In Your Pants with Dr. Susie G - Stop 🛑chasing pain

Episode Date: October 18, 2018

On today's show, you're going to change your relationship with pain. Pain gets a bad rap, but guys, pain is a 'defender not an offender.' It's normal to experience pain in life and often it's unavoidable but living with pain is far from normal. It's time to bring hope and recovery back on the table so I've invited Dr. Perry Nickelston on the show today to help you stop chasing pain and start living life.

You're listening to In Your Pants with Dr. Susie G, the physiotherapist for your private, helping you get in the know down below. Hey guys, it's Dr. Susie G here and welcome to the In Your Pants podcast, where we de-stigmatize private parts and cultural taboos, plus we throw in a few things here and there about health in general, because let's face it, health isn't just about what's going on your pants. This is definitely not the place to be shy, so I hope you're ready to get in the know down below.

On today's show, you're going to change your relationship with pain. Pain gets a bad rap, but guys, pain is a defender, not an offender. It's normal to experience pain in life, and often it's unavoidable, but living with pain is far from normal. It's time to bring hope and recovery back on the table, so I've invited Dr. Perry Nicholson on the show today to help you stop chasing pain and start living life. Dr. Perry Nicholson is a chiropractic physician with a primary focus on performance enhancement, corrective exercise, and metabolic fitness nutrition. He's trained from the American College of Addictionology and

Culpus Disorders. He's an expert in myofascial orthopedic, medical, and trigger point soft tissue therapy. He's a member of the board of directors and medical staff advisor for the American Institute of Medical Laser Application. Dr. Perry teaches healthcare professionals all over the world how to successfully use class four deep tissue laser therapy in alleviating pain. He's also the director of clinical protocols and training for light cure medical lasers specializing in myofascial laser treatments. Dr. Perry is an expert in movement assessment and diagnosis. He's certified and trained as a functional movement specialist and a selective functional movement assessment specialist. He uses programs designed to find your source of painful dysfunction

and correct it. He's a regular columnist for Dynamic Chiropractic, Practice Insights, Chiropractic Economics, Two-Year Health Magazine, Advanced Physical Therapy, PT on the Net, Live Strong, Strength Coach, and other industry publications for health and fitness. Dr. Perry has dedicated himself to teaching others how to get in shape and lead a healthy Lifestyle. He's currently publishing several books on health, fitness, laser therapy, business success, and self-treatment programs from his website. Dr. Perry, thank you so much for being on the show with us today. And honestly, what an impressive bio. Oh, well, you know what I always say? I mean, you never stop learning, right? I mean, it's

forever a journey to try to become better at what you love to do. And I must say, I loved your introduction, the way you talked about pain, because my favorite phrase that I use all the time is that pain is a request for change. And I just love when you look at it that way, because it's your body actually trying to do you a big favor and help you out, sending you a little bit of a request. And unfortunately, if you don't listen, the requests become louder and more frequent. That's so true. Absolutely. And from my understanding, it was through your own personal experience with pain that led you to your now life's mission and model of stop chasing pain. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. I'd be happy to. I mean, honestly, I think that's

that way for most people if they decide to get into healthcare or even if they're not into healthcare, but you know, they're just an everyday human being that goes through chronic pain that I can spur them to start a blog, right, or even start a podcast and share their journey to try to help others through their suffering because it's through the greatest suffering that we go through that we learn the greatest lessons. It's not always easy to see it at the time, but, you know, that's definitely the way it was for me. I had hurt my musculoskeletal system, my shoulders, my hips, my backs, my knees, pretty much everything from being a competitive athlete and competitive bodybuilder for many, many years. And then I just pushed it to a limit and a chiropractor helped put me back together numerous times. And then I just thought to myself, you know, I think I could do this as well and fell in love with it and got into the business. And 25 years later, I find myself kind of going into different parts of healthcare from suffering many different types of injuries beyond just the low back type stuff and working with people who have really serious kind of long-term chronic illness things.

