Uncover Your Path To Chronic Pain Resolution: Art & Science

Introduction to Chronic Pain Resolution 0:00

Hi, ladies. Welcome back to Mastering the Menopause Transition Summit 2.0. I'm your host Dr. Sharon Stills. Always, always excited to have another conversation to share with you. And today, as always, is going to be a good one. We're going to be talking about not pain management, but the resolution of chronic pain. And I know for many of you going through the hormonal journey, pain can be a part of your everyday life. And often you're probably told, well, you're getting older, it's something you have to live with.

That's just how it is. Maybe they're telling you it's in your head. And so I have my special guest today, Dr. Yoni Whitten, who's here with me. He's a chiropractor with over 17 years experience who focuses on pain resolution. And so we're here to have a conversation to let you know that pain is not something you have to live with. And it's something that you can work through and it can be in the rearview mirror of your life for you. So welcome, Dr. Yoni, to the summit. Really awesome to have you here.

Thanks so much for having me, doctor. So it's a pleasure. You're so welcome. And you are a chiropractor. We were talking before we came live. How much I love chiropractic medicine and how chiropractic medicine and naturopathic medicineshouldn't be thought of. The alternative that chiropractic is is the way. And so I was saying how, you know, I love my chiropractor and I don't see the chiropractor as a place to go when I'm in pain. I see the chiropractor is a place I go to stay out of pain and to keep my nervous system aligned.

And so I and you know, I'm always a fan of chiropractors, so it's really great to have you here. And I'm just curious maybe to just share with the listeners why you chose to go into chiropractic and how you got into this resolution of pain. So it goes back a long way, actually. I would say it started probably when I was four years old and I was the second of three kids. I am the second of three kids. And when I was about three and a half, I had a giant growth here sticking out of my neck that was the size of a golf ball right here in the middle of my neck.

And my parents were freaked out, as any parent would be, and they took me to all the specialists. And after all of this advanced thought process that went into it, they decided that they would jam a needle into it and suck out the fluid. And they did that and it went flat, which was awesome. And then it came right back the next day. And so in all of their wisdom, they stuck an eagle in it, drained it, and it came back a second time. So then my parents were really pretty worried and they took me around to other specialists and they decided finally that they would go in and cut this thing out, which they did, and I've got a big scar that runs right there about five inches.

So as I got bigger, it kind of grew down and it ended up down here, but it was here in the middle of my neck. And so this was really interesting because they got it cut out. They found a brilliant surgeon. It's a beautiful scar, actually. He did a great he actually sewed it up from the inside. So it's really nice as far as scars go. But it started coming back, believe it or not. And so my parents took me to a chiropractor. And this is the part where everybody thinks that that was one of these amazing, magical adjustments that fixed it and it went away.

And that was not the case at all. What the chiropractor did and this was the point that I was making before we before we went live here, is he took a step back and he looked at the problem through a different lens. And he said, what is this kid eating? And let's do an elimination diet. And so with that approach, my parents figured out that I had a pretty severe food sensitivity to sugar and dairy, which is not uncommon. What it took was somebody looking at the problem from a different lens. Conventional medicine looked at it as,

Yoni Whitten's Early Health Journey 4:17

what's wrong with this kid's body? And the chiropractor that we saw said, What is this normal body reacting to that it needs to sequester an isolated this poison and stick it outside of his body so that it doesn't go into general circulation? And that hit me like a ton of bricks. Then right around the same time, my dad, who was in his mid thirties, was having some pretty significant digestion, digestive problems. And we saw a medical doctor who had a different take on things. He radically changed my dad's diet, got him to start emphasizing exercise and meditation.

All of his problems went away and at the same time, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live and so and told you need to go on chemo and radiation right now. This is the early 1980s. No Internet. She discovered the Gerson Clinic radically changed her lifestyle, radically changed her diet and completely resolved her cancer. So that was three things that happened when I was four years old that showed me with beyond a shadow of a doubt that what you put into your body dictates your health status and your quality of life.

And I learned it at four years old, so that's what sent me down that path. That's amazing. I think at four years old, I was like playing in the yard. Yo, I'm not saying that I knew I wanted to be a chiropractor, but I am saying that it planted those seeds. And once you've seen those things, you can't unsee them like your if you grow up like that. And we started an organic garden as a result of this. My mom totally changed the diet of the whole family. So everything about my life changed at that point.

And I remember building the garden with my dad and going into the garden with my dad. We had our own chickens, we had our own eggs. We would go pick fruit and vegetables and bring it back to the house and we would eat it for dinner. So it like changed everything about my life. And it's like when you see that and then you grow up and you see that, wow, we are not doing what other people are doing and other people are suffering, bringing in their health in ways that we don't suffer in health. You start making the connections.

