What Your Pain Really Means - Will You Dig Deep Enough?

 Brain First / Body Follows

When I was in chiropractic college, I was taught to take the patient's "chief complaint" and get the details.  After that, I explain the goal of chiropractic is to reach the brain by adjusting the spine so the brain can expand its reach through the mind-body systems.

And then I get the questions.  What about the  ____________ (fill in any physical problem someone is preoccupied with)?

I was told I have to live with ____________________ (fill in the blank).

But, how can "my" ___________ be related to "my" ____________?

I placed my in parentheses because people really take a profound ownership of something labeled as a dysfunction. 

When the questions take me in circles, I know people are impatient, frightened, and just at the end of their rope.

The fight or flight response doesn't have time to work through the issue.  It has a one track mind. In fact, the fight or flight response pulls blood flow and oxygen away from the problem solving pre-frontal cortex.

The fight or flight response assumes all the shaking bushes are bears and responds with the same solution to run.  There's no time to look and change course as needed.  The limbic system will not change course if everything is perceived as a bear.

We also add things to our lives that prolong the fight or flight response so healing is delayed. (Caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, medicines, sugar, processed foods, etc.)

When folks are impatient, frightened, and at the end of their rope, it takes a some serious energy to slow down so the real problem can be addressed. 

It takes energy to slow down.  Sit with that for a bit. 

Chiropractic gets you to the place where your brain can work on healing and self improvement.  It gets you out of the prolonged over-stimulation of modern life. 

The adjustment calms the fight or flight response so the vagus (rest and digest) can do the work of rebuilding.

Fight or flight does serve an important purpose.  But we don't want to exhaust it. 

Step one: Unwind the Fight or Flight response.  We can't follow through with anything else until we do this. 

The chief complaint is not the original problem.  Deep down inside you know that. The chief complaint is a brief snap shot of a systemic response to life events.  All responses are orchestrated by the brain. 

Brain First / Body Follows. 

If you're going in circles, you're in Detour Healing. 

Get adjusted and train your brain. 

Train your brain with Brain Sense Tele-Health. 

I've Been Wrong My Entire Life: Why Is My Body Rebelling Against Me? (Part 2)

"Brain First / Body Follows"

Part 1    Part 3

Why is my body rebelling against me?

I asked myself that question in 2003 when I was pregnant.  I had high blood pressure and the doctors (I had more than one) were freaking out because I was not interested in taking a blood pressure medication.

I don't typically get into a panic over my health, but the medical establishment has a one track mind.  There is no room for discussion or different experience.  

Why was my body rebelling against me?  Already a chiropractor who understands the body is self healing, I needed to figure out where I was missing something.  I was faced with a disconnection.

My searching on the internet helped me find the answer I was looking for.  Now, you have to remember there is no single answer so I used that term loosely.  A combination of new behaviors helps you feel more empowered.  It requires sliding old stuff off your plate to make room for new and exciting activities in your life.

During my search I came across Dr. Tom Brewer and the pregnancy diet he focused on for his many decades caring for pregnant ladies. I purchased an ebook for $15 and printed it out.  It was a thick tome, probably 50 pages of his published research and an easy to read how to manual. 

I was totally immersed in his career.  He used nutrition by prescribing everyday foods to help women avoid the problems of pre-eclampsia.  

Sounds boring to most, unless you are the one trying to make sense of your body rebelling against you.  I had such chronic fatigue my entire pregnancy that I thought it would never go away.  I was laying on the bed crying one day to my husband.  For someone who has tons of energy and never had a health problem, my pregnancy was kicking my butt.  The leg pain, back pain, rib pain were tolerable, but exhaustion was taking over my mind.  

Funny, nearly 20 years later I realize now that I had a similar course of intense tiredness when I was in my early twenties.  Boy, if I had recalled that experience, I could have made the connection and taken better care of myself.  I was disconnected.

Dr. Brewer had a list of 13 food groups.  I hung it up on the fridge and wrote check marks each time I was successful.  Eat something, then mark it off. 

