Whole Body Revolution

Rewire yourself for greater health, happiness and success.

Sukie Baxter

Pain Relief

The Secret to Eliminating Gas, Bloating and Indigestion, For Good

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Do you notice a heavy, bloated feeling when you eat?  Do you frequently suffer from gas, bloating and indigestion?  Here’s a tip that will help you not only eliminate digestive issues but also get way more nutrition out of your food.

Whenever possible, youʼll want to consume your vegetables raw and uncooked. Heating food above 115 degrees Fahrenheit destroys the enzymes in the plant. Enzymes break down the food inside your body and make the nutrients available to your cells.

Your body does produce enzymes on its own; however lifelong habits of eating over processed “dead” foods (like corn chips, white bread, tortillas, crackers, cookies, hydrogenated fats and oils, etc) take an enormous toll on your bodyʼs ability to produce enzymes. The older you get, the fewer enzymes you have available to help you break down food.

Lactose intolerance is, in fact, an enzyme deficiency. Lactose is a sugar in milk that requires the enzyme lactase to break it down. Most people donʼt produce lactase and, thus, are lactose intolerant.

If you find that eating raw produce is difficult at first, I suggest you supplement your meals with a few capsules of plant based digestive enzymes. You can purchase these at any health food store – just ensure that they are plant based.

In fact, if you want to boost your detoxification results, take enzymes even if produce isnʼt a problem! They will help to digest any food residue hanging out in your digestive tract and fermenting. This happens when food is incompletely broken down, causing gas, bloating and indigestion. Digestive enzymes will give you back that light, free feeling in your belly!

Pain Relief

Are You Eating The Number One Best Anti Inflammatory Food For Pain Relief?

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Certain foods containing natural anti inflammatory compounds can fight inflammation in your body and relieve pain, all without the use of drugs.  Even better, many anti inflammatory foods make delicious additions to your meals, livening up your diet and healing your body all in one fell swoop.

The mother of all anti inflammatory foods is actually a spice called turmeric.  Turmeric is a bright yellow-orange colored spice that is frequently used in Indian curries.  It has a warm, peppery flavor that is slightly bitter.  Turmeric has been used as a healing spice in Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine systems throughout history due to its powerful effects on the body, which go far beyond just pain relief.

Health Benefits of Turmeric

While turmeric may best be known for its natural anti inflammatory compound curcumin that’s responsible for reducing muscle and joint pain, the bright yellow root has many other physical benefits.  Turmeric is a powerful detoxifier and anti oxidant food.  During one study, rats fed turmeric showed a dramatic increase in two liver detoxifying enzymes, suggesting that daily ingestion of turmeric may help mitigate the effects of dietary carcinogens (like pesticides, residue from plastic, and preservatives).

Turmeric has also shown promise in slowing the progression of neuro-degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis, although researchers aren’t sure how the anti inflammatory spice functions in this regard.  And turmeric has an additional litany of health benefits, from lowering cholesterol to cardiovascular protection.

With anti inflammatory effects comparable to over the counter drugs such as Motrin and none of the unsafe side effects, it makes sense to include turmeric as an integral part of your diet.

Tasty Ways to Eat Turmeric

Turmeric is perhaps most delicious when cooked up in a savory curry.  Just make sure you use pure turmeric powder to make your curry as tests done on curry spice blends have shown that their content of turmeric is minimal, so you won’t get the full benefit.

Sprinkle turmeric on egg dishes, use it when sauteing vegetables, mix it into a homemade salad dressing or veggie dip.  You can also use fresh turmeric root, which looks a lot like ginger root and is available at many health food stores, in vegetable juice in place of or in addition to ginger.

When I started drinking green veggie juices chock full of ginger, another powerful anti inflammatory food, and turmeric, I noticed pain relief within three days.  Consuming fresh turmeric has the added benefit of keeping all the delicate enzymes intact, the full function of which we don’t fully understand yet.  I have noticed that consuming whole foods in their raw, unadulterated form usually yields the most potent results.

Want more pain relief tips and tricks?  Enter your name and email below for free instant access to my 5 secrets to a flexible, pain-free body.

Back Pain

Why Does My Mid Back Hurt When I Look Down?

Do you have middle back pain when you look down toward your toes?  Do you feel tension and strain between your shoulder blades?

Pain in the mid back between the shoulder blades is quite common. But massaging your aching muscles won’t get rid of your middle back pain.

It’s logical to want to rub the part of your body that hurts because it seems like that’s where the problem is. But to really get an understanding of what’s going on in your mid back, we need to take a more holistic view.

