The Natural Sports Medicine Book
Chapter 1 Why Natural Sports Medicine ?
For those athletes wishing to avoid the surgeons' knife, this book is for you, We will learn that when the knife and drugs are indicated and we will learn of the options to surgery and drugs. Our goal will be what Professor William Chisolm so aptly taught us in basic sports medicine at Brooklyn College: The restoration for Full Function, Full Strength, and Pain Free Full Range of Motion.
Two facts need to be known here.
Most sports injuries are mild to moderate. This means that the boo boo is not bad enough to need surgery, casts, or extensive rehab.
Most sports injuries are over-treated or under-treated. MDs frequently use cortisone to treat minor injuries, which can cause everything from tissue-death to osteoporosis.
American need to know that innocent painkillers we take for granted are real killers. According to the Wall Street Journal, twenty thousand people die in the US each year from aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen. In the UK, Tylenol is sold only by the dose because so many have died unintentionally from kidney failure.
Chapter 2 Injury Recovery : Its Nutritional Demands
Sports medicine and athletic training have for years ignored the nutritional aspects of rehabilitation. It's not our fault really; sports medicine follows where physical medicine leads. In this country, orthopedists and physiatrists have no good literature available on the feeding of rebuilding tissues. Since nutrition is not a subject taught in medical school, most in rehabilitation have tended to ignore it as unnecessary. Fortunately, medicine elsewhere has not.
Look to see what veterinary medicine is doing with nutrition and you'll see where human nutrition will be in 30 years. Everything from Vitamin C to Glucosamine to MSM first came out of veterinary medicine. Dr. Kassimire Funk may have first discovered vitamins in 1913, but the application of that knowledge to the human end of the mammalian species has taken most of the last century to be realized. Vets know an astounding amount about information on the nutritional needs of their patients.
In Europe, especially central and eastern Europe where nutritional science is a more integral part of healing, there is a different outlook on illness and injury. In our country, the medical system does not make money unless a patient gets sick and stays sick. In most of the rest of the world, society loses money if a person gets sick and stays sick. At the fall of the Iron Curtain, Eastern Europe was 20 to 30 years ahead of the Western curve in sports medicine and physical education. With the flow of their physicians, trainers, and coaches to the West, we are now learning that their techniques of conditioning, training, and rehabilitation were superior to ours. Token evidence of their superiority is seen by the fact that the US Olympic Weight lifting Coach was Romania's National coach, and the Exercise Physiologist in charge of conditioning for the US Marshals Service was a trainer for the elite Soviet Special Forces.
If we combine the knowledge held in veterinary medicine with the techniques and methods of the old eastern block, we will come up with a superior method of getting our athletes back on line in record time with a more fully rounded and complete development. We need a brief review of Histology - the science of living tissue.
There are three types of tissue:
Epithelial Tissue: skin, eyes, internal organs, and muscle. (In some classification, muscle is its own tissue, but because muscles and epithelial tissue arise from the same embryonic tissue - the mesenchyme - and because it contains the same mineral building block, I include it as epithelial tissue.)
Connective Tissue: fascia, ligaments, bones, cartilage, and blood vessels.
Nervous Tissue: the brain and nerves.
Epithelial Tissue
The mineral base is zinc, and the need is for 50 mg most training days. During injury, up the dose to 100mg for the duration of rehab. Zinc is only toxic in doses above 300 mg a day and only if taken for extended periods. There is much ado today about having to balance zinc with copper. Yes, for every 100 mg of zinc we need 3 mg of copper, but we in the States are far from being copper deficient. Most of us have copper pipes in our homes, and this fact alone provides us with the 3 mg we need. If there is an imbalance, the excess does not rest on the zinc side; we hardly have any true dietary sources of zinc. To get our needed dose of zinc, we would have to eat a bushel of whole wheat, aside of beef, or a basket full of oysters. The old wives' tale about oysters being aphrodisiac arises from the experience of zinc deficient men eating oysters and suddenly having their prostates work again, churning out semen. Zinc is the reason why semen is white and is essential for the production of testosterone.
For the muscular portion of epithelial tissue, we must also include 1 g protein / kilo of bodyweight Many trainer out there who are working with bodybuilding protocols instead of true strength training protocols are stuck in a "we need a gram of protein or more per pound of bodyweight." rut. This formula has never been true. It was invented to sell bodybuilding supplements. That much protein creates a huge ammonia load on the kidneys, leading to a condition known as glomerulosclerosis (fibrosis of the kidney). Kidney troubles are one of the leading killers of athletes and body builders.
Connective Tissue
For soft connective tissue the answer is simple: organic sulfur in the form of MSM is needed to the tune of from 500 to 1,500 mg daily depending on the location and extent of the injury. This substance is the brick that forms connective tissue; now for the cement - Vitamin C. Two capsules twice a day. For the mucopolysaccharide, use glucosamine HC1 (the HC1 is absorbed better and works faster than the glucosamine sulfate), and chondroitin sulfate to the use for 750 to 1,600 mg daily, again depending on the extent and location of the injury. These provide wherewithal to repair the cartilage.
In case of hard connective tissue injury the body needs 1,000 mg of calcium, 600 mg of magnesium, phosphorus, and the bone builders - vitamin D and K. We need not provide the phosphorus as most athletes drink cola and sodas where phosphorus is found in abundance. Magnesium all by itself s needed for the function of 2,600 of the body's more than 3000 enzymes, many of which are involved in healing. Magnesium is responsible for muscular relaxation. Spasm cannot occur if tissue magnesium concentrations are high enough (i.e. around 2,000 mg a day). Magnesium is safe. Allopathic physicians order doses of 1 gallon of magnesium citrate (the most absorbable form of magnesium) before colonoscopy without any more ill effects than the runs.
Enzymes
Now we came to the most important part of nutritional healing. In the States the medical education concerning enzymes is non-existent; so, so , medic science hare doesn't know what medical science elsewhere has been doing with enzymes for 40+ years. Let's give you some history. The year was 1912. Scottish physician, Dr. John Beard noticed that pancreatic caner patients produced little or no pancreatic enzymes. He began feeding these patients extracts of fresh pancreas and in many of his patients the death sentence of pancreatic cancer was lifted. However, not knowing ho to stabilize his extract, the results of others with enzymes proved erratic.
In the 1920's - 1970's Dr. Max Wolf was the world's foremost researcher in enzymology. Dr. Wolf was an MD who also held seven PhDs. He taught medical school at Fordham and did research with Dr. Helen Benetiz at Columbia University. Dr. Wolf practiced medicine as an OBGYN and wrote the fist medical textbook on endocrinology in the 1920's. While studying hormones, he became fascinated with the other regulatory mechanism of the odd - enzymes. We tend to think of these critters solely as agents of digestion, but that is only one of thousands and thousands of actions that enzymes perform in the body. Of all the enzymes, the protein cleaving enzymes are the most important to the regulation of physiology. In brief the four most important functions of the protein-eating enzymes are:
summary: All inflammation is created by CICs. Not all CICs create inflammation. Some CICs are needed by kidneys, intestinal lining and other visceral function. Proteolytic enzymes can tell the difference between good CICs and bad CICs. NSAID drugs can't tell the difference.
