July 5, 2025 • 33 mins
Episode 90: Your Body is Strong, Resillent and built and designed to Heal itself!
The Body's Incredible Healing Power
In this episode of 'Conversations with Kimen,' host Kimen Petersen delves into the resilience and innate healing abilities of the human body. He highlights his experiences with athletes and patients, emphasizing how the body is designed to heal itself with strong structures like the spine and various specialized cells. Kimen explains the science behind tissue repair, pain, and the importance of movement for overall health. He dispels common myths about weakness and injury, advocating for a balanced approach to recovery that includes proper nutrition, mental health, and gradual reintroduction to physical activity. Throughout, Kimen provides insights on pain science and strategies to foster a proactive mindset towards healing and wellness.
00:00 Introduction to Conversations with Kimen
00:33 The Resilience of the Human Body
11:51 Understanding Pain Science
21:30 The Importance of Recovery
27:46 Gradual Return from Injury
32:10 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
. Conversations with Kimen is aboutinspiration, life lessons, and wisdom.
Your host, Kimen Petersen shareshis stories to inspire you to live
a more soulful and illuminated life.
The topics covered in this podcastare as personal opinions inspired by
life, experience, and conversationsshared with amazing people.
Kimen hopes to encourage you tobe guided by life in the flow.
(00:23):
So the whole journey is moremanageable and joyful and fulfilling.
Welcome back.
Today, I want to talk about somethingthat is probably one of my favorite
things to talk about in this world, andnot only because it's so relevant to
(00:45):
the athletic population I work with, butit's actually relevant to anyone who's
had injury, pain, struggle of any kind.
Although when I talk about things,sometimes I talk about a story
from an athlete's point of view orsomething, but you could actually take
a look at it as a metaphor for life.
(01:10):
This is specifically something Isay to most of my patients when
they come in for the first time whenthere's, um, dealing with injury.
And recently, uh, a newer patient ofmine said the first time she heard this.
It just changed her mind about herbody and now she lives it and also
(01:32):
shares it with other people, whichI think is absolutely amazing.
If you can inspire someone, not onlyto see how incredibly resilient they
are, their body is, and life is tothe point that they want to take that
and share that with another person.
I think that's the biggestone you can have in this life.
(01:54):
So specifically what I'm gonna talktoday about, and this is what I would
tell you if you came in to see me.
If you're an athlete or any human beingwho's dealing with pain, the first thing
I'm gonna tell you is the body is strong.
It's resilient, it's builtand designed to heal itself.
It can and it will.
(02:16):
Now, if your ligament's torn,it may need to be sewn together,
but once it's sewn together.
Then your body will take over.
You know, there's a lotof confusion out there.
There's a lot of, I don't know,it's almost like they're trying
to talk you into the fact that,um, you know, the back is weak.
(02:40):
It's a weak structure.
I'll tell you of honestly,um, in my education.
We did cadaver lab and I have held a humanspine in my hand, and it's heavy and it's
strong, massive bones, massive ligaments,and massive muscle all around it.
(03:00):
It is not a weak structure, soI don't know how people get off
saying that this structure is weakbecause it's incredibly strong.
Not only, not only is it built strong.
But the body is completely packedwith these amazing cells that are
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completely dedicated to healing.
And these things are working 247, 365, um, monitoring for issues.
And as soon as something happens,for instance, we've got fibroblasts
and there's these little guysthat are attracted to mediators of
inflammation from tissue damage.
(03:43):
And so when tissues damage, it letsout a tissue factor and it's really
strong at the source, and then itkind of, it spreads out from there.
And these fibroblasts are attachedto it, uh, are attracted to this
or this chemical mediator, and theyfollow it to the strongest source.
(04:05):
And when they find the tissue damage,they lay down a collagen elastin formula.
Um, kind of, they, peoplecall it scar tissue.
I don't like that word.
I like to say adhesive tissue.
And what I talk about with people,it's funny, these little fibroblasts,
they're not very accurate, sothey spray it all over the place.
So you have all these crossadhesions that can happen.
(04:25):
Um, and that's when stuff likerolling and treatment could help.
So.
You've, you've also got all theseother little cells, um, part
of your inflammatory system,uh, for illness or, you know,
invasion by bacteria or whatever.
(04:46):
Um, it's a whole inflammatory system,the lymphatic system, and we've got
monocytes, macrophages, neutrophils,
and all these, all these littlecells have appropriate little, um,
ways of protecting the body from.
Invaders and cleaning up dead tissue.
(05:07):
And then even with bone, bonehas these very, very specific
cells, osteoblast and osteoclast.
Now if there's say a, a jaggedfracture, not, not hugely jagged, but
jagged enough, the osteoclast willbreak down the shards and the, and
the osteoblast will rebuild more bone.
(05:28):
And the funny thing is thebody is really interesting.
There's this.
There's this law called Wolf's law.
And Wolf's law says that the body will laydown extra bone along the lines of stress.
And this is why we talk about resistancetraining, like lifting weights.
All the resistance training will helpactually increase your bone density.
(05:49):
And what I also believe this Wolf'slaw might say is that after injury, um,
the way the body heals that in injury.
Like after a fracture, that areashould be stronger than it was
before, and it should be highlyunlikely that you would get a break.
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And as long as it, it healed properly,um, it should be very unlikely that
you ever get a break in the same place.
So literally when the body healsthings, it heals it stronger
than it was in the first place.
So this is the intelligence ofthe human body, but not only that.
The body is filled with fluids that,that a lot of 'em circulate, um,
(06:36):
through muscle movement or you probablyheard that sitting is the new smoking.
Now that research was misinterpreted, it'snot actually sitting is a new smoking.