Next, I called him.  He was retired in New England and his phone number was published on the website.  He offered to answer questions.  He was my lifeline.  Sad to say it.  When I didn't have confidence in my local doctors he calmed me down after each weekly OB appointment.  Talk about an angel.  

I kept meaning to call him back up after my son was born, but eventually found out he had passed away in 2005 from an Alzheimer's type of brain degeneration.  

The diet kept my pain away.  I was pleased. I was still tired but overall I felt better.  My blood pressure remained high and that was the one problem the doctors couldn't get over. I had normal labs, normal urine, no swelling, no vision problems, no sickness, no palpitations, but my blood pressure was reason enough to receive weekly lectures. 

It turns out my body wasn't rebelling.  It was doing the right thing for the circumstance.  Increasing your blood volume, due to a growing baby means increasing blood pressure.  High or low....is a number.  We can't forget all the other variables involved.  

The whole point of this blog is not to discuss issues during pregnancy but to demonstrate that not everything is a dysfunction or a disease, or something that needs radical intervention. It's not a reason to berate someone for a naturally process.  The blood pressure was serving a purpose.  My high blood pressure was not a reason to yell at me during my doctor visits. 

The healing response is a natural process, but I've spent decades calling what comes first a dysfunction with a complicated label called a diagnosis.  And then if you don't heal properly, it is a chronic dysfunction with an even fancier diagnostic label.  This, I believe now in my later years,  is very detrimental.  

I've learned through college courses and media repetition that a dysfunction of some sort comes first, then the healing kicks in.  When I say that to myself right now, I cringe.  What nonsense!  It all is purposeful function.  

We accept that a fever is purposeful.  Swelling is purposeful.  Vomiting is purposeful. Feeling tired and needing sleep is purposeful.   We can support these purposeful processes or we can interfere with them.  A lot of my training focused on overreacting to purposeful functions and then considering a radical intervention. 

The chiropractic profession mostly works to assist the body's healing process, but the negativity of naming everything to label the body as faulty still creeps in to my dialog with folks.  It's a bad habit that's well ingrained.  I'm working hard on changing that.

That's why calming the fight or flight response is the first goal with chiropractic adjustments of the spine. The parasympathetic state of the vagus nerve needs to be focused on rebuilding or re-balancing.  

We tend to disregard that parasympathetic/vagus process and keep overwhelming the body with stress.  When we reach the point of the extreme stress response of "Freeze or Faint," it is strongly reinforced that we are chronically sick, it's very unlikely to improve and to get used to it.  Not my cup of tea. 

Our bodies don't rebel against us.  We rebel against it. Everything the body does is correct based on the situation.  We've taken situations and distorted them with bad thinking. It has turned into a very un-serving, terrible approach to health and we say it is backed by science. 

Our worst enemies are (#1) toxins, and (#2) our erroneous labeling of normal and correct body response, and (#3) the unnecessary stress and self harm we put on ourselves.   

Improving your health takes a "hard core hobby-like mind-set."  Remember your favorite hobbies that put you in an intense and fanatic state because you were so self motivated?  That's the best way to address your life style and self care needs.  

With chiropractic, we calm the fight or flight and nurture the vagus (rest and digest) process so we can set the stage for new learning in the pre-frontal cortex.  It's all brain.  And if you're still preoccupied with your pain, remember, brain first, body follows. 

Keep up the good work!  You got this!

Look for Part 3.  Find out why I say there is no disease.

Learn more about yourself with Brain-Sense Tele-Health Self Discovery Sessions.

The B.F.A. Protocol and "Food Maturity" 

are both available on my Patreon Channel.   Patreon.com/CountDownLiveUp   

I Cured Myself: I Bet You Want to Know How

 If you know my Lisa'isms or picked up my office handout titled: Dr. Lisa Lingo, or read the blog post Words That Block Healing, you know you that there is no such thing as a cure. 

Cure is a hopeful word.  Who doesn't want a quick fix?  But I thought I could catch your attention to let you know how I helped myself with a nagging problem with my left arm.  

By the way, if you think I sound like a broken record, (who still understands where that saying came from) it's because many of us are still "out of touch" with our own bodies.  We are disconnected. We've lost the most important relationship within. Trying to communicate that is quite the challenge for me. Some days I can speak about it with ease.  Other days I feel the intuitive side  is spot on, yet, there's a detour in my brain as I try to convey it to others. 