1. The Anti-inflammatory function. Enzymes are the first line of defense against inflammation. The body's cortico steroids are the second. All inflammation is caused by Circulating Immune Complexes (CIC) created by the immune system. For example, if an athlete has hurt his knee, the immune system created this CIC protein and tags it to go to the affected area. (The Nobel Prize in biology for '99 was won by the fellow who figured out how these proteins get tagged.) There the CIC creates inflammation - redness, swelling, and pain - as a protective splinting mechanism.
Aspirin, ibuprofen and the other NSAID drugs, both COX I and COX II, block CICs.
At first glance this action may sound just fine - until you remember that the kidneys are run by CICs and that the intestinal lining is maintained by CICs. Not all CICs are bad but these medications can't tell the difference. So they stop all Circulating Immune Complexes.
20,000 Americans die each year because these drugs can't tell the difference. Proteolytic enzymes, on the other hand, are specific lock and key mechanisms. They looks for exogenous proteins, proteins that are not what they consider to be part of the body's TRUE structure, and eat them! The CICs that create inflammation are differentiated from the ones that maintain visceral function; enzymes leave those alone while chomping down on the bad CICs. Dr. Wolf discovered this in the 1930's.
2. This protein-eating enzymes act as an Anti-Fibrotic. Enzymes are what the body uses to control the part of its healing mechanism that deals with fibrin. Fibrin is connective tissue that the body deposits into a wound to act as a matrix. Fibrin is laid in a thin layer across the wound, and epithelial tissue grow through it filling the gaps and sealing the wound.
When we get older, we do not produce enough of the protein eating enzymes that control the amount of fibrin. This leaves less space for the epithelial tissue to grow through. This over-deposition of fibrin can be seen and felt in fibrocystic breast disease, uterine fibromas, post-operative scar tissue (esp. in seniors). Folks who produce too much fibrin get blood clots, deep vein thrombosis, and arteriosclerosis as fibrin is the matrix for all of these.
recall: components of ECM (extracellular matrix) are categorized into 3 groups of proteins:
1. Fibrous structural proteins : confers tensil strength and recoil = Collagens, Elastins, Fibrillin.
2. Water-hydrated gels : permit compressive resistance and lubrication = Proteoglycans, Hyaluronan.
3. Adhesive glycoproteins & receptor : connect ECM to one another and to cells
4. Water 65%
3. The enzymes are immuno-modulative. If the immune system is cranked up too high as in MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Lupus, the enzymes tone the system down and then eat away at the CICs they're creating to attack their own tissue. If the system is down too low, the enzymes will boost production of the body's natural killer cells, improve the action of the FC receptors of the white blood cells, and overall improving the bug-killing action.
4. These enzymes keep the blood clean. Our blood is the river of life as the carrier of oxygen and nutrients. The blood is also the river of garbage as the bearer of metabolic waste and necrotic debris. In ideal worlds with perfectly healthy individuals, the trash in the blood is supposed to be cleaned on its first pass through the liver. Most of us don't have clean liver over the age of one. Protein-eating enzymes aid the liver to out-process this gunk and eat away at excess fibrin in the blood while decreasing platelet aggregation. A nifty way to keep the blood thin, clean, and flowing.
Most of us learned in physiology that old age begins at 27; this was Dr. Wolf's finding when he discovered that the human body's production of proteolytic enzymes begins to wane at that age and has a profound drop by 35.
In sports medicine enzymes will:
Keep micro injury from becoming macro injury.
Reduce inflammation.
Speed healing.
Prevent excess of scar tissue or eat away at existing scar tissue.
Improve blood rheology (flow), especially in those athletes prone to serve dehydration or using EPO to increase red blood cell count. (In these athletes this drug causes the blood to get as thick as yogurt, greatly increasing the risk of blood clotting diseases.)
Eliminate the need for the constant use of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) thereby prevent the major cause of internal organ dysfunction and toxicity. After a particular New York marathon where a major US drug firm gave away samples of its OTC ibuprofen, four runners died from the kidney failure that came from the combined result of dehydration and ibuprofen use.
Systemic enzymes are used by almost every Olympic team in Europe and most European pro sports teams. Currently many of the teams in the NFL, NHL, NBA, and Major League Baseball have discovered enzymes and are using them to keep their expensive players from being poisoned into retirement by the NSAID.
During their heyday, the Eastern block nations were buying millions and millions of enzyme tablets through third parities in the West and secreting them behind the iron curtain. Not one got to a hospital; the entire lot went to their sports training centers to prevent injury, speed workout recovery, and allow the eastern block athletes to maintain their impossible 8 hour a day training schedule without overtraining or injury.
Chapter 3 Tools for Recovering and Rebuilding
What happens to an area during an injury? Sometimes there may be serious injury without loss of function. A fracture of the forearm is a good example of this. I've seen Coles fractures, a condition where both both forearm bones are broken straight across and the patients are still capable of moving not only their fingers but their wrists as well. Next on the list is inflammation. This condition is defined as swelling with pain and redness. The blood vessels in the injured area react to the insult by opening up and dumping a lot of fund in to splint it up, and with the distention (ballooning up) of tissues comes pain. This is nature's way of telling you to keep off the injured area until it heals.
note: Myositis Ossificans (MO) = calcified lumps in the muscle
The inflammation that swells an area after an injury also brings with it a load ofcalcium to deposit in the affected area. Our bodies do not know what has been inferred, whether it has occurred to soft tissue or bone. Always opting for the worst case scenario, the body thinks bones have been fractured and so brings a great deal of calcium with the first load of body fluid. If muscle, fascia, periosteum, tendons, cartilage, or ligaments have been injured, the calcium is useless and can create a new problem, myositis ossificans (MO). MO occurs when the calcium that has been deposited in an area during the initial phase of injury hardens into a large bone chip. Most examples of myositis ossificans can be found in the deltoid muscles of ex-football linemen (those lumps can be ping pong ball-size). Sprinters often have this injury to the front of the thigh.
MO limits range of motion and creates painful motion because of muscle/tendon must grate over the rough slab or barnacle of bone in order to move. This creates constant irritation and inflammation, which draws more calcium. We won't get into how to get rid of MO but we will deal with avoiding its occurrence.
When dealing with the first 3~4 days of an injury, remember the acronym RICE:
- Rest
- Ice
- Compression
- Elevation
Other Things You Can Do
Healing / Drawing Ointments
One day I went to my naturopathic tutor, Dr. Charles W. Turner, and told him that I was using an old patent medicine on injuries that seemed to both reduce the bruising and dislocation along with the effusion and pain. (It works by drawing the black and blue to the surface where it dissipates back into the circulation.) The stuff looked like black melted crayon. Doc Turner turned to look at me and said that he didn't have any more to teach me, I have just found the secret of the world. The nifty ointments have been around for over a hundred years. Their formulas are simple iodine in an ointment base with a touch of oil of wintergreen(methyl salivate). The oil of wintergreens dilates the pores and allows the iodine to flow transdermally into the tissues. Concentrations of iodine in tissue will increase the local metabolism, dissipate black and blues, reduce swelling and pain, relax muscles, and generally speed healing. When using a drawing ointment, apply a dab to the affected area. Rub the ointment in until the color disappears. Use this over strains and sprains, on bruises and contusions, any swellings or sore points. The only problem with ointments is getting them. Even most old-time pharmacists think they've been long gone, but not so.