And I think that but those seeds being planted at that age are definitely like, what set the stage? I mean, it's not an accident that me and my brother ended up going into this field. That's amazing. Yeah, I was going to saydefinitely like your destiny, Right. Like the universe wanted you to do this. And that's why you're so passionate and so good at what you do. And I think we're all like, I'm at least like I was kind of that mother raising my kids, but I'm like, Oh, I wish I could have joined your family.

That sounds like a good way to grow up. But we're where I'm growing up. So I have two kids of my own now and my daughter's four and my son is one. And we move to a place that's like such a pure environment. I'm the purest environment that I could find. I mean, we're in the middle of nowhere, a quarter mile from the ocean. We've got fresh air. We've got literally no environmental pollution. We were on well, water. And like so these things have become extremely important for me growing up and now I'm passing it down to the next generation in the same way that my parents did it for me.

All right. So we all want to hear about how to get rid of our pain. But I'm also thinking we should start a sign up, like, how do we get adopted into the family? Well, do. That on the side. I'll see if my parents are interested in taking on that. Did a good job. Okay. So, Payne, you know, like I said in the beginning, it's something that I know a lot of the ladies listening are dealing with. And you know, when I first asked you to come on, you said, well, I don't really you know, I'm not an expert in menopause.

And I said, that doesn't matter, because just because we're in menopause, we still have bodies. And that's one of the reasons why I you know, there are certain things that apply to menopause and like our hormones and we talk about that. But when it comes to the physical body and being in pain, what you have to teach just goes across no matter where you're at. So I want you all to really listen up whether you are in chronic pain right now or maybe have little, you know, visits from pain, or even if you're not in pain just to listen because this is good information to have in your back pocket and to implement.

So with that being said, tell us about what it means to resolve chronic pain and how do you view it and how do you work with your patients? That's a really good question. So the the first thing that I would encourage people to build upon as a foundation is the understanding of what pain is. So pain is an alarm signal from your body. It's a warning. You can think of it like a house alarm or a car alarm. When a house alarm or a car alarm that's functioning properly goes off, it goes off because something's wrong and it's trying to get your attention.

And that's exactly what pain is. So it's not normal to be in pain and it's not normal for the house alarm to be going off. And that's the first thing that people need to understand. So it's not to ask somebody to live in pain is not a nice thing to do. You know, when you when you gave me the introduction, you said something along the lines of if you're living with pain and if you've been told that your pain is normal, you know, or it's just a part of getting older, that's that's a it's a lazy explanation.

It's a lazy explanation. It's like, oh, well, we took a blood test and everything looks normal. Oh, and we took an X-ray. And I can't see anything that's outside of, of, you know, you know, pathology. I can't see anything that I would label as pathology. So now I'm just going to say everything is fine. I have a piece of paper and I have an x ray film. Oh, I dated myself. I have an image on a screen, a PDF on a screen that I anyway, but some people understand that, but I'm going to completely ignore the person that's standing in front of me.

Okay. So what I would encourage people to to start with is pain. It's not normal. It's there to get your attention. It's intelligent. Pain is amazing. The body we've evolved to have this incredible response that's there to keep us alive. It's helped. It's to draw attention to something that compromises our survivability so that we can stay alive past long enough to pass along our DNA. That's it. That's what pain is. And so think of it as like a bright neon sign, a flashing alarm, a house alarm with all the wailing sirens and all that stuff.

Pain as a Warning Signal 10:54

It's trying to call your attention to something. People understand this implicitly when they have pain in their teeth or their jaw. I better get to the dentist right away to figure out what's causing this pain. And yet if you take that exact same person and they have a headache, they don't run to anybody. They run to the medicine cabinet and get a drug that's going to cover up the symptom without ever stopping to ask what caused it. Very weird. Do the same thing with back pain. You do the same thing with shoulder pain and knee pain.

You never were never trained to say What is my body trying to draw my attention to? It's just pop a pill, cover it up. That's also abnormal. That is not a normal response. If you went to a dentist and you said, I've got tooth pain and the dentist looked in your mouth for a second with a shining light and their little mirror, and then they gave you a pain pill and sent you out the door. You would be furious. But that's what happens when people go to a medical doctor with, say, back pain or knee pain or shoulder pain.

