Articles - Z-Health / Pain Relief
- You CAN Teach an Old Dog New Tricks
- You CAN Heal an Old Injury
- You CAN Regain Strength & Mobility in a Joint
- You CAN Lose Body Fat
- You CAN Be Great at Nearly Anything You Want to Be
- etc.
By Brian Copeland
The tragic story we have been taught from our youth is that you can't change your ways, old injuries do not heal and abilities are based on natural born talent. Well we are going to dispell those myths and show you how you CAN change virtually anything you want to change about yourself.
Neuroplasticity is the new buzz word in the human science industries.
It’s a combination of two terms: neural and plasticity.
Neural refers to your nervous system. A complex network of cells that make up your brain and nerves. Your nervous system is similar to the world wide web, lots of information being shared between lots of different sources from near and far... but your brain has to make heads or tails of that information. The nerve cells live all throughout your entire body and they provide constant information to your brain about how bright the room is, how hot or cold you are, which direction is up and how badly your boss just annoyed you... and of course, many many other things.
Plasticity refers to how your brain is malleable or able to be remodelled... a.k.a it can be changed. So neural connections can and do change, in fact, they are changing right now as you read this.
Not only do they change, they can regrow when they are lost. That is why you here about miracle success stories of someone who lost the ability to walk or talk after a traumatic car accident, then 6 months to a year later they are walking, talking and living life to the fullest. (Although they had to work for it, people that don't work for it may not recover... more on that later)
So, the term neuroplasticity means that our brains are constantly changing and adapting – to everything.
Your brain is better than a circuit board because it can receive constant upgrades.
Our brain's primary purpose is our survival, that is why we have so many built-in reflexes like flinching away from something flying at our eyes and flinching our hand off of a hot iron before the burn gets too bad.
Neuroplasticity is used by the brain to help you survive in this unpredictable world. If your brain can predict what will come next, you have a better chance at surviving. We quickly incorporate our past experiences (physical, mental and emotional) and chunk them together into a memory. That memory better enables our brains to predict what will happen the next time we do x,y,z.
Unfortunately our brains aren't smart enough to throw out the bad experiences (got made fun of in 3rd grade or broke leg skiing) and only learn from and keep the good ones (the cutest girl/boy in school asked you to the dance or won 1st place in a sporting event)... no friend, our brains keep the bad information and the good information and form what can only be described as... you.
You are the sum total of all of your experiences.
So we know that the brain can adapt, remodel plastically it's own nerve cells in order to form a constantly changing new you; yes you are constantly changing all of the time, the question is how much. If you keep practicing old habits you won't change much at all now will you?
But how do we get the brain to change in ways that we want?
Well, let's say you have a fear of public speaking. This may be from a traumatic (or you felt like it was at the time) experience in elementary school when you did show-and-tell and someone made fun of you during your presentation... OH NO the world just crashed! Now as adults we think it is just a silly little thing we will get over, but believe you me, that changed your brain at that moment.
So since we have a memory or a chunk of nerves that relates public speaking to a threatening fear, how do we actually change it? Well we start to build newer better memory chunks over it of course!
Small little successes with public speaking, in very safe environments at first. Gradually challenging yourself to a little more at a time until you are over your fear or at least until your fear no longer controls you.
Based on neuroplasticity, you can change darn near anything about you:
- Eliminate fears
- Learn new skills (languages, math, new job, etc.)
- Change your personality... yeah, really! It has been done, a lot!
- Even eliminate old aches, pains and tight muscles through neural reeducation... this is what Z-Health does.
- Improve your athletic performance... once again, this is what Z-Health is all about!
Years ago Doctors used to say that after a certain age your brain stops learning and adapting and that only children can learn new things or only children can learn easily. Hogwash. Neuroplasticity is alive and active at any age. Granted, like nearly anything in life, if you don't use it, you lose it... Your brain tissue I mean. While neuroplasticity never stops, neuroplasticity can work in reverse.
If you stop using your brain as many people who retire do, your brain will begin eliminating unused chunks (memories) from your brain... Alzheimer's Disease, dementia and other such maladies will arise.
Use it or lose it... better yet, use it to better yourself... you are using it anyway... just make sure it gets used for the better.