Systemic Enzymes
The same enzymes we learned about before as a benefit to eating, when taken in higher dosed during the acute phase of an injury, greatly serve to reduce the inflammation and pain. Ten tablets 3 times/day are what is needed during the first 72~96 hours of injury.
Androstene Creams
Androstene is a precursor to testosterone. Creams are absorbed some 95% while oral administration of Androstene shows only a 5% absorption. The body takes this Androstene and thorns into its won testosterone. This is a wonderful supplement to speed healing of all bone and soft tissue injury. During the Vietnam war, every wounded trooper was given androgens (testosterone substances) to help them recover faster. Though the work has been "denied" because of the stigma anabolic steroids now have due to their misuse in athletics, many old combat surgeons and front line doctors remember giving these drugs in their proper therapeutic dosed and having the wounded heal in record times. We can reproduce these healing times today without the side effects of using synthetic hormone drugs. Androste is natural, it gives you body the tools it needs to make it's own testosterone. The only warning: Do not use this if you are pregnant.
Doc Turners Old Time Poultices
Dr. Chales W. Turner was the first black Naturopath, Chiropractor, and Osteopath. Studying all of these systems of medicine after his return from the First World War he compiled a mass of information on natural healing techniques which he applied in his 60+ years as a healer. One of his favorites was the Kosher Salt Poultice. Tis remedy draws swelling from an area, as fluid moves from lower to higher saline concentrations, taking with it metabolic waste the cell may be holding. At the same time, in the opposite direction minerals are moving transdermally into the affected tissue. These minerals alkalize the area. Injured tissue tends to be acidic (due to its destruction and the holding of metabolic waste). The higher the acidity, the slower the rate of healing. The salt also contribute mineral building blocks for tissue repair.
Use this treatment after the first 72 hours has past:
1. One of these heating pads: Hydrocolator heating pad large enough to cover the affected area, or Electric heating pad able to withstand being wet. The pads of preference are specifically made for moist heat.
2. One box of kosher salt
3. A medium sized towel.
Spread salt over half the towel and our water no hotter than 105 degrees over the salt to create a kind of brine. Place the heating pad over this and fold the free side of the fowl over it. Place the salt side of this poultice over the injury and hold at medium heat for 20 minutes. Once done, have ice cubes in a small plastic bagand dab over the area for 5 minutes. This creates localized vasoconstriction and lock in the minerals and alkalization longer. If the ice is not done, all of the good stuff will be carried away quickly by the increased circulation. Feet, ands, elbows, etc. can be placed in bucket to which is added from 1/2 cup to 1 cup of sea salt.
Ice Massage
We use the trick of bringing blood from the inside-out instead of trying to force an increase of circulation from the outside-in. This method is useful for deep or thick area. Heat applications used to stimulate circulation only penetrate into tissue some 0.5 to 1.5 inches. If as in the case of a back buttock, or thigh injury, the injured tissue is very deep, then no increase in circulation will be had at that level from superficial applications of heat. Remember that ice left on for over 20 minutes brings blood to an area from the inside-out.
Chapter 4 Degrees of Injury
First Degree Injuries
An athlete can play with first degree injuries if supportive taping or bracing is worn. Athletic tape or the brace must restrict the range of motion in a joint to prevent further damage yet has to have the laxity in injured ligaments and tendons. Don't depend on your doctor to tell you what bracing is best. Nine out of ten times he really does not know. If he is an orthopedist, he may send you to a brace maker.
Most ERs don't know what to recommend for a first degree injury that gives support and allow play. Seek out a pro on injury support during sports - a Certified Athletic Trainer. Athletic Trainers are college-trained experts on the reduction, rehabilitation, and support of athletic injuries. There was a time when these experts were found only in colleges, but now hight schools around the country have recognized the need to hire these caregivers.
Second Degree Injuries
More serious with more extensive damage to ligaments, anions, and muscles. Several days or weeks must be taken to reduce the immediate effect of the injury and then restore function. Do not play with a second-degree injury until your physician clears you. Further stress on the weakened and hurt part will make the injury more extensive.
Third Degree Injuries
The worst kind. Here the player has a full tear of a muscle, tendon, or ligament. Here a spot where a tendon is attached to a bone may have pulled that bony piece clear off the shaft or joint platform. This is also where fractures and serious dislocation live. Healing, casting, or surgery is not enough to recover from a third degree injury: a full bout of rehab and neuro-muscular reeducation is needed to insure full function, strength, and ROM after one of these injuries.
You soccer moms out there thinking that you've spared your child the dangers of American football, think again. Shin fractures and compartment syndromes of the leg permanently damage hundreds of children playing soccer every year. Not to mention the brain damage, cervical nerve damage, and arthritis incurred from "heading" the ball. (Compartment syndrome usually results from bleeding or swelling after an injury. The dangerously high pressure in compartment syndrome impedes the flow of blood to and from the affected tissues. It can be an emergency, requiring surgery to prevent permanent injury.) Never, never, never neglect an injury. Sports is a game, not war. Hurt your body an neglect it, and you will pay in the future with arthritis and dysfunction.
Chapter 5 Getting Fit To Play
The Navy Seals have a motto: "Train hard. Fight easy". And this is how it should be. Conditioning exercise should specifically prepare an athlete by developing the strength, endurance, agility, and flexibility he will need to easily perform the skills demanded by the sport. The play itself should not be that much of an endeavor because the conditioning and skills training beforehand should have been harder than the game itself demands. Typically, america's ivory towers of sports medicine and exercise physiology are 20 to 30 years behind Scandinavia and Eastern Europe in theory and application. As an example, the top textbooks in exercise physiology on the development of strength and power are from Scandinavian physiologists. Romania's comer national weightlifting coach was scoffed at by American academics when he described the training techniques he and the Communist Block in general utilized to build their gold medal powerhouse teams. They did not scoff for long. The Romanian coach now heads up the US Olympic Weightlifting Team. What mix of things did the likes of Romania and East Germany do to produce athletes of such superior ability? The answers were threefold:
1. Ture Strength Training
2. Plyometric Power Training
3. Systemc Enzymes
True Strength Training
Strength is the ability to apply force. Most of what passes for strength training in the West today is simply modified bodybuilding. Bodybuilding works with moderate resistance with moderate numbers of repetitions, in very strict movement with the aim of producing muscular hypertrophy. True strength training uses very heavy weights, few repetitions, and they do something unthinkable in bodybuilding - they cheat. In other words they use their whole body to help perform the lift. Like Bruce Lee's principle of putting the whole body mass behind a punch! Whole body involvement is the recipe for functional strength. Skill movement in martial arts, sport, dance, or any activity involves the whole b odd, never one joint at a time. Training only one joint without synergistic involvement of the rest of the body produces strength that has little transference to real movement during performance. Proper strength training does not produce a lot of hypertrophy. Instead it produces a change in muscle known as hyperplasia where a muscle bundle splits and become two or more overlapping muscle bundles.
