The Three Pillars of Pain-Free Living: Structure, Nutrition, and Nervous System Regulation

Over one billion people worldwide battle chronic pain daily - a silent epidemic robbing them of joy and vitality. But what if this suffering isn't inevitable? What if the pain signals persisting long after tissues have healed are actually trying to teach you something?

Functional medicine practitioner Leigh Brandon transforms our understanding of pain from enemy to messenger. Drawing on 24 years of clinical experience helping patients overcome seemingly hopeless chronic pain conditions, Brandon reveals the three fundamental pillars of pain-free living: structural alignment, nutritional balance, and nervous system regulation.

The human body functions like a bicycle wheel - when properly aligned, tension distributes evenly, but muscle imbalances create excessive stress and accelerate wear. Brandon shares the remarkable story of a professional rugby player who eliminated three years of debilitating pain in just eight weeks through targeted corrective exercises. For those dealing with structural issues, the key lies in proper assessment followed by specific movements to restore balance.

Equally important is nutrition's role in pain perception. Foods grown with pesticides, processed oils, and refined sugars create inflammation that sensitizes your nervous system, lowering your pain threshold. Through the concept of "viscerosomatic reflex," Brandon explains how gut inflammation directly affects muscular stability throughout the body - a fascinating connection demonstrated by a client who recovered from mysterious throat swelling and chest pain after identifying food sensitivities.

Perhaps most surprising is the profound impact of emotional healing on physical pain. Unresolved trauma keeps your nervous system on high alert, amplifying pain signals. Brandon recounts the transformation of a woman who eliminated 25 years of neck and back pain by healing a relationship with her estranged mother - revealing how pain often manifests in locations symbolically connected to emotional wounds.

For those seeking relief, simple daily practices like diaphragmatic breathing, meditation, and mindful movement can dramatically regulate an overactive nervous system. The key isn't finding the perfect technique but committing to consistent practice - even five minutes daily can begin shifting your pain experience.

Ready to decode your body's pain messages? Discover the free Chronic Pain Breakthrough Blueprint a

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Pain as a Signal
• 7:10 The Three Categories of Chronic Pain
• 13:22 Structural Alignment and Posture
• 21:40 Nutrition's Role in Pain Management
• 34:32 Emotional Healing and Trauma Connection
• 42:33 Nervous System Regulation Techniques
• 48:07 Resources and Final Thoughts

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

New normal big life.

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

The people that suffer from chronic pain, it tends to be as you get older, it tends to become more likely. Now, I want to just put a caveat on that. It doesn't mean as you get older, chronic pain is inevitable. It doesn't. Okay. Now, in the UK where I'm from, over 75, 76% of the population suffer with chronic pain. Right? Which is, you know, that's not good. But 24% don't. So it's not inevitable. Now, if you look at a younger population, if you look at the entire adult population above the age of 18, it's around 43% suffer from chronic pain at any particular time. Right? Which is again very high. But it can happen to anybody. So there's no like you can't even say, oh, if people play football or basketball or they do triathlons, they're more likely to feel chronic pain because that just simply isn't the case.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06

Imagine this. Every day, over one billion people worldwide battle chronic pain, a silent epidemic robbing them of joy and vitality. In America alone, more than 50 million adults suffer, including over 8 million veterans. But what if pain isn't inevitable? Welcome to today's episode of New Normal Big Life with guest Lee Brandon, functional medicine practitioner, where we'll uncover the root causes and empower you to heal through biomechanics, nutrition, and nervous system regulation. Get ready for life-changing insights that can set you free from pain. Hi friends, welcome to the New Normal Big Life podcast. We bring you natural news and stories about nature that we hope will inspire you to get outside in adventure, along with a step-by-step plan to help you practice what you've learned and create your own new normal and live the biggest life you can dream. I'm your host, Antoinette Lee, the Wellness Warrior. Today I'm joined by Lee Brandon, a functional medicine practitioner, Czech practitioner, Czech faculty instructor, active release techniques therapist, author, and podcast host. His extensive training and years of clinical experience have given Lee the ability to provide a truly holistic approach to helping his clients overcome pain over the years, which they found very effective. While after other approaches have failed to relieve their pain, Lee's mission is to help as many people as possible to lead a healthy, productive, fulfilling, and happy life. For listeners in the US, a Czech practitioner is a health and fitness professional trained by the Czech Institute to assess and address clients' health and fitness needs using a holistic, individualized approach. They focus on identifying the root cause of issues rather than just treating symptoms and develop personalized programs incorporating corrective exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle coaching. Hi Lee, welcome to New Normal Big Life. Hi, Antoinette. Thanks for having me on your show. Lee, let's get right into it. What is chronic pain? Who gets it? Can you reverse it? And why is so many people experiencing chronic pain these days?

