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.
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors that can ultimately increase the risk of developing a variety of health issues, including heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, among other problems. Central obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides, and low HDL or good cholesterol levels are the 5 risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome. Having at least three of the five risk factors may suggest the presence of metabolic syndrome. Dr. Alex Jimenez, Alexander Jimenez, Truide Torres, Kenna Vaughn, and Astrid Ornelas explain the 5 risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome, in further detail, as they recommend diet and lifestyle modification advice and guidelines, such as the ketogenic diet or the keto diet, as well as demonstrate the biochemical and chemical pathways that the body goes through during ketosis to help people with metabolic syndrome improve their overall health and wellness. From eating good fats and staying hydrated to exercise and better sleep, Dr. Alex Jimenez, Alexander Jimenez, Truide Torres, Kenna Vaughn, and Astrid Ornelas discuss how diet and lifestyle modifications, such as the ketogenic diet or keto diet, can help improve the 5 risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome to prevent the risk of developing a variety of other health issues, including heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. – Podcast Insight
[00:00:14] All right, guys, we’ve come to another podcast. And welcome to Dr. Jimenez and crew podcast. Welcome. And you have a family here.
[00:00:23] We’re gonna go over metabolic syndrome today. Metabolic syndrome is a disorder that ultimately affects a whole lot of people. What happens is it actually affects one of the largest populations in El Paso, pretty much in this region. And what we have is, it’s not a disease. OK. First of all, it’s a combination of presentations that medical doctors and the World Health Organization have determined that high-risk factors in order to have a stroke, kidney disorders and even problems with dementia. But overall, it’s pretty much if you have metabolic syndrome, you really feel crummy. So today what we’re going to do is we’re gonna discuss the issues and we’d like to at least present it to you so that it becomes useful for you. And the information provided by us is going to be helpful for you or a family member. So if you have the opportunity and it’s something that you enjoy, please go ahead and at the bottom area, there’s a little bell to subscribe and a little belt in markets so that you could be the very first person to get information in the future when we ever post it. And it also gives you the opportunity to present or ask us for things that are important to you in the health-related realm. And now what we’re going to do today, my name is Dr. Alex Jimenez, I have my entire staff here. We’re gonna go ahead and we’re going to present each one of them in different moments. And we’re gonna do some really interesting dynamics. We also have our resident biochemist at the National University of Health Science who’s actually going to chime in, who’s gonna give us a little bit of a foundation about chemistry. This information is gonna be helpful. We’re gonna try to make it as simple but as useful as possible. Now, bear in mind everything that we’re gonna be talking about today revolves around the metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is what the health care organizations have determined as well as the cardiac departments have determined, as five major symptoms, now, you have to have three of them at least in order to be classified as metabolic syndrome. Now, the first thing is to ask, what do you feel? Pretty much you feel like crap. And it’s not really a good feeling to feel this way, but you’ll see that if you have some of these presentations, you’re gonna notice that your doctor may give you a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome. Now, the first thing that happens is you have usually a little bit of belly fat. Now, the belly fat that people have, people measure it. Now, for men, it’s a belly, kind of like the lonja, the belly that actually hangs over. And it’s about a good I’d say about 40 inches or greater in the male, in women it’s 35 inches or more. Now, that’s one of the first presentations. Now, the other presentation is high blood pressure. Now the high blood pressure that they use is 135 milligrams over deciliter. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Miller Mercury’s millimeters or Mercury or the slaters over to determine exactly the diastolic and the systolic. So the systolic is gonna be 135. The diastolic is going to be over 85. Now that doesn’t, again, you’re gonna notice something. These aren’t really extreme ranges. Okay. Now metabolic syndrome has high triglycerides. Now the high triglycerides are going to be noted in the blood. Okay. Now one of the things that can be determined early on is high blood pressure which is also a study associated with metabolic syndrome. So the other final one is the elevation of or decrease actually of HDL or the good fragments of cholesterol. Alexander is going to be a resident biochemist, is going to talk to us a little bit more about that in the latter part of the show. Now, bear in mind, I’ve given five things A, fat, B, high blood pressure, C, the blood glucose levels and also the triglycerides along with the lowering of the HDL. The question is, how are we going to be able to control this? Now, I want to give you some real good basic ways that you can actually control metabolic syndrome. And by the time we’re done today, we’re going to be able to assess the situation. And even if you have it, you basically will be able to control it. There are rare diseases that you can actually have. And again, this is not a disease. It’s a combination of syndromes or symptoms, collectively called a syndrome. So metabolic syndrome is one