Sandro Torres
I know that your time is valuable, and my time is valuable. I am always doing something; I do not like to waste time. I always like to invest my time. I keep busy writing, I read, meditate, exercise and work at growing my business. I am doing a lot of things. But whatever I am doing I make sure it adds value to the world and adds value to me. So, I really appreciate that you are taking the time to read this article.
Jackie Parker
So, it is important to know that the colon is anywhere from 5 to 6 feet long and I think that everyone here is interested in learning about diet and most of you are probably making an effort to eat well.
Nowadays, we eat a more processed diet...
So, it is necessary to supplement fiber almost every day. It really helps absorb toxins and it scrubs the small and large intestine. Our diets are not the way that they used to be. People are not going to the bathroom as often as they should be.
There are a couple of rules about the transient time. One is when you eat breakfast this morning you should eliminate it after today's lunch. Lunch should be eliminated after tonight's dinner. I have also heard the 24-hour rule. Maybe it is breakfast after breakfast. So, when people do come to see me, I can see things that they have eaten from two or three days still in their system.
So if you think about it, when eating food which starts with the enzymes in your mouth…
The tendency is to eat too fast, and we need to slow down and chew our food. These healthy enzymes really start digesting in your mouth first, which takes the burden off the rest of your system, and it goes into your stomach and hopefully you have enough hydrochloric acid and the right balance of stomach acids to break down that food. Then it goes into the small intestine and then into the large intestine. If you were to take from your mouth to your anis and stretch it out, it would be almost 35 miles long and that is a lot of transient, that is a lot from here to here and then for women we have all our female organs stuffed in there as well. So, it's really important to chew our food well , slow down and focus on having a bowel movement at least every day and generally. Like I said, it's anywhere from the size of 1/4 in diameter, totally tubular and soft enough that if we were stirred around it would all break apart and so if you're having anything different than that, it all means something. You have a toxic colon, and you have food that is rotting and fermenting and creating gas, and as that gas gets created, it is then you get what is called leaky gut syndrome, where the colon becomes very porous like a sponge and things that really are not meant to go out of the colon wall.
Vitamin B and K are made in the colon and the body utilizes it and if your colon wall is completely clogged, then you are not utilizing your food. You are not utilizing what your body needs. Then there is a mucus lining. We are supposed to make a new mucus lining every four days, the mucus lining protects your body and it's not sloughing off then. it is just building and building and then you are getting a wall that will not allow food to digest and your colon becomes toxic. There are no healthy bacteria. It is not a healthy harmonious place. When people suffer from gas, It sends people to the ER. They thinking that they have other pains and its gas pain and a lot of people when they say it is their stomach, it is not their stomach. It's their colon.
Yes, it is great to give the body a break. You don't want to put your body in starvation mode. I have had people come in and say they are doing “master cleanser” for 30 days and you will put your body into starvation mode and then it will start to store fat. There are people who have done crazy juice fasts. So, there is a right way to cleanse. It is nice to give your body a break from always having to digest. It is good to give your body a little bit of a rest from the same things that you eat all the time and when you do that you realize you don't need as much food, and you do not need as many spices and salad dressings. It is like hitting the reset for your taste buds and you feel great.
I do not think that everybody should do the same cleanse…
There are tools out there like laxatives that are a huge billion-dollar industry. There are things that I do recommend helping people to get the colon moving, but it is all stuff that you do not want to become dependent on. And personally, I think colon cleansing, a series of three, depending on what a person has, should be done every six months, like getting your teeth cleaned. Some people need it more. When people come to the gym, people work out and they must work their colon muscles. Colon hydrotherapy is also a workout for your colon, and it makes it stronger when you have a bowel movement, and you are independent and free of laxatives. Some of the cleanses do not focus enough on detoxifying the colon.
Some people say “I have not had a bowel movement because I have not been eating much. But there is still your body is detoxing and your colon needs to be open to have a place to dump into. So, I recommend a cold therapy session in the beginning, in the middle and the end of a cleanse because it supports the colon. Like if you're detoxing, where is it going to go if you are not eliminating. People say, “Oh, but I just had a huge bowel movement, and I don't think there is anything left. Then they come in for a session and we see things that are coming out that they ate three days ago.