I've had a nagging pain in my left arm for years.  It's been at least four or five.  It's difficult to recall because it only bothered me at night or first thing in the morning.  It became more obnoxious when I tried to lift weights with that arm.  It was a dull pain, yet "boring" like a drill going deep in the deltoid and down to the hand.  Sometimes it was in the armpit at the edge of my shoulder blade. 

What are the typical things to do about that kind of pain?  Massage and chiropractic come first to my mind.  Tender trigger points were easy to find.  I figured out it came from sleeping sideways, putting pressure on the shoulder and left side of the rib cage. 

I noticed it wasn't an issue during the day.  It certainly didn't bother me while adjusting folks.  I moved my arm through multiple ranges of motion to pin point the specific stress on the muscles.  

Most of the time I tried to avoid sleeping on my left side. So, five years of this chronic presentation was getting to me.  As I paid more attention to it, I realized other postures were irritating it. How comfortable are your arms when you're driving your car?  Do you rest your left arm on the open window ledge?  Is the arm rest on the driver door at a comfortable height for your body size?  Do you notice one arm is more easily irritated when you are sitting at your computer? Holding my kindle in bed is my nemesis.  Even how I carried my phone when walking the dog was contributing to the muscle fatigue. These activities add up over time. 

Anyone can obsess over these details. I felt as if the body just wants to rebel against all efforts to solve the problem.  Then I'm thinking that my arm is filling up with scar tissue and there are episodes when I can hardly lift it up during floor exercises. 

Naturally all kinds of wacky thoughts were creeping into my mind.  Just typing this is giving me a return ache while I'm detailing  how I've dealt with it.  

It dawned on me today that the irritation has been 100% gone for many weeks.  What did I do?  What worked?

What's my answer?  I don't know!!!  How funny is that?

If you've been hanging around me long enough, you are aware that there is no single answer.  When we look for that single answer we are highly disappointed.   Of course we, as humans, want a tidy resolution.  But our lives are complicated.  On one hand, pardon the pun, I wasn't that concerned about my arm pain.  Yet, I wondered how my arm would function ten years from now.  We can make ourselves worse by overthinking. 

Other than change my posture, sleeping position and concentrate on better form with exercise, and getting adjusted, what else did I do? 

I decided to stop over-evaluating every detail.  This kind of thought overburdens the fight or flight response.  We must admit that everything the body does is correct for the situation, even if I had a fiery tendonitis or an adhesion that disrupted blood flow, I knew the body's protective response was working.

I can't fault the nervous system for doing it's job.  A pain response indicates the nervous system has taken up a corrective action.  Even though it is uncomfortable, it is corrective.  I can support my body's healing process or I can delay my healing process.  Because it is a process, the timeline doesn't always fit our expectations. Often we do repetitive things that interrupt the process.

I decided to give my brain a rest.  I shut off the overthinking and said, "Brain, take over.  I'll get out of your way."  It is possible to layer on additional stress by believing you are stuck, that the healing process is not effective.  This is a subtle form of self criticism, self doubt and the fight or flight response keeps festering. I call it detour healing.  

You cannot be in a state of growth and defense at the same time.

When the fight or flight response is ignited by chemical, mechanical, and mental stress, we burn through loads of energy.  How do you replenish that?  How do you resolve or end a fight or flight response?  Do you hope for the best and just take it for granted? Do you feel you have a good handle on your body's purposeful actions?  Do you assist your body's four levels of nervous system function? (Trick question.  Stay tuned.)

My example of arm pain is very simple.  I know people are distressed by more severe symptoms. But the brain is still doing the right thing based on the situation.    

In my training I was taught to keep close track of someone's progress.  It is proper, but it can shift you into a negative mode.  And it reduces us to a bunch of numbers.  That takes away from the self empowerment you can create for yourself.  I believe it is a theft that I can't tolerate.  I don't have the right to take away your self growth especially when that's what the chiropractic experience is all about, if I successfully present it that way. 

