The Science Behind Youth Sports Injuries & Athletic Recovery

Intro and flexible nutrition for athletes 0:00

A lot of people are like, well, don't go any place that has bad seed oils and only grass fed and this and that and everything else. Well, if we only did that, we would never go out to eat with any friends. I mean, it's just the way it is here. Right. And so like you're talking to the point where if our kids go, wow, like my daughter will go well. She'll order a hamburger with no bun. It's not going to be grass-fed because we don' have it here and she'll get a potato and broccoli. Like that is going t be the cleanest that you can eat, but that's still good as opposed to, you know, ordering cheese balls and a fried chicken sandwich or whatever it might be.

Amen. Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. you know, I'm a faith driven person. So grace is one of the biggest things that we talk about, right? So give ourselves grace and give them, you cannot be a hundred percent. Again, like if there's serious auto immunity going on and things like that, then maybe we do for a period of time have to be 100%. There's no questions asked. But to your point, these athletes, they need fuel. And if they're on a travel team, there you're gonna be out and about and you gonna have eat on the go.

Giving them some different options. Yeah, if there's a Jimmy Johns around or something like that, OK, well, then we can live with some processed meats for right now, you know, as long as we're not making a habit of that or, doing some things like, that it's not going to be detrimental if you do it every once in a while. Welcome to Take Back My Brain with Lori Hammer, where real healing starts in the brain. I'm Lori, a functional nutritionist and mom who's walked the path from anxiety and burnout to clarity and calm.

Each week, we're going to dive into brain-based tools like amino acid therapy, gut health, fasting and faith to help you reclaim your energy, emotions and sense of self. Well, hello. Welcome back. I'm so excited you're here with me today. We are going to dive into middle school and high school athletics. And I mean, like, we haven't talked about that a long time. athletes and the misconceptions and myths and things we need to be doing different with our kids. So I have today with me Dr. Taylor Premmer.

He's a chiropractor, functional medicine doc and he is committed to helping those high performers, athletes, and purpose driven individuals. And he's located in Lincoln, Nebraska and I just found out he knows some of the same people that I know. I love how small the world is. Dr Taylor, welcome to the podcast. Well, thanks for having me. It's a treat. We were talking beforehand that ironically, I've listened to some of your podcasts before I even knew who you were. And so that's it's, a small world all the way around.

So congratulations. You've been doing this for a while. I know and a lot of episodes and I commend you. Had a podcast for five years and. How much goes into it. The fact that you're still rolling and doing amazing is pretty awesome. That's one of my favorite things to do. I love, I loved podcasting. So thank you for being on today and honoring us with your presence and all of your wisdom. Let's talk about performance. You are a high school athlete, right? Yes, definitely. And so, you kind of learned all those things.

Were you a college athlete too? No, not college. Not good enough to be college, but just enough. Very passionate about it. And honestly, a lot of what the reason that, you know, I'm so passionate is because I was one of those kids that looking back and you take the camera at

Athletic injuries and hidden root causes 3:25

the crime scene, my potential was there, but I didn't have the right pieces to really put it all together. And some of that was, you know, some underlying functional medicine issues, which maybe we can get into in a bit. But then also just, I grew up in an itty bitty tiny town in the middle of Nebraska. We had 800 people and I always joke, we had no one calling on us. So the closest- Yeah, why would they? Chiropractor PT was an half hour away and even then they did as good as they could have, but I feel like they were missing some big pieces that could've really helped me and also my other people.

And so that's really been my passion over the last 10 years is trying to really revolutionize what it means to treat not only our high, high level athletes, but those athletes that, you know, they don't want to play in college or the NFL and stuff like that. But they still want enjoy their time in high school. And injuries are one of the main reasons why they do not get to have a good experience, which I think is a shame. It is ashamed. So what are the biggest, what I want say, What are most common injuries that you are seeing amongst kids today?

Yeah, I kind of put it in two categories. If you just want to go straight MSK, musculoskeletal, the acute ankle sprain is the number one reason why someone would miss a practice, a game, anything like that. And if you look at the stats, that's the No. 1 orthopedic reason someone shows up to urgent care to ER and stuff like, is acute ankles spraining. The majority of the time, there's no fractures or nothing like. we treat it like a fracture. So we use the RICE protocol, right? We rest it, we ice it and we compress it.