Here again we have one of the differences between European sorts science and the Yanks - most physiologists here don't believe hyperplasia occurs in humans. In Europe, hyperplasia has been a scientific given, and they've adjusted their training methods accordingly with great success. According to studies done at two separate Olympics, the weight lifters also the second most flexible, balanced, and agile athletes there; the gymnasts are the first. Bodybuilding is a non-contact sport getting you ready to pose and very little else. Strength training gets you ready to perform, to excel, and to strive. Most sports demand explosive movements against resistance. That resistance can come either from gravity (as in gymnastics), a medium (such as water in swimming), or an opponent (as in judo or wrestling). Explosive movements against the weights can be done safely if proper training in its biomechanics is done beforehand.
What's the difference between Exercise Physiologist and personal trainer? It's like the difference between someone who gets their black belt by attending two or three weekend seminars as opposed to someone who masters and art by spending years learning its discipline.
Plyometric Power Training
Explosiveness against weights only partially builds the ability to produce power. To fill this need of sport, the Eastern Block exercise science folks developed Plyometric training. Here in the States some folks have fancied up some aspects of plyometric training folks have fancied up some aspects of plyometric training with giant rubber balls and fancy equipment. You don't need any of those. Let's first answer the basic question as to what plyometric exercise is. Plyometrics are exercises that involve an explosive movement of the extremities that propel the entire body. The full body learns how to cooperate in producing great speed and explosiveness that transfers directly to a sport skill. One example of plyometric work you may have seen involves athletes zigzag-jumping over knee-high benches side to side. The most common plyometric exercise involves jumping up onto a bench some 20 to 25 inches high with both feet. Then the athlete jumps off to the rear and down again, absorbing the downward energy on the return, then uncoiling it to jump cup once again. The Soviets trained all of their athletes, from the arches to the fencers to the shooter to the wrestlers in plyometrics They found the balance, precision, anaerobic conditioning, and power that were useful for all athlete in all sports.
Plyometric Drills Example
- Standing Jumps
- Zigzag Jumps
- Clapping Pushups
My warning goes out to those athletes over 35 with OJS (Old Jock Syndrome). Your rotator cuff muscles either won't like you doing upper body plyometric work, or they simply won't let you. It's okay; you don't need that upper body speed anymore. You can play with more savvy and stealth than pure athletic ability. Thats how life is; accept it. As we get older we should be playing less and working out more. The first destroys the body; the second builds it.
A typical day for a Communist block athlete would go something like this:
- Stretching. Not the slow static mamby-pamby passive stretching we advocate here but an active stretching that actually produces strength.
- Progressive Resistance Training. Strength work at the aforementioned low reps, low sets, and high weights. For example, 3 sets of 3~5 repetition with 80~95% of a 1RM (RM=max weight you can move for 1 repetition).
- Plyometric Exercises
- Skills Training. Practice in the actual sport.
- Aerobic or Anaerobic Conditioning. As needed by the sport.
What is anaerobic conditioning? Everyone can more or less describe aerobic exercise as working out the heart and lungs to develop endurance. This description would be correct, and we'll add one thing. In aerobic exercise, oxygen is the primary fuel the body uses to maintain its work load. You literally burn oxygen. Anaerobic exercise, on the other hand, does not involve long steady bouts of work but short and super intense rounds of exercise. In this type of work, oxygen is either not available to the muscles due to the intensity of muscular contractions which cut off blood supply, or the work bout overloads the body beyond its ability to deliver oxygen to all of the working parts. In this type of work the cells burn glycogen or blood sugar as their primary fuel instead of oxygen. Olympic free style example is the best example of an anaerobic sort. Free style wrestlers are the best conditioned athletes, both aerobically and anaerobically, as the demands of their skill are s great. Conditioning for anaerobe ability involves nearly endless repetition of exercise drills involving one burst of energy after another. Athletes wind up breathless, nauseous, dizzy, and the number of precious energy-producing centers of the cell knows as mitochondria just build and build. This increases both the stores of potential energy as well as the actual furnaces to burn that energy in the cells. The result is longer, stronger, more controlled bursts of skill performance.
The third secret is a physiological realization as to three drawbacks of intense training.
- Inflammation,
- micro injury, and
- immune system depression.
All conditioning and skills training produces inflammation. Muscles, tendons, ligaments, bursa, periosteum all react to hard training by swelling and becoming painful. Micro injuries occur every day in skill and condoning exercise. These tiny injuries are not enough to sideline an athlete, but they accumulate and, sooner tether than later become a macro injury demanding rest. Both micro and macro injuries produce scar tissue (fibrosis) which limits the range of motion in the limb and creates the potential for further injury.
The one aspect unrecognized until the 60's was that intense training schedule lowered the body's immunity. Every day of hard training is followed by two to three days of immune system suppression. When an athlete tags too many days of training together without adequate rest, the immune system hoes into steep decline, sometimes to the point in some athletes, such as marathoners, where it dies out all together. There is now even a professional journal for immunology in sports medicine. What armament did the Iron Curtain countries use to combat these three deadly foes to performance?
Through the 40's and into 60's, Cortico Steroid drugs were used against the inflammation. These drugs had nasty side effects such as water weight gain, death of bursa, weakening the tendons, osteoporosis, extreme mood swings, and more. They had no answers for the issues of fibrosis and immune system depression. Then came the late 60's and everything changed. In the constant search for substances to improve performance, the East Germans took notice of a preparation that was gaining favor on the other side of Germany - Human Growth Hormone.
The Olympic athletes themselves called the Olympic in Atlanta the Human Growth Hormone games. HGH is the favored drug of Olympians since there is presently no test to determine its use. But HGH has some horrid side effects on healthy young people' so bad, in fact, they make anabolic steroids look good. The International Olympic Committee seems impotent to stop drug use because spectators come to see record shattered. Without drugs, such sports as cycling, speed skating, and track and field would be boring events where this year's times and distances would be no better than they there in the '64 and '68 games. The result would be a drop-off in viewers and a drop-off in sponsorship. The bribing scandal concerning the Utah water Olympics did more than anything else to show that the Olympics were no longer about the glory of amateur sport; they're all about the glory of money for the promoters, the hosts, and the potential winners.
Use of cortico steroid could be dropped. When the International Olympic Committee banned cortico steroid use in 1975, most of the Eastern block countries did not even blink. Their athletes were already off the anti-inflammatory drugs and performing harder, healing faster, staying healthier, and maintaining their ranges of motion all through the use of those enzymes.
