Our nervous system is the control center of the body. Healthy nervous system function influences digestion, energy, movement and performance. Many people's nervous systems are working on over drive as a results causing hypothyroidism, adrenal fatigue and leaky gut. Our digestive system has a nervous system unto it's own called the enteric nervous system. Most people don't realize that our digestive tract has just as many neurons as our brain and spinal chord. Watch this video to learn more about your nervous system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Baris Harvey discuss everything you need to know about how the functions of our nervous system and what you can do to keep it working great for overall health and fitness. Find out more in this podcast.
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Baris Harvey: Welcome to another awesome of Beyond Wellness Radio. Before we go on today’s show, I want to tell you guys about our newsletter. So make sure you go BeyondWellnessRadio.com and hit the button that says Sign Up To Newsletter. By doing this you will never miss out on an episode. Be the first one to hear it as it’s sent out to your inbox each week. You guys want even more? Click on Just In Health link and go straight Dr. Justin's page and get direct access to Dr. Justin himself.
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How’s it going, Dr. Justin?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Baris, it’s going great! I’m actually hooked up to my emWave right now. It actually has me red turning to blue, so I’m trying to do the whole podcast today in green in coherence in a parasympathetic state as well–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Talk about here in just a bit.
Baris Harvey: Yeah, it’s funny when you mentioned that, “Oh, I’m pulling out my emWave,” as soon as you do that naturally, for some reason it turns red. It’s like it knows it’s being looked at, I’m like, “Wow, you guys are looking at me.” Same thing happened to me right when I pulled it up. I’m also doing that, so for people out there who’s wondering what the emWave is, it’s a way to track your heart rate variability and to actually train it so that we can get it in coherence with–so that way the communication with your heart and you brain are communicating appropriately. So that way, you’ll be thinking with your brain but also thinking with your heart, and following like your true purpose. So if you guys are having any stress problems. This is a great tool and Dr. Justin does have the hook up so go to him and he will make sure that you get a nice deal on it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and regarding the emWave, I just kinda wanna make sure people know what’s going on. So the whole idea of coherence really is that communication between the heart and the brain because they found that 70% of the fibers in the heart are actually the same fibers, the same neurological fibers in the brain. So there's a strong connection between the heart and the brain even just beyond an energetic type of spiritual thing, but more even just a scientific, nervous system kinda thing. And also, when we deal with coherence the whole idea of coherence is basically heart rate variability is a marker of parasympathetic tone, right? The more parasympathetic, the more rest and digest, the more repairing we do with the less breaking and the less stimulation. And the whole idea is with heart rate variability is the more uneven your heart beat is, right? Heart rate and variability, the heart rate is variable from beat to beat. It’s a great sign of overall health. The best, most healthiest people, the Navy SEALs and our military and such, they have great, great heart rate variability, so it’s an excellent marker for health and it's really just the unevenness, right? The variability between your heartbeats, not having the exact heartbeat at the exact split second, but slight bit of variability from beat to beat.
Baris Harvey: Yeah. Like Darwin said, it's not just about–I know people's take his words out of context and say you know, survival of the fittest, and not just about being the fittest, it’s about being the most adaptable, right? And that’s why having a varied heart rate is important. It keeps your body kind of ready and adaptable, and like you said in the healing parasympathetic state–I don’t think we need any too much extra sympathetic stress, huh, in our society right now. So trying to do some extra things that are common healing to the body will be so that’s super important especially if you’re type A personality, putting this on and actually getting a reading of feelings, right? I think it’s kinda hard you can’t necessary measure feelings, but this is like it’s the best tool that I can think of that would do something of that sort that kinda detects your stress before you even notice that you’re stressed out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, yeah. And one of the things I do to get up in the morning is I activate my sympathetic nervous system. One of the things I do is I start out, get outta bed, and I do push-ups to failure.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I start off then with a foundation training series by Eric Goodman, it’s just two minutes where I just go and get my extensors working because we’re just so much in flexion all day.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then one of the things I do is I end my shower with about one to two minutes of really, really cold shower.
