My discussions of hip & back injuries has led to a revolution in thinking on rehabilitation & athletic training. Beginning with Undiagnosed Hip Injuries & Stubborn Fat Loss, I theorized that most humans are suffering from a variety of back & hip injuries, discussed the science, and then presented a rehabilitation program.
I’ve used neurology as the primary anatomical science, since all muscles are connected to nerves. The idea is to stimulate these nerves in the right way, in order to re-activate atrophied muscles. This is a rehabilitation process that can take years for severe & long-standing hip/back injuries.
Note that this is much different from the traditional short-term approach to rehabilitation. Many of these programs don’t target the injury deep enough, for fear on eliciting pain, and only superficiality “rehabilitate.” The injury victim incorrectly believes he/she is back to normal, when in fact they have decreased mobility in their trunk, which then deactivates corresponding musculature in every branch, so as to not provoke injury & pain radially.
Misguided patients will work out incessantly, building only certain (non-injured) muscle groups, while neglecting the atrophied source of their problem. Eventually these individuals breakdown in pain, despite their dedication to exercise. The truth is, they were afraid to face the depth of their pain, and too ignorant to learn the necessary anatomical & physiological realities needed to deal with these injuries.
The deepest pain is in the spine. Here it is most intense to release, but that’s where you have to go in order to fully rehabilitate. Half-hearted efforts are no good. You either acknowledge this & handle it, or the pain handles you.
Here’s a link to the latest scientific obesity study in America. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), nearly 40% of today’s US adults are obese, and over two-thirds are classified as overweight. About 20% of children (age 2-19) are obese. This is a serious health crisis. At this point, having a healthy body makes you extraordinary, when it used to be ordinary.
So how can we be healthier? First, eat right. Vegetables, fruits, tubers & nuts go a long way. Local & organic are more nutrient dense, which is what your body needs. Drink water. You are what you eat. It costs more to be good to yourself here, but it’s worth it. Cut out something else you don’t need to make up the difference, if you are on a budget. Most people eat too much meat.
You must get enough sleep, and it must be of good quality. Pain interferes with sleep. Many people take narcotic analgesics and other sleep-interfering medications, just to get a minimal amount of poor rest. The pain that our society is not dealing with, has led to dysfunction everywhere, most starkly illustrated by the opioid crisis which has been going on for decades.
As we get sicker & fatter, we become more dependent on pills to numb the pain, just to keep us going. The questions most people never ask themselves are, “What am I doing this for?”, or “Are we just automatons to be kept working, indulged & anesthetized for our entire existence?” It doesn’t even seem right to call that a “life.” Work, pain, narcotic escapism, and then death is a failure of capitalism, in that our species doesn’t realize its own true worth, and rewards the wrong values.
What releasing the pain does is improve our health & decision making. It is impossible to make consistently correct decisions when suffering from pain. Pain is physical & emotional, and we all want it to go away. If that isn’t possible (or isn’t presented as a possibility), then (at least) we want the pain diminished. Most humans living on this planet today are in pain. The above-cited obesity rates prove that point.
If we don’t handle our pain, individually and as a civilization, then we as a species won’t survive. when someone with enough power decides they can’t take the pain anymore, it will end for everybody. That’s why I consider these writings my most-important contribution, as this applies to everybody, regardless of artistic sensibility, class, or politics. Humans can’t escape science, anatomy & physiology. Therefore it must rule our existence, over religion & money. That’s the only way to relieve the pain.
As explained earlier, fat needs to be reconsidered entirely. Fat comes in two forms: visceral & subcutaneous. Visceral fat is excess potential energy– stored everywhere. Subcutaneous fat is the “stubborn fat” on the belly, lower back, thighs & butt– which most people can’t lose. The reason for this is because they take the wrong approach, and don’t understand the differences between the two forms of fat.
To illustrate their differences, lets describe the extremely obese individual. This person (male or female) has both forms of fat in excess, but their first priority is to lose their visceral fat, which forms everywhere, including around the internal organs, clogging the arteries, etc.
Free radicals & carcinogens have room to hide here too, and this is why diseases like cancer & dementia are linked with obesity. This life-shortening health risk must be dealt with correctly, otherwise the obese individual stays in pain until he/she dies a miserable death. This visceral fat can be easily lost with proper diet & exercise.
Subcutaneous is different from visceral fat, in physiology & characteristics. Subcutaneous fat clings to the belly, back, thighs & butt– despite all the diet & hard work. Clearly, a different approach is needed to conquer stubborn (subcutaneous) fat. Encased inside stubborn fat is atrophied muscle, which needs to be gently re-activated through rehabilitation. Trying to liposuction subcutaneous fat is a really bad idea.
You have to understand anatomy to reach the atrophied muscles encased in stubborn fat, in order to activate these neurons & their muscles, which then removes the stubborn fat. Most traditional workouts don’t target the deep-injury areas, so they are useless against stubborn fat. If you exercise everything around the injury, but never go after the root of the pain, then you will get middling results no one wants to look at.
