Heath and Stress - Your Cumming Chiropractor Dr Ekberg

This ... I can... I'm willing to bet that you have never heard it really explained as

to what those things really are and how they really work so we're going to try

to put it all together for you and and why is this a big deal well they

say that we have the most advanced health care system in the world and

that's arguably true but are we actually getting health out of that health care

system that's the question well let's look at some statistics we spend just

over two trillion dollars a year in health care and yet when we look at how

well we're doing health-wise we rank 37 out of 39 countries on the

industrialized list and most of what they do is they give us a bunch of drugs

and they say that well you have this this symptom you have this problem so go

ahead and take this drug and that'll get you better

well if it actually got you better and then you would take the drug you would

get better and you could stop taking the drug right well that's not really how it

works you gotta keep taking it for the rest of your life so drugs aren't really

a measure of how healthy we are they are a measure of how sick we are and in this

country we have 5% of the world's population we take 55 percent of the

drugs and we spend two trillion dollars doing

it so we're going to talk about why why this is and what the reasons are and

what we can do about it they have estimated that there's about 1

million deaths per year that are due to the healthcare system due to medical

care that's the number one cause of death in the country and that's a huge

astounding number but if you break that out that's the same as having 7 jumbo

jets crashing with no survivors every day throughout the year and next year

and that's just the United States do you think that me any planes taking off

tomorrow if that happened today and yet we keep going to the hospitals we keep

going for four more meds so that may not be the way to go and then there's talk

about health care reform but health care reform it's not a question of whether

the system works it's just trying to get more people access to the system so I

think it's a good thing that if you break your leg that someone takes care

of that that's wonderful but we need to look at the overall picture of the

health care system so why why has it gotten this way why is it this way and

it's because we have the wrong model we don't understand the human body we don't

understand health and we don't understand that the real reasons for why

things go wrong

and here's one of the main reasons we're treating symptoms we're not addressing

causes and if you have something like pain or high blood sugar or arthritis or

anything else that's a symptom or that's a problem all it means is that there's

something that isn't working right and if that thing that's supposed to work

was working you wouldn't have the problem it makes sense but there is no

drug there's no pill that you can add to the body and make that thing work again

so what drugs are doing is they're just covering things up they're not

addressing the source of the problem and it's not making anything work better

again it's sort of like the fire alarm goes off and you're put in earplugs are

you fine now no the building's still coming down all right you just don't

know about it until it's too late if you're driving down the road and your

gas gauge says you're running out of gas you can put a piece of tape over the

pesky little thing and then you can see it you're still gonna run out of gas and

if we keep ignoring indicators the problems will always get worse they not

that I know that they ever get better so it's not that drugs are a bad thing

it's just that we have to know when to use them they can be lifesavers when

there's emergencies and acute pain if I break the leg I'd like for someone to

give me some drugs and put it back in place but when we use drugs for chronic

conditions that makes no sense at all because we're making

worse so when we're talking about that thing that's supposed to work that isn't

working when we have a problem what is it that's supposed to work well in the

body when we talk about what's working we're talking about function and there's

three levels of function in the body and the first level is passive tissue these

are things like bone and cartilage and connective tissue and fluids and fat

cells and blood cells they're all important

they give the body's shape and structure but in terms of function in terms of

action they don't do anything then there's the active system and that's

your muscles so that's your your voluntary muscles to move around

it's your postural muscles it's your heart

it's your intestinal tract it's your eye blink even your blood vessels have

muscles they can contract so that when they contract your butt blood pressure

goes up when they relax your blood pressure goes down because that's a

normal mechanism in your body so that your body can choose what to do in

different situations but even though muscles perform all the work in the body

they do everything in terms of moving things around they don't make any

decisions whatsoever none they only contract when they get a signal and they

relax when the signal stops so when we talk about function we're talking about

the regulatory system which is the brain the central nervous system and all the

cells called neurons so if we truly understand the system then we see that

the passive system that's a tertiary system

three levels removed from where the function is and if you think about it if

you go and you get a diagnostic test a medical test that could be an x-ray or

an MRI or a blood test or a liver test or a tissue sample all they're checking

is passive tissue they're only measuring effects and these tests don't tell you

anything about why it got that way in the first place so it's not that they're

useless it's just that they're not telling us why why it happened and if

we're truly looking for health and prevention we want to know why it got

that way muscles are also in effect they're secondary but the primary and

the cause is the regulatory system that's where all regulation and all

function occurs in the body so this brings us to a startling conclusion that

if you get chopped or stabbed more you fall down the stairs during a car

accident or maybe if you have some severe deficiency of vitamin C or

protein so you get scurvy or beriberi or something then there's one cause and

it's kind of obvious the thing hit us right there that's where it broke that's

where it hurts we know what the cause of the problem was but outside of that

everything else is a brain problem everything else because it's about

regulation everything that's supposed to work is working because of how your

brain regulates things and that depends how your brain interacts with the

environment so has anyone ever experienced stress a few alright and has

anyone heard of or or done a Google search on conditions related to stress

like oh we're not quite there yet all right we'll get back to stress so now I

need a volunteer someone who's done eating know just by name is check just

by name so what's your name list good to see you so we're gonna face each other

and sort of Facebook from sideways so if you hold your arm up for me nice and

strong and I'm gonna push down on it and I'm not gonna push super hard but I want