Baris Harvey: Oh yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The cold shower basically stimulates my nervous system to adapt and what it does is it just starts stimulating the sympathetic nervous system and here’s a really cool study I have here. They actually looked at adaptive cold showers as a potential treatment for depression in the journal, Medical Hypotheses. And I just found–
Baris Harvey: Wow!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Two to three-minute cold shower had a significant analgesic effect and helps alleviate depression.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It helped increase beta endorphin levels. It helped increase noradrenaline levels and increased synaptic release of noradrenaline in the brain so–and it had an antidepressant effect. So I always start my day with a cold shower and push-ups to failure, and a little bit of foundation work just to get my extensors in because I really wanna have good posture and I wanna be ready to go and then I go downstairs. I’ll typically then put some coffee on, some butter and MCT coffee in my French press. While that’s brewing for 4 minutes because I don’t wanna waste time, I put a podcast on while I do a 4-minute Tabata.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I do that empty stomach because then I’m really tapping into fat, right? Because I'm exercising on an empty stomach but it’s not so long of a duration of exercise where I’m getting catabolic but it's just enough to start tapping into fat and to revving up my metabolism 10 to 20% over the next couple days to really just increase my body’s ability to burn fat and also put on muscle.
Baris Harvey: Yeah, definitely. And so we’re diving into this pretty quick. People are like, I didn’t even know what the topic is yet. So today we’re gonna be talking about building a robust nervous system and Dr. Justin is already getting into his daily routine and speaking about your daily routine, what did you have for breakfast today?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, today is kinda my standard Friday. I know, but it’s kinda the same every Friday. Collagen, 4 raw eggs, butter-MCT coffee, and then I’m just hyped up right now on adaptogenic herbs. I feel like adaptogenic herbs should be in everyone's routine. The Russians did tons of research, spent tens of millions of dollars on it, immune benefits, stress-modulating benefits, right? And I think you mentioned the–I wanna say Sigmund Freud, not Freud but–
Baris Harvey: Darwin?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Darwin. Darwin, yes. Darwin talked about, you know, survival of the fittest and we really are taking that to adaptation and–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: These are things that you can put into your body, adaptogenic herbs. It's right there. It’s adaptogenic. It’s helping your immune system, your nervous system adapt.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Your hormones adapt. So again, healthy lifestyle, healthy habits, and then healthy supplements to take your body to the next level of adaptation.
Baris Harvey: Yeah, especially because taking adaptogenic herbs, that’s kinda like the–even if you didn’t know exactly what you’re doing, that’s a good starting point just because it's not like, “Oh, it's gonna put it, increase it, or decrease a certain hormone,” because it’s more of a modulator. It goes in there and says, “Hey, this is out of balance, let me kind of–you need more of this.” And it’ll crank, you know, the knob this way. Or it will say, “Hey, you're overly stressed out, you need less of this.” And it kinda just modulates it and puts it back into balance.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Baris Harvey: So, yeah, definitely. And it’s almost like, like it just–I mean, look at the pictures of some of these like plants and take like a deep look at–especially like, if you look at like some of like reishi mushroom. You can tell by the way it’s formed, it seems like a pretty imbalanced kind of plant. It knows what it’s doing. Plant power, people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Absolutely, I totally agree.