that can be misconstrued. Now, you’ll notice that the level of blood glucose is going to be elevated, usually over a hundred. Now, these are really relatively normal numbers that people have. But if they’re higher than that, they do create issues. Now, also, when you have the belly fat 40, that much. A lot of people have it. People have also blood glucose levels that are higher than 5.6 on your blood glucose when we would see now these numbers, along with the 150 milligrams per deciliter of triglycerides, they’re all normal. But in combination together, they do ultimately create a scenario that is not favorable to a cardiac issue. Cardiovascular issues do present as a result. So what we’re gonna try to do is try to bring down and control these issues. Now, what are the things that cause metabolic syndrome? Well, one of the things is stress, smoking, a sedentary lifestyle, and also even sleep problems and disturbances. Each one of these we’re going to be elaborating in the future podcasts but we’re gonna be able to tell exactly what’s actually going on in a better way. We also have issues of inflammation and processed foods. Now, at the core, metabolic syndrome, the main issue is insulin sensitivity issues along with high blood pressure issues and inflammation. So what are we going to do to control that? I want you to know that every single one of these five issues, whether its blood glucose, high triglycerides, low HDL counts or blood glucose, they’re all relatable to one disorder. It’s insulin sensitivity, insulin sensitivity controls every one of these factors from raising high blood pressure, the kidneys actually are controlled by the insulin causing their increase in blood pressure. We’ll discuss that issue and the correlation of it so we can bring ourselves to control the blood glucose. We ultimately have the fastest and the surest way to provide the fastest route to heal and to fix an individual with metabolic syndrome. So let’s go ahead and talk about the issues that are going to be resulting from that. Now, as I’ve got this, we’re gonna notice that if over a period of time you continue to have a lifestyle that has high levels of these particular five factors, you’re going to notice that you’re going to tend to have high cardiac risks. Now we have a team here and I want to introduce each one. We have Kenna Vaughn, who is our health coach. Our health coach is the one that’s going to be the one that explains to our patients what is going on. I’ll bring her in. We also have the clinical liaison, which is Truide Torres, the individual that is going to be able to bring out and ask the questions and determine what kind of issues and treatments are appropriate for you. So we’ll be discussing those. And we have our resident chief editor Astrid Ornelas, who’s gonna be the one that also explains the studies on it. All the way from Illinois. We also have Alexander, which we have here. Right. We added the backway. You can’t see him, but he’s presenting in. Say Hello, Alexander. You got him there. Hello. All right. So he’s out there. He’s going to be able to discuss the issues on the biochemistry side of things. And we’re looking forward to being able to explain those issues. Now, one of the things we have to do is go back to the issue of insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity is at the root of all these issues. So what we’re gonna do is we’re going to discuss exactly how insulin can actually be controlled. But what we’ve learned through these studies and I’m going to bring in Mrs. Ornelas here to discuss the studies that we have pertaining to how to control blood glucose and blood sensitivity study. What did you find out recently that actually shows the proof and actually presents the easiest way to control blood, insulin and elevate HDL?
[00:08:08] OK. Well, first of all, just as you mentioned, metabolic syndrome, it’s a collection of health issues that can increase the risk of developing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Basically like, you know, it can affect our overall health and wellness.
[00:08:29] And I’ve done quite some research. And I’ve found through the National Center of Biotechnology Information, the NCBI, there’s a variety of research which basically states that metabolic syndrome or people with metabolic syndrome, one of the easiest, you know, quote-on-quote, easiest. Or one of the best ways maybe out there that can be used to help.
[00:09:04] Restore it, yeah, to help restore or reverse your metabolic syndrome would be through the ketogenic diet, or the Keto diet, as a lot of people know it best by. It is a low carbohydrate, high-fat diet, which according to research studies, offers many benefits to people with metabolic syndrome.
[00:09:28] It can help improve or promote weight loss. And it can help reduce diabetes.
[00:09:38] Basically, you know what I mentioned right there?
[00:09:42] I have found nothing faster to lower blood glucose and actually reverse triglycerides issues in HDL issues. Than the ketogenic diet. So in essence, if you want to do it fast, it’s amazing the speed at which it restores the body back. What else is there?
[00:10:00] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So basically the human body normally uses glucose or sugar. It is supposed to be our main source of fuel. Our main source of energy. But for people that have metabolic syndrome. People who have obesity. Insulin resistance. Diabetes or an increased risk of diabetes. The ketogenic diet can be very beneficial towards that because the ketogenic diet, first of all, it is a low carbohydrate diet. Carbohydrates essentially turn into sugar or glucose and we don’t want that.
[00:10:41] Like if people have metabolic syndrome, they have, you know, diabetes and insulin resistance. You don’t want sugar in their bodies because they produce too much of it. They have too much blood sugar.
[00:10:53] But by increasing the number of fats that you eat and then decreasing the number of carbohydrates, you actually keep a low amount.
