How You’re Damaging Your Nerves And What You Can Do About It.

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And on the line with me today is a very powerful force in the field of chiropractic. He is really known as a leader in neural scan interpretation, in wellness practice development. And literally thousands of doctors from around the world listen to this guy's strategies when it comes to how you can use chiropractic to enhance your wellness, your health. And today what we'll be talking about your physical performance and the ability to get your body to do much, much more than you may be capable of right now. His name is Dr. David Fletcher and he does also have a website. I'll make sure that we put a link to it in the show notes and let him take tell you about that as well. But today we're going to be talking about how you can kind of enhance your body's communication, your nerve communication, and also basically track how you're doing, be able to do things like predict over training and know what type of stress your body has, how your nerves can actually work or not work in terms of being able to send good messages to your body in the whole process of neurological communication. Lots of other cool stuff. So, Dr. Fletcher, thank you for coming on the call today.

Oh, hey, Ben. It's my pleasure. And what an exciting chance I get to tell a story that I love to tell. So it's wonderful to speak with people who love performance.

Yes. And you know, I've seen a lot of the things that you do and you know, you seem to have so much going on. But before we launch into some of the things that you feel are really cutting edge in terms of how people can enhance their physical performance? Can you walk me through a little bit of what you do or where you'd actually send people if they wanted to find out more about you and what it is you represent?

Yeah, that's terrific. So my company and my programs are associated with a company that's referred to as the Chiropractic Leadership alliance or better known in the industry as cla. We have a worldwide presence, so it shouldn't be that difficult for people to find a CLA trained doctor. I'm sending you the link to subluxation. S U B l u x A-T-I-O-N.com and the reason that I think that it's important to affiliate with a doctor who has the technologies that we have produced is really because what we're going to be talking about today, Ben, is the opportunity that everybody on the street has to really understand a lot more about how the tensions and stresses that might be in their daily lives are actually going deeper into their system and affecting their performance.

Gotcha. Okay, so let's go ahead and start there. There actually is technology that can identify issues. Because I guess when I go to a chiropractic physician, a lot of times maybe I'm getting my sacroiliac joint adjusted or my neck adjusted. But when you say technology, what exactly are you referring to?

Well, we have recognized that within the chiropractic paradigm, most people are concerned or interested in, just as you said there, the sacroiliacs or some type of structural function. But what we recognize also, and I think everybody on the street recognizes, is that the spinal core houses your central nervous system. And so although we tend to, as lay people, think about the nerves as those things that, you know, promote pain and promote sensation, they really are controlling all function. And when we start to look at how we can develop relationships with performance within an athlete or within anybody, it's wise and critical to start looking at how the nervous system lying within the spine is actually being managed and controlled. And that's what our technologies now begin to do.

Okay, I got you. So this is something that someone would basically almost like, plug themselves into or work with a doctor to connect themselves to.

Yeah, like, this is full Star Trek stuff. You know, the tricorder. So what happens is, of course, and it's. This is all validated and reliable technologies that have been used in a number of different disciplines over the years. But in chiropractic, we've been able to congregate them. And so what we will do is we will look at up to five different dimensions of the spinal nervous system to try and see if, indeed, well, which one of those might be interfered with and on the other side of it, which one is performing within good or great ranges. So it's pretty cool stuff. I mean, let's go back to that initial conversation you had where you said, oh, my neck or my sacroiliacs. Like, that's really important stuff for us, too, because when we're talking about the whole chiropractic picture here and talking about wellness and performance, it's really important to recognize that that can be boiled down to two really simple words, and that is balance and tension. So the balance of your spine plays out an enormous role in how we perform, especially in triathletes and especially in running sports or for that matter. But the other really important concept is the term tension or tone. Because when the spine can be out of balance, it can place unusual Tension into the nerves inside of it. But here's the other kicker, Ben, is that when you're holding on to tension, and I mean everything from family tension to, you know, dietary tension, to any type of tension that could be affecting your health, and it can show up as the body guards and protects itself and throw your balance off. So it's kind of a give and go. Balance, tension, tension, balance.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. Does this relate to the concept of neurological communication? Because when I talk to you about you coming on and speaking with my listeners about getting their bodies to be capable of ideal performance, you mentioned that you wanted to talk about neurological communication. So is that relevant to this, and if so, what is that and why is it important?