SPEAKER_00: 3:18

Yeah, good question. The first thing I would probably think is important to explain is what is pain, right? Before I even talk about what is chronic pain. So for me, pain is a signal. It's a signal from your subconscious mind to your conscious mind to make you aware of danger. Okay, so as an example, if you just started to tread on something sharp, like a nail or a piece of glass, broken glass, obviously you wouldn't do that consciously. Right? So as soon as the receptors on your base of your foot, what are called gnosyceptors, which gtor just means um danger receptor, will send a signal up through your nervous system to your brain, and your brain will say, Ah, I need to protect my foot. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to contract the muscles that are going to lift my leg off of the foot. Because if I press down on it, then I'm going to cause damage. Okay. So understandably, most people think that pain is something to be suppressed. Take it away from me. I don't want it. But pain is pain is a very important gift that we have as humans. Now, people that suffer with leprosy do not feel pain, which is why they end up losing fingers and toes. Because you know they might be chopping vegetables and not realize they've just chopped the end of their finger off until they see blood everywhere, right? So when you think of it that way, pain is a gift. But obviously, when we have pain for a long period of time, that's what we call chronic pain. So the term chronic comes from chrono, meaning time. So any pain that someone's had for more than three months is considered chronic. Now, there's not one type of chronic pain in terms of the causation. So, for instance, you could injure yourself. Now, what should happen is the body should heal and the pain goes away, right? But what sometimes happens is the pain remains after the tissues have healed. So, what happens there is that you've got you get the pain signals going from the receptor site to the brain. That that that alerts the brain to the damage in the body, and then it can work out how to heal that tissue damage. But sometimes what happens is the pain signal doesn't get switched off. So I liken it to a fire alarm in your house. So if you imagine you're asleep at night and there's a fire in your house, you will want your fire alarm to go off. Right? That is your warning system, just like pain is to our body. The fire service turn up, they get you out of the house, they put the fire out, you rebuild your house, but the fire alarm is still going off. Okay, that's what chronic pain tends to be. Now, there are other there are other potential causes, and I'll probably talk about that a little bit later. So, so that's what pain is. That's what chronic pain is.

SPEAKER_01: 6:41

Why do so many people suffer from chronic pain? And uh is there a way to reverse it or cure it?

SPEAKER_00: 6:48

Yeah, so the people that suffer from chronic pain, it tends to be as you get older, it tends to become more likely. Now, I want to just put a caveat on that. It doesn't mean as you get older, chronic pain is inevitable. It doesn't. Okay. Now, in the UK where I'm from, over 75, 76% of the population suffer with chronic pain, right? Which is, you know, that's not good. But 24% don't. So it's not inevitable. Now, if you look at a younger population, if you look at the the entire adult population above the age of 18, it's around 43% suffer from chronic pain at any particular time, right? Which is again it's very high. But it can happen to anybody. So there's no uh like you can't even say, oh, if people play football or basketball or they do triathlons, they're more likely to feel chronic pain because that just simply isn't the case. It can happen to anybody, it's just as likely to happen to someone that works at a desk than it is to someone that maybe does martial arts. I mean, that might not be a good example. Martial arts people probably do suffer from from pain, but it's probably not chronic pain. Okay, so then people think, oh, you know, particularly as people get older, they think, oh, this is inevitable, or they might have been told, oh, you've had pain for five years, there's nothing we can do. But I'm going to say that for most people, I'm not going to say for everybody, most people can overcome their chronic pain. Now, the reason why I can say that quite confidently is because I've been helping people for the last 24 years overcome chronic pain um conditions. And I put the causes of chronic pain into three different categories: structural, nutritional, and neurological. So neurological means you know of the nervous system. And when I work with people, what I tend to do is I look at all three areas because for some people it might be one of those issues, for some it might they might have two of those issues that's caused the pain, and some of them might have all three. So, you know, someone might have been to see someone that looks at the structural system and that hasn't got the job done, and it might have been they might have helped, but not got the pain completely eliminated. You know, someone might have an autoimmune condition, and they might have been to see someone look at it from more of a nutritional aspect, and it might have helped, but it might not have got a the complete job done. And then the neurological, which is the biggest aspect in my view, all pain is neurological, but there are there are a number of subsets of neurological that that we can potentially talk about. But just to summarize, people can can eliminate pain, or most people, I'm not gonna say absolutely everybody, most people can eradicate chronic pain, but they need to look at all of those three areas potentially.

SPEAKER_01: 10:10

So you talked about structural, nutritional, and neurological reasons for chronic pain. Could you break down each of those so that we can understand how they relate to you developing pain initially and why it might become chronic?

