Podcast Episode #39: How Quantum Physics Can Heal The Body and Enhance Performance

Podcast episode number 39 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast, your free weekly audio exposure to cutting edge fitness, nutrition and wellness information. My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer and nutritionist. Each week I'll be bringing you information that goes outside run of the mill exercise and diet advice. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to lose a few pounds, enjoy this week's podcast episode from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. Still not recording with a headset, still locked in my bedroom closet to get rid of a little bit of that echo. But I promise I will spring for a headset soon. I've been jetting around pretty busy, just got done with half Ironman New Orleans, and I actually posted a race report for that race on my personal blog at BenGreenfieldTri. As in triathlon.blogspot.com as many of you know, my sport of choice that I personally compete in and enjoy is triathlon. Occasionally it does get a bit painful, and that actually did happen during that race down in New Orleans. It was a tough endeavor, but I crossed the finish line. Anyways, today I'm bringing you more listener Q and A, but a little bit more interesting than that. I have a very cool interview with a guy named Dr. Akers who I met down in California a few months ago. And and he literally laid his hands on me and healed a knee injury that I was dealing with just through some strategic pressure points across my body. Told him I wanted to get him on my show to talk about what he did, what his healing process actually involves. And I actually have him on the show today, so you're definitely going to want to catch that interview. And if you have chronic injuries, aches or pains, it won't go away. If you just have a plateau in your physical performance, if you're playing a sport and you want to enhance your athletic performance, you're going to want to listen to this interview. He talks about a lot of very interesting stuff. The listener Q and A is focused on leg exercises for older adults, an alternative to diet, pop and soda, and then finally, a talk with a college student who's trying to build lean muscle and has lots of questions about supplements. And then we will start off the day, of course, with just a few special announcements. So let's go straight into this Week's content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com Special Announcements okay, first of all, you may remember if you've been listening to the show since January, that at the beginning of this year I took on eight individuals and basically gave them a special to where if I was able to use their photos, their videos, and also post all the details of their exercise and their nutrition programs online, then they would actually receive special discounts on training, etc. Well, anyways, eight people signed up and I'm posting everything from video from them to recorded phone calls that I have with them to results of laboratory tests, basically their entire journey to achieve their goals. And we're already 25% through this year. So if you want to check out some of the techniques that I'm using with them, some of the strategies we're implementing in everybody from the Weekend Warrior to the Ironman triathlete, to the people who have tried everything to lose weight and are now trying this, you can just click on the link that I'll put in the show notes to this podcast or you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com help and there's basically stories of eight different people that you can check out there and then a couple quick announcements for local individuals. I will be giving another talk in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho at Pilgrims Nutrition on April 24th at 6:00pm the title of this talk is Holistic Fueling for Ironman Triathlon. There is an Ironman triathlon coming up in Coeur d', Alene and you got to shove a lot of calories down the hatch when you're training for an event like that. I'm going to teach you how to do it without causing damage to your body, without messing up your liver, your kidneys, your gut. And basically I'm going to teach you how to fuel your body going outside of a lot of those old school methods of just eating lots of bread, lots of pasta, and drinking lots of juice. There's a lot better way to do it and I'm going to tell you exactly how. And then also another announcement for you triathletes out there. The Iron Speed Coeur d' Alene Triathlon Camp is still scheduled for May 9 through May 14, 2009. I'm coaching at that camp. Another coach from Canada, Cal Zyrisky, is coaching at that camp. This is a perfect opportunity. If you're competing in Ironman Coeur d' Alene or or if you're doing any Ironman triathlon this year, you're not going to want to miss this camp. It's four Solid days of race strategy, nutrition lectures, physiology testing, biomechanical analysis, much, much more. It's actually a fantastic price, this camp and about 50% of the cost of most other camps that you're going to find across the country. So I will put a link to that camp in the show notes of this podcast and there is even an opportunity to tack a couple extra days on and just train with me. I'm going to take you all over the Coeur d' Alene area, throwing you into different pools, on run courses, on bikes, and just teaching you everything about the sport. So check that out. And then finally, there are lots of pre written triathlon training plans and coaching plans that I've put up on the Internet. These are not deals where you hire a coach to coach you. These are just pre written plans that you can get where I've written out every single thing that you're supposed to do for each day. I've got training plans leading up to sprint triathlons, Olympic distance triathlons, half ironman, Ironman for beginner, intermediate or advanced athletes. Check out the link in the show notes of this podcast. You're definitely going to want to check that out. And