You know, maybe they'll take an x ray. And if the x ray doesn't show, like I said, pathology, anything that they can attribute the pain to then end of story. Here's your pill out the door. Mm. That's such a great example of the. Very weird Dr. Stills, because people would be furious in the dental example and in the medical doctor example. There they feel that the doctor's done their job. Oftentimes the doctor won't even put their hands on the patient. It's a theme that's come up. As I've been doing the interviews for the summit this year, it's like it's common, but it's not normal then.

So I really want everyone listening, like to start really thinking about that. Like, where in your life is something going on common? But it's not normal. Like I talk about this a lot with for we'll talk about it for menopause. Oh, it's normal to have hot flashes. Everyone has hot flashes. But no, it's not normal. It's the body signal telling you that something is out of balance. So it's common, but it's not normal. And so what you're saying is the same thing with pain. It's very common, but it's not normal.

Okay, so we keep going. That way too way too common. So you're talking about 20% of the world's population is suffering with chronic pain? Very, very, very much unacceptable. And it's getting worse every year. The leading experts in journals like The Lancet, which are some of the most well-respected medical journals in the world, are saying that the chronic pain problem is going to be significantly worse by 2050 now. And it's for two reasons that they attribute it to two main reasons. So the first one is an increasing age of the world's population, which is just statistically true.

Less and less people are having babies, so there's less and less young people and more and more old people comparatively. So that's pushing up the average age of the population and there does tend to be an increasing incidence of pain with increased age, but it cannot be attributed to age alone. The second factor, Dr. Stills, is much more interesting, and that is a population shift that's going on globally and people are moving away from low income countries and the traditional way of living that's associated with those low income countries, and they're moving into urban centers and they're adopting the modern lifestyle.

That's so sad. Yes. But it's so we're so are thinking and civilization is so backwards. What we value and what we what we don't value so. Well, it's a it's a rabbit hole. Right. There's a lot of different ways that you can go with that. When you start talking about what are the issues with the modern lifestyle? I mean, we've got if we just look at it from a physical medicine perspective and we and we compare modern humans to our hunter gatherer ancestors, our hunter gatherer ancestors walked an average of 5 to 9 miles every single day.

I mean, how many. Steps is that? Well, I guess it would depend on how tall you are, but I'm sure I'm sure you've got a mathematician listening to figure that out for us. Real over the recommended 10,000. But I mean it doesn't even become necessary because you're comparing 5 to 9 miles a day on average, too. I mean, we've got recent data showing that human beings nowadays are sitting as much as 15 hours a day. I mean, it's like it's like we're sitting back and we're scratching our heads and going, there's one and a half billion people in the world suffering with chronic pain.

We've got people sitting 15 hours a day. Sitting is literally the position that is more so than any other linked to increased incidence of pain. And it's not just back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, hand pain, all kinds of problems. And so you're spending 15 hours in a position that causes more pain than any other known position proven in multiple studies across decades and multiple countries. And you're wondering why people are in pain and they're and at the same time, it's a double swing because not only are you sitting too much, but you're actually robbing your body of movement while sitting.

And movement is an essential nutrient. Love that so I've heard like you know you hear sitting is the new smoking and so 15 hours I'm like so then do they just sit all day of desk in front of TV and then just go to bed? And you're talking about people who wake up, commute, sit in the car, go into a sedentary job and maybe this is pre-COVID because so many people work from home now. But now you're talking about people wake up, sit at a breakfast table, go sit in front of a computer, go sit at lunch, co work in front of a computer, coach, sit at dinner and then sit in front of a television and go to sleep.

That's, what, 15 hours a day looks like. So what do you what do you have like recommended for? Like some you know, some times you can't avoid it. You have to say you have a job. I mean, I have one of those sit stand desks. But do you have tips like to make sure you're ergonomically? Because I think right. Looking at the computer, looking at the phone, that can lead to a lot of pain. Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, if we're just taking it from the sitting perspective, the goal is to spend less time sitting and to spend more time moving.

So there are multiple ways to go about this. You mentioned a couple there. A standing desk is a great way to do it and it doesn't mean that you can't sit it means that we are designed to be in constant motion. Our brain is literally fed by motion. And so when we talk about going back to what we started on this and the foundation of what pain is, it's calling our attention to a problem. So anybody would relate to this. If you're sitting in a movie theater or you're sitting in class or you're sitting at your job and you have to do this in your chair, move around that it is a subconscious pain response.

That's pain before it's reached the conscious centers of your brain, which we call no resuscitation. It's noxious stimuli that's being handled on a subconscious level before it gets up to the conscious centers of your brain. And what does your body do in response? It moves because the movement cancels out the nose. Perception. Everybody in your audience will be able to relate to that.

