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The 3 Roots of Chronic Pain and How to Address Them | Leigh Brandon
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Leigh Brandon is a highly respected Functional Medicine Practitioner, CHEK Practitioner, CHEK Faculty Instructor, Active Release Techniques® Therapist, Emotion Code Practitioner, author, and podcast host. With nearly 30 years of clinical experience, he takes a truly holistic approach to health, wellness, and performance—helping clients achieve results even when other methods have fallen short.
A lifelong learner, Leigh has trained with some of the most brilliant minds in health and wellness, including Paul Chek, Bill Wolcott, Dr. John Veltheim, Dr. Michael Leahy, Dr. Bradley Nelson, and Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt. His relentless pursuit of knowledge, combined with hands-on experience, allows him to transform cutting-edge insights into real-world solutions for his clients.
Since 2010, Leigh has been part of the CHEK Institute Faculty, teaching and presenting internationally in Europe, the USA, and Australia. He has also published five health and fitness books and created multiple online professional education programs, further extending his impact in the field.
Leigh Website & Socials: https://www.bodychek.co.uk/
Leigh's Chronic Pain Breakthrough Blueprint: https://www.bodychek.co.uk/freepainguide/
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Transcript
Introduction of Lee Brandon and His Approach
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey folks, k Christian Yordanov here. Welcome back to the show. Today, we have a great guest for you. His name is Lee Brandon. He's a highly respected functional medicine practitioner. He's a Czech practitioner, Czech faculty instructor, ART, active release techniques therapist, emotion code practitioner. He's an author, podcast host, and he has over 30 years of clinical experience. So he's a very well-respected practitioner.
00:00:27
Speaker
uh as i mentioned he's in the czech institute so he is on the faculty there with paul czech he studied with heavyweights like bill wolcott dr dietrich klinghart and a few others and we had them on the other podcast i think it's last year maybe the year before i can't remember talking about his latest book on adult acne and overcoming it and today we're going to talk about the topic of chronic pain and resolving that so lee thank you so much for joining us today man Yeah, Christian, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me back.
00:00:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. um Super, super interesting topic to me. Actually, i had somebody a couple of months ago talking about ah different way of approaching ah some of this, you know, imbalances in the body that can cause chronic pain. So what's, um just let let's start high level and we can we can, you know, drop down deeper.
Diet and Chronic Pain: The Gluten and Sugar Connection
00:01:20
Speaker
What's your kind of approach to addressing chronic pain in a nutshell, if you if you would?
00:01:26
Speaker
So I would say i approach chronic pain from three different aspects really. So first you've got the structural, which we can go into.
00:01:38
Speaker
Then you've got the nutritional, which is often an aspect that most people tend to look over or not realize is involved in in in and the issue.
00:01:51
Speaker
And then the final one, which is a broad subject that covers actually a lot of subjects, and that's that's the neurological aspect as well that, I guess, keeps people in pain once the pain has already done its damage, so to speak.
00:02:06
Speaker
Okay. So actually, let's maybe start with nutritional because that this is as as soon as you said it, um I'm like, okay, so what can what can cause pain? I know prostaglandins can cause pain and I know if we eat a lot of omega-6s from nuts and seeds and obviously seed oils, that can increase prostaglandin production and there some of those are pain signaling molecules. I'm thinking that that's probably one angle, but I couldn't really think of much else on the spot there. What's kind of, maybe, can you enlighten us a little bit on that topic?
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So there's a number of aspects to it. So obviously with a poor diet, that can increase, you know, you've mentioned prostaglandins, but it can increase inflammation generally in the body.
00:02:54
Speaker
Again, you mentioned and seed oils, vegetable oils. You've got things like processed sugar, alcohol, All of those things can, if you like, irritate the nervous system and create an immune response. like They can irritate the gut lining.
00:03:14
Speaker
They can cause ah what's called a leaky gut, which I know you know all about, which basically means that, let's call it foreign material, goes through the lining of the gut into the bloodstream. And again, that's where you get the immune system, goes on alert, and that's what creates systemic inflammation.
00:03:35
Speaker
another Another aspect of that is food sensitivities, which again, I know you know about, but key things or the most common things I tend to see are gluten-containing foods, pasteurized dairy products.
00:03:49
Speaker
Another key one or common one is soya products. I know in the US, corn tends to be quite high on the list for a lot of people, but you can literally be sensitive to any food and we're all very different.
00:04:03
Speaker
um but again, they have the same effects. A, they can, again, create or help towards a leaky gut, but they also stimulate that
Case Study: CEO's Elimination Diet Success
00:04:13
Speaker
immune response. They stimulate um inflammation in the body.
00:04:18
Speaker
Now, the reason that's important is because, and and there's more reasons I'll go into in a moment, but the reason, because people might be thinking, well what's that what's that got to do with pain? One of the things that increases your likelihood of feeling pain is inflammation, right?
00:04:39
Speaker
And what it's what it's also doing, it's feeding inflammation into the nervous system. So this will be covered when I talk more about the neurological system. But basically, whenever there's a ah perceived threat in the body, and inflammation is a threat because it's a foreign body or a perceived foreign body in the body, what it will do is The more inputs into the nervous system, the more the body thinks it's in danger.
00:05:07
Speaker
So pain is a protective mechanism, if you like. it's an ah It's an alarm system, for want of a better phrase. So if you think of a fire alarm in your home, if there's a fire, you will want it to go off to alert you to a problem.
00:05:24
Speaker
So pain is there to a lot alert to us to ah i should should I say, to alert our conscious mind of something our subconscious mind is aware of.
00:05:36
Speaker
Just like if you were just about to tread on something sharp, obviously, unless you were crazy, you wouldn't do that consciously. But let's say your foot's just hit something sharp and it triggers off the pain sensor in the base of your foot, sends a signal up your um nervous system, up your spinal cord into your brain and your brain will say, oh, I need to do something to stay safe, which will probably be and need to stimulate the hip flexor muscles in that leg to lift the foot off rather than push it back down, as an example.
