Just Do It. You'll never get a hit unless you step up to the plate.

Tonight I am feeling pretty good.  Maybe it's all the alone time I have had to reflect on how really blessed I am.  Or maybe it's the two beers and the best garlic knots I ate tonight.  Either way it's time to journal.  There are a few people that have shaped my path at Palmer.  One I want to acknowledge is Dr. Bill DuMonthier.  In my first two years I have had many conversations with him expressing my concerns about how hard the program has been for me and that I struggle with "just getting by".  I have always been the type of person that has excelled when it comes to just about everything.  I did well in high school and even made the Dean's list in college with out much effort.  In sports I can pick up any sport and become proficient at it in no time at all.  I had other choices to pursue in professional sports.  I was the Michigan state champ in bowling in the eight grade bowling against high school and some college amatures.  I had offers to play college football, baseball, and even played one year of college basketball.  Anything and everything requiring movement and sports comes very natural to me.  In a six month period I studied for and passed the series 7,6,31, and 3 test and became a financial advisor for Morgan Stanley.  Chiropractic College was a whole new animal in itself.  I was not prepared at all for this.  I had an undergrad background in kinesiology and biomechanics but had not really been in a book let alone research since 1994.  It was like starting from scratch in a fast paced program where I had to learn everything again.  I spent hours in class trying to stay awake only to go home and pass out, wake up at nine or ten o'clock at night and start studying till three in the morning.  A common site in my trailer park room where I lived for my first year was  to wake up in bed with a pile of books all over me and my laptop on the floor because I knocked it off the bed when I had fallen asleep.  I barely passed most of my classes and when Part I of boards came close I expressed my concerns to Dr. DuMonthier.  He had some comforting words for me then that carried me through. He said, "It is because you care so much about this that I am not worried about you.  Because you care you will do whatever it takes to pass these exams."  Now the number and all the stats compiled by the school were not in my favor.  C average students that do not take a board review course have an 80% fail rate for Part I boards.  I could not afford to pay for a board review course so I got Irene Gold and read through it over and over on my own.  There were some very smart people in my class that failed Part I, but I was not one of them. Nor did I fail Part II. So thank you Bill for believing in me when I didn't quite believe in myself.  I will always struggle when I have that feeling of just getting by.  I always desire to be the best at what I do.  Today I find myself in books learning about techniques, functional movements, rehab and core strengthening.  Medical books about diseases are my new favorite.  I do not want to be know as just a chiropractor.  I desire to be a great doctor of wellness that has chosen chiropractic to express myself through.

