Back Clinic Video. Dr. Jimenez brings a variety of videos that include PUSH Rx testimonies to help people see what CrossFit is and how it has helped them get and stay in shape and those who have suffered an injury and have begun physical therapy. Also presented are videos that show Dr. Jimenez performing spinal manipulations, adjustments, massage, proper form when lifting or exercising, and discussions about various conditions, treatment options, and nutrition.
A licensed D.C., C.C.S.T, clinical pain doctor who uses cutting-edge therapies and rehabilitation procedures focused on total health, strength training, and complete conditioning. We specialize in restoring normal body functions after neck, back, spinal and soft tissue injuries. We take a global functional fitness treatment approach to regain complete functional health. To change, teach, fix and empower all my patients with what is possible is my relentless and never-ending passion.
Dr. Jimenez has spent over 30+ years researching and testing methods with thousands of patients and understands what truly works. We strive to create fitness and better the body through researched methods and total health programs. These programs and methods are natural and use the body’s own ability to achieve improvement goals, rather than introducing harmful chemicals, controversial hormone replacement, surgery, or addictive drugs. We want you to live a fulfilled life with more energy, a positive attitude, better sleep, less pain, proper body weight, and educated on how to maintain this way of life.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez, health coach Kenna Vaughn, Truide Torres, biochemist Alexander Jimenez, and Astrid Ornelas, discuss how chiropractic care can ultimately help treat sciatica or sciatic nerve pain.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Hey, guys, we’re live today. We’re going to be discussing the scourge of the back, the scourge of the back for myself. I’m a chiropractor practicing out here in El Paso, Texas. We usually have a disorder that’s typically there isn’t a day that we don’t see it, and it affects so many people. But there’s a lot of confusion with, and I call it, the scourge of the low back. It’s called sciatica. Sciatica is a disorder that has many, many reasons and many, many causes. One of the most important things is first to assess the reason and cause of sciatica. But most importantly, when it first hits an individual, it strikes them, usually with a shocking misunderstanding as to what’s going on in their legs. They feel pain in the low back. They sometimes feel pain in the leg. Different areas depend on where the issue lies, so a little bit of its anatomy breakdown and explanation of what it is. First of all, it’s a syndrome. It’s a syndrome that has many reasons and many causes. The issues that come about and are that that make sciatica arise are vast. I would venture to say that there are a million people that come in with sciatica. There are a million reasons that have presented each one of those patients. There is a majority of problems in and a subset of issues. We’re going to go over that. Today, our goal is to bring out the awareness that it is a problem, just like the present anemia. And there are many reasons why a person would have anemia. Many people are familiar with anemia, and they say that’s low blood, but you’re going to find out where the blood issue is to determine exactly what the causes of anemia are. Well, the same thing with sciatica. There’s a lot of reasons why the sciatic presentation occurs. So we’re here to kind of begin the process of explaining that. So we’re going to get real deep and down and nasty with the science of it. We’re going to try to give you some tools that you can look at and assess. So your provider can give you a better explanation, or you can ask better questions in terms of where your sciatica originates. So the first thing is to understand the anatomy, and I’ll go through the anatomy in a very visual way. But I want to first kind of take you to a visual, and my visuals are very three-dimensional and offered through complete anatomy. Complete anatomy has given us the ability to use this and show, and it is something that many medical students use. So in today’s modern-day, we don’t have to use some visceral or some sort of human anatomy. We can use these tools to help us present to the patients and to teach. So it’s probably one of the most used anatomical structured systems, and we use it to teach people in our patients every day, given the dynamics of sciatica. Here we have a picture of a sciatica HDMI, so we can see a presentation of what the sciatica nerve looks like when we can see it. The interesting dynamics here is that when you look at the interesting presentation, you can see as I go away how vast and how large it is. Now the first thing is I rotate this individual. You got to see that it comes from a large glute plexus in the lumbar spine to the sacral nerve roots. So anywhere down the line that anything is touching this thing, this beautiful, powerful nerve, you’re going to find that there is pain radiating down. So we’re going to discuss those issues. And as we kind of go over that, we want to understand that so away from HDMI. So what we’re looking at are the issues that present with us when we discuss it. So what are the causes, and what is sciatica? Sciatica is inflammation of the sciatic nerve, and as it presents what happens many times, it is the largest nerve in the body, and it’s how most people know it, and it travels from the lumbar plexus to the leg. So, anywhere that that thing is touched, it’s going to radiate pain. Now, what are the causes? Well, they could be from vascular. They could be compressive. They could be lymphatic. There could be a space-occupying lesion, such as a tumor causing the issues. Now, a good clinician will do a lot of different tests and a lot of different assessments to determine where it is having the problem. So when I have a patient, they come in when the first thing we have to do is a history we have to assess and find out what’s going on. So finding the history of something that suddenly someone starts sitting or they become active, or they get hit in the back, and they start having sciatica, it boats to a well, dynamics. So what happens is, what we need to do is we need to discuss the dynamics of where it begins and what goes on. So in terms of our direction, I would like first to take you to the physical assessment. When you explain to your doctor what’s going on, you need to tell him exactly when you started having it. That’s very important. The history is very like when these issues are? Do you have a sedentary life? So these are the types of issues that present most of the time a person comes into the office with having a severe presentation that they’re shocked? They didn’t expect this and what occurs in this particular area is that you can see where the nerve root comes in. So over here, you’ve got to figure out where it came from. As you notice, a lot of the reasons that many of these individuals have is because it’s a little bit of atrophy and muscular issues that arise. As you can see right here, there’s a lot of areas where the nerve can keep becoming trapped, and this is the main reason that most people have this issue now as they go through this and they present a symptom. I got to figure out, and we have to figure out where the problem originated with our team. So as I go through that, I want to give you a different dynamics here in what I’m going to explain. I’m going to present my team to you so that they’re all going to. Each one of them is going to explain a little different aspect of what goes on. Today, we will discuss how a coach, such as an individual helping the doctor, can assess the situation. We are going to talk to our coach Kenna. We’re going to talk to Astrid, who’s going to bring some science knowledge here. We will bring a patient in, discuss the experience with her, and bring in our top guy from the university at the biochemical level. He will teach us a little bit about some nutraceuticals and some applicational processes that we can do to help an individual with sciatica. So at first light to tell, I like to ask a question to Kenna. So Kenna, what I want to do is I want to ask you exactly what it is that you notice when a patient presents with sciatica and what kind of things we can do in the office and what’s our approach specifically more like the metabolic issues and the disorders that present that way? So when we’re looking at here, let me go ahead and head into this area, tell me a little bit about how we present a patient and what we deal with when we’re talking to an assessment or doing an assessment.
Kenna Vaughn: So one thing that many patients with sciatica have is the pain they’re feeling, of course and that low back. But another thing is they don’t have a lot of movement due to that pain, and movement is essential. It’s what life revolves around. So we take that movement, and we look at how we can help this patient decompress that sciatic nerve with the adjustments that Dr. Jimenez does, but also how can I benefit from my side of things for this patient? So we do have a lot of great resources available to us. We send our patients to Push, which is a gym here that helps them get that calibration in their muscles that they need to build up those stronger muscles all around that sciatic nerve so that this nerve doesn’t get pinched frequently or as often. And another thing we have available to us is an app called Dr. J. Today. And what that does is it syncs with the bracelet that our patients wear, which allows us to track their movement. So we want to focus on that movement as part of it. And another thing we can do is nutraceuticals in supplements. So what are nutraceuticals and supplements? One of the main ones we focus on that almost every individual should be taking is vitamin D3, and we like it coupled with vitamin K. This will help your bones and circulation. And it’s going to help to decrease that glucose by increasing your insulin sensitivity. And this is where it comes into play with sciatica.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I had a question for you in terms of that. When you’re discussing that we’re dealing with and sciatica as a pain in the hips, we’re correlating, and we’re tying together, I guess, a disorder that many people have as metabolic syndrome and many times are overweight. And that was one of the presentations that many of the patients with sciatica, not that everyone is overweight, with sciatica. Still, many people who become sedentary and don’t move as much do suffer from metabolic syndrome. So to get that under order, one of the things is to bring the insulin under control. And once we do that, we start losing weight and getting more active with the exercise protocols. She mentioned Push because we began to calibrate the hips. Now, as you can tell from our picture here, there’s a whole lot of muscles in this region, OK? So as I kind of use the application, you can see a little bit more of the muscle tissue that is involved. So as we look at the muscle tissue, we can see that calibrating and these muscles that control the hip actually propel the creature, so propel humans, so to speak, right? So what happens is as this happens, if this becomes deconditioned through a sedentary lifestyle. Well, the thing that’s lying underneath also stops working, and the muscles stop working as effectively. So one of the ways that we treat people is through a coach to assess their body mechanics and put them through the Push Fitness protocols that can help them get a calibration of the structures. One of the things that we also do in this process is we look at the sitting issues and tell me a bit of what you do, Kenna, in terms of helping people adjust their lifestyle or modify their mobility issues.
Kenna Vaughn: So what their mobility, as I said, we use the app, and we also use Push Fitness, and the supplements have a lot that comes into play because like I said, with that increasing the insulin sensitivity, what we’re going to want to do it, that is it’s going to help to control the blood sugars. And you might not necessarily relate blood sugars to sciatica just yet, but as I said, everything is connected. So when we put our patients on a protocol and have them control these blood sugars, it also helps maintain their inflammation because sugars and chemicals cause that inflammation in the blood. And that’s also it’s going then to cause nerve damage to our body and our system. And then, once we have that nerve damage going, we’ll see many more patients sitting down, which relates to that lack of motion. And then we see a lot of patients coming in with sciatica.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Sciatica. So basically, we’re going back to the same monster, which is called inflammation. Right. So inflammation is the deal. People that have sciatica will often tell the story of how it kind of looms with them. It’s like having this untrustworthy nerve back there that if they have stress or go through emotional dynamics, it affects sciatica. So this threshold that activates the sciatica presentation could have even an emotional component to it. So we want to bring that to light, too, because many people have normal lives, but they don’t have the presentation under normal situations. Suddenly, bam, they get an emotional, financial issue, family things, and sciatica just flares. Where is that even logical, right? The key is inflammation, inflammatory response, stress responses. And those issues do create an almost perfect storm to create a predisposition for inflammation. So that’s why we bring in the dietary components and the food to start eating better to prevent inflammation again. Those are some of the things. So she also mentioned the issue of Push. Push is our fitness center, where we actually put people through exercise protocols, and when we start putting people through exercise protocols, it’s there to calibrate. Now, what’s the biggest muscle in the body? Well, not too far from the anatomy to an anatomical structure. You can see the muscles in this particular area, and everybody knows that the glutes are the big muscles. So when you see this powerful muscle, if this muscle becomes decalibrated from a sedentary lifestyle, you’re going to notice that you’re going to have a lot of predisposition. So it’s like a car with flat tires. So if the car has flat tires, it starts swaying and moving to the wrong side. Well, if it’s swing, you can imagine that it affects the axis and the axles, and all that kind of stuff starts happening. Things like these happen, but in our human structure, there’s a finely calibrated system here. One of the things that many people don’t know and don’t think about is the lymphatic structure. Now, if you can see here, you can see the lymphatic. Now those guys ride directly next to the venous and arterial structures, and you can see it here. So as you can see that for progressing, you also look at the arteries. So if someone doesn’t have an arterial system that is working well and sitting on this, you can see congestion occurring around the structures, around the nerves. Now there’s a lot of nerves in here. So when you start looking at these dynamics, you start seeing that a person who is not using their muscles has an increased congestion level. So as I remove these muscles here, you can see this picture, and I’m going to remove every one of them. You start seeing the noticeable dynamics of how complex their nervous system is. So over here, you can see the complexity of how those nerves function. It’s amazing to see all the structures in here. So when you look at this, you can see the amount of influence that lack of movement would cause. It’s almost like a traffic jam. Imagine sitting on this thing all day long, OK, let alone be inactive. So one of the things we want to do is to assess exactly what it is. And one of the things that we do is to calibrate the system. So going back to removing these picked areas, you want to go ahead and work on the big systems. OK, well, as you can see, these muscles bring a huge component into helping sciatica. Now, where are the sciatic issues coming from? Now let’s go ahead and start discussing those particular issues as we can kind of go through this. And I want to take you through a little anatomy lesson here because it does require a little bit. As I remove these things, we’re going to see all of the structures that come in, and actually, but you can see if I can get the nervous system only out to the minimal component of it, the big ones. And as you can see here, you can look over this way and see anywhere down the line right here by where the nerves are. Them out where the disk comes out in this particular area as it penetrates forward, it goes this what we call the sacral notch, which is this guy right here. This hole is a sacral notch where it comes out, and you can see that it can be bumped into the bone and the actual femur here. So there’s a lot of areas that we can see that directly affect the sciatica regions. But having gone through that, I’m going to go into that in a little bit deeper. But I want to go ahead and get a little personal story right now. I want to ask an individual now what sits in here, and most women, you know, this is where they contain babies, right? So in a situation where you have an individual that is going through a lot of changes, such as an individual who’s having a child, you can see where the hips actually change and right down there, if you can see down there, this is where the sacrum has to open up to allow for the birthing canal. You see that big hole right there. A baby’s got to go through there, and if it can’t go through there, which it probably won’t until probably the ninth month where this area starts expanding, guess who’s going to go by, then kick in on the way down? OK, that would be a child. OK, so let’s talk about that. I’d like to present Trudy here because she has a story of how it affected her.
Trudy Torres: Well, I guess, you know, as a woman, you know, it’s an extremely joyful situation when you find out that you’re going to be a mom. If it’s your first-time baby, you’re in for a roller coaster. You know, like you guys were mentioning, there’s a lot of different scenarios that you go through emotionally, physically. So when you’re pregnant, you’re the perfect storm for something like this to come up. You know, you are just balanced from you’re so, so tired the first trimester. I’ve always worked out. So for me, I have never experienced sciatic pain before, and for me being so active, I went from being 100 percent active to just being so tired. I had to be super careful about spending my energy, especially in the first trimester. So on top of that, if you add, you know, everything else that’s going on physiologically with me and then my life became so sedentary. On top of that, you know, I have a desk job. So sitting at a desk and then not compensating, moving all of a sudden, that pain is so excruciating. I did not experience this with my first baby. I experienced this with my second child. And, of course, I gained more weight with my second child. So once again, you know, you’re adding problem over the problem. And just because you’re pregnant, that doesn’t mean you’re eating for two, because unfortunately, some of us, you know, have that misconception, and that’s when your weight tends to get a little bit out of control. So you’re adding a lot of different factors that create the perfect storm and are just super, super hard. One of the things that Kenna mentioned that helped me was becoming active and being exposed to Push. I had someone here that was able to work out specifically with me being pregnant. Obviously, my limitations as you start gaining more weight, it’s not the same thing that you can do when you’re not having a baby. So I was able to continue to work out later on in and, you know, after I was exposed to chiropractic and implementing exercise.
Kenna Vaughn: So the main symptoms you had when you had sciatica, and you were pregnant, was it mainly just pain, or did you also get that tingling feeling because there is more than one symptom of sciatica?
Trudy Torres: No. Unfortunately, it was just not pain. It was pain. It was burning all down my leg. I did not know what was going on. As I said, this was not with my first pregnancy, and every pregnancy is different with my first child. I watched more what I ate. I was still active, so I believe it was a combination of things, you know, that I felt like I was eating for two. I gained more weight than I should have.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I got a question: Was it when you rapidly gained weight during the final trimester?
Trudy Torres: I think everything kind of started happening a little at a time. I wasn’t that active in the first trimester, so I began having flare-ups not as bad as once I gained the weight. But, you know, once I gained more weight, that’s when I started having more severe symptoms, as I said, the burning, the lower pain. It was just excruciating, and it’s something that I don’t wish upon my worst enemy.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Now, did you ever have a recurrence after you had your baby?
Trudy Torres: Yes, I did. I did, and unfortunately, I did, but one of the things has helped me keep that under control. It’s been being active, continue to watch my weight. My supplements were one thing that I would ask Coach or Dr. Jiménez when you’re pregnant. I know we were talking about the different supplements. What do you still recommend for pregnant women to get on the different vitamin D and K supplements?
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s an excellent question, and one that I’ll answer very clearly as a wide disclaimer; you need to make sure that your doctor knows what you’re experiencing. Obstetricians, which are OB-GYN doctors. They’re very well astute as to what type of supplements. So in the world of supplementation, it is wise to have a doctor assess that, and many of them will make sure that you have good supplementation. The area where it’s the accurate assessment is you have to have supplementation. Your body’s trying to produce an enormous amount of cellular activity as it creates life. It draws upon a particular area that inflammation goes crazy, the body goes into dynamic changes. So nutrition becomes an essential thing from intestinal nutrition through metabolic nutrition. So one of the things is that you have to have a doctor, typically today’s individual who is in there as young childbearing age, they have a doctor evaluating. So yes, one of the essential things is from folic acid to vitamin E, D. These are a whole, complete gamut of vitamins that are assessed and given by their doctors. So most women will know that if they take some medication, they have to put it clearly by their doctor. That’s the most important thing. And the second thing is on the supplementation side; once your doctor knows, he’s probably going to give you something of a basic level of supplementation and nutritional assessment. So in terms of that, a dietitian can evaluate you and assess you and determine what’s going on in terms of the aggressive approaches where an individual is not pregnant; there’s a lot of things that can be done. But let me ask you this. I know that you do a little bit of a CrossFit, and you do that kind of stuff. And you mentioned that you had sciatica after. I want to go to the point that many people who have sciatica lead a predisposed life to sciatica now, meaning that once you get it, it’s not that your terminal is that you always have the potential of having it, so whether your body dynamics have changed. Typically, you’re not 18, and now you’re 40. What happens is your body is warning you that it’s not working as it should be. And suddenly, the nerve starts becoming flared up, either the compression through atrophy of muscle or imbalance of muscles. So all those things are essential; I notice that you mentioned something that you did. It also affected you after. Did you do some competitions later, and did it affect you?
Trudy Torres: I did do competitions after. What helped me keep it under control was that its different factors to keep it under control. You know that keeping moving makes sure that you’re taking the right supplements in chiropractic care. I’m a firm believer, you know, of a holistic approach, and I believe that a combination of all it has helped me keep it under control. I have not had flare-ups, but I believe it’s because I’ve had all these different combinations. As I said, you know, I kept active. I have, you know, been in average weight. I have also implemented chiropractic, you know, as maintenance.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, I would like to give people a kind of insight as to what happens when you first go to a doctor, and they assess you; there are many ways to figure it out. One of the ways that it’s an easy way if there’s degenerative and there are bone changes is an x-ray. And that’s what we typically look at, and we first start all assessments. But the definitive assessor who gives the vast amount of information is looking for some compression. And at that point, sometimes we have to look at the arterial-venous circulation. But the number one way to determine if someone has sciatica due to a disc injury or some compression or space-occupying lesions like a tumor or some arthritis or some sort of imbalance in the muscle is genuinely the MRI. The MRI is an excellent tool. Now, if there is bone involved, a CAT scan is used. The EMG is used to determine the muscular tone and the muscle’s ability to react and see which tone levels. But you don’t need to be a rocket scientist and put someone through that. They already know that their muscles are tight, and there is an issue. The ability to determine how the nerve functions is a nerve conduction velocity test that tells you how fast and slow the nerves could work. Now in the situation where we do a bone scan, we’re trying to look for any metabolic issues outside, and there could be a tumor or some problem. But that’s rare, and that’s not typical, but the number one way to assess an issue is through an MRI and an X-ray. Those will give you the most significant, broadest areas. Now I want to go ahead and talk a bit about nutraceuticals and specifically nutraceuticals. We’re going to go ahead in this about the treatments for it. And as we go through that, I’d like to go ahead and discuss certain areas and specific supplements. Now Astrid is our resident nutraceutical information gathering. We also have a biochemist in the background who will bring some insight to a different level. But what kind of things do we typically offer patients when they need it as a metabolic, a leaving protocol?
Astrid Ornelas: OK, well, first of all, I want to bring in an interesting statistic. According to researchers, approximately 80 percent of the population suffer from some type of back pain. Included in that are low back pain and sciatica. So with that being said, of course, it becomes a priority to know what is it and what can we do to assess this common problem? And like, Kenna and Dr. Jimenez, like you and Trudy have said, exercise is essential. And together with exercise, we want to bring in a diet. We want to eat foods and supplements. And because obesity or excess weight is one of the problems is one of the leading causes or one of the most common, commonly well-known causes of sciatica. We want to, you know, all together with exercise and following like a good, a good diet. We want to follow these things so that we can. If we lose weight, it can help improve sciatica. So with that in mind, there are several of them. I guess natural remedies, natural nutraceuticals, if you will, can help reduce or improve sciatica symptoms and, therefore, lose weight. So one of the ones that I want to talk about is that we have it here: turmeric or curcumin. So turmeric is a plant, it’s a flowering plant, and it’s related to ginger. And we eat the root. That’s what we know it. This yellow kind of orange-looking root is very commonly used in Asian foods and most commonly in curry and curcumin. You’ll hear turmeric and curcumin used a lot interchangeably together, and curcumin is the active ingredient that’s found in turmeric. So one of the things that I wanted to bring up with turmeric and curcumin is the benefits that many people can take, and they can either eat turmeric or take turmeric supplements. It can help to reduce sciatica or sciatic nerve pain. So turmeric has a lot of anti-inflammatory properties, which can help reduce pain and swelling, which is probably one of the most common symptoms of sciatica. There’s a lot of research studies that have found that turmeric or curcumin can reduce neural inflammation, which is inflammation in the nerves, which, as some of us here, know if your sciatica is caused by a disc herniation or a herniated disc, sometimes the substances or the chemicals that are inside of your disc, they can irritate the nerves. So taking turmeric and curcumin can help reduce the inflammation caused by these irritating compounds. It is also a powerful antioxidant that can help reduce oxidative stress, which can cause inflammation. And probably one of the highlights of taking turmeric or curcumin is that it can improve metabolic syndrome, as we previously discussed in a past podcast. Research studies have found that turmeric can help regulate body fat by reducing inflammation. It can also help lower bad cholesterol. It can lower triglycerides. It can improve blood sugar levels. And it has antibacterial properties as well.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me ask you. We’re talking about the potential of someone having sciatica; since some people have sciatica, that kind of looms on them. Well, we’re trying to do with turmeric, and we’re trying to prevent it from kicking off. So it’s basically like prophylactic prevention. I like to go a little deeper, and we have our resident scientist here, Alexander, and he is right with us right now, and he’s got some points of view on some of those supplementations. Tell us a bit of what you learned in terms of supplementation and your point of view on how we can assist sciatica from a biochemical point of view.
Alexander Isaiah: Well, there are a couple of different ways of taking different perspectives and avoiding the whole. An inflammation response is a good way of saying it. Let me see. Can you guys see my screen here?
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes, we see you, we see you right now. So I saw your screen. Yes, I do. We see the screen entirely.
Alexander Isaiah: Awesome. So I’m going to go into a little bit of the biomechanics of what’s going on with sciatica. Then we’re going to break down a little bit of the muscles, and then we’ll go into the supplementation aspect of what we can do to have either prevention or active treatment during treating sciatica. So here we could see we have three individuals from left to right. The first one is an individual who has a neutral spine. And you can see that as we draw a line down the middle there. External auditory Matis, the ear, is in line with their deltoid and is in line with the median part of the sacrum. In the second person, we can see that they have a little bit of dysfunction in terms of their physical aspect. So here we have an individual whose sacral promontory, which is the anterior side of the sacrum, is tilted superior, and their posterior area is tilted, posterior, inferior. I’m sorry. And what this is called, this is called a counter mutation. So by having that sacrum pointed up, you’re putting more stress on the thoracic region and causing the areas to be more inclined to different stresses. And most of the time, this is caused by tight hamstrings. So these hamstrings are pulling down, forcing the anterior side to come up and stretching these quadriceps. So it can either be done from an imbalance of over-powerful hamstrings or tight hamstrings and weak quads. In the third individual as we draw the same line down the middle. We can see that they are almost in line, but on an individual like this, we could see that their sacral promontory, the front side of the sacrum, is tilted anteriorly, which is called mutations. So we have a counter mutation over here. It’s going to go counter. And then mutation over here on the right side, so an easy way to remember this. They’ll stick forever is that this is pretty much if you think plumber’s butt, this is what it looks like. This is what J-Lo looks like. Oh, so you’ll never forget it that way. But the difference is here is that here the pressure is on the thoracic spine. But in an individual with notated hips, the pressure is in the lower back. So let’s say someone is pregnant and developing another child in this area. They’re going to be putting more pressure on the lower back versus someone who has pressure on their thoracic area. They’re going to be more pressure there. So going into a little bit more of the anatomy. We can see that we have all the different muscles here, and we could see the piriformis, which is this muscle right here. I’m going to give you different colors for you guys, so that you can see better. It is muscle right here. And then we could see the superior gemellus is right under that. So sandwiched between the two is the sciatic nerve. And if we have someone who is mutated, they’re going to be stretching these muscles more and putting more compression on that sciatic nerve, causing that area to be more inflamed. More of those neuropathies are occurring, shooting down the leg. And then in other instances, when we have the piriformis, which is split in half and the sciatic nerve is running between them, and that’s 10 percent of the population that that usually happens. And so and these people have always had sciatic problems. So by strengthening and working on those conditions and going over those nutraceuticals, we’re about to go into, we can treat and alleviate some of those symptoms. So the first one I kind of want to go into is a little bit of niacin. So niacin, we all see it as the store brand as something popping up like that. And most of the time, it’s either in 250 mg or 500 mg of capsules or tablets. I always recommend getting the tablets just because you can take half of the tablets. And I tell people this is because most of the time, nicotinic acid is the main thing is, vitamin B3 causes a little bit of a flush effect, but that’s just the way it works. So we’re going into it here. We can see that nicotinic acid, as it’s going through its chemical pathway, actually produces lots of NAD+, and NAD+ is essential in the cellular metabolism of many tissues. So going into brief biology, we all know that the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cells we were all beaten to death growing up in basic biology. But as we take a look more in-depth at the structure of the mitochondria, we could see that it has an outer membrane, an inner membrane, and then an interim membrane space. So we’re going to look mainly at this little section here that’s folded in between, which are called the cristae. And we could see that the first complex, known as complex one or all the known as any dehydrogenase, is responsible for using NADH, converting it and using its protons, and moving it across the gradient to make ATP. But we could see that more NAD+ is produced here, right? So that’s where niacin comes into effect. We supplement more with NAD+ to cause a reduction reaction between NADH and some other electrons, forcing it into NADH. So what does this all mean? Pretty much what we’re doing is we’re creating a boulder downhill effect, so we’re making more NAD, and we’re forcing it to go to product. And how does this happen? Just easy thermodynamics is you put a lot of it up the hill. The enzymes are going to force the work to go down the hill and make more energy. In doing so, and you have a more healthy metabolism of cells. And this does not only correlate to neuropathies, but it also helps with circulatory function, cardiovascular health; the main multi nucleotide muscle in the body is the heart, so you’re not only making sure that you’re neuropathies are covered, but as well as you’re making sure that you’re keeping a healthy heart just by supplementing with vitamin B3. Another great one, saying that you have more ATP produced and more functioning and healthy tissues, is green tea. I chose to use green tea because it has a very similar pathway to curcumin in the sense of anti-inflammatory effects. So the main ingredient in green tea in case you either have green tea in your house or curcumin available, whichever one’s easiest for you, they mostly have the same chemical pathways in that they inhibit either inflammation or cell proliferation neural damage. So the main chemical in green teas is called catechins, and catechins are similar to catecholamines, like epinephrine and norepinephrine, which is just adrenaline. And the main one is EGCG. The cool part about EGCG is that it inhibited NF Kappa B and ROS. ROS is just a reactive oxygen species, which is just free radicals, which can cause havoc and wreak havoc throughout your body, which is why it’s an antioxidant. So in doing so, it prevents NF Kappa B from producing any proliferating effects from cells or inflammation or neural damage. Now, if we go more into biochemistry, I can just break it down a little bit here. So EGCG will upregulate AMP. High levels of AMP will down-regulate this enzyme, called glycolysis, and allow for ATP to be converted to CATP. This is important because not only does the CATP break down things, but it mainly breaks down any adipose tissue and helps kill any cells that are proliferating too quickly, such as cancer cells. And it also keeps cells functioning properly, such as neural cells. So as we’re coming here, another cool part about green tea is it has small amounts of caffeine. If you are pregnant, we don’t recommend that you do any caffeine or stimulatory effects. Always consult with your doctor before taking any of these things. Specifically, something that does have caffeine and that we just doesn’t want to mix anything, especially during pregnancy. But if you are trying to make sure that you help your sciatica or your metabolic syndrome. Green tea has another effect. Using caffeine, which inhibits phosphodiesterase and phosphodiesterase diseases, is responsible for turning off CATP, so it’s a double whammy effect. Not only are you burning fat and shutting down glucose storage, but you’re also allowing for this catabolic or this structure that breaks down things to keep going. Here’s a little bit of an overview of the different things that green tea does and how it helps. And just kind of going into another cool part about green tea is that it binds to other very toxic things, such as iron. We know that we have iron in every red blood cell, but people who have hemochromatosis have too much iron in their blood, and they have to give blood about once a week. Someone who has hemochromatosis can take supplementation of green tea and reduce their iron levels, preventing any toxicity from those iron.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, when you’re talking about those pathway patterns, you remind me very clearly that many of the times, the whole idea behind our show is to try to give you natural ways. However, there are potent medications that work with these pathways, one of which is gabapentin, used for neuropathic pain. Many people don’t want to do that because of the side effects and the critical issues that it causes. We were looking at this in a natural format in a natural way. Going back to the metabolic, what are the things that we notice in the metabolic areas you have seen? What are the other supplements? Do you notice that I have been able to assist people in recovering from because Astrid mentioned turmeric, and that’s the line we’re using. We’re using the anti-inflammatory. They’re limiting, limiting the reactive oxygen species or the ROSs to prevent the inflammation from occurring. Is that correct?
