IS inflammation the root cause of your pain?

You have chronic pain, you go to the doctor, the doctor prescribes you painkillers. That’s how we are told to deal with pain nowadays, but we know that isn’t the best way. Instead, we should be determining the root of what’s causing the pain, not just masking the symptom with a painkiller. It’s not just random. It’s not genetics. It’s not just in your head. It’s likely inflammation caused by some sort of underlying stress.

but I don’t feel stressed?

Stress isn’t caused just by a tough day at work or a screaming child. Exercise causes stress, cold water exposure causes stress, even sitting in a sauna can cause stress. Theses types of stress are hermetic stresses that help you get stronger and more stress-resistant. You know the old Kelly Clarkson lyric, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” essentially that’s the idea.

There are other types of stresses that can make you weaker, for example: eating foods you are allergic or intolerant to, drinking alcohol or smoking, sitting on the couch and watching TV all of the time, just to name a few. These stresses cause a negative kind of stress that triggers an inflammatory response that causes symptoms like pain, headaches, stomach aches, fatigue, itchy skin, etc. These symptoms are your body communicating that something is wrong to you.

How do I know what my body is saying?

This is where things get a bit more complicating. Some instances are much more simple: I’m allergic to dairy, I eat cheese, I poop my brains out. Obviously, it was the cheese causing the poops. Other instances are bit more complicated. For example, I have an intolerance to nightshades - a family of plants including tomatoes, white potatoes, egg plants, etc. - so when I eat anything from the nightshade family, I get negative side effects. Some are easy to decipher: tomatoes give me acid reflux. Others are a bit more nuanced: I eat white potatoes and I get pain in my left shoulder and neck.

When this first happened, I had no idea what was going on. I ate white potatoes on a regular basis, and on a regular basis I was having shoulder and neck pain. Being a personal trainer, I assumed it was something to do with the musculature in my shoulder and neck being out of whack. Was I sleeping wrong? Did I have an imbalance? What are my muscles doing to cause this pain?

It turns out it wasn’t anything to do with my muscles, it was my diet.

Eating white potatoes caused this inflammation in my shoulder and neck that manifested itself as aches and pains. It was my bodies way of telling me, “dude, stop eating freaking white potatoes.” Now that I understand this concept of symptoms being a way of communication, I look out for them and try to connect them to behaviors. Another example, is if I exercise, then take a cold shower within a few hours of finishing, I get stiffness and joint pain. Seems strange since cold showers are touted as being a great way to lower inflammation, right? Well, yes, it is great for lowering inflammation. The issue lies in the fact that exercising causes a positive inflammation spike that tells our body to adapt and get stronger, if we stint that spike by cold showering, it causes our body to send us a signal - “don’t cold shower right after a workout, dummy!”

So how do you learn to communicate with your body? How do you learn what it is trying to say? Practice. That’s it. It’s just practicing the ability to listen to your body. It takes time, but you can get to a point where you are very in tune with your body. I believe that all symptoms are linked to some root cause, I don’t think things just happen randomly. So when your body communicates, don’t just chalk what it’s saying up to being unlucky or genetics.

What are the symptoms I should look out for?

I will note that some symptoms could mean a million different things, in that instance you may feel unlucky, but don’t fret, you can go through the list of possibilities and narrow it down to the most likely offenders. Knowing that, let’s dig into the list of symptoms and their possible roots.

• Frequent Headaches

This is most often linked to an electrolyte imbalance caused by poor hydration. This doesn’t mean dehydration in the traditional sense, you don’t solve this issue just by drinking more water. Just drinking more water can often times cause further dehydration, ironically. What you need in this case is to make sure you are drinking high quality spring water and supplementing with electrolytes when needed.

I’ll note here that people who suffer from frequent headaches or even migraines are often sodium deficient - 85% of migraine suffers are sodium deficient. Salting your food can actually help fill this deficiency gap. Salt isn’t going to give you hyper tension unless you way overdo it. Just salt to taste. And those tastes can change overtime so listen to your tongue!

More rarely, headaches are connected to eye strain or tension buildup, but it does happen. If you work a job where you sit at a desk on a computer all day, you are more likely to get eye strain and tension buildup (specifically in the neck). These symptoms are more habit related, so you need to find a way to combat them. For example you could wear blue light blocking glasses to help reduce eye strain. You could focus on maintaining good posture while on your computer as well as opting for a standing desk if possible to reduce tension buildup. These are more obvious offenders, however, but they can still be overlooked, so keep your eyes open for the obvious causes.

