Oh my aching back!!!, Part 2

We are back again with Ann, but today we will look at what might be happening if Ann did not listen to the signs her body is giving her.  Ann may be so busy that she doesn’t even stop to realize that her body is giving her early warning signs and that a course correction at this point would be easy compared to what may happen if she ignores her body.

So what may be happening in the really big picture?  This will depend on the individual's history and, I believe, attitude; and the timing could be months or years or never.  But a high possibility is that since Ann was not eating properly and was under stress, her body had a hard time maintaining balance.  Unfortunately, this is not just a structural (muscle and bone) issue.  The core issue may be keeping her major hormones balanced.

How did we get from stress and back pain to an imbalance in hormones?  Although I place no claims to being an expert in hormones, I am certified in First Line Therapy which is designed to help people take measures to reduce the risk of disease.  The very basics are to maintain a healthy body composition.  When Ann began to eat bagels and coffee for breakfast, skip meals and eat higher carbohydrate meals, together with her additional work stress and lack of exercise she put her body into a downward spiral.

Keeping it really simple here, when too much high carbohydrate foods are eaten for too long (this includes simple sugars and white flours, white potatoes, just to name a few), the body may become increasingly insulin resistant.  Insulin resistance is when the body produces insulin but does not use it properly.  Insulin resistance increases your chance of developing Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. 

So what is insulin.  Insulin, is a hormone and is made by your pancreas to help your body to use glucose for energy. Glucose is a form of sugar that is the body’s main source of energy.  When Ann began to eat too many simple sugars, it stressed her pancreas, and eventually her insulin became unable to process all the sugar.  This caused less sugar to get into her cells, thereby causing her cells to produce less energy.  Not only did she get tired, but also her body could not process all of the sugar into the cells and therefore stored it in a safer place – her fat cells.  To make matters worse, the fat cells then signal the body to make more inflammation and the cycle is started.

Now we understand why Ann began to gain weight, but why did it affect her sleep.  Your major hormones are insulin, cortisol and adrenalin and in order for your body to function properly, they must all be in balance.  This means your pancreas and adrenals must be functioning well. 

When under the kind of stress Ann was experiencing:  long hours, not eating properly and no time for meditation or relaxation, Ann's body was often in a "fight or flight" mode, a genetically hard-wired response of the body to protect her from bodily harm. Adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol was often released into her bloodstream and her body directed her energy toward survival:

•    increased heartbeats and blood pressure,
•    release of stored sugar from the liver,
•    muscles (esp. thighs, hips, back, shoulders, arm, jaw and facial muscles) would tense for movement,
•    blood flow is directed away from digestion,
•    and more, just in order to be ready to fight or run! 

This response would have been appropriate if she was running from the enemy and the response was to be short-lived, but if these hormones stay high for prolonged periods, Ann will experience a multitude of negative effects.  Cortisol, instead of sharpening her cognitive function would reduce cognition and impair memory. You know this if you have ever drawn a blank when you’ve been under stress and then put on the spot.  And rather than regulating healthy blood sugar levels, too much cortisol leads to elevated blood sugar, or hyperglycemia, and increases your appetite for refined carbohydrates.   You can see where this would add to Ann’s weight problems.

Too much cortisol also eats into bone density, breaks down tissue in your muscles and joints, disturbs thyroid function, and hampers immunity.   Long-term, Ann will have a heightened risk of anxiety disorders and depression. So you can see how extended high cortisol levels added to Ann’s overall hormonal balance (and this would have included her sex hormones, blunting libido and increasing symptoms of both PMS and eventually perimenopause.)

As Ann continues to ignore her stress-related symptoms, her adrenal imbalance eventually became “cortisol dominant.”   She begins to worry whether she will sleep even before she gets to bed!  She has difficulty calming down enough to fall asleep and her sleep is fractured from awakening during the night because high cortisol  levels.  High cortisol levels in the evening alter normal sleep cycling, reducing the amount of restorative REM (dream-state) sleep she experienced.   Because of this Ann awakens in the morning still feeling as if she needs a night sleep.  As Ann continues to push, she will suffer from  adrenal fatigue and chronic insomnia.

And on and on.  Lesson:  Listen to your body and seek to understand what it is asking for.  Then be good to yourself and fill your needs first!  This honoring of Self will go a long way to bringing ease into your life.

"Oh, my aching back!!!"

 Have you said that before - maybe at the end of your work day or just wandering about shopping or doing housework or worse yet, not doing much at all?  Here's where you start dreaming for a massage or maybe a magic wand!

There are many reasons why your neck, back or other body part may ache.  In my work I have found that muscular imbalances cause some muscles to be tight and some to be weak and the resulting compensation patterns take the brunt of responsibility for pain.  Here's a the story of Ann (fictitious name and situation).

Ann felt great.  She loved to exercise and was in great physical shape when she took on a different job that was not only very challenging, but occupied most of her previously free time and she and no longer had time to exercise as much.  She became a weekend athlete when she wasn't recuperating from her work week.  She found herself at a desk much more than before and the stresses of the job mounted slowly.  With less time in the morning, her breakfast became more like coffee and a bagel, if she had time to eat at all, and lunch was fast food, high in carbohydrates and sugar.  Dinner happened later in the evening because she had a longer commute home.  Because dinner was late, bedtime became later and over time it became harder to either fall asleep or stay asleep.  She began to gain weight around the waistline.  One day she bent down to pick up a small box of files and "OUCH!"  Now it felt like her back was locked and any movement was difficult.  Not only that, she didn't feel she did anything to cause her back going out.

So what happened?  There are a lot of possibilities here and they depend on the general physical and emotional health and attitude of the person as well as the duration of this type of stress.  So here is one possibility.  Ann was in great shape when the new job came along.  Besides her fast food meals and no time for relaxation, sitting at a desk for long periods began to impact her hip flexors, (the muscles enabling her to bring her trunk forward when standing, causing those muscles to shorten.

And here is where it gets interesting.  If Ann is being pulled forward by her hip flexors, two things happen.  Her hip extensors (the muscles that hold her hips back to oppose the flexors' forward pull) must weaken as in this instance the flexors are overpowering the extensors.  Also when your trunk leans forward a little, your eyes are then looking slightly downward and since the body wants you to be able to see and keep your balance, the eyes gave direction to the Ann's brain to tighten the back of her neck in order to keep her head upright to see.  (Stand up and try it, bending forward at the waist only an inch, stop and feel, then lift your head up an inch by slightly tightening the muscles at the back of your neck.  If this happened over time, you might never notice!)  The body is amazing in how it orchestrates the muscles in order to remain upright and keep one's balance.  We call this compensation patterns.   And I have kept this very simple - often times only one side gets out of balance and this creates a whole different pattern of weak and tight muscles.

If Ann strengthens her weak muscles and stretches her tight muscles she can begin to bring balance into her body.  Along with a little meditation or other stress relief, and some exercise or a few good walks during the week, and a balanced diet, Ann will recuperate easily and all will be well! 

Next time, we'll look at what may happen to Ann if she ignores her current routine.