You know, the illnesses that really people just don't really have an explanation for why it happened in the first place or why when we do all of the traditional conventional therapies that certainly can do very miraculous things, why don't they work after a period of time and why does somebody keep suffering? So my quest for that answer is where Stop Chasing Pain came about. So I tell people that, of course, you absolutely want to treat pain. is pain is telling you something unfortunately it is not giving you the answer of what it is it's it's unfortunately never that easy that if it hurts here say for instance on my knee that we just treat your knee and everything turns up unicorns and rainbows and stuff like that and so sometimes it happens right because the body wants to heal itself i mean that's what it's designed to do but most of the time these injuries that come about for people especially for

chronic illnesses take decades to develop. It's a slow process over time. And then all of a sudden you wake up one day and have pain, or you go for the run that you've done every day of your life for a decade. And then now all of a sudden, why does it choose today to hurt you? It's that breakdown process. And that's kind of my mission right now is to show people how to treat where the pain is, but to think into a much bigger picture of how the whole body is interconnected and all of the systems of the body need to work together. It's something I think we innately know. And when we hear it, we're like, well, of course it does. That just makes common sense. But it really blows my mind of how when you get into healthcare or you have a problem,

we forget it. We just automatically attack the symptoms that you have, not trying to put the picture together of why they happen in the first place and what the body's trying to tell you, because the symptoms are the communication way. It's a tap on the shoulder that says, hey, doc, you really need to listen up here because something's not right. Right. Absolutely. And I love how you said it's an accumulation of events over one's lifetime. I always tell my patients, hey, it's like you're having a good time at a bar and you've had one too many shots and the next day you're regretting and you blame it on the last shot well what about the 10 others that you had you know yeah that's so true it's like it's also

accumulation right I mean you take five shots and then you're great then all of a sudden you have the sixth one and then it takes you right out right right I mean that's it and then you're blaming it oh I shouldn't have had that last shot damn it you know and you're like wait a second don't blame it on the last shot well that's really brings up something that's very important and i love the way you do it when you can relate it back to going to a bar right because that's real life right is everything in life is dose dependent and what that means is that you know like this takes stress for instance people think that stress is a bad thing but stress is actually a necessary thing for your body because that's how you become stronger and resilient and you

adapt to stress and then that's what inflammation is so inflammation when you get it is not bad it's only bad when you can't get rid of it or it stays or it keeps coming back so that's the dosage part so anything that you do even if it's quote-unquote good for you if you do too much of it then the body's gonna communicate back to you that this stuff is really good i know i know you're trying to help me out here but you need to back off the throttle a little bit because then i'm to hurt you even more. And that's really, really important for people to understand that even when they start to get into things to make themselves feel better, right? Like corrective exercise or corrective movement or medication. I mean, the dose is the dose. You need what you need and it's

different for everybody. And that's really important because something I may give to you to help your back, for instance, might not, it probably won't be what I give the next person walks in my door for their back. One, because it's a completely different back. That back has had a different story over the course of its whole life from yours. So each individual needs to be treated in a very unique way. And I find pain medicine is almost like nutritional advice. People say, if you want to lose weight, go buy this diet book. And I'm like, well, that diet might not be good for your body. And that's kind of what happens. Why some people say, well, it didn't work for me. And I'm like, well, it doesn't mean that it won't work for somebody else. It's

just not what you needed at that particular moment in time. And then one of my favorite phrases that I tell people is you cannot get well in the same environment you became ill within. And I'm going to say that again, because it's really powerful. You cannot get well in the same environment you became ill within. And that's the accumulation process over the course of your whole life. So I can work with people, for instance, and give you all of the things that you need to do to help yourself get better. And when I'm working with you one-on-one in my office, I can do everything to make you feel better. But if you leave and you go back into a situation that may be a physical environment that you're in, maybe you're sitting in some terrible office chair all day long. But it can also be something as much as an emotional relationship or a toxic relationship that you're in and your body, your physiology reacts to the emotions that you have, the people that you surround yourself, how you think about yourself, how you think about the world.

A lot of times these chronic pain syndromes that people get in are this vicious loop of something that their body just keeps reliving over and over and over. And when you can come at it from that perspective of if you have the power to change your environment, it's definitely not easy. But when you realize that, that's very empowering because when you have chronic pain and illness, you feel hopeless a lot of times. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. you can't get well in the same environment you became ill within yep and that's what they call epigenetics if you've heard of epigenetics and then so they say that it's not so much your

genetics that are going to make you um get sick or have an illness so it it may stack the deck against you in a way but just because you have the genetic potential for something doesn't mean you're gonna get it and so the phrase in epigenetics is genetics loads up the gun but your environment pulls the trigger so how you live your life from the people you surround you with to whether you exercise to uh nutrition to maybe you're in the bar one too many times all those things right then that can kick off the gene that's that's ready to be fired and they they have it's what they call a dirty gene where the gene can be kicked off to to become active or it can kick off to become dormant. It can go either way. And most of the time when people have these

chronic long-term illnesses, it's not the therapy so much that is going to be what I call the secret sauce creamy filling. It's what you do with your own lifestyle afterwards. But when you've suffered enough pain and you've been through a lot of things, you're pretty much ready, open, and receptive to try anything you can to help yourself get better. I mean, that's the way it was for me when I went through many of my things that we'll make it into and talk about it later, beyond my just typical neck or back or shoulder or knee pain, which is the thing that's really taken the world today. It's not so much that type of pain. It's all these other illnesses that people have from the depression, which is running rampant, the chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, Parkinson's,