00:06:08
Speaker
Right. So. the other The other things with foods, another key thing is is toxins. So again, what a lot of people may not realize is that in our food supply, there's actually quite a lot of toxins.
00:06:23
Speaker
So whether it's the NPK fertilizers that are used in non-organic um crops, whether it's herbicides, pesticides, and obviously the key herbicide is glyphosate, that we know absolutely destroys our gut.
00:06:40
Speaker
um You know, many people call it an antibiotic because actually kills the all the bacteria in our gut, which is essential essential for health. um Depending on what soil, again, it's grown in, you could have heavy metals in the food as well.
00:06:53
Speaker
And this isn't things you can, you know, just run under run under the tap and and wash it off. It's in the food. right So again, toxins, foreign bodies, especially if you've got a leaky gut, it's going to get into your bloodstream, it's going to create inflammation.
00:07:10
Speaker
so So there's quite a lot to the nutritional aspects of pain. And it's really key that
00:07:21
Speaker
if you're in pain, it might well be one of the things that you need to do to overcome it. It might be the only
Nutrition's Role in Pain Management
00:07:28
Speaker
thing. So I've got an example of someone. So I worked with this guy. ah His name was Trail.
00:07:33
Speaker
He was a chief executive. And he came to me with... predominantly like a sore, aching sternum, breastbone. And whenever he ate anything, his throat would swell up He would choke.
00:07:50
Speaker
He couldn't swallow the food and and he had trouble breathing. can you imagine that's pretty frightening thing to happen? Right. and he would And he went to several doctors and most of them were just kind of shrugging their shoulders, saying, no, we don't really know what that is.
00:08:04
Speaker
One of them diagnosed him with costochondritis, which is inflammation the cartilage on the ribs. That kind of made sense to the sternum thing, but didn't make any sense with what was going on in his throat whenever he ate anything.
00:08:21
Speaker
And one doctor suggested cutting open his sternum, open up his ribcage and having a look inside just in case they might find something. Which he was petrified by by that option.
00:08:36
Speaker
he had lost By the time he came to see me, he'd lost 17 kilos in weight. So he was looking very slim. Because he was scared to eat. So he actually stopped eating.
00:08:47
Speaker
Oh, God. Like some days he could get you know some fluids in, but he actually stopped eating because he it was just too frightened. Because imagine if he can't breathe, that's really scary. so So he came to me and he said, do what what do you think it is? And I said, well, but don't know what it is, but it seems to make sense to me that you're having some kind of reaction to something that you're eating, because every time you eat, you're getting swelling in your throat.
00:09:14
Speaker
that That makes the first kind of sense to me. So I said, what we'll do is we'll run a test. and see if you've got any sensitivities going on to food. So we did that and it came back and he came up with all these sensitivities.
00:09:30
Speaker
So we did we did an elimination diet. We cut out the foods that he tested positive to. And within a few days, he started feeling better. There was improvement.
00:09:41
Speaker
It was slow, but there was improvement. Weeks went by, he's getting better. Months went by. and Now he's back to eating the same volume of food he was eating previously. Yeah. Then his you know, his energy level started coming back.
00:09:55
Speaker
Uh, he started feeling emotionally much better. you know, imagine a lot safer because he's not choking every time he eats. Yeah. And, and then, you know, we stopped working together.
00:10:06
Speaker
He was doing okay. And then about six months later, he just happened to be in London where I was working at the time. And, uh, he came to see me. Now I opened the door and I, and I literally said to him, can I help you?
00:10:20
Speaker
ah And he said, Lee, it's trail. What? Right.
Structural Imbalances and Corrective Exercises
00:10:25
Speaker
Because he'd put those 17 kilos back on. Yeah. And he looked like a professional rugby player, like, you know, packed on with muscle.
00:10:34
Speaker
And I was just absolutely shocked. um And he was, you know, he was obviously absolutely delighted because he'd spent God knows how much money going from doctor to doctor.
00:10:45
Speaker
and He was going to private doctors, specialists, and they just didn't know what to do with him. And to me, it was quite simple. So now all the pain had gone, all the, you know,
00:10:58
Speaker
his his throat wasn't swelling up and he was doing great. and And interestingly, you know, he's, he's referred family members to me over the years and they're all doing great as well now. Um, and it but it shows, it shows the importance that,
00:11:14
Speaker
nutrition can play and you know not always it's not always a case of oh yeah let's just change your nutrition and everything's going to be fine but oftentimes it's one of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle but in in his case it was entirely nutritional and what was interesting was he was actually a ceo of a supplement company whoa which was quite interesting he's gone to do other you know on doing other things now but you know what it What it did for me is it just filled me with so much satisfaction, in how I could help someone that was in such a dire position.
00:11:50
Speaker
Literally, in they were scared of, but they thought they were going to die because they couldn't eat, right? And to be able to help someone in that way just really filled me with the you know the biggest satisfaction possible in terms of what you do for a living.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, man. And, you know, that was that was a real motivation for me to continue helping people with pain. Yeah, it's it's interesting. Like, I mean, headaches, like, I absolutely, that's the one of the first thing I i' would think is, because I remember back in twenty ah in 2017, 18, 19, my mother at that point had IBS diagnosed for more than 10 years. So she was about 13 years diagnosed.
00:12:33
Speaker
And the doctors did absolutely, like, Nothing, absolutely nothing, right? um Luckily, they didn't make her worse because that's, you you know, but a very common thing.
00:12:44
Speaker
if they If they're useless, they'll frustrate you, but at least they won't harm you. But if they're not, they could be very harmful. So anyway, she at one point, shes she was basically, after every meal, she was either writhing in pain, like something in her in her stomach, holding herself and all that,
00:12:59
Speaker
Or would have a horrible headache. And then we we did a food sensitivity test and basically half of the foods that that test tested for were reactive. So that was 90 foods out of 180. So, yeah, so now, I mean, now we we don we do this with almost every client as well.