Chapter 6 Avoiding Excessive Exercise
Now that the over-exercise craze of the 80's and90's has passed, we know that excessive exercising creates disease states in the human body. Many of the marathoners who claimed to be running from heart disease wound up dead from that very condition. The cause was vascular scarring and inflammation. Some lifters, supplementing their training with high dosages of creatine that bloats muscle up in size, wound up dead or nearly dead from muscle wasting and kidney failure. It seems that excessive creatine combined with dehydration creates a deadly condition known as Rhabdomyolysis. Those who survived the rapid muscle death did so by extensive surgery removing the dead and dying tissue they worked so hard to build. In other cases of overdoing the immune systems of endurance athletes died, leaving them at the mercy of any old infection. One famous marathon runner got an infectious disease from his cat. Most of the over doers of the 80's and 90's are now nearly crippled from the excessive joint wear. The over doers of the later 70's are dead or in wheelchairs.
Chapter 7 Foot, Ankle, and Leg Injuries
Plantar Fasciitis and Heel Spurs
There is membrane made of connective tissue that resemble a weave of very fine white hairs. During most activities, this supporting membrane (fascia) stretches and gives to meet the forces that are taken up by the foot. When it can't stretch anymore, of if repeated injury has built up scar tissue within the fascia the tissue will tear and attempt to rip itself from its connections at the forefoot and heel. The body will then react by drawing calcium to the area and cement the fascia to the bone.
Micro-current electrotherapy and soft tissue manipulation such as Myo-fascial Release work best to relieve the pressure and pain and to restore functionality. Nutrition and self-care must also be done to hasten the recovery and prevent its return.
Achilles Tendon Strain
Here the Gastroc, Soleus, and Plantaris (green) come together and attach to the calcaneus. In evaluating the strain of the achilles, the doctor or athletic trainer must palpate the outside edges of the structure and check for divots and fraying. If divots are found at the edges, the evaluator must then feel to see if there is troth between the divots.
This indentation across the tendon indicates that the tendon is tearing slog that line. If such continues, the entire tendon will rip apart creating a condition needing surgical repair.
Chapter 8 Knee and Thigh Injuries
Sprain of the Collateral Ligaments (CL)
A sudden torque, a foot firmly planed wile atempting change direcion during running, akick against the side of the knee. Of the two collateral ligaments, the medial (MCL) is the one most often injured since exterior forces are more likely to land against the outside (LCL) of the knee. This causes the joint to open on the inside forcing a stretching and tearing of the ligament.
Meniscus Tears
The menisci are connected to the tibial plateau by a ring ligament. The medial meniscus is also connected to the MCL so it can be pulled gently out of the way of the prominence at the center of the joint during rotational movement. If the injury is bad enough, it will cause the meniscus to tear and float around the joint and possible locking it up by jamming itself. This is called bucket handle tear.
In severe tears, surgical repair may be needed to insure stability in the joint. Hold off surgery until you've first tried to rehabilitate the joint. Orthpedists are first and foremost surgeons and many times will rush their patients into cutting.
The old joke in sports medicine is that if yo do nothing bur rehab, your knee may hurt and lock out for some two years; if you do surgery, your knee may hurt and lock out for some two years!
Joint Mice
Injuries can cause a piece of cartilage come loose and float around. Also, semi-torn pieces of injured cruciate ligaments can flap around. Both of these can get into the space around tibial prominence and jam the joint. There are manipulation techniques to unlock the joint and return almost immediately, but after a locking event a session of RICE should be done.
With time (1~2 years) the body will reabsorb floating segments of cartilage, but torn cruciate will continue to be a bother. If locking is excessive in occurrence then surgery might be considered to remove or repair the offending piece.
Chapter 9 Hip, Pelvis, and Lower Back Injuries
Sacroiliac Joint Subluxation
The condition is very painful, can be veery crippling, and is the easiest thing in the world (for someone who know how) to correct. Once that's done, the pain and dysfunction is instantly gone! The experts here are the chiropractors. Do not go to an MD for this condition, or you may find yourself having necessary surgery. Many orthopedists can't tell the difference between a lower lumbar injury and a sacroiliac subluxation. It sounds utterly stupid but most don't, that herniated disks are the two most mossed diagnoses MDs make with reared to the back.
recall: sciatica caused by actual disc herniation ↓
Since there is little muscle at this site, all the lower back and abdomen strengthening won't help or prevent the SI joint form popping out.
Lumbar Spine Injuries
There are so many parts and pieces down there that experts need to be consulted to properly diagnose the damage. Here again the Doctor of chiropractic (DC) is superior to the orthopedist in training and technique. Who studied the area for 4 solid years or someone who studied the area for only a few weeks or months? Some things all back injuries have in common. In all cases of back pain spasm, only 4 muscles groups cause most of the pain:
- Ilio-Psoas
- QL
- Piriformis
- IT Band
These spasming quartet spasm in an attempt to splint the area, preventing further movement. It's these muscles that eight cause pain within themselves from the spasm or press down on nerves, causing rivers of radiating pain. This is what happens in sciatica, which is secondary pain associated with many back conditions.
If these muscles are released from their deep spasm, most pain, even sciatic pain, will be greatly relieved. Luckily, we only need two stretches to release this afflicted muscles:
- Hip Roll Stretch
- Single Knee to Chest Stretch
Be forewarned that stretching is not easy or pain free. A good stretch directly involving spasm or contracted muscles will hurt like the dickens. The trick is to take a stretching position to its first point of pain, hold it there, then count slowly to 30, relaxing along the way.
A muscle taken past its accustomed ROM will react by involuntarily contracting (stretch reflex). This initial contraction usually releases in about 20 seconds. It's only after that release that you're really stretching. When you hit 30, return to the pre stretch position, rest 10 seconds, and repeat the stretch. Do each stretch 4 times. This stretching program should be done first thing in the morning before arising from bed, the last thing at night, and anytime in the middle of the day if you feel stiff or experience the onset of pain from spasm.
Aseptic Necrosis of the Hip Joint
Even fully conditioned players cannot get around their genetic limitations. Some folks have very little in the way of blood vessels to the hip joint. While it is true that exercise can increase the size and number of blood vessels in any muscular area, the deep hip joint is comprised of bones, tendons, ligaments, and synovial membranes. No of these tissues benefits from the increase in vascularization of conditioned muscles.
There have been a couple of famous cases where star pro athletes were suddenly knocked out of their playing lives by the death of the tissue deep in the hip joint. Hip replacements are necessary in these cases because the bone and cartilage of the ball and socket die.
Chapter 10 Abdominal and Torso Injuries
Rib Fractures
While most rib fractures occur from a blow to the chest during a contact sport, they can also occur via "indirect trauma" such as a violent muscular contraction, or even from coughing. Direct trauma displaced the fibs inwardly toward the internal organs. This is the most dangerous type fracture as the jagged broken ends can tear and perforate the chest lining (pleurae), lungs, liver, kidneys, etc.
Rib fractures are quite easy to detect, but unless you know what to palpate or test for, it's best to leave things alone; transport the person to the emergency room. Fractures here usually heal in 3 ~ 4 weeks.
Subluxated Rib Heads
This condition often causes piercing, burning pain just to the side of the spine where the rib connect. MDs, unfamiliar with the condition often mistake this pain for muscle tear of some sort of spinal injury. The pain comes from the slight dislocation of the head of the rib from the small notch. Once the rib head is out of place, it presses on all of the soft tissue that surrounds it sending the rich sensory nerves resulting to a frenzy of pain.