And we elevate it we put boots, uh, We put crutches and then, you know, You may follow up with orthopedic surgeon the next day or a week later. They say you're in the boot for six weeks and the the boots comes off and okay you are free to go back. Now, if you dive into the research, the muscle atrophy that happens within that six week period is pretty significant. And so it's a crime, in my opinion, that we don't use some of this new research and these new concepts of treatment. And instead we just, we throw our kids back out there without real good treatment and then now they're more susceptible to having another ankle sprain and that's, a, crime to me.

And so that's the number one thing. But then, you know, if I just look at a functional medicine standpoint, and if we look back on that, I know the reason that I saw your podcast first was Dr. Kristy Sutton talking about celiac disease. And I'm a lucky person to have celiac disease and hemochromatosis. The more I test for celia disease in young athletes, the more find it. It's the misconceptions around that, which you talked about with Dr. Sutton of the genetic testing is where it's at. We don't need the biopsy of a gut and things like that to get to that answer.

Instead, we just need to do a simple blood test and we can usually figure it out for relatively inexpensive. But that's to me is the biggest thing I find. You know, where we're seeing more and more that kids are having loose connective tissue, either downloads even or whatever that spectrum is and that contributes. That's like epidemically diagnosed right now. Yeah. And I will tell you, I think that there is a direct connection between people with loose connective tissue and celiac disease. I agree.

Yeah. And so that is huge thing. Now, you're seeing ACL repairs in kids that are 12, 13, 14 years old. You're even seeing Tommy John surgeries, for example, in the elbow in those same age groups. And so that to me is the big missing link to this is meddling the two together is yes, you have an acute athletic injury, but asking the reason why. Did you just have bad luck, which we can't avoid, or were there certain things that were predisposing you to be able to have those injuries? Especially if we look at females, like the rate of incidence of ACL tear in females versus males is drastically different.

However, we don't study the females because female hormones are difficult to study and it's hard to get sample populations. There's a big, big difference in that population. Now there's this big movement that there are a couple of hallmark studies that came out that basically you can predict when a female might tear her ACL depending on where she's at in her cycle. And so now you're having people that are saying, well, maybe we should just put all of our female athletes on birth control. Therefore it reduces their chances of, of ACL rupture, which is just blasphemy.

It's just ridiculous. But that is the next phase of sports medicine in my mind. And, and so I'm hoping that I can continue to push the, the narrative that that's not the answer. Like that as yes, that, it's the problem, but the is not through birth controlling and things like that. Right. And I mean, I suppose there's lots of reasons, but can you pinpoint like, you know, several key reasons. So I'm 52. You know I was in high school, late eighties, early nineties, and we rarely had, it was sprained ankles.

Okay. But we barely had ACL repairs. Even like traumatic brain injuries, you can say we didn't diagnose them as well, but I just don't remember those things being the issues that they are now. And nobody had like elbow surgery, for goodness sakes. It just didn t happen. Reasons? Yeah, a couple of them. I think if we just talk about the elbow, there's a homework study that came out that they looked at unaccounted pitches for athletes and they look at high school, I'm sorry, college athletes. They followed a college baseball team.

It's like a division three baseball. And what they did is they just had someone that followed around the pitchers and basically put a tick mark every time they threw a ball. And what they found is during a practice, during, uh, a game, stuff like that, there was 60, I'm sorry, 40% of unaccounted throws for that pitcher. So we've been kind of taught this lie that a hundred pitches is like the people's kind threshold. Well, then we use that hundred pitchers for our major league baseball. And now we put it into the college game and in the high school.

Now we're using that same thing for youth athletes. Which is really cool. Let's look at travel ball. I am sure it's, it is big in Iowa. It's big everywhere now. So if you take your, you know, your let's just say your 12 year old boy who's playing travel ball, so they may practice two or three times a week, which isn't a big deal. However, usually they're playing basketball and other things along with that. So we can talk about load maybe, but let us just talk throws in general. You know during the week their load management isn' t that much but then they get to the weekend tournament and they play six or seven games.

Well, they may only pitch two games and they made say, well, we're holding them to 50 pitches a game. That's great. But if you're a pitcher, that means you have a decent arm. So what happens is when you get pulled from pitching, then you go play the outfield. Well and then your throwing the ball to home plate. between innings if a ball gets hit to you. And now you do that five or six times in a weekend and then you that seven or eight weekends in row. Now it's just a load management issue. We haven't allowed the body to adapt to this much demand and therefore something's going to break down.

So there's a couple of technique changes in the last 10, 15 years that took the stress off of the shoulder and now are on the elbow. A really common flaw biomechanically we see is that we were taught And, you know, and I was taught the same thing. It was kind of my generation that out of the glove and this is nuanced, but it's something to look for out. Of the globe. If you're in pitcher's prayer. So the balls here, your looking at home plate that the first move you do is actually move your arms down.