Placebo Effect

I sometimes have these livid dreams.  Some people would call them visions.  I tend to believe they are supernatural in nature and they are streamed into me for the Most High or my higher self.  The amount of information is staggering and it comes so fast I spend days going back over it.  The best thing for me to do is put it on my board so it stays in front of me.  So the other night I was asking Why do I make the same mistakes over and over and do it almost unconsciously. Why is the Placebo Effect more successful than actual medications sometimes?   Remember the Bible quote, "Ask and Ye Shall Receive"?  Well later that night between  3:00 and 4:00 am (which is when they usually come) these answers came to me.
    The Placebo Effect is when something is given that in reality has not real proven benefit but the person is told that it will help them.  They believe it, so it is.  This is another reinforcement of how powerful your thoughts really are.  Person A gets a sugar pill and the reassurance that this pill will help them and they get better.  Person B is just given the medication and they get better.  How does person A get better without the medication?  I their mind they actually believed that the pill would cure them and their biology responded to that belief and they got better.  I had a friend that fought in Viet Nam.  His father told him to go and protect his brother.  To him the reason he believed he was their was to protect his baby brother.  He had been in seven helicopter accidents, five of which he was the only survivor.  He told me he started to believe that he was meant to live.  He had been shot, peppered with mine fragments, claymore pellets riddled his body, and many other things designed to kill a man in the jungles of Viet Nam.  I truly believe now that his belief was what sustained him and his biology responded every time he was wounded.  There are many stories out in the public of how someone was diagnosed with cancer and in their mind they saw themselves as whole and by some miracle their cancer disappeared.  Other will argue that they were misdiagnosed or they never had cancer to begin with.  Well then their is the No-cebo effect.  Where the person is told they have a disease when they do not and are perfectly healthy and their health begins to fail.  When told they have this rare cancer they begin to think, "I am dying" and actually do.  The biology changes as the conscious thought does.  Once the conscious thought overrides the program the subconscious starts to run this program in the background.  I once heard Bruce Lipton say that the Subconscious Mind's processor is running 95% of the bodies biology and the conscious is running 5%.  So 95% of you is running without consciousness of it running.  It's like this computer.  All I see are these words forming on the screen but behind the keyboard there are a million little functions happening and I pay them no attention. I do not have to think about breathing but if I become conscious to my breathing I can speed it up or slow it down or even stop my breathing.  I am not thinking about my heart pumping, If I consciously change my focus I can speed it up or slow the rate down.  Once I have learned something it gets turned over to the Subconscious and starts running automatically.  Driving is a prime example.  When I was first learning how to drive I was focused on driving and keeping my car in between the lines.  I was distracted by everything.  I had to think ahead and plan things out.  Today I just get in and pay little attention of driving.  It sometimes scares me that I can not even remember driving to a destination.  I get in and then I am there and say, "Wow!  Where did that three hours of time go."  I wasn't present.  I was concentrating on something else.  So if the conscious mind is 5% and the Subconscious is 95% and running a million times faster how can I change the biology and create wellness?  This is my million dollar idea.  Find the answers to the Placebo Effect and put them into everyday living and healing.  On a personal note when I became aware that I had the power inside me to do this it transformed my life.  I do not have time to be sick so I say, " I am always healthy".  I have been sick or ill 2 times in the last seven years where I had to take an antibiotic.  I just let whatever I have run its course and tell myself that my body can handle this and my body is designed to handle this.  I have no doubt in my mind, I will recover.  When I am run down I say to myself When I am rested I will heal.  I rest and I heal.  