So, it is all part of the process and I'm sure you can do it without colon hydrotherapy, but the use of enemas has been discussed in medical journals. They were used in the hospitals, as soon as you came in, you had an enema. In the old days you had them before childbirth and you had an enema before you left the hospital. Now they don't want to do them, so the doctors and nurses are giving stool softeners instead and laxatives and we've become accustomed to taking pills. If I had a headache, in the old days you had to do an enema and it's been around for thousands and thousands of years. And when people see me and have colon therapy. For the most part. When the whole session is over with. Generally, I like to do three. They feel so much better, losing up to 10 lbs. and often we are carrying around that 4 to 5 lbs. of fecal matter that we don't need to be carrying around.
In all the years that I have been doing colon therapy I see pills go by; I see Fibercon. It does not break down. A few times I saw a piece of steak; that person was really backed up. So, the meat and proteins breakdown. Some vegetable fibers are actually indigestible and that is for fiber purposes.
So, there are many things that can cause a leaky gut…
a lot of anti-inflammatory drugs, people are taking so many drugs these days. I think that in the old days, the doctors used to do the grand rounds. The old guy's teaching the new guys coming in into the hospitals and now it is drug companies, and it is the drug reps that are teaching the new doctors about this drug and then that's kind of what they do. A lot more people with gut problems and definitely constipation, I'm sure. That leaky gut is basically where the colon becomes like a sponge. It is so porous that things are just leaking out of your colon and into the rest of your body. So, you are like I said, you are leaking out toxins and you have way too much permeability.
Dr Alex Svac
So, a little bit of what I want to talk about today was movements or quality of movement, efficiency, move and all that kind of stuff. There are three main reasons why we look at good quality movement, proper movement.
The first one being performance and injury rehabilitation, preventive measures…
If you look at the best athletes in the world and especially the ones that don't get hurt often, they are not necessarily the biggest, fastest, strongest people on the team. They have the best overall quality of movement, efficiency, and coordination relative to their activity and sport. So, movement kind of directly translates to performance and activity.
The second one is the overall quality of daily living…
So, for instance you do not have good movement with your squat. Something you do all the time, all day, every day even if you are not thinking about it. You squat down in your chair or toilet or whatever it is. If you are constantly repetitive in nature working on top of a dysfunctional movement pattern, can lead to stress on the joints, injured disks. So, it is good for the quality of all activities.
And the third thing is overall burn out…
So, when talking about stress, we have these maps in our brain and it prioritizes certain aspects of our body. So, for instance, the hands are the most sensitive areas in the body. In the brain, that is a vast area, but all these different body maps have ties into other aspects of the way our brain works. They found a lot of connection between these body maps and perception, quality of thought, and cognitive functions. Stress is a key factor in your life. It can affect our quality of movement, and
poor quality of movement can affect the way you perceive yourself.
So, what I mean by quality movement is, for example, people with low back pain, pelvic pain, hip pain, knee pain. The big issue that they have is something called the hip hinge. To demonstrate it, common bending over to pick something off the floor and when you do a hip hinge, what you should be able to do is, as you bend forward, you should be able to dissociate or separate from your body the difference between the lumbar spine and your pelvis. A lot of people with issues from the chest down have a hard time distinguishing that. For instance, somebody with low back pain, chronic low back pain in nature, when they bend forward instead of maintaining that natural neutral lumbar spine curved relation, now you will see a kind of a flexion. When you flex the lumbar spine with the pelvis, it puts a lot of shear force on the disks and joints.
So, a good quality hip hinge, you are maintaining that curvature and keeping tension on hamstrings, glutes, etc. Poor hip hinges when someone bends forward, they more so round at the back or lumbar spine instead. As they are trying to pick something up, the lumbar spine should be strong and stable. The thoracic spine is where it should have a lot of good mobility. If you start to flex or so, you lose that natural curvature of the lumbar spine. It puts a lot of shear force on the disk, being a lot of horizontal force onto it.