If the spasm resulting from the subluxation is not too bad the rein heads may be put back in using the following technique.
Hang from a chinning bar, count slowly to 30, breath deeply, and relax. Between the stretch's pull and release, you might feel the mild clunk of the bones popping back into place. Most of the time, though, the resulting spasm in the surrounding muscular tissue will be so bad that it will need a chiropractor, osteopath or nature path to adjust the bones and put the ribs back in. Pain relief is instantaneous once the subluxation has been reduced.
Costochondral Cartilage Separation
Though few have heard of this injury, it actually occurs more often than rib fractures. The ribs do not have a bony connection to the sternum. Since the area has a lot of give and take, the articulation between these bones must be a flexible one. Finger-like projections emanate from the side of the breastbone for a few inches and then attach to the ends of the ribs. There will be pinpoint pain at the front or side of the chest. If the tear is complete, the rib often will stick out like an unbound spring.
The repair involves same day surgery and a small incision, drilling two holes, and tying the loose ends together with stainless steel wire. Most doctors today try bracing the rib cage with an elastic bandage and hope that the ends come lose enough together to mens. Wishful thinking! You've got to take the brace off sometimes, even if only to shower. When the tension is gone, the rib will pop out again. If minor surgery is not performed, the injury will heal much more slowly, resulting in a rib that continues to protrude. Find an orthopedic surgeon who knows how to fix it, and get the job done right.
Chapter 11 Shoulder Injuries
The first thing to remember about shoulder injuries is that little injuries hurt like big injuries and big injuries are unbelievably painful. This is due to the rich blood supply coming to the brachial Plexus. The shoulder girdle forms the "yardarm" that allows our upper extremities to have the range of motion around the torso
Acromio Clavicular Joint Separations
Though the ligament holding the AC join is very strong, it can over thine, be overworked. Worse yet,a blow can cause it to separate. The usual test for a separated shoulder is to tap two finger tips on the point formed by the AC joint. If the joint is injured, the pain brought on by tapping is enough to bring awfully grown football player to his knee.
In partial separations, the arms and shoulder are placed in a cross brace which pulls the bones closer together to allow them to mend in a position close to the original. This brace is worn during the day for 6 weeks. If the truth be known hover, I've seldom seen it work.
In full separation the last outer inch of the clavicle is surgically sawed off. That leaves nothing but muscle holding up the mast. Muscle is supposed to make things move, not hold things together. Joints are supposed to move around a pivot, so what happens when you cut off the pilot and leave structures hanging freely. The old way of fixing AC joint separation is much better in terms of time spent out of action (a few days as opposed to 6 to 8 weeks) and makes much better biomechanics sense than chopping of the head of the joint!
Why is the joint-chopping procedure used? For only two reasons that I can figure:
Remember orthopedists are surgeon, and surgeons cut things. The more they cut the better. The longer, more involved, and the more complicated the procedure, the more they and the rest of the medical staff can get involved and collect.
The second reason why chopping is favored is Biomechanics. MDs never study it. One would think that orthopedic and reconstructive surgeons would be experts at biomechanics. Not a chance. They pick up some knowledge along the way, buy as far as formal learning of biomechanics at school goes - it never happens, not in any medical school in the U.S. Most any undergraduate Physical Education majors know more about biomechanics than most orthopedic surgeons! It happens that the only doctors with training in biomechanics are those who have earned previous degrees in {physical Education, Exercise Science, or Kinesiology (the formal name for biomechanics).
So the chopping off procedure is the result of a lack of formal education with regard to the purpose, actions, and functions of joints in sports and life. Sad.
Chapter 11 Shoulder Injuries
Shoulder Joint Dislocation
A shoulder joint mistreated or left out of position can severely injure the nerve bundle of the Brachial Plexus in the armpit. This can cause paralysis of the arm and shoulder. Don't monkey around with this one waiting for it to go away on it's own; it won't. Unless you know how to relocate a dislocated shoulder pint, let a pro do it. Once the swelling sets in, it will take ice and about 50 cc of intravenous Valium to relax the muscles and knock the anxious patient out enough to pop the joint back in.
A word about exercise. Not all shoulder exercise is good. There are many common shoulder, chest, and upper back exercises that will do more harm than good and should not be performed by any lifter over the age of 27 (physiologically when old age begins). The following exercises will destroy the rotator cull muscles:
- Behind the neck Pulldown
- Behind the neck Shoulder Press
- Wide grip front Pulldown
- Full Range of Motion Bench Press
- Machine chest Flys
Read the rehab section to learn the whys of the biomechanics involved and to discover exercises superior to those listed as taboo above.
Rotator Cuff Injuries
Pain reaching up, pain in pulling something back, pain and restriction in reaching up and back with the elbow bent, and pain and restriction in reaching up from behind your back are all sings of rotator cuff injury. If the injury is serious enough, surgical repair may be needed. A word of warning here: most orthopedists are horrible at doing shoulder surgery. And to top it off, the more conservative arthroscopic surgery may not necessarily be better than open shoulder surgery. If a lot needs to be done, the closed arthroscopic procedure may take too long. Aside from that, there is only so much cleaning and fixing you can do through a little joint scope.
Chapter 12 Arm and Hand Injuries
Bursitis of the Elbow
Injuries of the lower tricep tendon are oftentimes accompanied by an egg shaped swelling at the point of the elbow. This is known as Olecranon bursitis. This swollen bursa sack tends to be a persistent cuss and is difficult to get rod of oven after the tendon is healed. Ice water baths where the elbow is immersed in a large salad bowl of ice water for 20 minutes are the preferred treatment. Compression bandages, elbow braces, and the like worn while at play or training, keep the area from further swelling and help to squeeze out effusion.