When I fractured my right ankle and had a plate and nine screws put on it, my thoughts where of winged angels knitting that piece of metal and my fibula together to make a stronger skeleton.  The doctor said this break would take 8 weeks to heal.  The two bone had been completely separated.  I went back in three weeks and he scratched his head and said, "There is no break line anymore.  Like it never happened. Your body heals very well."  The day my cast came off I started walking.  I wasn't walking very well but I was waking on it.  Thirty days later I threw one inning of relief with no rehab.  I did not go to PT one time.  Here is where I also see this placebo effect, in the clinic.  Patients are hurting, but when they get the clinic they say I am feeling better already.  How?  I have not done anything.  What if they tell themselves I will feel better when I get adjusted?  So for the next couple of days until their appointment they hurt and are in pain and not feeling very well.  On the day of the appointment they start feeling better.  By the time they get onto my table their symptoms are less severe and I adjust them.  They start to smile and say thanks and walk out like nothing was wrong.  I truly believe that these people delay their natural bodies process to heal by their thoughts.  I'm sure if it happens with me then it happens with medical doctors too and even surgeons.  People will say, "As soon as I see the doctor I will feel better."  Why not just take a picture of your doctor and put it on your fridge?   As soon as you see him you will feel better!  What I am really trying to say is that you are so powerful as a human.  You were created in God's image.   If our subconscious is running 95% of our biology then it is also speeding or delaying our healing process by the programs in the background.  The subconscious is really a recorder playing back the messages that we feed it.  Some of those messages are good ones or good programs while others are bad.  People will say, "Just think Positive!"  Well I'm hear to tell you positive thoughts plus bad programming is a losing battle.  You can say I want to be healthy or I am healthy everyday, but if your subconscious is saying look in the mirror fatty and the processor is a million times stronger you can see where this is going.  Fatty wins out.  So how do you change the programs? You do have to change the thoughts, and be conscious, as well as creative.  Meditating and using theta frequencies are a big key also.  The first six years of your life your brain is a recorder, this is where a lot of information is planted and the recorded starts recording.  Have you ever heard this, "My little Sally is a sponge.  She absorbs everything." Little Sally is 4 years old and she really is absorbing everything.  She hears her father tell her mother that she has put on a little weight and I don't like it.  Or she has heard her father say I love you precious, you are going to be a star.  One good program and one bad.  Children really do hear everything.  They do things and get yelled at, "What were you thinking?"  They weren't.  Their brains do not have the ability to reason yet.  They are recording.  Do this or don't do that.  This hurts me but this doesn't.   That is probably why their answer is always, "I don't know why I did it."  One parent sees a snake and says, "Look Sally that is a garden snake." Then picks it up without any fear and lets Sally touch it and examine it with awe.  Never really knowing that there is any danger.  Another person sees a snake a freaks out.  Sally's recorded says snakes are dangerous and when I see one I should freak out.  I grew up on a farm.  I have seen snakes and spiders and step in all kinds of crap.  I have no fear things like that because as a small boy I was curious and just didn't have anyone around me freaking out.  My grandpa would walk over and say that's a black widow they can bite you and make you sick then he would step on it.  So I natural kill black widow spiders when I see them.
 The bottom line I am trying to get across is that your thoughts are powerful.  They can control your biology, especially the biology of healing.  Have those thoughts of I am getting better, healthy, my body is healing and regenerating. Then believe the healing has happened.  Envision yourself as whole and complete.  Meditate and be present to the recorder or the voices that are contradicting what you believe.  Believe that you are powerful and trust yourself, because you are powerful and rare.  You are one in a billion.  No one has ever been like you and no one ever will be exactly you again.  That kind of rarity has value.  In all truth you are priceless.  Believe.  