you to lock that arm and make a really strong response

and that's nice and solid and you can all come up after the talk if you want

to have this verified because some of you won't believe this and but if you

think about what we just said about passive tissue that's the bone active

tissue is the muscle and regulating tissue is the brain so when I'm pushing

down and she resists all three of those systems have to work and they have to do

their part now move your left leg forward like you're taking a step there

and we're going to do this again hold real nice and strong just like before

did you notice the difference okay and I'm not yeah so why would that happen

No that's the first guess I guess with

everybody complains they look at the brains doing something different

exactly that's the first part the bone didn't change the muscle didn't change

it's the signal from the brain to the muscle that changed so the muscle test

first of all is not really a muscle test it's a snapshot of brain function if we

do it like I just did which I don't really care if you can resist five

pounds pounds or 50 pounds I just want to see if it's working so the other

thing that we can see is that when you put your leg forward that apparently

changes something about how the brain does business with the arm and in this

case it's very simple because I don't know many people that walk like this so

the brain is gonna try to correct that and it's going to say this arm is in the

wrong place it needs to swing back so the other arm can go forward it's called

a cross crawl pattern and we've all done it since we started formally and we've

done it so much it's one of the strongest patterns in the body but it

shows us a lot of imported information it shows us that a muscle test is about

the brain it shows us that the brain operates on input on feedback and that

feedback the information coming from the rest of the body and the environment is

what determines the sort of output produces okay so we can check this real

simple if you put your left leg forward again and your right arm now you're

still sort of off-balance but let's check the hold strong and that's working

now we can just do real quick and check what about the other way so now if you

stay where you are and you keep that arm straight and I'm

gonna pull out cuz this is the muscle that pulls it back and hold strong and

that's not working so this was Rockstar

Games reflex pattern but think about this now when I build insurance they do

not allow me to treat an area where you don't have a complaint because they

don't understand these things but we just showed that if you have a hit that

is not sending the proper feedback to the brain that can shut off your

shoulder so you can have a shoulder problem because someone hit you on the

hip and those are just a couple of body

parts we mentioned the complexity of the system is outstanding you have a hundred

billion brain cells they receive a billion bits of information every second

and every bit of that information has to be responded to it always turns

something on or turn something off and the sum total of all that turning on and

off that's your health that's your function

so thank you very much so with that we will talk about stress because stress is

some of that input that the body has to process that turns things on and off so

if you look up a condition of conditions related to stress you'll find things

like cancer hypertension heart disease diabetes allergies arthritis pneumonia

headaches back pain fibromyalgia chronic fatigue ulcers interval bowel chronic

infections there's basically nothing that's not related to stress how can

that be how can something intangible something nebulous like stress have all

of those detrimental effects on the body how can it shut down and cause damage to

all those things and it comes back to brain and feedback

so we're gonna spend some time here here's a very all-inclusive illustration

this is your part of your brain the cortex is the most modern the most newly

developed portion of your brain it's the thing that looks like a walnut with all

the folds that surface layer is the cortex it's the most unique thing about

us as humans that's the most the thing that sets us mostly part from other

animals it's been developed mostly in the last few hundred thousand years

below that we have the brainstem and it doesn't really look like this but I'm

just picking a couple of places to help illustrate what we're talking about the

brainstem is the same in all mammals the complexity is very little different from

a mouse to an elephant to a human it is hundreds of millions of years old and it

deals with things like survival and animal instincts and an instinctual

behavior so when we have stress when there's stress in the environment or in

in emotional stress just inside us we have

Chemical stress structural stress and emotional stress the body doesn't care

which one it is it's just stuff that we have to deal with and that stress sends

a signal and the first place that signal is picked up is in the brain stem the

primitive animalistic portion of the brain that deals with survival and as a

reflex that brings them the sympathetic which is the portion responsible for the

stress response sends out a signal to turn on that stress response and first

thing that happens is we start a cascade of things like your increasing heart

rate you get an increase in muscle tension you get an increase in blood

pressure and all of those things sort of makes sense because let's say the stress