00:13:16
Speaker
And I'm surprised what things come back as reactive. There was one lady... um she had lemon for whatever reason was just off off the charts and uh even on after like a six month retest it was still very high like very still inflammatory but she removed a bunch of foods and just like over the course of a weekend she reported just so much water retention kind of dissipating And then, i mean, just the the weird stuff coming up as reactive for people like banana. like you you
00:13:50
Speaker
It's also like people think I don't eat that food, therefore I can't be reactive to it. But when we use more sophisticated lab food sensitivity tests, your immune system at any point in time can be reactive to foods that are normally benign. And what I find is...
00:14:08
Speaker
The chicken is actually coming on oh coming back as pretty reactive in ah in a decent percentage of people. Probably because it's so saturated with omega-6s because a lot of those chickens are eating just corn and soy predominantly. you know But it's it's definitely an underrated... And as you were talking, i was like yeah, of course. like I remember...
00:14:31
Speaker
In my autism book research, gluten and casein, you had the the opioid-like peptides, like the gluteomorphins and the casomorphins, and they interact with the opioid receptors, so they could they could definitely trigger different kinds of pain and other symptoms as a result of that.
00:14:49
Speaker
So but it's a but a lot that with ah it's a much deeper topic than I even considered, man. Mm-hmm. So in terms of, let's talk about structural stuff. Now I've i've had this issue that when am doing a project and I'm deep into the project, am pathologically focused to to the point where it's it's literally causing me pain. Like I remember with my first my first book, I was spending like 10, 14 hours a day at the computer for eight months.
00:15:22
Speaker
and I messed up my back and my neck. And then with my my second book a couple of years back, again, my neck, i ah could at one point I couldn't turn it to the one side, it was so bad. and I had to go to the chiropractor over a month to kind of get myself. But what i what happened with my last book is I started going to Pilates just once a week.
00:15:43
Speaker
And that my trainer, she completely kept me together just with one Pilates session a week. So since then I've bought my wife, she's now a Pilates instructor. I bought her, her own reform. We've converted our garage into a Pilates studio for her.
00:15:57
Speaker
So I really understand the, the, the sort of the importance of doing things like that to prevent structural pain, like neck back. But kind of give us your insights on this. How do you approach structural stuff? Where do you do like in-person testing where do you start?
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think the first thing to make people aware of is I look at the body like a bicycle wheel. So obviously a bicycle wheel, you want it to spin straight and true, right?
00:16:27
Speaker
If a bicycle wheel is buckled, what you'll find it has some spokes of the wheel will be too tight. Other spokes will be too long and loose. And what you need to do is to tighten up the loose spokes and lengthen the tight spokes so that they're optimum length tension so that you've now got a nice straight spinning wheel the human body is similar in a way but instead of the spokes we've got muscles and our muscles can have different length tension relationships so
00:17:04
Speaker
What you often have in the body, particularly in today's society, is on one side of ah of a joint, you'll have muscles that are excessively tight. And muscles on the opposite side of the joint are therefore excessively long and often holding a lot of tension.
00:17:23
Speaker
Right. So what that does is, first of all, that puts abnormal stress through the muscle itself. So that's increasing your likelihood of some kind of muscle pain, muscle injury.
00:17:35
Speaker
But probably more importantly, what it's doing is it's putting excessive stress through the tendons. So that's the bit that joins the muscle to the bone. the ligaments that help to support the joint that those muscles cross, and the joint itself.
00:17:50
Speaker
So you often get excessive forces in one, two, or even three planes of motion. So we live in a three-dimensional world. And when the body's not well aligned, i.e. it's structurally out of balance, there's excessive forces going through specific areas.
00:18:10
Speaker
Now something like a ligament, has a tensile strength greater than steel so people say well how do you how do you sprain a ligament if they're that strong well the reason is is because if you've got a ligament and it's being stretched let's say 18 hours a day that's putting a very low amplitude but long tempo stress through that material and over time that tensile strength will become weaker
00:18:44
Speaker
So what i remember back in 2002, so there was a footballer that played for England called Michael Owen. He was like a superstar, relatively young still footballer at the time.
00:18:57
Speaker
And he was playing in the match in the World Cup and he went to change direction and his knee just completely collapsed inwards. And he completely ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament.
00:19:08
Speaker
Now, the movement he he did should never have ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament. But it was clear that that ligament would have been getting weakened over time because of some muscle imbalance that he had in his body. And he did also suffer from hamstring issues before that.
00:19:27
Speaker
And the hamstrings and the anterior cruciate ligament, they kind of help each other out in terms of what they do. So.
Neurological Aspects and Emotional Links to Pain
00:19:36
Speaker
I guess probably the best example I've had was um I was working with a rugby player called Billy. So he he had been having injuries for three years when he came to see me.
00:19:47
Speaker
And what he what he was getting, he was getting pain in his in his front of the thigh, so in his quadriceps, and also in his groin. He could play about three matches and then he'd be on the sidelines. So he'd go see ah the physio.
00:20:03
Speaker
He might get some massage. He might get some acupuncture, maybe some stretches to do. And after about three matches on the sidelines, he'd go back and he'd play three matches. And after the third match, he'd be injured again. so there's lots of threes there. Three years, three matches on, three matches off. was pretty much...
00:20:20
Speaker
a rough a story of of what happened to him. So he was semi-professional. He had been playing in the, or for a club that played in the Premier League in and England, but he was now playing ah level down. So he was semi-pro, but still high level, you know, second tier English rugby.
00:20:42
Speaker
And he came to me and he said, look, I've basically got two months of off season until I go back to the preseason training for next season.
00:20:53
Speaker
This is what's going on. Do you think you'll be able to help? So I said, look, I can't guarantee I can help, but you know I can certainly help you the best I can. So ah did a very in-depth physical assessment on him.
00:21:08
Speaker
So found all of his imbalances in his body. designed what we call a corrective exercise program, showed him how to do the exercises and the stretches, and he went off for four weeks, did the program, and that was really laying the foundations of what was to come.
00:21:28
Speaker
and So he came back after four weeks, I reassessed him, and now I had to design a new program. Now, I said to him at the time, it would be great if you had a longer off season because I want to be able to get you so you're so robust, you're not going to get injured playing for the next season or two.