There are a bunch of different things that can also happen. That is when you also get a lot of compensation types of issues with the pelvis. Then you will get a lot of muscle inhibition and the glutes start to shut off because your pelvis is used to relying more on your lower back muscles. So, you get a lot of compensation type issues which could lead to injury. The hip hinge is kind of just one movement. There are all kinds of basic movement patterns. For Instance we look a lot at a deep squat pattern, the lunge, movement pattern, overhead reach for someone with neck shoulder type issues .Having good quality of those movements and good efficiency in those movements is what sets you up to be as injury free as you can be and basically if you are especially someone that is working out, physically active.
But even if you are not necessarily lifting weights or running…
you go through different movement patterns like that all the time. So, if you are constantly having a poor hip hinge or poor slot pattern or your knees caving in and feet pronating, over time that can easily lead to deficiency joints, discs, and neurological changes in your brain in that kind of area, tends to get what we call in english, smudged.
The treatment when I see someone with that with a forward movement pattern like that. So, if you grease the grove. you continue to teach a proper movement pattern over and over again. You'll actually physically see a change to the brain, and this is where the connection is a lot clearer and much sharper. And then that's when you know that pain is kind of subsiding for someone in pain.
You know that when someone says lift with the legs, this still is not a good movement pattern because it is putting stress on the quads and the knees. The hip hinge is actually a good movement pattern. To lift something on the floor because it loads the whole poster. This is an efficient movement pattern if you're picking up something that is a relatively light load. If you start to lose that pattern, you're going to put a lot of pressure on the joints. If you can start to load that movement pattern, even with a little bit of layout weight, your body is naturally going to figure out how to move with that weight.
Pain is just the brain's way of saying, “like give me a change…”
So, over time these peripheral nerves are always firing because there is some sort of dysfunction in the body, mention muscle imbalance. If that goes on for an extended period of time, you get a windup effect and then you also get central sensitization. Meaning there is an actual structural change to the central nervous system, meaning spinal cord and the brain. Once you get central sensitization, you cannot do anything about that. It is just something in your spinal cord you cannot do anything about that. You can reprogram the pathway that does that same movement, so that now It starts taking a different pathway, so that it ignores that old pathway. In a sense and that's when chronic pain goes away. They're saying you can change the efficiency of certain movement patterns or work in different planes or maybe just create a new path for this space.
Dr Hilary Back
My talk today is to talk about naturopathic medicine to some degree because so many people don't even know what a naturopath is. We are basically general practitioners, and we see almost everything. There are some that are specialized. I consider myself to be a general practitioner of naturopathic medicine. Where we fit in is, instead of going to your doctor and they just give you an antibiotic because you have a cold, we will, first of all, try to boost your immune system to stop getting so many colds and we are going to treat the cold using some natural antimicrobials. So that is really what it is.
You know, there are so many different options and opportunities around natural medicine. All of us who are here today are interested in natural medicine in one form or another.
Leaky gut, I like to think of it as we have what are called tight junctions…
throughout our intestines and when someone has a leaky gut. These tight junctions become looser and things that should not get through do. What happens throughout your leaky gut is that you get a large variety of symptoms, and the reason why there are so many symptoms is because whatever is getting out of what should be in your gut, your body is actually identifying as not me. This is not supposed to be here. It's not supposed to be here, it should be in the intestine. It's not supposed to be by the wrist or in your muscles or just in general as far as blood flow. Your body then starts attacking itself. So leaky gut is basically the basis, in my opinion, for all autoimmune diseases.
You start attacking yourself now. It also can cause digestive disruption such as gas and bloating. There are a ton of things that we think that leaky gut can cause. So healing people's gut is really the center of healing because we as naturopaths believe everything centers in the gut. Because if you are not digesting well, nothing else is working properly.
Leaky gut manifests in a lot of ways; autoimmune disorders are very common…
If someone is pretty sick, you want to treat the gut. There are a lot of natural remedies that can be very helpful in healing both the small and large intestine. Probiotics are important because what is happening is that your large intestine has to do with elimination and getting rid of toxins and it's also 80% of your immune system. It's important that you keep your large intestine colon healthy, so what I would tell you is that there are several things that can help.
