The Body is a Single Unit
Made up of 70,000,000,000 supercomputers. 

My passion is “health” as you know if you read any of my blog posts. I am a daily learner and suppose I will do this until I pass on and get my upgrade. 

Currently, I am reading Pete Esgoscue. A Vietnam war vet who is a self-described functional anatomy expert who can fix misdiagnosed conditions and rectify them in a short period of time. Sometimes minutes. Sometimes hours. Sometimes over the course of a few weeks. 

 

There are two books for you to be aware of in case you have any postural alignment problems. By the way, I am also sure you do. Why? Because of how we conduct our lives. The machine we have, our human body, was built for another time. In the last ten thousand years we moved from being hunter gatherers to agrarians then to repetitive industrial work and now we have arrived as information movers, clicking and clacking on keyboards. 

 

The first book written in 1992 is timeless. The Esgoscue Method of Health Through Motion.  The training is well worth your time in reading this book. Pete is teaching us to understand our body’s signals, whether it’s pain or numbness and how to interpret it. But the solutions he presents all have to do with understanding and implementing the mechanics of the body and how the musculoskeletal system interacts with the nervous system. 

 

The second book is a current offering from Pete. Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain copyright 2021 with many explanatory visual diagrams. 

Since being seen by an Egoscue Therapist, I can report that my posture is better, I walk five miles most days, I do about 30 minutes of Egoscue e-cises daily. My lower back pain and my posture sitting at the desk is significantly better. I stand up from the desk many times a day and move. Health through motion. 

 

Tennis Professionals, NFL stars and Pro Golfers, regularly consult with Pete to fix issues. Jack Nicklaus the famous golf pro wrote the forward to his first book. Pete saved Jack from surgery and had him swinging a golf club again with a 3 hour session. No surgery needed. 

 

Generally his solutions are to work on an area that we would think is not connected to the issue. If you have tennis elbow, he’ll figure out why and it may have nothing to do with the painful side of the body, but we favor a set of muscles to perform a task which weakens and atrophies another set of muscles elsewhere. If it’s sciatica, Pete says, there may be nothing wrong with the disc or the nerve but it’s a problem with the lower part of the leg. The ankle, knee, hip and back are one unit. Where is the communication going awry? Going directly after the pain by surgery and fusion may only serve to have the problem show up elsewhere. 

 

Now, I’ve got to read the chapter on the shoulders. I am definitely a little stuck on the right side. I’ll report back. 

 

Masking symptoms through the use of NSAIDS or stronger pain killing medicine is like putting a piece of electrical tape over the Check Engine light on your car’s dashboard. A twinge is a friendly message. A tweak or a numbness is a message. One lady came in to see Pete with the diagnosis that she had neuropathy in her leg. After a few minutes of exercise the “neuropathy “ was gone. Feeling had returned. Her feet were warm instead of cold. The poor woman just was sitting too much and her muscles were programmed to limit communication since those muscles were not being used. Energy will not be spent on communication if the body deems it to be unneeded.  We have the ability to change the messaging by adopting better movement and exercise routines and creating new programming. Our bodies will do what we tell them to do. Small baby steps of mobility over a period of time allows humans to go from crawling to walking to running to jumping to trained athletes who perform ballet that sometimes appear to defy gravity or basketball players under six feet who can slam dunk a b-ball. The least in stature who can defy gravity and dunk is Andrew Lloyd at 5’8” who teaches us what he did. 5’8″ Dunker – How I Increased My Max Vert 20″ (Dunk Motivation) 

 

Supplementation for pain relief is another story. The nutrients we consume to support body function is important. In 2022, it’s very difficult to get the nutrition we really need just from the food we eat. An apple looks like it did in 1930 but in 2021, there is a deficit of nutrition in today’s harvest due to a lack of nutrients in the soil, the overuse of pesticides and herbicides. The organic content of the soil has come to light as being the most important ingredient. That is the microbiome of the earth and the topsoil ultimately becomes the microbiome in our own bodies. We need the fungi and bacteria of the soil, we need the mycelium and neural networks of the plant and forest kingdoms to produce healthy food, which in turn promotes human health. If all you eat is packaged food, then you’ll need to wait a few thousand years for the human genome to catch up! We have to change the variable for the equation to work. Eating what’s grown locally in the best manner possible is easier than waiting 10,000 years. 