00:21:48
Speaker
But I only had four weeks. So I had to make a bit of a, you could call it educated guess. You could call it educated risk taking because I knew in four weeks time he was going to start preseason.
00:22:01
Speaker
So I said to him, what do you do in preseason? And he said, well, we tackle bags. We do agility work. We might be doing sprints. We might be doing fartlek type training.
00:22:14
Speaker
But they weren't doing full on tackling and passing and kicking all that kind of stuff. So I thought to myself, right, well, he needs to be strong enough to at least survive that. So ah gave him his next program that built upon the foundation But it what what I wanted to make sure that he was strong enough to survive what he was about to do.
00:22:37
Speaker
It was a little bit risky. I would have liked to have spent longer with the foundation, but that's what I went with.
00:22:44
Speaker
So he did that four weeks of ah training. He started his pre-season. And to cut a very long story short, what he did was throughout the season, he just went, he just swapped those four-week programs throughout the season.
00:23:00
Speaker
And he played the whole season, didn't get injured once, played every single game. And at the end of the season, he said to me, he said, I've never felt so fit and strong.
00:23:11
Speaker
He said, I was bursting through tackles. I was more agile, was changing direction quicker than ever. And I was kicking and punting longer than I've ever done before. And that was, but ah you know, we only worked on his structure. That's all we worked on.
00:23:27
Speaker
So again, that was just another example I look back on and and just think how rewarding for me, right, as well. it's really rewarding that yeah you this guy, he he was in love with rugby. That's what he loved to do.
00:23:41
Speaker
you know he identified himself as a rugby player, but you know how much longer would it in would he have been able to play in the way that he was? He might have had one, maybe two seasons, and he probably would have dropped down levels as well.
00:23:56
Speaker
because can't keep expecting the coach to keep picking you if you're always injured. yeah yeah So so that was that was really great working with him. um In terms of the neurological side, so this goes into, this can potentially be a whole podcast in itself.
00:24:18
Speaker
But again, the thing the thing that's important to understand is that pain is ah is like an alarm system. It's a bit like, I mean, there's lots of analogies, but if you think of your, if you're driving your car and you get an engine warning light come up on your dashboard, it's telling you that something's wrong.
00:24:40
Speaker
And what you should do in that case is take it to your local mechanic. They diagnose the problem, they fix it, and then you go on your way and the light won't be on anymore.
00:24:52
Speaker
What sadly tends to happen is that people get into pain
00:24:58
Speaker
They often go to ah medical professional of some sort. And quite often, the first port of call is medication. Painkillers, anti-inflammatories.
00:25:13
Speaker
In my analogy of... the engine warning light on your dashboard, that's like taking it to your mechanic and they cut the electric signal going to the bulb of the warning light.
00:25:24
Speaker
Or they'll give you a piece of, they'll get a piece of black tape, put it over the light so you can't see it. yeah So you haven't addressed what the root cause the problem is, right?
00:25:37
Speaker
So what happens with what we call chronic pain. So chronic pain generally is pain that lasts longer than three months. kind What often happens is that someone has an initial injury, ah tissues heal, but the pain remains.
00:25:58
Speaker
So what's happening here is your alarm system is still going off. So let's say let's just use it as a fire alarm in your house. right
00:26:09
Speaker
You're in your house, the fire alarm goes off, You realize there is a fire. You get out. You call the fire brigade. The fire brigade come along. They put the fire out, but the alarm's still going, right?
00:26:23
Speaker
You might even rebuild the whole house because it completely burnt down, but the alarm is still going off, but there's no fire. So what's happening there is that your nervous system has become overstimulated.
00:26:41
Speaker
Now, the areas of stimulation can come from many different areas. So it could be structural. Right. So if there is any structural stress on the body that can be inputting into the nervous system.
00:26:55
Speaker
If you've got any of the things that we spoke about nutritionally, that can be inputting into the nervous system. Or it can be other types of stress. So it could be emotional stress.
00:27:09
Speaker
It could be financial stress. It could be relationship stress. It could be that, you know, as a child, you had some kind of trauma.
00:27:20
Speaker
So, you know, the common ones, you know physical, sexual, and it can be emotional trauma as well. You know, not feeling loved by your parents can be quite a trauma. Now,
00:27:32
Speaker
What your body doesn't realize is that when there's all these inputs into the body, it doesn't realize that there's no actual physical threat.
00:27:44
Speaker
It's just that your nervous system is over sensitized. We call that central sensitization because it's sensitization of the central nervous system.
00:27:54
Speaker
So what we need to do in those situations is is to calm it down. Now. A really interesting example, and this is this is a story I love to tell. So I was actually finishing my check training in California.
00:28:09
Speaker
And at the end of our training, they fly in a client for you to work with. And the lady i worked with, I can't give you her real name, so don't have permission to talk about the story, but I'll call her Karen.
00:28:22
Speaker
So she flew in from Hawaii. And she was a marine biologist. She was 50 years old. and she'd been in pain for 25 years, right?
00:28:33
Speaker
So when you consider that, you know, our sales turn over every two years, she didn't have the same body that she had 25 years ago, so why is she still in pain, right?
00:28:46
Speaker
Now, what was interesting about Karen, all her pain was on the left side of her body. So left neck, left shoulder, which pain radiated down her left arm and she had pain in her left lower back. Now, interestingly, 25 years previously, she um she hit her back on something sharp.
00:29:11
Speaker
And on a different occasion, she fell off a mountain bike and landed on her left arm. So you think, well, that was that was the cause of the pain.
00:29:24
Speaker
So I did my usual physical assessment. well I looked at a nutrition. And before I started working with her, I got a whole whole load of paperwork, health questionnaires, all the health history, everything.
00:29:42
Speaker
And when I looked at her pain, I thought, okay, so left side of the body. Now we know from a lot of Eastern philosophy, like traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, et cetera.
