Ligament Stretch Syndrome The Toilet Bowl of Adrenal Exhaustion by Dr. Arlo Gordin

Many people suffer from stressed-out, tired adrenal glands, a very common problem.  The typical symptoms can include fatigue, headaches, pain and aches, inflammatory conditions (problems that end in “-itis”, bronchitis, dermatitis, colitis, etc.), low blood sugar, rashes, swellings, allergies, asthma, or numerous others.  Low adrenals often cause, underlie, or aggravate many health problems.

Of those many people with worn-down adrenals, a significant group has a condition known as “ligament stretch syndrome”.  This problem gets its name from the effect it often has on the joints.  When the adrenal hormones are so low that they leave the joints and ligaments (tissues that hold the bones of joints in place and allow for their determined range of movement) undernourished, a person will fail a test from Applied Kinesiology, the chiropractic specialty that developed muscle-testing as a health analytic method.  The doctor tests the muscle strength in an arm or leg, then gives a quick tug on the arm or leg tested.  On instantly re-testing, the muscle strength is greatly reduced.  People of good adrenal health don’t weaken after such a small quick jerk across the joints, only the ones with “ligament stretch syndrome”.

If you have ligament stretch syndrome then you score below the typical and common low adrenal patient.  At that point you really have hit the toilet bowl of adrenal gland exhaustion, decreased function, and reduced hormone output.  Any of the typical low adrenal health conditions exist for the ligament stretch patient, but special patterns of symptoms tend to be found.  As a “ligament stretch syndrome” patient you may have some of these following described symptoms, usually not all of them.  Fatigue can be present and can be extreme; like your engine never really gets going.  Because the joints are poorly kept up with hormones, you could feel that you can’t do normal physical or athletic activities.  The result is new pain and a sense of injury.  “I can’t play racquetball, or I’ll hurt a wrist or ankle.”  “I can’t work out, or I’ll hurt my back or knee (or whatever!)”  These migrating multiple pains could cause you to be so careful of physical activities, so that both family and friends begin to think you're losing it.  You may consider that you've become a hypochondriac, but all of the pains and symptoms that are real; the little things that shouldn’t cause pain, could make you miserable.  And your injuries don’t heal well.  The ligament stretch syndrome patient often has multiple areas of pain, multiple areas of chronic injury.

You may feel constantly mis-aligned or out-of-adjustment.  But this is the patient who complains that chiropractic adjustments don’t “hold”.  Even worse, adjustments may have caused pain (a great adjustment doesn’t hurt a patient, not usually, unless ligament stretch syndrome is present).  So some feel a need for an adjustment, but what’s the use?  I feel I need one, it might hurt me, so I can’t have one...what a hassle!

A terrible hopelessness affects many of these patients.  They feel that they can never get well.  It’s a hopeless type of depression.  Their inflammatory conditions can be horrible.  Patients with fibromyalgia (the horrible pain in joints and muscles) almost always have “ligament stretch syndrome”, as do people with severe auto-immune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.  Headaches can be of the more severe types, often migraines.  Poor immunity and frequent colds or infections can result.

What a mess!  These patients are the doctor’s and chiropractor’s nightmare:  non-recovery and constant severe complaints.  Until the research uncovering ligament stretch syndrome was made, these patients had no likely hope of health.  And they are magnets for medications and the prescription pad: pain killers, anti-inflammatories, migraine drugs, arthritis meds, even anti-depressants.  Some "self-medicate" abusing alcohol or other substances.

The treatment for this condition is specific.  The patient must take the correct adrenal nutrient, often trickling the dose every waking hour, at first.  The adrenals must be “kick-started” in this way or they usually won’t “wake-up” at all.  The average patient will complete this hourly dosage in one week;  some will take longer, and some shorter.  When they pass the ligament stretch test, they’re off the hourly adrenal.  Now they’ve graduated up to terrible adrenals, still lower than most patients with low adrenals!  (At this point adjustments become painless and more helpful.)  And still more adrenal repair needs to be done.