SPEAKER_00: 10:27

Yeah, so if we look at it from a structural, so I'm talking about the structure of the body, or so we're talking about you know your skeleton, your posture, the way you carry yourself. And I compare the human body to a bicycle wheel. Okay, two amazing inventions. To a degree simple as well. Now, if you look at a bicycle wheel, when it's completely round and straight, all of the spokes on the wheel have the same length tension. Now, if you had a crooked wheel or a buckled wheel, what you would find is some of the spokes would be too tight, other spokes would be too loose. If you took that wheel to a bicycle engineer, they would loosen the tight spokes and they would tighten the loose spokes, and that would straighten the wheel. Now, in our bodies, our bodies are similar, but instead of looking at spokes, I'm looking at the muscles of the body. So you can have muscles on one side of a joint that are too tight, muscles on the opposite side that have got too much length tension in them. Okay, now what that will do is that will alter the positioning of the joint, and it will alter what is known as the optimal instantaneous axis of rotation. So every joint has an optimal axis of rotation, but when you've got that muscle imbalance throughout a joint, what it will do is it will create excessive stress through the joint in all three dimensions. And that can lead to wear and tear, which can lead to injury. Now, in some instances, I'm not saying all, in some instances, if the structure isn't realigned, that will continue the pain condition.

SPEAKER_01: 12:18

Before we cover the next topic in this episode, I want to introduce you to the adventure sports lifestyle with what I call a micro story about an adventure that I've had. The adventure sports lifestyle and my deep connection to nature is essential to my good health. So here's the story. The second biggest post-retirement concern after asking yourself, can I afford to retire? is what will I do with my free time. As many as 300,000 retirees have chosen RV life. They've sold their homes for a life on wheels, choosing to spend their retirement going from one adventure to another. I can tell you that a Winnebago RV is definitely on my adventure sports witch list, and I'm not alone. 76% of RV owners are younger than age 50. I hope this inspires you to get outside an adventure in an RV alone with friends or the people you love most. Now back to the show where we're talking with Lee Brandon. So if you have a if you are outside of your optimal access of rotation, does that mean you've hyperextended uh that joint, or how can that happen? How can you prevent it?

SPEAKER_00: 13:31

Well, that's a really good question because in modern society, because most of the time we're spent seated, we we never we were never designed to sit in a chair, we were designed to squat on the ground, right? So when we're in abnormal positions for long periods of time, muscles will I don't want to get too technical, but they will drop sarcomeres. So within a muscle, the tiniest unit of a muscle is called a sarcomere. Well, if a muscle shortens for a long enough period of time, the body likes to save energy, it would say, Well, I don't need that many sarcomeres. So now it's going to shorten and it's going to be stuck in that shortened position. So any unnatural movement for long periods of time, like sitting, and that's a big one. I mean, I guess today using mobile devices is another one. You know, you see people looking down at their phone for hours and hours of a day, that that will create muscle imbalances in the body. So the way the way to prevent it is to try and just, you know, just simple things. If you if you're standing up straight, you know, shoulders back, shoulder blades squeezed together, chin in a little bit, just being more aware of your posture. Now, the way that I tend to work with people is I I analyze them, I analyze their entire body, and I establish which tissues are tight, which tissues are loose, and I teach people how to you know mobilize joints, how to stretch tight muscles, how to reactivate inhibitive muscles, how to strengthen weak muscles. And there's actually um a great story of a guy, he came to me a few years ago now. He was a rugby player. So, you know, in the UK we we say rugby players is is like American football, but for real men because they don't wear padding, right? I was just seeing that in my head, mind you. Um, so anyway, so this guy came to me, he wasn't actually one of the bigger guys, he was one of the small because there's big and small guys in rugby. I mean, not that he's small, but anyway, he he came to me and for the last three seasons he'd had well he'd missed three, sorry, he'd missed 50% of the matches over the last three seasons, and it was due to pain in his groin and um pain in his uh thigh. So he was he was one of the guys that kicks the ball, okay. So a bit like a goal kicker in in football, and of course, that was a major problem for him for kicking and for running and tackling. And he said to me, Look, I've got eight weeks until I start pre-season. Is there anything you can do to help me with with this injury that he'd have for three years? So it's definitely a chronic condition. So my first thought was, Wow, you're not giving me a lot of time because there's you know there's potentially a lot of work to do. So anyway, I said, look, let's see what we can do. So I did my analysis and I designed a program to realign his structure, posture, and he did that program for four weeks. He came back, I reassessed him, and then I had to give him a different program to build upon the foundations that we'd created in order for him to not become re-injured when he when he started his training. So, to cut a long story short, I worked with him for these eight weeks. He had the two programs that I'd given him. He then had the best season of his career. And he played, he probably played for another five years or so before he retired. And after he retired, he said to me, he said, I never ever got injured again. And he said, All I did in the gym, I would switch between your first program and your second program every four weeks. He said, That's all I ever did. And he said, I never got injured again.