So, no I did not cure my arm pain.  I worked through it by understanding that there is no treatment, but rather there is a  process I can assist.  It took a while.  It took some detective work.  And it took a different approach at serving the nervous system that continues to serve me.  

Our choices will either invite healing or invite an energy drain that could eventually lead to a detrimental energy crisis. We have the opportunity to work with the body or against it.

If I can help you evaluate the four functional levels of your nervous system, you can open up yourself to a healing experience waiting to be unearthed.  

It won't make sense, until it makes Brain Sense.

Brain Sense Tele-Health

Food Maturity Mini-Course Now Available

(Image courtesy msm.com)

Hi folks.  I just uploaded 2 of the 3 videos of my latest mini-course: Food Maturity. 

If you're done eating as if you are still in your 20s, this video is for you. 

I remember those days.  I ate anything I wanted.  I wasn't bloated and logy back then.  But looking back I had a horrible time moving my joints.  It took me a while to get up from my chair.  I had to pry myself out of bed.  Even talk myself into getting out of bed.  And I thought it was normal because I must have felt that way most of my teenage years and early twenties!!

It was after I became a vegetarian that I realized I was no longer a mess.  It was a good start, but I've matured even more and will talk about the Ketolox Phasing program I designed to help people wade through the keto confusion. 

The CDC has depressing stats about our health:

60% of Americans have a chronic condition

40% have more than one chronic condition

50% of us take one prescription

24% take 3 or more drugs

13% take five or more prescriptions

And the saddest statistic shown by Dr. Joseph Kraft: 90% of teenagers are already ill by the age of 19, yet it goes unnoticed. 

I'd like to show you how to change the simplest markers of inflammation such as your blood pressure, blood sugar, triglycerides, Vit D levels and waist measurement.  

Also, following a keto diet will help you manage the five annoying signs of brain impairment. 

So, I'm not a famous guru and I don't have my own personal chef, but I live in the real world just like you.  We can do this!!!!

The Food Maturity Video Course is available on my Patreon Channel.  

Count Down Live Up!!  If you can count backwards from 5, you can have amazing health!!!!

Are you making Brain Sense? Brain-Sense Tele-Health

In the intro video I discuss - Why is this information important - What will you be after completing this mini-course - What will you have to show for it - Why me as your teacher Where is the video course? https://www.patreon.com/countdownliveup Topics covered during this 3 video course. 1- Eating Real Food - What's disqualified 2- Addressing the SAD, sugar, cravings, deficiencies, 3- Eating Keto, the diet closest to nature, and human needs 4-Ketolox Phasing, pacing yourself, gradual detox 5- Constant glyphosate defense 6- Food and friendship 7- 5 Signs of blood sugar issues 8- Inflammation markers 9- Whole food concentrates - fill the gaps 10- Where to go for intermittent fasting advice 11- Processed food addiction 12- Apps that help you stay on track Ready to dive in? https://www.patreon.com/countdownliveup Brain Sense Tele-Health http://createpurpose.blogspot.com/2020/11/half-healthy-is-still-half-sick.html Disclaimer: this video is for informational purposes only. It is not medical advice.

I've Been Wrong My Entire Life: Disappointed But Shifting Gears (Part 1)

I've Been Wrong My Entire Life: Thanks for Nothing, World

I'll backtrack a little bit.  There are a number of insightful people I can thank.  But on the most part, we are a mess and I am disappointed to have been a part of the mess for so long.  (In my last post I mentioned being a mess because I had been off my routine with a lazy attitude for most of the winter. This post talks about something bigger.)

I feel as if I should delete all of my blog and start over.  It goes back to 2005. But I won't do that.  Some of it is helpful or inspiring.  It might show the evolution of my journey.  I always focused on the aspect of self healing and how to enhance that. 

After all, the only healing is self healing.  We may use  interventions to assist healing, but don't be fooled.  Your body does the healing.  And even better, you are healing even when you're doing nothing. You heal during sleep. 

So, here I will begin to explain how frustrated I am with the whole system.  You know I'm not a fan of the drug side of the medicine. And I'm not keen on the view that nearly everything is a disease waiting to happen. 