Treatments and Nutritional Maintenance
Treatment for Strains
Systemic enzymes: 5~10 tablets/capsules 3 times daily
Protein: 1g per kilo of bodyweight daily
Zinc: 50 ~100 mg daily
Vitamin E: 800 ICU daily
Vitamin A: 10,000 IU daily
Androstene Cream: Men 2~3 applications daily / Women 1 application daily
Treatment for Sprains
Systemic Enzymes: 5~10 tablets/capsules 3 times daily
Glucosamine / MSM : 4 tablets daily
Ice Application: 20 minutes 1~2 times daily
Drawing Ointment: Apply lightly over contusion site 2~3 times daily
Compression Braces with Support: Do not use elastic bandages
Treatment for Inflammation
Systemic enzymes: 10 tablets/capsules 2~3 times daily
Glucosamine / MSM : 4 tablets daily
Magnesium: 2,000 mg daily
Potassium: 1,000 mg daily
Drawing Ointment: Apply 2~3 times daily to inflammation
Treatment for Bone Spurs and Arthritis
Systemic Enzymes: 5~10 tablets/capsules 3 times daily
Glucosamine / MSM : 4 tablets daily
Magnesium: 2,000 mg daily
Vitamin B6 : 100 mg daily
Vitamin E: 800 mg daily
Treatment for Fractures
Systemic Enzymes: 5~10 tablets/capsules 3 times daily
Calcium / Magnesium / Vitamin D : 2 tablets daily
Magnesium : extra 1,000 mg daily
Glucosamine / MSM : 4 tablets daily
Zinc: 50 ~100 mg daily
Vitamin D : 400 ID daily
Androstene Cream: Men 2 applications daily / Women 1 application daily
Treatment for Contusion or Hemorrhage
Systemic Enzymes: 5~10 tablets/capsules 3 times daily
Sublingual B12 : One eyedropper-full daily
Iron Tonic: 1 TBS daily
Zinc: 50 ~100 mg daily
Vitamin E: 800 ICU daily
Protein: 1g per kilo of bodyweight daily
Vitamin C : 1,000~2,000 mg daily
Rutin: 1,000 mg daily
Drawing Ointment: Apply 2~3 times daily to inflammation
10 Natural Treatment You Haven't Heard of Until Now
Chapter 11 Osteoporosis
Why doesn't my supplements and medication work? I hear that from osteoporosis patients often. The explanation is simple. You cannot re-mineralize the bone if it doesn't want it. Your body has just spent years demineralizing the skeleton. It's just like preparing a nutritious meal for an infant who doesn't want to eat. All that good chow will go sailing off the hight chair and wind up on the floor. In order to make your body demand the uptake, you must follow physiological law. Mineralization is laid into the bone along lines of axial stress. In other words, bones need to be compressed and pulled in order for the body to see a need to re-mineralize them.
Here is an interesting story. Give a horse a load of vitamins and then train that horse hard. The following day all you see at the bottom of the stall is the usual house poop. Give that same animal a load of vitamins and omit the training, and the nest day you'll find the vitamins mostly undissolved and unabsorbed in the poop. To increase the body's absorption of nutrients, you need to create a demand. The right exercise creates that demand.
As you age, strength exercise is more important than cardiovascular exercise. Statistics now show that after 30 years of the aerobics craze, couch potatoes live just as long as their marathoning cousins. Longer likely, because extreme endurance exercise kills off the immune system. Distance runners and triathletes are dying off due to infection and heart disease. Yes, heart disease.
Nutrition and Dietary Supplements for Dealing with Osteoporosis
For Bones
Calcium
Magnesium
Boron
Vitamin D
For Pain and Inflammation (these nutrients help lower the soft tissue irritation and joint degeneration)
Systemic Enzymes
Glucosamine
MSM
Chapter 12 Longevity And Anti-Aging
The process begins with low enzyme levels in the body, which seriously impede the 6,000+ functions that enzymes perform. Low zinc may lead to swollen prostates, skin troubles, and slow healing. Low calcium and magnesium may produce osteoporosis. Low sulfur may cause connective tissue degeneration with its resultant back and joint pain. In the early days, oxidization was considered to be the cause of aging. We now know that free radical action is only a part of incurring disease. The research on enzymes and hormones makes it very clear that these are the keys to living longer, healthier, and stronger.
Soy Products: Both men and women need to stop eating soy products and their isofalvone derivatives. These soy products are estraces - analogous of estrogen. Although they are natural, they carry with them all of the potential problems of estrogen (brest / cervical cancer, feminization of men / boys, etc.) No one in the world needs any more estrogen when pesticides and environmental pollutants are full of estraces.
Brain Food : Lecithin granules 2~3 TBSP daily
Your brain is 60~70% cholesterol. All of the thinking and transmitting portions of your brain are made up of cholesterol. (Next time someone calls you a fat head, thank them) With lecithin you get the phosphatidyl lipids needed by your brain for normal functioning. The choline and inositol in it will also lower your total cholesterol count and give you a better "good cholesterol" / "bad cholesterol" ratio. Lecithin is the only soy product I recommend. Whole lecithin works better than any of its individual components alone. The health food industry is following the pharmaceutical industry in isolating active chemicals and offering them for sale as the latest and greatest thing. Lecithin is cheap and works as God intended. The isolates are expensive and don't work nearly as well.
For advanced nutritional work, I suggest the teachings of Paul Bragg. Study the farsighted thinkers who recommended that one should eat different diets according to one's blood type.
Nutrition and Dietary Supplements for Longevity / Anti-Aging
Tissue Support
Zinc - for Epithelial (eyes, internal organs, skin)
MSM - for Connective (blood vessels and fascia)
Calcium, Magnesium - for Osseous (bone)
Restoring Enzymes
Systemic Enzymes
Restoring Hormones
For Women - Progesterone Cream
For Men - AndrostenedioneMen or Androstene Cream
Chapter 13 Circulation and Brain
Recipe for Opening Up Arterial Occlusion
Lecithin granules - 3TBS
Systemic Enzymes - 5tablets 4 times or 10tablets 2times
Vitamin E - 800 IU
Cayenne - 200mg capsule 4 times
Garlic - 500mg capsule 2~3 times (if the blood pressure drops down too low, leave out garlic)
Vitamin C - 1,000mg with Bioflavonoid 500mg
How to build strong blood
Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12 is the most needed component of the red blood cell. It gives the oxygen carrying punch to the cell. In order to maintain healthy blood, we need to take 1,000mcg of B12 every day. The best way is via injection. The second best way is through sublingual absorption.
Folic Acid
This essential nutrient is not only needed by pregnant women to insure proper spinal cord formation and protein synthesis in the fetus, it's also needed by all to avoid heart disease. The proper ratio of Folic Acid to B12 is somewhere in the vicinity of 800mcg of Folic Acid to 1,200mcg of B12. Or 1.000mdg to 1,000mcg. Anywhere in that ballpark is a go.
Most people on a blood building program begin to feel better within the first week. Women don't have the energy let down during their cycles, athletes have greater endurance, and work-a-day folks don't feel as generally rundown as they used to.
All the thinking parts of your brain, the neurotransmitters, are made of cholesterol. The body needs a steady stream of good cholesterol. Without fats, you would be dead. Cholesterol is used to make hormones. Hormones, especially the sexual hormones, are the fountains of youth. These can only be made of high quality cholesterol and the vegetable variety just doesn't cut it. We need cholesterol to make internal organ padding. We don't think much about the way our bodies protect the viscera inside of us, but it does so with brown fat. Without these bundles and layers of fat, the internal organs would rub against each other and bruise. We've examples of just such trauma in bodybuilders and endurance athletes. They strive for extremely low body fat levels under 6%, internal injuries are common.
We need skin suppleness. Without the oils, maintaining soft supple skin would be all but impossible. We would feel and move like old dried up cowhide. Most importably, you need cholesterol for brain transmission. It all depends on fat. Look at the MRI pictures of Alzheimer's patients' brains. Their brains look like Jello-O that has been left out on a table for weeks. Shrunken, dried, and cracked. There are no fat people in Alzheimer's wards.
You can protect your heart against bad cholesterol and feed your rain all of the good stuff it needs to keep it functioning at high levels for life. And you can get most of the brain nutrients you need from one inexpensive source - Lecithin!