Alexander Isaiah: Yes. OK. The main thing is to inhibit the production of NF kappaB, which both curcumin, other known as turmeric, both have the same name. They’re interchangeable and green tea, and both inhibit these inflammatory pathways and cancer pathways.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes. So let me ask you, Astrid, in terms of those inflammatory comments. Tell me a few of your thoughts on this particular matter.
Astrid Ornelas: Well, I wanted to add another compound that can benefit sciatica or sciatic nerve pain. And that is called alpha-lipoic acid or ALA. And so ALA is an organic compound, and it is produced naturally in the body, but of course, in smaller amounts. Or it can be found in foods such as red meat or organic meats or in plant foods such as broccoli, spinach, Brussel sprouts, and tomatoes. Or it can also be taken as a dietary supplement. And I wanted to discuss the effects or the benefits of alpha-lipoic acid. Because just like green tea and turmeric or curcumin, ALA is also a powerful antioxidant, and it helps reduce inflammation, according to several research studies. And it can also have a lot of benefits for people with metabolic syndrome because it can help lower blood sugar or blood glucose levels. It can improve insulin resistance, which is, you know, an effect, or it’s something that they can that can ultimately cause diabetes. And several research studies have also found that alpha-lipoic acid can also improve nerve function, which, you know, people with sciatica or sciatic nerve pain, especially caused by neuroinflammation. ALA can also help improve nerve function in these people.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: OK. That’s an essential point of view. As you can see here on our list, we have quite a few different presentations and areas such as vitamin C, vitamin D, calcium, fish oils, omega 3s with EPA, berberine, glucosamine, chondroitin, alpha-lipoic acid, acetyl-l-carnitine, ashwagandha, soluble fibers, vitamin E, green tea, and turmeric. As you can tell, there’s a lot of things that we can do to stop the inflammatory cascade. We’re going to be going into all those because sciatica is so complex and diverse that we have to find the best for the patient from the millions of presentations that it has. So throughout the anatomy, as we discussed, and I’ll show you back the anatomy in a second here, you can see that there’s a lot of physiological and as Alex presented biomechanical imbalances that, if not taken into consideration, we will end up with issues in the future as a result of these predisposing dynamics. Now, as we recover these dynamics, we’re going to discuss many different topics. So I wanted to at least give a little more on the side of the things that we do now in terms of differential diagnosis. Many other issues can cause these presentations and from, you know, the dynamics of just a compressive nerve through space-occupying dynamics. We have other areas that come in and affect the patients. So what we’re going to do is in the following seminars, we’re going to go over specific types of things we can do, but let’s give you some guided ideas in terms of the treatment protocols that are out there. We have chiropractic care, which is a form of chiropractic. Chiropractic means mobilizing joints and moving the body, and there are thousands of ways we can do it. A lot of people think that it’s just manipulation or adjusting the spinal. We have to take a lot of things into consideration. We work on the bones; we work in the muscles; we work on the counter muscles. We have to formulate many dynamics to figure out what’s best in line to assist each patient. Once we find out the cause and find out what we call etiology or the pathology and the problem. We can go and use different methods. We use acupuncture, nutraceuticals. We work hand in hand with different providers to provide medications. We also do the goal ultimately in sciatica is to eliminate any chance of surgery if there is a surgical need or that needs to be done. But that’s such a small dynamic that we don’t want to go there unless we have to. We have different other protocols in different methods of treatment, like dry needling. We do aggressive rehabilitation. Now, why are we doing rehabilitation? Because as you saw in the picture earlier, the muscles we have were extremely involved in calibrating the hips. We want to make sure that we, we determine now over here, we got some basic care. We also got some aggressive care. Now, as you know, some basic care will be like ice-cold ultrasound, tens units, spinal adjustments, lifestyle changes, which is pretty much the biggest one because most people end up in a chiropractic office because their lifetime lifestyles change. Now, what do I have? I have a person who was an athlete at one point that suddenly got a desk job and now doesn’t move as much. Well, that’s easy. We can start getting that person back into yoga, pilates, tai chi, getting their bodies to align pelvically, and their whole body structure to get back to where it should be. Here’s the deal as soon as you can get past the inflammation and prevent that, and we can get you to move your body in a way that you did when you were a child, kind of like moving, dancing, and walking. That’s the way to calibrate the glutes. This is a powerful muscle, and as we’ve learned through technology and science, immediate atrophy occurs with the muscles not used. So imagine what happens when you start getting a job, and you used to be an athlete, and now you sit down eight hours a day, that’s going to give some great dynamic. So one of the crazy components is that as I look at this, I give you an idea of the types of exercises we can do. We can go into the extreme kind of CrossFit environment. And if we look at that, you just don’t look at the crazy structures, but you see people moving dynamically. A lot is going on here, and you can see that we can come up with our rehab centers. We have extreme athletes, too, even the people that are, you know, able to move just a little bit. But the point is that as we do this process, we can help someone with the treatments and protocols occurring, as you can see in this particular area. We can see Trudy and me. This is one of the things that the reason I was alluding to. But we can see when you were doing some self-treatment here. Tell me a little bit about what you were doing and what you were experiencing at that point.
Trudy Torres: That was, I believe, if I recall correctly, that was after my competition. I did compete for CrossFit. And, you know, it’s hard, after for a couple of hours. It takes a toll on your body. So I was kind of stretching my hip and stretching, you know, the rest of my glute area to avoid that flare up again. That’s something that once you experience it once and you have to go through the treatment, it stays in the back of your head because you certainly don’t experience pain again. That’s why you have to pay attention to all the different preventive areas and approaches to avoid ever having a flare-up.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, I got to tell you that I led you there because I know you had a lot of experience with sciatica. Alex, let me ask you this. You know, you were an aggressive competitor in the world that you did things. Tell me a bit of the thing that you did that you noticed when you were working. Let’s say an as a collegiate athlete, did you ever have hip issues?
Alexander Isaiah: Only when I didn’t stretch or when I didn’t work on my core muscles, or when I wasn’t making sure that I was anatomically in line, I did have some issues either with joint pain or just lower back problems or even upper back problems that all just tied into either flexibility or I just wasn’t paying attention to either my diet as strictly as I should, especially at that level. So, yes, I did.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. You know what? There’s a lot to be covered here, and we’re going to be discussing a lot of issues. Did anyone want to add something else before we kind of closeout? I want to thank my crew for what we’ve done here. We are going to continue with this. Because we’re going to go real deep, this story of sciatica is going to get nasty with information. This is the beginning of touching on the subject matter. Thank you, Alex, for bringing the information because extremely, very deep in terms. I want to thank Astrid for giving us insights into biochemistry. My true patient, Trudy, and my coach over here, Kenna, and the supporting staff. So I want also to go if you guys want to find us. We’re here, and we’re here in this area where we are available. If we can help you and you can contact us at any given time. I want to thank you all, and I appreciate it. We’re going to be hitting sciatica relentlessly because it was relentlessly the scourge. It is ripping apart a lot of people at their works. They just quietly suffer. They don’t sleep, they stress out, and it causes a disruption. And it happens in mommy’s world, and it disrupts the whole family directly because a happy mommy is a happy family. So the entire thing is what we want to do is to assess what’s going on here. Find out the treatment protocols and give you the best options possible. Thank you guys very much, and God bless.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez and Dr. Mario Ruja discuss what sciatica does to the body and how it affects a person’s overall health and wellness.
What Causes Sciatica?
[00:00:06] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Hey Mario, we’re on a new podcast today. Today we’re going to be talking about sciatica and the complications with that. I got Mario here, and we’ve decided to chat and discuss the issues of sciatica.
[00:00:29] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It sounds excruciating.
[00:00:31] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, let me ask you this. In your practice, Mario, in terms of working with sciatica, what have you learned over the years in terms of sciatica?
[00:00:41] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Sciatica will put you down, Alex. It will make you feel like a baby and make you remember how vital chiropractic is and maintenance. It’s like having that car. For example, if you are driving Buggati and do not do the maintenance, you just put gas. It’s just like, rip it and run it. And then one day, it leaves you hanging in the middle of I-10, and everyone’s passing you, and you’re embarrassed.
[00:01:15] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It is what sciatica is.
[00:01:18] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It isn’t very pleasant.
[00:01:20] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, I believe it’s kind of funny that we’re laughing at it, but it is a scourge. I call it of the low back. It catches you off a surprise. It creeps up on you. It looms around, too. Yeah. And when they bite you, I mean it classically defined as pain going down the leg. There’s a lot of reasons why that happens. What do you get when your patients show up with that? What do they tell you? What kind of symptoms do they sort of present?
[00:01:45] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: You got to be kidding me. First of all, their wife drives them in. Does that tell you what it is? Yeah, it’s like a knife stabbing them in the back, and it radiates down their leg, and then they’re usually leaning to one side or another. And then they have this story. Alex, there is this crazy story like, ” Well, I was only…” the only part is ridiculous. “I was only picking up my child,” or “I was only throwing the football, and all of a sudden, my back went out. And then I try to stretch it, and I have my wife rub it. And all of that didn’t work the following day. I couldn’t get out of bed and had to crawl to the bathroom.” Now that is when your attention is on.
[00:02:43] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah.
Dr. Alex Jimenez and Dr. Mario Ruja Explain What Sciatica Does To The Body.
[00:02:44] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Our attention is on sciatica. This is a big topic, Alex.
[00:02:48] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: This is a vast topic, and let me just kind of throw this out there where we are going to begin the process of breaking down sciatica by no means are we going to be able even to know the breadth and width as this is like saying you can take down a sequoia with one bite. It’s not going to happen, and we’re going to have to chisel away from it. And as we go in there, we’re going to go deep. Are we going to get nasty with the science, Mario?
[00:03:14] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: This is getting deep and nasty. Folks will have to strap on their seatbelts for this ride.
[00:03:21] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Absolutely. As we do that, we’re going to be able to kind of go deep into it. We’re going to touch on some subject matters, but follow us on this process because we’re going to be discussing real essential issues about sciatica that affects so many millions of people at any given point. I’d venture to say that one in every four people is suffering from chronic back pain, and half of those people are suffering from sciatica in some form or the other or some pain down the leg. So in that sense, we’re dealing with a huge issue that affects millions of patients and millions of people across the country with all different doctors and different types of protocols. And these protocols can be from really esoteric to invasive. And we all want to do it quickly, and we all want to do it a simple way. So I think modern medicine Mario has determined that we have to go basic and try everything before any surgical interventions.
[00:04:16] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I mean, it’s common sense, and I always used the car model as an example. Before you get a rebuilt transmission, why don’t you maintain it before you drop a new engine? Why don’t you change the oil and get a tune-up? Unfortunately, again, you mentioned the unbelievable impact of low back pain in our society. I believe I don’t know if I may be in the ballpark. It is the number two or three reasons for work injuries and is one of the biggest reasons for the military to get med boarded out of the military. I mean, this is a big issue that impacts people’s lives, and then you would get into chronic pain management, things like that. But again, if we look at the most critical solution in our life, how can we prevent it? Prevention is the natural utilization of therapeutic arts that decrease the misalignment in the spine. Again, that misalignment is that torque where your back is out of alignment and calibration, right? Which causes uneven wear and tear on the disc. Then the other one is constant compression of sitting down and repetitive motion. The other one is just the injuries from everyday sports activities. More and more young kids are getting injured in sports football, basketball, more intense pain, more torque, and you can see pro basketball players and football players, all of them suffer from sciatica.
[00:06:19] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. Here’s the cascade. The cascade starts with a decalibration of the pelvis or the hips, or some injury trauma, some space-occupying lesion, or something on this path. I’m going to go ahead and demonstrate here on our pathway, and we’re going to show a little bit of what is in the nerves.
[00:06:43] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I love this 3-D model you are showing here.
[00:06:43] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Thank you.
[00:06:44] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: This is good stuff.
The Sciatic Nerve
[00:06:46] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: This is the complete anatomy provided for us and what we can see is a three-dimensional aspect of how and why someone has sciatica. Now when you look at this, Mario, what’s your first take? Because for me, it says it’s a complicated structure when we’re looking at this. When you look at the back, where it comes out, you see this big old cable called the sciatic nerve, but you see so many proximal areas and so many regions that are getting weird.
[00:07:11] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That is a lot of moving parts, Alex.
[00:07:15] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes, it is. And you know what? One of the crazy things that I’m looking at here is the sacrum.
[00:07:20] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And that is the base.
[00:07:21] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s the foundation. The way the creator created us was that this is where energy transmits this bone right here. The sacrum, right? But little to the front of it. You have the sacral nerve roots that come out as they form out. You can see on this particular area; you can see the nerve roots coming out as they come in posterior aspect, you can kind of turn this around and we kind of get this little area here and as we rotate this thing, we can see the sciatic nerve as it comes out of what we call the sacral notch. That sacral notches right there is enormous.
[00:08:03] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That is crazy.
[00:08:04] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I know, right? So what happens is when you see it here, you can understand that this big ol’ nerve influences the entire creature. You take this thing out, and you have limited the creature’s ability to move. Please look at it as it comes out; you can look from the inferior border to the superior border. You can see why a woman is pregnant; you can determine why this baby could sit in this pelvic cavity here can cause a lot of damage to the sacral nerve.
[00:08:31] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Many of them suffer from back pain and sciatica.
[00:08:34] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: This is one of the reasons why right here that baby sits and dances in this whole area here. So when we look at this kind of stuff, we can make sense of all the presentations. As you hurt a nerve in one area, you can see that you would hurt as you would do something like this. And the nerve will hurt a distal or pull towards away from it. Once you hurt that region, our goal is to determine the nerve roots going down on that particular area. If this affects all the way down the leg, it will cause pain. Now, you can see in this specific region what goes on.
[00:09:18] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: This is it now. Now you see that this is what I like, and this is a creation. If you believe in miracles, you stop believing and just realize that you’re one walking. Here’s the sacral sacrum right here, the sacred bone, and that’s why it’s called sacrum because it’s sacred.
[00:09:42] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I didn’t know that. I learned about the scared bone, and it is the base of the spine.
[00:09:48] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: This is where, as you mentioned, this is where the birth comes out. This is where the next legacy is created. So here is the ilium. OK, so that’s your hip bone. You have two of them. There is symmetry in our bodies, and that’s how God created us in symmetrical synergy. Then right here are pubic surfaces, and then you’ve got the operators right there, and then here is that L5 disc, and this is the one where I would say probably about 80 percent of disc herniations happened right there. So if you want to take a wild guess, this is it right here.
Intervertebral Foramen
[00:10:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me hone in on that right there so I can bring that in a little bit better.
[00:10:42] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: This thing is dancing.
[00:10:43] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: As Dr. Ruja was explaining, he’s talking about in the disk space of the spine right here.
[00:10:51] Dr. Mario Ruja: Right, so see, that is where you have the IVF.
[00:11:00] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Intervertebral foramen.
[00:11:01] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: IVF. Interverebral foramen. There it is, and all that is like a fancy word for it. There’s a hole where the right everything comes out.
[00:11:06] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So here we start looking at the hole on the side, and as we look at it right there. You can see where the nerve roots come out right there.
[00:11:29] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So at that point, you see it here.
[00:11:35] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Exactly, and as you turn the model.
[00:11:38] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: OK, right there.
[00:11:41] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That is the nerve right there.
[00:11:43] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So this is where how they sit on top of each other right there. Then you can see it from underneath right in there. Now at this point, these nerves, like the fiber optics, are traveling down through these canals and openings and everything. So there are so many places, Alex, that they can be entrapped, compressed, and they can be twisted again. Remember, the big word for us and in our talks is inflammation.
Does Inflammation Causes Problems In The Body?
[00:12:23] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Inflammation yes.
[00:12:26] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Deep inflammation, yes. Now, these are all again if you’re looking like an electrician because I love how electricians work. You look at the fiber optics, and you have to trace it and find out where the issue is? Is it up here? Right here? Is it in the middle? Is it here in the canal? It is right there in that notch is the muscle compress.
[00:13:01] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh yeah, you can see it in the muscle compress.
[00:13:12] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: See where it’s pinched right there. That peraforma muscle is now critical. Again, that’s where you see a lot of times you need to release that muscle. Once it compresses, it just goes haywire right there.
[00:13:30] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, why do they call the peraforma muscle Mario?
[00:13:35] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Tell me, Alex.
[00:13:37] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Because it looks like a pear. When you take it, it’s a fat muscle when you look kind of flat here.
[00:13:43] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: And I visualize in the pear, Alex.
[00:13:44] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. Here is the top of the pear, and that’s the wide part of the pear.
[00:13:49] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That’s cute, Alex. I don’t know what kind of pear that is.
[00:13:52] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Exactly.
[00:13:52] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: But yeah, you’re right, it’s pear-shaped. Now I can see it.
[00:13:56] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: This is a crazy part. There’s a superior Escamilla right here in that area so that it can be trapped anywhere. As we look at this from the base point of view, you can see why people start having these symptoms.
[00:14:08] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, if we look at this pattern, we can also see an increased sedentary lifestyle, Alex. Can you see how all of these muscles are here? The glutes, gluteus minimus, Maximus, the hamstrings. Major squat muscles and the hips. Can you see all of these being deconditioned and compressing on a nerve?
The Lymphatic System
[00:14:40] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, let me show you this, Mario because I wanted to show you this. When I first started seeing this, I thought this as you begin noticing that you have the venous system, but here’s what people don’t know about the venous system. Next to it is the lymphatic system. Now let me remove these muscles here, and you’re going to see the intricacies of the green lines. These green lines are in the circulatory system.
[00:15:02] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Wow, the green lines are the lymphatic system.
[00:15:05] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The green is the lymphatic, and the red is arterial. When you start seeing red now, you can see that they have problems with their circulation when someone sits down a lot. And as you can see here, imagine sitting down all day on top of this thing? Can you see how the inflammation would happen in that region?
[00:15:25] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Alex, look at how much is happening in that pelvic area. I mean, this is like fiber optics just strapped, and this is like compress. Already, there is not that much space going on here, Alex. I mean, you’ve got nerves, arteries, veins, and lymph, all of those going through the same canal. So there is not a lot of what I call, you know, space and forgiveness. That’s why this radiating pain down the leg compresses that area that the flow down the leg is activated. That’s why your leg goes numb and your muscles to a large extent after a long time of having this problem. What happens, Alex, with a lot of my patients is they get muscle atrophy. You know, they gain muscle weakness, and that’s where your muscles shrink.
[00:16:40] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me show you the additional muscles here. You see, that’s why we train because all these muscles here are surrounding and covering up this area, and the muscle decalibrates.
[00:17:00] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Decalibrates.Is that like a fancy word for saying it just…
[00:17:05] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: De-conditions?
[00:17:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That flops down?
[00:17:08] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: For me, I like the word calibration because it is a fine-tuned structure. Philosophically speaking, they got a bump at this ball that follows them everywhere when you look at humans. This power unit, right? This throttling system, it’s the glutes. Some have it more significant than others, right? But here’s where we propel from; it is the source of power. It is the way the creature creates its anchor. If the hips are gone, the beast doesn’t survive. So when we look at this, and we look at someone who was an athletic person when they were young and all of a sudden they get this job where they sit in front of a computer, they don’t go out. What happens to them? They decalibrated like a car. It doesn’t get used, and before you know it, it starts sinking and becoming flattered, and eventually, the inner workings that we just came from really start grinding. So when there’s congestion, the lymphatic system is responsible for the circulation. But the lymphatic system, unlike the arterial and venous system, which works primarily with the heart pumping, is functional by motion. So when you sit down, you are not moving.
[00:18:16] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: You know what, Alex? It is the sacral occipital pump; when you’re talking about the CSF cerebral spinal fluid, I can tell you right now when that sacrum is not pumping back and forth when you’re walking, you know what happens? It’s stagnating to flow to your brain.
[00:18:36] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It does.
[00:18:37] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, all the way to your brain. Then the area that you talked about that I think is critical. You’ve got to keep the body moving. We are created as bipeds. We do not walk like gorillas who walk on all fours. I know sometimes you feel like one, but we’re not apes. That’s right; we’re not silverback apes. The thing is, we’re bipeds. So that means the whole body has to align and stand up. Alex, in every sport, I tell people I’m impressed with your biceps, but your core sucks. You know what? Your core determines your overall function. That is where you keep your body upright, and you create that calibration of your spine. Once that that lordosis, that curve into your back. Once that is lost, you’re degenerating; you’re aging. There it is, right there.
[00:19:41] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let’s go ahead and take a look at that right there. Yeah, that’s the lordosis you’re talking about in the spine.
The Lordosis
[00:19:56] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Can you draw the lordosis out?
[00:19:59] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Of course.
[00:20:01] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Wow, that is crazy, Alex.
[00:20:06] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That is crazy.
[00:20:10] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: OK, so let’s do the pink pen for pain on the lordosis.
[00:20:17] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That curve along with this curve makes a big difference. So what happens is you end up understanding that this sacrum or this glute area influences a vast area. What I’ve learned in my practice is that when you have a person with a sciatic issue, there are upper back issues, and there are shoulder issues now if the lower back has problems…
[00:20:53] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It throws everything off, and it’s like a domino effect.
[00:20:56] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. What do you think about when they tell you, Hey, the person only hurt their lower back, and this is a work-related job? And similarly, they say it’s only related to the back. Yet they come in with leg pain, arm pain, and it makes sense to us, but nobody wants to understand that.
[00:21:11] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, that’s because they don’t want to, Alex. That’s where they want to lie, and it’s a lie. Remember when your mama told you it is not OK to lie?
[00:21:34] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know what? Why don’t we just say for what it is? They’re lying. They understood why they don’t understand that the body is a biomechanical chain, and if it affects the hips, it starts affecting the lower back, which then affects the upper back. And everybody knows if you have a back that’s giving up, your shoulders will have issues. If you got shoulder problems, it is equally on the opposite side of the room; you’re going to have knee issues. So what happens is as we look at this dynamic model, we see that we can’t be telling a fib here.
The Trapezius
[00:22:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: The spine is one unit composed of many segments. OK, it’s not separate. So there is no way that you can have an injury to one part of the spine, and you can tell me 100 percent that it does not affect any other one. It’s impossible. I’m sorry, God didn’t create it. If you want to see it here, look at this ischium muscle as it goes all the way across. Look at this one. This one is amazing. I’m just going to do this. Here is here’s the muscle right here, trapezius. Now watch as it goes from here to where the shoulders are down, then go to the neck in the back of the neck.
[00:23:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me clear up the pen marks, OK?
[00:23:35] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Can you move the body down?
[00:23:38] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes, I can, and there you go.
[00:23:44] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So I want to show one example so you can see all the way to the base of the head.
[00:23:49] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: OK, I got you.
[00:23:52] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Alright.
[00:23:57] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, here’s what you want to show. I think what you’re trying to show is that you’re trying to show the negative muscles and see all the good stuff in there.
[00:24:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, but I want to show you just that top layer, the trapezius.
[00:24:10] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Oh, let’s go to the muscular portion.
[00:24:11] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So it goes all the way from the base. Can you zoom out so we can see the whole thing?
[00:24:16] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Sure can.
[00:24:18] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: OK, lift the model.
[00:24:20] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I wish I could.
[00:24:23] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Now here it is, and this is how dynamic this is. When people say, Oh, you only hurt your neck, but not your mid-back. Here it is. Trapezius right here goes from the base of the skull down the shoulders, right there, all the way down to the mid-back. OK, and this is probably like T10 T11, right? Somewhere around there, right by the middle and all the way across. So this whole area right there, that’s one muscle, and if you have an injury here in this area, this will affect all the way here then if you go in deeper into the second and third layer of the muscle.
[00:25:50] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me click here for you to see it.
[00:25:53] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Now it gets crazy.
[00:25:55] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: When we start removing muscular layers or increasing muscle layers, you start looking at all the functions.
[00:26:02] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Oh, look at that, the super spinadeus, And look at this right here. Vader scapula and from the shoulder all the way to the head is scalenus calculus.
[00:26:24] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: OK, so what we’re looking at here, we’re looking at the unbelievable body, but let’s go back to the area of concern.
[00:26:33] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: All right, you see how connected it is, Alex.
What Are The Causes of Sciatica?
[00:26:36] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Here’s the deal, OK? You and I know that the whole darn thing is connected, right? We can determine what is going on after dealing with the many patients we’ve seen over the years. And we’re like violin instructors. We touch the violin, and we make this body move. Our job is to understand when someone comes in and physically to see where this problem is. Find out where the issues are; there are tons of issues, and we haven’t even begun. We’re just having a general conversation about sciatica and where the issues are. What we don’t want is we don’t wish to surgical intervention at any early state unless it’s really necessary. Now what we’re looking at is when we see this, nobody wants that. So how do we fix this? So there are tons of ways to do that.
[00:27:26] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Can we go back to the slides of the causation for sciatica?