Well, I think it's absolutely relevant because, listen, every part of our health is under the guidance of first and foremost our nervous system. So our brain has to communicate effectively through our body, and our body has to communicate effectively back to the brain to tell it where it's sitting in the environment. Of course, the interface between that is brain to body, body to brain lies within the nerves that exit from our spine. And so nerve communication, or neurologic communication, is critical as a starting point for somebod to build a much more performance based health wellness relationship. So guess what happens is that, I mean, obviously if we were to severely injure the spine, it makes pretty much sense that you could aggravate or even, you know, damage the nerve system. But what about those little subtle shifts that occur within the spine? What about those subtle shifts that may not always be obvious in pain, but are putting unusual stretch tension or pinch tension into that? You'd like to know if that was going on long before the pain or changes had happened. And that's what our technology can pick up.

Okay, so let's say someone wants to avoid that happening in the first place, you know, avoid damaging that communication process. What type of things do we do on a daily basis that can damage neurological communication or affect the alignment of the spine or the ability of the nerves to communicate with the body?

Yeah, well, that's a great question, because in reality there are three basic or primal stresses that our body is interacting with at all times. The first one are the physical forces. So gravity being the natural one. Let's just talk about the simple stuff like posture. You know, if somebody has a really disturbed or distorted posture, eventually that that constant pressure that sits within the spine spills over. But, you know, these are the unthought ones. The other two primal stresses are biochemical, which means that when we ingest food or we take the wrong toxicities in our body, we have to react to that. And of course, the body only knows what to do with that. It can guard itself, it can cleanse itself, it can guard itself, but it reacts within the nervous system. And again, we have technologies that can see how active and reactive that is. And then, of course, there's a third vector, which is emotional. And the emotional stressors that are constantly driving us around, which are everything from our anxieties we have or our ambitions we have, are constantly playing out. So whatever stress or nerve communication or nerve interference that we're talking about, Ben, is really a wonderful mix between physical, biochemical, and emotional stressors coming in our body.

Interesting. So let's. Let's delve into those just a little bit deeper. In terms of a physical issue, are we talking about basically just sitting at your desk working with poor posture, or are we talking about other things that creep up day to day that could affect us from a physical standpoint?

Oh, I think we're talking about all those other things as well as posture. I mean, just imagine that we're taking. Let's take a really simplistic one, but let's imagine that we overpronate. And as we tend to overpronate and don't have proper corrective balance put into our shoes and. Or our knees, we start to transmit forces up into the kinetic chain. And as a result of that, that sacroiliac joint that you mentioned at the front end might become very aggrav. Well, as the aggravation has to be dealt with by the spine and the nervous system, the brain is constantly interpreting what it needs to do to try and keep this whole system without damaging itself keeping functional. So this now becomes a stress load into that whole system. Getting my point here. Unnecessary stress is now being built into the system.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah.

So we've got these folks like myself or people listening in who might be out riding their bikes, hunched over, going over bumps all day long, running, and maybe running in shoes that don't quite support the way that they're running, or perhaps lifting weights and maybe not using perfect posture the whole time, which I know none of us are guilty of, but what that's doing is actually affecting more than just the muscles or more than just feeling tight or sore. You're saying that that can affect the alignment of the spine and thus affect the ability of the nerves to communicate with the rest of the body.

That's right. It's an unnecessary stress. Now we're really resilient as you found out, you can take an awful lot before an actual symptom arises. But here's the point in performance is that the more bandwidth that you chew up with unnecessary stressors coming in, the less accessibility you have when you really need it. As if, when you're doing longer distance training, if you have injury recovery, you want as much bandwidth as you can have. We refer to that as the reserve. You want as much of that around as you can possibly have. So why waste it on the little stuff that you can control when you really need it, for the later days, when you really want to delve into the performance and accessibility stuff?