If you have this problem, you must learn all the information on low adrenals and low blood sugar, and do everything possible to help them repair, and eliminate all things possible that tear them down.  Diet, stress management and supplementation are positioned at the top of the list of useful things.  Watch our videos on YouTube to learn in detail about adrenals:  Energy, Blood Sugar is the one that explains adrenal health, disease and recovery in detail.

With the breakthrough of understanding the diagnosis and treatment of this condition, some of the most tortured patients that ever cross a doctor’s door can be miraculously helped, brought to a high level of physical and mental health and well-being.  Severe asthma, pain syndromes, allergic, headache, migraine, auto-immune patients can most frequently be brought "back to life".

Testing for whether this problem exists is easy and fast.  We test/screen it on every new patient.  Because when it is present, if not treated first, we'll be banging our heads on the door of failure. 

If you sense that this information sounds like you, do yourself the greatest health favor ever, and have it checked.  If it tests positive and you do the things that reverse it, you may likely find the light of health shining on you in ways you've forgotten or lost hope of attaining.

THROW THAT COFFEE OUT – NO WAIT PUT IT BACK IN THAT CUP! by Dr. Arlo Gordin

Many of us were drilled to believe that coffee (and tea) and caffeine were health no-no's and should be avoided.

For quite some time now, I have re-evaluated coffee and tea and I feel that it may well be interesting to you to consider some research, data and viewpoints.

It has been observed that many of the longest lived people on planet Earth drink coffee or tea at intervals through the day.  That type of data generally makes me consider that the item being considered may, at the least, be unlikely to be a life-shortener.

For many years it has been known that coffee will stimulate the production of adrenal hormones and for this reason any conclusion I submit here would be to use moderate amounts of coffee or tea (as for example 3-4 times/day).  Not massive intake.  To overdose on too much of these seems to court adrenal and other hormonal ill effects.  And if you know of my successful health strategies with my patients, adrenal "wake-up" and rebuilding are a corner post of many health programs.  Adrenal burn-out is epidemic and the underlying key factor in many pain, blood sugar, headache, migraine, inflammatory, allergic, asthmatic, autoimmune errors which go by myriads of names and diagnoses.  (For more on this topic go to Dr Arlo Gordin on YouTube and watch my presentations of 1) Glandular Understanding and 2) Energy Blood Sugar and the Zone (adrenals covered in worthwhile detail there).

I am a board certified Anti-Aging physician through the Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. Our brain division is involved in many fascinating areas of brain understanding and preventing/reversing the unwanted effects of aging on our brains; certainly one area of anti-aging that all of us would hope to benefit from.

Loss of memory, slowing thought, brain "aging", Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s:  Some of our top researchers observe that in our brains (electrical organs as they are) as we age they drop in both electrical voltage and speed. The consideration that these electrical slowdowns eventually make the firing of brain synapses slower, and when electrically challenged to exceedingly low power and speed, impede the brain's most basic activity: to fire and to work.

Strategies to speed up and up-power the brain are one area of current anti-aging activity.

Simply speaking, coffee is found to speed up brain activity. Studies state that coffee reduces risk of memory loss and Alzheimer’s.  It is considered that coffee causes the quite valuable blood-brain barrier to remain more impervious to degrading and it’s use is linked to better mood and less depression. Coffee appears to reduce the creation of plaques in the brain, considered the diagnostic mark of Alzheimer’s Disease.¹ Coffee has been studied and seems to prevent or diminish risk of death — it has been studied to provide a 15% reduction in cardiovascular disease. Studies have demonstrated that coffee use reduces incidence of high blood sugar and diabetes (a devastating disease and the most expensive disease to pay for in America; also an epidemic worldwide).  This as well as, some studies show, reducing the incidence of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.²

Although you can read health and scientific opinions that coffee can either kill you or help you stay young alert and healthy, I've long made my own and current evaluation of the data and opinion.

My espresso maker gets hot several times daily and has for years.