[00:27:34] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Absolutely. I’m going to take you back to the causation when you get over there in a second. The causation is right here, and we are looking at it.
[00:27:51] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: The first one is compression.
[00:27:52] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Compression of the disc.
[00:27:54] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Compression due to the lack of calibration balance within the system. So you have uneven compression and then a lot of sitting down; we talked about that, right? And then inflammation again, inflammatory process. We spoke last week about metabolic syndrome, inflammation. Inflammation affects the whole body and the disc bulging. Number two right there is disc bulging. That one again is due to what? The spine is out of calibration, out of alignment, putting uneven pressure, and it’s just like squeezing a balloon or a donut. That’s a classic example. You put pressure on a donut on one side, and it will crack, then you go from this bulge to worse herniation. Herniation and then fractures. Of course, if you have trauma DDD, that’s a funny thing. Degenerative disc disease.
Degenerative Disc Disease
[00:28:58] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes, early degenerative issues.
[00:29:00] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Right? And I love it because most people come into my clinic go, “Oh, I have degenerative disc diseases like I’m getting old,” and I say, “No. You had no maintenance on your back, and you’re not old. ” If you would have taken better care of your body, you wouldn’t have degeneration. They act as though this is normal; however, it is not normal; this is just a sign of the breakdown.
[00:29:23] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, the magnitude of either of us uncovering or discovering where a person has an issue. All of these things have ways that we can help it. What’s crazy about it is that we have to go against the grain in our methods because you would not think exercise would be a helpful tool right for this. However, exercise is one of the best things for we have to calibrate that pelvis if it’s appropriate. It’s a herniated disc, and it’s a bad one. We have to go ahead and surgically remove that; if not, we do anti-inflammatories, do we do natural methods, and get that body working and calibrating. Sometimes what happens is these people come in. These individuals are patients who come in and suddenly have a pain that just crept up on them over the last couple of weeks. Sometimes they have a slipped injury, a slipped disc, or even a vertebra that’s been fractured for years and now presents with the issues. Sometimes it’s a neurological presentation. Sometimes it’s a metabolic disorder like metabolic syndrome, and they have an inflammatory condition. What I’ve noticed, and I’m sure you’ve seen it too, is that these people who have sciatica live with this looming monster. It’s almost like a snake that lives in their pants, and when it bites them, it gets their whole leg. It disrupts people’s lives. Figuring out where the cause is is very important. So as we go over these things, I mean, it’s essential to go over the regions. I’ve even seen patients where they come in thinking it was sciatica. And sure enough, it’s sad, but it’s a tumor. And in that situation, we move on too quickly. I got to tell you, in the situations where we’ve had it, we’ve had great teamwork and resolved many issues for a lot of patients.
[00:31:06] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That’s the beauty of how we think, Alex. We think in terms of integration. So, just because you have a hammer, everything doesn’t look like a nail. We are chiropractors, but at the same time, we are physicians. And what that means is that we know about physiology, anatomy, neurology, all of that. So we can understand that the pain sensor is not the problem. The pain sciatica is not the problem. We look for the causation of the problem, Alex. And that is in many ways, the misalignment, the compression, the inflammation, the disc bulging again, bone spurs, and many times people will say, Well, I have bone spurs because I’m getting old. No, bone spurs are created because there is a misalignment and lack of calibration in your spine where the body is attempting to self-regulate, self align, and it’s called the wolf’s law. You know, its law is the same principle that deals with the fracture healing fracture where you have pressure, that’s where you have increased calcification. Alex, is that correct?
[00:32:22] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It’s the same thing when you work out; when you work out, you get calluses right because the body responds to stress by increasing and protecting the tissue. The same thing happens with the spine. Suppose it starts unloading improperly, then before you know it, the wolf’s law kicks in, the osteoclast start losing, which are the ones that take away bone, and the osteoblasts start winning. Then you have an increase of bone growth in a direction, usually in the direction of the force. So, in essence, the body tries to protect it, so you can imagine if someone’s going like in the leaning tower. Well, it’s on this side that the body protects it to prevent it from falling over. So, in essence, as we look at these degenerative diseases, we try to get them early on, and we try to mobilize. In most scenarios, we can help the individual by different methods and different techniques. And we use a lot of other methods and techniques to help individuals through this process.
Spinal Stenosis
[00:33:18] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I want to go through a couple of points. You know, we’re talking about spinal stenosis. Again, the start of spinal stenosis is the misalignment of your spine, which chiropractic has the beautiful art. This is the art and science of correcting that. So the more alignment, the more clarity, the more balance you have in your spine. The more maintenance you receive to your spine, the less spinal stenosis you will have later on in your life. Or again, spinal stenosis. You know, the other one that we’re looking at is degenerative disc disease or disc herniation. I believe that I look at the body in the 25+ years of my practice; the better maintenance you give your body, the fewer issues, and the less breakdown wear and tear you will have later on in your life. So I look at is that we are anti-aging doctors in terms of biomechanics, so we help the body maintain its optimal function for a more extended period. So that way, when you’re in your 60s and 70s, and 80s, you can walk by yourself without a cane, and you can function. You can do a squat. I love fitness calibration every time, you know. Danny is awesome. With PUSH, Danny is tremendous in terms of a fitness core. And this is where the synergy comes in. The more miles, the more wear and tear, the more pounding you put on your body. The more maintenance you need, the more recovery work. And too many people, Alex, have this idea like, Oh, my back hurts, I just need to squat more. I just need to do more weights. I just need to be in a gym, no. It’s like me telling you I don’t need count maintenance and tune-ups on my car. I just need to drive it more now. So the more miles you put on your bag, the more you squat, the more calibration you need. Why? Because eventually, your body is going to go out of alignment.
[00:35:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, as we look at disorders, like you said, spinal stenosis. There are many reasons we can have spinal stenosis, from a disc to just arthritic issues. But when we have an individual who suddenly has issues, OK, this is not a sudden, you know, kind of thing that the spinal stenosis doesn’t happen unless it’s a massive disc herniation that occurs in one moment. Yeah, but these things and what we’re talking about spinal stenosis, there are different reasons. And in the treatments are many methods are just, you know, microanatomy. There’s also a laminectomy which is to remove the pressure. But the bottom line is very little wrong with the nerve. The issue is compressive forces. So what do we have to do in the situation where there is a biomechanical imbalance in the pelvic girdle most of the time.
[00:36:20] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So it is structure impedes on the nerve.
[00:36:23] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes. And as we do that, we evaluate that there are certain things like age, obesity, or even less of a life of activity. What are other things, Mario?
What Are The Occupations That Cause Sciatica?
[00:36:33] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Sedentary lifestyle, repetitive occupational motion?
[00:36:36] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: What kind of occupations would have sciatica?
[00:36:40] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Truck drivers. Why? By sedentary vibration. Eight to ten hours by sitting down. Secretaries, I mean, you can go on and on, people working in banks and teachers even.
[00:36:57] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We have patients that go to the Southern Union railroad, the engineers, the vibration, the bouncing over 30 years of vibrating. Eventually, the bone activates the spine clouds, or you have spinal stenosis, and they have back disc issues, and they have degenerative diseases.
[00:37:14] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Athletes have a repetitive toque like a golfer. How many golfers do you know that have no back pain? None. How about baseball players?
[00:37:25] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: How about our buddy, Tiger Woods?
[00:37:27] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, what happened to him?
[00:37:28] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, what did people think? People thought he might have been having some issues with alcohol. Still, the reality is he’s taking medication after surgery, and suddenly, he’s driving, and he probably forgot to take medicine. You know, they took a pill and started to get addicted, and this is the issue. We got to figure out how to fix these issues calibrating. But I got to tell you; there are a lot of ways we can help people. The issue is that once we understand where the problem comes from, the plan of attack can take off. There are different issues and different types of diagnoses. We have here a little bit of a window where you can take a look at that. You can see that sciatica is a symptom. It’s a presentation of syndromes. It’s a pain down the leg, but there are tons of reasons.
[00:38:14] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Now the causation is right there, right?
[00:38:17] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, look at all of these things, and it is ridiculous.
[00:38:21] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Wow.
[00:38:22] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The one people think about a lot is peraforma syndrome, and that’s only one component. Then when that doesn’t work, your little stretches, you try to figure out what’s causing it could be tendinopathy, it could be bursitis. Look at all these issues when we go in here; when we look at these particular issues, we can look at other subsequent areas causing problems. You mentioned it before the four sets; this degeneration redevelops the quadrant is formoral area.
[00:38:48] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: So let’s make this simple. Otherwise, you know, people will listen to us and go; it’s a lot. It’s a lot, and this is like a fire hydrant, and I just have my mouth over it. Alex, this is what we got. Number one, it all comes down to foundation and function, right? If we go back on each of these things from, you know, four-set syndrome, this degeneration, ridiculous hip, you know, formoral impingement, quadrennial femoral, you know, abnormalities all of these. The root of all of these is the misalignment and lack of calibration of the neuromuscular system. I mean, when you go down to it, the majority, I’m not saying 100 percent, let’s not do that. Let’s not be silly tonight. No. The point is the majority, if we can do a better job for our community, if we can do a better job in terms of our athletes, is to create a maintenance calibration system for them, we would decrease a lot of these degenerative disc diseases and diagnoses, we would stop them before they blow up in their face.
Different Methods To Treat Sciatica
[00:40:19] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me ask you this. What kind of things in terms of our diagnostic abilities, what we use different methods to diagnose?
[00:40:26] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I love MRI.
[00:40:28] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: In terms of sciatica, X-rays are good, but MRIs can tell you what the problem is.
[00:40:34] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That’s it, and we’re talking about like a Tesla ten. I don’t know if they have it, and I think it’s sorry about it. I just got crazy tonight. Nah, they didn’t make it. We’re going to get some calls. Tesla, what?
[00:40:46] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We got a great radiologist, and they help us hone in on particular areas.
[00:40:54] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: They have a three-point-o or something?
A Relationship With Your Radiologist
[00:40:59] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The whole idea is a relationship with our radiologists. Our radiologists are our eyes and ears on the deep tissues. I can tell you that we do have the best radiologists working with us. We do. I mean, the city has some top-end radiologists people, and when we send them to them, they communicate with us and tell us where the problem is that from there we go at it from once we know where it’s at. We use cat scans. We use ultrasound. We use bone scans.
[00:41:29] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Why is it a question? OK, this is going to get a little crazy and a little nasty tonight. Why is it that most doctors, Alex order X-rays first? Why is it? I can never understand for myself. You know what I tried to go straight to the issue was to go to MRI. Why is it?
[00:41:51] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: The standard of care is many insurance carriers will want an X-ray first to see if it’s a degenerative bone structure to be able to bleed on that. But we all understand that the best possible option for actually assessing it is to kind of rule out some things. If you want to look at bone, you do a cat scan to do the soft tissues. Well, this is soft tissue. So then you do an MRI with contrast, and you can see the deep tissues and the separation and the inflammation for any prolonged issues occurring.
[00:42:21] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That’s why, to me, Alex, that makes sense if we’re looking at diagnosing disk and nerve issues, right? Why is it that we use an instrument many times and I see this and agree with you. All of the insurances are going in and saying, Hey, you need to do an X-ray first. We won’t let you do the MRI, do they? I’m like, but X-rays don’t show any soft tissues.
[00:42:46] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I think it’s a common thing. It’s almost like when you go to a dentist, you know, they scan all the teeth. It’s pretty easy to generalize. You know, there are times when the standard of care is into that today? For the low back, the standard of care is an X-ray as an initial entry point. So from there, I’ve learned, and I have gotten this lately, that most insurance carriers are very open to allowing the individual based on a presentation to do whatever it takes. They don’t stop. That’s a real beautiful change that’s happened since I’d say for the last five years; it’s a whole different game. So we get to see that we do nerve conduction and nerve testing to see the speed at which the nerve pulses. So we can find that AMG’s electromyography and see how the muscles are. But you don’t need to be doing that stuff for sciatica when you know the person is in severe pain. Now, if you want to prove it, that’s when you do the NCBI. Other than that, the person will not come in telling you that they have pain. Now sciatica because I call it the scourge because it just annoys you. It stops you from doing, you don’t sleep, you get to lay down, and the darn thing just activates. And there you got this electric current preventing you sleep. People come in with their eyes bloodshot and unable to enjoy their lives. This changes the quality, and we need to fix these things.
Does Sciatica Cause Inflammation?
[00:44:09] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It affects families. Alex, let’s get down to it. You know what? It affects your relationship with your spouse, with your children, at work. You know, you go to work, and you’re angry. Yes, you’re just mad at the world, and people are trying to figure out, like, what’s wrong, man? And it’s like, “You know what? I’m dealing with stuff.” And then that chronicity after a while, you’re like, “I don’t know what to do. I’m taking too many meds. I’m taking 800 milligrams every day for like five months.”
[00:44:39] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let’s give the people out there who may want some information a little bit of insight into the other options they have. Because what’s the name of the game here? What are sciatica and inflammation? It’s what it always has and always will be. So what we got to do is do what we can, and many people ask me, What are my options? Well, we have here a breakdown of certain things, and we’re going to discuss these things in real extensive detail over the next couple of months. And we’re going to hit this thing as we will be dealing with sciatica and vitamin C, D, calcium. We’re going deep all these things, you can take a screenshot of this, and you can say berberine. We got glucosamine, ACL, carnitine, alpha-lipoic acid, ashwagandha, soluble fiber, vitamin E, green tea, turmeric. A lot of these things have a lot to do with metabolic syndrome. But guess what? When you have metabolic syndrome, which is what?
[00:45:36] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Inflammation.
[00:45:37] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So what we’ve noticed, Mario, and correct me if you see something different.
Ashwagandha
[00:45:44] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: I love that word ashwagandha.
[00:45:47] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, I love it too.
[00:45:55] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It’s like, we’re going to meditate pretty soon, Alex.
[00:46:01] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: So, as we kind of look at these options, we really can discuss deep levels of biomedical science here, OK. Because everyone wants to know what we can do, but since we’re dealing with, let’s say, just on the angle of metabolic syndrome, again, we got to tie in another beast insulin. Insulin inflammation susceptibility. And here, we correlate. It may seem far away, but if you take a hundred people with metabolic syndrome, these people are susceptible to sciatica and the stuff we hold on to.
[00:46:46] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Let’s make it simple. How many people do you know with metabolic syndrome that don’t have back pain or sciatica? OK, let’s make it. Let’s make it simple.
[00:46:58] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We got to tie together, and this is where we do it. National in clinical practice, what we do is we make these connections. And the bottom line is we start changing people’s habits, you know, simple things like instead of having a pop or something else only option you should have as green tea. Green tea is an antioxidant anti-inflammatory. We start changing the metabolic processes, begin cutting the gut grease, and all that starts happening.
[00:47:27] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: OK. We’re mixing ashwagandha with gut grease. You know what? People are going to remember this forever, Alex.
[00:47:34] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: If you kind of see what we’re got, we’re saying it is complex. We can go down one rabbit hole and say we got the moment of truth or the thing that’s important. But the reality is that the low back causes neck pain. A lot of people will look at it and say, Why does that happen? Well, as Mario said, you know, God didn’t name it as neck pain. God didn’t call it lumbar spine. We named it the vertebral column. It’s the whole darn thing that is connected. From the moment you heal, strike your head feels the shockwave, right? So when we look at that, when we assess that, we can see that the body has a massive implication when some large nerve, late-deciding nerve, gets offset. So what we can do is first figure out, mitigate the issues, control them and come up with a treatment plan that works appropriately for the patients. So as we do these things, we will go over all those beautiful ideas that we have going on here. And I just wanted to let you know that we’re going to be discussing many more subject matters.
Vitamin D3
[00:48:35] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: There it is vitamin D3. That is why I love vitamin D3, and it’s everywhere.
[00:48:43] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Four hundred disorders. A 400 percent decrease in all risk mortality or times decreases disease mortality with vitamin D. This is like the magical thing? I mean, common sense. I mean, what’s our biggest organ, right? It’s the skin. So when we live in the sun city, right, what happens?
[00:49:07] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: We absorb the sun’s rays.
[00:49:09] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And that should be the healthiest.
[00:49:11] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Hey, I want to get crazy tonight. All right. Sun City vitamin D. We should be the healthiest on the planet.
[00:49:22] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s it. I mean, it’s essential. So what did we get called about a couple of decades ago? Mario, you remember that we were named the fattest sweaty town in the country?
[00:49:35] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: That angers me, and that should motivate and pump people up. That right there should be the wake-up call and the battle cry of El Paso and the whole region. Never again will you ever open your mouth and say that because we are the best.
Treatment Protocols
[00:50:00] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We are. We are very family-based and a location and a community, but we suffer from metabolic syndrome, which implicates issues. And one of them is sciatica. I got to tell you; there isn’t a day that half my patients coming in have sciatica, and you and I have been doing this between 25 and 30 years, right? So as we’ve been pounding and fixing these disorders. And you’ve got to tell you there are studies where we see that when doctors of all different sorts refer for a surgical consult, there’s a high tendency to have surgical, you know, focus when you go to a nonmusculoskeletal special like a physical therapist or chiropractor, we kind of filter out the situation when in our path or an available position to see the lower back pain. They throw it into the orthopedic surgeon, and only five to 10 percent of most studies show that those become surgical the ones we send. About 50 percent are surgical. That means we do a great job of filtering out before they have that issue. In other words, we fix the problem, and the ones we do refer to these.
[00:51:17] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yes, that’s right.
[00:51:19] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Game on. So we want to make sure you know that you know that we need that for your orthopedist out there. We require that option, that modality, but we don’t do that kind of procedure. But it’s necessary for terms of the common treatment protocol, you know, the mainstay of sciatica.
[00:51:38] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: It’s gabapentin. Just adding on to that, we refer to real cases, you know? When someone comes in, they need it. It’s not like, Oh, you know what? We’re going to waste people’s time. They need it. Because again, the new model now for back problems and especially sciatica is noninvasive. OK, noninvasive care first for at least two to three months.
[00:52:10] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, you know, I’m on my point of view on those guidelines. You know, every person is different.
[00:52:17] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah. ODG guidelines, Alex.
[00:52:21] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And what happens is that you can oversee the treatment protocols when we look at these dynamics.
[00:52:31] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Yeah, there it is. The treatment protocols. You know, I look at treatment. Chiropractic care, a lifestyle change. Metabolic syndrome, we’re looking at physical therapy; we need everyone on board. Acupuncture, drugs again. Medication for pain. Anti-inflammatory muscle relaxers. Nutraceuticals, herbals, steroid injections. Yeah, those are what we call lying like the second you, even with a lot of the patients, it’s after conservative care by the time they get to that phase. And then, of course, you have surgery, surgical procedures. So yeah, you must go with our patients. We go from noninvasive to invasive care.
[00:53:36] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: These procedures are the ones we do.
[00:53:47] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Now with those. And that’s a foam roller right at the storm rolling, that means releasing the goods, the pure performance right there. And again, a lot of our viewers will think, hold on. I can’t even walk, and I can’t do that. But again, this is the secondary phase, Alex. This is the second phase. Furthermore, we’re not getting people out, and all of a sudden, they can’t walk in there. They’re, you know, doing box jumps. No, this is the secondary self first care correct release the pressure brake and the pain pattern and then stabilize and correct the muscle imbalance. So those are things because I think a lot of times, you know, many people ask me like, “Oh, you know what? I want to go work out.” I’m going on like, Hey, slow down, superstar, let’s not workout. You know, let’s not work out. Let’s correct the problem. Calibrate your back. Then you work out, and then you do a process of what I call periodicity. That means you scale it. You got to crawl before you walk and walk before you run. So let’s not be superheroes, and a lot of people just aren’t patient.
[00:55:08] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I agree with you.
[00:55:09] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: They’re not patient. They want things now. You know this has been created. This sciatica and back problems have been created for years. No maintenance for like 10 20 years. And they expect to walk into the office and, in one visit, do jumping jacks. You know what? Sorry but it’s not going to happen. So that’s where people want again. We do our best, but we don’t look for quick fixes. If you wish for the symptoms to go away but are not corrected, then you’re going to deal with the problem. That’s going to be lingering for years and years, and it’s going to get worse, you know, and those pain sensors. This is what’s so important. God created a body such as such a miraculous system, and we can’t even duplicate this. The most potent technology developed to wear the sensors, the awareness, proprioception within our body, and pain is effective. I often tell people, don’t block the pain because it is healthy because it tells you to stop. That pain is that red light on your dash that says, don’t drive the car, don’t park it, and fix it. Please don’t unplug the light and keep driving it. And this is where our society and our, you know, immediate care. I want things now. I can’t wait. Just like fitness, you know, people want to get fit in like like a week.
[00:56:47] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Like, come on, it’s not going to happen.
Conclusion
[00:56:50] Dr. Mario Ruja DC*: Same thing with your health. It takes time, and you have to get the proper diagnosis. You know, the intense lab work, the genomics, the inflammatory. I mean, this is like I tell people, you’ve got to invest in your health or your sickness. Either way, you’re going to spend the money, either way, but once, you’re going to enjoy the fruits of that investment. The other one, you’re just going to drag. So the process of diagnostics from MRI’s, the process of diagnostics to look at metabolic syndrome, to look at your inflammatory process, that’s an investment. And then with those tools with that information, you got to have created baselines, Alex. If you don’t know where you’re at, you don’t know where you’re going. Now that’s what I would say is I want to motivate and empower people to invest in that process because it’s not an overnight thing and people want it. I tell them that they have got to understand. Be disciplined, be relentless and see the results for life instead of patching up your health.
[00:58:15] Dr.Alex Jimenez DC*: This is very dear and near to all of us here because sciatica affects so many individuals. We’re going to be discussing all these issues one section at a time. We’re going to bring an explanation. We’re going to give you an answer. We’re going to provide you with options. We’re going to provide you with treatments. We’re going to come up with a way that we’re going to find the best possible treatment protocol for you. And if not, we’re going to give you at least a basis to ask your doctors exactly what the best approach is, and you’re going to at least know the different directions you can take because we must understand this disorder. It may be simple to many people, but it debilitates you. You integrate way when you have it. We’re going to bring this to you. If you ever want to ask us personal questions and call us personally, Mario makes himself available 24-7 via phone number (915)494-4468. Always has been, and you get called all the time as he is right now. My phone number is(915)850-0900. And here we have, Mario, and I want to thank you all for allowing us to go over these things. This is also Mario’s website at: rujahealth.com. It’s easy, and it’s a fantastic site. We got me over here. This is my address and my phone, and then there’s Daniel Alvarado, where he works from the PUSH Fitness center. So we welcome you guys to see what’s cooking here and seeing what’s happening, and we wish you the best of everything that’s happening. So as we go through that. Mario, it’s been a blessing, brother and I look forward to going over more details with you in the next couple of days, and we will start recording more and more as time goes on. God bless.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez and PUSH Fitness owner, Daniel Alvarado discuss how PUSH was created and demonstrate how the right motivation can help people achieve their goals as well as, improving their overall health and wellness.
Discussion
Dr. Alex Jimenez and PUSH Fitness owner, Daniel Alvarado introduce today’s podcast.
[00:00:01] Daniel Alvarado: You know what keeps them moving and growing and living? Tell me. It is another catfish or that predator. So we never have predators in our lives. We stay stuck, and we don’t progress anything. So every time we ask God to take away the stress or God take away this issue. We’re asking God to make us weaker, not stronger. OK. Because instead of asking like, “Hey God? Make me more creative. Make me more passionate, make me more patient.” We ask for, hey, take away this, but then we still want everything else that comes along with it. How does that work? It’s not easy.
[00:00:41] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I don’t know. I mean, if you think about it’s from the first time we’re born. It’s not easy. You got to be one in a trillion sperm, really, and only God is very clear that if you don’t get to that egg first, you’re done. So from the moment where we’re given a chance, we’re on the point of destruction from the beginning. Exactly. So, in essence, why did that sperm get to that egg? So you can pass and fight through it.
[00:01:19] Daniel Alvarado: All right, so then you think of everything else as far as how people complain, how people say, you know, I want more money, I want this, but they don’t look at everybody’s backstory, the backend and the behind the curtains. They think, “Oh man, Jimenez, you are a doctor?” You don’t know how many times you’ve lost and rebuilt your practice or if you’re a gym owner and you haven’t made it. You don’t know how often you have to go in at 4:00 in the morning to get a workout in because you have to train people all day long to ensure that this business stays afloat. You know, people don’t see the back. You see, they’re quick to say, Oh, must be easy. No, it’s not easy until you step into the person’s shoes because you’re the one that has to sign the checks. You’re the one that has to stay up at night and figure out payroll. You’re the one that has to be creative and figure out how you’re going to make ends meet. You are the one that constantly has to be on it. You know, as much as you want to kick back and say whatever and do this, and I would love to work out four or five hours a day. That’s my passion and your passion.
[00:02:23] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It’s my passion too.
[00:02:24] Daniel Alvarado: And can we? No, right. What do we have to do? Do we have to be meticulous? We have to be disciplined and ensure we have a proper order to stay on top of the schedule. Yes or no? Absolutely. Exactly. You know, so I’m saying at the end of the day that if you don’t have something chasing you, I mean, you become fat and dormant and become lazy.
[00:02:45] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I think nature is designed to eliminate you. Alex would say, you know, it’s survival, the fittest limiting the species or whatever he’d call it when he’s in biochemistry. You see, I got to tell you it’s not easy to be a business owner. It’s not. It’s not easy when you have no sleep. Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve put the time in from early hours, and you here at 4:30 in the morning and here what time it is? Now you’re here, and we’re here sharing some stories. You know, it’s one of those things where it’s going to be nonstop all our lives. But here’s the thing if you don’t do it, it doesn’t stimulate you to become good at what you do, right? You become lethargic. Everything goes bad. You slowly begin the process of ceasing to exist.
[00:03:36] Daniel Alvarado: Right. So we all need rest to rejuvenate. Get creative. It’s scientifically proven. You need that to reset. You have to. Otherwise, you burn out. Right? But after how many days of rest, one or two where you get this disconnect spastic. Then afterward, you are like, “Alright, cool. I rested enough.” So you don’t stay stuck there.
[00:04:04] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: No, and I pray for vacation, right? And when I get it, after about three days, I’m like, OK, all right. I’m done.
[00:04:10] Daniel Alvarado: Let’s go.
[00:04:11] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, OK, what I’m going to break. What am I going to do? That’s how we are.
[00:04:15] Daniel Alvarado: Exactly. But that’s what makes you so successful.
[00:04:17] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. Well, it drives us, and it drives us to create who we are. And it also gives us a vision as to what we’re going to do. When we start this podcast, you know, Daniel, we want to get or tell the people a bit of the story of what you do and tell them about, you know, where you’ve been and what’s been happening with you. OK. So for me, it’s very important to share with the people what is happening. I’ve always been one to say, you know, I see how hard you work, and I see how much effort you put into things. But I’d like to know a bit of you as to what made you and what kind of makes you click a little bit. When I discuss these things, I want to ask you what made you begin PUSH? What made you start this massive organization?
How PUSH Fitness Started
PUSH Fitness owner, Daniel Alvarado explains how PUSH started.
[00:05:16] Daniel Alvarado: I want to reach the masses of people and help people. So in all reality, my sister, my brother-in-law, my brother, we’ve all come from platforms as far as I’m speaking, preaching, singing, whatever it is. I was always kind of the black sheep. And I mean it in a good way because I wasn’t trained differently. I just was very rebellious. That makes any sense. I wanted to create my own. So if someone is going right, I go left. If the people go right, I go left. I was always trying to find a different way, and I was stubborn enough to become the most successful by the end. But that’s what allowed me to create this place to reach the masses of people and have my platform of change in people’s lives.