Alzheimer's, all these quote unquote autoimmune diseases where they don't realize we have no answer for why your body decided to turn on itself and start to take itself out. Well, you better be looking at what's changed in the environmental factor of the human race over the last 30, 40 years. Right, right. And that's the problem. No one's asking these questions. No one's bringing up these like, well, let's figure out why this all happened. You know, what was, what's the allostatic load and why is it contributing to what you're experiencing now and i think you bring up such a valid point about the epigenetics and and and the fact that you can change in one direction i like to bring hope back to the table and say you can change in

the other direction you're bioplastic right i mean it's this ecosystem that's forever changing and it's not permanent so well that's a phrase i love that i use all the time i forget where i heard it But it says how you think changes your biology, right? So it's that mind-body connection. And you know exactly what it feels like. I mean, say, for instance, you could be sitting completely alone in a room by yourself. First of all, sitting in a room by yourself with complete silence is unheard of in the world today anyway, right? But if you can think about a thought in your past that brought you tremendous joy and happiness, right, and then you can feel it in your body, right, everything begins to change.

And then in a split second, you can think back to a very toxic, painful, excruciating time in your life. And then within the next second, everything changes and you feel completely different. And you were in the same space. You didn't go anywhere, but you actually did because you took yourself there in your mind. And your mind doesn't know the difference between what you're thinking about and what it actually is doing. And that right there is an empowerment for people, especially when they have the chronic pain issues and stress in and of itself feeds that vicious machine that we have. And I think that with what I'm seeing in healthcare today is, unfortunately, I see even more of a disconnect between the mind and body. We just break things down into these separate parts, not realizing that every system of your body has to communicate with each other.

But then we break it down even further to like this microscopic cellular level. Like we look at an individual cell of something trying to figure out disease. And I don't think it's going to work that way with what we're facing now because the human body is a very complex system. And when you have complex systems, you don't look at parts. You look at interactions. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you took that cell and put it on a petri dish, it wouldn't survive on its own.

Like it just wouldn't, it has to have all, like you're saying, all the other things that make it what it is and how it interacts with the rest of its environment. So. Yeah. And you know, what we've done in the past with healthcare is absolutely miraculous. I mean, what we've been able to do to eradicate some of the most horrific diseases in the world with the traditional approach has been incredible right but that approach is from what you see now doesn't seem to be working in relationship to the autoimmune ones so there's there's no single thing you can go into and say okay well this is the dude this is the dude that causes mumps so i'm going to give you this to take care of the mumps you there's no like one thing i'm going to

be able to give you and say okay this is going to take care of like your parkinson's because there's so many other factors that come into play that take decades to manifest themselves and coming at it from that way it's it's a great intention don't get me wrong but i don't think it's anything that that i've seen is going to change in the near future until you flip that coin and then you begin to look on the other side you look at how all the different systems interact with each other of the body and what i mean by that is your musculoskeletal system obviously that's your bones and your muscles but then you have to look at your lymphatic system your cardiovascular system your digestive system your endocrine system all those things

it feed off of each other and when one starts to go then another one has to take up more slack and very often where you feel the pain or the discomfort or the symptom is far removed from the individual system that began to become dysfunctional in the first place because the body's been trying to do its job to compensate and not have you experience suffering and pain and stuff like that. And then it's only when it can't compensate anymore that that's when it comes crying for help and then that's the pain signal right right and you so speaking of mindset i know we were talking about all that earlier in one of your youtube videos i remember you saying that recovery isn't just about the tissues it's also about what's going on in your mind and in your

heart so in your opinion how important is mindset when somebody is recovering from pain so i think it's absolutely critical at all stages from acute pain but definitely into chronic pain and the more you look in the neuroscience and the science of pain you know they're seeing that the amount of pain you have doesn't correlate to the extent of tissue damage that somebody experiences in any way shape or form what that means is that somebody can have a paper cut and be in excruciating pain and like oh my god it's the worst thing i've ever felt and then another person has a huge gash on their arm or maybe they have a huge uh herniation or lots of arthritis in their spine And they're like, dude, how can you even walk?

