You Own Your Body - Time To Start Acting Like It!

We all own our bodies. There is no warranty, return or exchange policy on this priceless biological suit of armor and its inner workings so it is high time we all faced the fact that if we don’t start taking the reins, something or someone else inevitably will (and this doesn’t usually end well)! This can be particularly difficult in our modern society where we are taught from a young age that we need to seek counsel from a health professional anytime we have questions or concerns about our bodies. While there certainly is a time and place to seek medical attention, it’s critical that we learn interception, or the ability to perceive what is going on inside our bodies, so we can properly self-assess. Our bodies have an incredible ability to inform us when things aren’t going well (like a check engine light in a car) and if we can properly teach this at a young age, we’ll avoid some of the tragic stories that come from people who dissociate from their bodies.

One such story came from a recent client who’s physician referred her to us to get her back on track after surviving a bout of stage 4 ovarian cancer that nearly took her life. During her intake, she explained how she got there and lamented the fact that she ignored the many warning signs her body was giving her over the years. “I was from a family that just didn’t get sick,” she said. “We just didn’t. And especially cancer - not in our family!” The most interesting thing was that even as she was telling the story with a newfound appreciation for paying more attention to her body, you could tell a part of her was still in disbelief that she “got sick.”

So what are these warning signs? Well they are different for everyone but generally speaking, anything that is significantly out of the ordinary, say insomnia, rapid weight loss/gain, chronic diarrhea/constipation, headaches or other pains that don’t seem to go away - all warrant special attention. 

This next story didn’t end as well as the previous because another client’s sister recently passed away after ignoring the plethora of warning signs that she had something serious going on in her GI tract. For years, she suffered from gastrointestinal dysfunction, chronic diarrhea and abdominal pain but didn’t tell anyone because she thought it was “normal.” This went on for years until she called her doctor when the pain became unbearable. After running a full gamut of tests, they found out that she had stage 4 colon cancer. She died a year later.

The common thread between both of these tragic stories is that if each of them were victims of the disassociation that is so common in our society today. The goal is not to rush to the doctor at the first sign of discomfort, but rather to be able to hone in on somatic dysfunction when it starts, distinguish whether it’s musculoskeletal or visceral and rule out some of the most common causes like sleep deprivation, dehydration, anxiety/depression or adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals. This is part of the reason why our intake process is so comprehensive at ALIGN. Our goal is to get as much information as possible before we treat/train so we ask clients/patients to go back as far as their childhood so we can paint a more complete picture. It never ceases to amaze me what people forget or worse, don’t bother to write in their intake forms. 

A good example of this was when a client who was referred to us by her physician because she was overweight and struggling with back pain for years. She said the pain was not the result of an injury but rather it came on gradually so we didn’t press much further and proceeded with our assessment. We discovered a number of weaknesses and imbalances that seemed likely contributing factors to her back pain and charted a course of action to address each one. Unfortunately months went by with little to no improvement and her ability to contract any of her core muscles remained limited at best. Finally one day she asked, “could this have anything to do with my surgery?” My jaw dropped, as I probed her for more details. It turns out she had undergone major emergency exploratory abdominal surgery which left her visceral cavity in disarray and full of scars. This revelation completely changed her treatment protocol and we were finally able to make serious headway toward getting her inflammation down and subsequently alleviating her back pain.

The moral of these stories is not to spark fear, but rather to  inspire you, the reader, to become the master of your own body. It may sound ridiculous, but far too often we rely on experts in the medical and wellness community to serve as intermediaries between our conscious selves and our own bodies. It’s like we’re scared to listen when our bodies are trying to tell us something. I get it though, in an era full of distractions and AI generated realities, it may seem like our high maintenance bodies will no longer be needed as we transcend this plane of existence for something far more utopian. Not likely however, as we are inextricably linked to this brilliantly complex and dynamic suit of flesh we call a body so it is our duty to embody our bodies and take full ownership of them!