is grizzly-bear it comes charging out of the woods and

it's heading for you now you're going to need some heart

activity to pump the blood to make sure that you can get away the muscle tension

you get ready for fight flight you're gonna have your some muscle get ready

for action your blood pressure goes up because that helps the blood move along

quicker then as the bear gets closer your infinite wisdom of your body says

we're going to need lots of energy for this so let's raise blood sugar and

there's a hormone called cortisol which is a stress hormone that primary

function is to raise blood sugar and while it's doing that it's also creating

insulin sense insulin resistance it reduces your insulin sensitivity so

that you can keep that that blood sugar up for action

and then you check out the claws he bears coming closer he's kept pretty

sharp claws so your infinite wisdom body is saying there may be some bleeding

before this is all over so just in case I'm going to start preparing and I'm

gonna increase my blood clotting factors and make sure I can close that wound

quickly if it happens and part of that wound clotting is cholesterol it's one

of the most important components both in blood clotting and in wound healing

tense and tissue repair so does this ring a bell does that look

like anything people take the medication for that's about 80% of the top-selling

medications it's high blood pressure high cholesterol blood thinners and

diabetes drugs and so far we're only a few seconds into this we haven't eaten

anything we haven't done anything all we did was observe a bear coming out coming

charging toward us that's what stress does and because the

body has limited resources all the resources in the body are carried by

blood and every one of us has about a gallon and a half so there's only so

much to go around so if you send all the blood over to these places then you have

to borrow from someplace else you have to shut down some other things in order

to make all of this available so the stress response is hardwired to turn off

the relaxation response and what does the relaxation response or the

parasympathetic do well it only does some random little things like digestion

immune function reproduction healing and they repair those seem like pretty

important things don't think those are the things that keep you alive tomorrow

wouldn't that seem like a pretty stupid thing to shut that down well we're not

really concerned about tomorrow yet cuz there's a bear right so that's the way

the body works whenever there's a stress work there is a potential threat to your

an immediate threat to your life and in for the survival value you're going to

shut down everything that can't help you survive that bear if it doesn't help you

fight the bear it's not important right now

so your digestion and your immune system and all of those things they're going to

be put on the backburner okay now it seems like we're screwed yes

because here's the environment sending these signals and were hardwired to shut

to turn on all the stress stuff and turn off everything keeps us alive till

tomorrow so there's got to be a way to to break this this cycle and there is

and this is where the cortex comes in again the cortex is our awareness it's

our higher functions and the cortex is wired it has the ability to when

appropriate to turn off the stress response so if there's a bear actually

coming at you that's not a good time to turn off the stress response but if you

realize that hey there's nothing to be stressed about then that's a good time

turn it off and then the cortex will do that here's the problem the more stress

we have the more that balance will be shifted away from the cortex to the

brainstem this has to do with blood flow also that when we have stress the blood

flow goes from the cortex to the brainstem that's why the more stressed

you get the more stupid you get have you ever been really flustered and you can't