[00:11:05] If you keep insulin low by eating more fats, you basically make the body go into a state of ketosis.
[00:11:18] You know what? Let me ask you something. I’m going to feed this over to right now to Kenna. And I’m gonna ask Kenna. Kenna, in your experiences with the blood sugar issues, how is it that we contain and we learn to be able to manage someone’s blood sugar the quickest, the fastest? What is it that you do in terms of coaching individuals, helping them back by coaching individuals?
[00:11:41] I definitely always evaluate their diet. And the main thing I like to focus on is education because so many people are not educated about, as she was saying, carbs and how they actually feed your body. A Big Mac might have 54 carbs and a sweet potato might have 30 carbs. And people don’t really realize that they’re that different. They only see 20 points or something like that. But the way that the carbohydrate breaks down in the body is huge. And that’s why the ketogenic diet works so well because you’re using those good carbs that are going to actually contain protein as well. And so it’s going to help to break it down slower versus a Big Mac, which is just going to spike your insulin way out.
[00:12:23] And what part of the Big Mac is the thing that spikes the sugar? I mean, in terms of.
[00:12:26] Right. So the bread, the carbs in the bread, it actually breaks down differently in the body than a sweet potato would. And so that’s what’s going to give you that high glucose level. And then after that, you’re gonna have the fall of the glucose level, which just your blood sugar going up and down does not feel great.
[00:12:43] So it’s not good. Of course, you’re paying for the sugars. When you ask the types of sugars that you have. You just mentioned right now that the quality of the type of carbohydrate matters.
[00:12:52] Yes, a little bit about the quality. Like I was saying, sweet potatoes, avocados, things like that. They’re going to have the carbohydrates that are better for you, meaning you break them down differently than you would faster sugar like sucrose and things like that.
[00:13:12] So simple sugars are out, basically, which is the reason that, first of all, metabolic syndrome did not even exist prior to the advent of refined foods. So refined sugars have caused this problem. So what we want to do is, sugar leads to inflammation. Sugar leads to triglyceride issues, sugar or basically insulin sensitivity issues are the things that are the basis of this process. All roads lead to insulin sensitivity in this process and in the organ that provides us with insulin. The greatest amount is in the pancreas. The pancreas is nonstop. And depending on how the pancreas responds to this blood sugar drama, it really determines the fate of the individual. It will alter the triglycerides. They will alter the blood pressure by having a direct effect of holding sodium in the kidneys. The body prepares, it retains the sodium, and by nature of sodium, the blood pressure soars, so the fastest way to lower your blood pressure is a ketogenic diet. And this is amazing because it really is simple. It’s not that complex. We can go extreme. And I know that our state really had a good research document on that. Tell me a bit about what you noticed.
[00:14:24] Yeah, basically, like what I was saying before. A lot of people don’t know the difference between what type of carbohydrates they want to eat. Like, for example, as you said, you know, a lot of people will eat a Big Mac and don’t eat that sweet potato. And they don’t know the difference between a good carbohydrate. Basically, we want to eat what you call complex carbohydrates. We want to eat whole wheat or we want to eat good starches because the body breaks those down into glucose, into sugar. But they’re used much more slowly. The body won’t immediately use them. And then you’ll get that crash, that sugar crash, because of the insulin spike.
[00:15:11] Right. So that controls the spike. You know what? I want to bring in our resident biochemist here. OK, so our biochemist is Alexander. He’s got a presentation here, actually, if I can see it there and see if it pops up here. Let me see it. And there he is. Alex, can you tell us a bit about what you’re trying to explain here on the biochemistry side of things?
[00:15:30] So as you guys were mentioning, just in general. Glucose is the main energy source in the way that we use it for the breakdown. Its breakdown of energy consumption is called glycolysis. So without getting too much into it, our end goal here is pyruvate, which then goes into the citric acid cycle to be turned into an acetyl-CoA in normal conditions. It’s good to have a carbohydrate meal, but in excess, you produce too much acetyl-CoA. When too many acetyl-CoA is used? You end up inducing fatty acid synthesis which is induced by large levels of insulin. So by doing so, you have an acetyl-CoA that ends up turning into palpitate. And one thing that I was mentioning is that not all foods are of equal quality. So here we can kind of see all the different types of fatty acids. So without going too much into the biochemistry, but kind of just giving you an idea of what’s going on here, these numbers on the left side represent the number of carbons in a row and then the numbers to the right of the semicolon are the number of double bonds. And normally double bonds will play a large role until you get into the effect of digestion in the way the body uses these. So by having more double bonds, it’s more fluid. So you notice the difference between a piece of lard and olive oil. What’s the difference? The only difference really is the number of carbons and the number of double ones. So here we have olive oil and then we have some sort of saturated fat. We can see that the difference is large in the number of carbons as well as double bonds. Double bonds allow for a lower melting point. That’s why olive oil is a liquid at room temperature vs. fatty acids and this plays a large role when it comes into how the body uses these types of things.