This is a biomechanical flaw and it will cause a timing issue down the road versus if you look at Nolan Ryan or some of these best pitchers that have longevity, they'll take the ball. out. So it's a nuance, but it is a good myomechanical trademark or hallmark to see that.

Training load, specialization, and overuse 10:46

And so that's kind of the elbow. Then if we look at ACL tears, I think the demand is big. Playing on turf is bigger. You're seeing more and more colleges and NFL teams move away from turf and go back to grass. Now, from a functional medicine perspective, you and I can try to riff on how we're managing that grass and maybe that's causing some other issues. Exactly. Yeah, which one is less toxic? I don't know. You can also say the same thing about turf. I mean, they're using artificial grass, using rubber that has that coming from petroleum and blah, blah blah.

However, grass is just more forgiving. That's just plain and simple. So your foot's not getting stuck in the turf and things like that. And so those are really the two big things, I think, load management when it comes to Little Leaguer's elbow or UCL tears and thing like and then also the Turf considerations as well as the nutritional status of ACL tears. I don't have a lot of evidence to back that up. However that's what I've seen pattern wise. Again, when you get an athlete that you have to give them that news that they tore their ACL, You'd be remiss not to go back and just think about, okay, what could I have done more?

Or what did we miss maybe in the training? What could we have been better? Because if you don't ask those questions and you're missing a giant opportunity for that athlete after they do have the surgery, then what do we do to actually make it so they don t have it again? The question that a lot of us forget to ask, whether that we're talking about functional medicine or musculoskeletal injuries and stuff like that, is to asked that core concept. We talk about getting the root cause all the time, but rarely do we actually get to root causes because it's hard to answer those questions and it is hard kind of dissect the things that you may have missed.

Oh my goodness. Yes. Well, and I think how undernourished our kids are, you know, I work with a lot of young ladies and most of them, well, they either don't have their period or it's so sporadic. You know they're 16, 17, 18 years old. They don t have a regular period. So they barely eat anything and they re going from, 6 a.m. till 10 or 11 p. m. at night and We push our kids beyond their limits. I mean, it's good to be like, hey, go for it and be involved in this and that and everything. And I remember being involved so many things in high school, but it feels so different now.

The fact that they're on a travel team, they are on their high-school team. They're are weekend tournaments. like and and, and how did we get here? And what do you feel like, is there an answer? Can we scale this back so that we save our bodies so when we're 40, 50, even 30, I look at my nephews and they're like I think you asked a really important question. How did we get here? Because even my generation, I'm 33, like I was the same way. I grew up in Nebraska. If you played baseball, you had Legion ball.

That was as high as you were. Now we have every single travel ball that you could ever imagine. And really what it comes down to, it's a business. They estimate youth sports is now a multi-billion dollar business, and it is the fastest growing industry in the United States. So that right there is unfortunately the answer. Can you do anything about it? Unfortunately, the train is on the tracks. Like, if your kid has aspirations to, you know, go play Division One baseball or Division one soccer or something like that.

Unfortunately the high schools like the High School the days of getting recruited. out of high school are just kind of gone. Now you have to go to the camps. You have go these different things in order to get eyes on you. And so now you're seeing a huge movement of parents pulling their kids out at the high-school sports and only doing travel ball, which is such a shame because you've such an opportunity to grow as a human being if you are around your friends and stuff like that. To answer your question, to me, the terrain is on the tracks.

Now we got to do things that support our kids. And honestly, it brings up a good question of, should we be specializing? Should we play multi-sports? And it's a big thing right now. Oh no, you have to play multiple sports and they'll pull a bunch of NFL players and say, well, Christian McCaffrey was the captain of his basketball team and he played baseball and did all these things. However, we're using the 1% and standardizing it to the 99%. So I think right now you can make a pretty good argument that specialization is honestly probably safer because yes, and I hate to say that it burns me at my core because I want the kids to play all these sports and have these opportunities.

Just go have fun. I feel like they're not having as much fun as they could have anymore. Exactly. However, again, if they have aspirations and maybe you're in a socioeconomical status where the only chance of your child going to college is to play a sport, then by all means, we should have conversations about maybe specialization is right and what time that time period that is. It's a good question. I really don't have a my gut tells me probably somewhere around freshman, sophomore year of high school, we should really consider it.