References

1. “Coffee Combats Alzheimer’s Risk.” WorldHealth, 2015, www.worldhealth.net/news/coffee-combats-
alzheimers-risk/.

2. “New Health Benefits from Daily Coffee - Life Extension.” Life Extension The Science of a Healthier Life,
2014, www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2014/7/new-health-benefits-from-daily-coffee/page-01.

Adrenal Gland Problems: Still a Poorly Understood Secret by Dr. Arlo Gordin

Many of my patients have been told they have an Adrenal Gland Problem.  But many haven’t ever gotten the results they wish.  You may have taken (many!) adrenal nutritional supplements, but the problems that are caused, worsened or complicated by your adrenal malfunction or exhaustion still persist or even get worse!  Why?  Because adrenals respond to many things in life: what you eat, your emotions, pain and more.  Just taking some nutrients usually is not enough to get the job done.  It takes more, and most doctors don’t know or help enough to get that “more” achieved.  And since precision chiropractic is often so essential, many doctors aren’t equipped to do the job.

You often may need to repair your adrenal glands as a first priority in order to get healthy. You have two of these little guys, one on top of each kidney.  They put out a number of essential hormones for health, and they respond to, and can be damaged by, a number of life’s less desirable but often not easily avoidable occurrences. They also, like your other glands, tend to get less healthy and productive just with age.  Their hormone output drop with increasing years, and can plummet from shocks or stressors, including biochemical ones.

These adrenal hormones release into your bloodstream.  They include: A. The blood sugar hormone that keeps your energy up between meals. If it is low, fatigue, headaches and other symptoms of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) result. B. The anti-inflammatory/anti-pain hormone “cortisone” that keeps your body from pain, as well as from inflammatory and auto-immune illnesses.  These include illnesses whose names end in “itis” (inflammation of) such as colitis, arthritis, dermatitis and bronchitis.  C.  The salt balancing hormones that tell your kidneys to not lose all your essential mineral salts into your urine.  Reductions in these play a role in such things as abnormal swellings of the body, and heart and energy malfunctions, D.  Adrenaline which gives you bursts of energy in “stress” situations, and E. Estrogen for the post-menopausal woman that helps her stay more hormonally balanced.  The adrenals make the only source of estrogen (female hormone) in the body after menopause.

Because of the profound effects of these hormones, if they are out of balance, big problems are the result. Temporarily they may be pushed into high gear by stress or incorrect eating, which later eventually leads to their burnout.  Burnout of the adrenals underlies a great many health problems, and worsens symptoms in the areas of your body that you are already weakened from birth (genetics) or from other insults and causes.

Overeating carbohydrates (sweet or starchy foods including sugar, breads, cereals, etc) will cause an insulin reaction. Generally at the same time all the ill effects of over-secreting insulin occur, the adrenals will be burnt out on the rebound blood sugar crash that follows. Not balancing food properly, overeating carbs, especially ones that arrive fast as sugar in the blood, is one factor that wears out adrenals.  Because insulin reactions to meals badly chosen in type and quantity, are the leading causes of 1) overweight  2) placqued and clogged arteries 3) heart attack and stroke (these two are the leading causes of death), eating better may be one of the best things you could do for yourself and your adrenal glands.  Refer to eating "40-30-30", balancing protein, carbohydrate and oil intake in the right proportions when you eat and when you snack.

Fatigue is a frequent effect of worn-out adrenals.  Because their hormones regulate the fueling (blood sugar supply) of cells, and especially those of the brain, underfueling results in low energy, worn-out-ness. Depression is another effect that may occur to an individual with an underfuelled brain and nervous system.  Many other symptoms of a worn-out energy system and poorly functioning nerves also can result. The reason so many symptoms are possible with poorly regulated blood sugar is because it is the fuel for the brain and nerves, and they are involved in every pain and physical feeling you experience, as well as controlling and regulating EVERY body function.  Sleep problems are also often a result of burnt out adrenals.