[00:17:26] Alex, are you saying that, obviously we all know that the good work of olive oil and avocado oil and coconut oil are the best thing. Is this the reason why this happens?
[00:17:35] Exactly. So the more double bonds they have, the more fluid it is going to be within the body and allow for the body to use those fats in a timely manner versus clogging up arteries and creating plaques within those arteries?
[00:17:48] Excellent. You know what? One of the things that insulin does? It packs away carbohydrates and energy in the cell. If you do that, what happens with this blood sugar? Eventually, insulin spikes it and puts it in the cells. Eventually, the cell grows. Hence the belly fat. That is ultimately what happens to the belly, it starts gaining fat cells and they start getting bigger, bigger, and bigger because they get injected in there. That stuff starts seeping out and once it can’t go anymore, it ends up in places like the pancreas. It ends up in places like the liver. It ends up in the intramuscular, in the muscular tissue. And that’s why we have the accumulation. And when you have a big belly, that’s what tips off the doctor, not only with the triglycerides and the blood glucose levels but also the belly fat. And that’s one of the things we have to kind of assess. So is this.
[00:18:36] Now, these fatty acids, which are fatty acids used for, almost everything within the body, especially for energy consumption. It’s like saying, would you rather be able to go five miles or 10 miles a week? Or go 10 miles. Right. And so gram for gram fat as an energy source is much more fuel-efficient and glucose or carbs.
[00:19:04] So carbs provide four grams of calories per gram and fats are around nine. So it’s almost more than double, the amount of energy that you’re producing from these sites, from these fatty acids. The difficult part is just knowing which ones are good. So kind of going into the good fatty acids which are going to be the ones with the double bonds. So I mean, any plant oils, animal fats, depending on which ones, we tend to want to stay away from large amounts of acid that tend to cause inflammation responses through the inflammation path. But the rest of these are really, really good, especially EPA and DHA. So DHA is actually used within the nervous system. It’s turned into neurotic acid any day as well. So getting these marine oils are really, really going to be good for your system just in general.
[00:19:55] You know what, as I understand these processes and I start realizing the biochemistry behind it, bring it home to this process, down to the cellular component it honors and it shows appreciation in terms of what creates the fatty acid excess. Now, again, what happens as a result of too much of these fatty acids or carbohydrates in the bloodstream? The body tries to store it in the form of fat and it’s shoved into the pancreas. So you get this fat inside the pancreas. If it can’t do it there, it eventually puts it in the liver. And like we mentioned, it gets it in the stomach or that’s when we see it as a final thing. I’d like to take the explanation and break apart one other point. The high blood pressure component. Insulin has a direct effect on the kidneys. Insulin tells the kidneys.
[00:20:43] Look, we need to pack this stuff into the fat and without getting beyond too much of the chemistry dynamics. You can see that what’s going to occur is that the kidneys are going to be commanded to hold more sodium. What we learned in chemistry and in biochemistry and in clinical sciences that the more sodium we retain, the blood pressure rises. In essence, that’s how quick the blood pressure goes. So you do that for a period of time and then you force the collection of atherosclerotic plaques because of the fat that is in there and it can’t go anywhere. You’re going to have a problem in the long-term future. So speaking about the oils, as Alexander just did, one of the things we ask, well, what oils do we not want to use? Canola oil, corn oil, sesame seed oil. I love sesame seeds. But the problem is that sesame seed oil causes inflammation, as Alex said, with acids. So what we got to do is we got to figure out exactly what types of oils we can do. And avocados, as Kenna had mentioned, are a great source of fats that we can use and make things more able to be processed. Our bodies and the old pyramid of diet is really bad because it’s heavy on carbohydrates. So one of the things that we look at is maintaining all those components. So we talked about the triglycerides, right? We talked about the belly fat, how it’s put together. And in each one of these, I wanted to point this out again. Each one of these, the high blood pressure, which is 135, high blood pressure is not considered high. High blood pressure at 135 usually it’s at 140, OK. So, why are we using triglycerides at 150 are not considered excessive. You know, HDL is lower than 50 are not considered horrible, but in combination together, if you have one at all, these three of these components out of the five, that’s what leads to a preposition of being sick and feeling crummy, let alone any prolonged period of this will end up leading to metabolic disorders, heart problems, stroke problems, dementias that actually occur as a result of prolonged metabolic syndrome, states that are within the individual. I know Alexander when I ask Alexander, he’s got some really interesting dynamics as I want to present right now. I’m going to show his screen right here because he’s got some interesting components on what also affects metabolic syndrome.