Okay, it's making sense to me from a biomechanical perspective, from a biochemical perspective. You talked about ingesting toxins, and I think that a lot of people would probably realize processed foods, maybe foods cooked in plastics, things of that nature, when you really delve into it. I mean, you know, does that literally, like when I, whatever, let's say I eat a big TV dinner, bunch of packaged food and processed ingredients, I mean, does that actually shift my spine and affect the communication of the nerves? Or is that working on a different level than like this biomechanical adjustment?

Well, it's interesting because, you know, the nervous system is all linked within the biomechanics, but also within this neurohormonal regulatory system too. Let me give you a little bit of a piece of neuroanatomy here. There are three different parts to our central nervous system that are processing our environment all the time. There's the mechanical part, which you described there. We call that the motor nervous system. But just like a cable has a bunch of bands that go in it. There's another part of the cabling in that central nervous system which is called your autonomic nervous system. And your autonomic nervous system is designed to help regulate everything that is being processed in your body. In other words, it's telling the glands, the blood vessels, all of that, how to work in sync and properly. Well, let's just say you eat that big TV dinner and your body perceives that as a big stress. Too much fat, too much toxicities that are going in your body, it has to react to that. And that's another one of those sort of unnecessary stressors that your body has to then signal. Well, in this case, it's signaling it through a pathway that is called your autonomic nervous system. Now we have a technology which identifies how functional that part of the nervous system is. We also have a Technology that detects how functional the motor part of your nervous system are. So you can start to see that we can start building a profile of where we're now saying, oh, you know what, you've got too much biomechanical stress coming in your system. Let's talk about that. Or, oh, you've got a spillover. And now that your autonomic system is now not working the way it should. So it's pretty cool to have these accessible tools within your chiropractor's range now.

So does the emotional level, that third dimension of stress that you mentioned, work in a similar manner to the biochemical stressor in terms of it affecting your autonomic nervous system?

It does, and it's interesting because I think that you would realize as well it also plays out in the motor system. It's that sort of dual combination that goes along. For instance, remember, if you're, I don't know, watching a. A scary movie or something like that, and there's a break in the action, and you find that your shoulders are up around your ears, you're really holding on to tension. Well, that's emotional distress. That's now showing up in your physical postures. But at the same time that that physical distress was going on, your body was churning out a whole bunch of different biochemistry. So emotional distress tends to be one of those trump cards that kind of overrides all these systems. And so we don't have a very. What we do kind of have an overview look at that one, but we look at that through both the autonomic and the motor systems.

So let's say that I'm listening in, I'm sitting at home, for example, and I want to start by figuring out if I may have mechanical, emotional or chemical stressors. Is there, you know, without, you know, picking up the phone and making an appointment with the chiropractic physician. Are there, are there signs? Are there signals? Are there things that you can use to start to identify where you may be stressed or even which of these three components may be stressing you?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think that self evaluation is probably one of the great strategies that we should all have. So I think that, you know, we'll go back to one of those early concepts, Ben, when we were talking about balance and tension. And I think that one of the great things to do is come to realize that your balance, biomechanically, is easy to look at and assess. Let's just stand in front of the mirror and let's just take a look at how the shoulders line up, how the head tipped and tilted to one side. Let's look at all these compensations and how our body is working with gravity. If you have a partner that can come and take a look and stand behind you, lay your hands on the hips, take a look at the alignment across your pelvic core. Compare that to the top of the shoulders. Make sure that as you bend forward, that there's no rolling, tipping curvatures called a scoliosis within your spine. Have somebody take a look at your foot alignment and make sure that you're not over pronating or flaring in the foot. I mean, these are basic standard things that we're all very familiar with. And those are subtle signs to tell you that your body is at some level, fighting through an unnecessary stress pattern.

Interesting. When I again spoke with you to schedule this interview, you mentioned that another area that you wanted to touch on when it comes to predicting or identifying the wrong type of training or over training is heart rate variability. What are you personally kind of using when you're assessing heart rate variability? Or how can someone use heart rate variability as a way to track their status?