[00:06:14] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me ask you when you first started PUSH; what was your reason you started it out? You were always into fitness ever since I’ve known you; you’ve always been into a deep understanding. You see, I love sharing that story with people about when I first met you; you were driven. I mean, you were hunting for knowledge. You were trying to figure out what it was that made people tick, and you wanted to teach people… A little cocky, I’d say. But being 18 years old, I mean, who isn’t right at that age? You haven’t been thumped in the head a couple of times. But you did, and you shared it with people, and you did that. But what made you? What drove you? Because I got to tell you, I’m a big believer, Daniel, about when you evaluate families, I see how hard your dad works. I see how your mom’s incredible in terms of what she does. She wins these CrossFit competitions just on meer drive. You have to turn off the lights to get her off the wall because she keeps on going, right? I mean, what is it that what do you feel drove you and what started the whole philosophy of trying to help people out?
[00:07:24] Daniel Alvarado: I mean, you put in my parent’s work ethic; they just never stop. They still don’t stop and try to move forward despite what life throws at them, and they’re successful in their way. They never stop working towards their marriage, towards their love, towards serving each other. They showed me that we always have to help people, and they serve each other. They serve at the church, and they serve wherever they go. No matter where my dad is, he’s always trying to help. It doesn’t matter. You try to take out your trash can and table; whatever it is, he will help. But that’s where I learned it from him. You don’t just go anywhere and just be wherever you go. You always serve. And that’s my interfaith mentality. You know, it’s biblical. Wherever you are, we are supposed to serve people as husbands and wives. We’re supposed to serve each other. That’s what makes us so successful. You know, you look at Jesus in the Bible, and what do you do? You serve people. He helped people. Not the norm. The most unorthodox, nonreligious people. You know, all the people there that needed the most help, not the most religious. And I think that’s what I love to do. I love helping the people that need the most help. The unconventional. Not the people that are all ready to let go. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I do love helping them. But I guess I like helping the unorthodox.
[00:09:08] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. You know what, when you mentioned that about your dad, one of the things I noticed is that I came here to work out at around six o’clock in the morning and it was freezing outside, literally freezing. You had a flat tire. Your dad was lifting in the car by himself to get that tire up. Yeah, it was crazy. By the time I got there, I was like, Is this guy working on it? There was no jack, and he was picking up the car himself. He’s pushing that thing up and lifting the vehicle to fit the tire on. I was like; You got to be kidding me. You didn’t even know until I told you, and you said, “Man, my dad never asked for help.”, you know, he does it. That’s one of the things you said, and that’s who we are. We are our parents. We eventually become our parents to some extent, and that’s very much how you are. Your philosophies have guided the PUSH fitness entourage, and the people who come here have been like extreme athletes. Tell me a bit of that in terms of what drove you to pick athleticism as your way of serving.
[00:10:11] Daniel Alvarado: I think I’ve seen the potential of what people can be pushed to if you believe in them. Often, people will, you know, people do believe in themselves, but it’s amazing what you see people become or individuals or athletes. When you say, Hey, I believe you. Someone that is not your mom, not your dad, because it’s kind of expected. You know, not that they have to tell you that, but you know, it’s kind of sometimes expected. You’re right. Yes, exactly. But then you have this stranger saying, I believe you genuinely wholeheartedly, and it brings out that much more in you. I know that’s how I was, and I still remember various times where you tapped me on the shoulder and said, you know. What are you doing? You can, and I’m very different; I don’t need someone to preach to me. It might get going, and that gets you going to move on to the next level of the mountain. And that’s what I love seeing as a potential that you could bring down in all individuals.
[00:11:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: When you see it, pretty much you’ve been able to see everyone crack. What is it you look for when you see them kind of hit that wall when you start working with an individual with a specific set, whatever sport they’re in, or whatever their dreams are? Weight loss or whatever it is. What is it you look for?
[00:11:50] Daniel Alvarado: To see the reason why they’re quitting. Are they genuinely tired, or have they been babied so much by society that they don’t know how to push for themselves anymore? It’s a sensitive society nowadays; you can’t push kids because they get their feelings hurt or feel this way or that way. And sometimes it’s like you got to wake your butt up; if not, you will not make it in this life. Nothing comes easy, and I think we’re expecting things to become easy because we’re, you know, microwave generation, where everything wants to be done so quickly. So I look for the reason as to why they’re quitting. This is genuinely why they are tired, and are they going to throw up? All right. But you remember firsthand that when I worked out with you, I went to the restroom and threw up. I came right back. Why? Because it’s what you build with that person that respect, you know, why would you want someone who is an equivalent you when he gets hard, you know?
[00:12:59] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah, exactly right.
[00:13:00] Daniel Alvarado: How are you going to count on them? How do you depend on them? When it gets tough, they are going to jump off the wagon; that’s it. You are left alone.
The Right Motivation
PUSH Fitness owner, Daniel Alvarado explains to Dr. Alex Jimenez how the right motivation can influence not only kids but adults as well.
[00:13:09] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know you’re given responsibility. A huge one with a lot of the El Paso kids in whatever sports they do and whatever the sport, whether it be agility, sport-based or just some sort of sport-based system where they’re just kind of, you know, let’s say, hockey or even things like tennis or golf. But they all have a moment of reaching within. I love how you do that in terms of going ahead and seeing the depths of what is wrong with them, and you can connect with them like no other. I’ve noticed that every single time with my kids, too, when you train them. Did you ask why? So really, at that point, you know, no one cares what you know, they care that you care and that caring allows them to open up, huh?
[00:13:55] Daniel Alvarado: Right? Yeah, it does. You know, it makes them feel like, you know, I do have it in me. I need a quit babying in myself. And I need to get up and get after this because no one will give it to me, and I got to get up after it and work for it. Period.
[00:14:11] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I would tell my daughter when they would come in and say, “You know what? I’m not coming in, you know, I’m not going today.” And I said, All right, well, let me call Daniel. “No!” Now they sense the obligation and trust you have put into their hearts like no other? Because that’s what they want. They want someone to believe in them.
[00:14:35] Daniel Alvarado: Exactly, to push them.
[00:14:37] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s why the push to PUSH, you know, there’s another way there’s the adage the push. You know, these are vital points. Do you have to deal with the mind-stuff while working with them? How do you work on developing a child’s mind or working them through their mental impediments or their mental kind of dynamics to make them better of who they are? If that makes sense.
[00:15:04] Daniel Alvarado: You had to build a foundation with them. First, you had to build trust with them. You can just go in and yell at them, Hey, let’s go. Move your butt! You know, you can’t do that. You have to build a relationship first, have them trust you, and understand why you’re pushing them. And then when they’re at the brink of giving up, and you yell at them, and they know why you’re screaming at them. A good parent after they spank them and ground them. They’ll tell them the reason why they did that. But they don’t stop loving them. They appreciate it because they know they’re wrong. Right? It’s the same concept here. Obviously, I yell at them after they know, like, hey yeah, I was sulking, and you start feeling sorry for myself and get after it, right?
[00:15:53] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, from my own experience with what you did. You see, you have a lot of moms watching you train their kids. Moms are sharp. There’s nothing more intelligent than a mother in this world. And they intuitively, they understand, and they feel the depths of the change in the child. Right? So when they see the depths of the difference in the child, they trust you. And this is in mass because I have like a whole wall of families, moms, dads. They bring their kids no matter what. Tired, cold, sleet, rain, snow. They bring their kids here to train with you and your entire crew with the philosophies of pushing to those limits. You know, how does that feel when you see those kids excel?
[00:16:45] Daniel Alvarado: I feel proud. I’m pretty much over the moon because you see the hard work you took to instill that time into them and make sure their full potential came out. So it’s rewarding, and it’s inexplicable.
[00:17:03] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me ask you this. You’re not young, and you’re in your 30s, which is a very young age. However, you’ve lived long enough to see some of these kids go on in to do their thing. Tell me how that feels in terms of you watching them develop in terms of their they’re who they are, and what they develop because of the foundation, or at least influenced by the foundation of just don’t give up and keep on pushing through it. How does it feel? What do you think?
[00:17:36] Daniel Alvarado: In a lot of sense, a lot of pride, because you can see what they could have been in there, what they couldn’t have been in times. Some kids do come from poor extremities. And so to see them excel believing themselves, go to college, get a successful job, and be something of a higher profession that otherwise they thought they couldn’t build or settle for less and not letting them settle for less is amazing. That’s why I keep doing what I’m doing.
[00:18:17] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Do these kids keep calling you and talking to you personally?
[00:18:21] Daniel Alvarado: Yeah, they do. They still keep up with me as far as what they’re doing, how they’re doing. They’ll come in and work out. So, you know, to share with me everything. It’s fun. You build that long-lasting relationship.
[00:18:35] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: If you could come up with a couple of words indicating what makes PUSH unique and you can look deep inside your heart and figure out what it would be a word to get an obituary being read about you. What would they say about PUSH and you, huh? Would you want them to say?
[00:18:55] Daniel Alvarado: Honestly, that they had somebody other than their parents believe in them.
[00:19:03] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s amazing. That’s a considerable component of everything that’s going on. When do you think someone actually should be coming out to this place and enjoying the kind of lifestyle that this place, you know, helps enhance their lives with? When is that time?
[00:19:21] Daniel Alvarado: Whenever. Whenever you want to be a better version of yourself.
[00:19:25] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: What do you think people sometimes think about, you know, why shouldn’t they come in? What should not be an impediment of them coming in here?
[00:19:35] Daniel Alvarado: Their image. They can’t do it, that they’re not like, you know, they’re obese, having problems, low back problems, and looking foolish. You know, the whole thing is that in the day, we’ve all looked foolish to an extent or another. But the point is if I always assumed what others thought and paid attention to how I felt this was for members and not being good enough, then I wouldn’t be where I’m at.
[00:20:03] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I tell you, I’ve learned a lot from you, and if anything, my kids have learned a lot from you by just your persistence. You know, I can honestly tell you that my son is better as an athlete because of your relationship with you. But let me ask you, what kind of physical and emotional changes have you watched your clients attain their goals?
[00:20:34] Daniel Alvarado: Hearing people say. “He saved me from diabetic medications.” We hear people say like I would have died, been in this obese state, and you saved my life. And that’s how do you not get emotional with things like that? How do you not get emotional and people saying, like, you know, I thought I couldn’t walk or had this muscle imbalance, or how do you say where I have this one client that couldn’t build muscle? I can’t remember the terminology, but the fact that she can build muscle now, where the doctor told her she wouldn’t be able to squat a bar, and now she’s squatting over one hundred and thirty-five pounds, that’s phenomenal. How does that not keep you motivated to get up every day when you don’t feel like getting up? You know, and I’ll repeat it, in King David’s words. You know when you had to encourage yourself because somebody is not always there to inspire you. So you do have to encourage yourself so you can be the best or somebody else that needs it more than you. Ultimately, someone has more complicated than you, and you can always help somebody under you.
Conclusion
Dr. Alex Jimenez recaps today’s podcast.
[00:21:52] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, Daniel, you said it is very short and essential keywords. You know, we appreciate you. We’re here at the push fitness center. You know you got some information there that you can use to find Mr. Alvarado. The PUSH fitness center is a monster center with many people who care and change people’s lives. Suppose you guys have any questions, comments, or ideas about what we do for people. Let us know, and we’re here to serve as Daniel is. Thank you very much, brother, and I appreciate everything you’ve done. And God bless, brother.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez DC, Health Coaches Adriana Caceres and Faith Arciniega, Massage Therapist Amparo Armendáriz-Pérez, and Clinical Nutritionist Ana Paola Rodriguez Arciniega discuss today what they do and offer with Functional Medicine.
Discussion
Dr. Alex Jimenez introduces his guests.
[01:00:11] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Welcome, guys. We’re here talking today about what we do. Today is a special day. It’s my father’s birthday, Alberto Jimenez. Alberto Augusto Jimenez. He is an immigrant from Colombia who gave me my knowledge. My amazing father. So happy birthday, dad. We’re going to be talking today is we’re going to be talking about what we do. We have a group of wonderful individuals here. We have five individuals. We have a whole lot more people in the background. So what we’re doing today is we’re beginning a process of notifying ourselves of a change that is going on. We’re going to be talking about nutrition, wellness, exercise, what we do in the office, how we do a little bit different techniques within the office, and how we compare and contrast to other services and let people understand what we do as we do change. So today, we’re in a new podcast room where we left the Push Fitness Center, which is now going to be another big, fantastic thing. So as they do the construction, we moved our podcast here. So you’re going to notice that we’re going to be communicating from this particular podcast. Still, we’re so connected to our Push counterparts and our Push Fitness centers and Daniel Alvarado, and we’ll be making that happen as it starts coming up. So today, we’re going to be talking about nutrition. I have Ana Paola Rodriguiez Arciniega here, so say hello there. We have Faith Arciniega. We have Adriana Caceres, and we have Amparo Armendáriz-Pérez as a massage therapist there. So we are going to be talking about different things. So each one of us has different specialties. So I’m going to start with some of the unique things we’re doing in our office, such as the types of treatments we do. We deal with a lot of inflammation, many injuries, a lot of trauma, and many soft tissue injuries. But you can’t get away from soft tissue injuries without discussing inflammation. So at the basis of inflammation, what we do is we associate, collaborate, find out the coincidence of inflammation to injuries, and we deal with the true causation of inflammation and come up with treating protocols and health care plans that affect people and their disorders. So many people come to us with a back injury or a neck injury after, let’s say, a motor vehicle accident, a car accident, or a work-related accident. But they may also have, you know, subclinical issues of inflammation that are just looming and then aggravate the direct trauma that’s going on. So what we’re going to do is introduce our team here one at a time so we can see what’s going on. And we’re going to start with Ana Paola Rodriguez Arciniega. Ana, how are you doing?
[01:02:57] Ana Paola: I am doing fine, and how are you doing?
[01:03:00] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Good, can you hear us OK over there?
[01:03:02] Ana Paola: Yes, I can hear you, OK.
[01:03:04] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Excellent. Tell us a bit of what you do, and we actually because you work hand-in-hand with us all here, and you are our virtual eye in the sky for nutrition at this point. But the nutrition that you deal with works a little bit with functional medicine. Tell us what you do and how we integrate that particular type of practice in our office.
Ana Paola Rodriguez Arciniega
Clinical Nutritionist Ana Paola Rodriguez Arciniega introduces herself and talks about what she does.
[01:03:23] Ana Paola: OK, so I am the head nutritionist, and basically, what I do is I take care of their nutritional assessment. But as you said before, we try to look for the root causes, and this allows us to create a more integral treatment plan for our patients, so that is focusing a little bit more on finding what is the root cause of the inflammation because it is related to injuries, accident, and stress, and to maybe delay the recovery part of our patients. So this is what we are trying to do to get like a fast track recovery for our patients for nutrition because it has to do with that.
[01:04:09] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes. And then? Don’t worry.
[01:04:17] Ana Paola: OK, I’m here.
[01:04:18] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: It’s all technology. Just keep on going and telling me. We’ll figure it out as we go.
[01:04:22] Ana Paola: So what we always start doing is very simple. I try to focus on what is going on with my patient physically, which has a lot to do with the body composition of my patient. So I find that that is the principle, not the principle, but the first step could do it that way. So we try to integrate this body composition analysis with the Inbody 770 machine that we use. And that way, we can correlate all the body composition, either a fat mass percentage or BMI or muscle mass or lean body mass, that our patient has and try to associate with injuries or correlated with inflammation. And it is often, very often, or all of the time, that we find a direct correlation with inflammation or this type of injury. Specifically, talking about intracellular and extracellular water is one of the most exciting starting with my patients. But the thing about nutritional assessment is that even if it’s like separated into different parts, it kind of overlaps within each other, and that is like the thing that has in common with functional medicine, functional nutrition, then trying to treat your patient as a holistic, like a whole person and try to integrate the nutritional part of it, the fast recovery of an injury, the massage therapist and of course, all the wellness part of their recovery that has to do with our health coaches. So mostly, what I think that I do right here is that I perform for that. I am part of a team that integrates like a holistic care plan for patients.
Adriana Caceres
Health Coach Adriana Caceres introduces herself and explains what she does.
[01:06:28] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well said. That is very, very good. I have to tell you there is no separating inflammation, nutrition, and injuries that there’s no way. So as we deal with it, we can learn about it. It’s almost like saying exercising and not talking nutrition. We have to deal with nutritional components. Now, specifically that we are talking about exercise. Adrianna, here, she’s our specialist and our expert on exercise physiology. She works with nutrition. She has extensive experience of working with clients online and in video as well as in your home. So she gets in there and exercises with you as she does her thing. Adriana, tell us a bit of your experience and what you do and what you offer these particular dynamics with our team here.
[01:07:14] Adriana Caceres: Sure. Well, my name is Adriana Caceres, and I’m your health coach, fitness trainer, and of course, exercise specialist. And as Ana was saying, nutrition and exercise go hand in hand. Nutrition is the base, but exercise gives you the mobility and gives you that range of mobility that you need to live a proper and, well, life until you know when you age. So definitely, it’s the base for a lot of recovery for injuries. The stretching is super important, and we use that a lot here to stretch our patients and make them do their small stretching so they can grow their range of mobility and have a better life in their daily life, their daily style. Right now, I work online a lot. So since COVID started, we started working out online with our patients and clients, and it’s different. But at the same time is super fun. The difference between going to an in-person exercise session and doing an online session is that you don’t have the time. We always hear excuses like; I can’t make it. I don’t have the time. I’m too busy. I know that I’m in pain, but I just think it’s too far. So the online cuts all those excuses. I mean, you’re doing that from the comfort of your home. You are just opening your TV or your computer, laptop, or tablet and connecting to a session. It’s on your time. So that helps a lot. The second excuse we always hear is if we are parents who watch our kids, what will I do? There’s no daycare, and this is just the same thing. It’s at your home, so you can even involve your family in this new and different lifestyle. Usually, when we have somebody who is overweight, it is a family. It’s the household. Because of course, it’s the same poor nutrition that they have or bad nutrition that they have and the same habits. So starting with the workouts online helps you realize, or your household realize that it’s a group thing, it’s a whole lifestyle, and you want to be the role model for your kids. You always want the best for your kids, so you want to be the role model for them. Normally they will. If you’re overweight or have a little extra pounds on, your kids usually will have the same habits. And of course, we’ll tend to be with the same kind of overweight that you have. So this helps them see a life change experience and get involved in this new experience.
[01:10:12] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, now that you mention that, you know, it’s essential to be the change that you expect in the world. I think Gandhi or something that says, might that be the change you want to see? Right. So the thing is, when you go purchase foods or exercise in front of your kids and see what you do, this is who they will become and what do we want for our children? We want the best. Our legacy is our family sometimes or our friends. And when you have family, they’re watching you. They learn they observe and appreciate mom, you know, wiggling around the living room and dealing with it. Everyone’s got memories of their parents exercising or doing something. And then, you know what happens, later on, we end up becoming our parents? Right. So if we have good habits, we eventually will become habits. I have become my father, and it’s the truth. The reality is in my son, and I listen to him. He doesn’t realize it, but he says everything I used to say. So it’s a continuous change. So if you’ve got nutrition and exercise, which seems to be one of the most extraordinary kinds of collaborative associative and treatment protocols, you can’t separate exercise from recovery. So Parkinson’s… exercise, Alzheimer’s… exercise, diabetes… exercise, brain disorder… exercise, health issues… exercise is such an essential component of fitness that by not doing it and not being part of it, you’re going to minimize the ability to return to an optimal configuration. Now, whether you like it or not, exercising mobility is one of the most important key factors. I realize that when you start working on so many patients over the years, you kind of start kind of seeing the intent of God. Right. So the intent of God is mobility, and he gives you tons of joints. I mean, why does he give you so many joints so we can wiggle, OK? To move, right? So using that and integrating the brain and the function of the brain with your body moving and pumping, and blood does heal a lot of issues and should be part of most treatment protocols. Even if exercise doesn’t look like, let’s say, a Zumba class, maybe it’s just wiggling around in a chair or doing certain things. We can do it for a lot of people. People think that I’ve seen from, you know, a nine-month literally about to have a baby, women doing CrossFit, and the baby is born fine. The body is designed to handle certain things too. Older adults about 100 years old, exercising. And children, they love to exercise. So it’s an essential component. So yes, that is what you do, Adriana, and we integrate that in the office, and we look or minimize the excuses to do that, so that’s very important. So do you also do nutrition a little bit?
[01:13:06] Adriana Caceres: Yes, I do. I’m a nutrition consultant, so I do help a lot with that part. As I said, it goes hand in hand, definitely to have a higher health span. You want to have a healthy habit, so one thing is lifespan, and one thing is healthspan, and lifespan comes out of years we’re going to live. Yes, eventually, we’ll die, and then our health span is how we want to live them. Are we going to leave them healthy our last ten years? Are we going to be able to walk? Are we going to able to say, are we going to be able to get out of a bathtub? So that’s what you want to have, and that’s what we don’t think about when we say, Oh, you know what? I know what I’m doing, and I don’t think exercising is for me. Everybody has a fitness level, and everybody has a way. And the trick for this is to find what you want to do. And what we do here is a lot of that we build up people and save injury, save from injuries and, you know, prolong their life and prolong how they live, their life, their daily activities.
Amparo Armendáriz-Pérez
Massage Therapist Amparo Armendáriz-Pérez introduces herself and talks about what she does.
[01:14:15] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, it’s excellent that approach. Now we also have a young lady named Amparo Armendáriz-Pérez. So for Amparo, she does our massage. And what she does is she works on individuals with a deep level of knowledge of fitness. Now, she comes to us with a vast amount of personal experience working with people and her desire for health care. So I would like her to tell us. Welcome. And tell us about what you do in terms of massage as a component within this group.
[01:14:55] Amparo Armendáriz-Pérez: Thank you. Being here as a part of this family, this community of servers, because that’s what we do. We serve those that come to us. We’re all about education. So we’re listening to, you know, nutritional education, physical education on how to help them to make better choices for themselves. What I do is I discuss with our patients what I’m going to do for them, what’s happening as I put my hands on their muscles. What I feel, and they even ask me questions, Well, what is that? Why do I feel so restricted? What’s happening? So I enjoy helping them understand their own body with all my heart because they’re in their own body. We exist in our body, and we know we have hands and feet and all these components. But sometimes, when they’re not operating correctly, we don’t know why, and that’s very frustrating. And so, I enjoy discussing with the patients. OK, well, this is what I’m feeling, and how do you feel as I’m, you know, applying pressure here as we’re moving and grooving here? And the feedback is what helps them to accelerate. They want to learn more. They want to know; well, what else can I do? You know, when I go home, how do I prolong this feeling of feeling like I’m standing up straight now? Like I feel more empowered? You know, I didn’t realize my feet felt that way. I didn’t know my arm felt that way. And I understand where they’re coming from because massage therapy was one of my avenues of healing when I went through a healing process. So it’s just a fantastic tool to reach out to the patients and allow them to know that this is another way that we support them is not just OK; we’re going to do this one two three. No, it goes further than that. These are your muscles, and this is how you can assist yourself, and this is what we’re going to do for you. And you can take it a step further and understand that you have the power to help these muscles become more pliable through nutrition, exercise, movement, and anyway, shape or form. And you can put your hand on yourself and feel like, you know, that’s tight today. I think I can kind of touch that a little and massage that, and you don’t need a license to touch your arm. And I think that that’s what’s beautiful about what we do. We empower our patients, and that’s important.
[01:17:16] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, when you were saying that in your approach, because I see that when you work on the patients, sometimes there are areas in the body that hurt. However, the human dynamics is that the body was designed with duality, such as one muscle affects another. The tricep, you know, pushes the bicep disengages. There’s a constant synergy with the muscular structure. Sometimes the pain or discomfort in those areas is remote or not, even in the area where you had, you know, you were initially told where the person’s issues were. Tell us a bit of that, Amparo. How you kind of tracked down the discomfort in, let’s say, an area over a problem that you’ve treated in the past.
[01:18:07] Amparo Armendáriz-Pérez: One of the most common areas I’ve experienced with many patients is when they discuss low back pain or sometimes even sciatic pain. And they tell me, you know, this is restricting me from sitting up straight. It’s restricting me from just going in the grocery store and walking to and from and not having to feel like I need to sit. And so, OK, I understand. And then they get on the table, and as I’m working on their back, I’m listening to what they’re saying. I also married together, what my hands are saying, and basically, my hands are just interpreting what their muscles are saying because sometimes, we can say something. I know in and out ourselves, OK, I feel this pain right here. However, the muscle is saying, well, something else is happening, and it’s extending, so they’ll tell me my pain is in the lower back while I follow the connection from that low back. And as I’m feeling alongside the side of their leg, I feel how tight it is, and it’s like, that’s got to be very restrictive down to the knee. And I’m like, OK, so let’s release that. And then as I’m working on that, it’s very powerful to hear the patient say, Wow, I can feel that, but you’re on my knee, and I’m like, It all goes together because the knee attachments go straight into the low back or into the hip area. And it was beautiful. Is that when they love to, everybody loves to learn about themselves? Why wouldn’t you want to know about yourself? It helps you become a better you. And so when I love to explain that to them, they’re like, Wow, so if I do this, I can feel better doing this. Absolutely. You know, ma’am or sir, right in here is where I’m touching. I’m massaging, and I’m applying compressions. It’s straightforward. It’s even over your clothes. I’m just playing some pressure right there, gently releasing, and they’re like, Wow, the movement is a lot better. And it’s interesting that just to the right around the knee, in the back and the front even, and it helps to release that low back pain.
[01:20:05] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, you mentioned just like the referral pain patterns, it’s incredible. How the body adapts is like that gecko, you know, when it’s hot and lifts its left leg and throws up on a different leg; that’s what the human body works. So if you have a lower back problem, it will affect the mid-back. It will affect your knees. The knees and lower back are directly and indirectly related. So as we look at those dynamic changes. One of the things we look at as we track down the problem. OK, it’s not just so easy to treat a low back problem for what it is. We have to find out the problem for every person and every person’s design, and we can track it down quickly after a couple of minutes of working in your body. We got the suspect in, and it’s not so apparent many times that it’s just a low back problem. You mentioned sciatica. Sciatica is one of these things where it isn’t a disorder. It’s a group of syndrome disorders that creates a lot of drama, and it almost has its mind. It’s like, it’s like you’ve got stress or sciatica flares up. You got, you know, you get upset about financial worries, sciatica flares up. It’s like it sits there looming, and it bites you, and it causes a whole array of problems and hinders a lot of people, which we don’t want to do surgically. And sometimes, there are issues where it does require surgical intervention. We have diagnostic procedures to determine the differences over a thousand reasons, and I would venture to say there are even more than a thousand reasons for causing sciatica. So we got to get to the root cause of it. And does nutrition play? Yes. Will exercise play? Yes, we have to look at all these components. Now we have another individual here, that is Faith Arciniega. So Faith comes to us with a lot of great experiences. She’s going to be an incredible doctor, nurse practitioner. That’s the goal right now. She’s in the process of going through that, but she also does our health coach integration. So she does many different things from, you know, body compositions, as Ana mentioned, all the way to in laboratory tests and X-rays are integrated with Ana. So we facilitate the ability to communicate the issues, treat the problems, and develop an appropriate care plan. So Faith, tell us a bit of what you do here in this particular group of people?