I don't know. I don't feel anything, right? So there's no, and plus the pain is all subjective. There's no objectivity to pain. What I mean by that is that you and I could get the same paper cut and it really hurts more for you than it hurts for me because it's your mindset. It's your perception on that. But I really came to grasp that more so for myself where, you know, you can fall into

these things when you start to get like, let's say for instance, I have, I've suffered from diverticulitis. Anybody who knows that? It's like you get inflammation in part of your digestive system, particularly on the descending last part of your colon. And it can be really, really painful, right? And then sometimes what will happen is that if I began to get like this small little cramp on that lower left side, my mind would just take over and go ballistic. That's like the worst case scenario is coming. Uh-oh, here comes the thing, right? And then it's almost like within an hour or two, that guy is full raging. And then I'm like, okay, well, let me try something different. So then what I actually did was I flipped the switch. And if I felt something down

there, I didn't really say, okay, well, you know, it's probably just a muscle. It turned a little bit, worked out kind of hard yesterday, no big deal. And then once I flipped that mindset signal, my body actually reacted a completely different way. So you've got, you can look at it in two ways. Well, one, you really had an episode the second time, maybe you didn't. But I also noticed for me is that it's very simple. If you think you feel better, you feel better. If you think you feel worse, you feel worse. I mean, it's that freaking simple. It is. It is. Yeah. When I ask that question, when I teach, I ask everybody, listen, if you think you feel better, do you actually feel better? Every single person says yes. And then I'm like, well, it works the other way, right?

Like you just said, you've got the hope, but you can go the other way. It's like, if you think you feel worse i can guarantee you you're going to be worse right and so that's where that it comes into play and that a lot of people bring in the big word placebo of how like well you're giving them something that's not really you know working i'm like yes it is working because they think it's working like you're proving my point right here that you know how you think can influence what you're feeling. And that's where medicine needs to look at the value of a placebo effect, because as long as you've gone in and you've done your professional course of looking at, let's do all the examinations, let's do all the tests, let's make sure that your back is not hurting because

you've got a tumor, right? And then if you've ruled that out and you're like, you know, I don't I don't know why your back's not hurting. Well, then why not use the power of the placebo? And it's like, you can do this thing right here, and then it's definitely going to make you feel a little bit better when you do it. And then they're like, okay, great, right? And then there's the nocebo effect is N-O-C-E-B-O. that's almost even more power than the placebo than the SIBO is how you talk to a patient or a client or another human being can influence the amount of pain that they have or don't have

right and it's it's almost like saying okay well the guy's gonna come on if a guy's wearing a white coat then you're automatically gonna feel better and then if another guy comes on and he's wearing a black coat you're gonna feel worse well then that actually starts to happen when people because they expect that you kind of planted that seed for them. And then that's why you have to really watch and be careful of the words that you choose to talk to someone about their care program or what their diagnosis is, because that does have a massive influence on their long-term results and their long-term care and improvement from pain. Right. Can I give you a hug? We'll take a virtual hug. Yeah, virtual hug, because that's just so critical. Like you're

saying, this is a pivotal, this is the paradigm shift and you're, you're speaking my language. I know you're speaking a lot of people's language and it's that simple. Like you're saying, you know, if you think it's going to hurt, it's going to hurt. If somebody tells you it's going to hurt, you're going to feel like it hurts. And they've done experience experiments on this too, with lasers, you know, red laser versus blue laser and what they were told, you know, but they're the same laser, but you'll feel more warmth and discomfort with the red one, just because someone told you it's going to hurt more you know yeah like it's really amazing like you know i teach a lot of different courses in movement and i've really gotten to look more into uh the the mind

and relationship to to the body and to illness is just called the psychoneuroimmunology is the name of it psychoneuroimmunology how you think influences your nervous system and your immune system and those two systems oddly enough are the only systems that actually have a memory so your nervous system your immune system never forget anything right and so that's tied into your your thought process right it's kind of like thinking oh my i think my back's gonna hurt when i bend over to tie my shoe well it's probably gonna hurt or i'm getting a sniffle i think i'm gonna get sick and then you get the thing right there right but i've done it when i do like assessment so i do a type of assessment where i test someone's strength their ability to resist

rotation. It's called a torque test, where what I'll do is I'll have somebody stand about shoulder width apart with their feet, a slight bend in their knee, and then I put my hands on their shoulders a certain way where I'm trying to twist them off center. And that checks their physical ability to control rotational force and gravity, which is really important when you have chronic musculoskeletal pain. And what I'll do is I've tried just kind of plan with people in the class in relationship to, if I see a shoulder, for instance, that's rolled a little bit further forward on the other one, I point out to the class, I'm like, okay, you know, like you see how this, this shoulder here is a little bit forward.