Absolutely. Well, you know, heart rate variability in terms of this neurological interpretation is really a game changer, just to go back one step before we go forward. So one of the technologies that measures the tension along the spine is called surface electromyography. That's looking at the muscle tone along the spine. The second way in which we look at the autonomics is something called a thermal scan, looking at the body's ability to manage temperature regulation. But the coolest one is one that's been used by exercise physiologists, cardiologists, and now we're really embedding it in our technology. And it's called heart rate variability. And I'll be brief with this, but it's really a game changer because basically there's. To keep it really simple, that regulatory nervous system, that autonomic nervous system that I said has to be able to speed up in an instant. So when we need to kick in our afterburners, we have to have accessibility to that, but we also have to have a really good set of brakes to slow it down once it's been speeding up. And so heart rate is your heart rate as you're sitting here, Ben, and as you're listening to me or any of the other listeners are, is constantly being sped up and slowed down to the needs of the environment. And to do that, you have to have a very, very active Central nervous system, it has to be really clean and really active. And we can now measure, when we take your heart rate and we measure the inter beat intervals, they're called, in other words, the pulse rate, the space between that pulse rate is very, very important for understanding how the body can react to stress and hold on to stress.

And you want that space to be what, long, short?

You want it. It's very interesting because it's counterintuitive. You want it to be slightly variable. And so there isn't an answer to. I mean, obviously we know that we'd like a conditioned heart rate to be low beats per minute comparatively, but the actual spacing of those beats, let's just say you were firing off at 60 beats per minute, that would be the equivalent of one per second. But in reality, there are some that are going to be 0.8 seconds, some that are going to be 1.2 seconds. And that distance between those beats, that variability, is the real math game that makes a difference. So a bunch of exercise physiologists a long time ago and cardiologists figured out that it mattered within certain ranges that you could manage this beat variability. And the people that had good variability had the ability to literally dance on the head of a pin, meaning that they could get very, very, very stress reactive, but they could slow themselves down very quickly. Well, that becomes a huge issue when you're training because when we look at HRV heart rate variability, we know that recovery is really about how well you can hit the brakes, basically. In other words, it's easy to speed your system up, but how good is your braking system? You may not know this, Ben, but the braking system is under the exact control of those nerves we talked about. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes, it makes perfect sense. Sorry about that, that was my.

Not at all.

So what we're looking at then is not necessarily when you're looking at heart rate variability, you're not looking at the heart rate variability or the variability between beats to be even and constant. As much as you're looking for the ability of someone to make quick adjustments because that signifies their autonomic nervous system is working properly.

Yeah, you nailed it there. But you know, those, those, those differentials in the beats, in the timing of the beats is so fractional that you have to have a very sophisticated collection system. Now there are some great ones that you can go, that are, that our, you know, listeners can go online and pick up. I mean, heart rate variability is getting so deeply embedded into the culture that you can Even go into the app store in itunes and pick up a free hrv. It's not very accurate, but it gives you a window into it of where it's literally measuring the heart sounds as you hold your iPhone up to your left side of your chest. And it kind of gives you this idea of whether you're getting variability in the heart rate. Of course, our technology is research grade and so we would look at, we don't even like ear clips or finger clips to take a look at that. We actually do something called plethysmography and I won't go into that, but we are really wanting to get an extremely accurate viewpoint of heart rate variability when we're working with, you know, working with our clients, our patients and elite athletes. But on a day to day basis, if the person, and this was the discussion you're having wanted to go and explore heart rate variability, there's a number of options that if they just google it in where they can download perhaps some simple software, they can do a simple collection with an ear clip or a finger clip just like you have with your polar, with your polar equipment. And this can give you some interesting stuff on hrv.

Interesting. So in terms of other ways that people can assess, we talked about getting a look at your posture, assessing heart rate variability, perhaps is there some type of a questionnaire or some type of thing that someone could go through like systematically if they wanted to just sit down and answer questions?

Yeah, and you know, that's a great lead in too because we have a sister company that began about seven years ago and it's called Creating Wellness. And our folks can go to creatingwellness.com and creating wellness takes those three dimensions of stress. And we hold. Actually we're the only patented wellness assessment tool that exists in the market and we have, right now I think we have 360 some centers around the which are creating wellness centers, but we have an online version which are. Hopefully I'll get a chance to hook up and give you a link for your listeners to go online and really do some self assessment. But it's a scaled and detailed, we call it lifestyle Questionnaire or lq which will systematically ask you about the three vectors of stress, the physical, biochemical and emotional distressors that are in there and give you a rating scale as to how you position on a day to day basis in comparison to the normative data. And I think it'd be brilliant for your people to get that interesting.