Brain Steroids! Are you kidding me?

CLICK THE LINK AND GET SOME TODAY!

https://addieup.com/addieup-blog/?tracking=54d52d5a7b2f8

So I'm in my final year of school and this product hits the market?  I'm a little upset that I hadn't heard of this stuff before a few weeks ago.  Individual case studies have been done bit not any randomized control studies that I can find.  The press is pretty neutral, but I'm still going to try it.  I've tried a hoard of these brain enhancers to no avail.  Well I guess one more can't hurt.  The ingredients look promising and healthy anyways.  Couldn't hurt right?  I'll keep you all posted like I always do.

Inflammation, Inflammation, Inflammation!

Recently I was playing baseball and a teammate slid into second base and then started flopping around like he had been shot in the leg. People were running out to see what had happened. The way he was rolling around I could see he was in a lot of pain. It was his knee. Then everyone starts yelling for me. I'm the unofficial official team doctor. I'm technically not a doctor yet but my teammates assume since I am in my last few months of chiropractic school that I am a doctor already because I treat people in the Palmer West clinic. My first questions are, "Did you hear or feel anything pop? Is there any burning pain? What happened?" That should have been my first question because from what I saw I was thinking ankle. When he told me he came down hard on it and slammed it on the hard dirt. So I asked him to lay still and I just wanted to perform a couple of instability tests on him. He was fine. He has a very bad bone bruise on the patella and the superior aspect of the patellar tendon. It was painful. Ice and compression to keep the inflammation down. Then he asks if he should start popping anti inflammatory pills. He is surprised when I say no. Inflammation is good at this point. Your knee is a high tissue turnover area and right now you do not want to turn off this natural response. He is even more confused , so I explain it to him in a little more detail that makes since and he just agrees to not take any anti-inflammatory drugs right now. So many people have the wrong information. Athletes just want to get back on the field so they say Doc just give me the cortisone so I can get back in the game. They get the shot, feel better, go back and play and all this time the bodies natural healing process has been turned off. The shoulder or knee gets worse and eventually their career ends prematurely because of arthritis pain that is unbearable and performance has diminished. Inflammation is good sometimes. When tissues are injured inflammation is a huge part of the healing process. So where in the body is inflammation bad? How about your digestive tract. If your Gastrointestinal (GI) tract is inflamed then you are going to have all sorts of problems. People with GI problems report painful joints, fatigue, muscle weakness, gas and bloating, nausea, constipation, diarrhea and many many more. Why would a chiropractor be concerned about the GI tract? People come to see us for joint pain. When I find functional and structure issues with the spine I will run a trial of care. Some time the person reports they feel better and normal after a few weeks. But I have had patients that come back and have the same complaint week after week. This is not a chiropractic problem. This is an inflammation problem. I am willing to say that ninety percent of these people have inflammation related GI problems. They are overweight, on all kinds of medications, dehydrated, report food allergies, fibromyalgia, celiac disease that is unresolved when taken of gluten. There history tells me this is the case loud and clear. I though I once had chronic neck and lower back pain. Once I put myself on an anti-inflammatory diet my problems began to go away. For one month I ate no dairy or meat. I lost twenty pounds, my skin looked younger healthier and was softer. Then next month I reintroduced dairy. I added cheese to my food and salads, butter in my coffee. The gas and smelly stools returned and my head is full of mucus. I even got sick for the first time in two years. My lungs are now full of mucus too. So I'm off the dairy again for good. I do drink coffee but instead of butter I use coconut oil and it is still creamy. I'm tired of being a nice about people's health. I'm at the point where I care about people to much to sugar coat what they are doing to themselves. If your body is in a constant state of inflammation then you are slowly killing yourself. If your body is too acidic and is a breeding ground for all kinds of bacteria and even cancer. You are consciously choosing to kill yourself buy the eating choices that you make so here is some "Tough love". Sorry to be so straight forward, I am just sick of the lies you are being told so really I'm not sorry. If your food last for months in your fridge then it is not food, it is food stuff or food product. These food products have very little nutritional value. Food spoils in days. It is living and therefore it dies. You must consume it while it is living to keep life in your body.
Does this make since? Why do you think people are aging faster? People are dying faster is the reason. The human body is designed to live to 120-140 yet ours are done at 75, and its a miserable 75 years at the end. If you have questions about an anti-inflammatory diet and how to reboot your system email me at greg@baseballchiro.com.

What is Little League Elbow and How Can It Be Avoided?

According to Dr. Thomas Souza DC LLE (Little League Elbow) is more like a syndrome than a pathology. It is usually an adolescent pitcher with medial or lateral elbow pain. The adolescent elbow has growth plates in it until around age 24. This information was given to me a general knowledge fact in chiropractic school. The long bone has a diaphysis, a metaphysis, and a epiphysis. The epiphysis is at the end of the bone and in adolescen children it looks like a broken fragment or chip on a radiograph or x-ray. Here is a x-ray of a normal child's wrist.