00:29:54
Speaker
They look at the body as the left side being of female energy and the right side of as male energy. And because she had pain in her kind of neck, shoulder, arm region,
00:30:08
Speaker
in the kind of Eastern philosophy ah of the chakra systems, interesting interestingly, there's a picture of the chakras behind me. um The neck, shoulder, arm relates to communication.
00:30:22
Speaker
So I just thought, I wonder if this is part of the root cause of the problem. So in our first consultation, ah said, so I'm just curious, what's your relationship like with your mother?
00:30:34
Speaker
because quite often it normally relates to a close relative, right? And it would normally be a parent. So I ask her that question and well, let's just say I opened up a massive can of worms with that question, right?
00:30:50
Speaker
So, i mean, this woman was so polite and calm and sweet. She was a lovely, lovely woman. And she said, don't talk to me about my mother. She never loved me.
00:31:02
Speaker
oh My sister was her favorite. She never gave me any attention. We haven't spoken for years. We don't get on. And thought, wow, thuss that's hit a nerve.
00:31:13
Speaker
That's interesting. So what I did, I did design an exercise program for her. I did teach her about nutrition and lifestyle. you know We went out for lunch together every day so I could kind of show her how how I ate.
00:31:28
Speaker
But most of the time we spent together, so we had four days together. And most of that time, i actually coached her in a technique called nonviolent communication. And the idea was that she would go home and reach out to her mother and try to reconnect, let's say, with her mother and and and be honest with her and tell her how she felt as a child and how she's feeling now.
00:31:56
Speaker
And I kind of explained to her why I was asking her to do that and how it could be related to her her bodily pain. So we worked together for four days. she went She flew off to Hawaii. I flew back to the UK.
00:32:10
Speaker
Six months later, I get a letter from Hawaii and I think, ah, that will almost certainly be from Karen. So I open up the letter and it says, Lee, I can't thank you enough.
00:32:22
Speaker
Not only is my neck, shoulder, arm and back pain gone, but I reached out to my mother. We've made up. We've got an amazing relationship now and we see each other every day and we're enjoying every minute we have together.
00:32:37
Speaker
That's amazing, bro. So me what that can sometimes tell us is that our bodies are often,
00:32:48
Speaker
trying to tell us something that we need to address, whether it's your posture, whether it's your diet or whether it's your relationships or whether it's your whatever stress it might be.
00:32:59
Speaker
Right. And that's why, you know, my teacher Paul check has termed the phrase, the pain teacher, i always trying to teach you something, whether it's don't push down hard, any harder on that foot. Cause it's going to go through that nail or stop eating that stuff. Because whenever you do, you get shoulder pain or you need to sort out your relationship with your mother.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah. Right. It's always trying to tell you something. And the important thing is if if you can't work out yourself what it's trying to tell you, reach out to someone who can read the body and help you decode what it's trying to tell you and then point you in the right depth direction if you need any more help in terms of how you can actually overcome that.
00:33:49
Speaker
Now, what I would just add is, and so I've given you examples where One was predominantly structural. One was predominantly nutritional. One was predominantly what I would call neurological.
00:34:01
Speaker
But my experience is there's always more than one factor. And sometimes all three are involved. And an interesting thing. So there's lots of things that have been coming out in recent years about pain science.
00:34:15
Speaker
And one of the things that's generally accepted, discussed, is that they'll say there's no such thing between posture and pain. Right? And they'll pull up studies proving proving the case.
00:34:31
Speaker
But when you actually look at the studies and when you look at a meta-analysis, which means looking at a group of studies, when you look carefully at them, they actually prove that there is a relationship between the two. So I'll give you an example. One In the meta-analysis, it would say, well, we have one group of people who had lower back pain and we got them to do extension exercises of their spine.
00:34:56
Speaker
We got another group to do flexion exercises of the spine. And the results were the same. Some people got better. Some people were the same. Some people got worse. So therefore, it doesn't work.
00:35:09
Speaker
But what they didn't do, they didn't assess them before they started and say, well, this group needs extension. And this group needs flexion and this group needs something else.
00:35:21
Speaker
Right. So you have to be careful when it comes to just following what people tell you that the science actually means. yeah Now, in a lot of people, it might be that their posture, their structure isn't involved.
00:35:36
Speaker
That's definitely the case. You know, in my case of ah Karen, I just, I don't think physically was a major factor.
Personal Experiences: Lifestyle and Pain
00:35:45
Speaker
I gave her exercises to do and they probably did help, but I don't think that was the major factor.
00:35:52
Speaker
But what I've seen is, as an example, the most common pain slash injury I've worked with over the years, is when people have damaged discs in their lumbar spine that's been the most common every single one of them without fail have had the same kind of posture particularly in their lumbar spine like what what's that like so it tends to be flat uh-huh right so uh allegedly normal lumbar curve is between 30 to 35 degrees of extension so that's that's when
00:36:30
Speaker
the lumbar curve says that it's optimum level in terms of dissipating forces from above because obviously it has to dissipate force for the entire spine right and that's why as you get lower in the spine the discs and the vertebral bodies get bigger because it has to take more load up in the neck they're pretty small but down by the sacrum they're pretty big yeah and it's really and it you know again it's if you if you understand how the structure works that's quite simple because If your lower back is more flattened, it's going to put more stress through the front of the disc.
00:37:04
Speaker
And the back, so the disc is like, it's kind of spongy. so a bit like a donut. It's got a nucleus in the middle, which is like the jelly of the donut. Well, if you squeezed one end of a donut, the the jam or the jelly, whichever way you want to call it, is going to is going to move away from the bit you're squeezing, right?
00:37:22
Speaker
Exactly the same things happens with the discs. So if you're sitting all day, which most people do, they generally sit with slumped lumbar spine, a flat spine.
00:37:34
Speaker
So the disc is getting pushed posteriorly for X number of hours a day. Right. Again, remember, ligaments are very strong, but if they're constantly being stretched,
00:37:47
Speaker
At some point they're going to go. And it's the same with the discs. The discs are very strong, but if you're constantly putting load through it, at some point, the smallest little thing, and you're going to be in trouble.