As a rule, stretching & tension bands are more helpful than free weights, but you do need to mix it up sometimes. The bones and muscles in the lower spine are tiny, and need gentle but sustained stimulation, with specific targeting, in order to rehabilitate any injuries to them. Walk & swim as much as possible.
The reason obese people don’t deal with their fat problem is because of the pain. As stated before, pain is physical & psychological. When muscles atrophy, the joints calcify as a protective mechanism. All voluntary muscles in the human body have insertions that ultimately end in the head & feet. This is how stubborn fat is formed, and it becomes most noticeable after we reach our athletic peak at around age 27.
The feet are where many calcifications occur, due to gravity. This is commonly called gout, or bunions, which is nothing more than the small bones of the feet being calcified together. A hip, knee, or ankle sprain causes a histamine reaction. If the victim never fully rehabilitates, the histamine sediment settles in the feet and becomes gout.
Even if there’s an injury in one foot, the contralateral foot will eventually lock up with gout. Histamines flow through-out the body, and they will compensate for the immobility in the other foot. Both feet have to be equal over the long-term, otherwise further injuries occur. The contralateral “healthy foot” in our example gets “locked-up” to equalize and prevent a blow-out. Obviously performance suffers. Today, most adults have feet with more rock (gout) in them than actual muscle. It is impossible to lose any stubborn fat without getting the gout out. Foot surgery with pins, etc. is also a bad idea in most cases.
The muscles in the abdomen & lower back run into the feet. They also run up to the neck & head, as this is how humans can stand & walk upright. The weakest link in the human kinetic chain is the spine. Our backs are exquisitely evolved, but also fragile and susceptible to injury. Any back injury affects the entire body, from head to toe. That needs to be understood as an anatomical fact, when rehabilitating.
Once a calcification breaks in the foot, it immediately activates and breaks the corresponding calcification in the core/back area. Then (if stimulated by upper body action), it will pop all the connected calcifications in the upper body, through the head. This needs to be done over & over, for a long period of time, to completely rehabilitate a serious back injury.
The process I’m describing entails activating the lower back and stretching the legs & feet. When calcifications are broken apart in a controlled & scientific manner, it releases energy which can be used downstream (& upstream) to dissolve more calcifications. This creates a positive feedback loop, which gives the rehabilitation process a momentum of its own. A huge problem in rehabilitation is staying motivated. Anything that comes from within and makes this difficult process easier, should be used to its fullest extent.
As mentioned, a back injury can affect the muscles in the face. Not only does the victim have pain which makes it harder to smile, but also the facial muscles don’t work as well, making smiling even more difficult. On top of all that, the muscles of facial expression can’t be in balance if the bite & TMJ aren’t in balance. No one likes someone who can’t smile, so find a real dentist who understands occlusion & proper TMJ function.
I am a professional dentist with 25 years in practice and a 5-star reputation, and it is my experience that ~98% of people need their bite adjusted, even if they’ve had orthodontics. Sometimes it’s just slightly, but often they need significant adjustments. A properly adjusted bite, done by an experienced dental professional, can make a huge difference in the level of facial pain. The results are painless, immediate & lasting.
Our teeth are covered in enamel, which is the hardest substance in the human body. That means there is no give to them. If the bite is off, and it goes undiagnosed, this eventually leads to pain in the forms of: abscesses, tooth mobility, broken teeth/restorations, grinding, migraines, and TMJ disorders. This is the only part of the rehabilitation process that you can’t fix yourself.
Here are a few final notes on this rehabilitation process:
1) Sleep on the ground. Our ancient ancestors did this, so there’s no good reason were can’t. The reason we don’t is because we prefer comfort. For many it hurts to sleep on the floor. The hard surface will wake you at first, but then you deal with it, by stretching & moving energy to relieve the pain, so you can get back to sleep. Do this, and over time sleeping on the ground becomes easier and more natural.
2) Yawning is the release of cranial pain. Our brains don’t feel pain in the normal sense. It is my conclusion that yawning is the release of fatigue and other elements of pain in the brain. Whenever I sent massive amounts of released energy up my spine and into the cranial nerves & brain-stem, I was overcome by waves of yawning. Sometimes it went on for hours. I felt my senses (vision, hearing, balance, etc– all controlled by the 12 cranial nerves), sharpen as the fatigue was being relieved by yawning. Our sleep-wake & breathing cycles are controlled by the pons medulla. Calcifications in the head & neck will interfere with the function of this vital brain-stem area.
3) Hiccups are definitely made worse by loss of control of the core muscles. The diaphragm is an involuntary muscle, and therefore a back injury will disable it.
4) When a hip & back injury isn’t fully rehabilitated, other injuries will stack on top. This affects voluntary & involuntary muscles.
5) Strive to become an ambidextrous athlete. This makes you superior, and better equipped to resist injuries.
6) A ripped abdomen is a clear sign of complete physical health, and is always considered most attractive by the opposite sex. In health, this is what motivates us above all else.
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