[00:23:00] Alexander. So kind of going into what it is, I guess, ketosis, because everyone wonders kind of what goes on. So I kind of got this diagram here to draw for you guys. We’re going to ignore the Federer pathway over here, but just in general. So what’s going to happen first is you’re going to deplete any glucose that you have. So the body normally stores around 100 grams of glucose in the liver and around 400 grams within the muscle components of the entire body. So if you times, 500 times four, that’s about 2000 calories, which is your daily limit. So you’ve got about a day worth of glucose always stored within your body. But once you deplete that, your body’s gonna start looking for other things. In the meantime, it takes a few days for your body to switch over from burning sugar, which is glucose, to burning ketone bodies from fat. So what’s going to happen? Your, first of all, your adrenals are releasing epinephrine, its precursor is norepinephrine. And it causes a couple of different things?
[00:23:56] You’re gonna get a little jittery at first and you can feel really bad for the first couple days. But then your body is gonna start switching over as your brain starts to start using these ketone bodies for its energy source. So as you’re producing norepinephrine, these are just like this is the cell surface here. These are just different precursor markers. So we have B1, B2, B3 and eight. So by doing these, they’re going to mark and signal to the G.S. protein, which is going to allow for adenosine class to activate ATP into cyclic AMP. Now, cyclic AMP is a very important component of degradation of fatty acids and the cool part is it’s actually inhibited by phosphodiesterases. So when people come in and say, why is caffeine a good fat burner? The main reason why is because caffeine actually inhibits phosphodiesterase to a certain extent. You don’t want to go too crazy with the caffeine and start doing lots of cups.
[00:24:52] Alex should I have like 8 glasses of coffee or how many?
[00:24:56] I think one glass of coffee is definitely more than enough. So by having cyclic AMP more active, you end up activating this thing called protein kinase which activates ATP and then it activates hormone-sensitive light base, once hormone-sensitive light base is activated. It begins degradation against a breakdown, fatty acids. Once these fatty acids enter and are broken down, they then become they then enter into the mitochondria and the mitochondria will then end up producing heat from this. So that’s why people who are in ketosis are always really warm. So what do I recommend when people are starting Keto. Ketosis Diet, Water, Keto diet. Definitely water. And as well as I would say L-carnitine. So as we’re looking at L-carnitine here, we could see that during fatty acid degradation you use L-carnitine as a main transporter between the outer mitochondrial membrane and the inner mitochondrial membrane. So by using fatty acids here, fatty acetyl-CoA after we’ve broken down these fatty acids. It’s going to enter CBT-1 which is carnitine. Poly transferase one. It’s going to enter and interact with carnitine and then it’s gonna turn it to acetylcarnitine. Once acetylcarnitine turns into it that it can enter the inner mitochondrial membrane through these two enzymes translocated and CPT-2 to be broken down back into acetyl-CoA, which is the same biproduct as glucose eventually.
[00:26:29] So then your mitochondria can use these in beta-oxidation. One thing to note is you have to drink a lot of water because people who are going through ketosis are going to be up-regulating the urea cycle. So you need to make sure that you drink a lot of water throughout the day. I would say anyone who’s doing it could drink a minimum of a gallon of water throughout the day. Not all at once. Throughout the day.
[00:26:51] It’s amazing, Alex, that you put that together because that makes perfect sense to me. And also explains why people do say when we put them on the ketogenic diet that they do increase body temperature and the water obviously helps you kind of keep the whole system pumping because that’s what we’re pretty much made of. And also the pathways that you indicated, the hydrogen in the water are necessary for the process to occur.
[00:27:15] Yes. Yes. There are certain aspects within each of these that they fuel each other, it’s all an interconnected pathway. But you will up-regulate the urea cycle during ketosis much more than when you’re not. For example, cats are notoriously known for having a rancid urine smell.
[00:27:37] And we have to take a look at that from the reason why. Right. So, in general, in humans, the urea contents in our urine is 3 percent. In cats, on the other hand, it’s anywhere between 6 to 9 percent. You have to think about it. What is the only mammal on the planet that is a carnivorous animal that only eats meat? The feline family.
[00:27:57] So since they only eat meat, they upregulate the urea cycle, thus having more urea in their urine. So if you’re only a meat-eater, you’re gonna have more urea. Thus you need to drink more water to flush it out through your kidneys.
[00:28:09] That’s amazing because it explains why we make sure that everybody drinks a lot. And then they feel better. And I guess if we don’t monitor it. Right, if we don’t do it right. We get that thing called the ketogenic flu. Right. And then the body just feels kind of crummy until it restores and it stabilizes the blood glucose through ketones. Now, the body can use ketones for sugar as it’s known. So one of the things that we do is we teach the people exactly how to go through the process. And I know we got some research articles here. And Astrid wants to discuss a little bit about that.