I have combination products that are all about gut healing that have deglycerized licorice, aloe and marshmallow and I mean they go on and on. Zinc carnosine can be very helpful for the gut. There are a lot of different options and so oftentimes I use a combination of products to help heal the gut. I am healing the gut while I am and trying to get rid of whatever is living inside someone that may not be helping them and treating whatever overall problems they may have.
I am going to go back again also with the cleansing, I do a lot of cleanses as well. They might be a little different than Jackie. I usually focus on detoxing the liver as well as the intestines. I often send people to get colon cleanses while they are doing an internal cleanse while on a hypoallergenic diet. I am in my 17th year of practice, and I can tell you that one of the most common things is how many people tell me they can feel it in their head, less anxiety, less depression, better moods overall. It is because food absolutely affects how we feel, and it is part of that framework because of neurotransmitters.
This is how you keep a healthy immune system...
Serotonin is kind of a happy neurotransmitter. Serotonin is made in your gut. So if your gut is not working right and you are not making serotonin, that could be part of why people are depressed. There are unbelievable numbers of connections between the gut and brain. I do not want to totally simplify it, but I think there is more to learn about everything.
I am not one to follow a one-size-fits-all at all. I do a lot of food sensitivity testing. I draw people's blood, I use the Melisa test. Many people do not even know that they are sensitive to different things. This test comes back, and it gives you a list; it tests about 112 foods. When you know, you try avoiding these foods and see how you feel. There are diets. One example, the paleo diet. If you know that something works for you or does not work for you, then that's a good start. It is a place to start, but I love food sensitivity testing because then this is about you. It is not about me. It is not about anyone else in the room; it's about what your body can manage. It's really simple; the one I do is more cost effective because sensory testing can be expensive. I love it and I find that people feel better. What we do is, you take these foods, whatever foods are on their list, you remove them for six full weeks and then you reintroduce them one at a time and you get to see what does and doesn't bother you. I mean, some things may bother you more than others; some things might not really bother you much. Sometimes you take something out for a certain period, like a year, and then you try it again and see how you feel because sometimes, once you have eliminated, your guts had a chance to heal, then you can reintroduce it and you can do better. I'm not a one-size-fits-all diet person. I really try to match It to who you are. That's my best approach and then if someone does not want to do food sensitivity testing. The other thing that I like to do is the hypoallergenic diet. I remove the 10 biggest food allergens that are out there. It's not all of them. Let's say you are allergic to carrots and I'm not taking carrots out of your diet. But I do get rid of gluten, corn and all the dairy, sugar, peanuts and eggs. Most meats I take out and then reintroduce them and you see how you do it with them. This is how you keep a healthy immune system.
Sandro Torres
So, what I am going to teach you at this moment is how you can improve your life. Let me begin by telling you my mistakes. My life when I was in Mexico City, I was poor, super poor. I had nothing, but that's the way I was leaving. I did not know much about life and my life was like living in a bubble. Then I moved to the USA. As soon as I got here, I started making money. But I was poor. That was my choice.
I want you to think about something. I was there because I made those choices. I was lazy. So that is the first thing that you need to learn. The things that we're doing right now are by choice. So, we are learning all this great information about posture, about the leaking gut, but it's important that you at least do something about it.
Now I am in a completely different position. I did make good money in the past and I used to work to High-quality restaurant. I made good money, but I wasted it. I bought a car, I was partying, buying clothes, traveling. I am not saying those things are wrong if you can afford that. I could not afford it. I thought I could afford it because I made money, but I found myself broke. Every season I never had enough money and I had to ask for money to pay my rent until I could pay it back when the season started.
Back in the past, I wanted to start exercising. I wanted to become very muscular...
and I started following the myth that I should be eating a lot of calories and I started gaining weight. So, there were a lot of things that I was doing completely wrong. Now I am in a different position thanks to these concepts that I am going to teach you.
So, right now, I owe no money; I am out of debt and I own few apartments and I have my business. I wrote a book and I'm working on another two books. I'm completely getting out of that situation that I used to be in. I'm in a different position because of the choices I made. I made a conscious choice about what I want to do, and I am paying the price for that. So that is exactly what I want you to learn.
What put me where I used to be back in the past was the drinking, eating at McDonald's…
spending my money, not paying attention to my relationships. These bad habits I used to follow would put me back in the same place. I never went back and thought about the things that I used to do.