The thing I always bring up to my athletes, for example, they're a baseball pitcher and they want to wrestle, or they wanna play football. Well, you're one shot from a dislocation or a sublux of your shoulder or something like that, which then if you have to have surgery to revise that now you've lost your ability to throw a You can still do it, but you're not going to be near as effective because once you disrupt the capsule of a shoulder, a hip, and knee, it's just never going be the same. As much as I can say I've rehabbed them really good, It's never gonna be same and so you know to those points I think it is up for debate and again it pains me to say that, that's the reality in the world that we live in right now.

Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about nutrition with those middle school high school athletes. I know some really Division III college athletes and they have their nutritionist and you know the red light therapy, they've got the hyperbaric, and all these recovery tools. We don't have those in middle and high schools. Definitely. Let's talk about it. What should our kids be eating and should all of them be getting tested for like celiac and doing some basic blood work and those kinds of things so that the parents know?

And then second part to this is how do you get them to be compliant in that? Yeah. Yeah, these are the hard hitters. These are things that keep me up at night to, be honest with you. Right, me too. I'm like, what? I know. And short answer, I mean, yes. If I have an athlete that comes through that's showing signs of, for example, loose connective tissue or laxity, or maybe they're just not developing as quick as the parents think they should or as quickly as their brothers or sisters did or something like that, that always should be like a trigger in your mind.

Something's probably not perfect here, so that would be automatically. Let's do some basic labs. Or do they have eczema? Do they has psoriasis? Like are they having some skin conditions that lead us back to the gut that may be, you know, lead down a food issue or food allergy or celiac disease and stuff like that. So that would be number one. Number two, like early on, I'm not a parent yet. I am hoping to be soon, but I m not parent so it's easy for me to say this. But early you've got to teach your kids that food is medicine and like food nurturing and it is fuel.

And that means maybe not going through the drive-thru. That's just, it is what it. However, I just think if I can just get kids and parents to really focus on what good protein sounds like and looks like,

Nutrition, labs, and recovery basics 18:18

that's the easiest way to start. If your kid loves steak, by all means, cook them steak and make them. I know it's expensive. and I know it's expensive and i know those types of things however you know that that is like the biggest thing I can would say to them and get them a good protein powder like that not alone so I really love a quip it is made from 100% grass-fed beef isolates and it doesn't have all the junk in it you weigh and things like But honestly, I just educate them on the three most common food allergies that you're going to see is wheat.

It's going be soy and casein, which is in dairy. And so it's a pretty good idea. Maybe we don't just pump them full of milk because that's what you have all day long. Doing a simple elimination diet or something like that would be a good way. People ask me all the time, when's too early to start supplementing? I don't have a good answer for it, to be honest with you, but if your kid's showing signs of, you know, that laxin and stuff like that, then yeah, maybe some creatine, Maybe some collagen, some good vitamin C, vitamin D, like checking those types of things and implementing that can go a really long ways to making sure that they're getting their micronutrients in from that.

It's funny that the new food pyramid came out. My background is nutrition. I have a nutrition degree from Nebraska. That's all it was based on was the old food pyramids. And that's the reason I went to chiropractic school because I was so disgusted in my education and what we were teaching and in what were trying to implement. So I think that it's a step in the right direction to actually make people understand that Red meat is not the issue. You know, protein is now the issues, the grains. It's the heavy process things that we're being exposed to that that's causing these things.

And so that is where I would start really, really high quality proteins, electrolytes, and then get rid of the junk. I mean, I think that it can literally be as simple as that. If it's still not responding, just like we wouldn't functional medicine approach, then we would just continue to move further and further, further down the list. Hey friend, just a quick break to remind you if calming your brain is the missing piece in your practice or in you home, my Mind Thrive certification course teaches you exactly how to do that with targeted amino acid therapy.

So it's real science, real results, no band-aids. Enrollment is now open. Link is in the show notes. Yeah, absolutely. And I love organ meats. I mean, add in those because those are going to strengthen your bones and strengthen all your connective tissue better than anything else can do. There's this giant myth about calcium and we've been taught such a good lie about that. Yeah, so that's what we did. Like after practice and stuff, my parents got me a chocolate milk because everybody said that that is the best thing to recover because you need calcium to strengthen your bones.

Well, I'm here to tell you like you have to have other substrates in your bloodstream in order for that calcium be absorbed correctly. Otherwise, it's going to get deposited in random places. arteries your fingertips your joints and so you know that's where vitamin D and minerals and like all these other things really come into play because if you don't have those substrates you cannot absorb the calcium and by the way there's more calcium in a head of broccoli than there is in the gallon of milk so like And you're getting it from organ meats and things like that.

