Contents & Containers: A Heart to Heart Conversation
Perhaps you’ve heard about a virus/biological going around that creates inflammation in the fascia, blood, and organs. Have you heard the terms myocarditis and pericarditis? This term describes inflammation of the heart (myocarditis) and the pericardium (pericarditis) which is the fascia of the heart. This inflammatory condition is becoming increasingly common. If afflicted, and once you have exhausted the arsenal of meds, have you truly healed? Or have you just put a band-aid on your most important organ? Meds certainly have an important role in treatment, yet they do nothing for the structure of the organ.
A key tenant of Osteopathic treatment is the concept of structure and function are interrelated. Let’s take a deeper dive into that concept relative to your heart. Your heart is essentially a double pump moving oxygen depleted blood from the body into the lungs, and from the lungs back to the heart, and then delivers that oxygenated blood to the rest of the body.
This pump is encased in a fascia called the pericardium. The pericardium has fascial attachments to the anterior aspect of your 6th and 7th Cervical (neck) vertebrae and the 1st thoracic (trunk) vertebrae, to the posterior part of your manubrium and xyphoid process (your chest bone), and inferiorly into both sides of the top part of your diaphragm.
Now that you have a basic layout of the anatomy of the heart/pericardium, let’s talk a bit about how to treat an inflammatory condition of the organ and its fascia. If we break it down into contents and containers, the heart would be the content and the container would be the pleura (fascia around the lungs), ligaments, bones, muscles, fat, and skin. If you want to help remove inflammation from an organ, you have to think about one big question…..Where is the inflammation going to go? You must create space for the inflammation to leave the heart. This is accomplished by working superficially to deep.
Consider the image above. Treatment begins with the skin/fat (skin rolling and cupping). Next, we treat the muscular layers with segmental strengthening and myofascial stretching for all of the “container muscles” of the heart (diaphragm, sternalis, pecs, intercostal, ect..). Then, we would utilize ELDOA and osteo-articular pumping to treat the bones and the deepest fascial layers. Specifically, we would pump/ELDOA the sternum, lower cervical spine, and ligaments of the diaphragm.
There is no one-size-fits-all recipe to treat the human body. Moreover, it is essential to employ a methodology that respects the different layers of anatomy to give inflammation a place to disperse. This will pay major dividends for your long term vitality and longevity.
More on micro-movements.
The party was amazing, everything was perfect. The music seemed to be all of his favorites, friends he hadn’t seen and years, and of course the drinks were flowing like an avalanche coming down a mountain. Like all good things, the party was coming to an end and he was headed home before it got too late into the evening. He hopped into his car and started to drive home. He reached down to check his phone causing his car to ramp onto the sidewalk…..That is where her night changed.
She was walking home from a friends, just a few blocks down the street. A trip she had made hundreds of times before. She was going over the set list for what would be the biggest performance of her life. She was an up and coming artist riding the waves of her early success. As she went over the subtle nuances that takes any performance from good to great, it hit her…..Unfortunately it was not a breakthrough idea for her performance, it was the drunk driver who was checking his phone.
Her dreams and her legs were shattered simultaneously. As she lay there unconscious and broken, it began to rain. She awoke to raindrops seemingly the size of quarters glistening in the headlights of car turned wrecking ball. As the rain continued to pour she watched her dreams and her blood being washed into the gutter. The next time she woke was in the hospital post surgery for a broken right femur to match her shattered tibia and fibula on both sides.
I was fortunate enough to meet her in my office about a year after the accident. She had recovered a decent amount of function (a big tip to the hat to the surgeons and physical therapist), but was still dealing with a significant amount of hip pain that was affecting here ability to play the pedals on her piano, and greatly limiting her ability to exercise.
Upon examining her we found that her sacrum was stuck in a rotation, leaving her unable to move properly at her right SI joint, forcing here to overuse the muscles on the front and side of her hip. We did a manual therapy treatment and 2 ELDOA™ for the dysfunctional joint. She walked out pain free. We continued to work all of the essentials of any good rehab program for the sacrum which included ELDOA™, Myofascial Stretching for the musculature attaching to the sacrum and pelvis, proprioceptive exercises for the sacrum, and finally full body integrative training. She found such value in the treatment and the system that she has stayed on as a regular client, and I am happy to report that she is playing more gigs than ever and enjoying her life to the fullest.
Here is a micro movement for your sacrum. Simply sit on the 1/2 roller (or floor for an easier version). Roll down to the desired level that you want to work (in the video I’m working S3) and shift the weight back and forth on either side of your sacrum.
Is CBD the new snake oil?