The most important neurotransmitters are the phosphatidyl lipids choline, inositol, and serene. Today, they are available, separated from their natural environment is many brain-boosting products. We don't know how well they work when separated from all of the things nature wrapped around them to help them work. Finally, everything works better when fish oils are added to the mix of fats provided to the brain. Add vitamin E and coenzyme Q-10 for their antioxidant and neuro-protective effects.
The Brain Recipe
Lecithin granules - Sprinkle it on food, mix it with drinks, or just plain pop a spoonful in your mouth and wash it down with a few swings of water (don't chew before swallowing).
B-Complex
Fish Oils
Vitamine E
CoEnzyme Q-10
Not only will this program improve brain function in the long and short run, it is also dandy for lowering the bad cholesterol in the body. To prove it to yourself, have a blood cholesterol count done, follow the program for a month, and then have an other test done. You will be a believer.
Bonus Chapter - 3 Spider and Varicose Veins
I was working with a fibromyalgia / lower back patient restoring her strength and ability. She had been debilitated by fibromyalgia for 5 years prior and had strained her back while attempting to cope with her life in a weakened state. For the twenty years years prior, this 40's something gal had been an executive for a well-known cosmetics company. Along with the rehab and general strengthening exercises we were doing, I had her start taking Systemic Enzymes as a natural, no side effect way to relieve the inflammation causing her back pain and, to eat away at the fibrosis of her fibromyalgia. (Fibrosis is the actual cause of the ischemic muscle pain of fibromyalgia). Three months went by. One day she bounces into the office and accounts that not only is her back pain and fibromyalgia pain mostly gone but a great many of her spider veins had disappeared and her varicose vein no longer hurt!
Large range of motion resistance exercise pushes the pled blood out of the stretched blood vessels and van temporarily drain them. Yet, in all the decades of exercise research, no one has ever found a way of making spider veins go away or reducing the flaccidity of veins that are already fully stretched out (varicosed) using exercise of any sort.
So what are enzymes?
Enzymes are "bio-catalists" they cause chemical reactions to happen. We have some 3,000 enzymes and over 7,000 enzymatic reactions in our bodies. Without enzymes we would be stone cold dead. Enzymes are essentials for vitamins and minerals to work. Most of us take supplements amdreally can't tell whether they are working or not. Vitamins and minerals are misnamed, they are really co-enzymes and co-factors. In other words they are things that make enzymes work better.
In our youth we made a slew of enzymes, that's what kept us young, strong, without pain, healing quickly. From age 27 to 35 we have steepest drop in our health and ability we'll ever have. Why? Lack of enzymes. Dr. Max Wolf, with 7 Ph.Ds.is the fellow who discovered the enzyme/aging relationship while he was doing research at Columbia University in the 1930's and 1940's. He found that the body makes a finite amount of enzymes in a lifetime. We used up a good many of them in our youth and around age 27 the body slows down the release of its protein cutting enzymes (the most important ones). From then on, every year it produces less and less enzymes in order to stretch life out a little further.
Hydrolytic / Proteolytic Enzymes
The hydrolytic / proteolytic (protein cutting) enzymes are responsible for hundreds of things --- but they are most important actions are:
First line of defense against inflammation - Enzymes are the body's first line of defense against inflammation. When you were a kid, you shrugged off injuries that now would lay you up for a week.
Control the rate and accuracy of healing - Enzymes control the rate and accuracy of healing. They speed healing without allowing the build-up of scar tissue. Think of the wound you healed as a kid. Think of the wounds you healed as a kid, with thin, strong, pliable, almost invisible scar. Now think of your wounds lately, thicker knotty with scar tissue, not as strong. Fibrosis conditions such as Fibrocystic Breast Disease, Uterine Fibroids and Endometriosis (although linked with Estrogen dominance ) are dramatically lessened if there are enough strong protein cutting enzymes present in the body. Enzymes eat away at the fibrosis the body does not need.
Clean the protein coating (connective-tissue buildups = Polymerization). If the connective tissue under the skin develop a coating of protein, it won't hold water anymore and collapse --- you've got a wrinkle. Restore the water holding ability of the connective tissue and the wrinkle is gone.
Regulate immune function - If the system is too run down the enzymes will increase the cleaning / killing action of the white blood cells on bungs and increase the body's production of Natural Killer cells. If the immune system is running too high and creating auto immune conditions such as MS, Lupus, or Rheumatoid Arthritis, then the enzymes will down shift the immune system and eat the antibodies.
Clean the blood of debris - Protein cutting enzymes clean the blood of all the debris the liver can't manage to clear out of the blood on "first pass".
Strengthen blood vessel walls / Open micro circulation passages - The enzymes open micro circulation passages clogged with fibrin. They Systemic Enzymes' effect on spider veins was discovered when patients in Europe, where doctors prescribe systemic enzymes, reported the clearing up of spider veins and easing of varicose vein discomfort. Studies done afterward on the effect of oral enzymes in circulatory diseases confirmed the casual findings.
Q: Enzymes to Fight Inflammation?I’ve recently read about the benefits of taking systemic enzyme supplements. The claims are that they fight inflammation and viruses, prevent blood clots, modulate the immune system, and cleanse the blood. What are your thoughts on these supplements?
– JANUARY 17, 2012
A: Enzymes are specialized protein molecules that catalyze (speed up) biochemical reactions. They are involved in all aspects of metabolism, growth and development, but there is generally no point in taking them as supplements. The reason is simple: enzymes that are ingested are simply broken down in the stomach and small intestine and digested like any other proteins. The only exceptions are the digestive enzymes made by the stomach and pancreas, which work in the gastrointestinal tract, and I occasionally recommend digestive enzyme supplements to patients who have digestive
problems.
However, the pointlessness of taking systemic enzymes orally hasn’t stopped promoters of systemic enzyme therapy from making many claims about the benefits of their products.
Perhaps the best known of these is serratiopeptidase, an enzyme found in silkworm intestines that allows the emerging moth to dissolve its cocoon. Serratiopeptidase does appear to have anti-inflammatory properties, and it is being promoted online and elsewhere as a treatment for pain associated with arthritis, surgery, trauma and fibromyalgia.
It is also advertised as a treatment for atherosclerotic plaque, the buildup of cholesterol, fat, and calcium in arteries. The claim is that serratiopeptidase “digests” the substances that cause plaque without harming underlying tissue.
Most of the published research on serratiopeptidase focuses on its anti-inflammatory properties and, most recently, its potential as a substitute for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and as a topical treatment for inflammation.
However, in February of 2011 a Japanese drug company voluntarily recalled its product generically called serrapeptase because double-blind studies comparing this agent to placebo showed no significant differences between the two. On the market since 1968, the drug was advertised as an effective treatment for conditions ranging from chronic bronchitis to sprained ankles.
Systemic enzyme therapy is also promoted for cancer treatment. Here, proponents claim that certain enzymes remove a protective coating from cancer cells, allowing white blood cells to identify and attack them.
According to the American Cancer Society, no scientific evidence exists to support this claim and no well-designed studies have shown that enzyme supplements are effective in treating cancer.