I know I was a little bit kind of biased towards triathletes in the announcements today, but if you really compete in any sport, you're definitely going to want to tune in to the interview today. And then our listener Q and A goes over a lot of interesting information. So let's go ahead and move on to this week's listener Q and A. Listener Q and A. Okay, before I get started, remember if you have questions just email me BenGreenfieldFitness.com you can Skype me using the free Skype software. My Skype name is PacificFit.net or you can just call toll free. 1-877-209-9439. Leave a voicemail my extension. That'd be extension number three and I will play your voicemail in the podcast and answer your question. So we've got three questions today. The first is from listener Steve and Steve says, I read your latest article which emphasized leg exercises and Steve is referring to an article in the newsletter that I Send out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and by the way, if you haven't signed up for that newsletter, make sure you do lots of special discount codes for supplements. Things of that nature go into that newsletter. And he says, however, are squats good for people over a certain age? Example 40 is the juice worth the squeeze for us older athletes or can we substitute another exercise in lieu of squats? Well, it is true that it's more common in older individuals for their knees to hurt or their hips to hurt when they're doing a full on squat based exercise. There are alternatives to the squat, but my first piece of advice would be to make sure that you're squatting properly in the show notes right after your question. Steve in the show notes to this podcast, I'm going to put a link to a squat video that shows you how to squat properly. And I recorded it. It's me performing a squat and it's got some key points in there that you should pay attention to when you do squat. However, I'm also putting a link to five other videos or I'm sorry, four other videos that show you alternative exercises you could do if you experience pain during the squat. One's called a single leg bridge and this is where you're just lying on the ground with one leg in the air, pushing through the other leg, bridging your hips towards the ceiling. You've got the one armed deadlift on there and this is similar to the squat, except rather than putting a weight on your shoulders or on your back and squatting, you're just picking a weight off the ground. And the one arm deadlift is a lot more friendly to the low back than the two arm deadlift, so you're simply picking a dumbbell or a medicine ball off the ground. The lunge is a common exercise similar to the squat. Sometimes it allows you to move through a little bit more range of motion. There's a little bit more rotational freedom of the hips during the lunge exercise. And I put a video that shows you how to properly do a lunge on there. And then also range of motion is something I find that a lot of people lose as they age. And so in addition to the regular lunge, I put up a video for the multi directional lunge which lets you open up your hips and move in different directions. So each of those videos I have included in links after your question, the listener Q and A section on the show notes of this podcast. Now listener Steven asks, one of your listeners mentioned about drinking Diet Pop and we know how bad it is for you, but I came across a product called Zevia and wanted to know if you approved this product at all. It has stevia as a sweetener. The ingredients in Zevia are triple filtered carbonated water, natural erythritol, natural GMO free caramel color, stevia leaf, citric acid and natural flavors. They have a cola which has natural caffeine and natural ginger root beer. Is this okay? And in short, my answer to Steve is yes. I haven't seen any long term studies that show stevia to be harmful, whereas there are many studies that show the harm of both sugar and artificial sweeteners. Zevia is tough to find in a commercial grocery store. It is carried in most health food food stores that I've been to. And it's fine as a product, maybe a little bit more expensive than soda. What I tell people or what I advise people a lot of times to do is use something like carbonated water to wean yourself off of diet soda or off of a soda habit. And you can put anything from lemons to limes to even cucumbers into water so you can enhance the taste. But Zevia, if you just want something that tastes very, very much like soda, but that is all natural and that is healthy, then yes, that's a great alternative. Thank you for pointing that out to the listener, Steven. And then finally, we have a little bit longer question from listener Craig. Listener Craig is a guy that wrote me a few months ago, college student, and he was wanting to put on muscle, more or less. That was his primary goal. And he has a couple of questions based off some advice that I gave him. One is that he has a friend and I'm just going to read this section of the question. He's interested in the ZMK and wanted to know if he should take it for a month or cycle it or just take it as long as he wants to pay for it. Do any of these ways matter? ZMK is a mineral supplement with things like calcium and magnesium in it that's put out by a company called Millennium Sports. Millennium Sports is actually a great company out of Chewelah, Washington, and I take some of their supplements for myself. They primarily make supplements that are designed for athletes in training. Well, as far as the mineral supplements go, the idea is that athletes, when they're exercising hard, leach a lot of minerals. They go through a lot more minerals than the average individual. They tend to be more deficient minerals. And ZMK is something that athletes can take at night to help enhance mineral uptake. As far as cycling it, I would say that if your friend is going through a very, very tough training cycle, training very hard, he should take the minerals and then he could probably wean himself off of those on rest days, rest