You’ve probably heard that our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, right?
Great! I’m about to zero in on the nervous system and brain specifically and these structures are made up of specialized cells called ‘neurons’
Interested yet? Read on…
Out of the approximately 68 billion neurons in your brain, it is estimated that EACH neuron can have between 1,000 and 10,000 connections!!!!
Imagine each neuron is a pathway or roadway that is built to send communication down. So you are the car (or communication) driving down these pathways. The connections are the intersections where you can take a right turn or simply carry on forward to your desired destination.
So, if each neuron has 1,000-10,000 connections, imagine how many pathways of possibilities that would make!?
It sort of reminds me of those books when you were a kid where you could chose your own ending (Goosebumps, I think it was called?)
I digress…..
That’s A LOT of neural pathways!
What’s an example of a neural pathway? Omg, I could go on and on with examples…here’s a few:
-the smell of coffee (neurons in your olfactory nerves pick up coffee molecules and send back info along their pathway to the brain and your brain decides, ‘mmmmm, that’s coffee!’
-you get a sliver in your toe (neurons in the skin of your toe shoot up info to the brain about what is happening down there)
-you are about to go onstage to speak in front of hundreds of people (neurons in your gut send info to the brain about feeling nervous, your brain sends that ‘butterfly’ feeling back down to the gut via a separate pathway)
The other cool thing is that our brains absolutely love breaking up old pathways, redefining them and even forming new pathways.
The best example I can think of for this is playing any sport. You know the saying “practice makes perfect”? Well, it’s right….sort of.
I prefer “Perfect Practice Makes Perfect”.
That is simply because, the more you do something or say something a certain way, the more positive feedback you are giving to the brain that it is doing a good job.
For instance, if you are practicing your lay up in basketball you need to focus on every single step of the process in order to get better. If you are good at the approach, but bad at the actually shot, most humans will keep practicing the full lay up, continue to miss the shot but nail the approach.
We are wired to ignore what we are bad at. Our brain is saying “yes! Nailed it again”….even though we missed the shot.
We must practice the hard stuff and get better at it. In this example, your nervous system already has a very strong and intricate neural pathway to perform the approach. However, the neural pathways that coordinate the shot are weak. So strengthen the weak pathways and the entire skill will come together like magic!
Now we’re ready to talk about this blog’s title
When you get an ache, a pain, an injury, etc. Do you tend to say “I’m just getting older”?
Or how about “oh, it’s just my age”?
If this is you, you need to STOP saying this phrase immediately!!!!
I cannot stress this enough. There is no such thing as an ache or pain that is a direct result of ageing.
I do not care what your parent taught you….I do not care what your doctor told you about your arthritis…
When you say phrases like this, they are instructions for your body to behave according to your expectations. (Hint: THIS is the #1 reason you need to stop telling your body that it's getting old!)
Let me explain something to you about arthritis. Trust me, it will blow your mind…
Arthritis is joint inflammation because of the loss of cartilage at the ends of the bones. This inflammation is brought to the area where the bones are rubbing to try and cushion it because you’ve lost your natural cushioning.
Cartilage is what we call avascular. This means it does not have a vascular (blood) supply to it. We need a source of nutrition constantly coming into any tissue of the body to keep it healthy so nature has designed a beautiful system called a synovial joint.
Most joints in your body are walled off from the rest of your body via a synovial sheath or capsule. Inside that capsule is the ends of the bones, their cartilage, the joint space and lots of fluid. There is an exchange of nutrients outside the capsule whereby the blood drops off nutrients and the capsule absorbs them into the walled off space. These nutrients float around in the joint space.
NOW, pay attention because this is the most misunderstood piece…
These nutrients need to get PUSHED into the cartilage to keep it healthy.
What an amazing system nature has developed! It works perfectly fine is you are moving your body in a full range of motion. In fact, dissection studies have revealed completely healthy knee joints in deceased elderly rice field pickers in Vietnam.
When was the last time you squatted down to pick something up? A fantastic compound movement meant to bring our hips, knees and ankles into their full ranges of motion. Imagine you did that every day? You would be feeding your cartilage every single day.
Instead, we sit at desks and only move our hips, knees and ankles to 90 degrees. When we need to pick something up, we bend with our back.
…and that’s how folks land in my office.
I can fix the back pain, because this is just a symptom…Symptoms are easy to fix….
BUT long term, the lack of range of motion in the hips, knees and ankles combined with their belief that “I’m just getting older” is sending powerful instructions from the brain to body on how to behave.
All of this is to say, beware of what you are thinking because thoughts are the language of the brain.This language instructs the body to feel a certain way because feelings are the language of the body.
So, are you using your neural pathways for healing? Or for destruction?
You decide….
Personally, I am currently re-programming my old stories of “I’m not flexible”. This time of year, I am outside running more and that old hamstring tightness creeps up again. It’s easy for me to default back to that familiar thought pattern of
“I don’t have time to stretch, I’ve always had tight hamstrings, I’m too tall to touch my toes”.
All of these are completely incorrect!
It’s time to stop telling myself the same old stories and just do the damn work (physically and energetically).
Join me inside The Reset3 Program to learn more and find out how to program, de-program and re-program your neural pathways!
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