Faith Arciniega
Health Coach Faith Arciniega introduces herself and explains what she does.
[01:22:27] Faith Arciniega: Absolutely. So as Dr. Jimenez mentioned, my name is Faith Arciniega. I bridged the gap between Ana and Adriana, and Amparo. We all work very closely together to ensure the patients leave here to understand better how their bodies should operate and function. So if the doctor goes in and finds out they’re having issues with their sciatica, I will go in before that gather together their medical history, see what’s going on, and see if they have problems with the gut. Depression, anxiety. And then, I would then communicate with Ana about those issues, and we can work together to find supplements or with the correct diet for them. So I work together with Ana and Adriana to ensure that the patient leads healthier and better understands their body because a car wouldn’t operate correctly. If we fill it with water, the human body will not function if we don’t fuel it correctly, so we teach them. How they should eat, what supplements they should take, and how they should exercise so that they’re moving and operating as they should be like the body was created to.
[01:23:26] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, as like you, as you kind of work with patients, we mean right before we have this little unified meeting together. We noticed that we had a patient that had, you know, chronic inflammation and pain everywhere. And it’s crazy. But you know, the problem comes as a low back problem and leads to ankle issues. But we could see that there was a dietary issue, and it was almost like inflammation. No injury; keeps on inflaming. Then we find out that there’s a lot of sugar, many processed foods, a lot of meat. Well, to say that those are bad, it’s not just that easy, but we have to figure out the cause for that particular individual. We assess food sensitivities, and we do laboratory diagnostics. We figure out what it is the root cause. Not everything is a surgical procedure; as a matter of fact, most things are non-surgical. So what we try to do is is allow the intelligence of the body wants to figure it out, using the knowledge that we have and the expertise that we have in functional wellness and functional nutrition to be able to come up with a treatment plan that’s appropriate with exercise and the protocols that we use. So we have a lot going on here. So we wanted to do this as a beginning because we will be doing quite a few different presentations. But as we do changes, we haven’t been communicating well. So now what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be coming back at different presentations, discussing particular topics. If you have a specific topic that you want us to discuss, particularly about an injury, inflammation, and a disorder that falls into the world of functional wellness and even functional medicine, we commonly associate and look for corporations related to the musculoskeletal system. So what we want to do is to be able to assess and determine the true causes because once we fix you, we want to improve you, right? We want to give you the tools to go on and live an extraordinary life because everyone here knows that I touted as much as possible. And man, if we’re designed to live 100 years and probably more, according to even the statisticians out there, if you take care of everything, the heart will continue to pump years after it’s removed from the body. So our body doesn’t get clogged with some atherosclerotic plaques or inflammatory disorders or some diseases or cancers; if we can keep it healthy, we will live a good life. God willing, God wants you to take you now. OK, so we all know that. So the focus of today was to present a little bit of a review. So Ana, thank you very much for helping us out. You know, a little bit of information there. You know, Faith, you’re out there. You’ve got the calm, soothing voice, and she’s cool with her voice there; you’ve got Amparo, which is our therapist that finds and tracks down. We got everyone here. We have many massage therapists that track down the issues. She’s just the one that has been able to formulate the ability to communicate the intention of the human body, which is and also the results, and that takes years to do. You can’t just go ahead and present yourself. Doctors worldwide will tell you a doctor that graduates, whether it’s in any clinical practice on his first day, is not the same doctor ten years later. And they’re like wine. They get better each time, and most of the time, you’ll find that doctors, the wiser they become, the more they rely on the wisdom of the body to manipulate and facilitate the healing process. So for Adriana, she’s our exercise, and she’ll have you dancing and doing the Zumba and seeing, you know, what’s best for you. And by the way, if you feel ugly that day, you can put the screen off, so you don’t have to be showing your body. You just know that she’s there, and you just tell her you’re doing the exercise. It’s pretty funny. Someone probably has the video off and is sitting there, you know, eating something. Yeah, I’m exercising, but we do have tools for that, like a cardio thing. They’ll tell us what your heart rate’s at; we will know if you are fibbing, but it doesn’t happen anyway. But anyway, it was a tremendous little connection today. It was the first, and we looked forward to more. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much, and does anyone have anything else to say. Faith, anything good, anything you want to add.
Conclusion
Dr. Alex Jimenez and crew recap on Functional Medicine.
[01:27:40] Faith Arciniega: No, just super excited for you all to come in here so that we can work together to find the best treatment plan for you. We’re all very passionate about patient care, and we’re excited to work with you.
[01:27:49] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: All right, Amparo?
[01:27:50] Amparo Armendáriz-Pérez: Just like, she said. We’re ready to help you be empowered. Understand that you are the boss of you.
[01:27:58] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I’m the boss of me. I tell my wife that you know what she says all the time; you think you’re the boss of you, right?
[01:28:02] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: And like I’m saying, OK. Anyways.
[01:28:05] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Ana, anything you have to say.
[01:28:10] Ana Paola: We’re so excited to work with all our patients, and we try to follow through and listen to all of the symptoms you’re having. So I guess that from our part, you will always have ears to follow through.
[01:28:32] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Thank you so much. Adriana, anything?
[01:28:34] Adriana Caceres: Well, we are here waiting for all of you, and we have a great team, all very passionate, as you see. And we are just here waiting for you to come in, and we will help you resolve.
[01:28:47] Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: We’re going to tear it up, guys. We’re going to tear it up. We’re going to make it. We’re going to happen. OK, so this is called Cobra Kai Chiropractic Center. OK, so if you think you’re going to come in here and just have a little talk? We’re going to get it on. We’re going to get it on with your body, and we’re going to take it to the next level. And yeah, we got to go, OK, we’re going to make the body what it should be, OK. And we’re going to release it without in pain, and it’s going to be a very comfortable dynamic. So thank you, guys, and we look forward to being connected the next one. So God bless you guys. Have a good one.
In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez, health coach Kenna Vaughn, Truide Torres, biochemist Alexander Jimenez, and Astrid Ornelas discuss sciatica or sciatic nerve pain in further detail to ultimately help educate patients on their symptoms.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Hey, guys, we’re live today. We’re going to be discussing the scourge of the back, the scourge of the back for myself. I’m a chiropractor practicing out here in El Paso, Texas. We usually have a disorder that’s typically there isn’t a day that we don’t see it, and it affects so many people. But there’s a lot of confusion with, and I call it, the scourge of the low back. It’s called sciatica. Sciatica is a disorder that has many, many reasons and many, many causes. One of the most important things is first to assess the reason and cause of sciatica. But most importantly, when it first hits an individual, it strikes them, usually with a shocking misunderstanding as to what’s going on in their legs. They feel pain in the low back. They sometimes feel pain in the leg. Different areas depend on where the issue lies, so a little bit of its anatomy breakdown and explanation of what it is. First of all, it’s a syndrome. It’s a syndrome that has many reasons and many causes. The issues that come about and are that that make sciatica arise are vast. I would venture to say that there are a million people that come in with sciatica. There are a million reasons that have presented each one of those patients. There is a majority of problems in and a subset of issues. We’re going to go over that. Today, our goal is to bring out the awareness that it is a problem, just like the present anemia. And there are many reasons why a person would have anemia. Many people are familiar with anemia, and they say that’s low blood, but you’re going to find out where the blood issue is to determine exactly what the causes of anemia are. Well, the same thing with sciatica. There’s a lot of reasons why the sciatic presentation occurs. So we’re here to kind of begin the process of explaining that. So we’re going to get real deep and down and nasty with the science of it. We’re going to try to give you some tools that you can look at and assess. So your provider can give you a better explanation, or you can ask better questions in terms of where your sciatica originates. So the first thing is to understand the anatomy, and I’ll go through the anatomy in a very visual way. But I want to first kind of take you to a visual, and my visuals are very three-dimensional and offered through complete anatomy. Complete anatomy has given us the ability to use this and show, and it is something that many medical students use. So in today’s modern-day, we don’t have to use some visceral or some sort of human anatomy. We can use these tools to help us present to the patients and to teach. So it’s probably one of the most used anatomical structured systems, and we use it to teach people in our patients every day, given the dynamics of sciatica. Here we have a picture of a sciatica HDMI, so we can see a presentation of what the sciatica nerve looks like when we can see it. The interesting dynamics here is that when you look at the interesting presentation, you can see as I go away how vast and how large it is. Now the first thing is I rotate this individual. You got to see that it comes from a large glute plexus in the lumbar spine to the sacral nerve roots. So anywhere down the line that anything is touching this thing, this beautiful, powerful nerve, you’re going to find that there is pain radiating down. So we’re going to discuss those issues. And as we kind of go over that, we want to understand that so away from HDMI. So what we’re looking at are the issues that present with us when we discuss it. So what are the causes, and what is sciatica? Sciatica is inflammation of the sciatic nerve, and as it presents what happens many times, it is the largest nerve in the body, and it’s how most people know it, and it travels from the lumbar plexus to the leg. So, anywhere that that thing is touched, it’s going to radiate pain. Now, what are the causes? Well, they could be from vascular. They could be compressive. They could be lymphatic. There could be a space-occupying lesion, such as a tumor causing the issues. Now, a good clinician will do a lot of different tests and a lot of different assessments to determine where it is having the problem. So when I have a patient, they come in when the first thing we have to do is a history we have to assess and find out what’s going on. So finding the history of something that suddenly someone starts sitting or they become active, or they get hit in the back, and they start having sciatica, it boats to a well, dynamics. So what happens is, what we need to do is we need to discuss the dynamics of where it begins and what goes on. So in terms of our direction, I would like first to take you to the physical assessment. When you explain to your doctor what’s going on, you need to tell him exactly when you started having it. That’s very important. The history is very like when these issues are? Do you have a sedentary life? So these are the types of issues that present most of the time a person comes into the office with having a severe presentation that they’re shocked? They didn’t expect this and what occurs in this particular area is that you can see where the nerve root comes in. So over here, you’ve got to figure out where it came from. As you notice, a lot of the reasons that many of these individuals have is because it’s a little bit of atrophy and muscular issues that arise. As you can see right here, there’s a lot of areas where the nerve can keep becoming trapped, and this is the main reason that most people have this issue now as they go through this and they present a symptom. I got to figure out, and we have to figure out where the problem originated with our team. So as I go through that, I want to give you a different dynamics here in what I’m going to explain. I’m going to present my team to you so that they’re all going to. Each one of them is going to explain a little different aspect of what goes on. Today, we will discuss how a coach, such as an individual helping the doctor, can assess the situation. We are going to talk to our coach Kenna. We’re going to talk to Astrid, who’s going to bring some science knowledge here. We will bring a patient in, discuss the experience with her, and bring in our top guy from the university at the biochemical level. He will teach us a little bit about some nutraceuticals and some applicational processes that we can do to help an individual with sciatica. So at first light to tell, I like to ask a question to Kenna. So Kenna, what I want to do is I want to ask you exactly what it is that you notice when a patient presents with sciatica and what kind of things we can do in the office and what’s our approach specifically more like the metabolic issues and the disorders that present that way? So when we’re looking at here, let me go ahead and head into this area, tell me a little bit about how we present a patient and what we deal with when we’re talking to an assessment or doing an assessment.
Kenna Vaughn: So one thing that many patients with sciatica have is the pain they’re feeling, of course and that low back. But another thing is they don’t have a lot of movement due to that pain, and movement is essential. It’s what life revolves around. So we take that movement, and we look at how we can help this patient decompress that sciatic nerve with the adjustments that Dr. Jimenez does, but also how can I benefit from my side of things for this patient? So we do have a lot of great resources available to us. We send our patients to Push, which is a gym here that helps them get that calibration in their muscles that they need to build up those stronger muscles all around that sciatic nerve so that this nerve doesn’t get pinched frequently or as often. And another thing we have available to us is an app called Dr. J. Today. And what that does is it syncs with the bracelet that our patients wear, which allows us to track their movement. So we want to focus on that movement as part of it. And another thing we can do is nutraceuticals in supplements. So what are nutraceuticals and supplements? One of the main ones we focus on that almost every individual should be taking is vitamin D3, and we like it coupled with vitamin K. This will help your bones and circulation. And it’s going to help to decrease that glucose by increasing your insulin sensitivity. And this is where it comes into play with sciatica.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I had a question for you in terms of that. When you’re discussing that we’re dealing with and sciatica as a pain in the hips, we’re correlating, and we’re tying together, I guess, a disorder that many people have as metabolic syndrome and many times are overweight. And that was one of the presentations that many of the patients with sciatica, not that everyone is overweight, with sciatica. Still, many people who become sedentary and don’t move as much do suffer from metabolic syndrome. So to get that under order, one of the things is to bring the insulin under control. And once we do that, we start losing weight and getting more active with the exercise protocols. She mentioned Push because we began to calibrate the hips. Now, as you can tell from our picture here, there’s a whole lot of muscles in this region, OK? So as I kind of use the application, you can see a little bit more of the muscle tissue that is involved. So as we look at the muscle tissue, we can see that calibrating and these muscles that control the hip actually propel the creature, so propel humans, so to speak, right? So what happens is as this happens, if this becomes deconditioned through a sedentary lifestyle. Well, the thing that’s lying underneath also stops working, and the muscles stop working as effectively. So one of the ways that we treat people is through a coach to assess their body mechanics and put them through the Push Fitness protocols that can help them get a calibration of the structures. One of the things that we also do in this process is we look at the sitting issues and tell me a bit of what you do, Kenna, in terms of helping people adjust their lifestyle or modify their mobility issues.
Kenna Vaughn: So what their mobility, as I said, we use the app, and we also use Push Fitness, and the supplements have a lot that comes into play because like I said, with that increasing the insulin sensitivity, what we’re going to want to do it, that is it’s going to help to control the blood sugars. And you might not necessarily relate blood sugars to sciatica just yet, but as I said, everything is connected. So when we put our patients on a protocol and have them control these blood sugars, it also helps maintain their inflammation because sugars and chemicals cause that inflammation in the blood. And that’s also it’s going then to cause nerve damage to our body and our system. And then, once we have that nerve damage going, we’ll see many more patients sitting down, which relates to that lack of motion. And then we see a lot of patients coming in with sciatica.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Sciatica. So basically, we’re going back to the same monster, which is called inflammation. Right. So inflammation is the deal. People that have sciatica will often tell the story of how it kind of looms with them. It’s like having this untrustworthy nerve back there that if they have stress or go through emotional dynamics, it affects sciatica. So this threshold that activates the sciatica presentation could have even an emotional component to it. So we want to bring that to light, too, because many people have normal lives, but they don’t have the presentation under normal situations. Suddenly, bam, they get an emotional, financial issue, family things, and sciatica just flares. Where is that even logical, right? The key is inflammation, inflammatory response, stress responses. And those issues do create an almost perfect storm to create a predisposition for inflammation. So that’s why we bring in the dietary components and the food to start eating better to prevent inflammation again. Those are some of the things. So she also mentioned the issue of Push. Push is our fitness center, where we actually put people through exercise protocols, and when we start putting people through exercise protocols, it’s there to calibrate. Now, what’s the biggest muscle in the body? Well, not too far from the anatomy to an anatomical structure. You can see the muscles in this particular area, and everybody knows that the glutes are the big muscles. So when you see this powerful muscle, if this muscle becomes decalibrated from a sedentary lifestyle, you’re going to notice that you’re going to have a lot of predisposition. So it’s like a car with flat tires. So if the car has flat tires, it starts swaying and moving to the wrong side. Well, if it’s swing, you can imagine that it affects the axis and the axles, and all that kind of stuff starts happening. Things like these happen, but in our human structure, there’s a finely calibrated system here. One of the things that many people don’t know and don’t think about is the lymphatic structure. Now, if you can see here, you can see the lymphatic. Now those guys ride directly next to the venous and arterial structures, and you can see it here. So as you can see that for progressing, you also look at the arteries. So if someone doesn’t have an arterial system that is working well and sitting on this, you can see congestion occurring around the structures, around the nerves. Now there’s a lot of nerves in here. So when you start looking at these dynamics, you start seeing that a person who is not using their muscles has an increased congestion level. So as I remove these muscles here, you can see this picture, and I’m going to remove every one of them. You start seeing the noticeable dynamics of how complex their nervous system is. So over here, you can see the complexity of how those nerves function. It’s amazing to see all the structures in here. So when you look at this, you can see the amount of influence that lack of movement would cause. It’s almost like a traffic jam. Imagine sitting on this thing all day long, OK, let alone be inactive. So one of the things we want to do is to assess exactly what it is. And one of the things that we do is to calibrate the system. So going back to removing these picked areas, you want to go ahead and work on the big systems. OK, well, as you can see, these muscles bring a huge component into helping sciatica. Now, where are the sciatic issues coming from? Now let’s go ahead and start discussing those particular issues as we can kind of go through this. And I want to take you through a little anatomy lesson here because it does require a little bit. As I remove these things, we’re going to see all of the structures that come in, and actually, but you can see if I can get the nervous system only out to the minimal component of it, the big ones. And as you can see here, you can look over this way and see anywhere down the line right here by where the nerves are. Them out where the disk comes out in this particular area as it penetrates forward, it goes this what we call the sacral notch, which is this guy right here. This hole is a sacral notch where it comes out, and you can see that it can be bumped into the bone and the actual femur here. So there’s a lot of areas that we can see that directly affect the sciatica regions. But having gone through that, I’m going to go into that in a little bit deeper. But I want to go ahead and get a little personal story right now. I want to ask an individual now what sits in here, and most women, you know, this is where they contain babies, right? So in a situation where you have an individual that is going through a lot of changes, such as an individual who’s having a child, you can see where the hips actually change and right down there, if you can see down there, this is where the sacrum has to open up to allow for the birthing canal. You see that big hole right there. A baby’s got to go through there, and if it can’t go through there, which it probably won’t until probably the ninth month where this area starts expanding, guess who’s going to go by, then kick in on the way down? OK, that would be a child. OK, so let’s talk about that. I’d like to present Trudy here because she has a story of how it affected her.
Trudy Torres: Well, I guess, you know, as a woman, you know, it’s an extremely joyful situation when you find out that you’re going to be a mom. If it’s your first-time baby, you’re in for a roller coaster. You know, like you guys were mentioning, there’s a lot of different scenarios that you go through emotionally, physically. So when you’re pregnant, you’re the perfect storm for something like this to come up. You know, you are just balanced from you’re so, so tired the first trimester. I’ve always worked out. So for me, I have never experienced sciatic pain before, and for me being so active, I went from being 100 percent active to just being so tired. I had to be super careful about spending my energy, especially in the first trimester. So on top of that, if you add, you know, everything else that’s going on physiologically with me and then my life became so sedentary. On top of that, you know, I have a desk job. So sitting at a desk and then not compensating, moving all of a sudden, that pain is so excruciating. I did not experience this with my first baby. I experienced this with my second child. And, of course, I gained more weight with my second child. So once again, you know, you’re adding problem over the problem. And just because you’re pregnant, that doesn’t mean you’re eating for two, because unfortunately, some of us, you know, have that misconception, and that’s when your weight tends to get a little bit out of control. So you’re adding a lot of different factors that create the perfect storm and are just super, super hard. One of the things that Kenna mentioned that helped me was becoming active and being exposed to Push. I had someone here that was able to work out specifically with me being pregnant. Obviously, my limitations as you start gaining more weight, it’s not the same thing that you can do when you’re not having a baby. So I was able to continue to work out later on in and, you know, after I was exposed to chiropractic and implementing exercise.
Kenna Vaughn: So the main symptoms you had when you had sciatica, and you were pregnant, was it mainly just pain, or did you also get that tingling feeling because there is more than one symptom of sciatica?
Trudy Torres: No. Unfortunately, it was just not pain. It was pain. It was burning all down my leg. I did not know what was going on. As I said, this was not with my first pregnancy, and every pregnancy is different with my first child. I watched more what I ate. I was still active, so I believe it was a combination of things, you know, that I felt like I was eating for two. I gained more weight than I should have.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: I got a question: Was it when you rapidly gained weight during the final trimester?
Trudy Torres: I think everything kind of started happening a little at a time. I wasn’t that active in the first trimester, so I began having flare-ups not as bad as once I gained the weight. But, you know, once I gained more weight, that’s when I started having more severe symptoms, as I said, the burning, the lower pain. It was just excruciating, and it’s something that I don’t wish upon my worst enemy.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Now, did you ever have a recurrence after you had your baby?
Trudy Torres: Yes, I did. I did, and unfortunately, I did, but one of the things has helped me keep that under control. It’s been being active, continue to watch my weight. My supplements were one thing that I would ask Coach or Dr. Jiménez when you’re pregnant. I know we were talking about the different supplements. What do you still recommend for pregnant women to get on the different vitamin D and K supplements?
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: That’s an excellent question, and one that I’ll answer very clearly as a wide disclaimer; you need to make sure that your doctor knows what you’re experiencing. Obstetricians, which are OB-GYN doctors. They’re very well astute as to what type of supplements. So in the world of supplementation, it is wise to have a doctor assess that, and many of them will make sure that you have good supplementation. The area where it’s the accurate assessment is you have to have supplementation. Your body’s trying to produce an enormous amount of cellular activity as it creates life. It draws upon a particular area that inflammation goes crazy, the body goes into dynamic changes. So nutrition becomes an essential thing from intestinal nutrition through metabolic nutrition. So one of the things is that you have to have a doctor, typically today’s individual who is in there as young childbearing age, they have a doctor evaluating. So yes, one of the essential things is from folic acid to vitamin E, D. These are a whole, complete gamut of vitamins that are assessed and given by their doctors. So most women will know that if they take some medication, they have to put it clearly by their doctor. That’s the most important thing. And the second thing is on the supplementation side; once your doctor knows, he’s probably going to give you something of a basic level of supplementation and nutritional assessment. So in terms of that, a dietitian can evaluate you and assess you and determine what’s going on in terms of the aggressive approaches where an individual is not pregnant; there’s a lot of things that can be done. But let me ask you this. I know that you do a little bit of a CrossFit, and you do that kind of stuff. And you mentioned that you had sciatica after. I want to go to the point that many people who have sciatica lead a predisposed life to sciatica now, meaning that once you get it, it’s not that your terminal is that you always have the potential of having it, so whether your body dynamics have changed. Typically, you’re not 18, and now you’re 40. What happens is your body is warning you that it’s not working as it should be. And suddenly, the nerve starts becoming flared up, either the compression through atrophy of muscle or imbalance of muscles. So all those things are essential; I notice that you mentioned something that you did. It also affected you after. Did you do some competitions later, and did it affect you?
Trudy Torres: I did do competitions after. What helped me keep it under control was that its different factors to keep it under control. You know that keeping moving makes sure that you’re taking the right supplements in chiropractic care. I’m a firm believer, you know, of a holistic approach, and I believe that a combination of all it has helped me keep it under control. I have not had flare-ups, but I believe it’s because I’ve had all these different combinations. As I said, you know, I kept active. I have, you know, been in average weight. I have also implemented chiropractic, you know, as maintenance.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, I would like to give people a kind of insight as to what happens when you first go to a doctor, and they assess you; there are many ways to figure it out. One of the ways that it’s an easy way if there’s degenerative and there are bone changes is an x-ray. And that’s what we typically look at, and we first start all assessments. But the definitive assessor who gives the vast amount of information is looking for some compression. And at that point, sometimes we have to look at the arterial-venous circulation. But the number one way to determine if someone has sciatica due to a disc injury or some compression or space-occupying lesions like a tumor or some arthritis or some sort of imbalance in the muscle is genuinely the MRI. The MRI is an excellent tool. Now, if there is bone involved, a CAT scan is used. The EMG is used to determine the muscular tone and the muscle’s ability to react and see which tone levels. But you don’t need to be a rocket scientist and put someone through that. They already know that their muscles are tight, and there is an issue. The ability to determine how the nerve functions is a nerve conduction velocity test that tells you how fast and slow the nerves could work. Now in the situation where we do a bone scan, we’re trying to look for any metabolic issues outside, and there could be a tumor or some problem. But that’s rare, and that’s not typical, but the number one way to assess an issue is through an MRI and an X-ray. Those will give you the most significant, broadest areas. Now I want to go ahead and talk a bit about nutraceuticals and specifically nutraceuticals. We’re going to go ahead in this about the treatments for it. And as we go through that, I’d like to go ahead and discuss certain areas and specific supplements. Now Astrid is our resident nutraceutical information gathering. We also have a biochemist in the background who will bring some insight to a different level. But what kind of things do we typically offer patients when they need it as a metabolic, a leaving protocol?
Astrid Ornelas: OK, well, first of all, I want to bring in an interesting statistic. According to researchers, approximately 80 percent of the population suffer from some type of back pain. Included in that are low back pain and sciatica. So with that being said, of course, it becomes a priority to know what is it and what can we do to assess this common problem? And like, Kenna and Dr. Jimenez, like you and Trudy have said, exercise is essential. And together with exercise, we want to bring in a diet. We want to eat foods and supplements. And because obesity or excess weight is one of the problems is one of the leading causes or one of the most common, commonly well-known causes of sciatica. We want to, you know, all together with exercise and following like a good, a good diet. We want to follow these things so that we can. If we lose weight, it can help improve sciatica. So with that in mind, there are several of them. I guess natural remedies, natural nutraceuticals, if you will, can help reduce or improve sciatica symptoms and, therefore, lose weight. So one of the ones that I want to talk about is that we have it here: turmeric or curcumin. So turmeric is a plant, it’s a flowering plant, and it’s related to ginger. And we eat the root. That’s what we know it. This yellow kind of orange-looking root is very commonly used in Asian foods and most commonly in curry and curcumin. You’ll hear turmeric and curcumin used a lot interchangeably together, and curcumin is the active ingredient that’s found in turmeric. So one of the things that I wanted to bring up with turmeric and curcumin is the benefits that many people can take, and they can either eat turmeric or take turmeric supplements. It can help to reduce sciatica or sciatic nerve pain. So turmeric has a lot of anti-inflammatory properties, which can help reduce pain and swelling, which is probably one of the most common symptoms of sciatica. There’s a lot of research studies that have found that turmeric or curcumin can reduce neural inflammation, which is inflammation in the nerves, which, as some of us here, know if your sciatica is caused by a disc herniation or a herniated disc, sometimes the substances or the chemicals that are inside of your disc, they can irritate the nerves. So taking turmeric and curcumin can help reduce the inflammation caused by these irritating compounds. It is also a powerful antioxidant that can help reduce oxidative stress, which can cause inflammation. And probably one of the highlights of taking turmeric or curcumin is that it can improve metabolic syndrome, as we previously discussed in a past podcast. Research studies have found that turmeric can help regulate body fat by reducing inflammation. It can also help lower bad cholesterol. It can lower triglycerides. It can improve blood sugar levels. And it has antibacterial properties as well.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Let me ask you. We’re talking about the potential of someone having sciatica; since some people have sciatica, that kind of looms on them. Well, we’re trying to do with turmeric, and we’re trying to prevent it from kicking off. So it’s basically like prophylactic prevention. I like to go a little deeper, and we have our resident scientist here, Alexander, and he is right with us right now, and he’s got some points of view on some of those supplementations. Tell us a bit of what you learned in terms of supplementation and your point of view on how we can assist sciatica from a biochemical point of view.
Alexander Isaiah: Well, there are a couple of different ways of taking different perspectives and avoiding the whole. An inflammation response is a good way of saying it. Let me see. Can you guys see my screen here?
