Hip Pain and Problems with an Easy Fix

Sometimes the most difficult health issues have the easiest fix that can't be seen. Simply because its too easy. We think it must be a bigger issue because the chiropractor or physical therapist is telling us one thing and our body's crying out in pain, while all along we only need a simple change. Here's a story about Karen and how a chain of events hurt her hips and how she remedied the problem after a few years of unnecessary appointments and many dollars later.

Karen was a healthy 50 year old woman who felt like she was 30. She was of average height and build and had no health issues. She ate right and walked daily and incorporated light excise into her life. One day while walking her dog through a tiered wooded park she an urge to run hard and fast through the empty area. She jumped and dodged through the woodsy park and hurled down to different levels and ended her run feeling good but wondering what on earth had come over her, perhaps she may pay for it later. The next day she felt a twinge in her groin area and it worsened over the next few weeks. It felt like a tendon or muscle was pulled very tight. Realizing this was not getting better she went to her chiropractor who said she had pulled a muscle and gave her some stretching exercises. Karen did them, but it took almost a year of stretches and chiropractic appointments before she felt good again. 

The next event in her life was a trip to Humboldt University, a school of outdoor stairs. You couldn't find more stairs in one place than this university. While visiting with her daughter they took a tour and spent the day climbing stairs, up and down they went all day. Karen had never had any issues with her knees before so when she woke up the next day with her knees aching she became very concerned. It progressively worsened throughout the next few days to the point she could barely get up and down her stairs at her home. She stopped walking the dog far, and hilly walks were cut back drastically. Karen had always been a crossed legged sitter, she would sit on the floor with projects and sit cross legged watching TV. She found she could no longer position herself like she had done since childhood. Crushed that it appeared age was setting in, Karen dealt with it as best she could and let time heal her pains. After year passed she had improved her knees (blog coming about how I fixed her knee problem). 

Now Karen's groin and knee problems were gone, but her hips were causing aching down one leg and sharp zings when she went up or down a step. Her lower back ached constantly and in the morning she could barely get out of bed, once she stood she felt much better. She began to go to the chiropractor regularly to have her hips adjusted. If she picked up anything heavy her hips was out again and back she went to have it adjusted. She spoke to the chiropractor about why the appointments and therapies weren't taking, and they kept suggesting exercising more as they noticed while stretching her legs they were very tight in the groin area and down her legs. They said exercise would tighten the muscles and hold her hip in place. 

Karen began to feel like age was really taking over body and decided gentle yoga would be best for her. From the first day she noticed her instructor stood a bit pigeon toed in front of the class. After weeks went by Karen realized that the teacher was drilling into the students to stand with their feet straight, and one day the instructor said you will look a bit pigeon toed if you truly stand with feet straight out in front of you. Karen lined up the outside of her feet in a straight line on her mat and felt very awkward, but made a conscious effort each class to line up her feet constantly.

Then the change came one night. While walking her dog up a slight slope Karen noticed she was teetering a bit in her gait. Like an overweight person who teeters from side to side. She even noticed that her knees where not bending very much. She tuned into her strange walk and how all the incidents in her past had created this new walk. The groin pull and the knee incident had put her in a protective mode while walking and she never noticed it. Her walks could only have continued if she has adjusted her walk to keep the pain away. These were not prominent movements an outside eye might see, but enough for Karen to take notice this particular night. She studied her walk the rest of the way home and remembered the yoga instructors mantra of straight feet! Karen began to pull in her feet from the slight outward stance to a straight foot stance and as importantly she began to bend her knees and ankles in a straight line forward as she walked. It felt like she was 20 years old again. She remembered how it felt to bend her joints and it gave her such a spring in her walk she knew immediately she had made an error in allowing her injuries to control her alignment. 

Karen walks everyday now and has to still think about aligning her walk, when she takes her mind off of it she wanders back to teetered walk slightly and open toed. Then she self corrects again. There were a few days that she had some foot cramps due to the new walking mode, but she called them happy cramps, since they were making such incredible changes in her life. She suddenly had a change in her hips, they were no longer aching and the chiropractic appointments stopped. She also laughingly mentioned her oncoming walks looks much more attractive than the old teetering Karen. The simple self correction fixed a problem that was controlling her life. Karen is back to long walks and feeling young again.

I just want to mention this story does not suggest chiropractors are not beneficial, they are very good at crisis situation and tune-ups. However, if you have to go regularly then the problem is not being addressed correctly. I try to tell my clients that if you continually work on a problem area and it does not get better, the problem is not coming from that area. Your organs and systems talk to your whole body and if they have a problem they very often voice there pain somewhere else. Look for story about Karen and her knees coming soon. It is a perfect example of the pain coming from somewhere else in the body. Also, Karen's hips problems were coming from her feet and knees.

If you suffer from hip problems perhaps this story can help heal your hip pain. Perhaps it will be a combination of this story and weight loss or a particular exercise that brings you back to a healthy place. Be opened minded and I hope this helps you.

Time for Hydrotherapy...

Its that time of year, immune systems need a good boost to prepare for the winter months. Hydrotherapy is a time honored method of water therapy. This ancient practice is still around because it has proven throughout the centuries that it works, and I can attest to this myself.

First, how to use hydrotherapy and then why and how it works.. Before starting there are three rules: Never use hydrotherapy on children. Never use hydrotherapy when you are having your period, or when you are sick. Now your ready to start.

I suggest using this therapy one week in the fall, typically October, and following again in January for a week. Start by taking a morning or evening shower, at end of the shower you will turn the water down to cold, and I mean brrrr cold. Stand under it for however long it takes you to get full goose bumps. Make sure you lift your arms and have the water hit your pits! This will really cool you down fast. Now that you're all goose bumpy turn the water back up to warm and warm yourself up for a minute. You repeat this 3 times. It is key that you end on Cold and step out of the shower. Again, always end on Cold!