00:37:58
Speaker
And I've experienced that myself, right? I've blown a disc out of my lumbar spine. And people often say to me, how did you do that? And I said, I just woke up one morning and I couldn't move.
00:38:12
Speaker
You know, I wasn't playing rugby. I wasn't in a car accident. I did um deadlifts a couple of days before and I was doing a lot of Bikram yoga, which I think was actually part of the issue. I think Bikram yoga was wasn't right for my body.
00:38:28
Speaker
And so, you know, i know and know what it's like to go through such a serious injury. And that put me in a really good position in terms of being able to empathize with people. Yeah.
00:38:39
Speaker
Because I've been there, I've lived it. But the the interesting thing with my back injury, mean, first of all, I was really embarrassed because had already been helping people heal from that kind of injury for what would have been 12 years by that point.
00:38:55
Speaker
And i kind of thought, well, with all my knowledge, how does that happen? But we're all human, right? yeah And interesting, were talking about writing your books. I was writing a book at the time and I was spending a lot of time seated.
00:39:10
Speaker
i wasn't doing as much exercise I would have liked. I wasn't getting as much sleep. And the region of my spine that was injured is in the region of the second chakra.
00:39:22
Speaker
Hmm. So the second chakra, one of the things it relates is the water element and it relates to the rhythm and flow of your life. Well, my life didn't have any rhythm and flow because it was go, go, go, go. go i was I was so focused on getting this book finished because I had a meeting planned in California with the people that were going to publish the book and it was set in the diary. The the flights were booked and I had to get it finished. but Hence, I was spending so long doing it.
00:39:54
Speaker
yeah So it was a bit of a double-edged sword that, you know, I'm i'm writing this book And it was on biomechanics, a tennis biomechanics.
00:40:06
Speaker
And literally, you know, four weeks before I'm due to fly out, I get a blown disc.
00:40:16
Speaker
And when I look back, yes, there was structural aspects to it, for sure. yeah i was sitting too much. I was doing the wrong kind of movements in Bikram yoga, excessive wrong movements.
00:40:28
Speaker
But I was also way too busy. And sometimes what pain will do is it will it will force you to slow down if your you're making yourself too busy.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. so my my learning from my own experience with that injury was ah need to really make sure no matter what I'm doing, no matter what goal I've got, no matter what deadline I've got,
00:40:57
Speaker
I have to set a core value around making sure I've got enough rest and recovery time. Yes, there might be the odd day where, you know, you've just got to grind it out fine.
00:41:09
Speaker
But then the next day, you've got to make sure you give yourself that time to rest, get to bed early, make sure you're eating right, hydrating right. All those things, they're going to help you recover.
00:41:20
Speaker
Yeah, bro. So that is so true. and It feels like right now that's the kind of situation I'm in because the last few months have been so busy. I'm doing so much work up here in the office. Some days I finish at 10 o'clock and all I have time is for a quick little meal.
00:41:37
Speaker
And then I walk the dog for an hour kind of outside in the darkness. because it's too hot to be outside in the day and then i'm back home and then bed and then it's been like that for too long and my i have this lower back pain from sitting at the and i have this chair is really good it's like a 700 euro chair you know and i also have a really nice um ah kneeling chair so i can interchange between the two of the dealing chair really allows you to for for the back to be a bit more mobile. and you can There's a bunch of different positions, but nothing is helping right now.
00:42:14
Speaker
Until a few days ago, i was like, you know what, screw this. So the first two hours of the workday, instead of being up here working, I'm just like out with the dog, walking around, doing something on the mat, just basic exercises, foam rolling.
00:42:31
Speaker
And it's already starting to improve. And I think it's just... my body telling me, dude, like there is actually, there is actually more to life than work. So, but but it's also like yeah the thing about you writing a book and sometimes I joke with people when they're like, oh my God, you wrote a book. That's so impressive. I'm like, I'll tell you one thing though that I learned is writing a book about health is the least healthy thing I've ever, I've ever done. It's the most unhealthy thing, you know?
00:43:00
Speaker
Yeah, I can relate to that. Definitely relate to that for sure. But, but I mean, I've written another book since that one. And I did it much. I did it in a much better way. I didn't. I had the only deadlines I had on my own. Yeah.
00:43:14
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, I could, I could be a lot more. like i could write it in a much healthier way.
Self-Sabotage and Subconscious Behaviors
00:43:20
Speaker
Exactly. And that's kind of the plan for the next one. I already have it planned out, the the the topics and the the chapters. I just said said to myself, it doesn't matter. like no Nobody gives a shit about your thing.
00:43:34
Speaker
like That's what I have to keep reminding myself. So whether it comes out six months later, like very few people it's going to matter to very few people. So there's no point in adding all of this psychological stress on top of it's it's almost sometimes i feel like life would be so easy and i'd be so successful if i didn't constantly get in my own way and sabotage myself over the the past you know 25 years or so yeah we know you just brought up an interesting word there sabotage because that's actually one way in which people
00:44:15
Speaker
stay in pain. and And that comes on for me, that comes on under my neurological aspects, right?
00:44:23
Speaker
Because when when we're growing up, so but say in the first seven years of life,
00:44:32
Speaker
We only have access to two different brainwave states, the delta and the theta. Delta is like a deep sleep state. Theta is like a meditative state. So in the first seven years of life, you don't really have the ability to decipher the environment around you. It just gets downloaded and that becomes who you are.
00:44:50
Speaker
And very rarely does that change throughout the rest of your life. Now, there are ways in which you can change it, but most people aren't aware of how to change that.
00:45:03
Speaker
but what happens often when you're when you're young especially if you live in the western world especially if you've got a big family the only time you get one of your parents and it's normally your mother the only time you get one-to-one time of them is when you're sick right so in your subconscious mind as you get older you think, well, the only only way i get love and attention is when there's something wrong with me.
00:45:39
Speaker
right This is going on at the subconscious level. So you know if anyone's listening to this and they're thinking, I don't consciously make myself feel pain, I don't want to be in pain, I agree with you.