We have a somewhat distorted definition of healing.  Healing is considered the opposite of disease.  That's not an inaccurate view, but we seem to downplay the body's profound abilities.  The focus on disease has deprived us of our true healing nature.  We don't give healing the proper attention and honor it deserves.   

I've been wrong my entire life because of this overemphasis on disease. We're always looking at what can go wrong rather than celebrate what goes superbly well.  Looking back at the history of medicine, a process that looks abnormal is studied and categorized "to death."  Pardon the pun. That's how deep this mental dysfunction goes.  Eventually an abnormal process gets named after the discoverer and we do it all over again.  (Paget's Disease.  Crohn's Disease. Alzheimer's Disease.)  New diseases will described and named after somebody. 

Thanks to an extremely detailed education, I learned to memorize disease names, disease categories, and disease symptoms.   It kept me busy.  During that time, I may have lost my sense of awe for the body.  It was a depressing education.  Details were complicated making them great exam questions.  It seemed so important to be able to dissect a list of symptoms in order to come up with a suitable diagnosis.  

But for what purpose was all this word dancing?  Are we just trying to make everyone feel at a loss since there are so many diseases?Our long history of categorizing disease has demoralized us.  And on the more dangerous side, it has distracted us from the most important part of healing, us. And I'm upset. 

What a waste of time. I fell for it and lured my patients around for just over 20 years.  I spent most of my time detailing everyone's symptoms, stresses, and bad memories.  I wrote pages and pages of timelines, onset dates, and mechanisms of injury.  I've ready chart notes consisting of chief complaints, old problems, new problems, multiple diagnoses, status change, progressions, regressions, on and on.  People pull  out of their wallets long lists of medications that they can't spell, pronounce or explain why they are taking them.  

Meanwhile people are living in a fog of disease terminology and I try to get a peep in about self healing.  It's a joke. I'm demoralized in such a way I cannot describe.  Embarrassment for being tricked is another strong emotion.  

I realize now it is going to take a while for me to explain.  I'll be proofreading and clarifying multiple times. The silly or unique thing about blogs is that you will have to constantly go backwards to read this in proper order. As the most recent blog post is at the top of the page, I may have to repeat myself to help the reader follow my story.

Welcome to Part One

It has been an enormous challenge to help people feel good about their bodies.  Not like teenagers going through puberty, or celebrities who need to work out ten hours a day so they are camera ready.  I want them to know they can handle life's ups and downs when it comes to health.  But I have competition.  It's not easy to compete with negativity.

Patients  come to me and say, "I have a new problem."  They feel as if they are at the mercy of their bodies.   Someone says, "My shoulder is acting up again." What does that mean?  Is it acting up again, like an overheated radiator in a car?  You are not car parts. 

Sadly, it's their identity.  Are you the person who has debilitating back pain every six weeks?  Are you so adept at predicting a flare up after mowing the lawn?  When I tell them they can self heal, the vibe I get is that of disbelief.  They don't trust their bodies.  They are basing this on past experience.  The mind can't imagine something different.  It just dwells on a catalog of memories.  We've even handed down these awful memories through generations.  We call it heredity.  

"Okay, Doc, whatever you say about that healing stuff, just do what you do so I have some temporary relief. I'll be back sooner or later."  Folks just want the quick adjustment so they return to their chaotic life style.  Do I really make a positive impact on people?

Look, I'm here for you.  I am happy to share the journey with you.  But, I feel as if we're on a beaten track going in circles.  There is nothing new. I know life is stressful, and some days are worse than others, but we have to break the cycle.  I'm looking for a mind shift. 

My mind had to shift. I've gone through a few smaller shifts over the years.  Perhaps they prepared me for the big shift I am dropping on all of my blog readers. 

There is no disease.  

Yup.  The belief in disease has been a great waste of time.  Get it out your mind and shift into something better.  Instead of planning your life around your disease mind-set, perceived disease flare ups, and the gnawing anxiety over new symptoms just plan your life.  

There's a catch, though.  Once you give up the disease mind-set you have a new set of responsibilities.  

Look for Part 2.