But when I do this test, I'm probably going to find that side weaker. And then what I'm doing is I'm planting the seed in that dude's head that it's weaker. Right. And then what I've, what I've done is then I go in and I test and then sure enough, it's weaker. And then what I do is I go back and I reverse it. And then I say to the person, it really freaks people out. And I tell the person, okay, now, you know how that tested weak? So here's not what I want you to do. We're not going to do any workout. We're not going to do anything. I want you to envision that that shoulder that's rolled forward is actually rolled back and it's strong. And you know, when I go in there that I'm not going to be able to move you. And then when I go back and I do the same test

again, and I go even harder, they don't move. They don't move at all. And the people are blown away. And I do another test where I actually get them to think not about their side of pain, but they think about a person. So here's something really cool if you want to try it. I'll tell you if you want. So you know how you can think about people in your life that are uplifting or toxic, right and so what i do is i do this this muscle strength test where if you're standing and then you put your arms you know out to your side so you put them out like you're making a cross and you bring them just a little bit further forward so they're not completely out to your side but they come forward just a little bit because then that gives you a stance of more strength and then

what you do is you have somebody else a partner put their hands on top of your wrist because your your hands are facing down to the ground and they put theirs on the back of your wrists on either side. And then what I have you do is I'm like, okay, I just tell the person, press up towards the ceiling and don't let me press your arms down, which means don't let me move your arms towards the floor. And then I just want to see if they're strong and if they can hold that. And they should be able to easily hold that. If anything hurts when you do that, you already know you got a problem. So don't go any further because something hurts. And then what I actually have them do is like, okay, most people will test strong on that. So let's go that they tested really strong.

Then what I do is I say, close your eyes. And I want you to think about someone in your past that was toxic. Someone that when you think about them, blackens your heart and you can just feel the frustration and the stress. And I give them about 20, 30 seconds to lock on that person. Then I say, okay, put your arms back up again and we're going to see how strong you are. every single person their arms will drop right to the floor like they'll just lose everything right and then they're like what and then i go okay well we can't leave you in that toxic state so here's what we got to do now i want you to close your eyes and i want you to think about the opposite i want you to think about somebody that lights up your soul that when you think

about them it fills your heart with joy it can be someone alive or dead and think about them and it's really funny because it's always harder for somebody to find a good one than it is to find a bad one. And then sometimes I have to think about it a little bit longer because that toxicity stays deep. Right. And then I say, okay, put your arms back up again. And then we test them then. And they're actually the stronger than the first two together. And then I'm like, so tell me what happened there. You didn't get stronger or weaker because you trained or you stopped training. It was a matter of two minutes that you did that and that's a classic case in point of how you think changes your biology and what happens is when you're when you're under threat like that from

stress your body becomes vulnerable it begins to actually shut itself down for protection and then you actually inherently become weaker and that's really important for people to understand with chronic pain because if they can realize they can influence how they move and how they feel by how they think that's powerful but it's really important for athletes that one have hit a barrier of performance and usually it's they can't get out of their own way at that point and they realize that oh my goodness how i thought made a huge difference in how my body performed i better watch it when i'm next to my competitor thinking that he's better than me because if i think he's better than me well then he actually is if that makes sense right so it's very empowering

when you can do that and it's kind of freaky for people because they're like well and it sends my point home because it has somebody say well i'm not sure if i believe that because you're telling me that to expect to be weaker and i'm weaker and i'm like well it's exactly what i'm telling you that, you know, that it's really, really, really powerful on how it influences your physiology. And then the next point I want to make is why in God's name would you ever give any person on this planet that much influence over how you feel, right? So when you let another person influence you and stress you out or cuts you out on traffic or make you feel less than you are, then that's not acceptable. But the biggest culprit of that is yourself. Because the way you

talk to yourself, if you think about it, you would never ever talk to another human being like that because they would either punch you in the face or they would leave and get as far away from you as you can. So to me, what I've found is the biggest enemy in getting healthy again is very often just looking in the mirror. You've kind of shed some light on this already. That was great. what you've been seeing a lot of patients and throughout your years of doing this what is the one most important thing that your patients or your clients have taught you or given you that's a really good one well most people that come to see me honestly are you got to be kind of a bad spot to end up

crossing into my through my door because i'm a practicing chiropractor yes but it's it's not my first type of thing that I do to you. So most of the time you've gone to physical therapy or chiropractic or traditional stuff before you find my work because my stuff's very different in the way that I combine a lot of things. One, because I do the laser and then I do a lot of different stuff with the systems of the body and I do some functional medicine stuff as well where functional medicine looks at the entire individual and does a lot of stuff with nutrition and how their lifestyle has been up to that point. But I think the biggest thing that they've taught me is that when they come through my door at that point, they, most of them have lost a lot of hope