We have looked at how your brain changes constantly, now let's look at how your body can change constantly as well.
Wolff's Law discovered by German Anatomist/Surgeon Julius Wolff in the late 19th century, states that bone will remodel along lines of stress. In other words, if you put your forearm into a vice-like system where it is being pushed one way in the middle and the other way on the ends, it will eventually begin to curve and you will have a curved forearm, not straight... I don't recommend trying this for the record!
Wolff's Law takes time as bone tissue adapts slowly to load/weight/force.
Davis's Law is the soft tissue partner to Wolff's Law, so it describes how muscles, tendons, ligaments, joint capsules, nerves, skin, etc. will adapt to load/weight/force.
You can thank Davis's Law for that sagging skin as you age... gravity sure is a bummer! And yes, the weight of gravity is the load/weight/force that is pulling your skin down. There are certainly ways to prevent or decrease the sagging skin such as exercise, good nutrition, etc. but read my other articles for that stuff.
Wolff's & Davis's Laws in action
Wolff's and Davis's Laws explain why braces can change the position of your teeth, or why one person is bow-legged and another knock-kneed and yet another person is perfectly straight-legged.
Walking send force or load into your joints via gravity, in fact with each footstep you land with roughly 3 times your body weight. So for a 200 lb man that is 600 lbs per footstep. With the average person taking around 3,000 steps per day that is roughly 1,800,000 lbs of load your body undergoes each and every day. This can and does reshape your body, including bow-legs, knock-knees, etc.
Additionally this can make a bum knee worse or even fix and repair that same bum knee depending on whether that 1,800,000 lbs of load is healthy or not. What does healthy mean? Well, look at the pictures above... if you have bow-legs or knock-knees then the load is not healthy is it?
From high school biology class you should already know that most every cell in your body is recycled every year. In essence, you get a brand new body every year. The reasons we age and an old scar on the skin may not heal is beyond the scope of this article... but not entirely.
You see, when you have an old injury there are usually 2 components to it:
1) Scar tissue
2) Neurological Memory of the injury
The scar tissue may be a problem that needs to be fixed because it has the potential to impinge nerves, alter natural movement patterns, etc. The good thing is that through movement Wolff's and Davis's Laws kick in and can remodel that scar tissue to be more pliable, more mobile and even stronger than what you had before. Ever heard that an old injury such as a broken bone heals stronger than it was before?
Making sure you do the correct movements to remodel in the correct way is important... seek out a qualified Z-Health Movement Specialist and/or purchase the R-Phase DVD/manual to get started.
The neurological memory in your brain about the past injury can be even worse than the scar tissue potentially. Scar tissue will sometimes heal on it's own but the neurological memory of the event is burned into your brain and will not likely change unless you do something specifically to change it. That is where neurological reeducation comes in.
If the last thing your brain remembers is how stepping down off of that ladder onto the rock caused you to roll your ankle... then guess what happens the next time to step down off of a ladder...? You guessed it, your brain will tense up as you plant your foot. The memory of the traumatic event has created a chunk of survival memory that your brain uses to predict what will happen the next time you do something. You are pre-flinching when there is no reason to flinch... This is not good.
Luckily this is usually quite easy to fix if you know what you are doing.
Once again, seek out of Z-Health certified Movement Reeducation Specialist and/or purchase the R-Phase DVD/manual to get started fixing yourself right away.
The same way that someone with an old injury can restore lost funciton to their body, you can use the same tools to improve your athleticism. Wolff's Law will build stronger bones, Davis's Law will remodel old scars/injuries so you move better and lengthen tissues and finally and most importantly... neuroplasticity will build the amazing level of skill you need to reach your potential... assuming your practice correctly.
Anyone seeking to restore lost function to joints, remodel tissues from old injuries or perform at your best should begin with the R-Phase DVD/manual. It will teach you the A, B, C's of movement, reeducate your nervous system about good movement and remodel old injuries. From there moving to the I-Phase and S-Phase products will be desired for an athlete that seeks superior performance.
You can get the R-Phase product here:
The next time you hear, “people can’t change” know it’s not true. They do, every single day.
Brian
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