SPEAKER_01: 17:33

So just to get this straight, you you first gave him a restorative program, the first program, and then you gave him sort of a maintenance program, the second program, and he switched between the two and never had another injury.

SPEAKER_00: 17:48

Yeah, it was more, I would say it was more than maintenance. So in rugby, there's a lot of you need a lot of strength and a lot of power. Okay. So it was actually a program of strength and power and agility so that he could survive. Because, you know, when you go through any kind of rehabilitation, it's important that your structure can handle the stresses it's just about to go through, otherwise, it's just going to become re-injured. Because what I didn't tell you is that this rugby player Billy, he he obviously went to see his physiotherapist and he received massage and acupuncture, and he was given stretches to do, but sadly for Billy, he was given the wrong stretches, and he'd been doing he'd been working with his physiotherapist for three years who couldn't help him, right? But when he worked with someone who was able to fully analyze his structure and to realign it and to strengthen him in the right places, then you know it's it's it's amazing when you give the body what it needs, what it can actually do.

SPEAKER_01: 19:01

So, Lee, to bring this back around to the ordinary person. Well, I I don't consider myself the ordinary person because I'm not a sedentary person. I do all the adventure sports. And so I really am of, although I am a former competitive bodybuilder and power lifter, today I really am more of a um my workout is really more of a functional workout because I live on a very rural property. I do lots of manual things, even though we have a lot of mechanized equipment. You still have to do a lot of lifting. I routinely lift over a hundred pounds by myself. And then I have the adventure sports with lots of bending and stretching and climbing and turning and flipping my kayak upside down and falling off my paddleboard, all the things, right? Yeah, it's a lot of fun. So to bring the story of this professional athlete back home to an ordinary person like me who does extraordinary things sometimes, um, how can I put uh functional rehabilitation into practice in my own life?

SPEAKER_00: 20:13

Yeah, I think the the uh the crucial thing is assessing. You know, that there's a saying without assessing you're guessing. And that comes from the guy who taught me most of the things that I know. It's a guy called Paul Czech. I don't know if you've ever come across him. And he is what the founder of the Czech Institute? That's right. Okay. So he's he's written a book uh called How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy. There's another one called the Golf Biomechanics Manual, and I wrote a sister book to that one called the Tennis Biomechanics Manual. Now, within each of those books, there are chapters where people can assess their own body to find out where their tightness is, where their weakness is, and then it takes you on a journey on how you actually correct those imbalances. So that that would be the easiest way for most people. That's an incredible takeaway there. Yeah, so that that would that would be you know where I suggest most people um could start to you know really investigate where their body is out of balance and and how to put it back into balance.

SPEAKER_01: 21:25

So movement, nutrition, emotional healing, and nervous system regulation are at the heart of your practice. What movement techniques should chronic pain sufferers and those wanting to prevent chronic pain be doing? And how often?

SPEAKER_00: 21:38

Yeah, so with movement, obviously the thing we've been talking about so far is called corrective exercise. So that would be one good thing for people to do to optimize their posture, their structure. But I would say for most people, movement, if you're in pain, movement is really important. If you're not in pain, movement is really important for many reasons, right? But one of them is that you know, a lot of people with that are in pain, the issue they have is in their joints. Now, most of our joints are what are called synovial joints, and in synovial joints, you have synovial fluid that lubricate the joint itself. Now, the only way to get the the fluid into the joint is with movement. Now, I completely appreciate when someone's in pain, quite often movement creates pain. So, what I invite people to do it is to investigate or to trial different types of movement that they can do without pain. Or at the very least, what movements can they do without increasing their level of pain? Like if they're already in pain, as long as they're not increasing the pain, then that that's a good thing. One of the ways in which a lot of people can move without pain is in water. You know, if you go to a swimming pool, you know, swimming, you might be okay swimming, you might not be okay swimming. If you're not okay swimming, maybe try walking or jogging in the pool. Because once you're in the water, it's taking all the stress off your joints because it's almost you know, it's like it's no gravity in the water. So they're they're good thing, things, you know. So I would say whatever movement you can do that's pain-free, and it might be you need to try different things, and also, if possible, do a type of movement that you enjoy doing. Now I'll tell you a quick story. So at my dad's um 80th birthday party a few years ago, leading up to it, one of my sisters broke her ankle. And my sister loves UK garage music, and I I was I was doing the music, and she kept saying to me, I hope you're gonna play UK garage, and then she kept badgering me. And it's not my thing, you know, I I don't have any. So I said to her, look, if you send me some tunes, I'll put it on the list. And for weeks and weeks she kept saying to me, Are you gonna play some UK Garage? And I was like, Well, I don't have any. So, anyway, right up until the day she kept asking me, and I said, Well, you haven't sent me any. So, the party's going, everyone's dancing. Next thing I know, I see these um crutches going up in the air like this when the UK garage music came on. So, this is another thing when when you're in a state of joy, your pain levels reduce, and the other thing as well, music is vibration. Now, I've got a story myself that relates to this as well. So I I was actually um in San Diego, this was a few years ago, 12 years ago actually, I'd ruptured two discs in my lumbar spine, but I was at a meeting uh amongst the the Czech faculty, and we were doing Native American drumming in a circle. There was about I think there was about 13 of us, and the whole time I was drumming, I had no pain in my back whatsoever, and for several hours afterwards. Again, it shows you when you're in a state of joy and also when you when you're in a particular vibration, what an effect that can have on pain.