As CBD mania has officially swept though the United States, it seems most everyone one is trying to cash in. From your local department store to your friends on social media there is no shortage of snake oil to go around.
The FDA has started to weigh in on the subject, by now I hope you have come to look at the FDA as a necessary evil. I say “necessary” because left totally unchecked private industry has no problem selling you urine in a bottle. I say “evil” due to the HIGH levels of corruption that occurs in the FDA due to the revolving door between statesmen turned lobbyist. It is common practice for Senators and House Representatives to help pass a bill then turn around and take a job as a lobbyist. In fact, it has gotten so bad that Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (the ultimate odd couple) are working to create a ban on the practice. “Of the nearly four dozen lawmakers who left office in the wake of the 2016 election, “one in six became lobbyists,” The Atlantic has reported. The magazine said the number was even higher after the 2014 midterms, when “around one in four became lobbyists.”
None the less the FDA took a look into things on Friday. ” FDA Acting Commissioner Ned Sharpless kicked off the agency’s historic first-ever public hearing on CBD by noting that “we’ve seen an explosion of interest in products including CBD, [but] there is much we don’t know.” See the full article here.
So what did the FDA conclude in the initial round of hearings?
- There is too much “junk” on the CBD market. As I mentioned earlier, if there is zero regulation anyone can sell a non effective and potentially dangerous product.
- Customers have no way of knowing what is legitimate. As a consumer it is important to do your due diligence on anything you are putting in your body. Keep reading as I will give you some help on this later in the blog.
- Many people still don’t know what CBD is. Many of the testimonies were linking CBD to Cannabis. In short, CBD contains little to no THC. Cannabis contains THC (levels vary based on strains).
- The FDA has concerns about side effects. All supplements and medicines have side effects, especially when taken in “isolates”. For instance CBD 1 and CBD 2 are isolates of the hemp plant. There are little to no long term studies on isolated CBD’s
As most of you know, I am a big fan of Functional Remedies Hemp Oil. The reason I chose Functional Remedies is because it features premium full spectrum CBD oils, not CBD isolates. Their parent company, CBDRX, is a juggernaut of scientific and sustainable development in the CBD industry. Not only do they own and control a whopping four facilities in Colorado to accommodate their research, high-tech processes, and sustainable farming, they also have their own genetic strain of highly potent hemp CBD, an accomplishment 25 years in the making. No one can beat their authority nor their expertise when it comes to hemp CBD.
If you follow my blogs and social media at all (especially my Instagram feed), you know that I am a firm believer that nutrition begins in the soil. Poor soil equals a poor product. Functional Remedies lab tests their products for purity and potency. Both of these tests are important. Purity tests indicate that there are no heavy metals or inappropriate substances in the product. Hemp is a soil remediator, meaning that it will pull toxins out of the soil while it’s growing. This can get into the final end product if hemp isn’t grown in a clean environment. Potency tests indicate how much CBD is in the product — an important consideration in an unregulated industry. Functional Remedies stands out because the company is led by an expert grower. This level of knowledge and experience at the top of the organization is unique for the CBD industry.
Before taking Hemp Oil or any other medication, be sure to do your research. It is your body and you are the only one who can truly take care of it. Check out our Functional Remedies page on our website to learn more.
Sunscreen and the FDA.
Once again the FDA is late to the party, and not just fashionably late. I have been digging beyond the accepted narrative when it comes to our health and fitness for the last 20 years doing my best to help you get a broader understanding as to what is really going on.
Today we are going to focus on the misinformation surrounding the sun and our health. As we all hopefully know sunlight helps us produce Vitamin D, Cytochrome oxidase, testosterone, dopamine, and many other beneficial vitamins and hormones. Is there such a thing as too much sun? Of course, the real question is what is the best way to utilize the sun without enduring the harm of sunburns and heat exhaustion.
If you think the answer is sunscreen, think again. According to the FDA 14 ingredients do not qualify for the G.R.A.S.E. list. This means there is either evidence that these ingredients damage health, or there is not enough data to prove their safety. The only ingredient that did make the G.R.A.S.E list were zinc and titanium (the most common ingredients in organic sunscreens). Feel free to check out the full article here.
What can you do? Get plenty of sun exposure to your skin and eyes. When you have hit your personal tolerance for the sun, get in the shade. If shade is not available, cover your skin and eyes. If you can not find shade or cover yourself, find an organic sunscreen that excludes ingredients that soak into the skin.
Another systemic healing methodology we are digging into is NAD+ injections. Stay tuned for a full blog on the subject. For now check out our latest youtube video where Tonya receives and documents the early phases of her NAD+ journey.