Your adrenals are also known as your “Stress Glands”.  Mental and emotional stress, worry, anxiety over love, money, family, any of the usual (or unusual) sources, will eventually burn out the adrenals, and cripple their hormonal output. The man who figured this out (Hans Selye) was recognized by the Nobel committee. He also discovered that other types of stress besides emotional can burn them out. Physical or chemical stresses can also cause adrenal burnout.  Ongoing pain, nerve system stress and malfunction, stimulant drugs, overdosing on caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol are on that list.  Despite the fact that some of the highest accolades  in science were awarded for this understanding, and it was broadly written about, few medical physicians give much thought to, or have approaches for assisting adrenals to repair or function.  This comes as no surprise since most medical physicians are not trained or comfortable to practice nutrition or life-friendly direction.  They are trained more with a prescription pad in one hand, and a scalpel in the other.  As such they are happy to write scripts for pain-killers, anti-inflammatories, and even the hard-to-quit and side-effect ridden medication "cortisone" much more freely than well-informed sense would allow.

If you have a chronic inflammatory disorder, generally medicine or drugs are merely symptomatic treatment.  Colitis, laryngitis, vaginitis, (notice the “itis” endings) are usually medically incurable, but just forever treatable, but only to reduce the symptoms. Chronic pain, fibromyalgia, torn up joints and arthritis are common effects with adrenal components. Now it is finally made its way to common medical understanding that inflammation is a basic factor in arthritis, and also in heart attack and strokes.  The drug industry’s anti-inflammatory drugs do not treat causes, but only symptoms. Headaches and migraines similarly have important adrenal (and blood sugar) components. Asthma and allergies have vital adrenal underpinnings. If ongoing medication is your recommended course, with no real end in sight, you could think then about strengthening your adrenals and fixing whatever else is actually causing the problem, not just spray painting over the symptoms with medications.

When your adrenals are weak, the things that are harming them are generally winning, and those that could help them are losing.  If you want to turn that around, you must try to discard or minimize the harmers, and bring on and support the helpers.  Stress factors should be handled, chronic pain corrected, imbalanced eating repaired, to name a few possibilities.  We do know how to guide you in getting these handled.

One great helper that can be instituted is to take adrenal support NUTRIENTS.  Generally this can be done with supplements into which several adrenal support substances are combined.  The right supplements should be prescribed, and the correct dose as well.  Many adrenal supplements flood the market and the labels look great.  But the actual effects are often not successful, and some, which contain “whole adrenal gland” even from “grass fed cows” have hormone content that sabotages your adrenals’ repair.  Our supplements don’t have hormone content for that reason.

Adrenal rebuilding, although not an overnight process, is a cornerstone of many health miracle cases in our office.  Chronically ill, pain-ridden, fibromyalgia and many times profoundly sick people have been restored to normal healthy lives. Migraine sufferers, headache sufferers, asthmatics, people with chronic pain, to name a few.  Although many require effective chiropractic treatment to areas of the body get the adrenals restored. To get many very sick and beleaguered patients to well often takes being effective in adrenal restoration. 

This is a critical arena of health to understand well and to apply.  It is not likely that it could be done adequate justice in only a page or two of writing.  I would refer you to our health class (in my name on YouTube and on drarlogordin.com), “Energy and Blood Sugar”.  In that seminar a much more comprehensive discussion of this subject is covered, and the specifics of solution explained. 

Our current lifestyles present great stresses on our adrenals. It is no great surprise that many of us have poor adrenal output, nor that many chronic patients have really burnt out adrenals.  If you fall into either category, one of the best things you could do is help your adrenals rebuild.  While doing so, do strengthen your blood sugar handling system, and reduce your risks for numerous health problems. Adrenal dysfunction causes many problems that reduce function and happiness, many nasty and “incurable” diseases, as well as those that are the leading causes of death.

Far better to support life, live it healthily, without pain, inflammation, allergy, metabolic failure and actively to the fullest than to enrich the trillion dollar drug industry, and that only for the hope of short temporary relief.