[00:28:42] So basically, as Alex mentioned, when people start following the ketogenic diet.
[00:28:49] You know, as he said, we want to make sure that they stay hydrated. But more so than that.
[00:28:56] I guess another thing that we want to educate people on is that not a lot of people know that we need to store up the body with good fats so that as the body adjusts, it starts up basically burning fat as a fuel rather than sugar or glucose. So we want to teach people what are the good fats that we want them to basically eat because like we need to store up fat in these parts so the body can go into ketosis and it can go through the whole process that Alex just explained.
[00:29:39] You know what? I’d like to bring Truide here because she’s the one that actually connects with the patients at the moment. We do assess someone to have metabolic syndrome in terms of the resources. How do we? How do you go through the process of presenting? Hello, Truide. And what we’re gonna do there is going to ask you, how do you bring this? Because she’s our clinical liaison, our wellness liaison. And she’s the one that basically is going to give us the information that helps the patient in the right direction.
[00:30:05] Well, hello. You know, it is all great information. And, you know, which is amazing that we are able to provide this to the public. And I know this can be very overwhelming for people that don’t have this information. So that’s where I come in. When people come, you know, either call us or come in inquiring about different symptoms that they have. They don’t necessarily know that they’re experiencing metabolic syndrome. But, you know, one of the main concerns is their weight gain based on their concerns. I connect them either to their primaries, which is Kenna, and they go ahead and say, OK, well, what is it that, what are the steps that we have to take and Kenna certainly educates them as far as ok this is your lab work, we’re going to have to take, we connect them with Dr. Jimenez. After we know exactly what is their main concern. And we’re going to start kind of peeling things apart like an onion to get to the bottom of things and get them feeling better. They’re not only going to walk away with the specific results, but they’re also going to walk away with like what Astrid was saying, what are the good fats to have? What should I be eating? They’re going to be walking away with a lot of information, but also structure. Another thing that we’re offering is that Kenna is always going to be there to answer any questions. And also, Dr. Jimenez. So they don’t have to feel overwhelmed with the processes they’re going through for a better, healthy lifestyle.
[00:31:27] You know what? That’s one of the things is it’s, there’s a lot of confusion out there. And I got to be honest with you, there’s a lot of misinformation out there. This misinformation can be categorized as intentional or kind of old or not. It’s just not up to date with these five elements and an individual having three of them. It’s very important to make it repeat. Exactly how to fix this issue with the individual and how to change your lives, because there’s nothing quicker to change the body than the ketogenic diet. We also have to monitor the individuals with the monitor them through the process. Now we have Kenna Vaughn that she’s got some methods that we use, that we employ in the office and are useful for that. Doctors do this around the country, but it’s very helpful in helping guide and allow for interaction and communication between us, the providers and the patient. What kind of things do we offer?
[00:32:18] We have one on one coaching, which is great for when you’re just starting something out like they were talking about the ketogenic diet. You might be confused and there is misinformation. So what this one on one coaching, it’s great because we can connect through an app that we have and you just pull out your phone. You can send a quick text message, hey, I saw that I could one website said that I could eat this, but another said this. Can I have this? Things like that. We can clear up that confusion fast, which can really keep you on track rather than doing that guessing game. We also have scales that connect to this app which allows us to monitor the water weight that they have as well as the fat that they have. And we can also monitor their activity through a wristband that we can constantly check the steps that they’re taking. Make sure that they’re doing exercise because exercise is also great to help lower blood glucose level.
[00:33:08] You know, you mentioned that about the monitoring. We do that in the office along where we send the patients home with actual scales that actually are BIAs. Many BIAs along with their hand and wrist. We can pretty much for those patients that want to have a connection with our office. We directly can get the information downloaded and we can actually see their BIAs changing. We also use the InBody system, which we do a deep analysis of the basal metabolic rate along with other factors that we’ve discussed on prior podcasts. This allows us to put together a quantifiable method to assess how the body is changing and a very quick way of restoring the body back to or away from metabolic syndrome episodes. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling. It really can. There’s nothing that destroys the body as these combination of issues at one time. However, it’s easy to see that the body does everything really quickly and it fixes, a ketogenic diet removes body weight. It decreases the fat in the liver, it decreases the intramuscular fat, it restores the blood sugar. It gets the mind working better. It actually helps the HDL through some studies. And I know that Astrid knows there’s a study out there that actually pulls the information up on the on how the HDL is actually are actually elevated with and with a ketogenic diet. We have a study here actually presented put it on the screen right there that I think you found that actually shows that the HDL. Am I correct? And the apple protein, the lipid part of the HDL also is raised and activates the genetic component. Tell me about that.