Modern Lifestyle and Chronic Pain 18:38

You've been lying on your side and you're uncomfortable. Switch to the other side, build up a pressure sore when you're sleeping at night because you have a mattress that is not supporting you sufficiently well, roll over to a different position. The movement is what cancels out the pain signal. And so that's the body is just built for movement. And so we're taking that sitting example. And you're saying this person sitting for 15 hours a day, sometimes they can't be avoided. We have to work. We have to put food on the table given 100%.

I give to that. But you can still improve the situation. You can take a standing desk. You can sit in what I'm sitting right now, which is a kneeling chair, got a great video on my YouTube channel that goes over literally the biomechanics in a study where they measured different sitting positions and the effect on the curve of the spine. And so you do your best to minimize the insult, to maximize your results. You don't have to. We're not talking about perfect here. We're talking about improvement.

And that is really the key to pain resolution is this idea, this Kaizen example, which not everybody will be familiar with, but it's a it's a samurai principle. And the translation is constant, a never ending improvement. Wherever you are on that spectrum, call it the health spectrum, zero on this end, which is death and 100 on this end, which is perfection. Very few people get to perfection, but we're always trying to get there and. Moving to I love Kaizen. I learned about that in a wellness coaching thing certification I took many years ago, and they talked about Kaizen, and I know I'm here.

I got all excited when you said that word. I'm like, Oh, because they talked about it. Like you're saying in movement, like if you haven't been moving or going to the gym. So we're talking about movement here, like start with little steps. So first by the sneakers and by the door, get a breakout outfit like, you know, step by step so you can get there and you're giving your brain good feedback of, yes, I'm winning, I'm winning, and not beating yourself up and taking small steps to achieve. So that's a good point.

Well, what you just said, and especially because your audience is women. Women more so than men, in my clinical experience, beat themselves up. Men, men pat themselves on the back board, were like, Yeah, we're awesome by female patients, by God, they beat themselves up. I mean, I call it supermom syndrome. They're constantly praising other people and putting everybody ahead of themselves and they're just beating on themselves. And so I'm 100% with you that manipulating the game and setting the stage for that person to be successful with whatever they're doing, even if it's just putting the shoes by the door, like you said, it's just that just that absolutely perfect example, set the game up so that you win and then and then just inch forward.

But Kaizen is amazing because it's not just that, it's also this idea that you will never brush and floss your teeth so well that they're perfectly clean for the rest of your life. It's this. You're constantly working at it. Yeah. You're never going to hydrate yourself so well in a day that you never have to drink water again. You know, it's something that you're working at. But the cool thing is, is you get rewarded for your efforts, you get to feel better, you get to move better, you get to have less pain, you get to have more comfort.

And with that comes more enjoyment of life and less restrictions on the things that you can, that less restrictions on things that you're unable to do and and more opportunity to engage in the things that you love. So what do you find? Are there root causes? Is and how do you resolve chronic pain? Like what are the listeners need to know about what you're doing because that's a big a stick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a huge statement. But but my point with it is I'm going to take the dental example again that the dental profession did something that's so amazing that other perfections really should copy, which is they said, if you do these two things, brushing and flossing every single day, 2 to 3 times a day, your dental health and your hygiene is going to be way better off and you're going to cut down on the amount of problems and pain that you experienced many times over, like these two things that take up a small amount of time will improve your life in countless ways.

And if other professions followed suit, you're not going to solve all problems by doing that. Obviously, there's dietary factors that dentists generally don't talk about, which, you know, shame on them. But they've done this really good thing with with with brushing and flossing and everybody knows it. And that's that's really a major victory because I don't think any other profession has done has done that in the way that they have where it's like, this is on you, Mr. Patient or Ms.. Mrs. Patient, and you need to do this and nobody can do it for you.

And it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor or educated or uneducated. You need to do these things. You can't buy your way out of it. And there's no excuses. It's inec's offensive to do it and it just needs to be done. And everybody knows that. What a major victory. And so that's kind of the approach that I take to to resolving chronic pain is there are some base level things that you need to do in order to at least have a chance to be pain free. And so you'll get a kick out of this because you're a clinician.

So my clinical exam, Dr. Stills, involves the easiest clinical exam, but it's, it's functional. So I'm like, hey, can you turn your head to the side? Can you tilt? Can you get down and up off the floor? Can you lift your arm over your head? Any five year old laughs at my physical exam. And yet in 17 years, the amount of people that have passed it, I can count on less than two hands. Wow, we have a population of people in modern society that are dysfunctional. They are physically dysfunctional and they don't even know it because our society doesn't require people to get down enough off the floor.