Okay, we'll link to that in the show. Notes for people who are Listening in. So I want to get into this technology a little bit because I find it intriguing. First of all, I assume that what you've talked about, this technology that tests heart rate variability, the emotional, the biochemical and the mechanical stressors that you've discussed that can interfere with your nervous system's ability to talk to the rest of your body. This is something that you would have to visit a doctor to be able to get access to, right?

Yeah. This is FDA Diagnostic Technologies.

Okay, so walk me through this. I want to go and, and get this analysis done. So where do I start? What do I do?

Well, I think the easiest thing to do is get on the subluxation.com S-B-L-U X-A-T-I-O-N.com and there's a find a doc section on there. And I think that if you can just plug in your district or your area, you'll get somebody in your local area who has invested in this technology. The second thing I'll say is this is non invasive. This is not like an X ray or it's nothing to do with breaking the skin barrier. These sensors all work from the holistic perspective of measuring from the outside in. Now this is all validated because it's FDA rated. It's all validated at both a research level and a clinical level. So I want your listeners to be assured that this isn't some half cocked idea that we're going off on. These are validated pieces of technology which will then score the person both individually. But we also have a proprietary scoring system which is called the Neurospinal functional Index, which takes five different scoring systems of these technologies, these sensors, and allows the patient, the client to get one number coming out so they can track the combination of all five technologies.

Gotcha. So let's talk about what you do when you find out that you have nerve interference going on from a biochemical, from a mechanical or from an emotional standpoint. Obviously if you've developed the technology that tests for these type of things, I would imagine you have some suggestions for people to make themselves right if they find out something's wrong.

Yeah, I think that actually we figured out what to do to make people right before we even had the technology. Good point. I think that you have to realize that no matter what a practitioner can do for a person, it's a collaborative effort. There's just so much you can begin manage. So I would like your listeners to sort of envision in their own world building what I would call a Health pyramid. Now, if we look at the health pyramid as having three levels or layers to it, the bottom layer is what we're going to refer to as neural efficiency. And that's really about de stressing your system. Now, what a chiropractor and a really trained practitioner can do is understand where that core tension is, score the person and begin to release that tension through very straightforward, specific chiropractic adjustive models. Now, this is safe, and this is a very, very significant process. You've experienced it yourself, Ben, which is to have your spine releasing the tension, rebalancing itself. And this is the starting point. And depending on how deeply set those challenges are within the spine and the nerve centers is really how frequent or how long a patient should be under some sort of progressive care.

Gotcha.

The second rung up there is what we refer to as healing movement or structural realignment. And this is where the patient really has to start looking at two components, which is in a performance model, the stretching and the strengthening. They really need to address what they've limited themselves off. These mechanical linkages, our biomechanical kinetic chains, really take a beating from just gravity or from training. And we have to be ahead of the curve by really stretching and strengthening to our deficits. And we spend a lot of time with our patients, really helping them restructure this alignment, if you would, pattern and really not making a judgment on this, putting the nutritional or the biochemical core at the apex. I mean, fuel is so important, but we do want people to realize that you have to have, no matter what you do on layer one or layer two, the cherry on top is knowing how to put the fuel in your system.

Interesting.

Yeah. Realistically, it's what we refer to as omission and commission, meaning you have to omit those things that are toxic to your body. And at the same time, you have to commit or commit to putting the better things in. The great news is that everything starts to learn. Don't forget, this is not an inert system. Band this body we have, this brain body connection we have is constantly learning. If we follow this de stressing at the bottom, removing at the middle ground and putting better nutrition in it. What we're really doing is hardening in these new habits that the body will become more efficient. From the key word, there is efficiency. Because as you become more efficient, you don't waste the energy. And as you move forward, you have more reserve to take on more training.