weeks, or recovery periods if he's just concerned about budgeting his supplements. And the same goes for A lot of different supplements. You know, for example, a couple weeks after race, like after Ironman New Orleans, I'll wean myself off most of the supplements that I take for sports performance, like creatine and nitric oxide. I'll continue to take my multivitamins and my and my omega 3 fatty acids and things of that nature. But yeah, I do tone it back a little bit just to cut back the number of pills that I'm consuming on a daily basis now. Craig continues on his question. He says, I've gained nearly 10 pounds since I last emailed you and want to cut a bit, but I don't want to lose the muscle I've gained. I'm thinking about eating less and I've read to eat 500 calories under my maintenance level and maintenance would just be how many calories you need to maintain weight. He says, I'm also considering taking a thermogenic product like MuscleTex HydroxyCut Hardcore or Millennium Labs Shred Xs Hardcore. I've never taken a product like either of these and was wondering if you knew about them. I want to cut the fat without losing the muscle. I'm not sure the best way to do this. I'm currently on creatine monohydrate, glutamine, universal shock therapy, which is a nitric oxide product, and Millennium zmk, which are those minerals I talked about. Should I stop using cream, creatine, ZMK and shock therapy if I use a thermogenic? Are any of these contradictory products that should not be taken together? I can see the individual benefits of each of the products, but I feel like there's a lot of them and I might be overdoing it a little. I'm very interested in any advice you might have about a good combination of these products to attain my goal of more muscle and less fat. First of all, with regard to your question about the interaction between these supplements, if you are taking creatine, which is designed to help improve or increase muscle contraction capabilities, if you are taking glutamine, which is designed to help a muscle recover better, if you are taking a nitric oxide product, which is designed to enhance oxygen uptake and enhance glucose uptake into the muscle tissue, and then if you are taking those minerals that we talked about earlier, the zmk, none of those are overlapping. All of them are achieving a different physiological effect within the body. But it is true that none of those are considered basically a fat burning type of supplement. So you asked me about a couple of different supplements and the first was this Hydroxycut Hardcore. Whenever I look at a fat burning supplement and for any of you who listen to podcast number 38 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com you know that one of the first things I look at is whether or not it's healthy. Because I don't care if you're burning fat off your body faster than anybody else, if you are doing damage to your body, taking years off your life, damaging your kidneys, shutting down your adrenal glands, then it's not worth it. There are healthy ways to do it. So I look at the Hydroxycut hardcore ingredients. It's got about 742 milligrams of a fat loss blend. Green tea extract, 280 milligrams of caffeine. That's a lot of caffeine. The energy supplement I take is about 40 milligrams. So that's what like seven times more. Basically that's about four cups of coffee. White willow extract, a couple other extracts that are not important enough to go into right now. And then if you scroll into other ingredients, FDC Red number three. FDC Black shade, Silica gelatin, Isopropyl alcohol, butyl alcohol, dehydrated alcohol, FDC Yellow 5, titanium dioxide, sodium hydroxide, povidone, propylene glycol. There are some things in this, Craig, that will help you to burn fat for the most part. This stuff is going to make your adrenal glands go nuts and it's going to over stimulate your central nervous system. There's a ton of caffeine in this. There are also a lot of possible carcinogens such as those FDC artificial colors. There are tons of artificial preservatives in this. I would stay away from the hydroxy cut as your fat burner. Now moving on to the next fat burner that you asked me about, the not the zmk, the Shred Excess Hardcore from Millennium Sports. The difference between the Shred Xs and the Hydroxy cut is that this one's not quite as caffeine based. It's designed to be a little bit more of a zero crash type of fat burning supplement. Its primary ingredient is ginseng. It does have caffeine blend in it with theobromine and synephrine which is it's also a little bit similar to ephedrine. The difference is that it stimulates the beta 3 receptors which were again something that we brought up on last week's show notes. And what that means is that when you stimulate the beta 3 receptors, you can increase the metabolic rate without actually adversely affecting heart rate or blood pressure. If you were going to choose between these two from a health perspective, you definitely want to choose the Millennium Sports Hardcore Shred xs. The clients that I train for fat loss primarily use a combination of the thermal factor and the lean factor supplements, which were talked about in last week's show. The Shred Xs Hardcore would be a little bit more along the lines of something that a body builder would take, or basically an athlete who was lifting a lot of weight and needed a blend that was a little bit more designed with bodybuilding in mind. That being said, the lean factor and the thermo factor could also be used for bodybuilding. This comes down to a case of there being more than one way to skin a cat. I would try either. Either one is going to get you results, but I would definitely stay away from the hydroxy cut Hardcore. That stuff would not be fantastic for your health at all. So I hope that answers your question, Craig. I will put a link to the thermo factor and the lean factor right after the question in the show notes on this podcast. So that's all for this week's listener Q and A. Let's go ahead and move on to the interview.