Jeez, we've got cameras in our car now. We don't even have to turn our heads to look behind us when we back out of the driveway. And you're laughing because this is probably like the third time I've dated myself in this in this interview because, yeah, back when I learned how to drive, we had to turn our head and actually look behind us to make sure we weren't going to hit anything. And so people don't even have to do that anymore. You can look straight ahead. And so they don't even know that they can't turn their head.

Well, guess what? If your neck is such that you can't rotate, you are at a much greater risk for having chronic neck pain. Same thing with the lower back. If you can't ask your lower back if you can't bend forward easily. These are things that everyone should be able to do.

Movement, Posture, and Desk Ergonomics 25:48

If you can't do those things, you're dysfunctional and your risk for chronic pain is increased massively. You mentioned heads in the phones and on computers. That's another big one. We've got something like five studies since 2018, I believe. I have the data on multiple videos and on my website, but I believe it's five studies since 2018. Talking about the incidents of forward head position in modern society 69%, 69 to 70% of the modern population has a forward head position and forward head position is associated with all types of pain, neck pain, back pain, headaches, shoulder pain, carpal tunnel, TMJ, teeth grinding.

All of these things just associated with forward head position. 70% of the population has it completely environmental. That's 100%. Cranial your neck right now. It's time for. 100% environmental. Now, the crazy thing about this is people say things like you just said, check in, check in, check in postures regulated subconsciously, it's regulated subconsciously. So you can only check in so much. It's necessary in the beginning, like when you're learning how to drive stick, you've got to think about clutch and and and gearbox and what gear am I in and turn signal and windshield wipers and what's my favorite radio station and all these other important things.

That's fourth time I've dated myself because I know how to drive a stick shift. But yeah, so in the beginning you do need some awareness, but posture is regulated subconsciously and so really it comes out to it's a training issue. Are you training your body to be upright or are you training your body to be bent into the shape of a question mark? Most people nowadays are so concerned with their social media and their computer and their devices that their head is down. And so it becomes adaptive to be in that position.

The body's literally trained. It's like if I go to the gym and I do a bunch of weightlifting for my arm, my arm gets bigger to adapt to that stimulus. Well, if I look down all the time, my body will literally take the shape of the activity that I'm engaging all the time. What do we do to train, to not have that forward head? Yeah, beautiful. So there's a lot of ways to do it. So if we're talking about the person who's the desk jockey who's on the computer all day long and needs to be on their devices like we said, to put food on the table. I totally get it.

You can go to a standing workstation. If you're working on a laptop, you got to get an external keyboard. It's like 20 bucks and it'll be the best 20 bucks you ever spent. And then you take your your your laptop device and actually put it up so that you're looking upward instead of looking down $20 investment. If your working on a computer, I mean, it's it's a no brainer if you're on a desktop like I am here, my monitor is sitting on top of a lift that actually makes sure that I'm looking up while I'm working on the computer.

And then I'm sitting on a kneeling chair, which, like I said, it maintains the normal curve in my spine while sitting, which is really cool. And also because it's got a rocker bottom, I'm actually able to rock forward like I just came closer to the camera or rock backward. Now when I rock forward, my body gets the sensation that I'm actually falling out of my chair. And guess what? The reaction you did it. You did it without even you beat me to it. Doctors just slow down. So what happens is that your body senses that you're falling forward and your muscles contract.

So what's really cool about this is now I'm in a sitting position that's active sitting rather than lazy sitting where a chair with arm rested, backrest and head rest and everything is supported. Now here my body is completely falling forward and my muscles have to hold me up here. And then what's off camera here to the side is a standing workstation where I spend. And so I'm going back and forth because, you know, I have to work on the computer nowadays, too. So. So you're asking what is. This chair, where do we get this chair? Oh, yeah.

There's a there's a, there's a video on my website that talks all about it. We can link it underneath here, but that's the a kneeling chair there. Oh. You know what it looks like one of those like sitting massage chairs almost that you get like. This is called The Backrest, but it's actually what I would I would consider a place finder. And then you see the rock bottom, how it's curved. Yes. Yeah. So that's what allows me to rock forward like that. And when I get into that forward position, like I said, it's like I get the sensation that I'm actually falling forward and so my muscles pull me up.

And there's research on this that shows that the curve that's in your spine when you're rocked forward like that is darn near the the the shape that your spine is in when you're in a standing position. So not only are your muscles active, but you're keeping the proper shape and your spine and your head has to be back. Because if I put my head forward while I'm falling forward, I really feel like I'm going to fall forward. So this is a great posture training tool and it allows you to multitask because this happens subconsciously.