SPEAKER_01: 25:36

I wholeheartedly agree with that. I broke my back and I am a chronic pain sufferer. And um what I noticed is there are some days when I start my yoga routine and it feels like I can barely move. Just I'm almost moving in slow motion. But then I get into the rhythmic music and the poses, and not only do I loosen up, but my brain stops registering the message of stop moving because this hurts. I want you to stop right now. And then my brain just feels happy and lighter, and it lasts for hours, if not the rest of the day. Yeah, absolutely. So when you were talking about walking in water, swimming in water, one of the things that I like to encourage people to do is to do their aqua exercises in natural bodies of water, like rivers and lakes, because it has the uh magnesium that can take away some of the pain and soreness. So I live on the river and I routinely get in the river with incredible amounts of pains. I don't take medications and I'll get in the water and the pain is gone, and it sometimes lasts for days.

SPEAKER_00: 26:56

Yeah, I mean the the ocean can be good as well. Yes. Um, because obviously you you you can get rid of a lot of free radicals as well, which can which can uh increase your pain signals.

unknown: 27:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 27:08

So Lee, what nutritional changes should chronic pain sufferers make um and those who want to prevent chronic pain?

SPEAKER_00: 27:17

Again, this is a really important question. And it does it does overlap with the neurological aspects, but I've kind of put nutrition on its own one because it's a big enough subject. But what we know with pain is that there's a a concept called central sensitization, and what that means is so again, remember I said right at the beginning, what is pain? It's a message from the pain receptors to the brain via the nervous system. Well, our nervous system is constantly surveying our environment for danger, constantly. Any input into the nervous system, what we call afferent drives, can increase the sensitization of the nervous system, hence the term central sensitization. So, what are some of these things that can increase the sensitization of the nervous system? Well, from a nutritional point of view, foods that are grown in non-organic environments because you know they're often grown with pesticides, herbicides, MPK fertilizers, sometimes you know, glyphosate is quite a big one, and these create quite a lot of damage to the gut and the gut microbiome. Anything that can cause inflammation in the body can be an issue because, again, that's stimulating the nervous system as well as the immune system, which obviously creates inflammation. Now, some of the key foods that are problematic for a lot of people are things like processed vegetable and seed oils. Um, gluten-containing foods can be an issue. Again, it might be because often they're sprayed with glyphosate, particularly in the drying process. Um, processed sugar, like white table sugar, can be an issue. Um, pasteurized dairy can be an issue for some people. But the other aspect to be aware of as well is what we call um food sensitivities, and this can be any food, and we're all different, and we change from time to time. It's not like if you're sensitive to one food now, you're going to be sensitive to it in four months' time. So, any of these foods can stimulate the nervous system and increase your likelihood of pain because part of what it does it reduces your threshold to feeling pain. So, anything that's putting you know a drive into the nervous system can increase pain, and there is another aspect as well if a food It causes inflammation in your gut. There's also um a concept called viscerosomatic reflex. Now it sounds like a very long term, but it's very simple. And everyone knows of a type of viscerosomatic reflex. For instance, when you have a heart attack, people tend to feel it on the left side of their neck, their jaw, shoulder, and possibly arm. And they might not even feel it in the chest. I mean, a lot of people do. But why are you feeling the pain in your arm if it's a heart attack? Right? That is what we call viscerosomatic. So viscero means organ, somatic means musculoskeletal system in this case. So when you have inflammation in your gut, what it actually does is it sends a signal to the brain to say, look, there's an issue here. So the brain sends a signal back to say, Well, I need to relax the muscles around the gut so it doesn't press on it. So what happens is there are particular muscle fibers in the abdomen that become