think of anything to say there's this stupid person in front of you and they

need to hear it and you can't think of a single thing and then it comes to you

later that's because all the bright all the

blood went away from your cortex and down to your brain that brought down to

your brainstem and you were getting ready for a fistfight instead of saying

something clever all right and so the more stress we have when we have chronic

stress when we get into patterns of chronic stress which we basically all do

then the cortex suffers and the cortex loses blood flow and it gets weaker

because of it so how do we get the blood flow back to the cortex how do we ramp

up texe again and now we have to understand

something called use it or lose it this is the most important or one of the most

important principles in your body use it or lose it you have 50 trillion cells

give or take every one of them you have for a reason

your body doesn't keep cells around arbitrarily if you use them they're

gonna get another chance if you don't they're gonna get flushed out and

replaced by something that you do need so when you go to the gym and you do

some biceps curls you're putting some tension on that biceps that tension is a

signal to make a bigger muscle use-it-or-lose-it

then if you hurt that arm you put it in a cast then that muscle atrophies and it

does so very quickly well the same thing holds true for every cell in your body

muscles we sort of understand because we can see them the brain we don't

understand cuz it's hidden away how do you use your brain then what does the

brain do it processes information it receives information from the

environment and by the time it gets to the brain it's in the form of electrical

signals so all the brain really does all day long is to process electrical

signals and the more of it the brain gets the stronger the brain gets the

less it gets the weaker it gets that's what degeneration is that's where

Alzheimer's comes from that's where all degenerative diseases

the only problem is we don't understand much about how the brain or until

recently how the brain works most people say well to use your brain you need to

do crossword puzzles and play bridge and stay mentally active and that's not a

bad thing it's just that that's only a tiny tiny portion of your brain that's a

conscious intellectual portion of your brain that's actually about one

millionth of what your brain does so doing the crossword puzzles you keep

that one millionth really strong which isn't bad but it's not doing much for

what we're talking about turns out 80 to 90% of what your brain

does is to process information related to posture and movement in a field of

gravity that's the most important thing there is because if you can't do that

then you will fall down you'll hurt yourself if you don't know where your

body parts are you'll lose them so the majority of what the brain does is to

process that kind of information and the brain gets it from two places

it's from muscles and joints muscle spindle cells and joint mechanoreceptors

send information to the brain so you can do amazing things like that on a good

day

so muscles the joints send information to the brain and this seems like a

trivial thing but this is the majority of the stuff that keeps the brain alive

and where then do we have most the largest number of muscles and joints and

receptors in the body if you had to pick one throw me some guesses hands are a

good guess but not quite

back back and neck especially

back-back provides a majority the back has spine has 25 or so movable segments

there's three joints per segments there's a dozen muscles there's hundreds

of muscles in this body not only that but that information is so crucial to

the brain and to your organism because your spine is literally the backbone

it's the foundation around everything that you do and then on top of it you

have your head and so the neck which has to integrate all that information as is

as important in terms of information as the rest of the body put together so

that is where most of the signals come most of the signals come from that

stimulate and keep the bulk and the strength of your brain alive so does it

sound like exercise is a good thing okay and you don't exercise to lose weight or

you for your heart or for anything those are trivial side effects you

exercise to keep your brain strong when the brain works better everything works

better all right so where does where does chiropractic

come into this well first of all chiropractic works because we have the

greatest input on the brain by addressing joints in the spine it's not

the only place we do work but that's where we can make the greatest

differences in the brain but let's say that these bones are

moving like this and that movement sends the signal to the brain has anyone ever

been hurt ever fallen down ever sprained an ankle been in a car wrecked

slept wrong okay so if there's a little glitch somewhere where it's supposed to

move like this but instead it moves like that what happened to the signal that's

supposed to go to the brain it's going to be altered it's going to be less of a

signal as a result I kid you not that brain is shrinking not as dramatically

as we're showing here but it is shrinking literally physically

absolutely so the job of chiropractic because if you do exercise on this it

will benefit you you will send more signals on both sides but you won't

clear the imbalance a lot of times sometimes you will but by the time you

have a few hundred of these which we all do then the body's not going to be able

to clear all of that on its own that's what chiropractic comes in when we clear

out that problem we restore that motion now with the proper motion we can get

the proper signal the proper signal can start rebuilding the brain and now we

have a system that is capable of responding the way it's supposed to

that's why chiropractic works and if you take a brain scan before an adjustment

you see the the amount of squiggles here is the amount of brain activity and

after an adjustment there is a change and it's not about moving a bone it's

not about a bone out of place it's about what happens in the brain what happens

to the feedback and the processing ability on the brain afterwards so the

brain works better pain relief is just a bonus

what fits your busy schedule better exercising an hour a day of being dead

24 hours that's unfortunately what happens a lot of times we get caught up

we need something really dramatic something life-threatening a wake-up

call before we reduce the stuff that we're supposed to do all along so

instead of talking symptoms and disease we want to start talking function if you

have a hundred percent function and processing ability in your nervous

system that's the best health you can have the worst health you can have is 0%

functioning that's called dead and if you have one live person you have one

person that found out that 10 seconds ago

they're both have a body they both have muscles they both have blood sugar they

both have a skeleton we can run x-rays we can run MRIs we can take blood tests

they're going to look pretty close and one is alive and one is dead what's the

difference it's their processing ability the dead one doesn't have any more

signals it doesn't process any information any

so what we want to talk about rather than symptoms is how regardless of where

along this scale we get a symptom let's just do all the things we need to do to

get the function up to a close to 100 as possible so here's the cause of disease

it's distorted input the improper feedback from your body and improper

inappropriate processing improper stress responses from the environment and

nutrition lack of proper building blocks if you have this you cannot get sick

what's required for health I love this one you take a plant and it's not

looking so happy what do you give it water water you gave it water it's still

not so happy what's next sunshine you do those and it's still wilting a little

bit nutrients in the soil last check check where it's growing yeah

so a five-year-old can tell you these three things and these are requirements

for health they're not suggestions they're not stuff that you do on a good

day when when you have the time they're requirements if you take a thousand

plants and you give them two out of three for a couple of years how many

plants do you have left zero because if something's required you got to have it

you can get by for a while you can get by for a few weeks

humans can get by for decades but if you talk an optimal function you got to have

all three what a humans need nutrients movement and purpose how do we do that

eat better move better feel better and feeling better is a skill it's something

that you can learn you don't wait around for the world to look the way you want

it before you appreciate it because that's gonna take a while you practice

appreciating what is so that's not the topic for today we don't have to have

time but this is this is essentially it so there are some appendices if I didn't

I thought some of this was going to be printed out but if you if you like a

printout of this I'll be happy to email that to Erin and you can get all the

notes for this plus some appendices to help explain some of the things

this concludes what I had to say and I'll be happy to stay around for any

questions or demonstrations or anything at all that you like to do