and they've come they've gone into a system the health care system to try to get help and i've often found that that very system is the one thing that actually hasn't listened to them or they feel like nobody's taking them seriously or they just can't get the answer and it seems very cold and very removed from uh what they're looking for and i went through that myself when I had cancer about 15 years ago. And it's a system that I don't think is prepared for what these individuals and clients need. And the amount of strength that they have and resolve that they taught me is that they don't want to give up. And even though they're at a point where they're like, you know, I just, I think I'm going to give up. I think I'm going

to quit, I know that they're never going to do it, right? I mean, that develops a type of strength and resiliency that they've taught me that is just blowing my mind every single time, especially when I see people who've come in, for instance, with like Lyme disease and they've suffered with it since they were 12 years old and they're in their 20s and, you know, they can they can sometimes barely make it through a day but they never give up and it really sends home about what people that complain about these trivial things like dude you put too much cream on my latte i kind of want to smack you one right like you are have lost perspective yes on what's important so that's strength of resiliency of the human character in a way and it really puts

things in perspective for them that I'm working with and then when I went through it on my own to really be truly grateful for feeling good and having health because it's something that trust me it's the one thing when you lose it you want it back more than anything and you you take feeling good for granted and I'll never do that again from my own perspective in people that I deal with. Like I recently had a severe injury for me where I slipped on ice and I tore, I had a complete rupture of my left quad tendon off my patella. And so I had to have it surgically reattached. And one, that really showed me of how the stress of pain affects your whole body because that brought back a lot of my other systemic issues that I had in the past from my

diverticulitis to my gut issues because of the never ending stress of pain. Right. And I was like, I can't walk. Like I was not able to do anything but lie on my couch and wait for the surgery. And then afterwards I had to have a brace to do anything. And I just kept saying to myself, all I want to do is walk. Like walking is such a magnificent gift that you have. And it's also the number one exercise and movement pattern that everybody can do to make yourself feel better i could have anybody do it what can i do to be healthier walk that's what i'm gonna tell you right it's just that simple and don't look at your phone when you do it walk right like be be in the moment present time conscious they call it be in the world and that lack of body

awareness when you're moving is also being linked to a lot of chronic pain that people have because you just don't have any idea where your body is in space and time because you're in a virtual reality. But gratitude is, if I had to sum all that up on what I told you, is gratitude is the biggest lesson that I've learned from the people that I work with. And you're giving so much back. Well, I'm trying to, and I think that's what it's about, right? I mean, you know, and you're doing the same, right? I mean, when you go through something for yourself and you've gone through suffering i mean that's you got two options there i mean it's gonna take you out kick your ass or you're gonna come out of the other side and you're gonna be stronger

and you can have a pity party or you can use that to uh lift somebody else up right and then here's a beautiful thing when you do that a funny thing happens you feel better like yeah you take that and you help another human being by some gratitude or showing some kindness and maybe sharing something that you went through, all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, that felt so good, right? And then you feel pain lessens and joy increases, or maybe it's something that happens to a loved one. It doesn't always have to be you, but I've seen it all the time where I've had a spouse or I've had a parent that are with someone that's close to them and seeing what they're going through has been a transformation for them. It flips a switch. And then some people

can take a completely different direction in their life after an illness or a tragedy or an accident. I mean, that's the classic movie script, right? Where that happens to somebody and then they they go through the suffering they go through the ups and downs and where they can't do it or whether they they alienate people right or loved ones and then it it takes you to a different place in your life and it's not easy to see when you're in it but when you come out of the other side most of the people that i speak to after that were saying you know what that was probably some of the was a miserable stuff I could ever have contemplated going through, but I don't think I would have changed it because it led me to where I am right now. That's right. I mean, how could you experience

happiness and joy without suffering? You wouldn't know what it is. Yeah, you wouldn't. I mean, if you were happy all the time, trust me, you'd be miserable. You really wouldn't. Right, right, right. Exactly. And there's a lot of good, like you're saying, that comes out of suffering. But like you said, when you're in that movie and there's somebody else directing it, it's very hard. To get yourself out of it without help. You know what? I mean, I've been in this stuff for 25 years and I used to think for me, it was like, okay, I'm going to go get this certification.