Baris Harvey: So let’s talk about–anyway, so we started talking about some of the chemical like structures that will help us, when we’re talking about building a robust nervous system. But we know that, talking about our nervous system, it's almost like a highway of information, right? Our nervous system is basically like, like computer wires and if we look at–we’re currently trying to map out the human genome and we know that currently there is no computer that is smarter than our–or has that many connection or neural than our brain does. Unfortunately, it seems like, you know, many of us today have been fed foods that don't allow us to really explore our own brain. I think we should and that’s kind of our goal is to allow people to feel their bodies and their brains at a fuller capacity and with that being said, we know that if there's an accident on the freeway or there’s construction, it really slows down communication and, you know, I can't–if I’m supposed to travel to Dr. Justin’s office and he’s down the street. If there’s a roadblock, I can’t–hey, I can’t deliver the mail to you, right? So what's happening if our bones and our posture are out of balance. What's happening there? And let's talk about how to build our nervous system, you know, by–you said you do the foundational exercises every morning. Let's talk about why it's so important to have a strong posture.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, posture is excellent. I mean, it's really important. Anyone that's had a few drinks one night and played the game, Jenga, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You know, right? Just that Jenga table that just like sitting up straight, you can put like a bowling ball. You could put like, you know, 3 or 4 maybe even 5 45-lb plates when that thing is just straight up and that’s gonna hold. No problem.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You start pulling one or two out, I mean, just like–just breathing on it could knock it over. So what does that mean? That means that structure is really, really important to absorbing force. Force obstructions.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So this is really cool. So when it comes to structure. Simple things we can do. Like Dr. Mercola has talked about this in his new book called Effortless Healing, is having good posture. So standing, having a standing desk is super, super important. Actually what I’m gonna do right now is I have a stand desk. I’m gonna go from seated into a standing position right now. So if you hear it get a little mechanical on the background, that’s what’s happening. But I try to stand about three-quarters of my day. So like–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 5 to 7 hours I am standing, which is absolutely huge for health. There’s a couple of things, right? One, we’re activating our extensors. Our extensors tend to be more parasympathetic, while when we go into that fetal position, it tends to be more sympathetic. Alright?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So let’s–before we go into posture, let's break down the nervous system first. So our nervous system basically is just how our body communicates. It communicates via nerves.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It also communicates via hormones, and the nerves and the hormones work together. So in our nervous system, we have our peripheral, right? These work go to the extremities, right? Hands, feet, and then it even goes to the organs. And then we have our central nervous system. This is like our brain and our spinal cord. So they tend to communicate together. So let’s focus on the peripheral. Now, we have what's known as our autonomic nervous system. Our autonomic basically, to substitute autonomic for automatic, meaning you don't really have much control over it. It’s automatically happen, like you’re not thinking about breathing, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You're not thinking about being startled. You're not thinking about, you know, having to go to the bathroom typically. It’s just–it happens, it’s on automatic. Now, in that automatic, autonomic nervous system, we have sympathetic, the sympathetic nervous system and then we also have the parasympathetic. So I hate these big words because medicine just uses them to confuse people.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I call it fight or flight and rest and digest, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Fight or flight is the sympathetic. Fight or flight. It’s the part of the nervous system that gets activated when you get startled, right? When you’re either gonna fight, right? Are you gonna attack or are you gonna run, alright? So it's when you get super stressed, you’re in traffic, right? You’re gritting your teeth. You may be flipping off the guy next to you, it's like, that’s the fight or flight. And then the parasympathetic is when you're like deep belly breathing, maybe you're finishing that yoga class and you’re in Shavasana or corpse pose. Or you’re sitting there–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: In meditation or you’re next to your wife or partner and you’re just like feeling this really great contentment and great connection, that’s the parasympathetic nervous system. Parasympathetic–
Baris Harvey: You’re gonna put me back to sleep bringing back yoga’s thing, I was just like, “Uhhh,” at the end of yoga. I’m falling asleep. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s my favorite pose, corpse pose. I am the best of that pose.
Baris Harvey: Exactly. So parasympathetic is bringing everything inward, right? Parasympathetic tone takes blood, brings it inward to the organs to nourish, to bring nutrition inward, and also helps with digestion, right? Parasympathetic is rest and digest. Blood’s going inward, repairing or increasing DHEA and testosterone and progesterone, or healing. Where sympathetic is shuttling stress hormone output, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The sympathetic nervous system whips the adrenals into action to make adrenaline or epinephrine, right? Same thing. That epinephrine then stimulates cortisol and the job of it is to mobilize sugar so the extremities and the arms can run and fight and flee, where the parasympathetic is driving inward and trying to help repair. So linking that back to
posture, sympathetic tone is always going into flexion, right? Tight hip flexors, going into that fetal position, flexing over, that’s the sympathetic. So trying to go outward by getting your body into extension, opening your chest up, pulling your head back, pulling your shoulder blades back, keeping your external auditory meatus, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Big fancy word again. Your ear hole–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ear hole over the middle part of your shoulder, over your hip, over your ankles and your knees. So just kinda having a really good kinda plum line type of alignment, that’s gonna be really important and got kinda tying the analogy back to Jenga. When that Jenga is perfectly straight, you can put like 200 pounds on that Jenga piece, it’s not gonna go anywhere. You pull 1 or 2 out, it’s shifting a little bit forward, just breathing on it will knock it over. So I’m gonna take a deep breath there, Baris.