inhibited. Now, when they're inhibited, the joints in the body become more unstable. When they become more unstable, they move more, there's more wear and tear. Okay, so it's a bit of a double whammy with nutrition. Now there's an interesting story of a guy I worked with again, it was a few years ago now. His name was Trail, and he was uh chief executive of a company. When he came to see me, he had pain in his chest, and whenever he ate, his throat would swell up and he would choke, and he found it difficult to breathe. And by the time he came to see me, he'd been to see many experts, many doctors, spent thousands of pounds on doctors' fees. No one really knew what was wrong. He'd been given a diagnosis of costochondritis, which is inflammation of the cartilage of the ribcage. And he said to me, I it doesn't feel right to me, it doesn't feel like it's that. And by the time he came to see me, he he was frightened to eat because every time he ate, his throat would swell up. And he'd lost about 35-40 pounds of muscle because he wasn't eating. And he said to me, Do you think you can help? And I said, Well, if every time you eat your throat, throat is swelling up, it sounds to me like you're having some kind of anaphylactic phylactic reaction. And he said, So what would we what would you do? And I said, Well, let's run a blood test and see if anything comes up. And he said, Well, that sounds a lot better than what one of the specialists has suggested, which was to cut through his uh sternum, open up his ribcage, and have a look inside to see if they could find something, right? That's shocking, yeah. So he was horrified by that idea. Okay. So started working with him, he he did a blood test, the results came back. There were several foods that he was sensitive to. We did an elimination diet, so we completely changed his diet, and within a few weeks he started to feel better. Within a few months, he was eating full you know full amounts of food again. And the next time I saw him was about six months later, and he came to where I was working. He actually didn't he actually travelled quite a long way to come and see me initially, but he came back to see me and he didn't tell me he was coming. So he turned up at my facility in in London, and I opened the door and I said, Oh, can I can I help you? And he said, Lee, it's me. Like, and then when he spoke, I realized who it was. I didn't recognize him because he'd put on so much muscle mass from when I first saw him. I literally didn't recognize him. I was in I was in absolute shock. But obviously, for him, he went from fearing for his life because he wasn't eating, okay, he was literally wasting away, to being this beacon of health and vitality again. You know, so food is is very, very powerful.

SPEAKER_01: 34:10

If you've not caught our episode on gut microbiome and the importance of what you eat, make sure you catch that on New Normal Big Life. And we'll be right back to talk more with Lee about the emotional healing process and it how it relates to chronic pain. World events are constantly teaching everyone some very painful lessons. Without warning, everything we take for granted can suddenly fail. And if you're not prepared in advance, you really don't have a chance. The fact is, the modern world runs on a just-in-time supply schedule. Even the biggest grocery stores can carry only enough food for a few days' worth of normal shopping. So when disaster strikes and chaos ensues at your local stores, the odds are simply against you. If you don't have emergency food and gear stockpiled in advance, you will probably suffer. My partner Ready Hour is here to help you ahead of time. Ready Hour has a long history of providing calorie-rich, reliable, and delicious nourishment for life's unexpected situations. And critical emergency gear, too. They're part of a family of companies that have served millions of people like you for decades. My family and I use Ready Hour products for camping, mountaineering, and disaster preparedness for five years now. They're not just reliable, they're also your affordable option too. Long-term survival food shouldn't break the bank. That's why they have great sales and payment options for you. It's your bridge to safety and survival when things just aren't normal anymore. So make your next decision your smartest decision. Be ready for tomorrow, today. Trust Ready Hour. Ready to shop? Use my affiliate link in the show description. Lee, what are the steps that listeners can take to begin the hard work of emotional healing? And how does trauma impact chronic pain?