00:45:52
Speaker
And that's because it's happening at the subconscious level. So what some people will do is they will oftentimes Choose behaviours in their life, carry out behaviours in their life that will make sure they're in pain.
00:46:10
Speaker
Because at the subconscious level, if they're not in pain, they're no longer worthy of love from others.
00:46:20
Speaker
So I did say the neurological side of it is a, is a big subject and we could go in so many different directions, but that's, that's a big one that I've seen in my practice as well. Oh yeah. is Is, what we call the saboteur archetype is that people become so frightened of being well because they feel they won't be loved because again you know growing up you know from zero to seven you know that's one of the most important things that you feel safe and you feel and you feel loved loved yeah and if you don't have either of those things the chances are you know you might create pain illness when you get older because that's that's your way of feeling safe
00:47:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've seen this pattern with myself and my wife as well. I remember it was like maybe last year in the springtime, she was um she went off to do this.
00:47:17
Speaker
like So she started with Pilates mat training. and then she wanted to do the the progress to reform all the good stuff. So she was at the certification course and she basically, I think on the second, the about midway through it, she basically put her back out and she came she came back. like She couldn't move, she couldn't pick up anything.
00:47:40
Speaker
So, but that was, what that wasn't the first time. Anytime like her business, her, like her ballet, ah she's a ballet teacher as well. That's her, was her career. So anytime like her business would take off, like she would get an injury.
00:47:54
Speaker
And at one point i was like, listen, like we we have to like, It's clear, the pattern. like it's It's so clear even I can see it. So we have to really get this out in the open.
00:48:05
Speaker
And now, since since then, since we kind of realized, okay, this is definitely a self-sabotaging pattern. and she We even like ah i ever even have a... He's actually technically a self-sabotage ah sort of specialist, but he does like cognitive behavioral therapy.
00:48:23
Speaker
So we're working with a therapist on just... kind of stuff. Just it's always, everybody needs a coach or or or some sort of someone to help them with something that they're dealing with. Nobody's got it all together, you know?
00:48:34
Speaker
But so you know since then, ah like touch wood, man, you know, but she's she's doing tons of exercise, tons of different classes and different things as well and and and so even more certifications.
00:48:47
Speaker
And she's fitter and stronger than ever. And anytime she feels a twinge, I'm like, don't ruin it now, don't go self-sabotage. So it's definitely, and I feel like um the whole pain thing, like my me and like growing up, I definitely use that as a way to maybe, that where there's a lot of conflict in the family,
00:49:09
Speaker
And if you kind of, not necessarily get sick, but you know, you're injured or something is wrong with you, then attention comes on you and you're just sort of diffusing a lot of tension because parents are like, ah but parents' attention is on you.
00:49:24
Speaker
And the unfortunate thing is then we will... because those patterns got what we wanted, we would then progress through life with very unhealthy patterns.
Alternative Techniques: Hypnotherapy and Energy Medicine
00:49:36
Speaker
And I think that's how I got into, you know, all the the trouble I did in my 20s, basically.
00:49:42
Speaker
Yeah, one one thing that I see reasonably a lot is...
00:49:51
Speaker
when When a child doesn't feel seen, that they're not getting the attention they crave, again, it might be they're in a, you know, they might have a big family, let's say, or they might be the middle child. That often often tends to be the case.
00:50:09
Speaker
When a child isn't getting enough attention or perceived attention in their eyes, they're often the attention seeker or they're often... the naughty one, because that's their way of getting attention.
00:50:22
Speaker
Right. If you won't listen to me, I'm going to make sure you notice me. right But those people, again, often tend up tend to be, it might and again, not in every case, but more often than not, they tend to be the ones that are in that chronic pain cycle because they're still trying to crave the love that they felt they never got when they were really young.
00:50:45
Speaker
Yeah. So getting into that unconscious, mind and re rewiring that program is really important. And there's lots of different ways you can do it. Things like, um, uh, hypnotherapy can be really good way. There's lots of energy medicine.
00:51:01
Speaker
So I, I do the emotion code. Um, people do, uh, applied kinesiology, cranial sacral therapy. There's lots of different ways in which, which you can address that.
00:51:12
Speaker
Um, but yeah, it's quite an interesting, uh, pattern that I've seen over the years. For sure, for sure. Great. Well, and yeah, there's such a ah one question I want to ask you just because I know you're so much more deeper in this stuff. And I have done various courses over the years that I and I never was interested enough to really go deep on it But I was doing when I was living in Ireland, you probably know the National College of was it the national training center? Sorry. So i've I did some courses there in personal training and neuromuscular therapy and stuff. So the, the dude that runs it, uh, John Sharkey, you know, he's quite a thought leader in, in sort of, you know, pain and neuromuscular therapy and,
00:51:58
Speaker
Um, so they, they talk a lot about trigger points. What's your take? Do you, do you deal with that? And the the other thing also, maybe you can weave into, do you, do you do this type of
Trigger Points and Online Consultations
00:52:10
Speaker
work online? Like or the analysis and the assessments maybe run, run in case people want to reach out, you know?
00:52:16
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, a lot of that can be done online. um Some people I would say, like listen, with your situation, I would need to see you in person with some instances. um But I've worked with people literally all over the world.
00:52:31
Speaker
cool and And the more technology gets sophisticated, the more it's enabling me to work online. I mean, obviously, hands-on therapies. you know would have to physically see someone to do that.
00:52:46
Speaker
um The assessments I still do in person. There are limited ways you can do some physical assessments with um apps that are out today. yeah um what What's tended to happen is if if i feel i need to see someone what people tend to do is they'll fly in to see me every two months for a couple of days so that's that's tended to happen um in terms of trigger points yep so again i i work with again with my hands um sometimes sometimes i find dry needling is needed
00:53:23
Speaker
Not always of ah rarely, I should say. um But dry needling can be really useful for dealing with things like trigger points. But if the trigger point is being caused by a muscle imbalance, you still got to address the muscle imbalance. Otherwise, it's just going to come back anyway.