You must be wondering how this works to improve your immune system, here is the best way to describe it. Your normal shower brings blood to the surface of the skin and creates circulation on the outer portion of your body, then when you turn the water cold it forces the blood that is sitting on the surface to quickly rush to your internal organs to protect it from the cold. This in turn creates a type of suction motion back and forth through the body and organs washing out toxins, thus strengthening the immune system.

If your immune system is already compromised by disease this is a great way to help improve and rebuild it along with providing healthy food choices. Again, don't use this therapy if you are already suffering from a cold or are very ill. If you have endometriosis, I highly recommend this during winter months. Over the years I have used this method every winter and noticed a great improvement during cold season. Even if you still get a cold you will notice it doesn't strike you nearly as hard as it used to. Be sure to follow it up again in January with another round of therapy as this is the half way point for winter and gives you the second boost to get through the final months of the season.

Native Americans to our worldwide ancestors have used this by soaking in hot springs and plunging into cold rivers close by, they used herbs to strengthen and treat colds too.

Mother Nature Rocks!

Endometriosis Exercise Video can promote healing...

Should you exercise or shouldn't you? I am asked this question quite often. My belief is that in order to help move the body along with healing a moderate amount of exercise is great for promoting the healing process. Never an obsessive amount of exercise, but just enough to move the blood and fluids in your body. There are great exercises for endo, I will insert a video on a few moves that are incredible for stretching and breaking up the webbing that occurs inside the reproductive area. When you are working with me to clean out the endometriosis adding these few moves can help the process mover quicker. Don't forget to check out my website: endowebsite.com

Check out this video:

How I Overcame Endometriosis

Who knows when I had enough symptoms to label it early stages Endometriosis, I suspect about the age of 25. From my first period at age 14 and then on I was plagued by heavy periods. I can’t remember a period that didn’t involve Super Plus tampons, or horrible maxi size pads used to give oneself a break. It wasn’t till my late twenties I noticed changes in my cycle, from the heavy, clotting, and exhausted during menses, to very painful days throughout the month, in particular ovulation. Ouch.

About the age of 30 and at the start of my marriage, I was diagnosed with endometriosis. Life spiraled down very quickly from there. I had many ultra-sounds to monitor my ever-expanding ovaries. After a few years I lamented and had surgery to remove my endometriosis. The doctor performed a laparotomy (same type of incision as a C-section) and discovered my endometriosis was all over my intestines, cul-de-sac, and had impacted the inside of my ovaries. My ovaries were 3-4 times their normal size and was causing great pain each month during ovulation. The doctors removed as much endometriosis as she could. She told me she laid my intestines out on a table to try and pick the endometriosis off. In the end, she said there were too many small deposits and she would use a drug for the last bits remaining.

Useless Surgery and Medications

I was immediately put on Lupron. At the time, this drug was not quite out on the market, and I had to sign (my life away) saying I agreed to a variety of possible side effects. I didn’t really understand that I was part of a test group for the drug. They hadn't yet discovered Lupron devastates the calcium in our bones...irreplaceable. Not knowing this, I stayed on Lupron for 6 months and watched my fingernails and toenails deteriorate rapidly. Lupron puts you into false menopause so you have no periods, allowing the endometriosis to dry up. After a 6 month prescription and no period due to the drug, my first period after the Lupron was back to its old self, very painful and no different than my past periods!

Doctor Says This Can’t BE!

I called my physician and said I didn't feel good. She said it couldn’t be endometriosis, it was scar tissue and not to worry. The next month the pain was back again. To quiet me down the doctor ordered an ultra-sound. When she received my results she told me she literally ran to the Endocrinology department and said "how can this be?" The endocrinologist looked at my ultra-sound and told her "there are some people you just can't help." All my endometriosis was back and even worse than before surgery!

I was told it's now or never if you want to try and have a baby. I went through a miscarriage, but became pregnant again (don't ask me how) and I delivered a healthy baby boy. Breast feeding typically prevents you from having a period. As soon as I stopped breast feeding my period came back I found myself on the bathroom floor again in pain. My physician asked me to prepare for a hysterectomy. My case was very aggressive, like a freight train out of control.

A New Friend Saved my Life

Soon after I went to visit a new girlfriend, Kathleen. This was a life changing point in my life. I sat in her car complaining of my endometriosis woe's, when she turned to me and said, "You should go see my nutritionist, she'll fix you." Well, what else did I have to loose? My uterus was on the line! I had tried homeopathy for a year, but it never worked deep enough. Nutrition never occurred to me. Didn't I eat right? How hard is it to figure out food?

Specializing Beyond Nutrition

What I didn't realize was some nutritionist's have specialties. Well, after 2-3 visits to the nutritionist I knew I struck gold. It finally all made sense, my mind was opened up to a whole new way of viewing the body. I made an agreement with my nutritionist that I would remain on a birth control pill for 6 months, since my endometriosis was growing rapidly it was all I could do to contain it, and I was too scared to stop my birth control pill for fear of the pain returning. At the end of 6 months, with a lot of trepidation I went off the pill. My endometriosis was gone!

Back to School I Go

I decided to follow in the footsteps of my nutritionist and applied to the university she had attended. Five years later I had a B.S. in Clinical Nutrition and during the five years of school I honed in on endometriosis as my own personal study emphasis. I finished healing my own body and along the way learned much more about detoxification and specific organ depletion.

I have been endometriosis free for 13 years, and no, I do not have any signs or symptoms of the disease. I do not take supplements to prevent the endometriosis from returning. I eat a balanced diet and like most of us enjoy dessert when given the first opportunity.

LIFE IS GOOD!

www.endo.website.com