So I've got one other question for you. You've mentioned a few Times, toxins and eating the wrong things, consuming the wrong things. Do you have any specific diet that you've seen to kind of work best in terms of keeping nerve interference at bay or certain foods that tend to be the biggest culprits in your opinion?

Oh, no question. I think that on the omit side, I think that when we look at processed sugars and there's just no question that they tend to be literally toxic to the nervous system. The whites, where we're talking, the dairy, the white sugars, the white flowers, these are the devastating, they overwhelm in a very subtle way how the nervous system processes. But I think that we can expand on that. And if somebody is really, really very interested in looking at how their body functions, not only will they go on to that lq, but our lq, that lifestyle questionnaire, has the potential to open up an enormous back engine on how people can look at diet planning, which includes everything from gluten free to casein free. And those are the other two dimensions. And Ben, I know you're very, very strong on this, but you really, for your performance based athletes, triathletes, you want to really have them exploring, looking and seeing what gluten free looks like too. It's quite shocking how toxic that can be. I would say that. Let me flip it around the other side. Those are the omissions. You know, what we found on the commissions is that this new principle towards high intensity greens, superfoods, high antioxidants, this is the big game out there right now. We see that, we refer to it as scanning the nervous system. We see that if we can get our clients into a superficial autonomic measuring tool, which is the way in which we look at the regulatory stress just completely shifts when we're looking at that one. So I mean the Omega 3s make a huge difference in the longer term, both in an anti inflammatory model plus a pro neurological model. But the combination of looking at a very strong omega 3 influx and I don't know how much you recommend, but we're talking at least in the three to four grams. You know, you don't want to go higher than six or seven, but you really, really want to make sure that that next level is a superfood. And I'm sure you have your own comments on those two ideas.

Certainly. And I have recommended for a few years that folks use greens and that they preferably not grab them out of the bargain bin at super supplements or invest in a good greens. It's actually sourcing high quality ingredients that haven't been sprayed with ethylene oxide or treated with pesticides and herbicides. And yeah, I absolutely agree with you. It is a cornerstone of my nutritional recommendations that someone get on a good greens supplement. So that's interesting to hear that you've observed it to have a direct effect upon the autonomic nervous system.

Absolutely. And you know, I wouldn't want to, I just want to give some guidance here and I'm not in the business of promoting or selling. We did find one was called Greens first and it was vegan as well as organic and it didn't have any sprays on it. So you know, your listeners may want to try and source out something like that because there's a lot of half baked greens that are out there. You know, they really aren't as clean as we'd like them for our clients. You might be guessing that we're really, we really take this thing called health and wellness seriously. You know, and here's the thing is that anybody can jump in at any time. Let's face it it, I've been in practice 32 years now and I've changed an awful lot of people's lives and their perspectives towards it. Anybody can jump in and move that bar towards being well. But the really cool thing is that if you really do this consistently, what happens, Ben, is this whole new field of neurological retraining. It's called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is this relatively new finding in the neurological fields that says that if you keep doing good enough things long enough, then what happens is the body literally builds new pathways within the brain. So hope for all of us that might have had some damaging events on those three vector stresses. The body can literally recycle a lot of these pathways and become more efficient and become more capable by these simple acts of, get this, just removing chronic stressors and making better choices on the other side. It is as simple as that.

Yeah. And I think I always like to geek out on the technology side of things. I actually am making a note to myself to go to the website and do a search because I just like to go get plugged into one of these machines and see what's up with myself. So I'll put a link for folks who are listening in who want to go find this type of stuff. I'll put a link there for you to find it. And folks, if you are listening, go to the show notes and ask questions if you have them or leave your comments and I'll be sure to report to you kind of what I find in terms of testing some of these potential blockers of nerve interference or things that could be affecting my own body's neurological communication. Because a big part of kind of getting that superhuman performance is getting every advantage possible. And so I'm all about that. Dr. Fletcher, thank you so much for sharing this information with us.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed it. I've spent my entire career kind of figuring out how this stuff works, and it's just as exciting for me to be able to tell about it, especially to your user group, Ben.

Fantastic. Well, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Dr. David Fletcher signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.