neck muscles push and pull down our face onto our groceries. Any
weakness in the front neck muscles allow the muscles of the back of
the neck to pull down on the head and pitch up our face, reducing the
forward curve in the neck. Our desperate need to properly position
our face again with our eyes lowered to the horizon requires compromising
the design and function of the still functioning upper neck muscles.
Under this unique load it doesn’t take long for the upper vertebrae
of the neck to wander off their central axis and subluxate. Subluxation
and concomitant shifting of the position of the upper spinal vertebrae
interfere with the brain stem and its ability to mesh with and then signal
through our body using the central nervous system and the “Roman Road.”
The consequence of upper vertebral
subluxation upon the brain stem is a blocking of the automatic organ
and muscle nerve synchronizing capacity which compromises health throughout
the body. By stressing the stomach, and then in turn lowering
its work potential, we create subluxation of the upper neck. We
lose more health from further subluxation as the nerves of the upper
neck and lower brain stem areas fail to achieve their automatic nerve
nurturing necessary to tell muscles to work. Unhealthy non working
muscles in turn fail to keep the bones of the body in position,
including those of the lower back. Under a load the “back condition”
strains and sprains and then becomes a “back problem.” The loss
of lower back strength on one side upon manual muscle testing is the
most frequent finding during examination of all patients. By correcting
the upper cervical spine vertebral subluxations using manipulation much
of the lower back muscle weakness can be reversed immediately.
Carefully read and re-read
the above few paragraphs to get the “big idea” about what you are
and how you work. This information is freely given to you from
new thinking about the most common cause of lower back pain.
Tending to the underlying causes
of upper neck subluxations includes elimination of the food-like-materials
we are commonly consuming. Downloading the number of stressors
specifically causing stomach stress greatly enhances health, especially
of the neck and through it the lower back musculature which in turn
allows us to load our backs and do work.
Our sensitive stomachs do not
tolerate spicy caustic components like pepper and chilies. Curries
and hot salsas stress us too. We are the top mammalian predator
on this planet and thriving to be healthy is the goal for survival.
Only the top cuts of meat are good enough for us to thrive on.
Never in our history did we attempt survival on ground up anything.
Hamburgers are stomach stressors. Pork is a stomach stressor so
are peanuts and corn. Finally we must acknowledge sugars as stressors
especially in the cooked tomato berry and fructose from fruit and corn.
By eliminating these stressors
we get to have a chance at having more health. By using common
sense and our innate instinctive senses we can get a lot better in our
health potential easily. Fast food places are a “drive by”
not a “drive through.” Whatever value you place on their salty,
sweet, fatty, sour and bitter tastes at the bottom line the food-like-materials
they serve are intolerable stomach stressors.
Bad gas strands a boat and
bad food strands a man. Going to work while malnourished in the
stomach will inevitably let us get lower back pain.
Once your lower back has injury
you must get it repaired and all statistics show that chiropractic manipulation
is best for restoration and maintenance of a healthier mechanical back.
The flip side of the back is the front and that is the territory of
the owner. Our lifestyles depict how we can keep our parts nurtured
and healthy. The more devoid of stomach stressors your diet becomes
the more healthy your body will become for you.
You and Your Back Pain - Part 1
You and Your Back Pain - Part 2
You and Your Back Pain - Part 3
You and Your Back Pain - Part 4
You and Your Back Pain - Part 5
About the author:
Dr. Brian Blower has been a licensed chiropractor for 35 years
practicing Applied Kinesiology and has been in private practice on
Grand Bahama Island for the past
10 years. He is a founding member of Applied Kinesiology Canada and was
educated at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College. He has treated
many celebrities and also specializes in sports medicine. Dr Blower is
currently in practice at the
Family Wellness
Center across from the Rand Hospital, Freeport. He can be reached at 242-351-5424 or 727-2454.
You
can also find Dr. Blower on Facebook HERE
Feel free to contact Dr. Blower with any of your questions or comments at BodyByBlower@yahoo.com
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