[00:34:53] So basically something that a lot of researchers, something that a lot of health care professionals out there, doctors, they often say is that people have high cholesterol.
[00:35:07] You know we’re usually talking about the bad cholesterol and they have high-bat cholesterol or the LDL. It’s generally associated with the genetic predisposition, like according to several research articles out there. If your parents, if your grandparents had high cholesterol, there is also like an increased risk of you having a genetic predisposition to already having high cholesterol plus like add that like your diet. And if you have if you follow a sedentary lifestyle and you don’t do it enough exercise or physical activity, you do have an increased risk of having higher bad cholesterol.
[00:35:59] You know, I’m going to pull the information from my notice that Alexander is pulling something information up here on the screen. And he’s actually presenting the monitor where you can actually see his blood glucose and the screens that he’s going. Go ahead and put that up there for him. There you go. Alex, tell me which you’re talking about right there. I see that you’re talking about the apoprotein and the lipoproteins and the HDL fragments there.
[00:36:23] So I’m kind of going into a little bit of everything here. So what happens when you eat something that is going to cause an increase in cholesterol? So first of all, is you have these genes called kilomicrons that are within the intestinal lumen or within your GI tract. And they have apoprotein B-48. The reason they have 48 percent of apoprotein B 100. So it’s just a little different variation. These kilomicrons are actually going to bring these in through the body and transfer it into the capillaries using apoprotein C2 and apoprotein E once they enter the capillaries. They are going to degrade and allow for different aspects of the body to use them. So I have three tissues. We have adipose tissue, cardiac tissue, and skeletal muscle.
[00:37:14] So cardiac tissue has the lowest KM and adipose tissue has the highest KM. So what is KM? KM is just a measurement of the way that the enzymes use. So a low KM means a high specificity for binding to these fatty acids and a high KM means that it has a low specificity for them. So what are the three parts of the body they use the most energy?
[00:37:40] It’s the brain, the heart, and the kidneys. Those are the most caloric consumption parts of the body. Just to stay alive. So first of all, the heart relies large amounts on these fatty acids here.
[00:37:52] And transferring them to the heart uses mostly fatty acids. I think it’s about 80 percent, 70 to 80 percent of its fuel comes from fatty acids. And to deliver these, your body uses these KM. So once the KMs exits the capillaries. It’s already as an LDL. So it needs to have it has two choices. The LDL. It can be taken back to the liver or it can switch its contents with HDL and the deals can deliver them correctly to the proper places.
[00:38:25] So that’s why HDL is so important because they deliver them to the proper places in the event that these� kilomicrons or these LDL aren’t transferred correctly back to the liver. So why are LDL so detrimental to the system of our body? So here’s a couple of reasons why. So as an LDL is scavenged throughout the body, they are seen as a foreign object by our macrophages or macrophages are our cells that are used for immune response. So macrophages end up engulfing these LDLs and they turn it into these things called foam cells. Foam cells become plaques eventually. But what they do is they actually embed themselves within or under the surface of the epithelial lining, causing a buildup of these foam cells here and eventually blocking the pathways, causing a plaque. So by eating better fats, having a higher amount of HDL as you can get these plaques and avoid plaques which are clogging up your arteries.
[00:39:27] You know, actually the link between sclerotic plaques and metabolic syndrome, you’ve made it very, very clear at this point, and that is the reason why prolonged states of metabolic syndrome do create these disorders. I want to take a moment to thank the entire crew here because what we’re doing is we’re bringing in a lot of information and a lot of teams. And if someone has an issue, I want them to meet the face that they’re going to see when they walk in the office. So, Truide, tell them how we greet them and what we do with them when they walk in if they feel that they may be a victim of metabolic syndrome.
[00:40:01] Well, we’re very blessed to have a very exciting and energized office. You’re always going to feel at home. You’re always going to if we don’t have the right answer at that moment, we’re certainly going to research. We’re not going to toss you aside we’re always going to get back with you. Everybody gets treated as an individual. You know, each vessel that we have, it’s unique in its own way. So we certainly don’t create a cookie-cutter approach. We’re always going to make sure that, as I said, you walk away with the most valuable informed option for yourself. We’re just a phone call away. We’re just a click away. And you don’t ever feel that there’s not a reasonable question. We always want to make sure that all the questions and concerns that you have they always get the best answer possible.