Baris Harvey: Yeah, definitely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Go ahead and talk–
Baris Harvey: I got a new analogy and I think it’s funny because we were talking about how we make up analogies but isn’t that the point to trick us info–like knowledge is really power and when it’s in a different language sometimes it's like, it's like a hieroglyphics, right? What is the parasympathetic nervous system? It doesn't make sense to me, so by connecting with something
we know that make sense to people, it starts to fire off those new neurons and you start to build new knowledge and it connects and it sticks. So since we're talking about, you know, developing a robust nervous system, I go, “Hey why not through analogy so that way we can, you know, have some neurogenesis and to create some new connections today, and I thought about a good one. A way to kind of think of how the nerves and hormones work because they're both sending information and basically things to do. You can think of the nerve cells and the connections almost like email or phone call, you know. Even though Dr. Justin’s in Texas, I can say, “Hey, you know, I need this or this, or hey, we need to get this done, blah blah blah.” You know, he could do the same thing to me or send me an email and it’s there instantly, right? I got the connection at the speed of light and/or the speed of techno–whatever the speed it travels. And then hormones are more like, you know, the postal service where like, for example, I recently got some Zen frames from Dr. Justin and, you know, made a phone call and sent email, “Hey, could connect me and give me a pair of these? I’ll go ahead and send a payment to you and, you know, put it on an air flight and got it, you know, 2 days later.” So the nerves fire instantly, whereas the hormones are a little bit more gradual but when they do hit, they do have a strong effect.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. I mean, they are certain hormones that are fast, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The sympathetic nervous system will stimulate adrenaline, norepinephrine in like split seconds.
Baris Harvey: Oh yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But cortisol comes to the show minutes later, right?
Baris Harvey: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cortisol is not a fast one but your adrenaline is super fast, right?
Baris Harvey: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then we have like our brain, right? Our brain has an effect on the parasympathetic. We have these things called cranial nerves, right? The big ones there are parasympathetic are 3, 7, 9, and 10.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Don’t really have to worry about it, but again eyes, salivation, right? So these are really important, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Taking in good sight, seeing good things, chewing, breathing in through the nose, nasal stimulation. These are all things that are activating the parasympathetic nervous system. That’s why when you eat, chew your food 30 times or so. Don’t be anal about it. Chew your food to about like an oatmeal-like consistency, you know?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: When you walk in nature, look far away. That stimulation to the eyes is very important. Lots of studies with long distance viewing while in nature will help alleviate depression, okay?
Baris Harvey: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Breathing in through the nose will stimulate parasympathetic fibers and put you more in a–into a coherence parasympathetic state. So these are simple things you can do with the brain. Now on top of that, we have this really cool nerve called the vagus nerve. It’s cranial nerve 10.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the vagus nerve does all kinds of stuff. It affects the spleen. It affects the heart and it affects the stomach and the pancreas, and the intestines and this is the nerve they get stimulated when the parasympathetic is really activated. It affects digestion. It affects all of your organs. So that gets shut down when we get into a stressed out state. So just think when you're getting stressed out, you’re, you know, cutting off trip to vagus so to speak. You’re cutting off that vagus nerve. So if you wanna go to vagus, you really wanna be working on doing things to keep your body in that parasympathetic state, breathing, you know, the emWave, right? 5-second breaths in through the nose, chewing your food really well. These are all great things that you can do to help get yourself into a parasympathetic state. And then also, you know, avoid eating inflammatory food. You’re gonna keep yourself totally locked in a stressed out state if you're eating food that’s inflaming you day in and day out.