 

I observed this on my daily walks in the forest. In the early morning, there is a fragrance of humus in the air that is unrivaled. I walk as fast as I can through the roadways with cars and trucks to reach the forest opening. Once inside and surrounded by trees and undergrowth, the mist of the morning air is regenerative. This week in Maryland it happened. I saw the shade of green that I have been waiting for all Winter. I hope these pictures convey what I mean. 

Caption: I have been waiting for this since last Spring. This shade of green is a feast for my eyes. 

 

Caption: These are the exposed roots of a toppled tree. The humic soil brings a fragrance to the air that is invigorating. 

 

Gut Health Tip of the Week:

“The mouth is for eating, the nose is for breathing.”  There are a lot of us out there who are “mouth breathers.” You can live for weeks without food, days without water but only minutes without air. 

 

You’d probably never stick a french fry up your nose. The reverse is also true. You should not breathe through your mouth except in the case of an emergency. 

 

When you breathe through your mouth, you are:

• changing the resting position of your tongue
• not getting nitric oxide 
• getting less oxygen
• chronically stimulating the sympathetic “fight or flight” response
• probably not breathing with your diaphragm
• altering the craniofacial growth of your face and how you look

Mouth breathing is one of the unhealthiest habits that you can be doing.

If you find yourself not breathing through your nose due to narrowed nasal passages or a stuffy nose, I would like to make you aware of how dangerous it can be. Consistent mouth breathing increases blood pressure. Air is not filtered before entering the lungs bringing with it exogenous bacteria, pollen, toxins and trouble. The sinus cavity is about the size of a small fist. There are circuitous passageways that spin the air over thin hairlike protrusions that capture extraneous material not allowing the advance to the lungs. Nitric Oxide is produced through sinus breathing which allows wider passageways for better blood flow. In the book Breath: A new science of a lost art by John Nestor, James describes an experiment he subjected himself to by blocking the nasal passages for about ten days and the calamitous effects it had on his health. Fortunately, he recovered his health by mouth taping and getting back to a new learned habit, nasal breathing. 

 

Watch Peter Diamantis interview James Nestor: Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art + James Nestor

 

Mouth taping is a practice that is gaining in popularity with “biohackers,” those looking to find ways to improve their health rapidly. I have been mouth taping at night for a couple of months now and it has done me a world of good. I use a small piece from a roll of special tape that holds well but is not painful to remove. See Here. I tried several of the mouth taping techniques but good old pain free medical tape works best. 

 

It’s been proven that nasal breathing promotes longevity by reducing a host of chronic illnesses. Because I have narrow passageways, I use a simple product called a nasal dilator to gently open the nasal passages while I sleep. I tell you it may be a little odd but it’s much better than needing a CPAP machine! There are several options you can choose from. Here’s the ones I found to be the most effective for me

If you are improving your lung function, if you are improving cardiovascular function, you are inherently improving your digestive system. Remember, the body is a single unit composed of a biological network of seventy trillion cells that work together in harmony, in unity and in love. 

 

Extra Resources: ZACH BUSH MD | 4 Minute Workout (for increasing nitric oxide in your body.)
Breathe Your Biome with Zach Bush MD

 

In good health, 

Garey Simmons

Next week, I hope to write about the dangers of high uric acid and Quercetin as a remedy and a healer of many issues. 

 

 

Mission: SaveSoil.org

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says there are about 60 to 80 harvests left in our worldwide soil which is about 50 years. Desertification means arable land is turning into desert.  Once food becomes scarce, massive migrations will ensue, followed by civil strife and with hunger leading the way. Very few in the environmental community talked about soil. Yet, by returning organic matter into the soil, using cover crops and the like, would reduce carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil where it is needed to feed, fungi, bacteria, mycelium and even the lowly earthworms. Visit savesoil.org and become an Earth Buddy. It’s a big prize to be able to look at your grandchildren and know that they will have food to eat.

 

 

PS Happy Belated Mother’s Day! The Sale is still working using Mom2022 as the coupon code for 20% off most purchases!