Coffee tastes good but what does your body think

A chiropractor friend of mine referred me a client who she had been treating for chronic long term neck pain. Her symptoms had improved considerably since her initial visit over a year ago however she required regular maintenance treatments every 2 weeks to keep her symptoms at a manageable level.

Where new clients have been receiving physical treatment already I am more inclined to look for other underlying reasons for clients pain issues. Chiropractic care is very effective but once you stop having regular adjustments the problem soon re-emerges.

One of the standard assessments I do with any new client is to test their individual muscles. I can then see which ones are not working as well as they should be. This does not mean they are weak and you need to get the client to work on those muscles. These muscles lack stamina or they give way quickly when tested. As an Applied Kinesiologist, I am able to isolate individual muscles to test their function.

 In Applied Kinesiology, each muscle is associated with different organs, nutrition, meridians and spinal levels. They are are also prone to effects of different food intolerances. Clients with neck pain often have weak Sternocleidomastoid muscles (found in the front of your neck). These muscles, in my experience, are particularly prone to the effects of caffeine in coffee by reducing it's function or stamina. When this occurs other muscles in the neck have to compensate and eventually they become tired themselves and go into spasm.

During her initial consultation, the client mentioned that she regularly drank 4 cups of coffee per day,

which immediately caught my attention. During her examination, I tested to see if her body's muscle's reacted to coffee by getting her to hold a vial containing caffeine and seeing if one of her shoulder muscles (which was strong on initial testing) weakened to testing. It did, and so this was a good indication to myself and the client that caffeine may be playing a role in her neck issues.

At the end of the consultation I advised the client that to get lasting resolution of her neck pain she needed to cut out coffee. This is no easy ask for most clients but this lady was keen to find a solution to he longstanding and somewhat debilitating neck pain. She totally cut out all coffee and promptly suffered with a headache over the next four days. This was a normal withdrawal symptom of caffeine. The headache disappeared and by the time she came for her follow up treatment the following week her neck pain was 90% better. Within 3 weeks, the pain had disappeared. As well as suffering from neck pain she had also mentioned she was often constipated, her energy was low, she was sleeping better, and her lower back and knees were no longer sore.

Muscle testing - Invaluable tool or hocus pocus

Muscle testing or Applied Kinesiology has been used by alternative health practitioners since the 1960's. It was originally developed by a Chicago chiropractor Dr Goodheart. Used predominantly in the US and Europe this diagnostic tool is little known to the general public in Canada. I first encountered it early in my Osteopathic career while watching my first boss David Melrose Osteopath and Herbalist. David used it both to assess peoples muscle strength but also to choose which herbs or homeopathic remedies to give his clients. After watching him test and treat a couple of clients it immediately grabbed my attention and opened my eyes as to how I was helping people.

While in college during my third and fourth years we would treat members of the public for a reduced rate. During this time I created quite a loyal following of satisfied clients. I seemed to have the healing touch for many I treated. This, of course, was excellent but I never really understood how this happened. At Osteopathic school we were taught the mechanics of treating people and how to be safe but the explanations on why this approach worked seemed a little wooly to myself.

Immediately after watching David I went in to see my next client and began testing their muscles to see where their weaknesses lie. I then applied the appropriate adjustments to their spine based on their weaknesses and to my excitement those weaknesses disappeared. This was also apparent to the client and furthermore when the client got up of the table their sore lower back felt better. At that point I was extremely hungry to understand more and muscle testing or AK has since been a fundamental part of my Osteopathic practice.

For myself it has been an invaluable tool and has with doubt without it I would not have helped many of the clients that have come to me for help. At the same time it has been a cross to bear during my career as some clients and some peers have seen it as irrelevant or hocus pocus. Since coming to Canada, it's reception has been mixed and as such I have learnt to recognize when to ration it's use in my practice. Like the world over some people are more open to new ideas then others. While I certainly do not rely on AK solely to diagnose clients physical problems I continue to try and open the minds of all that come into my office.

If you are interested in finding out more about AK I offer a free fifteen minute consultation
where I would be happy to show you how it can help unravel your health issues.

Muscle pain - An early sign of Autoimmune Disease?

Do you have constant or intermittent episodes of chronic pain?

Do you need regular visits to your local osteopath, chiropractor, physio or massage therapist to help keep these pains at a manageable level?

If the answer is yes, then you could possibly have the early signs of autoimmune disease.

An autoimmune disease occurs when your body's immune system has destroyed part of itself. A familiar autoimmune disease is  Rheumatoid Arthritis, where where your immune system destroys the lining of your joints. Another example is Hashimoto's Disease where your thyroid gland is destroyed.