Baris Harvey: Yeah, yeah. And well, like you said, whereas like the nervous system is working a little bit made quicker and you do have some hormones that work quicker, you know, 2-day express mail, right? When you have like the foods working on a chemical, like it kinda has a prolonged delay effect, like you eat a food, you know, it takes a couple of minutes then it starts kicking in, like if you eat a jalapeño, like you don’t instantly just sweat but give it a minute or two and it starts to compound and you start to sweat and you start to notice those effects but they do have like a delayed response, too, as you digest it, like it will stay in your system for a couple days depending on whatever the substance is, so if you’re continuously–even if it's a every other day thing where, you know, you don't eat a burger every day but you go to McDonalds every other day, well, it’s gonna have a negative effect on your health in your body because you’re still, you know, it’s still lingering so by the time it's finally–those inflammatory response finally start to end, and like, “Okay, we can relax, you guys.” It’s like, “Oh, here, he’s eating another burger.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup, exactly.
Baris Harvey: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So there are things that you can do to get like to tap into your nervous system. So I love chiropractic medicine.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very passionate about it and one of the things that I use is a window into the nervous system is applied kinesiology.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So applied kinesiology is really cool because when we talk about the nervous system, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We talked about the automatic nervous system, right? The autonomic, well, on the flip side of that is the somatic, okay?
Baris Harvey: Okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the somatic is just another word for the muscle nervous system. So I’ll be so much more convenient if they just named it the automatic and the muscle, but yeah–
Baris Harvey: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I already said, they keep you confused, so don't understand your body, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if we can use our muscles as a muscle testing, applied kinesiology muscle testing is a window to how the nervous system is functioning. So I can come in there and I can test someone's psoas and get a window into L4, L5, S1 muscles so I can test their shoulder, their deltoid, and get a window into C5. I can test their tricep and get a window into C7 and vice-versa. So I can, you know, put force into someone's muscle and the goal isn’t going to see how strong they are like you’re benching 300 pounds. I’ve had a gold medalist Olympic athlete said I could literally press down their rectus femoris muscle with one finger.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now if you would have put that guy in a gym he’d be ridiculously strong and fast but it's not about that, it’s about applying a set bit of force and seeing how fast they can adapt to that force.
Baris Harvey: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the slower they adapt, that means the higher risk of injury and also the less ability they're gonna have, the decreased ability–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They’re gonna have to generate force as well.
Baris Harvey: Yeah, definitely. And then so, the terms for that, again you said applied kinesiology and it’s also muscle testing, I know some people get like, get kinda weirded out, like “Oh, how can you muscle test?” But you mentioned that our muscles are basically just kind of conductors of electricity, right? Like we have–you yourself have and myself as well have different machines that stimulate these muscles just simply with electricity, and we can show, “Hey, and yeah, they respond to electricity.” They’re–we are bio-electrical chemical beings.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. And we're doing muscle testing. This is on a direct link. It’s a direct muscle test, meaning–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We're looking at the somatic nervous system, right? Just google somatic nervous system. What you'll find is the branch of the nervous system, the peripheral nervous system, meaning outside at the central nervous system that controls voluntary movements, okay? We have afferent, right? Afferent nerves go from the muscle into the spine.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then we have efferent nerves that go from the spine out to the muscle, so if you move your muscle, right? You’re using efferent nerves to then stimulate the movement and if someone touches your leg, the interpretation of feeling of that–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Back in your brain that's going to be more afferent. Afferent is going up. Efferent is exiting. E for exiting, A for entering.
Baris Harvey: Hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that’s kind of a good thing. So we have a direct window into how your nerves are functioning with applied kinesiology. Now this is different like if you have someone that muscle tests for supplements, that's getting more into an energetic type of realm–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Where you’re putting maybe a supplement on your chest, that's getting more energetic because you have to have energy from the bottle go into your, you know, you're nervous system–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And there is some validity for that for sure but it’s not nearly as scientific as applied kinesiology for the body because we're looking at the somatic nervous system myotomes directly.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’s a direct indication for that. Now if you wanna test supplementation and even more direct way to do it–
Baris Harvey: Isn’t it usually under the tongue?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, put it right in the mouth.
Baris Harvey: Where you hold it for a little bit?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Put it right in the mouth because then it's hitting your lingual nerves, now that’s direct nervous system test because it's going into your nerves. Your nerves to then going from the–let’s see that’s the olfactory and I think the cranial nerve number 5 is taking that up to the brain and it is telling it, “Hey, you know, what's going on?” The brain is sensing it and reading it for nutrients or for toxins or whatever and you’ll either get a strong or weak test. So that’s more of a direct muscle test.