So like, again, I'm not trying to be anti-dairy. It's just I see so many kids these days have an issue with dairy products and why that is I don't have a good answer. You know, like the dairy that we're eating nowadays is probably just different than it was 15 years ago. Oh, my goodness. It is so different. I mean, it's homogenized, pasteurized. There's so many more hormones and antibiotics and stuff that these cows are inundated with and so, no, It's not grandpa's cow. Not your raw milk that some of us grew up on by any means at all.

And our food system is just depleted. You are a product of what you're eating. So if you are eating depleted food, if your eating toxic food you going to be depleting and toxic as well. And it's so true with our kids. You know, and I am a parent. I can go back and say this, I grew up, you know I raised my kids and not eating garbage. Right? So we just don't eat crap here. Good for you. So even as my kids have grown older, they would go out with their friends and they might sit in McDonald's, but there was no way that either of them were ever going to touch a McDonalds hamburger, french fries, nothing like that.

And just because they both knew they have so much knowledge, you're held accountable when you have knowledge. They're like, I just can't, and my mom will kill me. Yeah. Yeah, well, and your kids are there. Your kids were looking up to you, too. So the choice is what is your what? Is your you know, how are you modeling that for them? And the best results I have with kids or their parents are like, I'm not going to eat that then either if they can't eat it. I am not eating it and we're going make the switch as a family.

Yeah. Amen. And two, you know, like I always think about it, just from a genetic standpoint, people, how many times a day do you hear it? Well, is this just runs in my family? You know my mom had this and now my kids are going to have that. Well what the genetics? Yes, they do play a huge role. However, your choices are not genetic. They're habits. You model your habits after your parents, Your parents model them after their parents and so on and you can pass on good things too. You know, like one of the things that my parents never worked out, they never work out in their life, never touched a weight.

They were literally allergic to it. And so when I moved back home, I do some weight training here as well to help people to strengthen their bones, to, help them gain muscle, for longevity and things like that. So now they're working out once a week. That comes in here every single week and so I, all the time I wish that understood some of that stuff and just like went to the gym because that's a habit that I still have to flex and it's not always easy for me to do those things even though I know how important it is but that is just you know 30 years of doing what I was just kind of taught how to and so the same things are for your kids right now no matter how old they are.

You're the example. Right. Yeah. So, so, true. And I've always teach my mamas, like, you know, because I work a lot with moms, as to just don't make a big deal out of it. Like if you're going to switch stuff in your home, just switch it like if. You're gonna start buying grass fed meat. Just don' announce it just just do it or you'r like hey, we're. Going to eat less gluten. Don't announce. It's just by the different noodles. Kids will eat it, they're hungry. There is a point in time, my son got really picky for whatever reason.

And he just like, I don't like any of this. I'm like okay, that's fine. So I would just cook anyway and I just went and set him a place at the table. Then eventually he's like I do want that. We can fix your own plate. You just don t make a big deal out of it. Empower them, right? Yeah, they're making their choice. Yeah. Making their own choice, yeah. My daughter, her friends will make fun of her. A few of them they'll be like Do you bring your granola and your filtered water today? And she's like, no, I brought beef sticks.

Yeah, right. Right. Exactly. I love it. She's definitely, you know, like a carnivore driven kind of girl. Speaking of that, special diets, there's so many out there. And so what do we do with our kids? Should they follow a paleo? should they do a lot of diet variation? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. It's hard to say because it's so individualized. And I think to your point of not making a big deal of it, I just think if you just eat clean 90%, 80, 90% of the time, you're going to get a really clean look, like not having processed foods and things like that.

Yeah, yeah. So not having processed foods and processed oils and things like that around, like, that's where I would start. Get rid of the packaged foods, get rid the canned goods, things that, and just start there. So then as far as being on a specific diet, the only time I put people on the specific diets, especially when we're talking about our athletes, is when they have, let's say they had celiac disease, or they some sort of food allergy that I'm suspecting, Or they do have a concussion or something like.

That's were I'll get strict on things. Otherwise, I just, I find the more stricture you put on the kids, the harder it is for, number one, parents to adhere and for them to not push back. And so, yeah, I don't know. It's so independent and it's different every single person. I hate to even generalize it, but yeah. Would everybody be better off if they were eating a paleo diet? Probably. Probably, you know? I think we would argue with that or just an anti-inflammatory diet in general, meaning higher levels of protein, lower carb.

more fruits and vegetables, that's a pretty good way to think about it. Yeah. Well, I know around here, because we live in small town Iowa, you grew up in a small-town Nebraska, and our restaurant selection is not amazing, right? So, we don't have a ton of good places to eat in the town of 5,000 and every little town around us is like 200. So you've got your little bars and all those kind of little cafes and stuff. And so, A lot of people are like, well, don't go any place that has bad seed oils and only grass fed and this and that and everything else.