I don't have to think about holding myself up here because I'm scared I'm in a fall on my face. Fear is a great motivator. That's just important to note here that I can't actually rock forward beyond this point. So it is a safe. It's safe to do it. It does take some time to get used to it. But, you know, it's kind of like working out, you know, if I was training for a marathon, I wouldn't go out and run 24 miles the first day. I would ease into it running, you know, maybe a quarter mile. So when people start off with this and this is a tool that I use in clinical practice all the time for people who who work in front of computers, hey, let's make your sitting active.

You can sit on an exercise ball, but this is even better because you're really you can you have more options with this one. Okay. Well. Yeah, I just. Definitely link to that video so that your audience can can see the study and they can and I actually demonstrate the different sitting positions. And so it's pretty varying. So yeah, I just redid my whole because I realized like where, you know, I spend a lot of time on my desk nowadays too. And so I got the sit stand desk. I got this new chair because I'm actually only five feet tall.

So I got like a mini chair. If it looks super tall on camera, it makes it. I like being sure it doesn't bother me, but I like my feet for the first time. Touch the ground because the chairs like for little people and it's got lumbar support and I notice such a big difference and I got the lift for my computer. So and now I'm going to get one a year. But I'm saying this because it's really important for everyone listening. Like if you spend a lot of time at your desk, it could I was having some pain and just by making these changes I notice like, oh, I don't have a plane anymore.

Like I was, I was doing it to myself with my desk and my chair. Yeah. Yeah. And what you just said, Dr. Stills, is the key. I think that the vast majority of that one, two and a half billion people that are suffering with chronic pain, they're unknowingly doing it to themselves. And it's such a shame because we could cut that number by at least 750 million with some simple things and and some some basic modifications and a little bit of education. You know, there's one thing that I would encourage your audience to remember is, is that where the eyes go, the body follows.

So if your eyes are looking down, your body will go down, your mood will go down. If you're looking down, it's really interesting. There's actually research on that. There was a cool TEDx talk that talked about this posture like this and that one, right? So it influences. It. And hormonal profiles, right? So it influences the tone of your voice, how you feel about yourself, the hormones that are circulating in your body. All of these things just based on body posture or vision plays directly into that.

If you look down, you're going down. Imagine looking down on a lap all day long, 8 hours a day, five days a week for decades. I mean, it just it beats you. And that's that's a big part of the reason why those researchers at The Lancet are predicting that this this chronic pain problem is going to get so much worse. So just taking the simple step to make sure that your eyes are like at least level, maybe 5 to 10 degrees up angle, get that monitor up. If you have to work on a computer, take some frequent walking breaks throughout the day and then pat yourself on the back that you've done something wonderful for yourself and feed into that upward spiral.

So I have two questions at the top of my brain. First one is this with the phone, because so many of us are on our phones and you are so do you say like to hold the phone in front of you or just get off the. Main thing like, oh, this is this. That's a great what? And I've got to admit, right off the top that I don't engage with my phone very much. So my my wife, if she was in here, she'd be cracking up. Because when we met, I had a flip phone and this is six years ago. Yeah. I was like the last one to the party on the flip phones.

Like I have like my nieces come over and they're just like looking at me text and they're like, Do you want me to do that for you? So I am not the most dexterous phone user. But yeah, you have to find a way to either minimize the amount of time that you're on your phone or do it in a position where where it's you're not looking down to do it. Like, you know, if you're texting up here or lying on your back or something like that to to do it, there has to be a wait and minimize the insult. And again, we're not looking for perfection.

You know, if you're spending 14 hours on your phone and you cut it to 13 and a half, that's an improvement. And so that that's that's the thing that I would hit home on, that I don't have a good solution for it other than starting off with some awareness about how much time you're looking down. I don't think it takes very long to send a text, so I wouldn't be super concerned about that. I would be concerned about the person who is watching a podcast or their favorite television show while looking at their phone.

Know that's that's such a good awareness and challenge. And I love that you said that. Yeah, it's about movement, not perfection.

Daily Mobility Routine and Resources 35:48

And a half hour change is better than zero change. And just to have that awareness, I'm going to take this challenge myself because I'm not as unattached to the phone as you are. But to really like if I have to look down at my phone, just make sure it's because I'm taking care of something and finishing, not because I'm reading something, to really have that awareness, to start looking up. And I have over here like I have this little I don't know if I could see it. It kind of blurred out because the filter.