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes, we see you, we see you right now. So I saw your screen. Yes, I do. We see the screen entirely.
Alexander Isaiah: Awesome. So I’m going to go into a little bit of the biomechanics of what’s going on with sciatica. Then we’re going to break down a little bit of the muscles, and then we’ll go into the supplementation aspect of what we can do to have either prevention or active treatment during treating sciatica. So here we could see we have three individuals from left to right. The first one is an individual who has a neutral spine. And you can see that as we draw a line down the middle there. External auditory Matis, the ear, is in line with their deltoid and is in line with the median part of the sacrum. In the second person, we can see that they have a little bit of dysfunction in terms of their physical aspect. So here we have an individual whose sacral promontory, which is the anterior side of the sacrum, is tilted superior, and their posterior area is tilted, posterior, inferior. I’m sorry. And what this is called, this is called a counter mutation. So by having that sacrum pointed up, you’re putting more stress on the thoracic region and causing the areas to be more inclined to different stresses. And most of the time, this is caused by tight hamstrings. So these hamstrings are pulling down, forcing the anterior side to come up and stretching these quadriceps. So it can either be done from an imbalance of over-powerful hamstrings or tight hamstrings and weak quads. In the third individual as we draw the same line down the middle. We can see that they are almost in line, but on an individual like this, we could see that their sacral promontory, the front side of the sacrum, is tilted anteriorly, which is called mutations. So we have a counter mutation over here. It’s going to go counter. And then mutation over here on the right side, so an easy way to remember this. They’ll stick forever is that this is pretty much if you think plumber’s butt, this is what it looks like. This is what J-Lo looks like. Oh, so you’ll never forget it that way. But the difference is here is that here the pressure is on the thoracic spine. But in an individual with notated hips, the pressure is in the lower back. So let’s say someone is pregnant and developing another child in this area. They’re going to be putting more pressure on the lower back versus someone who has pressure on their thoracic area. They’re going to be more pressure there. So going into a little bit more of the anatomy. We can see that we have all the different muscles here, and we could see the piriformis, which is this muscle right here. I’m going to give you different colors for you guys, so that you can see better. It is muscle right here. And then we could see the superior gemellus is right under that. So sandwiched between the two is the sciatic nerve. And if we have someone who is mutated, they’re going to be stretching these muscles more and putting more compression on that sciatic nerve, causing that area to be more inflamed. More of those neuropathies are occurring, shooting down the leg. And then in other instances, when we have the piriformis, which is split in half and the sciatic nerve is running between them, and that’s 10 percent of the population that that usually happens. And so and these people have always had sciatic problems. So by strengthening and working on those conditions and going over those nutraceuticals, we’re about to go into, we can treat and alleviate some of those symptoms. So the first one I kind of want to go into is a little bit of niacin. So niacin, we all see it as the store brand as something popping up like that. And most of the time, it’s either in 250 mg or 500 mg of capsules or tablets. I always recommend getting the tablets just because you can take half of the tablets. And I tell people this is because most of the time, nicotinic acid is the main thing is, vitamin B3 causes a little bit of a flush effect, but that’s just the way it works. So we’re going into it here. We can see that nicotinic acid, as it’s going through its chemical pathway, actually produces lots of NAD+, and NAD+ is essential in the cellular metabolism of many tissues. So going into brief biology, we all know that the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cells we were all beaten to death growing up in basic biology. But as we take a look more in-depth at the structure of the mitochondria, we could see that it has an outer membrane, an inner membrane, and then an interim membrane space. So we’re going to look mainly at this little section here that’s folded in between, which are called the cristae. And we could see that the first complex, known as complex one or all the known as any dehydrogenase, is responsible for using NADH, converting it and using its protons, and moving it across the gradient to make ATP. But we could see that more NAD+ is produced here, right? So that’s where niacin comes into effect. We supplement more with NAD+ to cause a reduction reaction between NADH and some other electrons, forcing it into NADH. So what does this all mean? Pretty much what we’re doing is we’re creating a boulder downhill effect, so we’re making more NAD, and we’re forcing it to go to product. And how does this happen? Just easy thermodynamics is you put a lot of it up the hill. The enzymes are going to force the work to go down the hill and make more energy. In doing so, and you have a more healthy metabolism of cells. And this does not only correlate to neuropathies, but it also helps with circulatory function, cardiovascular health; the main multi nucleotide muscle in the body is the heart, so you’re not only making sure that you’re neuropathies are covered, but as well as you’re making sure that you’re keeping a healthy heart just by supplementing with vitamin B3. Another great one, saying that you have more ATP produced and more functioning and healthy tissues, is green tea. I chose to use green tea because it has a very similar pathway to curcumin in the sense of anti-inflammatory effects. So the main ingredient in green tea in case you either have green tea in your house or curcumin available, whichever one’s easiest for you, they mostly have the same chemical pathways in that they inhibit either inflammation or cell proliferation neural damage. So the main chemical in green teas is called catechins, and catechins are similar to catecholamines, like epinephrine and norepinephrine, which is just adrenaline. And the main one is EGCG. The cool part about EGCG is that it inhibited NF Kappa B and ROS. ROS is just a reactive oxygen species, which is just free radicals, which can cause havoc and wreak havoc throughout your body, which is why it’s an antioxidant. So in doing so, it prevents NF Kappa B from producing any proliferating effects from cells or inflammation or neural damage. Now, if we go more into biochemistry, I can just break it down a little bit here. So EGCG will upregulate AMP. High levels of AMP will down-regulate this enzyme, called glycolysis, and allow for ATP to be converted to CATP. This is important because not only does the CATP break down things, but it mainly breaks down any adipose tissue and helps kill any cells that are proliferating too quickly, such as cancer cells. And it also keeps cells functioning properly, such as neural cells. So as we’re coming here, another cool part about green tea is it has small amounts of caffeine. If you are pregnant, we don’t recommend that you do any caffeine or stimulatory effects. Always consult with your doctor before taking any of these things. Specifically, something that does have caffeine and that we just doesn’t want to mix anything, especially during pregnancy. But if you are trying to make sure that you help your sciatica or your metabolic syndrome. Green tea has another effect. Using caffeine, which inhibits phosphodiesterase and phosphodiesterase diseases, is responsible for turning off CATP, so it’s a double whammy effect. Not only are you burning fat and shutting down glucose storage, but you’re also allowing for this catabolic or this structure that breaks down things to keep going. Here’s a little bit of an overview of the different things that green tea does and how it helps. And just kind of going into another cool part about green tea is that it binds to other very toxic things, such as iron. We know that we have iron in every red blood cell, but people who have hemochromatosis have too much iron in their blood, and they have to give blood about once a week. Someone who has hemochromatosis can take supplementation of green tea and reduce their iron levels, preventing any toxicity from those iron.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: You know, when you’re talking about those pathway patterns, you remind me very clearly that many of the times, the whole idea behind our show is to try to give you natural ways. However, there are potent medications that work with these pathways, one of which is gabapentin, used for neuropathic pain. Many people don’t want to do that because of the side effects and the critical issues that it causes. We were looking at this in a natural format in a natural way. Going back to the metabolic, what are the things that we notice in the metabolic areas you have seen? What are the other supplements? Do you notice that I have been able to assist people in recovering from because Astrid mentioned turmeric, and that’s the line we’re using. We’re using the anti-inflammatory. They’re limiting, limiting the reactive oxygen species or the ROSs to prevent the inflammation from occurring. Is that correct?\
Alexander Isaiah: Yes. OK. The main thing is to inhibit the production of NF kappaB, which both curcumin, other known as turmeric, both have the same name. They’re interchangeable and green tea, and both inhibit these inflammatory pathways and cancer pathways.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yes. So let me ask you, Astrid, in terms of those inflammatory comments. Tell me a few of your thoughts on this particular matter.
Astrid Ornelas: Well, I wanted to add another compound that can benefit sciatica or sciatic nerve pain. And that is called alpha-lipoic acid or ALA. And so ALA is an organic compound, and it is produced naturally in the body, but of course, in smaller amounts. Or it can be found in foods such as red meat or organic meats or in plant foods such as broccoli, spinach, Brussel sprouts, and tomatoes. Or it can also be taken as a dietary supplement. And I wanted to discuss the effects or the benefits of alpha-lipoic acid. Because just like green tea and turmeric or curcumin, ALA is also a powerful antioxidant, and it helps reduce inflammation, according to several research studies. And it can also have a lot of benefits for people with metabolic syndrome because it can help lower blood sugar or blood glucose levels. It can improve insulin resistance, which is, you know, an effect, or it’s something that they can that can ultimately cause diabetes. And several research studies have also found that alpha-lipoic acid can also improve nerve function, which, you know, people with sciatica or sciatic nerve pain, especially caused by neuroinflammation. ALA can also help improve nerve function in these people.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: OK. That’s an essential point of view. As you can see here on our list, we have quite a few different presentations and areas such as vitamin C, vitamin D, calcium, fish oils, omega 3s with EPA, berberine, glucosamine, chondroitin, alpha-lipoic acid, acetyl-l-carnitine, ashwagandha, soluble fibers, vitamin E, green tea, and turmeric. As you can tell, there’s a lot of things that we can do to stop the inflammatory cascade. We’re going to be going into all those because sciatica is so complex and diverse that we have to find the best for the patient from the millions of presentations that it has. So throughout the anatomy, as we discussed, and I’ll show you back the anatomy in a second here, you can see that there’s a lot of physiological and as Alex presented biomechanical imbalances that, if not taken into consideration, we will end up with issues in the future as a result of these predisposing dynamics. Now, as we recover these dynamics, we’re going to discuss many different topics. So I wanted to at least give a little more on the side of the things that we do now in terms of differential diagnosis. Many other issues can cause these presentations and from, you know, the dynamics of just a compressive nerve through space-occupying dynamics. We have other areas that come in and affect the patients. So what we’re going to do is in the following seminars, we’re going to go over specific types of things we can do, but let’s give you some guided ideas in terms of the treatment protocols that are out there. We have chiropractic care, which is a form of chiropractic. Chiropractic means mobilizing joints and moving the body, and there are thousands of ways we can do it. A lot of people think that it’s just manipulation or adjusting the spinal. We have to take a lot of things into consideration. We work on the bones; we work in the muscles; we work on the counter muscles. We have to formulate many dynamics to figure out what’s best in line to assist each patient. Once we find out the cause and find out what we call etiology or the pathology and the problem. We can go and use different methods. We use acupuncture, nutraceuticals. We work hand in hand with different providers to provide medications. We also do the goal ultimately in sciatica is to eliminate any chance of surgery if there is a surgical need or that needs to be done. But that’s such a small dynamic that we don’t want to go there unless we have to. We have different other protocols in different methods of treatment, like dry needling. We do aggressive rehabilitation. Now, why are we doing rehabilitation? Because as you saw in the picture earlier, the muscles we have were extremely involved in calibrating the hips. We want to make sure that we, we determine now over here, we got some basic care. We also got some aggressive care. Now, as you know, some basic care will be like ice-cold ultrasound, tens units, spinal adjustments, lifestyle changes, which is pretty much the biggest one because most people end up in a chiropractic office because their lifetime lifestyles change. Now, what do I have? I have a person who was an athlete at one point that suddenly got a desk job and now doesn’t move as much. Well, that’s easy. We can start getting that person back into yoga, pilates, tai chi, getting their bodies to align pelvically, and their whole body structure to get back to where it should be. Here’s the deal as soon as you can get past the inflammation and prevent that, and we can get you to move your body in a way that you did when you were a child, kind of like moving, dancing, and walking. That’s the way to calibrate the glutes. This is a powerful muscle, and as we’ve learned through technology and science, immediate atrophy occurs with the muscles not used. So imagine what happens when you start getting a job, and you used to be an athlete, and now you sit down eight hours a day, that’s going to give some great dynamic. So one of the crazy components is that as I look at this, I give you an idea of the types of exercises we can do. We can go into the extreme kind of CrossFit environment. And if we look at that, you just don’t look at the crazy structures, but you see people moving dynamically. A lot is going on here, and you can see that we can come up with our rehab centers. We have extreme athletes, too, even the people that are, you know, able to move just a little bit. But the point is that as we do this process, we can help someone with the treatments and protocols occurring, as you can see in this particular area. We can see Trudy and me. This is one of the things that the reason I was alluding to. But we can see when you were doing some self-treatment here. Tell me a little bit about what you were doing and what you were experiencing at that point.
Trudy Torres: That was, I believe, if I recall correctly, that was after my competition. I did compete for CrossFit. And, you know, it’s hard, after for a couple of hours. It takes a toll on your body. So I was kind of stretching my hip and stretching, you know, the rest of my glute area to avoid that flare up again. That’s something that once you experience it once and you have to go through the treatment, it stays in the back of your head because you certainly don’t experience pain again. That’s why you have to pay attention to all the different preventive areas and approaches to avoid ever having a flare-up.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Well, I got to tell you that I led you there because I know you had a lot of experience with sciatica. Alex, let me ask you this. You know, you were an aggressive competitor in the world that you did things. Tell me a bit of the thing that you did that you noticed when you were working. Let’s say an as a collegiate athlete, did you ever have hip issues?
Alexander Isaiah: Only when I didn’t stretch or when I didn’t work on my core muscles, or when I wasn’t making sure that I was anatomically in line, I did have some issues either with joint pain or just lower back problems or even upper back problems that all just tied into either flexibility or I just wasn’t paying attention to either my diet as strictly as I should, especially at that level. So, yes, I did.
Dr. Alex Jimenez DC*: Yeah. You know what? There’s a lot to be covered here, and we’re going to be discussing a lot of issues. Did anyone want to add something else before we kind of closeout? I want to thank my crew for what we’ve done here. We are going to continue with this. Because we’re going to go real deep, this story of sciatica is going to get nasty with information. This is the beginning of touching on the subject matter. Thank you, Alex, for bringing the information because extremely, very deep in terms. I want to thank Astrid for giving us insights into biochemistry. My true patient, Trudy, and my coach over here, Kenna, and the supporting staff. So I want also to go if you guys want to find us. We’re here, and we’re here in this area where we are available. If we can help you and you can contact us at any given time. I want to thank you all, and I appreciate it. We’re going to be hitting sciatica relentlessly because it was relentlessly the scourge. It is ripping apart a lot of people at their works. They just quietly suffer. They don’t sleep, they stress out, and it causes a disruption. And it happens in mommy’s world, and it disrupts the whole family directly because a happy mommy is a happy family. So the entire thing is what we want to do is to assess what’s going on here. Find out the treatment protocols and give you the best options possible. Thank you guys very much, and God bless.
PODCAST: In this podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez, a chiropractor in El Paso, presents UTEP’s Engineering Program and Dr. Sarkodie’s team, Juan Corona and Valeria Altamirano, to discuss the genesis of the new dynamic Foot Heel Regulator and what it is. Leg length discrepancy is a health issue characterized as a significant difference in the lengths of an individual’s legs which can ultimately cause a variety of other health issues, including low back pain and sciatica, among others. Juan Corona and Valeria Altamirano describe why they started their leg length regulator product and how they’re planning to bring it to the public to help people with this health issue improve the overall quality of their lives. – Podcast Insight
[00:00:02] Today, we’re going to be presenting an amazing young group of individuals where we’re going to be discussing really what’s special in El Paso. We’ve got a lot of talent here in this town. And one of the things that we’re gonna be talking about is the actual professionalism. And the science actually what the college engineering does. Dr. Natalicia is an amazing, dynamic principal who’s left a legacy of engineering in the school of UTEP. And one of the things that we have is we have an amazing desire for our youth to want to stay. Now, I’ve been here for 30 years and I’ve been practicing for quite a bit of a long time. And what I’ve noticed is that when I first came to El Paso in 1991, a lot of the young individuals wanted to leave. It was a very common desire that if you lived out here, you wanted to leave. You wanted to go to Washington State. Washington. Harvard. But you didn’t wanna come back. Today, we have a school that is recognized around the world. And the science department is one of the most amazing departments and well respected. And it’s always in the top 10 with M.I.T. and in schools that are very high in engineering values. So I’ve met a lot of the students out here over the years and specifically engineering students and the amazing minds that they have and how intelligent they are. It doesn’t stop to baffle me. It makes me very proud as an individual, as a parent, as a community individual to present certain talents. And today we’re gonna be presenting a group of individuals that have begun a new process, a new endeavor in their lives, and a new beginning. [00:01:38][96.4]
[00:01:39] This beginning is one that is full of mystery, wonder, and amazing science endeavors. [00:01:45][6.1]
[00:01:46] The program that we’re gonna be discussing focuses on leg length regulations or what they call the leg length regulator. That’s the idea. One, Dr. Sara Cody, Dr. Thomas Sarkoty, who is their teacher, is one of the lead individuals and the one that is spearheading this program. And now I have the privilege of having these two young individuals. I have Juan Corona and Valeria. And tell me how you pronounce your last name. Altamirano. OK, so she’s got a really strong voice, so she will have no problem with introductory. So today I want to do is I want to talk to you guys about these two individuals and specifically about the leg length regulator. This leg length regulator is a new dynamic that is their baby. These guys are master students. That means they’ve gone through a long level education and they are in pre Ph.D. programs, which if they choose to, they can become the future in this new design. So I want to present it to you guys. I’m going to talk first with Mrs. Valeria, and she’s going to go ahead and tell me a little bit about this program as she’s one of the leads. And then the second chair is Juan. I want to be able to go over these things and to discuss what it is that this new product that is being actually genesis or begun here in El Paso is about so Valeria talk to me. Hello, how are you doing? [00:03:13][87.3]
[00:03:14] I’m doing really well. Thank you for having me here. [00:03:16][2.2]
[00:03:17] So you guys have started a new product and it’s this leg length regulator. Tell me a little bit about what it is, because I think El Paso wants to know what we’re doing in the engineering department. What is it? [00:03:26][8.9]
[00:03:26] So the leg length regulator is a new device that we’re trying to develop. And it’s to focus on patients that have leg length discrepancy. And what that is, is when your lower limbs are of unequal size. So a lot of people don’t really know that they have this kind of illness until they notice that they have a lot of back pain. It’s hard for them to stand right. It’s hard for them to walk. And they just experience a lot of uneasiness when they’re doing things. So for a class project, we were assigned to do research and make a device that of our choosing. And Dr. Sarkody had mentioned if we wanted to look into leg length discrepancy. So I went ahead and looked into it and I noticed that a lot of people are affected by it, especially children and elderly patients. So we went ahead and decided, okay, let’s build something for this cause. And that’s how it came to be the leg length regulator. So what it does is we’re trying to use an LVDT, which is a linear variable differential transformer, and it uses that along with a PD controller and programed into an Arduino. And it’ll help regulate the amount of pressure that’s being put on to the foot to help lift it back up to where it’s supposed to be so that the patient doesn’t feel pain. That’s the main goal here, is for that to eliminate pain. And so that children and adults can go on with their everyday lives without having this issue. [00:05:05][98.8]
[00:05:06] This is very much amazing. I want to ask Juan in a second here specifically about the idea and how he’s also perceived the beginning of this idea. But as a practicing physician over the last 30 years, I can assure you that leg length discrepancy is a huge problem. It totally throws and alters body mechanics. And one of the things that I can assure you is that when I evaluate each one of my patients, I actually measure for leg length discrepancy, whether it’s just a qualitative look or even a quantitative approach through x rays or different linear methods by measuring femur, hips and knees, tibias and all the good nuts. But we can figure these things out and we can look at the effects. And I will tell you this, that having an altered foot mechanics really throws off the human locomotion, the ambulation of the foot. So I’d like to know a little bit about Juan. Juan. Tell me. And your last name is Corona. Right. And you’re an El Pasoan. And tell me a little bit about the story behind you and this project. [00:06:11][65.4]
[00:06:13] I have an undergrad in mechanical engineering. So I’ve always been interested in the biomechanics field. I volunteered in some labs before and I approached Dr. Sarkody as part of my job for him to be my thesis advisor for my project. And as Valeria mentioned, we were in one class where we were asked to find what kind of problem and come up with some kind of a solution in a case. In our case, it was this leg length regulator then we would, that was the class. Then we had another class, which was it was more like a workshop. It’s called ICorps. And basically what they do is tell you and teach you how to sell your product and to see if it’s actually needed for a different kind of population. So, what we want to do, as Valeria mentioned, come up with a device that regulates the different lengths in your legs and to help people reduce their pain, their back pain, their knee pain, and all these different biomechanical issues that come with having this discrepancy. [00:07:23][70.6]
[00:07:24] You know, one of the things when you said biomechanical discrepancies, I have to think back to the years when smoking was real bad. It’s been one of the killers of the Americas and people in families through the nineteen hundreds. [00:07:38][14.0]
[00:07:40] One of the things is the surgeon general really fought hard and the system fought hard to put these little emblems on to smoking packages, which was smoking is hazardous for your health. Right. And everyone knew it was common sense but they took years to produce this one sentence. Later on, they went off and they put another sentence in there, says it could be also deleterious to pregnant individuals. Right. So this took a long time. It literally it’s sad to believe that it actually took to the 80s to put that statement on. Now, one of the things that I noticed is, is that the surgeon general has recently, and we’re talking about the last decade, has determined that arthritis is a disorder of biomechanical imbalance. Right. So now we know that biomechanical imbalance is one of the major causes of arthritis. When the body’s out of calibration, the body actually forms a level of imbalance. And the body responds, it’s just like when you work out, everyone who works out with their hands. They eventually get calluses on their hands and fingers. This is a normal process. Well, that’s because the body is under stress. The tissues are stressed. The body responds. Well, guess what happens when the body’s out of mechanics? Well, the bones in a process that is delineated by wolf’s law, which is a process of which accelerated mobilization of the osteoblasts, which are they work together, the osteoclasts and osteoblasts you ultimately form arthritis in the direction where the load is imbalancely placed. This is the way the body protects you. So one of the things is that if your body’s out of whack or your foot is not put in the right position, you will actually cause early degenerative changes not only in your foot, ankle, hip, knee, and pretty much the spine in different areas. Right. One of the things that people don’t know is that when we have, let’s say, a person who’s got arthritis in their back and they got a bad hip. Where do you begin? Which one do you fix first? And the smartest and the most astute surgeons will realize that you’ve got to first fix the hip first, because how can you fix a spine with a base all misaligned. Right. It’s almost like you’re building a house on an even floor. So you’ve got to fix the pelvis in this situation. We’re fixing it from the ground up. Once we fix the issue from the ground up, we can actually place a situation where now the body’s in the proper mechanics and then we can deal with the back problem. It’s very hard to fix, a little back problem with a body that has a base that is offset. [00:10:05][145.4]
[00:10:06] So let me ask you this in terms of this new product because I’m really excited about this product for you guys as I’m a stand buyer in this really mumbo jumbo to me engineering process and all these linears and vectors that they kind of develop in the neato stuff that they do. I want them to tell us a little bit about what was their beginning, how did they do their research? How did you guys do your research? Either of you guys can answer, how did you do the research in terms of beginning the process? [00:10:32][26.2]
[00:10:38] So in order for us to… first Dr. Sarkody, he mentioned about this problem and he said that it was affecting some people, though, in order for us to double-check that we had to carry out some different kind of interviews with people that had. Well, we first interviewed different clinicians and patients that have this condition in order for us to see if it’s actually something that was present among the people here in El Paso. And it is actually pretty common. Very common. Yeah. So we started doing more research and then we started some reading some peer-reviewed articles, you know, to see what our main effects and why… And if I may. [00:11:18][39.9]
[00:11:18] … [00:12:58][0.0]
[00:12:58] Yeah, it has like 500 people in it. And everyone that’s in that group has been affected either by a family member or they personally have been affected by it. And so I messaged the group admin and I said, hey, I’m doing research. Can I join your group? I don’t have any relation to leg length discrepancy, but I’m trying to build a product to help patients that really need it. And she got back to me and she told me, yeah, definitely. Go ahead, like I’ll post it and see if people are interested. And so, yeah, I was able to get in and I got interviews and that’s kind of how I saw that a lot of patients are actually affected by it. And I didn’t know to what extreme until they were telling me their stories that they have to preorder their shoes, they have to send their shoes to a company to get them back. One little girl told me that she only has one pair of shoes because it’s the only one that works. So she’s sad because she can’t really be that little 12-year-old girl that wants to wear every single shoe out there. [00:14:05][66.8]
[00:14:06] Yes. Is that true? Is that true? I have women here watching in the background. Is it true? They all say yes. It’s very true. OK. You know what? Let me ask you particularly because now we’re entering the human component of actually leg length discrepancy. I don’t think anyone’s written the story about the humanity of it, or at least I don’t see them as much. But there is a humanity, a feeling, an empathy to it. What did you sense as you were hearing these stories from these individuals? [00:14:31][25.5]
[00:14:33] I was shocked because I didn’t know how bad it was for a person to go through this, because, I mean, you know, my legs are even. I would hope that they are. And it never occurred to me like, oh, I have to go by a different shoe because I need a wider heel to even out my body. And some patients told me that they are active, but it’s hard because when they want to work out, it causes more pain because of the back problem. And then they have to go to rehab and then they want hip surgeries so that they can fix everything. But then it happens again. And then some patients told me that they don’t have the funds to afford a hip surgery and just to go through all that struggle of trying to find something that’ll make them feel good about themselves and not stand out. But at the same time, make it work. Because that was one issue that I noticed. A lot of people do not like the extra heel insert because it’s so bulky and so big and so noticeable and people will stare and be like, why do you have a different shoe size? Like, it looks weird. So it makes them feel really uncomfortable and they don’t want to go out because of this. And so they just stick with regular shoes because they don’t want to be standing out and have people pointing like, hey, you have a problem and they rather take in the pain than fix it. So that really hurt me a lot. Knowing that there’s not something that can help them improve and be able to live their lives daily without having this in the back of their mind. [00:16:14][101.3]
[00:16:15] One of the things that you mentioned is and I don’t know if you guys are old enough to have. Well, probably not. But, you know, many people started realizing that the word why became the most important word, probably about a good decade ago. You guys were in middle school. The why that you have in order to do this project. What means a lot to me is that your compassion to it, it hurts you. What else did you feel? And I’m going to talk. I’m gonna ask Juan how he felt after he did his research. What did you feel when you did your research about the individuals and their plight to try to feel good? Valeria, go ahead. [00:16:54][38.9]
[00:16:54] Um, well, for me. What made me want to keep on going was asking them questions, like I asked them, what do you want? What is out in the market that you would buy? And they told me what it was. So with the information that they gave me, I started looking into different like redesigning our initial design so that it can fit their criteria so that it can help then and ask them questions about telemedicine. If a component was available, would you prefer that? And would you like to reduce the number of times you visit the doctors and they told me? Yes. And they were just really I was just basically trying to get what they wanted. So I can try to figure out how to put everything that they’re looking for into one design. [00:17:39][44.3]