[00:40:50] Guys, I want to tell you. Thank you. And I want to also share with you that we happen to be in one of the most amazing facilities when we do, there’s exercise involved with returning the body back to a normal state. We function out of the PUSH Fitness Center. We’re actually actually. Doing the podcast from the fitness center. And you can actually see the information here with Danny Alvarado. And he’s the one that or Daniel Alvarado, who is the director of Push Fitness, who we work with, a bunch of therapists and physical therapists to help you restore your body back to where it should be. We look forward to coming back. And like I say, if you appreciate or you like what we have here, you reach down on the little bottom, hit the little button and hit subscribe and then make sure you hit the bell so you can be the first to hear what we got to go on. OK. Thank you, guys. And we welcome you again. And God bless. Have a good one.
The following Neurotransmitter Assessment Form can be filled out and presented to Dr. Alex Jimenez. The following symptoms listed on this form are not intended to be utilized as a diagnosis of any type of disease, condition, or any other type of health issue.
Podcast: Metabolic Syndrome Explained
Metabolic syndrome is a collection of risk factors that can ultimately increase the risk of developing a variety of health issues, including heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, among other problems. Central obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides, and low HDL are the 5 risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome. Having at least three of the five risk factors may suggest the presence of metabolic syndrome. Dr. Alex Jimenez and Dr. Mario Ruja explain the 5 risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome, in further detail, as they recommend diet and lifestyle modification advice and guidelines to help people with metabolic syndrome improve their overall health and wellness. From eating fiber and staying hydrated to exercise and better sleep, Dr. Alex Jimenez and Dr. Mario Ruja discuss how diet and lifestyle modifications can help improve the 5 risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome to ultimately prevent the risk of developing a variety of other health issues, including heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. – Podcast Insight
Neural Zoomer Plus for Neurological Disease
Dr. Alex Jimenez utilizes a series of tests to help evaluate neurological diseases. The Neural ZoomerTM Plus is an array of neurological autoantibodies which offers specific antibody-to-antigen recognition. The Vibrant Neural ZoomerTM Plus is designed to assess an individual�s reactivity to 48 neurological antigens with connections to a variety of neurologically related diseases. The Vibrant Neural ZoomerTM Plus aims to reduce neurological conditions by empowering patients and physicians with a vital resource for early risk detection and an enhanced focus on personalized primary prevention.
Food Sensitivity for the IgG & IgA Immune Response
Dr. Alex Jimenez utilizes a series of tests to help evaluate health issues associated with a variety of food sensitivities and intolerances. The Food Sensitivity ZoomerTM is an array of 180 commonly consumed food antigens that offers very specific antibody-to-antigen recognition. This panel measures an individual�s IgG and IgA sensitivity to food antigens. Being able to test IgA antibodies provides additional information to foods that may be causing mucosal damage. Additionally, this test is ideal for patients who might be suffering from delayed reactions to certain foods. Utilizing an antibody-based food sensitivity test can help prioritize the necessary foods to eliminate and create a customized diet plan around the patient�s specific needs.
Gut Zoomer for Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO)
Dr. Alex Jimenez utilizes a series of tests to help evaluate gut health associated with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). The Vibrant Gut ZoomerTM offers a report that includes dietary recommendations and other natural supplementation like prebiotics, probiotics, and polyphenols. The gut microbiome is mainly found in the large intestine and it has more than 1000 species of bacteria that play a fundamental role in the human body, from shaping the immune system and affecting the metabolism of nutrients to strengthening the intestinal mucosal barrier (gut-barrier). It is essential to understand how the number of bacteria that symbiotically live in the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract influences gut health because imbalances in the gut microbiome may ultimately lead to gastrointestinal (GI) tract symptoms, skin conditions, autoimmune disorders, immune system imbalances, and multiple inflammatory disorders.
Formulas for Methylation Support
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Proudly,�Dr. Alexander Jimenez makes XYMOGEN formulas available only to patients under our care.
Please call our office in order for us to assign a doctor consultation for immediate access.
If you are a patient of Injury Medical & Chiropractic�Clinic, you may inquire about XYMOGEN by calling 915-850-0900.
For your convenience and review of the XYMOGEN products please review the following link. *XYMOGEN-Catalog-Download
* All of the above XYMOGEN policies remain strictly in force.
Modern Integrated Medicine
The National University of Health Sciences is an institution that offers a variety of rewarding professions to attendees. Students can practice their passion for helping other people achieve overall health and wellness through the institution’s mission. The National University of Health Sciences prepares students to become leaders in the forefront of modern integrated medicine, including chiropractic care. Students have an opportunity to gain unparalleled experience at the National University of Health Sciences to help restore the natural integrity of the patient and define the future of modern integrated medicine.
IFM's Find A Practitioner tool is the largest referral network in Functional Medicine, created to help patients locate Functional Medicine practitioners anywhere in the world. IFM Certified Practitioners are listed first in the search results, given their extensive education in Functional Medicine
