Podcast Episode 6 - Pain and Metabolism

Transcription:

Alright. Welcome back. Neuro Train Collaborative. This is Katie and Kelly. I'm Erin, and we're gonna talk about the metabolics precipitating pain and what's happening usually how the metabolics of your body and the resources of your body may be contributing to your pain experience if you have chronic pain or an area of pain that is comes comes and goes. One thing that is really cool and we'll be covering this in our nutrition class on Wednesdays second and fourth Wednesday of the month in September. But one thing to know is that as we've said this before your metabolism is the total sum of all the chemical processes in your body. So any interference in your metabolic processes directly impact structure. and that is a revolutionary idea for most people. So not having enough magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium, all of that can impact nerve function can impact inflammation, it can impact muscle contraction, it can impact cellular swelling. a low zinc can also low copper, all those things can also impact swelling and higher estrogen levels. And All that stuff can create what's called an excitoxic experience in the nerves and cells, which is what they do before they die typically when they're stressed. They become really hypersensitive. That could be playing a large role in the pain experience. So these are some of the topics that we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about thyroid function, why thyroid is so powerful to get really solid nerve conductivity and like good mineral balances in the cell, how that plays a role with progesterone and your pregnenolone levels and how those all kind of complement each other we’ll also be kind of… the other thing to note is that sunshine is so crucial for lowering sympathetic response in the body, helping you use your sugars better and, of course, giving us vitamin d. and low vitamin D can be a major contributor to pain. Does anybody have anything to add to that? Yeah. I think it's important to note that when you start working with any of the three of us. -- and if you have a a history of pain, chronic pain, acute injuries, recurring injuries, that it is really hard for us to ignore the metabolic side of this. that if you come to see us and you have recurring ankle sprains, it's gonna be really hard for us to say, oh, we can do this, this, and this movement wise. and set you free because there is some metabolic stuff going on there that can really affect the outcome of what you're doing. So compounding results, if we can handle a little bit of changing to metabolics, to then increase your abilities your body's ability to use the movement better. So let that sink in more, then it's gonna help you a lot more than just doing the movement by itself. So typically in a chronic pain state, we see high cortisol levels. Right? Stress levels go up considerably. Chronic pain is exhausting. It's it's painful in more ways than just physical. And it takes a lot of energy. And our cortisol is gonna go up because cortisol is protective. It does good things. Without cortisol, we would not be here. It keeps us alive. Downside is, you run on Cortez all too long and your body just gets even more exhausted. It doesn't work as well. There's other things that happen metabolic wise that don't suit us long term. So short term, it's very protective. It does good things. But it's not something that we want to be living on high levels of for years and years and years. And so one thing that really helps with high cortisol levels while we're working on chronic pain while we're working on movement and vision and all the rest of the things. is sugar. And I'm really like, wait, I get to eat candy and cakes and cookies. No. No. sugar in the sense of fruits, roots, juices, milk can be really really helpful full in healing some chronic pain because it's going to lower cortisol. Some of you may also be listening in right now and you haven't had sugar in a while and when you do have that occasional binge your pain increases. Yeah. Because sugar lowers cortisol and if cortisol has been masking your pain for quite some time or lowering the threshold of it, you might have some increased pain if you binge on sugar and have too much and too small of a window. But our goal with these metabolic classes on Wednesday is the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month and certainly in some of the other classes that that we start talking about metabolics. Sugar can be really helpful in small doses as you start to increase your sugar intake if it's been a while for you. And there are certainly precautions that we want to take too because sugar and pufa, probably unsaturated fats don't mix well together. so you can also see an increased pain with that. When we're talking about a lot of the aches and pains that increase after you've had a binge typically your not bingeing on fruits or even juices or milk. you're you're binging on things that include those unsaturated fats and a lot of other things. So brownies, cookies, cakes, those kinds of things certainly are not going to help your chronic pain long term. So we're going to differentiate between what's helpful, what's not, what you need to be considerate of if you have a history of diabetes or anything else metabolic going on. so that we're doing this safely. But in a way that actually helps you decrease chronic pain or acute injuries, that kind of stuff. The other thing I want to mention is that we're also going to be talking a little bit more about Pufa, so those unsaturated fats. And in a history or with with a history of