Baris Harvey: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nervous system-wise when it comes to nutrition. So if we were talking energetic stuff, that's not what we're talking here. That’s what I call, more indirect. We're talking about direct muscle testing.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So when I work with my professional athletes or college athletes or people that are just trying to get better from an injury, we're going in, we’re testing all their muscles because that gives us a window into their nervous system.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And by getting a window, we see nerves–if we see those muscles aren’t working, we know the communication to those muscles is impaired.
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when we know it's impaired, there’s a couple of things we can do. We can apply a specific adjustment to get movement into that joint which will help the communication, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It'll get the nerves communicating so it’ll help that afferent. It’ll help the communication going in–
Baris Harvey: And let me cut you off real quick.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What? Yeah.
Baris Harvey: Because I think you brought up a really, really good point that I want to make sure that doesn't just slide past you real quick. And this is gonna sound irrelevant right now, but it’s gonna make sense, okay? So our gut bacteria is a community of cells and different bio-organisms that are basically kind of change how our mood and our body, and they communicate with each other. The same way when we eat plants, they send a direct message to us or we just animals or–and they could be a good message or bad message. They can benefit us or negatively affect us by the same way if someone's diabetic and their foot is numb, they’ve having poor communication. At the end of the day, we have to remember that all of these processes are just a form of our bodies of–it’s kind of having to have–you have to have some kind of holistic view to fully understand this or even believe what I'm sayin’. But it's just a form of our body more as an organization, as an organism, and not just a one static thing and that everything is just trying to get into homeostasis and basically communicate with each other. So if you have impaired communication on any level and you’re not–the same way if you get a misinterpretation with, you know, your wife or your girlfriend or something like that, you might have an argument and be like, “Oh, well, my phone didn’t receive you call.” We have a missed call and bam, there’s issues the same way with your body. So I just want to make sure you that you pointed out like you had a gem in there and you started to talk about like impaired communication. That's I think super big, so go ahead.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's awesome. Awesome. So where chiropractic is phenomenal is that the body, especially the spine and the joints they communicate via movement, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if that afferent communication isn’t coming in, right? Is that old adage in programming, crap information in means crap information out.
Baris Harvey: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if we aren’t getting communication because things aren't moving properly or because the muscle is shut down because of an adhesion or a trigger point or scar tissue, we’re putting crappy information into the system which is almost kinda guarantee crappy information out. So as a functional medicine doctor, I apply applied kinesiology as a window into the nervous system and then we can test, “Hey, is it by having them touch certain places on the spine, on the joints, or on the muscle tissue?” We can see how it gets stronger, right?
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So the body is amazing because if we bring awareness to something, we can actually–
Baris Harvey: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Get a window into how the body functions. So if I touch my back, let’s say my psoas muscle is weak. So if I put my leg out at a 45-degree angle and I press down that shows weak, I could have my patient then touch their lower back where those nerves are and if that strengthens, that's the body or the nervous system telling me this area wants more input. It wants more communication and we can provide that by adjusting that joint–
Baris Harvey: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or if I touch the muscle–if touching the muscle strengthens it, what my nervous system is saying, there’s an adhesion or trigger point. There’s something in the muscle that’s affecting the communication and we can do a soft tissue technique like ART or myofascial release or Graston technique or a muscle spindle technique and we can reestablish communication to those feedback loops. So this is like direct science and if any, if every doctor knew about this, we could be preventing injury. We could have–
Baris Harvey: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Our patients performing so much.
Baris Harvey: Yeah, and that’s our goal. So slowly we’re surely get our–get this out to the masses because just like we mentioned earlier how it's just like a highway of communication and you don’t want your muscles to be like LA traffic. You want a steady flow, you know what I mean, and it's the same thing. And then so we’re talking about the muscles in the spinal system and the importance. I know it’s a big thing with people is like low back problems and even myself, you know, at a younger age I
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In this episode, we cover:
09:19 Building a robust nervous system
13:00 Sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems
22:25 Applied kinesiology and muscle testing
36:33 Problems with most chiropractors
46:14 Enteric Nervous System