Yeah, but it's like a little older. Yeah, yeah. We have to. It's my phone up higher. So I think that that's, that's actually a really good solution. And that was what I was talking about with the, with the laptop is, is, you know, getting the screen up so that you're looking up. And that's also a really good example of little steps in the right direction, though it might not be perfection, that angulation of the head downward is is a significant point. So if you want to geek out on biomechanics, this is really, really interesting.

So the human head weighs about 10 pounds. And when you turn it to the side, itweighs 10 pounds just as the weight of the head. Now, if you've got a big headlike I do, maybe it's 12 pounds. But the idea here is when you're looking straight ahead, the strain that's on your neck is relatedto that 10 to 12 pounds of weight. The moment you angle forward, the weight of the head increases. So there's research showing that when you get to an extreme downward angle, like about as far as you can bend with the neck, an audience member might be able to relate to this as like a doing dishes position the weightof the head is no longer 10 to 12 pounds.

When you're out here, it's 60 pounds, Dr. Stills six zero. Now you talk about the opposite of Kate is that it's constant and never ending strain on your body, which you build up equity over time. And this feeds into that chronic pain problem in a major way. So the mechanics of it are simple. Imagine holding a dumbbellhere, 10 pounds dumbbell close to your body. Super easy, right? What if I get it out to here? I'm still a 10 pounds dumbbell,but it's that muscle's working way harder in that position.

That's exactly what happens to the head. So you take that person who's looking down all day long and it's not a ten or 12 pounds issue. It's a 40, 50, 60 pounds issue multiplied out by the number of hours that you spend in that position. And you see the body will physically change its shape because of that stress. Few things you see forward, head position rolled in shoulders. You see a bump form here at the base of the neck that sticks out. Why does that happen? It's the literally trying to counterbalance the weight, all that weight going forward.

Your body will stick that out to try and counterbalance you. It's literally your body changing shape to try and prevent you from falling on your face. That's what's happening. These muscles here at the base of the neck, the trapezius, they become huge and swollen and tender. How many patients have you seen that have trapped knots that will not go away? They won't as long as you have a forward head position because those muscles services are being required to hold that dumbbell out here all day long.

It'll never go away. It'll go away when they're lying down on their back and they're in a non weight bearing position where there's muscles are not required, do anything. As soon as they stand up it comes right back. The only way to fix that is to fix the forward head posture and there's ways that we do that as well. It requires a little bit more effort. But the first thing that I would encourage people to do is to stop the bleeding. You know what I mean, like Stop encouraging the problem. That's the first step towards correction and it's a critically important step.

But that's this is powerful ladies. Like just because one thing you're paying attention to that could have like profound changes on your body. And I think the connection with the mood. To oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it feeds and it feeds into everything like you, my daughter does this thing. She's very animated right now. She's four years old and she's sad about something. She literally goes and she hangs her whole body forward from the hip. And I swear she must have learned this from a classmate at school or a cartoon or something.

I don't know where she got it because there's nobody else does that around here. But very funny. It's very exaggerated the position. But if you think back to that Ted talk, it's literally she's conveying her mood through her physical posture. Then it's it's a four year old understands it. When they see it in a cartoon, they know what it means. If your kid comes home from a big day school where they had to take a test and they walk through the door, you know what they're feeling? You don't even have to ask.

You know, it's written on that. And so if you if you change that, there's research showing that it changes what's going on in your body. That we have research showing I'm sure you've seen this, but if you fake a smile, it changes your mood. Mm hmm. It's amazing. It's amazing. You can do the same thing with your posture. If you've got poor posture, there is no possible way that it's not negatively affecting your mood, not positive, your posture, your improving your mood. I mean, it's it's it's amazing.

It's it's it's definitely worthwhile to pay attention to it and know that you can make some Kaizen improvements, some little steps in the right direction because those little steps, they build up equity over time. I love this so much. I had no idea where our topic was going to go. But bringing in the, you know, forward head tilt and standing up and being your superwoman, like these are things you can implement and start doing. And well, sometimes it's the little things, you know. That's why I love doing the summit, because we can teach these little things that sound so insignificant, maybe that you can start doing on your own that have these ginormous effects in a positive way on your body.

So the last question I just want to ask, I guess, is you mentioned like the flossing and brushing of the dentists mental health professions. So what would be your flossing and brushing? Oh, I love that you asked. I love that. So that the main thing I think for that is and this is something that I absolutely practice, what I preach my my kids do it with me now. It's so funny. Even my one year old is starting to do it, which is which is amazing. But so I move every single joint of my body through every range of motion that it's got every morning.