Concussions, sleep, and nervous system recovery 27:28

Well, if we only did that, we would never go out to eat with any friends. I mean, it's just the way it is here, right? And so like you're talking to the point where if our kids go, wow, like my daughter will go well. She'll order a hamburger with no bun. It's not going to be grass-fed because we don' have it here. And she'll get a potato and broccoli. Like that is going t be the cleanest that you can eat, but that's still good as opposed to, you know, ordering cheese balls and a fried chicken sandwich or whatever it might be.

Amen. Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. you know, I'm a faith driven person. So grace is one of the biggest things that we talk about, right? So give ourselves grace and give them, you cannot be a hundred percent. Again, like if there's serious auto immunity going on and things like that, then maybe we do for a period of time have to be 100%. There's no questions asked. But to your point, these athletes, they need fuel. And if they're on a travel team, there you're gonna be out and about and you gonna have eat on the go.

Giving them some different options. yeah, if there's a Jimmy Johns around or something like that, okay, well, then we can live with some process meets for right now, you know, as long as we're not making a habit of that. Or, doing some things like, that it's not going to be detrimental if you do it every once in a while, but it is the repetitiveness and over and, over, and again, it really gets people in trouble. Yeah, absolutely. So let's dive into our final thing on here, concussions. Like, this feels like There are so many concussions and like repeated concussion.

My assistant, her daughter is an athlete and she gets keep getting schmucked in the head and not passing concoction protocols. And then she recovers. She feels really good. Then she got schmocked in her head again. You've got another concusion. Like, I just don't feel like that happened before. So again, what's going on and is it a depletion issue, is that a repetitiveness issue? Is it the, I don't know, what is Yeah. I mean, it's a little bit of everything, to be honest with you. You know, like the more contact you have in contact sports, the most likely you are to have a concussion.

However, you know the mechanism has really changed, I would say, in the last five to ten years. And it used to just be that we imagined that it was like an egg and egg yolk inside of an eggs, right? So the egg gets slammed against it, and you get a bruise and then it'll just kind of heal. Well, now it is what they call axonal shear, which is a big word that basically just means the axons that are basically transmitting electrical impulses that give your brain stimulation, your thoughts, you're movements, stuff like that, they get sheared apart quickly and it causes, just like if you strain a muscle, that it cause bleeding here.

So after that axon has been overstretched, well now you get bleeding in this area and we probably understand what the blood brain barrier is. The blood-brain barrier, is what basically prevents your brains from sucking up toxins and other things like, but it also makes it difficult to get rid of things. So that's why I think we discount the healing time and what it takes to really get rid of that bleeding and bruising in the actual brain itself. And part of it is nutritional status. Part of is sleep.

For me, like the first thing I do if I have a kid that gets a concussion or even just a brain hit or something like that, we just start them on a really, really kind of strict supplement regimen that includes creatine, magnesium, omegas, vitamin D, Vitamin C, some sort of B complex. Those kind are my ground, my starting point as far as supplements to give the body the substrates necessary to get rid of that bleeding and those inflammatory markers in the brain to then eventually heal that area and then it's good as new.

But what happens is we don't get all those inflammatory markers out of the brain. Then we have a second or a third or whatever that might be a quick nebular injury. And now you restart that process all over again. So if I have kids and they're playing contact sports, those would be the supplements that I would probably just keep them on as a preventative nature. Therefore, they have, you know, some people say you're insane like that. You're just making expensive urine for your kids. Well, maybe.

However, if the body has those substrates ready to go when something like that happens, that should theoretically decrease the healing time and should kind of help with that. But yeah, I mean, all of those things matter. Blue light, excessive blue light. Not getting deep sleep because they're staring at their phone or watching TV before they go to bed. All of these things But again, like for your parents that are listening, that seems like a lot of overwhelming considering all the things we already talked about for them to keep track of.

A pretty good rule of thumb, don't let your kids look at their phone or the TV an hour before bed. Like, again we talk about habits. I wish I had the habit of reading before bedtime my entire life, you know, what a good habit to have, whatever that looks like. You can read fun things, read the Bible, or whatever your family is into. but get them away from screens and blue light as long as possible to allow their body to get into a deeper sleep. Because you kind of have two different ways of sleeping, right?