• Acid reflux, bloating, Diarrhea or constipation

  This is a key sign that you’re eating something you are intolerant to and I would say a majority of the time this is the case. Stomach pain is almost always connected to the food you’re eating - seems like one of those “duh” moments when you think about it. Common offenders are whole grains (particularly wheat), dairy (pasteurized is harder to digest), sugar, high fiber vegetables, acidic foods, and carbohydrate-rich foods in general.

  I have noticed with myself, after years of eating poorly in my childhood and early adult life, that I tend to have my best digestion when I eat a low carbohydrate diet free of whole grains, vegetables, and low in sugar. It may sound crazy to feel my best with no vegetables, but their is an explanation: vegetables are high in anti-nutrients which are exactly like they sound - they reduce and/or hinder nutrient absorption. Green leafy vegetables tend to be the highest in anti-nutrients so even though they are “high” in nutrients, the nutrients in them are very indigestible meaning that a majority of those nutrients are not digested by your body. If you are suffering from digestive issues, you may want to consider cutting back on some of these hard to digest vegetables and the other foods listed above.

  I wrote a whole post on gut health here that is worth checking out if you suffer from digestive issues.

• Brain fog, Irritability, mood swings

  We often think that hormones are the biggest cause of brain fog, irritability, and mood swings and will consider it out of our control, but is it really something we can’t control? I don’t believe so. I think hormones can have an effect, but I think poor diet is what leads to poor hormone health that inevitably leads to brain fog, irritability, and mood swings. You can probably tell that I think diet plays a crucial role in our health based on all we have talked about today, but I think it has an extra special role here. Science has begun to call the gut our “second brain” because we now know that our emotions are directly connected to our gut health. Having poor gut health makes us more anxious, nervous, irritable, and even depressed - based on that alone, we can infer that food effects our brain and mind.

  So what do we do to alleviate our brain fog, irritability, and mood swings? We optimize our diet and gut health. There are some individual differences here, so this is more general advice, but most people will benefit from a lower carbohydrate diet free of conventional whole grains, pasteurized dairy, processed sugar, high anti-nutrient vegetables (see this post to read more about gut health) and instead opt for local raised meats, raw dairy, seasonal fruits, and small doses of properly prepared whole grains (think sourdough, sprouted, etc.) and vegetables. Basically, aiming to eat whole foods with a big focus on nutrient density.

• Joint pain, Aches and pains, stiffness, tight muscles

  Like the story I talked about above, inflammation from food intolerances was what led to my joint pain, and often times that’s what causes my clients pain. Again, foods we are intolerant to cause bad stress to the body, not the good kind of stress, so continuing to eat them will cause more and more damage to your body overtime. Keeping a food log and tracking your symptoms is a great way to determine what may be causing your issues.

  Another common offender for joint pain, aches and pains, stiffness, and tight muscles is a high carbohydrate diet. Sugar in general is very pro-inflammatory, meaning it causes inflammation on it’s own. So that is something that should be managed and kept low to help with these issues. If you eat sugary desserts before bed, you’ll notice that you will wake up with lots of joint pain and inflammation the following morning, that’s because of the sugar.

  Another common cause is a sedentary lifestyle, sitting all day and getting little to no activity. This leads to poor posture, tight muscles, and weakness, all of which lead to a high risk of injury down the road. The best thing you can do to overcome a sedentary lifestyle is to incorporate activity into your life on a daily basis: go for walks, exercise regularly (preferably strength training with a personal trainer like me), standing when possible, parking further away from the grocery store, taking the stairs, limiting your TV time. These are just a handful of easy ways to reduce your sedentary time, but they make a world of difference in the long term.

Is inflammation the root cause of your issues?

Only you can be the judge (again, unless you come and work with me and I can help you narrow down the list). This isn’t a perfect list, so don’t let it get you down if your issue isn’t solved by the tips I listed above. Some issues have much more complex root causes that may need the help of a professional to determine. Working with a personal trainer, nutrition coach, or holistic practitioner can help determine some of these harder to solve issues.

If you liked this post, consider checking out some of my other posts! If you want to learn more about what it’s like to work with me, send me an email at primitivewellnessptmt@gmail.com. If you want more information like this on a regular basis, join my private facebook group “Primitive Wellness in Newport, ME” for free. Thanks for reading!