Haha!

Bio- I remember in one of your first threads when you signed on here I responded with this thread link: http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread205597.html.

A lot of the alternative type of stuff I did is on there; let me know if you would like to know specifics on any of the line items. It's not that I did anything special compared to anybody else, but I WAS able to identify a lot of what was right for me and that's what was important. The biggest difference between my approach and the typical medical approach is a focus on the emotional, mental, and spiritual components of health, instead of primarily the physical.

Essentially what I did was take a multi-pronged holistic approach and threw the proverbial kitchen sink at it.

The common medical perspective from what I read in my research early on was that RSD is essentially the sympathetic nervous system gone haywire.

Ok - well hey that's good to know. So what is the sympathetic nervous system? Well, it's largely regulated by the subconscious, for one. And, it is intricately related to the fight or flight response.

So - RSD manifests as the sympathetic nervous system in permanent fight or flight mode. Ok - good to know. BUT - it's in the subconscious. Wherever that is. My next question was a big one, and it changed my perspective on many things:

How do I CONSCIOUSLY influence the subconscious? Because that's where this RSD thing, whatever it is, seems to be coming from.

Well, I went back to the key physical manifestation of the disease - the permanent fight or flight response. So what CAUSES a fight or flight reaction?

Stress.

Ok now that's a broad range of just about everything and anything. Friggin' everyone knows that reducing stress is good for your health. So what? The thing is - there's lots of different kinds of stress: physical stress, mental stress, emotional stress, spiritual stress, to name the big ones.

Stress is really just FRICTION, and we have that just by being alive and kicking. Gravity is a permanent stress on the body we all have to deal with. Heck, breathing air causes friction in the lungs. So there was no eliminating it, as far as I could see.

So I asked myself the next question: What TYPES of stresses do I have that would relate to something like RSD?

Well, I had surgery and it triggered it. Duh. Yeah, but thousands of people have surgery every day and don't suffer from evil chronic pain disorders. Plus, I was 100% healthy before RSD! Former athlete! But still in the prime of my physical life! I couldn't have even BEEN that stressed if I was in that good of physical shape. Right...???

(I WAS NOT RIGHT.)

I also read some Dutch research on excess oxygen free radicals in the bloodstream being the possible primary cause of RSD. A little more research brought me to understand the biological function of oxygen free radicals - they contribute to oxidative STRESS. A little bit of oxidative stress is good and normal and helps the body metabolize and function properly - MORE than a little bit and the immune system starts to react.

And the immune system reacts by INFLAMMATION. It's an automated calling in of the cavalry to a specific area of trauma (another word for physical stress.) The subconscious sends more blood to that area in order to HEAL it. WE don't do it; that's just what our crazy simple, crazy complex body DOES in order to continue to function. IF there are more free radicals present than the immune system in its current condition is able to neutralize, either because of the severity of the initiating trauma AND/OR longstanding, chronic stresses that have built up over time, some very big problems will inevitably start to appear. Because the human body is smart. It knows way better than we do. Once ischemia sets in, it will actually QUARANTINE effected areas to protect the rest of the body. That's what happens in middle to later stage cases of RSD.

I think it's also why the longer someone has RSD (or ANY chronic condition), the more difficult it is to reverse it.

That doesn't mean we can't make progress though, right here, right NOW.



And it's based on identifying, and gradually reducing, the primary sources of YOUR stress. Broken down loosely as follows:

Diet. (What you put in your mouth to live on.)
Environment. (What all of your sense organs tell you about where you are physically. What/Who do you see? Hear? Taste? Smell? Feel? )
Movement. (EVERYTHING is in constant movement. Inertia is not our friend. This is one of the toughest ones for RSDers; must strike a continuing perfect balance between overdoing and underdoing.)
Emotional. (How you feel about your current environment?)
Mental. (What do you believe versus what reality is?)
Spiritual. (Am I alone - or not?)

Most of us are familiar with the more physical aspects like diet and environment. But even here, there is a real lack of either knowledge or communication from the medical field on proper diet. In our case, any food that is INFLAMMATORY ie acidic is not beneficial in anything more than a very small amount. Excess sugar and carbs, processed foods, caffeine, meat, soda... Heck pretty much the entire normal American diet is inflammatory.

And environment's easier said than done too, right? Sure- I'll just quit my job, pack up and move to the beach and let the salt water and sand heal me up. That won't cost a dime. It's not as if I haven't already spent my life savings on medical bills. Oh- and negative people? Yeah I'll just cut them right out of my life. Especially my family members. No big deal there. OH YEAH -- and the fact that almost EVERYTHING we use from shampoo to toothpaste to cleaning agents have toxic chemicals and proven carcinogens in them? Heck, chlorine gets sucked up by our skin EVERY DAY we take a warm shower. Look it up.

Environment is a tough one. I just did what I could, adding or eliminating one or two things at a time.

What most of us AREN'T familiar with, however, is how to identify and change emotional and mental stress. That's where things like meditation, visualization, qi gong, creative arts, yogic breathing, etc come into play.

The key is in changing as many of the inputs of the above to POSITIVE. This is done gradually over TIME: ie frequent repetitive events. And with REPETITION, that mindset will seep beyond your conscious intention, to your SUBCONSCIOUS (and unconscious, actually), where it will have a much larger impact on your Life. RSD can improve significantly as a result of that.

Acceptance instead of resignation. Responsibility instead of fault. Every quality has a range or scale - with positive on one end and negative on the other. It's really simple and I can pay it lip service all day - it's just way easier said than done. And it's done by identifying, and reducing, YOUR sources of stress.

To go a little more new agey: Another REALLY BIG clue to the sources of our stress- a real blessing - is that non physical stress, in particular emotional and mental stress, manifests in the PHYSICAL body as a guidepost to help us figure out their true sources. The hardest thing to do is to be truly honest with ourselves. But once stuff pops up in the physical body, you know that particular stress has been there for quite some time. And you can't ignore it. The physical body is the LAST place stress shows up.

Every body part correlates to the whole. Everything is connected. And every body part has a function. And if that specific function is impaired, it correlates to the whole: i.e. YOU. An example for me - I've had ankle issues all my life. Well, what is the function of an ankle? To be supple and flexible, promoting movement in all directions.

My entire life, if I'm honest, I've been INFLEXIBLE and STUBBORN. Closeminded. I had myself subtly convinced that I was always right. And if I wasn't, it was DEFINITELY someone else's fault.

Another even easier example: the eyes. What do they do? They, uh, SEE. In my case, I've been extremely nearsighted since I was a child. I went from flawless vision at age 7 to 90th percentile nearsighted at age 8. This corresponded EXACTLY with a move to a new house in a new state, along with this crazy massive irrational fear I had of being drafted in the future and dying at war (don't ask). I was so afraid of the future that my eyes literally stopped letting me see beyond what was right in front of me. (Alternatively, Farsightedness would be fear of the present.) Interestingly, I've worked through a lot of these fears as an adult, and my vision REVERSED on its own. (Not to where it's 20/20 by any stretch, but my prescription has gone down in both eyes. Too much of a coincidence to dismiss, at least for me.)

I'm not saying it will always be easy to pinpoint. Some cause and effect is so complicated that it's just beyond the current level of our awareness, and I accept that. I mean - how do we explain people born blind, or children dying young of starvation?

But I did find that I was able to identify my real sources of stress if I really, honestly, looked.

All right at this point I've gone tangent enough so I'll wrap this up. Just some stuff to let seep into the subconscious.