You have deep sleep and you have REM sleep, and those two processes are happening during those times. And so if you're not allowing your body into REM, which is rapid eye movement, or deep-sleep, you are not allow your brain's lymphatic system to work properly, therefore it can't really reset and heal and drain and do those types of things. Those are big words, but just know, the deeper sleep your kids get and the better sleep they get, they better. It doesn't have to be 10, 12, 14 hours. Like it just needs to good, efficient sleep.

And then, you're allowing your body to process just like adults or anybody else. Well, I think you just hit on another key thing, sleep. Our kids need more sleep than they generally get. That's huge for recovery. They're running on empty half the time, and they're getting six, seven hours of sleep, they are exhausted during school, so they don't have the repair time. And I'm not saying that you need to like put an aura ring on your 12 year old or something like that, but just, I just a thing that I do with my athletes parents a lot, let's say they do have elbow pain and they're a pitcher.

I just, on my whiteboard, I'd just start writing. Okay, so today's Tuesday. Let's go back a week ago. Starting Tuesday, what'd they throw? Okay. So then they threw, they had practice so they probably threw 30 times. Perfect. 30. All right. Wednesday. Oh, we played catch in the backyard 30 time. There's 30 and then I've just started tracking. Then by the next time in a weeks they're like, oh my gosh. He's actually throwing the ball a lot. Same thing can happen with their sleep. Okay. So you had a late practice, you ate late, got to bed late and they had to be up early for practice.

All right. They got seven hours. Boom, seven. The next night, oh, we got a full night's sleep, so they got eight. Perfect. You're still an hour and sleep dead if we're being serious. Then just start tracking things that way. It doesn't take rocket science to say, Oh man, All right, this weekend, we should probably take it easy a little bit because I know that Johnny is a bit lacking in sleep. Maybe we shouldn't make some good home cooked meals, stay home, get to bed early, things like that. So just break it down very simple.

It doesn't have to be extravagant. You don't to go to these crazy places where they're tracking everything and do that crazy stuff. If there's a problem, by all means, find someone like yourself or like me that can kind of dive in deeper. However, just take it from a very 30,000 foot view and just use common sense when it comes to your kid. And for the most part, you're a mother, and you usually know what your kids needs, whether they believe it or not. So, move into that. That's one of the biggest things I'll say.

Let's just step back. Don't view Johnny as the baseball player. Let's view you Johnny is the kid. All right. What do you think the kids needs? Like, what do your think is going on? Not what the doctors told you or anything like that. Like what you feel like is. And majority of the time the parent is gonna know or sometimes even a kid will have a better idea. So for the more part, though, we just don't we kind of discount that subjectiveness of patient encounters and and instead we go all into the objective and we test and test.

We test, and the next thing you know, you're confused. The patient's confused and. They're overwhelmed, they're not compliant. Absolutely. What are the foundations? If we remove those foundational interferences, we give the body what it needs. God designed our bodies to heal and to function really, really well. Amen. Amen. Yeah. I kind of have, you said the foundations. My foundations, I have five of them. Sleep, movement, nutrition, supplementation, stress, and mindset. So like those are five ways that, it sounds ridiculous, but that's where I start with all my patients.

It doesn't matter if they've been everywhere. They have the craziest case. Like I had a wild case today that I saw. Those are the first five things I'm going to ask you. It doesn't matter all the testing you've had, you know, I'm going to ask you, what are your symptoms? What do you think is going cause it? Okay, now let's check in. How's your sleep? How is your movement? how's Your nutrition? I was your stress. I have your mindset like those are the five keys to me. And if we just start there, then usually we can uncover what I would call what the root causes because sometimes we want to make things so complex and in reality, The beautifulness of life is in the simplicity of it, right?

The least amount necessary. So and I think that that hopefully parents that are listening to this will will take that and realize, oh, yeah, maybe I don't have to buy the best red light device on the market, or I Don't Have to use, you know, those crazy expensive compression boots. I have To get my kid and glutathione IV every time they play or, You know things like that, like And I say those things because those are those were legit questions I get. But sometimes you just have to go back to the basics.

And, you know, that that to me, everybody on planet Earth just took care of those basics, I would probably be out of a job. I hear you, I here you. So, you know, maybe not a good business model, but do we want people doing those? No, no, we really, really do. Right. We want you to do those. I would love to be out of a job because people are so healthy. Amen. My I wish I could just lay hands on everybody. They would heal whatever disease they have and then I can teach them how to stay that way. You know?