Every single choice that you make right now is going to affect your future. So, if you eat a candy bar, Jackie may find out in three days. Then you eat a candy bar tomorrow and the next day and you continue doing it. It is going to affect your future. Now if you substitute that candy bar for an apple, is it Is going to affect your future? What is going to happen in one year, in five years?
As a matter of fact, I want you to do me a huge favor. Everybody close your eyes. I am going to be talking to you for a bit, but I want you to keep your eyes closed. I want you to think how your life will look in a year. I'm going to give you a couple seconds. What do you want to be in one year? Think about your relationship. Think about your trips. Think about your health. Think about your finances. Think about your habits. Think about things that you want. Now we are going to have a jump to five years. Think about where you want to be in five years. Where are you going to be? Now for the last thing. Are you going to be buying yourself a home, with a family, and health? Go ahead, open your eyes. So now that you thought about it, tell me the truth. Did you see yourself dead? Did you see yourself with cancer? Sick or fighting with your significant other? getting divorced? Do you see yourself there? Nobody does, right? The problem is that we do not make those conclusions, we just live life as it goes, letting life make the choices for us.
When you set up goals and think about it, say, I want to be here in five years, how many get there? If you do not see yourself with that, if you do not see yourself with cancer, what can I do, what is under my control so I can avoid that? What are the things that cause cancer? The microwave, processed foods? Think about all those things that do contribute. Can you stay away from that? If you do at least those things, you know that you are doing something to avoid that, right? If you see yourself with your finances in good condition, can you do something about it? If you see yourself healthy, like a nice body, not being overweight, you do something right now. Can you exercise? Can you eat healthily? So, every single thing that you do every day is going to affect your future. Keep that in mind.
Once you have a goal, you are going to start doing little things every day so you can get there…
I hear that if you trust somebody with $10 and that person goes and invests those $10 and then gives you more money back, that person can be trusted with $1,000,000. That means if you can start with the little things, you can do the bigger things. But if you cannot do the small things, you are not going to be able to do the bigger things. If you cannot switch the candy bar for the apple, you cannot cook healthy because you are not even doing the smaller things. Take the more difficult things, they are going to be even more difficult. You need to begin with something small. If you cannot walk for half an hour, you are not going to run four miles.
Stress is good depending on the stress that you bring into your life…
Let's talk a little bit about my stress. Here is a great example, in the past I did not have the money to pay for an expensive car and if I did not have the money, it would be a lot of stress to keep it. I would have to have two jobs to pay for that car. That is a negative stress that won’t bring value to my life. Now I stress about my business; I stress about all my clients, helping them get good results, being happy, delivering what I promise. That is good stress because these things bring value to my life. So that is the difference between one and the other.
Raise your hands if you do not have any problems? If you are human, then you are going to have problems. We all have problems. There is no person out there that does have problems. As a matter of fact, I was walking by my house and I was reading and there were probably like 100 people. I just wanted to ask them, please do me a favor, please raise your hand if you don't have any problems. Nobody raised their hand because I was talking to the dead. Dead people do not have problems. The cemetery is just by my house. Sometimes I go there to read. So, only the living have problems. The more problems you have, the better it is, if they are good problems. You need to solve them; that is what keeps you going. You become stronger when you deal with them. You have to know how to approach it. You have to create them. It is good to create problems.
If you are married or if you have kids, you are going to have problems. If you have a business, you are going to have problems. If you have a job, you are going to have problems. If you exercise, you will have problems. You will always have problems. That issue is how you deal with those problems.
So find problems that add value to other people’s lives and your life...
Custom Body Fitness Sandro Torres Talk: Factors Do Add Up: Find out how far you can go
GaiaTree Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine
Megan King, L.Ac., Ma.OM. Talk: How Acupuncture Restores Imbalances https://gaiatreeacu.com/
Back To Balance
Dr. Hilary Back Talk: Naturopathic Medicine: What it can do for you https://backtobalancedoc.com/
Glenwood Springs Chiropractic Center Dr. Alex Svac Talk: Intro To Functional Movement Assessment
Inner Wellness Jacqueline Parker
Talk: Healthy Colon and a Vibrant Life