00:53:40
Speaker
Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, yeah. that's That's one thing because I remember when I, i after ah training for my Thai boxing fight when I was ah about 30, some 10 years ago, after, even months after that, I had this horrible pain in my left hip joint, you know, where the ah femur kind of,
00:54:04
Speaker
in that um I forget the name of the of the of the joint, but I was going to this this dude who is Conor McGregor's basically his main, at least at the time, Dr. Payne, with they called him his main physiotherapist.
00:54:21
Speaker
And he was doing this thing, dude, where he would he was a big, massive guy from Moldova or whatever. And like he would like take his elbow and he would be on his table.
00:54:31
Speaker
And he had ah go like Jesus music and like sort of ah greek Orthodox chanting and like these icons of you know saints and stuff. And you're like almost like, dude, am I going be sacrificed here? What the fuck is going on? But this guy would like you take his elbow and he would basically press it into your stomach, various kind of various parts, like the you know where the psoas is, this kind of stuff. And I figured that maybe – mean, who he could barely speak English, but he he never explained what he did. but what I found later is probably he was –
00:55:05
Speaker
working on trigger points that had formed in my psoas because I think my psoas was so tight that it was pulling the the bone and that was grinding the joint and that was causing me a lot of pain at night.
00:55:16
Speaker
But it was it was pretty intense. i and So actually my wife had started going to him and ah one day I took, I was with her for her session and that's when I kind of signed up to start working with him. But she was there like crying She was crying. And I'm do you cry every time? Oh, yeah, I'm crying every time. this It's extremely painful. That's why i call him Dr. Pain.
00:55:37
Speaker
So he did this to me. was the most painful, horrible thing. But in maybe 10 sessions, 12, 14 sessions, he actually did fix me. But the craziest thing at the end was this is, I don't know if he does this to everybody, but my wife was like, oh, yeah, he puts you out. And he he basically sticks his thumbs into your neck.
00:55:54
Speaker
I don't know how where exactly, but you just lose consciousness for like a minute or so. And I'm like, dude, what the hell is that? Like, why you do that? And apparently it's because of you know what you were talking about, the kind of the neurological thing. It resets the basically the nervous system and the brain.
00:56:12
Speaker
So you can actually, like you were saying, structurally you can maybe start working on the trigger point and all that good stuff. But if
Connecting with Lee Brandon and Upcoming Podcast
00:56:20
Speaker
the if you have this sort of... neuroplastic habit or the neurological habit of being in pain that's almost like a morphogenetic field that you need to sort of dissolve by and one way he does it is with freaking just putting it out so your your whole nervous system is reset what's your thoughts on that as we wrap up today interesting interesting
00:56:44
Speaker
I mean, listen, there are so many techniques out there and you know I'm not familiar with with all of them. um I'm not going to really comment on something. I don't know yeah the ins and outs of. But what I would say from...
00:56:56
Speaker
you know, the hands on work I do, it's very rarely is it painful. um There are certain areas of the body that just tend to be tender, like, you know, the pectoralis minor muscle tends to be little bit tight. The pterygoids in the mouth tend to be quite tight.
00:57:12
Speaker
I would say the psoas, when I work on the psoas, I would call that very slight discomfort. But most of the time, when I'm working on people, it's actually quite a pleasant experience and, and it's very effective. It's not pleasant because it's not working. It's yeah. And I think, know, what we're taught is when you're good with your hands, it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be painful.
00:57:35
Speaker
Yeah. But I'm not saying, I'm not saying other techniques that are painful aren't good as well. they are i mean, I know rolfing for instance is very painful, but, but has been shown to be very effective. So yeah.
00:57:47
Speaker
I prefer the the, we had one lady, she's Dutch, she kinda comes to your house here and she does like she she does a few different things like Thai massage and stuff like that, but it's very gentle, but then you're almost floating.
00:58:03
Speaker
like you she She basically sets this blanket on your floor And she just kind of like does all this weird stuff. You know what the hell's going on? But I'm like, dude, i used to, when she used to come to the house, I'd be like falling asleep while she, I'd like, you know how you yawn and release tension?
00:58:18
Speaker
I'd be like yawning, they're ready to like literally go for a nap only for, you know, I have to like let her out the house and stuff. but And then you feel like really good the days after. So I totally, totally agree. It doesn't have to be painful. And I think the the no pain, no gain. I do have like the the dude I um interviewed about this similar topic a few months ago that I met in Mexico, the Narcopuco.
00:58:41
Speaker
His thing is a no pain, no gain thing, but I gotta say, if if the person that does it right knows what they're doing, and like, because he did the thing only on my right arm and for months, dude, like, I i was just like, my neck paint went pain went away. So I think it's all about having a skilled practitioner and then the method they use really doesn't matter as long as you get the end result, think.
00:59:04
Speaker
Yeah, I agree completely. Okay, Lee, thank you so much for joining us today. Before we wrap up, just let the listener know where they can connect with you and if they want to know further information, all that good stuff.
00:59:18
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. So if anyone's listening to this and, you know, they're totally fed up of being in pain and they want to know, you know, what might be keeping them stuck, what they can do is like I've got a ah free chronic pain breakthrough blueprint that they can have access to.
00:59:34
Speaker
And they can find that at forward slash free pain guide. Cool.
00:59:48
Speaker
any social media or anything like that you want to? Yeah. i mean, if I go to my website, which is bodycheck.co.uk, I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and soon, soon to be on, uh, TikTok.
01:00:04
Speaker
So I've just got a new social media coach and she's told me I've got to go on TikTok. Yeah. Like if you're not on TikTok, do you even exist? Right. Yeah. And also, I don't know when this will go out, but I've got a new podcast starting on the 25th of August.
01:00:24
Speaker
And that will be called Beyond the Pain. Cool. Awesome stuff. Right. We're going to have all those links ah in the show description, folks. So check that out. And Lee, thank you again so much for joining us today and sharing your deep wisdom and insights, man.
01:00:41
Speaker
Christian, thanks for having me again. It's been a pleasure.