Related:

Why Does My Mid Back Hurt? Common Causes

First of all, we need to understand the two kinds of tight muscles: those that are locked short and those that are locked long.

Muscles that are locked short are just that – muscles that have contracted and won’t let go.  Locked long muscles, on the other hand, are being stretched, usually by the muscles that are locked short. They’re hanging on for dear life to keep you in some semblance of balance.

This is usually what’s going on in cases of middle back pain. The muscles on the front of your shoulders and chest are super tight, pulling your shoulders and back forward and stretching the muscles along your spine.

Those muscles in your mid back and along your neck are already being pulled to the greatest length they can manage. Rubbing them won’t help because they’re being stretched and literally can’t let go.

4 Keys to Fixing Middle Back Pain for Good

Your mid back pain is a result of tight shoulder and chest muscles — NOT tight back muscles. Usually people who suffer from middle back pain actually have weak back muscles, so back strengthening exercises can help.

In many cases, weak core muscles and tight hip flexors are also pulling your rib cage down, causing your shoulders to round into the classic computer hunch.

To get relief for your middle back pain, work on opening up the front of your body. Stretch your hip flexors and your chest muscles. Work on strengthening your core.

Pain Free At Any Age

 

Pain Relief

Video: How to Get Rid of a Foot Cramp

Foot Cramp Relief

This video shows you a myofascial release trick to get rid of a foot cramp and prevent it from coming back.  Do this frequently, especially if you wear a lot of high heels or very tight, constrictive shoes to keep foot cramps from happening again.

This exercise is great at the end of the day to relax sore, tired feet but be gentle and careful if you have a foot cramp happening while you are doing this.  You don’t want to cause extra tension and cramping.

Pain Relief

What To Do For Pain in the Neck and Mid Back

Your neck is so stiff you can barely look over your shoulder. The space between your shoulder blades feels like someone’s got your spine in a vice grip.  Your shoulders are so close to your ears it looks like you’re trying to start a new fashion in earrings.  This is not a pleasant situation.

And yet, despite all the neck and shoulder stretches you do, in spite of all the neck massages you receive, the pain continues to persist.  You may even have had an MRI or x-ray that showed “nothing is wrong” with your back.  But if nothing’s wrong, why the heck does it hurt so bad it wakes you up in the middle of the night?

Here’s the secret…there really is nothing wrong with your neck and mid back.  The pain is coming from somewhere else – your hips.

This makes absolutely no sense when we look at the body from the western medical perspective which divides the body into parts and pieces.  If your neck hurts, they look at your neck, from C1 (the first vertebra in your spine) to C7 (the last “neck” vertebra).  But this is kind of short sighted when you consider that C7 connects to T1 – the first thoracic vertebra – and T1 to T2, so on and so forth, all the way down to your sacrum, the triangular shaped bone at the bottom of your spine.

Lo and behold, your sacrum lies between your (drum roll, please) hip bones!  So, if your pelvis is restricted, tilted, shifted or imbalanced, it’s going to travel upward, right into your neck and mid back.

Now it’s all starting to come together, right?  The body is a system where each piece and part is dependent on every other piece for function and balance.  So, neck and back pain sufferer, how do you address the restrictions in your hips?

First, stretch your quads.  Hip flexors – the muscles the bend your knee to your chest – get really tight when you sit a lot, which pretty much everyone in western society does more than they should (yes, even if you go to the gym every day).  These guys drag your pelvis forward and cause a “swayback” appearance in your lower back.  Lacking support from below, your neck and mid back get really tight to keep you upright.

Second, make sure your glutes and hamstrings are working.  Do glute and ham exercises, but NOT the ones that require a machine.  Machines are for rehab and they don’t really give you functional movement.  The best way to train your body is with body weight and free weight exercises that force you to use deep postural muscles to support the movement.

Some good examples of glute and hamstring exercises are deadlifts, squats and kettlebell swings.  Body weight squats can be quite effective for anyone who has lazy glute and hamstring muscles, but I like to add in a kettlebell at chest height because it forces you to keep your upper body back over your heels.  When you kip forward and point your chest at the ground, you’re just feeding the tight hip flexor pattern.

Third, get good bodywork from a structural practitioner who can help you learn your physical imbalances.  It’s pretty hard to change something you’re not aware of, so if you’re blithely going about your day with a crooked pelvis for 23.5 hours, seven days a week, half an hour of glute and hamstring exercises aren’t going to change anything.  Repatterning your body is all about changing your habits, and the exercises you do should carry over into every aspect of your daily life.