[00:17:39] That’s amazing. Juan, what was the why that’s driving you in this project? Because you got to do you know, one of the things is, engineering is one thing? Right. Right. And that’s the math. That’s the lines, the physics, all the cool stuff that is, you know, the Oppenheimer stuff. For me, when we get to the humanity of it. How do you feel this project has empowered you? [00:18:01][21.6]
[00:18:23] And of course I’ve had some knee pain or back pain or my foot hurt sometimes after running. Depends on how much you run and everything. How often. And then it’s I think it’s pretty easy for a person to not relate. For example, I think when people say that they just have two legs with differing lengths, you might not think how much it affects them and how much it impacts their life. And really like in a more personal way, like, for example, someone that likes a certain sport. If they walk, how much they cause in order for them to get a different shoe that is able to help them reduce all these pain. So I think all these pretty small issues when it translates to their experience. I think that’s the thing that impacted me the most. Because you might not know how much this condition is actually affecting their life until you ask them and they tell you. You know, many people that have these types of conditions are prevented of doing some activity that they might like. In my case, it would be running. And I don’t know what I would do if I were not able to run, you know, because there’s a difference between not doing something because you don’t want to then not doing something because you can’t. That’s a big, big difference. Yeah. So like that you get taken away that choice. I think that’s something that really impacted me. So that’s why we really want to keep working on this device to improve it and to make it accessible because there are solutions right now, but there might not be as accessible and affordable for different people. [00:19:59][95.3]
[00:19:59] … [00:24:30][78.6]
[00:24:31] And no matter what kind of individual, the human foot was designed to last 100 years at least. OK, so there’s nothing in our lives that lasts 100 years. Nothing. No car, no computer, no house without constant maintenance. [00:24:43][11.8]
[00:24:43] So imagine the majesty of the foot dynamics. This thing was created for all has like a bunch of bones, all with an arc on it. Two trends, late forces. The whole thing is covered in curves so that it dissipates forces and translates energy and dissipates energy in the most amazing way. One of the things that the feet does have is that as you strike the foot, the first hip is called the heel strike. [00:25:08][24.8]
[00:25:08] The heel strike is the moment at which your heel strikes it. At that point, the whole body has to adapt to the opposite. The contralateral, the mechanics, the muscles on the opposite side of the body engage. They know that you have struck the floor. You know this because when you ever missed the heel strike on the stairs, you look like some sort of crazed animal trying to figure out where that foot’s going to land. Right. Your body jumps. So from the heel strike. So as the body goes forward, then it goes to the foot, the stance phase, the stance phases the next phase on the final phase, which is probably the next phase, not the final phase, which is basically the toe-off or the toe land and the toe-off the first metatarsal, which is the big toe. It actually translates to energy, but it was being guided by the heel strike. So all this matters. Okay. Now, based on how the body translates that energy and that foot, we can actually see what actually occurs to the body. Now, guess who’s adjusting to this foot? Heel stands and toe-off stage, the low back is the knees are the cushion mechanism. The meniscus is, the mortise joint in the ankle. These things are all adapting. The beautiful thing of the tibia and the fibula also adapting. So in this magical motion thing. Yeah. You know what? Sadly to say, but we could talk the story when we were young kids, that toe bone connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone connected to the hip bone all the way to the neck bone, and we sing that song, but it’s very true. So this design is very important to me as an individual to look forward to what it has now. Let’s get into the dynamics and the science of it. Okay, what did you guys do? And by the way. I can only get into it as far as they want to get into it because it’s very unique and it’s very still in the developmental stage. What were the things that you were considering in designing the product? [00:26:51][103.3]
[00:26:56] Yes. So when we were in the design process, I actually drew up some sketches and I sent them out and said, hey, does this look okay? And we all came to an agreement to do kind of like a shoe insert because we saw that the shoe insert was available. And then the addition heel part of the shoes, so we all said like, OK? We want to get rid of the whole oh. It looks weird kind of aspect. So our first initial design was focus on the shoe insert. And then we started looking into different material, like for foam that’ll help do the adjustment. And then I looked into different electrical components because my background is in electrical engineering. So I went ahead. [00:27:45][48.8]
[00:27:45] … [00:32:17][34.2]
[00:32:37] Yes. So I did do research on it about what the program is. And it’s ICorps. And what they do is they help engineers or anyone in the science field to build different technology that could be needed out in the world. And you present what you have to this group and they determine if, kind of like, if you’re worthy or not to have to bring your idea to life because a lot of people, what I’ve learned from the regional ICorps program was that a lot of people think that they have a million-dollar idea. But when they present it and they do research and they do customer discovery, they start to realize that maybe no one really needs it. They just thought it was a cool idea. [00:33:24][46.3]
[00:33:25] Yeah. So there’s stages. And so you said there’s regional and there’s what is there national. OK, there’s regional. National. [00:33:30][5.3]
[00:33:32] Yes. So when we went out and at first I was like, I don’t know, like to be honest, I told myself, I don’t know if there’s an actual need for this kind of thing. So it was cool having to go out and find people that have this type of issue. And I’m glad that I did because now I know a lot of people do have this issue and they don’t realize that they have this issue till they’re about the mid 20s, higher 30s, and it’s kind of too late for them to figure out, like what to do and help adjust their posture and fix it. Compared to kids who are born with it, they have to deal with all this and then go through different appointments to help fix it. And then they can qualify for surgery, which can take time. So when I saw that, I realized that what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to make, it has an impact and can help all these people so they don’t have to be like, OK. [00:34:31][58.5]
[00:34:31] I have limited options. What can I do? Either hip surgery or get a shoe that’s going to make me stand out. And so this device that we’re trying to develop shows that it can go above and beyond and help a ton of people. [00:34:46][14.5]
[00:34:47] Let me ask you this Juan. Obviously, this is first a great product, but then you’re going to throw your baby out to competition. Right. So tell me how you feel about that and how ready are you and what are the things that you’re gonna be doing to get ready for this competition? [00:35:03][16.4]
[00:35:04] Um, so, yeah, um, basically as Valeria mentioned, the ICorps program they teach us if our idea is actually, if there’s actually a need for people to get it and if people are willing to pay for a device, essentially know if we’re actually able to commercialize it. So in this competition, we have different of course people and people have a different device and we all think there are devices that most needed one but we actually have to prove that people need it and that it’s actually going to help their lives. So I think in the original part, we already, that part is already finished. But we’re looking to go for the nationals. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be tough. I mean, I’m pretty sure that like not everyone gets it gets there, but we are very confident. And how much is the device needed and how much these people would get their life improved if they actually get us through it? [00:36:05][61.4]
[00:36:06] I think we have it in our thoughts. And as you guys develop this, you guys are thinking of like which was your avatar, who really wants the product. I would assure you this, that as a parent if I see my son having an issue, I’m the avatar, I’m the dad because you’re selling the product to me because I’m the one that’s going to identify my little boy. My little girl has an issue. Right. [00:36:30][23.8]
[00:36:30] So I got to tell you, the way you package this stuff in the way you’re explaining it to me excites me to be able to help my son, my daughter in whatever situation is. So that’s very exciting to see. Now, in terms of getting it on with the competition, let’s talk about getting it on with the competition because we’re gonna get it on. Right. So as we do the process, have you guys thought that process out in and how we’re going to present that at the regional? I think first it had to go to regional correct or has it been not we’re not past regionals or we are past regionals. [00:37:03][32.2]
[00:37:21] I have, um, I saw that it was a seven-week program and they told us that the first four days are heavy because you have to go to seminars and it can be from 8:00 in the morning all the way to 6:00 in the afternoon. So you need a lot of time. And then another thing that they told me was if we do want to do this for the regional, we had to contact 25 or conduct 25 interviews. And at the national level, you have to do 100 interviews. So it’s four times greater than what it is at regional. [00:37:59][38.1]
[00:38:16] And then we can also use LinkedIn to go for more of the doctors and people that actually focus and specialize in like leg length discrepancy. But it’s good to know for the customer segment of who’s actually going to be purchasing this because that’s where our money is going to be coming from. Yes. You know, it’s gonna be a lot of work, but we’re committed. And I’ve already looked at my schedule and I’m like, OK, this day is gonna be dedicated just to do this and things like that. And I’ve been pushing things around so that way I have the time to do what is needed and to get it done efficiently and successfully. [00:38:56][39.6]
[00:38:57] You know, full disclosure, I’ve been invited to be part of the mentor program along with Dr. Sarkody in different responsibilities. I look forward to working with these individuals and knowing the entire team to be able to bring the product to whatever it is that it’s supposed to be. It’s already written. But we’ve got to make it happen. Right. So we’ve got to propel this product. So I was brought in by Juan. He found me out. I was you know, I was bouncing around and I think Kenna also bumped in and we kind of crisscrossed and we got e-mails and they told me about this product. I thought it was an awesome idea because I have seen the effects. I can tell you that if I had an option like this, it would be unbelievable or a great choice for individuals that have from scoliosis to back problems to hip problems. Because we live in a world where when I started practicing, there was no such thing as the Internet. Now, as far as whether it is and did indicate that it’s a fast thing, my daughter, she was able to do things, you know, do a whole project by just getting on social media and doing things in minutes. That took me years to do. The people out there are highly educated. And now with the Internet and the resources that they’re out there, this is gonna be a big thing. I do believe. I believe in their vision. I believe in their why. [00:40:18][81.4]
[00:40:20] … [00:45:45][68.6]
[00:45:50] Well, you know, I can see you’re holding your cards to your vest there. Well, I tell you, I’m very impressed with you guys I’m fans of you guys. And I look forward to having you guys back into doing the podcast and discussing different avenues. Now, each one of these we did a lot of general talking. We didn’t get too deep into the subject matter for that. And that is by design. By the way, until we are able to really present this product, we won’t want to give the competition any of the ideas. Because then you guys, you know, you see the leg length regulator 2 and you’re gonna be really upset. Right. So as we do this kind of ideas today, we’re gonna be filling in some of the videos in the background. That’s gonna be just basic and generic. But I look forward to assisting you guys. And in the ability to push you guys out there and make it happen, because we’re gonna get it on right. Guys, we’re gonna get it on. We’re gonna get it. We’re going to take on these I.T. technical individuals and we’re going to bring it home because we have a stronger why. Right. And that’s what I want to make sure that as we encompass these new dynamics, I look forward to seeing my cohort, Dr. Sarkodie, in this process. And we’re gonna be bringing him into the next podcast and discussing, you know, the insights, the genesis in this product, and the reasons why the developmental process from his point of view, what he sees into his design, along with his personal experiences in moving biomechanical dynamic apparatuses that he has had. Because as I understand, Dr. Sarkodie has had a vast amount of experience in body and mechanical dynamics, specifically when we’re dealing with gait dynamics. [00:47:31][101.0]
[00:47:33] So UTEP, you know, has brought in a lot of great order around the world and is attracting great scientists from around the world. And what we need to do is we need to support our teams and our individuals. So. Enough said and we look forward to seeing you guys into the future. So God bless. And again, we had Juan Corona and Valeria Altamirano. [00:47:54][21.8]
[00:47:55] All right. Sounds good. All right. Thank you so much, guys. [00:48:00][5.2]
PODCAST: In today’s podcast, Dr. Alex Jimenez, chiropractor, and Kenna Vaughn, health coach, introduce Jeremy McGowan and Taylor Lyle, both experts in nutrition and strength training, as they discuss the differences between what is athletic strength training vs what is military strength training. By sharing a wide variety of nutrition and fitness recommendations, Jeremy McGowan and Taylor Lyle bring their knowledge and experience to El Paso, Tx where they offer performance improvements and injury recovery wherever they are needed. Dr. Alex Jimenez, Kenna Vaughn, Jeremy McGowan, and Taylor Lyle share what it is they do in their careers to provide overall health.� – Podcast Insight
[00:00:18] All right, guys, we’re here today. We’re excited. It’s a real special day for me here in El Paso because as you guys know, my job is to advance the science of wellness and fitness and to bring people that we have in El Paso to the forefront and to, you know, kind of show the individuals that are out there and the options we have. A lot of people don’t know. I’ve been out here for 30 years and I’ve seen El Paso kind of develop over the last three decades. And I’ve been nothing but proud to see the young kids and young men that are heading to the fitness programs all around the city, along with the insights that they’re bringing from where they come from people coming from all over the world. We have Olympians. We have specialists. We have top trainers, power trainers, fitness trainers, Crossfit trainers all around the world. These individuals bring a huge amount of talent and they all do the same thing. They get old. And as we get older, they were once the best in the world. And they come back and they share with. If you’re an Olympian and you know what? For the youth. So we bring certain individuals that have sciences and technologies. And some people are in the middle of their flight, in the beginnings and in the new starts of their lives where they actually bring us some great sciences. Today we have Jeremy McGowan and Taylor Lyle. These were two individuals that we brought in last time and we’re gonna hopefully have them come back and share with us their technologies. Jeremy brings a background. He works in the military, really smart guy. All these kids are really smarter than I am. It’s a beginning of time where we can see that the knowledge that the military has brought out has brought really great talent from around the world. [00:02:11][113.8]
[00:02:12] Jeremy is from Panama City, correct? Yes, sir. Yes. And Taylor, where are you from? Dallas. Fort Worth. [00:02:17][5.5]
[00:02:18] Dallas, Fort Worth. And one of the great things that I love about this, this whole story is that they’re here in El Paso and a lot of people don’t know this. And their expertise and knowledge are not only for us to to to benefit from, but they’re benefitting and they’re teaching the people that are here, the military, through their sciences and their techniques and their specialties and their licenses. So we really, really do have a moment in time where now the world is advancing in El Paso. So what I’d like to do is I’d like to say, introduce, you know, Kenna Vaughn. She’s over there on the side so you can see her. She’s there, she’s out. She’s anchoring on the side, making sure that my cameras work well and that I don’t stutter too much. Then we have Taylor Lyle and we have Jeremy. Jeremy McGowan. Correct. Yes. OK. And what we want to talk about a little bit about fitness training and the ideas about specifically about strength training, nutrition and as it pertains to collegiate sports and as well as power training for the military. So these kinds of sciences are very important for people to correlate. Now, do they cross lines? They cross lines for athletes in high school. So these sciences and these techniques are going to be good. But I like to know a little bit about Jeremy today. Jeremy, welcome to the show. And the people are here watching and they’re interested in understanding what it is that you do. So tell us a little bit about what you do and what you’ve done and where you came from. And we’ll leave it from there. Go ahead. [00:03:42][84.7]
[00:03:43] So, like you said, first, I’m from close to Panama City, Florida, a little tiny, small town. I went to Troy University on a baseball scholarship. It’s a D1 University in Alabama, close to Montgomery. So southeast Alabama, played there for five years. Soon as I got done playing slid right into coaching, I coached there for a little bit over three years. I ran baseball and softball, mostly assisted with other sports, the football, volleyball, soccer. A lot of others. Got offered a job out here to slot into the military side of things to coach. Getting really turn it down. Really, really enjoy what I’m doing here, running the physical training programs or the PT programs for a battalion at Fort Bliss. So I’ve worked with two separate battalions. We run the PT program, reconditioning program and then we work hand-in-hand. Kind of help write their PT programs so that when we’re not with them, they have a better idea of what to do. [00:04:36][53.1]
[00:04:37] I got a question for you. And you said that you’re an athlete going back to that. What position did you play? I pitched. You pitched. Oh, so you’re the dude. You’re the man. [00:04:44][7.0]
[00:04:45] You know, I was a closer started a little bit, but mostly closed. I really just tried to throw as hard as I could. That’s about it. Were you good? I like to think so. But you know some people might tell you differently. [00:04:57][11.8]
[00:04:58] Well, don’t be modest. Don’t be modest. You gotta say that you’re good at what you do. You know where I came from when I was a little boy. We got to see this out here in Mexico. We got this guy named Fernando Valenzuela. Well, remember that guy. Yeah. [00:05:11][13.4]
[00:05:11] Man was he was a Dodgers. Oh, man. I remember this big chunky looking dude that just could rip the ball. Definitely it didn’t look like he was a pitcher. But really, you know. But here’s the thing. Here’s the thing that I know now that I didn’t know then that people who got strong cores can really, really propel their force. Right. And this dude had a thick core, he busted up some gloves. Oh, hey. So let me ask you, what did the military see in you that they wanted to provide for this local community? [00:05:44][32.8]
[00:05:45] So the way that it kind of worked this whole program started as a very small pilot. There were five strength conditioning coaches and that was the first people on the ground. So that was it. And then it expanded. Now there are 60 coaches across a few bases in the U.S. So basically they needed qualified coaches that had an experience. So they wanted guys that had been a strength coach, you know, three-plus years, whatever, to lead the way. The assistants could have a little bit less experience but had to be certified, had to have a little bit of experience in the field so that they could get some, you know, guys in the run PT programs that were used to running large groups. So they wanted guys mainly from the collegiate side because we’re a little more used to running large groups, the private sector as well, depending on where they were at. Obviously, if they’re, you know, only working there for a very small amount of time, it might not be as much, but… They really wanted to focus on, you know, the qualifications, so having that Master’s degree and having that call and having that certification was the main thing. [00:06:44][59.0]
[00:06:45] I’ll tell you what, I saw you’re, clearly that you’re a really, really smart that both of you guys have resumes that are just amazing. And I got to tell you, the talent that the military brings this town is amazing. So don’t feel shy. Go ahead and tell people you got the big ‘ol Masters because that’s huge because you’re only one step away from a Ph.D. Let me ask you this because that’s very curious. The military has different departments, different battalions. What is it? [00:07:07][22.2]
[00:07:07] How many people in the battalion, the one that we were in originally there was around 410, 450. This one’s larger. So there are five companies. Each company is comprised of around 100 people. So there’s upwards of 550 in the battalion right now that we work with. [00:07:22][14.3]
[00:07:22] I’ll tell you what, we’re used to running a little bit of a Crossfit center. We’re actually coming from the Push Fitness Center. And 20, 30 kids at one time is a lot. How can you manage the largeness or the immensity of those groups together? [00:07:34][12.2]
[00:07:35] We kind of set up circuit style training for the most part. So we try to run stations with them. Luckily, I do have another strength coach, it’s not just me. So that helps a lot. We split the group up into two. Normally we’ll run a lifting type station and then a running type station and one of us will run each and we get about the halfway point. We’ll switch. So he’ll come over if I’m running the training. The strength training station to begin with. We’ll just flip flop. So he’ll bring his group over the straight training. I’ll take my group of the running and we’ll do that for the last half. So we usually have around outside tops around 80 people in a group. It would be the most that we would have and we would have 40 and 40 apiece. [00:08:09][34.0]
[00:08:10] Jeremy so you can pretty much see all these guys in different, I guess, techniques whether this is a running area. This is a strength area. You can see them all line sight kind of in the distance. [00:08:19][8.8]
[00:08:19] Yeah. That’s the goal. So with the strength training sessions, we set up kind of a semicircle on those stations so that I can just walk around the semicircle and then be able to see everyone. [00:08:29][9.6]
[00:08:30] And then as far as the running goes, it’s normally we do more anaerobic style training, some more sprint type work so that we can be right there telling them, you know, running the rest times, telling them, you know what, Tom, we’re trying to be on the run, whatever might be so that we can actually manage it a little more. [00:08:44][13.8]
[00:08:44] Wow. Taylor, we’re gonna get with you in a second there, so go ahead and drink some water. We’re going to get to you in a minute. But I got to ask a question for you. When you look at as a strength coach, do you have a deep-seated philosophy and the way things are done? And I assume and I don’t know, it seems like you’re beginning’s were with baseball. Correct. How do you apply that? That science and the level of mechanical sciences to the different kinds of levels and different types of specialties in the military. Let’s say you got some. Right, you know. I don’t know what kind of things they do. Let’s say the mechanics versus the heavy-duty artillery gunners. How do you change that up for them? [00:09:20][35.9]
[00:09:21] So one thing that’s really, really changed over for me with baseball to this is obviously with baseball I worked, with a lot of overhead throwing athletes. So a lot of shoulder problems, a lot of shoulder stability, things like that, that I was really trying to work with something that I’ve noticed in this military sector because of the way they’ve trained for so long. There they have a lot of shoulder injuries. There’s a lot of shoulder problems, a lot of instabilities as far as their, you know, way overcompensating. Their shoulders are starting to round from doing push-ups for so many years and not getting the proper training along with that. So having that expertise on that side of things, it’s helped me a lot as far as training, you know, different types of people. So I work in a BSB right now, so I haven’t really worked a whole lot with infantry, BSB Brigade Support Battalion. [00:10:06][45.2]
[00:10:06] Okay, got you. [00:10:07][0.4]
[00:10:07] We have a lot of mechanics, medics, communications people. It’s not a whole lot of high-speed guys. So we’re not really working with a lot of infantry type people. [00:10:17][9.7]
[00:10:17] We’re not working with a lot of guys that are really, really out there and really, really active. So a lot of the times, the people that we work with, the main things that we’re working on is landing mechanics, proper lifting technique, because we do have guys that have to lift some heavier stuff with transport and stuff like that. And in landing mechanics, guys jump out at trucks all the time. They’re in big, tall trucks, whatever might be. So those two things are something that we really try to work on so that in their day to day jobs, they don’t get hurt. [00:10:46][28.6]
[00:10:46] You know, when you say landing mechanics, whether it’s volleyball or anything, you know, that’s got to be the almost second nature. Oh, yeah. You know, I’ve seen that in the last couple of the last decade or two. I see the philosophy changing in the military, specifically in their ideas and their fitness goals. Recently, they’ve done some changes in their new programs where they actually if you don’t pass these certain things, you don’t even get the vacation time or even have even time to or migrate up in the ranks. But based on this performance, I’ve heard a lot about this ruck thing. What is this ruck thing? Yeah. Yeah, I heard. How much weight is it? Because they don’t care if you’re a 180-pound person or a ninety-five-pound lady, they’re still going to carry the same weight. [00:11:27][40.8]
[00:11:27] So there are different size rucksacks. It can be depending on really what your unit wants for that day or what type of thing you’re doing. So. Sure, you might have heard of the Baton Death March that happens here once a year. Yes, it did. So there are two separate standards for that. There’s a military light and the military heavy on the rucksacks are different. I don’t remember the exact way, but I want to say it’s 40 and 80 pounds. OK. If I remember right. Could be wrong on that. But it’s somewhere around that. And so that’s the light standard and the heavy standard as far as what they do in a normal setting for a rucksack. They kind of set it up for themselves. So basically, if a unit’s going on a ruck, they might tell you, hey, load it with as much as you want. Here’s how long we’re going, be able to do that in this fast. So they get to kind of pick their rucksack weight, depending on what they can handle. [00:12:13][45.6]
[00:12:13] Is it 40 through 80 or 40 and 80? [00:12:15][1.8]
[00:12:16] So in the baton it’s 40 and 80. But if they set it up themselves, they could do 40 through 80 as just depending on what they want to run with. [00:12:23][6.6]
[00:12:23] Yeah. You know, what do you look for in terms of an individual in order for them to say, oh, this dude’s going to just kind of wreck his back or he’s going to mess his shoulders up? What do you how do you tweak it so that you can kind of help them not get injured? [00:12:35][12.3]
[00:12:36] It’s, so posture’s a big part of it. Again, a lot of guys have rounded shoulders, so that translates over into the ruck as well. Well, they’ve got a heavy rucksack on their back. They start to hunch over round their back, their shoulders are already rounded. So you’re putting a lot of stress on the back, which I know you’re kind of the guy for that. [00:12:54][18.0]
[00:12:55] Oh, my God. I live with that every day, you know. Oh, you mean how we treat them? [00:13:05][10.2]
[00:13:05] You know what that can do to a back. And, you know, so there’s an issue that we try to fix. We do a lot of pulling, a lot of rows, a lot of rear delt work to try to get those shoulders back right. And stop the hunching. Stop the rolled shoulders. So that’s one thing that we try to do. And then again, as far as the lower body goes, proper gait is something that we try to work on, on the PTs work on that a little bit more than we do. But proper running mechanics, proper gait can obviously help with a lot of hip ankle knee issues. That a lot of guys have when they’re out there because they’re on uneven terrain. A lot of times rucking. They’re wearing their boots. You know, they’re not necessarily in the best running gear. So we try to do as much as we can to combat the problems that that can cause. [00:13:49][43.5]
[00:13:49] I find this to be so amazing that the both of you guys are here. Taylor, I know that you guys work together and I know we were introduced with you and the vast amount of expertise that you have and shared with us last time. But how do you guys interact? How does the diet world and the physical training world work together with Jeremy’s dynamics? [00:14:09][20.3]
[00:14:11] Yes. So we work hand in hand. I mean, you really can’t train without nutrition. So I’m out there a lot of times at the P.T. sessions, whether I’m trying to participate myself or just help the soldiers. So, you know, just making sure that they eat something in the morning, that’s a big issue that we see, is that they don’t have enough energy. And they wonder why they can’t finish their workout sometimes. So, you know, that is something that we both preach and then making sure that they eat something afterward, whether it’s going straight to breakfast or they’re getting some type of post-workout recovery modality. So we work with that. And then, you know, I do quite a bit of one on one counseling. And so a lot of times when I’m meeting with a variety of soldiers, you know, strength and conditioning come up in my conversation and we do a referral system. So I’ll refer them to Jeremy and, you know, follow up with him. And then, you know, a lot of times they’ll meet with them individually, give them a training program. And so we’re constantly urging communication with the best practices and, you know, how do we work towards the common goal. [00:15:25][74.0]
[00:15:26] So, you know, Jeremy, in terms of when you look at someone and you see them, they’re just they need help. You know, this kid is. He means well. But you can see him falling apart because you get that instinct like this kid’s going to blow out at something. He’s just not there. He looks ashy. He’s not eating well. How do you bring in Taylor in this dynamics, in that situation? [00:15:47][20.4]
[00:15:48] So a lot of the times I can really see it closer to the end of a workout as she said. Their energy levels are just low. You know, they can’t even, during the break period, they’re sitting down, they’re lying down. They’re trying to drink something and they can hardly drink as their stomach’s upset, you know. So I can tell pretty quickly if somebody has not eaten or is struggling with the nutrition side of things. And if that’s the case, then I’ll tell them, hey, you know, we’ve got a dietitian. We’ve got somebody that can help you. I can help a little bit in terms of telling you you need to eat something before you come out here. But she can help you, you know, in a better way than I can. [00:16:22][34.2]
[00:16:23] You guys coordinate a little bit. Kind of like this one is going to be a rough one. OK. We need to know where they’re going. They’re gonna be on the floor today. [00:16:29][6.4]
[00:16:30] There are some times that, you know, we can tell, you know, I can tell when I set up the circuit, like, okay. These guys are gonna get broke off a little bit, you know, and especially the ones that I’ve looked at and I know that she’s talked to, I’d make sure with them before those days. Hey, did you eat anything? And if not, then, you know, I’ll try to help out as much as I can, like, take breaks, you know, make sure you eat something next time, though, because this is how the sessions are going to continue to be for right now. [00:16:58][28.1]
[00:16:58] Guys, can you feel what I’m seeing, guys? And I’ve got to tell you when I started here in 1991, literally the military treated from my vantage point, again, I’m civilian and I don’t have to follow the rules, but like, they are set up there. But I could sense that the world was like Full Metal Jacket. It was really intense. It was a really harsh environment. And as you can tell, these two individuals are the forefront of the military to this day. So one of the things is I have to ask you both one question. Do you guys care about your guys? Oh, yeah, yeah, yes. You know what I got to tell you? You know what? I see this from the captains. Now, the world in the military is totally pro. There are people in a way that I have never seen go back two decades ago, three decades to 1991. I could not even get my hands on a military patient. They just would not let anyone outside the military take care of the people today. You guys are. Are you in the military? Both of you. No. No. [00:17:55][56.2]
[00:17:55] Contractors. See they’re bringing in the outside world. They’re also letting the inside go out. It’s awesome to see that because from my point of view, the caring that’s involved had to move from the top down and to have you guys from around the world, there’s got to be some amazing crew of people recruiting you guys. And I got to tell you, it makes me very proud because from the senators, you know, that actually made the Fort Bliss to become as big as it is now. And as it’s moved up, you see a lot of kind, caring sergeants, colonels, commanders that really care about their people. [00:18:33][38.1]
