Our bodies are designed with innately driven mechanisms for healing. However excessive stressors affecting our body, both from the external environment as well as poor lifestyle choices can inhibit our innate healing process. As a health practitioner it is my job to facilitate healing by reducing the bodies stress load and removing as many obstacles of healing as possible. In my experience and training I have found that there are 6 hidden barriers of healing that present in our office. The 6 barriers of healing are: food sensitivities, immune challenges, heavy metal toxicity, chemical toxicity, scars and excessive emotional stress. When any of these are present, chronic illness or pain can continue even with good care and if not addressed it is often impossible for a patient to recover their health. We use a system of testing the body through the bodies muscle response to stressors to find out if these hidden barriers exist.
1. Food Sensitivity
Food sensitivity is a poorly understood reaction to food that may be associated with an increased level of a certain IgG class of antibodies. Unlike a food allergy, which produces an IgE response with immediate symptoms, the response from food sensitivity can often be delayed for a few days and the intensity of the response is often dependent on the amount or frequency of consumption. In our office I find food sensitivities to cause an inflammatory response in nerves, muscles and joints as well as the brain. Patients will present with pain, stiffness, fatigue and sometimes a “foggy brain” and will state that they just woke up feeling bad with no “known” cause. The primary foods responsible for these kinds of reactions are: eggs, dairy, wheat, methylxanthines (caffeine byproducts), soy, sugar, yeast, corn and nightshade vegetables. There are blood tests to evaluate an IgE and an IgG response however in our office we do energetic testing using vials of these substances to see how the body reacts. Often after energetic correction and eliminating these from the diet a person will quickly begin to feel better. It’s often suggested by Functional medicine practitioners that when these are found, a patient should be put on a supplemental program of Multizyme (digestive enzymes) and Zypan from Standard Process and if leaky gut is present then a gut healing agent like Enzycore.
2. Immune Challenges
Immune challenges are bacterial, viral, yeast-fungal and parasites that flourish in an overstressed and weakened immune system. The term for an overgrowth or imbalance of these opportunistic organisms is dysbiosis. These organisms live in and on us however are often kept in check by our “healthy” microbiome. Our immune system is affected by many different stressors including your thoughts, your food and your physical activity. Dysbiosis is a major cause of inflammation which can create all kinds of chronic health problems.
For many of these immune stressors medicine will prescribe an antibiotic type agent which in some cases can cause more harm by severely disrupting the body’s normal biome in the gut. There are healthy natural herbal and whole food anti-microbial available as an alternative to this approach.
3. Heavy Metal Toxicity
Heavy metals are toxic to the body and are found both in nature and are often a hazard of our industrial world. These toxic metals have been around as long as we have, and our bodies have developed a sophisticated detoxification system to deal with them as well as toxic chemicals. However the shear amount of our exposure is a great stress to our liver and kidneys which are constantly working to detox us. These can be a significant cause of inflammation and nervous system disruption with excessive exposure and or when a person has a weakened immune system or has an over stressed detox system. There is a fair amount of controversy about metals like mercury in dental fillings and in vaccine additives. I will not comment on this subject at this time. There is energetic testing for these as well as natural supplementation to help reduce the levels when needed however this should be done slowly over time to prevent a toxic reaction.
4. Chemical Toxicity
Until about 1940 almost no toxic synthetic chemicals were produced in the U.S, and now literally billions of kilograms of toxic chemicals have been produced and are used on everything from pesticides, herbicides to plastics, chlorine-fluorine, preservatives-food coloring to drugs/medications. These chemicals significantly stress our liver and kidneys as they constantly are working to detox us. The 3 most common toxic chemicals that show up for functional medicine practitioners are pesticides, plastics and medications. Dr. Michael Whitman who does a lot of work on patients to help detox this as well as metal toxicity recommends a product called Brain Bright Detox as well as other specific nutrition for this overload.
5. Scars
Scientific research has demonstrated that any area of tissue that heals with scar formation can act as a capacitor, which accumulates nerve energy and which can cause nerve receptor misfiring. This can cause pain anywhere in the body due to the wide range of connections we have in our bodies. Scars caused by hysterectomy, C-sections and episiotomies usually cross the midline of the body where important energy meridians are located. Reactions to scars can occur even years after the initial scar was produced.
Scars can be treated with cold laser therapy and wheat germ oil.
6. Excessive Emotional Stress
Our overall health is very dependent on how we eat, how we move and how we think and feel. If a person is overwhelmed by an emotional state and or “stuck” in a particular emotional place they begin to continually produce stress hormones and effect neurotransmitters in their bodies and brains which can adversely affect their physical health. I am not trained to treat these conditions however we have clinical psychologists that we can refer to who use various methods to help get people free from this continual and destructive stress.
Will Schafernak. D.C. Copyright© 2019 • all right reserved