The end plates of the radius and ulnar bones look broken but these are normal, these bones have not matured yet. I used a wrist because it is easier to see the plates then the ones in the elbow. The radius and ulnar have a proximal end that articulates with the distal humerus. The distal humerus also has growth plates on the distal ends of it to. With LLE there can be two major complaints. The medial or inside part of the elbow may have stretch injuries from the throwing when the external rotator muscles pull the arm back an then stretch the ligaments and then compression injuries can occur on the lateral side. There is a law called Wolff's Law that also can come into play here to. There is a non union of the immature epiphysis along with stress from throwing and stretching of the tissues. Wolff's Law works like this, when a bone has added stress to it then it will increase bone building activity and lay down additional matrix to make that bone stronger. An example of that would be to look at the tibia and femur bones of a long distant runner that is 60 and a couch potato that is 30. The 60 year old runner will have more dense and slightly larger bones from the stress of all that pounding of the body on those knees. The couch potato has really no need for this because they do not bear a lot of weight on their bones so their radio-graphs will show less density in the bones. Now add this stress to a bone that is still not finished growing and you will see that on an x-ray of a child that is right handed, hard throwing, and pitching many innings that their right elbow joint may be slightly larger than their left. It will definitely have an increase in external and internal rotational range of motion in the shoulder as well. The excessive throwing can also cause the growth plate to mature early and the epiphyseal plate will close early. Medial elbow pain is usually due to microtrauma of the medial anterior oblique ligament. The stress may also cause fragmentation of the medial epicondylar ligament. Now imagine your little league all star throws with his right arm and hits from the right side of the plate too.

Now they are experiencing the same medial side arm stretch but holding a weighted lever. The developing arm is experiencing two to three times as much stress as when they were throwing. I hypothesize this from the fact that a baseball weighs nine ounces and a little league bat can weigh 18 to 27 ounces. Some people will argue with me that the swing has two hands involved and the throw only one. I can accept this argument to a point, but from high speed video I can still see the medial arm being stretched.

As much baseball as I played as a kid and all the complete games I threw as a pitcher I didn't injure my arm until I was in college. Here is the difference. I throw right handed and hit from the left side of the plate. My right forearm muscles were getting work on both sides and avoiding an imbalance. The internal rotators involved in throwing where not involved in my hitting, when hitting my external rotators were getting the work. My pectoralis muscle on the throwing side were not getting stretched on the hitting side. I noticed also that I had more than a few students that were not pitchers that were having medial arm pain in their elbow. I thought it was strange that their arms were always hurting and they were not pitchers at all. When I asked them what they did most they said, "I hit three days a week and play tournaments on the weekends." After working with these hitters for a few months their arm problems mysteriously disappeared.
Was it by chance? I really believe it was how I trained them. I used a weighted chain system and made them swing from both sides of the plate to strengthen their core muscles. In the beginning some of them complained that it hurt to much to swing with their top hand or the one stretching the medial arm side. I would have them just do the bottom hand swings with that arm. I had a one handed bat with a chain attached to it and I made them swing that from both sides of the plated using forehand and backhand. Lastly I cleaned up their mechanical flaws and made their swing more efficient. So based on my clinical experience I would train both sides of the whole arm and their arms problems resolved. They trained the accelerating internal rotator muscles and then trained the decelerating muscles. They trained the forearm flexors as well as the extensors and if they were significantly weaker with their bottom hand I had them do more reps with that hand until is became stronger. The pectoralis muscles are part of the internal chain, so the latissimus muscle on the back must be trained too. If your young pitcher is using rubber tubing then I recommend Jaeger Bands. Use these bands for resistance training then use then in the exact reverse motion. Start from the release and jump back the the wind up. The bottom line is if the growth plates are damaged at a young age then the damage may be permanent. Which can mean a lifetime of arm pain and problems. Start out slow when the arms are young and still developing and do not be in a hurry to get them to the major leagues. Baseball is typically a forward moving sport, so do not forget to train the backward moving muscle too. This will create stability and overall greater strength. I have no problems with inning restriction at the lower levels and if curve balls are going to be thrown then proper mechanics are a must. I see so many young players trying to snap the elbow and wrist to make the ball spin. This is a receipt for disaster. My personal recommendation is learn to throw a fastball consistently for strikes to locations first, then a change-up, and curve ball and slider last. I played with professional players that were in there 20's that did not throw a curve ball at all. Best pitch in baseball is a well located fastball with changes in speed. When these guys learned how to throw a slider or curve ball it just put another bullet in their gun.
I hope this information was useful. I value any comments or feedback.

Ref:Differential Diagnosis and Management for the Chiropractor 4th Edition, Thomas Souza DC