There we go.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield, and I am back today with an interview with a chiropractic physician, nutritionist, applied kinesiologist, medical intuitive, and I don't know what all else the rest of you are, but welcome to the show, Dr. Akers.

Thank you, Ben. Appreciate the opportunity, so to speak, about health.

And the reason that I have Dr. Akers on the show is because I met him down in California a few weeks ago and basically I was giving a talk down there and Dr. Akers happened to be at the talk and I was dealing with a little bit of a knee injury. And I walked up to him and I told him, you know, I've been having a little bit of pain in the side of my leg. And he literally took one look at me and just by, I guess, seeing how I was standing and the way I was carrying myself, was able to. To understand my injury and understand the way that I was training. Almost as if he'd been watching me train for a couple of weeks. I mean, he knew how I was running and where I was feeling the pain. And more importantly, he kind of knew what to do and just in about five minutes actually fixed what the problem was. And so I really wanted to learn a lot more about how he does what he does. And he has a very interesting website that talks all about quantum physics and healing. And I just want to delve into that today and find out exactly what the deal is with your practice and how you heal. Dr. Akers. So give me a little bit of a background about you and how you got into this profession.

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. I think starting at my history is a good life. I was born in New Zealand. Now New Zealand is a nice. It's an interesting place and it relates to what I do today because it's a very traditional place that has, as part of its history, has healing art within the culture. I'm Polynesian, my mother's Samoan. So we grew up with the concept of healing. There has to be a hands on healing approach integrated with herbs and other natural healing modalities. Hands on healing and massage has been part of my life since maybe five or seven years old. My mother had a back injury and she was a child and she was always saying, you need to work my back and massage my leg. It was sort of one of my jobs to do as a kid. So I was very comfortable doing it. As I grew up, I really didn't go into the healing arts. Initially I was convinced I wanted to build the Six Million Dollar man for some reason because that was. I was hit back in the day when I grew up. But the engineering of the body fascinated me. It led me to physical therapy training and then eventually to chiropractic where they have an understanding of the body and how important the structure is. And from there it went into various approaches and techniques with applied kinesiology and reflexes, then into Eastern medicine. All driven by my need to understand how this body, how this machine, how it operates. Because to me it was always fascinating. I'd watch people all my life just watching, certainly watching the way they move and the way they stand and operate because I was fascinated by it. So my background sort of set me up with this fascination of the physical form. Now I will tell you, even after chiropractic school, it just, there was, there were missing pieces and so I went further into trying to understand mechanics of like for example, the foot. So I've taken lots of different courses from various doctors around the world who have an appreciation for physical medicine, all to try to understand what's this about, because chiropractic to me was wonderful. However, we didn't go deep enough for some reason.

So what was the next step to take it past chiropractic?

The next step beyond chiropractic, like I mentioned was applied kinesiology, where you're using muscle feedback or body function responses to orchestrate or navigate. Navigate and diagnose structural problems affecting functional problems. See, the concept is, especially with athletics, what we're dealing with is a functional loss that's appearing during the game that the patient will eventually have an injury. So the injury's not necessarily coming from that episode. It'll usually come from a weak patterning. The weak patterning, be it adductor or gastroc or something's got to go on as far as a weak pattern that the body, the athlete will push beyond his limitations and then strain or injure. And hey, my knee hurts. But it isn't a knee problem. Maybe a coccyx or a pelvis or an ankle pattern that has created overload. Knee problem. So again, getting back to chiropractic in that it didn't go far enough. Even the orthopedic traditional medicine didn't see deep enough in that they're looking at one small. Whereas the only way to, to appreciate how the body works is completely integrate this whole deal. And this body is, is from the ground up. You know, the way I like to tell my patients is that, you know, the interface to the ground is this foot. And how I've learned through wonderful mentors about how important the foot is. And I learned From a wonderful doctor years ago, Dr. Vladimir Yamda, Czechoslovakian who set up the Soviet program and has done a wonderful job of setting up physical rehab in both east and the West. He was reminding me that the shoe's not doing us much good. It's not really helping us. We have to really keep that foot as an organ alive and sensitive and functioning, because that's how with the world he was stressing, even the skin, the small joints, all the information coming in from the foot is utilized absolutely throughout the entire athlete. And if you dull that input, you're really decreasing the athletic function. My point being, there's a lot of shoes out there that are dulling down that foot input. That's not really helping the athlete.

So do you think it's a shoe problem or do you think it's a mechanical problem within the foot from the way that the athlete is trained. Training, or from the way that the athlete is carrying themselves farther up the body?

Well, I think there's a couple of things. Number one, I believe the athlete has to do barefoot training as part of their routine. In other words, when we do the balance and the rockerboard, the way it was trained that I was taught is that you do it barefoot initially because you've got to get that short foot flexor, the fibers running from the calcaneus to the metatarsal, those shortfoot flexor fibers, they're second only to the upper cervical spine as far as innovation in sensation proprioceptive input. So you've got to get those short, the arch muscles in there stimulated with inflammation constantly because they fire up the leg, up the spine to serve out to give input to the athlete to have him move correctly. Right. So the first thing needs to happen is that you have to have a clear foot. All right? And the way you do that, there are a lot, there are short foot exercises that you can do. The stimulation to it is, you know, there's no mistake or that the Chinese do a lot of foot massage. Their foot reflexology is brilliant. That's 5,000 years. They know they can access the entire health just from the foot. And I believe they're right. So even in my therapy I work a lot with the foot as if the foot has memorized lots of injury patterns in the past.

And what type of patients do you work with?

I tell even my quote, regular folks, ladies getting groceries and grandma, I tell them that even they are an athletes. And even though I work with teams and athletes that compete at all levels, I tell even a non athlete, they don't think you're an athlete. I tell them that they're actually, they're an athlete. If they've got a body, they're an athlete. And what I'm doing is I'm reminding that their body that they're not out of the game. And I'm reminding them that they can't even think that they're out of the game because as soon as they do that, they're going to accept sedentary lifestyle, which is really a negative impact on our body. Of course.

Now, before I ask you about some of the practical ways that you apply this theory in healing, tell me about how quantum physics works into this, because I see that mentioned a few times on your website. How does the understanding of quantum physics relate to the process?

Now, the one thing about quantum physics, and I don't pretend to be a quantum physicist, but I've studied it for years. And one thing that we have to understand and take from quantum physics in the body is that in quantum physics, our reality is really not set in stone. It's in a state of flux. It's always ready to be recreated. And that's the way that the body is. The body exists as a quantum machine. In that even though there may be an injury pattern, even though there's calcification of fusion, this body is always prepared to recreate itself. So there's nothing set in stone in the body. Because in this reality, the science of quantum physics does rule in that anything can change any moment. And I remind my athletes that, hey, even though there is an injury that's set deep into this ankle, this calf and the spine, it can recreate. And all you have to do is, in a way, reprogram. Which brings me back to the whole work that I do with this matrix regeneration. People are unaware that the rules of this body is whatever it has memorized, it will continue to create meaning. If you sprain your ankle limp, that limp is going to be a permanent pattern within you for all the years of your life. Unless you reprogram that limp, the limp is almost never perceivable. It's like you can't really see it easily because the body will always try to hide the injuries for reasons of survival. Right. So the re patterning I do is to identify the injury patterns, identify them, and then erase every connected pattern associated with that sort of original injury.