SPEAKER_00: 36:06

Yeah, again, this is a big one, and this is the one I feel most people are unaware of. So, you know, as I said earlier, pain is like an alarm system. And as I've also mentioned, the concepts of central sensitization. So when we've got all these inputs coming into the nervous system, it ramps up those pain signals. So anything like stress, emotional stress, financial stress, relationship stress, unresolved childhood trauma keeps your nervous system on high alert. So again, what that will do is it will lower someone's threshold before they feel pain. Okay. Now, one lady that I worked with some years ago, she's actually from Hawaii, and I worked with her whilst I was in San Diego. She was 50 years old when she came to see me. So this isn't her real name, but I don't have her permission to tell the story, so I'm gonna call her Karen. It's not a very Hawaiian name, but we'll go with Karen. And she had had pain for 25 years, and it was on the left side of her neck, left shoulder going down into her left arm, and also her left lower back. Now she had um fallen and hit her lower back, and she'd also fallen off a mountain bike and landed on her left hand. Okay, but they were both 25 years ago, right? Now, when you think every cell in your body turns over at least every two years, she'd had a new body 23 years ago from the time she had those accidents, but she was still in pain. So I I literally had four days working with her before she was flying back to Hawaii, I was flying back to the UK, and you know, I did my assessment on her structure, I designed a corrective exercise program, we went through all the nutritional aspects, but what what I found quite interesting reading her paperwork, her questionnaires before we started working was where her pain was. Now, in in a lot of situations, but not all, in a lot of situations, where the pain is can tell you a lot about what's going on with that person. And I'm really referring to more eastern philosophies, so things like Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, etc. And what I was hypothesizing, or at least considering, was the fact that first of all, all her pain was on the left side of the body, not on the right. Now, in those eastern philosophies, they suggest that the left side of the body refers to female energy, and the right side refers to male energy. So I thought, okay, I'm just gonna park that for now. But then also from the Ayurvedic system, and you can see actually over my shoulder here, there's the the seven chakras of the body. Okay, now each chakra refers to specific emotions, specific events, specific functions, etc. And you know, the neck, the shoulder, and the arm relate to the fifth chakra. The fifth chakra is all about communication. So I was wondering: is there something that she's not been communicating with a female in her life? Now, quite often for most people it relates to their parents. And if you've got a neck issue, that can cause a lower back issue and vice versa. But what was kind of plugging away at my um intuition, if you like, was is there an issue with her and her mother? It was just a question, I didn't know I didn't know if this was gonna be anything. But in our first day, you know, we were we were consulting, and I just said, I'm just curious, like this might be nothing, but what's your relationship like with your mother? Oh boy. I opened up a big can of worms, right? And and to cut a long story short, as a child she felt very unloved by her mother, and she felt like her sister was the favourite, and when they when she got but when she became a young adult, her and her mother had a big falling out, and they hadn't spoken for decades when she came to see me. So there was obviously this big outcry when I asked that question. You know, she was almost annoyed that I even asked her the question, but I thought, ah, okay, we could be on to something. So I kind of explained to her what I was thinking, and she was quite open to what I was suggesting. And so, what I did in the time that we had, as well as showing her some exercises, and you know, I'd we'd go out for lunch each day, and I would show her, you know, how to eat correctly. We worked on a technique called nonviolent communication. And what I was suggesting to her to do when she went back home to Hawaii was to reach out to her mother and use the techniques I was teaching her of non-violent communication to let her mother know how she feels and how she felt as a child, and to let her mother know what she would have liked then as a child and what she would like now, and also to listen carefully to the mother as well, right? So time the time you know, our time went, she flew off to Hawaii, I flew back to the UK, and about six months later, I get a letter from Hawaii, so I thought I know who that's from. And I open up the letter and to paraphrase, she said, I can't thank you enough. Not only is my neck, shoulder, arm and back pain gone, but my relationship with my mother is amazing. Not only have we made up, we see each other every day, and we're enjoying every minute of it.

SPEAKER_01: 42:26

That's incredible. And how did it impact your pain?

SPEAKER_00: 42:29

Her pain was gone. Amazing, yeah. So, you know, one of the things that we try and get across is that we call it the pain teacher. When you're in pain, what is the body trying to make you aware of? And it might be it might be your posture, it might be you're eating some bad stuff, it might be that there's something emotional going on, it might be that there's just too much stress in your life, it might be that there's toxins in your environment that you need to deal with, you know, and you need to you need to be able to decode what your body's trying to tell you. Now, sometimes, of course, you might need to reach out to someone and ask for someone to help decode that for you. But what I what I would say is don't expect someone else to take the pain away for you. What someone might be able to do for you is to teach you how to do it for yourself. So with Karen in Hawaii, I didn't I didn't do the work for her, she still had to do it. I just gave her the steps to take, but she still had to take those steps.

SPEAKER_01: 43:41

That makes sense. So, what nervous system regulation techniques should chronic pain sufferers and those who want to prevent chronic pain be doing, and how often?