chronic pain, they've actually found that increased unsaturated fat intake will result in reversible reversible nerve damage that leads to an increased cycle of chronic pain. So we take out unsaturated fats. We do some other things to kind of help you out. that can actually reverse the nerve damage, so I don't like to think, oh gosh, I've got nerve damage forever. No. Nerves can always be healed. It takes some time. take some practice and figuring things out that they can be healed. And what that study did show is that when they removed unsaturated fats from their diets, nerves healed over time and chronic pain decreased. So that's gonna be another really important thing that we talk about as far as metabolics go in September. so that you can understand your pain a little bit more. You can start to look for things, start to look for correlations. and notice, maybe I haven't been doing this the way that is most helpful for my lifetime or the last couple of years. and you can start to become your own scientist moving forward to figure out what works doesn't work for you specifically. Anything that I got? Yeah. I was just gonna say that the thyroid component of that is another underlying root So we know that your brain runs on glucose and oxygen and activation and that it's directing the master gland, and the master gland is working in synergy with those, that that neurology and that your master gland of thyroid is where your stress hormones are are going to be directed from. So when we have an increase in cortisol, adrenaline, other any stress hormones, we know there's an underlying root happening within the communication of the thyroid gland, which is based on the kinds of nutrients that you have or don't have in your body. So I like to share this story of I have a diabetic client who is over eighty years old. And of course, this is an example of someone I've worked with for a long period of time. And I know all the health history there and we where we look at data that comes from our Cronometer so that we have information to go on and also we look at pulse and temperature in response to see how things are going. And this person was experiencing neuropathy in the extremities and loss of nerve function in the fingers. And we started looking at, well, if the thyroid gland, if you have low thyroid hormones, and we also have low sugar, because diabetics are very careful with the amount of sugar that they're getting. The nerves don't have fuel in order to create sensation. So we have been working together on introducing, reintroducing the minerals that haven't been present in the in the diet and also on how to get sugars to help the brain and the nerves that need fuel all the way down in the tip of the fingers and lowering those stress hormones metabolically. and this this person that has got their finger sensation back over eighty years old and wants to play the mandolin, wants to be able to feel the strings of the guitar underneath the fingers and we got it back. So we know that these things produce powerful results and it doesn't matter. how old you are or how long you have been a certain way. That when you start giving your brain fuel, then it will in return give better function to the nerves that are throughout your body. Great points, both of you. One last piece to know about sugar is that it is it's an accelerant. So it's a fuel source, but it's an accelerant to metabolism as is thyroid, as is caffeine. So if you're having sugar or caffeine or thyroid, but you have a poor nutritional foundation. You're literally accelerating your metabolism and then there's a big discrepancy, and that's where a lot of negative side effects can occur along with pain and migraines and all kinds of stuff. skin issues. So that's part of why we say, hey, you know, when you're when you're starting to add carbs back in, if you've gone low carb for a while, it's better to go or if you're diabetic, fruits and roots are awesome. But particularly fruits though because you don't need insulin when you have a good amount of potassium. And potassium's helping shuttle sugar into the cell. as is fructose is something that doesn't need a lot of insulin to enter the cell easily. So those are really cool things. And when we talk about master gland, I just think it's funny because I was reading my physiology book and they were talking about the Pituitary gland being the master gland and there's kind of a back and forth opinion on between scientists. But one thing that I do know is they did a study on some rats, and I can't remember what was going on with the rats, but they had to do with high prolactin, I think, and high parathyroid. And they removed the pituitary gland and it completely resolved the issue that the rat was having, and that rat was fine without his pituitary gland. So I just thought that was an interesting study And so it does kind of speak to your thyroid is the driver of energy metabolism in every cell and that's kind of why we reference that as the master gland of metabolism. The master of metabolism. Any other things that you two wanna add? No. We we could talk about it for days. I mean, there's really years, honestly. We we can continue talking about this for a very long time. There is so much to know. So we're really looking forward to you, even if you're brand new to us, joining us in September and learning a little bit more about your body, what might work to help heal some of the chronic issues you're dealing with. Yeah. Definitely. We will be talking about it for days because we'll be talking about it in every class. Alright. Well, have a wonderful day, and we'll see you next time.