And how do you.

And it works really well with. Well, there's a couple of ways other folks do it. I do it the traditional way with a pressure point. So it's like acupressure. And it's amazing because I work at one of my offices. I work with an acupressure. They're traditional Chinese acupressure clinicians. And my work really parallels what they do in that we do pressure point with finger, with elbows, with deep pressure. In fact, I've been seen standing on some pressure points of patients on the table because I do a deep pressure release to the fascia to that matrix. Because the fascia, or the covering of the body, the matrix that I speak about, it's pressure sensitive and temperature sensitive because the fascial cells are technically liquid crystals. So therefore, that covering that memorizes everything is subject to pressure changes. You can change it with pressure, you can change it with temperature. You can change it with sound. You can change it with all kinds of different modalities. But I use the way that I.

Sorry, I lost you for just a second there. You were just finishing up how pressure and temperature is one way that you can erase and that you're using the acupressure method. And that's what. And you've just. Have you always used that as your method?

I've always used that as a method. You know, I Feel that's sort of my way, as it's traditional for my culture. And that's the way I'm most comfortable using it with my chiropractic background. I do manipulation as well, because even in manipulation, you are affecting that fascia matrix, you are affecting that patterning. It's just. We're just applying it to the joint spaces. So it's almost as if you have to have so many tools in your toolbox to do an effective job at clearing the injuries from athletes. And again, I think everyone's an athlete.

Okay. Well, I know that some people are very analytical, and they're probably understanding what you're getting at. And then some people like to hear an example of how this would actually work with an injury. So can you give me an example of an injury that you see and how you use the idea of acupressure to erase the body's memory of that injury and restore function?

Sure, absolutely. Well, let's start with something very common, and first, I'll go through how the body operates, like for an ankle sprain. Now, an ankle sprain is very nasty to the body and simply because if we use the idea that the body is a survival machine that has evolved through the years with the need to stand upright in a balanced fashion, than an ankle injury that will typically, that potentially can make you fall, can flex you. This is the number one threat to your survival and therefore the number one threat to your body and your health. So ankle sprains that will knock your balance off, your body will not tolerate number one. So the way in which your body will compensate is that it will use every resource as far as mechanical tension. It will compensate your other muscle patterns to bring you in upright position, keeping your eyes level and your neck straight. It will compensate to keep you in that level, balanced place. Now, I know that. And when I work with a patient, even with an ankle sprain, I explain that, yes, the ankle sprain, I can see that. But I explained that this ankle had to communicate with this knee, with this hip spine all the way up and guaranteed to be in the TMJ. Now, the TMJ's job is this apparatus that people think that we're chewing with. The chewing is the secondary job. Its primary job is to distribute balance.

And so when you say tmj, just to clarify with the audience, you're talking about the temporomandibular joint in the jaw, correct?

Yes. Thank you, Ben. Yeah. It's the most complex, wonderful apparatus that actually, you stand on one foot and you feel your Jaw move, it'll accommodate for that off balance and redistribute pressure. So it's sort of like your balance management machine that your body has. Your body has that TMJ that we speak of now. It's the most important job because without it you don't have fine tuned balance. You won't be able to stand. So therefore anybody with almost any injury that's affecting balance will have an involvement with the TMJ that needs to be erased. So again, I will track up typically what I'll do. On an ankle, for example, you have to clear the ankle. What that means is that you have to actually barrage a lot of inputs to erase the talus position. In other words, the talus dome on the top of the foot. That interface takes all the short foot flexor information up into the talus, the talus going into fibula and tibia, then to the cruciates and then up into the hip. So the information has to be erased. And I, one of the positions I'll do is I'll just do a long axis pull. What that does is it just barrages the nerve centers of the talus with. It'll clear. It's like you got a little explosion and erase that. Now I'll pull that talus and then we'll come up through the musculature, through peroneal areas and usually going into cruciate areas. And I'll do deep pressure along that matrix and I'll work my way up typically in through the hips, probably into some of the core areas like the hip flexor. But eventually I know I will find a jaw and an atlas position that's tight, but that tightness is absolutely healthy because that's a natural compensation for a tilting of your gravity tilting of your level line or an ankle sprain. And unless you erase that injury pattern, the body will be happy to compensate for all your days with that twist to your posture. That is a problem. It's a huge problem. And in fact, let me just go off and say. Ben, you still there?

I'm still here, yeah. All right.

Okay. I'm going to go off on a tangent and say something really important in that what happens from these athletic injuries is that the body will borrow off not as important or subordinate systems in order to remain stable and standing. What that's saying is there's a lot of people out there jogging and walking whose health is not balanced enough to support that movement. But their body is obligated to obey what you want it to do and will Start bogging, borrowing entity off non structural places. So if someone isn't balanced enough due to old structural injuries or ill health or toxic issues when they walk and move, your body will always obey that walking and moving because it sees it as primary. And your body will start borrowing, taking, stealing energy from other places. We're talking immune system, cardiovascular system, digestive system, circulatory system, and walking and moving isn't serving their health. Now that's a lot. That's something that people don't realize.