That's the first thing that I do. And I go outside and I watch the sunrise and I stand on on Earth, not on on on manmade ground. I stand on on on either rocks in the front yard or grass in the backyard. And I watch the sunrise and I move with my family, every joint of my body, through every range of motion. So starting with the fingers, moving to the wrist, moving to the elbows, I've, I've got videos on my website that we can direct your audience to where I guide them through my entire morning routine. And I'm happy to share that with you guys.

I want to see that I'm like, if I'm not getting adopted into the family, at least I want me. So every joint of the body, through every range of motion it's got every single day, make sure that it feels good when you do it. So I go through a very full range of motion, but I've been working on this for years. Start with a range of motion that feels good with for you. Start with a range of motion. Start with a number of repetitions that feel good for you. You don't have to do my routine, but take a bit in peace of it.

It's all free and you don't have to buy anything. And you can start incorporating some of the some of these things into your life and watch what happens when you start feeding your brain this essential nutrient of movement in a massive quantities. Start your day, your brain works better, you're in a better mood, more energetic, clearer focus, just happier. It's it's like it's like getting a big breath of air when you've been starving for air or a drink of water when you're dehydrated. It's just it's an essential nutrient on the same level that that air and water are.

And when you start your day with that, that would probably be number two, is to start your day with it as especially encouragement for, like I said, your audience, women who tend to put other family members and children ahead of themselves, taking that few minutes to put yourself first will make you better as a mom, better in the boardroom, better has a wife, better in everything that you do. Just taking a few minutes to to to do that for yourself going into the day. Mm hmm. Well, around here, we know that self-care is not a luxury.

It is a necessity. And, you know, when we're getting into this stage of our lives, we're like, okay, something happens, and you just finally get it, and you're like, Okay, me first, and that's okay. So I love that. I don't do that. I don't do I'm going I'm going to watch your video and start doing that. That's just yeah, I will definitely send a link. So the whole routine, the movement portion of it probably takes 5 minutes, 10 minutes. Wow, it's quick and easy and if somebody was just starting out, they could probably do the whole thing in 5 minutes just by cutting the repetitions in half.

But I mean, if you're starting from zero and you add that, I mean, Jay is what a huge leap in the right direction. Well, you know, I've heard about like talk about vitamin G for, you know, gratitude or vitamin J for joy. And now I'm like vitamin M for movement. So I do that a lot of times. So I'll do most of the routine in the yard, and then I'll go in and I'll finish up part of it in front of a red or on a vibration platform. So I've got a vibration platform here over my shoulder, and then I've got my red light, I've got multiple red lights.

Actually, I'm a red light geek, but so I've got a big red light panel. And so on a day like this morning when we had a storm move through, I'll, I'll do it in front of a red light panel. So I get some some nice rays into my body which warms you up on the inside and the mood goes with it. Yes, we are red hot, sexy menopause. We love red lights. Anything. Well, so tell us tell us your Web site where we can find you and your YouTube channel, because I know you've got a lot of great videos there as well. Yeah.

painfixprotocol.com is the website. Lots of good resources there for people. And then the YouTubechannel is also pain fix protocol. Oh gees. God, we I think we just went over 150 videos on there on a variety of topics. We've got restless leg syndrome. We've got all types of postural videos, back pain issues, hip pain, pelvic floor issues, lots of cool stuff that I think your audience would enjoy. Love it, love it, love it. Well, thank you for being here. This was just fabulous and very informative.

So I highly recommend go check out his website, go check out his videos. I'm going to go to I. I've checked out a few the restless leg one is really cool. So I know that can increase in menopause. So if you're having issues with restless legs, he's got a great little video. I think it was like 6 minutes really detailed, went right into what can be causing the problem. So fantastic. And just, you know, get your stand up straight, get your head on, think about your desk. There's lots of good things that you can implement into your life to really make pain a thing of the past.

So thank you for being here and all the amazing work you've done. Remember, I want to be part of the family. Where do I sign up? I'm sure there's other ones too. I'm going to get emails like where do I sign up to be? Part of the women's family as well. And just thank you everyone for being here and really take some of this stuff. You know, sometimes like we said, we get in our own way and we get stuck in just, oh, this is how it is. Or, you know, I'm in pain. And sometimes we just got to really like break out of that mindset and be like, No, I'm going to take charge of here.

I can handle this. I am the master of my body and I'm going to start making little changes. And when you start feeling it, it'll create the momentum to keep wanting to put in the energy and effort to keep doing the changes. So thanks again, everyone, and we'll be back with another interview soon.