I recently wrote a blog titled "Shoulder pain, your thyroid and soya". After reading this article, a friend of mine in the UK commented to me on Facebook that he had been diagnosed with Hashimoto's and was now on medication. Previous to the diagnosis he had suffered from a recurrent shoulder problem for many years which since he has been treated for his thyroid has disappeared.

There are three main factors that lead to the development of an autoimmune disease:

1. Genetic predisposition - whether your family suffered from an autoimmune disease.
2. Triggers - food sensitivities, heavy metals, chemical toxins.
3. Intestinal Permeability - "A leaky gut".

One of the main food sensitivity triggers for autoimmune disease is wheat gluten or gliadin. The second most common autoimmune disease triggered by gluten is Hashimotos disease.

The concept of helping peoples chronic pain issues by taking them off gluten or gluten cross reactive foods, such as soya, is not unfamiliar to me. I have helped hundreds of people this way but have not really understood the true mechanism.

As a guide in my diagnosis of clients I use Applied Kinesiology or muscle function testing. With AK I can detect weaknesses in individual muscle groups. I also use it to test for food sensitivities. In AK each muscle in the body is linked to a specific gland or organ. I can therefore test how the muscle for the thyroid which is the Teres Minor and see if it weakens when the person is in contact with a particular food or any other trigger such as gluten. This is just a guide for me that this person needs further lab investigations for the foods I find that weaken that muscle.

Studies have shown that antibodies for autoimmune diseases can be found in the blood 9 years before the person starts exhibits signs and symptoms of the disease. Up until that point it can the person could be happily unaware that anything was happening in their body that was sinister. Chronic persistent muscle problems could be your bodies early warning system like the red light on your dashboard.

There are tests available through Cyrex Labs which can tell you whether you have these autoimmune antibodies in your system.

There are of course many many other mechanisms that could be causing muscle pain but this makes sense to me. I welcome any questions or comments.

Shoulder pain, your Thyroid and Soya

The food we eat has an enormous effect on our bodies. I see this in virtually every patient that walks into my office. I have recently been treating two clients for chronic shoulder pain. Shoulder problems are, speaking from my own experience, notoriously difficult to treat. The same was true for these two clients. In both cases, their pain had started without any particular reason. Treating them using massage and osteopathic manipulation had seen only minor improvements.

There had to be a deeper root cause.

When problems don't respond to physical treatment then if I am looking deeper the first place I look is the persons diet. There are certain foods that I know from experience have caused clients issues in the past. On questioning both these clients both were eating large amounts of soya. The man was having soya based protein powder shakes every morning and the woman had been consuming soya milk as she was intolerant to cows milk.

There is a lot of misinformation about the health benefits of soya.

The main benefit is that it has a positive effect on the incidence of breast cancer in the far east. It is true that there is less breast cancer in far eastern countries like Japan where they eat large amounts of soya, but they eat soya sauce. This is totally different in nature to the highly processed products that we see in the western world which is made primarily from highly toxic genetically modified soya beans.

So how is soya bad?

Soy contains a number of substances that are harmful to your body and in particular the thyroid. The thyroid is the gland found in the base of your neck that controls the rate at which you burn food. One of these substances is soya gluten which is similar in structure to the gluten we find in wheat. Wheat gluten has been shown in research to be linked to the thyroid autoimmune disease, Hashimoto's. This disease occurs when your body mistakes the proteins in your thyroid for the gluten protein and attacks it. Because soy gluten is similar in structure to wheat gluten so the same problem can arise if you eat too much soya.

With your thyroid under attack so this obviously has a negative effect on how well it works.

The medical term for a reduction in the function of your thyroid is hypothyroidism. The typical symptoms for someone with an under active thyroid include fatigue, weight gain, sensitivity to cold, numbness in the fingers, constipation, depression and muscle and aches and pains. Not all these symptoms need to present but the last one on the list is the most relevant for my two clients.

The exact mechanism as to why a person's shoulder should be effected can not be explained using western science.

However there is a connection when you look at at it from the practice of Chinese Acupuncture and Applied Kinesiology which connects different organs and glands to particular muscles. Your thyroid is associated to the Teres Minor muscle in your shoulder. So when the function of thyroid is reduced to this effects the strength of the muscle and so your shoulder is likely to develop a problem.

A simple answer to a chronic problem.

Suffice to say I duly advised both clients to remove soy and a few weeks later their shoulder pain was gone!

If you have been suffering from chronic pain which has been unresponsive to physical treatment then looking at your diet could be the next best step to finding an answer. Let me know if you have any questions or comments below.