Hmm. Now when you say toxic issues, what are you referring to?

Well, the toxic issues is, you know, to remain healthy in the world these days, it requires several things. Obviously we've got to work with the diet that we've got, the diet that we have, we've got to eat as best we can, but we have to supplement. We have to get some strong foods in there to keep the body clean and supplement. Folks who don't have a clean biochemistry with liver congestion and kidney stress, things like this, that's extremely common out there. So the supplementation of the athlete is critical as well. So you not only have to correct the movement patterns of old injuries, but you also have to maintain that the internal detox systems are open and working for you. So again, I see one of the biggest problems is that we're trying to get this body to walk when it's not perfect to, it's not open or clean enough to do. So.

So what I'm getting from this so far is that for people who are, you know, let's even say that we're not a high level athlete, but say somebody who's a weekend warrior, who's maybe training for a 10k or maybe for their local 100 mile bike ride or something of that nature, you're seeing that foot issues are crucial, that having a proper alignment of the matrix all the way up to the jaw is something that athletes or everybody needs to be thinking about. And then if your body is not in a proper state with everything from nutrition to some of the other alignment factors that you talked about, you're actually going to be basically robbing your immune system and other crucial energy factors in your body.

Yeah, absolutely true. And it's really, you know, our culture doesn't see flexibility as the high priority that I know it should be. You know, in the west here we can't even sit on the floor. We don't have hip open flexibility. We think, well, we've got a comfortable chair, why should we be able to stretch like children? But in other cultures we know that is vital. If you've ever seen, for example, like the sumo wrestlers, the large people, anyway, they develop the flexibility, they can do full splits. They have incredible flexibility through their body, through their hips, in order for them to project energy. They're powerful athletes. You can't move them because they know to run the energy through the body they have to have the hip openness. Now high end athletes, obviously they require that, they require that. But the weekend athlete will say, well, I've been training hard. And I say, well, how's your flexibility? Well, I'm always tight, but I can train hard. This is not helping them. So what I do in my practice, I say, let's go to the gym. We've got to work on this. We've got to work on your personal stretching yoga program. One in which that you have to stick with until you get that openness in this body and you'll feel the energy flowing. Then you can say, you know what, I'm going to go play my sport because I've earned the right to be on the field now because my openness and flowing of the body will support that activity. See, most of the folks here will just say, hey, I want to play hard and I want to hit something, I want to get aggressive. Well, yeah, but see, when you're, you know, when you're a little bit older in the sedentary lifestyle, you think your athletic days are over like at 40 or 50. And they think I'm just getting old. It's not getting old. They've just accumulated too many stresses and injuries in their body, in their matrix that's beginning now to affect the flow of energy. And these guys are going to accept the medications and the ill health that comes with aging, which is absolutely not true. Because if you study how the body operates in different cultures, it's how open you can keep this body, how flowing you can keep the energy. And the easiest, easiest way to do it is just a personal stretching program to start off with.

What type of stretching are you talking about? Like static stretching, yoga, dynamic stretching combinations, probably a combination.

But the ones that I'm going to put on my website are very basic. They're all floor yoga and all for just hip openers. And the reason I focus on that is because I know this body is oriented for weight bearing. So I spend a lot of time ankles, knees and hips before shoulders and spine. Actually, you've got to open up the weight bearing aspects, the locomotion parts of the body first and foremost. Once we get the hips, amazingly Open, the rest is so much easier. So I do static yoga with breathing because obviously it's the breathing that's the key. You want basically your breath with that chi moving throughout your whole system. And the yoga is a wonderful approach to enable that to happen.

I think it's interesting that you bring up the importance of the foot and the ankle and the ground interface because that's the third time that that a health professional has brought this up on our show. I believe the other two people were Johnny Gillespie, who is owner of the Balanced Athlete, which is a yoga program up in the Northeast, and then also Jeff Spencer, who was Lance Armstrong's massage therapist and chiropractic. He also brought up the extreme importance of the foot. And so to the people out there in the audience listening, I mean, take this message home and incorporate it in your routine. You cannot ignore the foot, the ankle and really probably the flexibility that Dr. Akers is talking about is one of the keys to that. Because most of the moves that you're talking about with yoga, your foot's connected to the ground, right?

Yes, yes. Because you have. In the exercise program that I'm going to eventually put on my website, it's going to be a weight bearing movement exercise that stimulates, but without the foot connecting to the ground, the body won't have an idea of where it's supposed to go to. You got to orient it. A lot of my focus when it comes to stimulation and the exercise will be foot oriented, weight bearing. So yeah, it's vital.

Now you talked about your website. Is that something that's forthcoming or something that's already up?

Well, the website that I have right now, it's beginning. I'm going to put some inputs and some videos on it, but it's rulesofthematrix.com is the beginning again. I like the terms of it because I think most people are not aware that our body has this matrix covering, which is absolutely medical fact. An amazing structure that again does a lot things including memorize old injuries, but it's the primary healing organ in the body. It's our fascial matrix. But on my website I've mentioned that there are rules and these are the rules that I've found after 20 years of doing the work.