SPEAKER_00: 43:52

Yeah, really good question. And and I'll say there's not one answer. Um, and the reason I say it because there's so many, there's so many techniques. And what I what I tend to do is I tend to when I'm working with someone, I ask them a lot of questions and try to give them the ones that I feel they're most likely to do. So, you know, there can be some really simple breathing techniques, for instance, just to help calm the nervous system down. And it might be as simple as you know, breathing in through the nose for five seconds. And the other thing I would just be really clear about as well, as you inhale, make sure that your tummy is moving outwards. Unfortunately, a lot of people in the Western world have developed what's called an inverted breathing pattern, which creates more stress. So, if when you breathe in, if you feel your tummy's coming in, that's actually creating more of a problem. So you need to let the belly relax and come out as you breathe in because that means the diaphragm's dropping down. And then as you breathe out, I don't mind whether you breathe out through the nose or through the mouth. To me, it doesn't matter, but there are techniques that specifically suggest through the nose, and there are some techniques that's uh that suggest particularly um out through the mouth. People can try different forms of meditation. I know some people really struggle with meditation. Um I I've been using uh a form of meditation called the Pashna for a long time now, about 13-14 years. But there's there's so many different types, and I would say, you know, I tried probably seven or eight different types of meditation for many years before I come across one that really worked for me. If people find meditation very difficult because they've got a very active mind, then I would suggest a form of movement meditation. So, what does that mean? You've mentioned one already, yoga. Okay, so it might be something like you know, kundalini yoga as an example, or it might be tai chi, qi gong, or in in the in the Czech system we teach what are called zone exercises. Now, zone exercises are forms of moving meditation, but they they specifically focus on one of the chakras in the body. So, again, we mentioned the chakras earlier. So, if I remember right, I probably gave Karen some movements that stimulated a fifth chakra, first and second, because of her lower back. Um, so that there are there are many. I mean, even just going for a walk in the forest, going for a walk on the beach, going for a walk in the park. Um, there are things now. We've got there are so many techniques. So, I mean, for one is a walking meditation, and so what you do for walking meditation, go somewhere that's in nature, and then with each breath, or sorry, with each step, you might breathe in for four steps. The fifth step, you hold your breath, and the next four steps you breathe out, and then you just repeat and repeat and repeat. This is actually one that I practice. Yeah, it's amazing. You know, there's there's slow walking where you walk as slow as you can possibly walk, but you know, as long as you're still moving, that's okay. Um, there's one called the stalk walk. There's just so there's so many techniques, but the best one is the one that you'll do every day. So, to answer your question, um, how frequently I would suggest every day. And you know, if you feel like your schedule is very full, start with five minutes. If you can get to five minutes, try and find another five minutes in your schedule and try and build up. I mean, 30 minutes, even 20 minutes is is a good uh time to aim for. If you could do 20 minutes twice a day, that would be even better.

SPEAKER_01: 48:01

Lee, this has been so insightful. Thank you so much. What else do you want listeners to know?

SPEAKER_00: 48:07

Well, you know, if people are stuck in pain and you know they they they feel lost, they might have been told they can't get rid of pain. I do offer a free guide to people, and it's called the Chronic Pain Breakthrough Blueprint. And they can find that at my website, which is www.bodycheck. Now that's spelled b-odych.co.uk forward slash free pain guide.

SPEAKER_01: 48:36

Well, thank you so much. I'll make sure that the links are in the show description, and I'd love to have you back soon. Uh, thanks for having me, Antoinette. It's it's uh been real fun. Magnesium, an unsung hero, fuels over 300 bodily reactions from heart health to stress relief. Magnesium expert Natalie Girato, founder of Rooted In, found freedom from anxiety, insomnia, and pain through topical magnesium. It transformed my life, she says, inspiring her mission to share this mineral's power. Cardiologist Dr. Jack Wolfson calls magnesium essential for heart health, helping regulate rhythms, blood sugar, and reduce inflammation. Up to 80% of people may be deficient facing issues like depression, migraines, insomnia, or muscle cramps. For women over 40, magnesium eases menopause symptoms, boosts energy, and supports bones. Choosing the correct type of magnesium matters. Real stories, Natalie's and mine, highlight its impact. After interviewing magnesium expert Natalie Girauddo, I became a customer. I was already a magnesium fan, having been told by two cardiologists to take magnesium for a minor heart arrhythmia. Natalie explains it best in the Magnesium the Mineral Transforming Lives episode of New Normal Big Life, number four in Alternative Health on Apple Podcasts. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Fast forward after the interview, I bought the Rooted Inn bundle for sleep, tranquility, and pain relief. As a spine injury survivor with several other health challenges, I'm in constant pain. However, I don't take any pain medication. Rooted in is now one more source that nature provided to give our bodies what it needs when it needs it. You can find magnesium in natural bodies of water like lakes and rivers and in soil. But modern farming practices have stripped magnesium out of the soil and our food. That's why today, Rooted Inn's rest, relief, and tranquility are part of our afternoon and nightly sleep routine. My guy who did two tours kicking indoors in a rock with the Marines now has no trouble falling asleep. I no longer have to take melatonin before bedtime to fall asleep. So after I became a customer and saw how well these products work, I applied to become an affiliate.