That's a big part of my pride. You mentioned laying hands. That is very biblical and it doesn't matter what culture you're talking about. If you are talking the Chinese or Indians, across the entire planet, laying of hands has been one of the most important things in healing. And so I think that is another thing that has kind of lost is so many times people think I'm adjusting, I am doing crazy soft tissue and stuff like that, but a lot of times we're just like calming things down, meaning I may just do a little bit of soft-tissue work and in reality I just calming everything down.

And I think that that's a lost art. Whether we're talking chiropractic, manual therapy, PT, anything like that, just the laying of hands. That's something that you as a parent can do as well. Sometimes you just have to touch your kid where it hurts, and that can go a really long way. So don't discount your ability to help someone else heal, even if you don t have the credentials behind your name and stuff like Yeah. I mean, it regulates your nervous system. Amen. Kids just, they need to be touched.

They need be snuggled and loved, even if they're big boys and they don't touch me mom. You really, really want a mom hug. My daughter, the first concussion she got, and she was young. And if she felt, you know, like, just regulated, if you felt nervous, anxious, or any of those things, she would just come find me wherever I was in the house, and she will hold on to me, I would hold onto her, And I will do that until she feels better. And then she's like okay now, thank you, then just move on, right?

And it wasn't hyperbaric, it was not a red light, It was just that physical, physical touch. We forget how powerful that is. Absolutely. Yeah, you said it perfectly well and it doesn't discount those other things if your kids have an issue with multiple concussions and healing and stuff.

Practical injury care and where to find Dr. Premmer 39:18

Exactly. Hyperbaric auction can be a great piece of the puzzle, but if that's where you're hanging your hat on and you are skipping the other thing that we've talked about, maybe you got better uses of your time and money. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh my goodness, Taylor. Thank you so much. This was a fantastic conversation. Do you have anything else that you want to leave everyone listening with? I think if I could give you one clinical pearl, and this is to all the parents, a lot of times you don't know where to start.

Let's just take the ankle sprain. ankle sprain, a bump, bruise, things like that. The first thing that your mind's going to go to is that RICE protocol, the rest, ice, compression, elevation. I will challenge you and instead use movement, use heat, and use weight bearing. Those three are going give you such a big clue of whether or not you do need to take them to urgent care or the ER to get imaging because if your child can weight bear within that first 24 hours of an injury, It's a pretty good indicator that they don't have anything seriously wrong.

No fractures, ligament damage, and stuff like that. It is a good rule of thumb. is not, heat is what gives your body the chance to heal. We've fought against inflammation and swelling for the last hundred years and I'm here to tell you that the swelling is actually there to help bring your bodies beautiful healing substrates to that area. So heat increases circulation, it helps to reduce inflammation long term and it also increase the healing aspect. So ice shuts down the metabolism. It shrinks it down.

it prevents you from getting those substrates to heal and it will prolong your injury time. And then the last thing is movement. Sometimes as crazy as it sounds, you just need to walk something off. So don't be afraid to add some movement I'm not saying that when Johnny hurts his leg or his ankle to put him back there on the field. I am just saying Let's let's hold off a little bit on putting them in a boot in an extra or I'm sorry and crutches and things like that. Instead, let us use movement.

Let us weight bearing and let use heat. It is research backed. I have tried and tested it over the last 10 years and I am telling you that is like it is a chef's kiss how good it works. All those things are my challenge to status quo and my challenged to orthopedic medicine is I could just burn all the boots on planet Earth. I would do it in a heartbeat. Anyway, again, there's a time and place for it, but you got to use it there. Yeah, absolutely. Where can people find you? Yeah. Obviously, I'm in Lincoln, Nebraska.

But I do all virtual consults as well, whether that's functional medicine or I consult on a lot of injuries. It doesn't matter what level of athlete you are. I see patients all over the country, which is the nice thing with my new setup. And so you can go to PrimerHealth.com. P-R-E-M-e-r, it's in the background here if you're watching. Primmerhealth. com, or you could follow me on Instagram at Prima Health or at Dr. Taylor Primir. So that that where I live. Awesome. Oh my goodness. This is such a great conversation.

Thank you so much for blessing us with your time. I appreciate you, Laurie. Keep crushing it. Definitely will. And I know all of you listening that you know somebody who needs this podcast. So send this to somebody because you that they need it, so God bless each and every one of and I will see you in the next episode. See you guys. Thanks for listening to Take Back My Brain. If today's episode helped you connect with hope or direction, I want you to follow the show, leave us a review and share it with someone who needs it.

And if you're ready to start your own healing journey, explore our courses and our coaching programs at lorihammer.com backslash store. So until next time, remember you cannot medicate away a nutrient deficiency and healing your brain isn't just possible, it's powerful.