I saw that you call them the rules of the matrix on your website. I noticed that. Yeah, tell me about those.

The number one rule number one is, is collect, number two conceal and number three compensate. And quite simply, is this matrix body, the one that's interpreting your environment that covers you. It's going to collect information from your environment. But the important thing to remember, it's going to collect only survival threats. In other words, think of it as a whole. There's a hard drive memory going on all the time, memorizing your life, but it's only going to memorize events that are threatening. Now that's number one. It's going to collect everything. It won't collect like, that was a wonderful birthday party. No, it won't. But it will memorize, hey, I almost slipped and fell, or this is, I feel threatened by this person. Those patterns are memorized in this huge hard drive that we have. So number one is going to be your matrix going to collect. It's going to collect threats. Number two is conceal. And the Matrix memory will conceal that information from you. It won't tell you that you were frightened. You'll notice a little bit, oh my gosh, I almost slipped over here. But after that, it won't, it won't connect to your conscious mind because your matrix does want you consciously aware of, of threats that are occurring around you. Because if you express the survival fear in your conscious mind, you'll express fear to your environment and therefore become an easy target. So the context that we've evolved in this body through survival strategies is true. If you show weakness in the jungle, you're the next target. So the second rule of Matrix is not to be a target. And the way it does that is your matrix will keep the threat away from your conscious mind. Now, something to note here is that pain come in. Say, well, why are you pressing there? I don't hurt over there, you know, it's over here, you know. And I say, well, you know, your, your body will hold on to these injury patterns. You won't consciously know it, but once I touch the spot, they go, oh, whoa. Why is that sore? Why is that tight?

That actually is something I experienced when you were working on me. It was the outside of my right leg that was hurting. And the main pressure point that you were working on was the inside of my upper right leg.

Yes, exactly. Again, it does that. We're sort of governed by this, this matrix that we're living in. This body rules us. And it's the key is it has survived, you will survive. Because of the way it's designed. It doesn't want to tell you all the information otherwise you become a target. So it's very hard to know what your body's experiencing and what you're experiencing through the years. It's sort of like once you go Through a game and you were hit after a couple of hours after hit on the field a lot of times, oh, I feel good. Now you need to go get a check. You need to stretch it out. You need to have somebody to look at. You want to make sure you don't carry that injury to the next game. And that's what we do in pro sports. A good friend of mine does the NFL and NBA and they just go from head to toe. Make sure that athlete that took a hit on the game in court doesn't take that injury pattern to the next game because it's costing, it's. Well, it costs lots of things cost lots of money. So that's rule number two and rule number three is that your body will compensate. It will spread that injury out. Sort of like the more injuries you take on, your immune system is going to start to pay into that. Your circulatory system. Everything's going to suffer according to how much holding pattern you've chosen to pick up. You know, a very interesting example I use about this is like an automobile accident. We're sort of aware that, you know, if you're really drunk and you get into, you know, these head on these, you walk away from it. I treat firefighters and they're really upset that some of these drunk drivers, they just walk up and go home, they're fine. Whereas a family that's not inebriated, they're injured and they have to go to the hospital. And the difference is that the drunk person's interpretation of the event is quite different. What we're talking about is the drunk person doesn't perceive this as a life threatening event. Oh, my head will go through this windshield. Oh, that sounds like fun. But the mom and the kids, they brace themselves because they're in this dangerous situation. The drunk does not feed into danger. He doesn't have fear response. He does a program, his matrix with that type pattern. He will walk away with this. He may have to heal a couple of things, but his movement patterns have not been affected.

So you're located stuff down in, you're located down in Sacramento area, right? Yeah, in California. Now our listeners are all over the nation and you know, after listening to this, after I spoke with you, I really started to incorporate things like foam rolling and using the stick a lot more to help out with my connective tissue alignment and basically help to align that matrix that you talk about. What are some practical ways that people can incorporate these concepts that you're talking about into their daily routine, into their daily maintenance, Right?

Okay. You know, that's a great question. Two of the things that you mentioned, the foam roller. The foam roller is wonderful. It's becoming popular in the gym. It's a vital piece of equipment. It's inexpensive, does a great job, especially the it band that is really supporting for the hips. Okay. So the it band stretch with the foam roller is wonderful. You can do a complete body stretching with the foam roller. But the other thing that I want to remind folks about is it's like a small ball. It's sort of like a medicine ball. They're fascial release balls. But you can get the same thing at the sports store. It's like a mini basketball, essentially. You want to get that small ball and you want to lay on top of it. You put it on the floor and you put right over your core, right over your gut, and you want to allow your body to sink into it. What you're doing is you're reaching into the hip flexors. Now, the hip flexors, you can stretch them doing length stretches, but when you get directly into the belly of it and work out the matrix tension of the hip flexors directly with, like, a pressure that works better than any steels. And in lieu of having somebody's elbow like I do on patients, you can almost do the same thing at home with a small ball to the gut. That's what I would recommend.

How big is this ball? Is it like the size of a soccer ball or small?