I'm going to go to this course. I'm going to learn this, learn this. I mean, you can have a toolbox that's stacked to the top, right? And that's cool. I mean, you should learn how to be better at what you love to do. But when I went through my own suffering and then I started to step back and work with people that had some really serious issues and then I realized that those actually took a very big distant backseat to the relationship that I had with them as a human being. One, of course, as a professional doctor-patient kind of connection, but also of dropping that veil of, okay, I've got this, this, this, this, this stuff I can do to you. And I changed the whole way that I treat people, where I spend a lot of time with you in the beginning, an exhaustive amount of time in the beginning, because I wanted to form a better connection with my patient and my clients that I was working with.

And then I also came in the end that the more time you take that way to just listen to someone and really be there, you typically come and find the answer of what's bothering them just from doing that. And that's a classic thing that they teach you in medicine that I think that we forget is that 90% of your diagnosis, which is your ability to try to figure out what's going on, is through the patient's history and talking to them. The last 10% should be the test that you do, but now it's the other way around. We do 90% of tests. I send you for all this, this, let me see what the machine does, and then I hardly, barely talk to you. And then the interesting thing about chronic pain is because I've said it takes easily a decade to two decades for this stuff to manifest itself. you'll usually find the answer the underlying answer to their current problem by taking the time to go through the history of what most people will think is irrelevant and that's the one that

that when you find that that's the catalyst because they've gone and looked at the trickle down effect to the end result and not going after the the why because people think the diet here's a very important thing to understand people think the diagnosis is the cause and like okay your diagnosis is lateral epicondylitis or tennis elbow i'm like okay thanks sparky but what the hell is that to me about why i got it in the first place like i can i can treat it because it freaking hurts but if you don't figure out why you got it well then it's probably going to come back again. If it doesn't come back there, it may come back some other place. And it's the same thing with other stuff like, you know, for my diverticulitis. Okay, I got that. I got to deal

with it, but why the hell did I get it? And then that goes down into looking at all the stuff that you have done. And that's where you can get the long-term results. And that's more of kind of like a functional medicine approach, which is an individual approach as opposed to a blanket, Okay, well, I'm just going to give you your Flagle antibiotic or your Cipro for your diverticulitis, which is probably a good thing to do if you're in an extreme amount of pain. But then there's the environmental factor after that. One, well, you know stress will kick your ass, so you better watch your stress. Two, you might want to watch the stuff that you're actually eating, right, and then doing that can possibly kick that stuff off. and that's where you also have that degree of self-responsibility that comes into into play

and a lot of times you don't really come to that realization until you've gotten your ass kicked enough to say you know what i'm really gotta change what i'm doing here because your health is ultimately up to you and health is health is um not a right it's a gift and to have that You need to work towards it and maintain it to do it. And even when you do everything right, it doesn't mean that you're not going to get problems either. But, I mean, your chances are greatly increased if you can stack yourself. And that's like when I tell people about positive and negative thinking. First of all, you have to have action behind anything, right?

But I say to them, listen, if I tell you to think positive about something, you actually stand half a chance of being successful, right? And that depends on how much action you put into it after you think that positive attitude. But I say, if you think with a negative attitude, you don't stand a chance in hell, none. There's no way you're going to get it. So I like my chances. I like my percentages on the positive way. even if it's only 10%, I'll take it because the negative is a negative percent. That's just a given that you're not going to get where you want to go. Absolutely. Absolutely. Working in and less

working out. Right. Yeah. Oh my God. That is so true. Right. Cause I, I got into bodybuilding when I was younger because, uh, you know, my father passed away from cancer when I was 13 and I saw that disease take him from who your dad is in your mind to, you know, it just took him away, wasted away. And I was a very fat, shy, introverted, overweight kid who lost his dad. And I just started training, right? And the training and stuff definitely started to give me commitment to and dedication and stuff like that. And I began to change my external physical appearance right which fed the internal but what i see happen more often than not when people get into fitness and training and stuff like that is that my inside worth was based on my outside

like it was feeding the mirror image that i was seeing to try to feed the inside and it was something where it can take you down a dark path as well because you're how you feel about yourself is based on your visual and that's just as toxic and it's only through uh through injury or through it actually it's through the passage of time where you know you're young and you don't know shit to where you get older and life has really taken you out at the knees that you start to flip it around. And you think, you know what? If you're ugly on the inside and how you think about yourself, very little you got to do on the outside. It's going to be able to bring that up. And then that's also when I came to look at more of an Eastern medicine approach to

the mental mindset. And I got more into martial arts and internal martial arts and being more aware of that. Once that inner part in me started to become stronger, then the physical actually became stronger and that's exactly what i related back to you there of if you think you're strong you're strong if you think you're weak you're weak right right right well and so for the listeners out there we're going to sum up all of this i know it's probably really hard to put it into three things you would suggest but what if somebody's in pain right now and they're listening and and they want to start somewhere what what are what are three things i mean i don't i hate putting things in boxes i mean just tell us you know where should they start