[00:18:34] And I got to tell you, it makes me feel really cool for an individual out there because I’ve got a kid who is your age. Right. So, you know, you guys got, you know, your guys taking care of him. So it’s a great thing. [00:18:43][9.8]
[00:18:44] Let me ask you, in terms of focusing on the dynamics of, let’s say over the shoulder, you had mentioned that shoulder thing going into that particular area is now for my vantage point, I’m a real lover of the shoulder girdle and the way the word and how it works together when you put something on the shoulder back in the day, there was one thing that really destroyed everyone’s shoulder. People didn’t realize this was this military. It was like a football jacket that had weights on it and they’d load it up in the front in the back, and you could put on, you know, some weights on it. These people had shoulder problems because of the pressure of the on the chromium, on the clavicle. And this happened. How is it that you kind of prevent a shoulder injury in terms of what you’ve seen when they wear things that are compressing them like a rucksack? [00:19:32][48.3]
[00:19:33] So part of that is the way they wear their rucksack. Our PTs do a really good job of demonstrating to them the proper technique of how to wear a rucksack, how to tie it down the right way so that it’s not putting a lot of pressure on their shoulders. That’s not something that necessarily I do, but that’s one way of combating it. As far as my role in it, I’m really just trying to strengthen the whole shoulder girdle and that whole area of the upper back, upper traps, whatever it might be done to try to take some load off so that they have a little bit of a shelf or something to sit it on. So we do a lot of like I said, we’re dealt work. We do a lot of rotator cuff work and a lot of trap work as well, so that they do get a little bit of that shelf. [00:20:15][41.7]
[00:20:15] All right. Well, that gives me a good understanding. I want to know the difference between an NCAA Division One athlete and the military athlete. How do you go about training and start like what are the similarities? And we’re going to try to look at the differences to contrast that specifically in that science. Go ahead and tell me a little bit about what you do for with your philosophies. [00:20:37][21.8]
[00:20:38] So similarities wise I would say the main things is their want to. A lot of times the military guys, the ones that are a little more high speed, they really want to get after it on PT. Right. So they’re one harder sessions. They want to sweat. They want to feel like they got something done. The NCAA guys are the same way. You know, they don’t want to come in and do one exercise and be done. They want to lift heavy. They want to get big. They want to get strong. And it’s the same way here. The only issue is here the training age is so much lower as compared to an NCAA Division One athlete. So when I would get a guy at college, you know, 18 years old. But he came straight out of high school. That was a 6A, 7A, 5A high school, you know, some bigger school played football for four years. He’s been working out since he was in eighth grade. These guys come here and, you know, I’ve got a lot of people that are 30 years old that didn’t play sports in high school, that have been in the military since they were 18. And they’ve been training wrong for 12 years since they got in the military. So their true training age is really nothing. [00:21:43][64.8]
[00:21:44] You know, they don’t really have good movement pattern. They don’t have an idea of really how to lift. They don’t have an idea of, you know, the right way to warm up, the right way to cool down anything like that. So it’s a lot more teaching here as compared to I could really get up and running at a Division One school like I was in about three or four weeks. I was up and running, had guys going full speed almost. So and here it’s a lot of teaching. [00:22:08][23.6]
[00:22:08] Jeremy, do you work with the reserves also? I do not. So we’re just with the active duty. Active duty. [00:22:14][5.6]
[00:22:15] So you mentioned 30 years old. OK. How does that work? And what’s your approach for a 30-year-old versus an 18-year-old? That’s got to do the same procedure. [00:22:22][7.6]
[00:22:23] The 18-year-olds are a little bit easier to teach. Their movement patterns are a little bit easier to pick up on because they haven’t been doing it wrong for so many years. Right. So if an 18-year-old and this is true across any population, whether it’s military or whatever, these guys, it kind of sticks a little faster. Right. So you teach them something two or three times they might have it, whereas this 30, 35-year-old guy that’s been doing this movement, but he’s been doing it wrong for 12 years. You know, when you try to teach him the correct way to do it, it might take eight, 10, 12, 15 sessions for him to finally get it down. And the issue with that is because of how many people are in the battalion, we might only get one or two sessions with him a week. So it might take four months for him to finally get this movement pattern down. And that slows down a lot of people in the process. [00:23:08][44.9]
[00:23:09] Do you separate them to kind of keep them on a different sack of or direction? [00:23:12][3.3]
[00:23:13] So we try to the issue with that is there. You know, if you’ve got one guy in Bravo Company and one guy, an Alpha company that is in the same boat, they don’t really do PT together. So it’s hard to separate within the same company, those people, because you might get that company once or twice a week. So if I’m really trying to separate the guys that are picking up on the guys that aren’t the groups, you’re going to be one of the really small. Or they’re just going to stop coming because they’re not getting enough out of it. [00:23:38][24.8]
[00:23:38] Taylor, in answering that same question, when you see those young kids that and versus the older or how do you approach the diet changes as well as just the approach of nutrition for them going through the same process in terms of the program? [00:23:55][16.3]
[00:23:56] Yes. Just what Jeremy said, you know, the 18-year-old scenario, they typically you know, they want to get better. They want to do what it takes to make it to the next level, which would be professional. And so I feel like they strive to want to get better. They’re a little bit more intuitive to that and receptive. And the, you know, 30-year-old, it’s not that they aren’t receptive. But, you know, a lot of them will have a family, whether that’s a spouse and children. And, you know, you have to take, you know, other factors that may be out of their control to have this success. So really, just in both scenarios, education component, there is so much room to grow, you know, unless someone maybe you went through like Ranger school a little bit more elite on the tactical side, you know, they might be a little bit more attuned to the nutrition and already know what to do around training and recovery. So they might not need as much education and guidance. But definitely there’s a lot of room to grow and both collegiate and military setting for nutrition. [00:25:09][73.5]
[00:25:10] All right. We’re gonna throw it to another gear here. Now, we’re dealing with in my thought process, as you take these young men to the next level, you’re going to deal with some elite guys. And that’s where a lot of my, you know, kids here, the Division one athletes, they correlate. And I got to tell you, from what I’ve seen, because I treat quite a few of the strange cats that go off to the journeys and they go into their, you know, the jungles, these are different kinds of characters. They have different mindsets. And there are at the highest level. Some of these guys are literally in their early, late 30s. And they’re just like that, you can see. In their eyes, they’re just ready to go climb trees, get in the jungle. [00:25:47][36.6]
[00:25:48] These individuals, these elite, these tactical guys, these ones that are that have percolated up to the highest level. How do you work with those individuals and what do you do in terms of trying to maintain them at their sharpest level? [00:26:01][13.5]
[00:26:03] So those guys are a little bit more obviously, like you said, they’re high speed. So they are more like working with a Division One athlete. Honestly, there’s been strength conditioning coaches in the special ops side of things for years and years. There are a lot more in tune with that side of things, with knowing the proper technique. Knowing how things are really supposed to work and knowing how they’re supposed to feel. So, you know, if they have a problem, they’re a lot more likely to either know if it’s actually pain or an actual injury. They can actually handle the two of them whereas guys that are not used to working out to them, you know, having pain and being sore the day after a workout, they’re hurt. You know, these guys are a little more in tune with their body and they’re a lot more likely to be able to push themselves through your workouts so you can go a lot heavier with them. You can do more of a, you know, true tier-based or strength-based or whatever it might be program that you want to do to get them better and better. [00:27:05][61.7]
[00:27:05] You know, when I was going to college, there were these programs that came out, strength training programs, where you could actually calculate how strong an individual was if they followed this tier, you know, go through these many deadlifts, do it this way, do it these reps. And over time, you were gonna go, you know, in a linear progression upwards. It was amazing that you could actually do it that way. Do you feel that if you push these athletes, you watch them improve, especially the top tier one that you can actually push them to, you know, an amazing level of accomplishment with tough training? [00:27:41][36.0]
[00:27:42] …�[00:32:55][48.8]
[00:32:56] Jeremy, how do you look at that stuff? And do you are you privy to that information and do you apply it to the flight that you’re doing? [00:33:02][6.0]
[00:33:02] So I don’t really get the actual numbers. Taylor is the one that gets those numbers and she would just share with me, hey, you know, this guy might need a little extra help. You know, as far as losing some weight goes, this guy is in the standards. He wants to gain a little bit of weight and he can, you know, that kind of thing, whatever it might be. So I don’t get the actual numbers, but I do get some information from her that I can help the guys with. [00:33:23][20.1]
[00:33:23] You know, one of the things that we realize in health care is the unification of data as well as integration of other sciences. You two guys met at a… Obviously, I’d like to know a little bit about how you guys introduce yourselves and how did you guys interact and how did you. Because, Taylor, you kind of talk to me about Jeremy. And I got to tell you, Jeremy seems to be an amazing guy. That’s got a lot of knowledge. And we and I really appreciate that. But how did you guys get to interact together? How did that process go in terms of for the purpose of the military? [00:33:56][33.1]
[00:33:58] Yes, so, yes, Jeremy is an excellent strength coach and it’s been a pleasure working with him. We actually work for two different contract companies, so we just were put together by chance, to be honest. And I mean, we just really clicked since day one, our personalities match really well. So that’s really where it began. And Jeremy has been here for almost two years and I’ve been here for almost a year. So he’s been here a lot longer than me. But so we met when I started. [00:34:28][29.3]
[00:34:28] Gotcha. In terms of your overall goals for the military and the dynamics for the athletes, let’s go back into the world of a little bit of the athletic division one. And now let’s also consider the fact that the sciences you have can also be applied to even the general public and even to kids at that level. And I know a lot of my patients have parents out there that want their kids to benefit from the best ideas and philosophies. And one of the things is that you realize that it’s not so much about knowledge. It’s about philosophy. It’s about your point of view. It’s the way you stand in what you think about how can we take what the military does in its sciences and its progression sciences to get these athletes and these individuals ready for battle. To our kids, how can we apply that if you can kind of reach into I don’t know if you’ve got kids, but if you do deal with kids, how would you apply those sciences to even the young, young high school, younger people population? [00:35:32][63.3]
[00:35:33] So I actually one of my papers or whatever for my masters was about strength training in kids because it was something that really, really interested me, because all my life I heard kids shouldn’t lift weights. Kids shouldn’t do this. It stunts their growth. It does. You know, it’s bad for them, whatever. [00:35:49][15.8]
[00:35:50] And honestly, everything that you read research-wise says otherwise. That’s just been a myth that’s been out there for so long that people started to believe it. So for me, as far as translating my side over to the general population. Younger kids all the way up to high school, it honestly starts with GPP, which is just general physical preparedness. So being able to handle their body weight, being able to learn movement patterns. So obviously push-ups, pull-ups, things like that for body weight, but then movement patterned on the squat, the landing mechanics like we talked about, things like that, and then just the general agility and movement stuff. So playing tag, doing things that are actually active outdoors. [00:36:29][38.9]
[00:37:12] So, you know, have him, you know, just practice squatting and making sure the knees are pointing out over the toes. He’s not getting valgus knee is not caving and he’s not you know, when he’s walking his gait pattern is good. When he’s running his gait pattern is good when he’s planting his foot. You know, stop and go playing tag with his friends. He’s, you know, actually planting sinking into that hip and driving off. You know, there’s little tiny things that you can look at that can help with those movement patterns as they get older and hopefully combat the chances of injuries as they get older. And then once as they get older and those movement patterns are more ingrained, then you can start adding some weight to stuff you can start doing. You know, even just goblet squats is where I would start. So a kettlebell or dumbbell holding a single thing. So you’re not actually loading the spine things like that and floor press and med ball throws and different things like that where you’re adding weight once those get learned more ingrained than you just are getting into the bigger lift. You know, you get to the big three, the squat bench deadlift, the Olympic lifting type stuff, whatever it is, Taylor, he is good. [00:38:12][59.6]
[00:38:13] ... [00:42:17][48.6]
[00:42:18] Taylor, you know you’re talking, right? I mean, this is amazing stuff in terms of its dynamics and specifically for recovery. How do you guys play into kids or young men that are injured in the nutrition component? How do you help them? How do you support the dynamics of the nutrition component? I know we talked about a little bit, but can you go back into it and talk about the things that you look at at the micronutrient level, as well as the macronutrient level to get these guys to be able to sustain the loads that they’re going to be under and provide them their best option? [00:42:53][34.6]
[00:42:54] Yes. So it goes back to recovery, nutrition, and the nutrient timing and making sure I mean, you’re breaking down your muscles when you’re working out and you’re trying to build them back up, grow. And so, you know, what’s going to do that is protein and carbohydrates. So making sure you have a three to one ratio of carbohydrates to protein. You know, that’s going to help them replenish their stores, their energy stores and also build muscle. And then from an injury standpoint, it’s just again, you know, making sure that depending on the injury will depend on the prescription for nutrition. But overall, you want to make sure that they have enough energy needs first and foremost, and they’re going to be less active typically. So, you know, you might not need as high of calorie needs that they would when they would be training. And the same with carbohydrates. It is your primary energy source, but you’re not going to be training as hard. So typically that is going to be lower. Now, your protein needs are going to be almost twice as high as they normally would be to really make sure that you’re, you know, getting the growth and nutrients you need for the protein and for the muscles to just recover from the injury, and then fat also plays a huge role as well. So and then micronutrients, you’re going to look at your B vitamins, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin A. You know, magnesium, those are all going to help in the wound healing injury recovery aspect as well. And then also immune support, which is really important. [00:44:36][101.9]
[00:44:37] Jeremy, thank you. Jeremy, they’re leaving now the day, they’re all exhausted. They’re all whooped on. Right. What are the words of advice that you give them about what they’re gonna eat tonight? You know, and let’s say you got an individual that’s just they just look bad. And what do you tell them? How do you tell them to rehab? Recover? I guess is a good word. [00:44:55][18.4]
[00:44:56] So for me, I’d try to preach high carb, high protein once after. So obviously, like she said, protein plays a big part in the recovery side of things. And they just depleted a lot of their carb sources during the workout. So that’s really what I try to preach, our sessions are in the morning. So a lot of times they’ve barely eaten anything as we’ve mentioned before. And if they have, it’s a lot of times not enough. So I try to preach. Get some carb sources, get some protein, get some eggs, get an omelet. They make you omelets in there. I know they do because I’ve been in there, eat one, you know, get something that can actually help you recover from this workout. [00:45:35][38.3]
[00:45:35] You mentioned, you know, they would sometimes show up without eating properly. You know, that’s a problem with a lot of the athletes. So they’re, you know, especially younger ones. They want to look good for some of the ones so they can volleyball. But some wrestlers, they got to, you know, have the basics, too. And for different types of athletes, different things for the population that you’re dealing with in order to get them better. What is the baseline good level of carbohydrates and what type of drinks or what kind of foods do you offer or recommend them at least get in that much so that they don’t end up totally running and being depleted by the end of the program. [00:46:12][36.3]
[00:46:13] So they’ll need 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate, 30 minutes to an hour right before working now. And like Jeremy said, a lot of times, the workout is at six-thirty in the morning. So you’re not going to have the ideal scenario where people are eating three hours meal before they, you know, train. So. [00:46:30][17.7]
[00:46:31] So when you just wait. I’m sorry. When you said that 30 to 60 grams. So. So thirty-one twenty to 240 calories. Just a start up the engine. Right. Is that right? Is that a good fare. [00:46:40][9.0]
[00:46:41] Yeah. So that is fair. So what that looks like is 30 grams could be a banana or it could be a couple of slices of toast. You typically want something that is going to digest very well. So that’s going to be low in protein, low in fat and low in fiber. So that is going to be a carbohydrate source. You’re going to want to isolate that carbohydrate to avoid any digestion issues. So, you know, for people that can’t handle solid foods as well, I always recommend liquids. It’s already converted. So something as simple as a 20 ounce Gatorade. You know, if they can take something a little in between solid and liquid applesauce pouch, you know, there are so many varieties at the grocery store now for kids or adults. And, you know, just taking one of those apple sauces will also help meet that need. [00:47:33][51.8]
[00:47:33] You know, as you start your training program in the morning, what kind of things do you do? How do you ramp up the training program? Jeremy, I’d like to know a little bit about that, like take me through a day in your world. [00:47:45][11.7]
[00:47:46] So with ramping it up goes. As I said, we might get guys once or twice a week. So it’s a very, very slow process. It’s also dependent upon their battle rhythm. So, you know, we might get guys say twice a week. So we do have to get a group twice a week, which is what we were that whole battalion. We get every company twice a week. We might get them for six weeks and then they’re gone for three weeks doing a field training exercise and they completely detrain. Right. They’re doing nothing but sitting there for a lot of the time and, you know, practice in military type stuff, they’re not getting any physical training in. It’s not mandatory out there. It’s not necessary. And nobody does it and they can’t really shower. So nobody really wants to get sweaty and stuff. Right. So those three weeks when they come back, we kind of have to reset. There’s not really that much of a ramp-up. It’s a lot of general physical preparedness stuff. We do a lot of bodyweight stuff. And then a lot of the big three, we try to progress those as much as we can. So like right now, because we just kind of restarted with this battalion, with the whole COVID thing going on. We’re doing a lot of goblet squats. We’re doing trap bar. Deadlifts are extremely important. That’s going to be in their new PT test. [00:48:58][71.9]
[00:48:59] What was that? Trap bar deadlift. A different name for it, but we do that. And then right now, we’re doing floor press and we’re planning to progress the goblet squad into a front squat, front squat to back squat. Right. So that’ll be the progression there. The floor press will progress into the bench press. [00:49:16][17.6]
[00:49:17] Are those the three that you’re talking about? The three? [00:49:18][1.3]
[00:49:19] Yeah. So those are kind of the big three is your deadlift, your squat, and your bench. And so that’s your main three strength lift, right. That’s what everybody wants to be good at. So that’s the three that we kind of focus on. But we’ll set up circuits around that. So if we’re doing so, you have floor press, right? We’ll try to do some kind of a pull with that, whether it’s rear delt or an actual row. So it might be a kettlebell row, dumbbell row. Some like that. And then we’ll do a lower body exercise with that. So we try to go full body every workout session. So we’re getting upper, lower-end core. We try to do the main lift is for strength. So if it’s floor press, squats, or deadlifts, it’s more of your strength-based stuff. So it’s more that max effort. So it might be sets of four sets of five. Some like that with a heavier weight. We try to work up to a heavy load. Then everything else is more hypertrophy based. So it’s more work capacity. We’re trying to do, you know, a little bit of a lighter weight, but it’s still going to be heavy not to where it makes them work for those eight to 12 to 15 reps, whatever we might do. [00:50:21][61.6]
[00:50:21] Do you mix it? Like, do you have some hypertrophy versus agility and versus body mechanics stuff or do you have like certain days. Today’s Body Mechanic Day today is power today. This today is Hypertrophy Day. [00:50:30][9.3]
[00:50:31] So right now, because we don’t really know what group we’re going to get every day with stuff going on so they’re, kind of work in shifts. They’re not there every day. So we might have one group one day. It might be the same exact people, you know, for a full week. It might be. They come every other day. So the plan right now basically is we go up there, we set up three lifts. Monday was a Friday or lift days, Tuesday a more run day, though. And like I said, the running is more anaerobic stuff. So sprint stuff. But on those sprint days, we do more. We do lift more. But it’s more bodyweight work capacity stuff. So we’ll do a lot of push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, squats, lunges. But it’s all bodyweight type stuff and that’ll be all in a circuit with some running involved. And then on the lift days, it’s, you know, like I said, that one lift strength. Everything else is more hypertrophy/work capacity. So it’s all high reps and. [00:51:24][53.2]
[00:51:26] It’s kind of tough to get a lot of hypertrophy type stuff in because of the box that we’re working out of. So we have a gym that’s inside a box. You had to pull all the weight out. There’s not really enough weight to load up a lot of stuff if we want to do a lot of squats. We need weights for that. Right. So we need weights. But on the barbell, well, there’s only eight forty-fives. Eight thirty-five, eight twenty-five, and eight tenths. So if I have four stations of squats like that up, I’d need almost all of that weight to be able to handle that. So I can’t use that weight on anything else, whether it’s the sleds, the trap bars, whatever it might be. So I have to come up with stuff with bands and kettlebells is really I see an invention there. [00:52:02][36.8]
[00:52:03] I think there’s an invention in there and what I’m hearing is, is that your gym doesn’t go out to the outside that easy. So is that what I’m getting? Like you want to be able to have a piece of equipment, has all your stuff on it, so you just drag it off that thing. [00:52:14][11.5]
[00:52:14] … [00:56:58][62.0]
[00:56:59] I really believe that what he just said was a huge component? Now he has spent his whole life understanding body dynamics. And he ended up understanding and now the military gets it in a different level. The translation of force comes from the core. It is huge. When you hear med ball slams, that is a body that’s going to its fullest out and slamming at a full range of motion. When you’re seeing hip flexes, you’re pulling that hip to the furthest, deepest dungeon of movement, to the furthest extreme on the outside. So to be able to do that, to be able to translate, weight and slowed and sled movements, you’re gonna need a powerful core. The dynamics of it are the ability to move it through time and space at a certain rate of speed. How long you do it, you can do it a little bit, that’s strength. But power means you can translate it over twenty-five feet or so and hit back and forth. So we’re really pushing the body to a level that is amazing. I have sat down with certain patients of mine and they find that that theory. And I found it to be very interesting that deep tuck, the knee tuck, and the deep flexion movements. Where did that philosophy come from and you have as a physiologist and the nutrition strength coach? How did that come in? Where did that come from that they realized that those particular movements, the slam ball, as well as the deep tuck, became a crucial component in the military action? [00:58:26][86.2]
[00:58:27] So I know the people are well, Major Matthews’, that actually used to run H two F, she’s transferred over to a different side of the military now, but she used to work at the Olympic training facility in Colorado. And I know she helped develop the test. So I would guess I don’t know for sure, but I would guess she played a big role in that. Yeah, because she, you know, does know a lot more about that side of things. I know she helped create, you know, with the power throw and stuff. [00:58:57][29.5]
[00:58:57] What’s her name, shout out again? Major Matthews. Major Matthews. OK. [00:58:59][2.7]
[00:59:00] So you know we met her, she came down I think it was a little bit before Taylor got here so she came down to talk to us and explained about the test and why they were doing it and whatever. And she played a big part in developing a test because of her background. [00:59:18][18.4]
[00:59:19] Have you guys gone to Colorado Springs before to take a look at the Olympic Center? I have not. I have not either. You know what? I got to go there. But there, you know, I got to watch from the outside inward. And you got to I got to tell you that you can see top athletes from around the world. I mean, from powerlifters. But you can see that they’re not very big in the sense of muscular build. But you can see that every athlete had a trainer with them and usually it’s a physical therapist that was right with them. And they were talking mechanics and movements. And these athletes and all the sports that they have, you see this amazing. It’s almost like watching something out of an amazing superpower show where you see these athletes running from all different directions…
And these are the top athletes in the world training centers from swimmers to high bolt whatever the sport is, I can imagine, but you can see them training in the center and they really focus on the range of motion. And you can see the physical therapist showing the motion. And actually the intensity of the movement is really, really important. So that science of Deep Tuck and translation of force is huge now. And it’s amazing that now to be able to do that is at the forefront of the military’s progression. Let me ask you this. Now that you know and you’re in your science and understanding is about the youth. How do you correlate that and take me into the progression of how to get kids, let’s say, a high school kid into doing that particular component of translation of forces so that we can make them great at being a lineman or just torquing the heck out of someone in wrestling. You know, kind of that deal. [00:00:54][54.1]
…
You know, I’ve got to tell you, you know, I could sit here and talk for over an hour. This is it. We’ve been over at least 60 minutes here. People are gonna look at me and YouTube is going to shut me out. But I’ve got to tell you, this has been literally an exciting moment because, between the both of you, I feel like I’m in a show of Jumanji of knowledge. You know, it’s like I just opened up a Pandora and you guys are full of knowledge. That is great. Again, I got to tell you, El Paso has these individuals. And if you, again, I don’t yield, the information will be on there for them if you want to communicate with them. I’ve got to tell you, we have them. We have such great talents, such smart individuals out there. Birds of a feather flock together. So for both of you, I can see how you guys migrated into appreciating the levels of vast knowledge and in the direction that you have for both of you. I honestly see you guys being Ph.D.s and whatever you guys do. So it’s only one step away from being Ph.D.s I will say that strength coaches are different kinds of characters, huh? They’re just different, man. They just there’s no joke. There’s serious. This is life-threatening. And when you’re under that bar, they want to take care of you. So they’re the most compassionate people. And they’re the most serious of all people. And as you said in the gym, basically everyone seeks out, both of you guys, for the greater order. That is what you guys do. You guys have great knowledge. And I’ve been a big proponent of great order rules. So you guys have been pulled in through whatever the sources are to bring you to create great order for these young kids and young men so that they can perform the best that they can in the world that they have to go into. So I got to tell you. Thank you, guys. Thank you. I know that this information was something that correlates to children. I could open up each one of those conversations and open it up for another hour each. So, Taylor, I got to tell you. Thank you so much for bringing us some knowledge. And I look forward to talking to you guys some more in the future and bringing you in and breaking it up into a different. Because we talked about the leg. We talked about the knees. We talked about nutrition. Each one of these are directions that we can spend hours talking about. And it’s out there. And just to let you know, my goal is to bring it out so that the parents can also see what’s important. I think all we got here is good nutrition, good body mechanics, range of motion, dynamic transfer of power, and also the progression from even young that, you know, you can’t be accused of abusing your children when you put them under a weight machine. If you have the understanding is the proper mechanics and the right age and the right dynamics of it. So nutrition plays a huge role. I always knew that the core held the secret. Now, I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but when God put the baby, he put it where? He put it in the core. OK. So when you look at it, the Orientals called it the Chi, the center of the power right in kung fu. Watch the hips. Watch the hips where you can see where the guy’s going because of the center of the order rules in sports in translating. And when your life depends on it, your core, it has to be one of the most important components as to where you translate force and reaction time comes from there. As a matter of fact, it’s the basis of what the body dynamics are. The pelvis, the hips, the range of motion, and the knees. Those are the sciences that these young individuals have brought in the nutrition of it. Because when it comes down to circulation, you know, what’s in the circulation, the food, the stuff that you put in that hole in your face and the rest and the sleep and the water and hydration. What I’m very pleased about is that I’m a lot older and I appreciate the level of youth and youngness in them, so to speak, that is going to be changing the world for the future individuals and families around El Paso and in the regions that this kind of can reach. So thank you, guys. I appreciate your information. And I’m a fan of both of you guys, by the way, OK, because you guys are an amazing talent that I got to tell you, I do have a window. Before you were here in the 1990s where there was a different world, El Paso is different. And Sylvester Reyes, by the way, that’s the senator that I wanted to call out, it was his dream to make that military force out here and make it as big as it was. It’s got a long history. But in that impact of those big centers, those training centers was this dream. So I got to tell you for that, Senator, I don’t know if he anticipated you guys come in, but he did create the great order so that you guys would come and share your knowledge. So I wish you the best and thank you guys for everything you guys have offered. And I look forward to hearing from you best. And thank you, Kenna. Thank you for everything.
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