It's a small. It's like a small soccer ball. They technically call them mini basketballs because they have the. But they have minis, and they're like maybe six inches, maybe six, eight inches, something like that. And they're very firm, so they're rubber. But they do a wonderful job of breaking the areas of the hip flexors, especially through the core, that otherwise you really can't do a good job of releasing. So those are two things I'd recommend. Of course, the floor stretching with the yoga is the other thing. But also any opportunity to have somebody rub your foot, please do that. There's a lot of. Certainly, if you feel inclined to do some reflexology work with the foot, that's fantastic. There's no substitute. And I get my feet done probably at least once a month by my practitioner, and that makes me clear the whole foot. It's a total body treatment. Just through the sole. That would be something. If nothing else, just have your wife here. I've been rub your teeth, and I'm going to tell you if you find some painful Points keep on rubbing. That's a good thing to do because those are reflex points that are so sorry about that.

You were saying that there were reflex points in the foot.

Yeah, what I was saying is that you want to get the foot. Did we cut off? All I was saying is if you can't get to reflexologist, have your wife or husband rub your foot and any point that's tender, go ahead and do that. Foot massage is worth its weight in gold. It's a very, very, very, very strong structure. It has to be because it's weight bearing all the time. So it can take a lot of pressure. Even though you'll complain a lot. It's a very strong structure. And again, what you want to do is you want to have the foot wake up a little bit because just by wearing very supportive, it dumbs down, it doesn't get the inputs and it loses all that proprioceptive implications. That's vital to balance in the athlete. So yeah, foot massage and make it aggressive.

What about something as simple and this is something I do, like keep a golf ball underneath your desk and just rub that on your foot.

That's excellent, excellent. Especially if the athlete find part of the arch being a problem and there's like, you know, initial onset of like plantar fasciitis, things like that. No, use the golf ball. Good idea. I do that with patients every day. Say, hey, here's the golf ball. Work on that every day. You can't just say, hey, I've got a bad foot, I need to take a shot. You've got to work through that fasciitis that's building because the fasciitis that's building through the foot is peaking in about an imbalance in this body. Well, anything, go ahead.

Oh, no, I was just, I was just going to ask if there were actually any, any other, any other tips that you can give people to do at home.

Yeah, I think I'd still be selling the concept of flexibility first. You know, like I say, exercise is absolutely wonderful. I want everybody to exercise and play a sport. Absolutely get involved. But I see that as number two. Number one, you've got. The body has to be open to perform the sport. So every top end athlete like yourself, you're very aware that, you know, the person who will win the race is the one that has an openness. The energy is so efficient that it runs without, you know, work. You don't beat yourself up as you, as you run a ride or swim. Right. Starts the openness first, then the training and the enjoyment of the sport is that's doable, that's easier. It's a tough part that I see is the congestion in the body that happens over time due to sort of the sedentary lifestyle and the world that we live in right now. So spending time on the openness and stretching and flexibility, openness through the diet, openness through the thought and mind, opens through the breathing and openness through this body. I put my emphasis there first.

One of the things that I do every morning is I'll just do some light calisthenics for about four or five minutes to heat up the body. And then I just have a very short seven or eight minute yoga routine that I go through that. It's just some very simple hip openers that I have memorized. I started doing that several months ago and have been. And it's been crucial in keeping me open, keeping the hips open when I'm running or biking or walking or even with the back pain that I'll experience when I'm sitting for a long period of time. It's really helped with that as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ben, I'm taking a page out of your book. I do the same thing. That's great.

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna put a link to your website up and also this, this interview will actually come out later on this week. But is there any other. Are there any other resources in terms of websites or books or anything of that nature that you would recommend to people to find out more, to learn more?

Well, I am in the process of putting some of the details onto my website to link. I'm just going through a couple of my resources that would be easy, not so typical, and real practical so they're forthcoming.

Okay, fantastic. Well, I want to thank you for your time, Dr. Akers, and I look forward to maybe talking with you again and finding out more information about ways that people can use some of the concepts that you talked about to heal their bodies. Because I really think that in this day and age, there's so much information that we have access to and that people just, they go out the door and they just push hard and don't think about a lot of these different aspects in terms of the groundwork that's inside their bodies that should, should really come before a lot of the movements that they're doing.

Yes, no, I absolutely agree with you and I appreciate you having me on speaking about this. And also, I'll leave you with one thing. It's like I tell my patients, you know, there's a lot of complicated healthcare to do out there. But when we're doing it with just this body, something as simple as openness and breathing and stretching, it not only is extremely effective to your body, it costs you nothing. It's always there and available. It's like, oh, where's my. Oh, my body's right here. It's right here. You've got it. It's available. It's going to cost you nothing. It's all the benefits. Thank you for having me on, Ben.

Thanks for coming on the show. This is Ben Greenfield and Dr. Akers from BenGreenfieldFitness.com signing out. So that's all the content for this week from BenGreenfieldFitness.com remember, next week I will be coming at you with a little bit more information about iPhone fitness programs. And then I'm also going to be releasing next week some incredible discount codes. I know that one of the things I've run into is that people tell me that a lot of the nutrition supplements that they take are expensive and they add up. And I have figured out a way for you to be able to affordably get yourself hooked up with a lot of the supplements that I talk about on this show. Remember, if you want to leave us a ranking in itunes, just go to the the show notes of this podcast and click on the link at the end that says leave us a ranking in itunes. Be sure to spread the word about this to your friends. Send them over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com, sign up for the newsletter. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out.