to change their paradigm of pain that's a good question what are some physical activities you can definitely do one is to definitely drink more water and hydrate yourself people who have chronic pain or inflammation in their body even in the brain which is extremely common it's easy from a perpetual state of dehydration so the the human beings of today don't drink nearly enough water, even though they think they do. And my recommendation is two and a half liters of water a day for women and three liters for men. And that's really important because that's the amount of lymphatic fluid. That's the detoxification system of your body and your lymphatic system. On a nightly basis, when you sleep, it's supposed to recycle or refurbish three liters. And the

lymphatic system is 90% water. So if you're not hydrating yourself, you can't detoxify. If you can't detoxify, you can't get rid of inflammation. If you can't detoxify, you can't generate new tissue. So you actually have to make sure that you drink and that'll be a big improvement in mental clarity and also helping you with pain and inflammation. And the other one is to do breathing techniques breathing more from your diaphragm which is more down in the belly and your sides as opposed to your chest and your neck because when you're under stress you really don't breathe that well or breathe at all and then we lose that relaxation time of breathing so if you can find a quiet space and do some breathing for about five minutes uninterrupted and if you're not

even sure where to start you can look up diaphragm breathing on youtube or google you can find stuff under my things as well and then it can make a surprisingly fast difference for you and it ties back to the first one as well because the lymphatic system is a system that moves through two primary mechanisms lymph moves through human movement so the more you move of yourself the better. And it also moves through breathing. So if you can breathe through your diaphragm more, which will really help your back. And then the other one is do the water. Those two things right there in and of itself, you're probably going to do more than 90% of most people in the world. And then number three is to take a very good look at your environment. And what I mean by that is

is that we always look at the physical environment that we're in, right? Like, you know, how we're walking, how we're standing, how we're sleeping, stuff like that. But I want you to look at the people in your life. And I'm a pretty big motivational, you know, speaker guy and love to learn from all different types. And there's a guy who was very influential for me in the beginning. His name is Jim Rohn, R-O-H-N. And he said that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So what you need to do is you need to sit down and write out a list of the five people that you spend the most time with.

And then when you think about that person, really think about how they make you feel about yourself. right and you might have to cut bait on a couple of people in your life to actually begin to get out of a stressful situation or get out of pain and it's not easy it takes strength to do that but an amazing thing happens when you can finally get the strength to do that you're like i can't believe how much better i feel when i'm not around this person or that person and The universe and the world kind of opens itself up to your intention. So if you drop some toxicity in your life, you'll make an opening for something else. And you'll easily end up finding yourself gravitating towards like-minded people.

And when you have that type of community, that kind of support with people around you, that's one of the biggest things that can help you get healthy too. Because nothing is worse for your body than when you feel alone. Right. So I think those three things are really, really simple to do. And they almost seem so simple that like, how can I do anything? And well, that's the point, because the solution doesn't have to be complicated to work. Everybody thinks it's got to be some big, huge thing. But how well you master the fundamentals and the basics determines how well you do everything after that anyway. and that's like i say you can't make a cake without cake mix well i just gave you the cake mix now go make your cake if you do that go make a cake and then you can do whatever icing you want but you got to get that's right oh my gosh dr perry this has been phenomenal i am so thankful for your knowledge your wisdom you're changing lives moment by moment and honestly it is a true

honor to have you on this show and and i hope many people listen to this episode because it will be quite transformational transformational if you really put it into practice so thank you so much for being on the show how can listeners connect with you oh well thank you so very much for having me on it was a lot of fun it's nice to be on the other side of the mic because i have i have my own podcast called stop chasing pain and it's it's really nice when you get to flip the roles and it's very easy to find information about me if you type in the three words stop chasing pain, you'll find pretty much anything and everything that you would want to find out about me. So you can, it'll take you to my website and then that'll branch you out to

the courses and the videos and the membership site that I have. And it's just a lot of good stuff on there that you can find. And I really am thankful for the opportunity to come on and share my views on some things. Thank you so much again. And to all you listeners out there, Thanks so much for listening to another In Your Pants podcast. I'll see you later. Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to head on over to drcgg.com where you can get more information, show notes, and related articles on today's topic.

Also, if you like what you're hearing, head on over to iTunes, subscribe to the podcast, and leave us a rating and review. We'd love to hear your feedback. Thanks again. Can I give you a hug? Okay, thanks, Sparky.