'cause if you got up for, say,five to 10 minutes every hour and
moved around, you could sit for12 hours without hurting yourself.
(06:58):
The truth is, it's the lack ofmovement is the new smoking.
And why is that?
It's because lymphatic fluid, venousblood flow, synovial fluid, all circulate
through muscle movement, throughmoving compression movement of joints.
So movement is incrediblyimportant for health.
(07:22):
Right here.
I want to like dispel another myth forvery, for a very, very long time they
were saying that, Ooh, like running,running, um, puts you at risk for joint
damage, cartilage damage, all this stuff.
And actually, you know what, they'vedone massive, massive studies over
years and years, like N 30,000,and what they actually found was
(07:47):
runners have stronger joints.
As long as they don't have a geneticproblem with cartilage, that is, but if
they have, in the absence of any geneticissues, uh, predis disposition to problems
with joints or cartilage, runners havethe healthiest and the least, least number
(08:09):
of knee and hip replacements of all, so.
The truth is, if somebody says running'sgonna hurt your joints, it's gonna hurt.
Your cartilage gonna hurtsome, um, they're wrong.
They're absolutely wrong.
There's massive studies to prove it.
So, like I said, so the body's gotthis whole system to keep us healthy.
Uh, lymphatic system, which, um, haslymphatic fluid flow flowing through it.
(08:35):
Um, the synovial, uh, fluid in the joints,atrial blood flow, which is the the pulse.
Um, the fresh, fresh oxygenatedblood and the venous blood blood flow
that's heading back towards the heart,which is pu pulling carbon dioxide
and waste products back through.
(08:55):
So the lymphatic system is the,is the inflammatory system really,
and people, people talk aboutinflammation as being a terrible thing.
Um, and people are always going,well, do I use cool, do I use heat?
And I think the researchright now is, is pretty good.
(09:16):
Um, with the understanding that if theinflammatory, uh, if the inflammatory
reaction is the healing reaction, doyou want to inhibit that reaction?
And that's a really good question.
You probably don't right now if it'sblack, blue, swollen out of control.
(09:39):
I am a fan of applying cold, um, onfor 10 off for five, not directly to
the skin, with a thin layer of crossbetween so you don't do tissue damage.
So basically you, you put cool on,say a sprain ankle on for 10 minutes.
You take it off, let the tissue warmup, do it again, keep on repeating it.
(10:01):
You can repeat that up for,you know, for up to, I believe
72 hours is about the max.
It's gonna have any effect.
You do have to understand there'sa potential of you slowing the
healing process doing this, but wheninflammation's outta the control and pain
is an issue, uh, it might be a good idea.
(10:22):
So, um,
synovial food, synovial fluidis in the joints, right?
And cartilage is reallyinteresting because it doesn't
actually have a blood flow.
Right.
So how, how cartilage cells, uh, getfed and get oxygenated is oxygen and
(10:47):
glucose diffused into the synovial fluid.
So you can imagine if you're sedentary,if you're not a runner, if you, if
you sit around a lot, there's not alot of movement of that sonova fluid.
So the waste product, pro productsfrom the cartilage cells will sit
on top of the cartilage cells.
(11:07):
Glucose will not make its way very well,oxygen will not make it its way very well.
So there's a good chance thatthe cartilage cells could be
unhealthy and possibly die.
And this is why movement is so important.
Of course, um, atri, uh, atrialblood flow, super important.
(11:27):
And then venous blood flow, ofcourse for pulling carbon dioxide
back to the lungs and wasteproducts back through the system.
So that's like, this is kind ofthe healing system of the body.
It's amazing.
It's got all these cells, it'sgot all these fluids and these
things are working 24 7, 365.
(11:51):
Okay, next we're gonna talkabout pain science because
it's an interesting thing like,
and a lot of people don't understand pain.
They used to think we had specificpain sensors in the body, but
we actually don't have specific.
Pain sensor.
We have what we call nociceptorsand they're free nerve endings.
(12:12):
And yes, they can be triggered bymediations, mediators of inflammation
from tissue damage, but they can alsobe triggered in the absence of the
mediators of inflammation, which meanswithout tissue damage you can have pain.
So what they talk about is these,these free nerve endings can
(12:33):
be activated by like stretch.
By pressure, uh, by other mediators,by extreme heat and extreme cold.
And the interesting thing is theycan be activated at 75% of the way
to tissue damage, so they don'tnecessarily need tissue damage
(12:56):
to send a signal to the brain.
So that's the nociceptors.
And the interesting thing is they spsend a non-specific message to the brain,
and when the brain receives thismessage, it'll modulate whether
or not to send back a pain signal.
(13:18):
And the idea is, um, you know, somepeople have misinterpreted this as well.
That's saying that thepain is in the brain.
And I say, no, it's painis not in the brain.
Pain is an output of the brain in responseto a danger message from the body.
(13:38):
So it's not in the brain, it'sa response from the peripheral,
from a danger message.
So if anybody ever tries to tell youand you're not in pain or tell you
it's all in your head, um, they don'tknow what they're talking about.
They really don't.
(13:59):
I've, I've worked with so many peoplein pain and I've had people come in
and my doctor says I shouldn't be inpain or I'm not in pain, and I'm like.
If, if you do work with people, ifyou're a therapist of some coin and you
do work with people, the first thingyou need to do is validate the pain,
validate the fact that they're in pain.
I and I can do it very easily.
(14:21):
I can see the way you're holding yourself.
When I put my hand in that area, I canfeel how your muscles are tightening up.
You are in pain, I can tell.
See if you can validate the pain.
If somebody can feel heard by you, that'sthe first step to making a difference.
The trick is you don't validatethe story about the pain.
(14:44):
And I'll get more tointo that in a second.
'cause I just want to figure, finishup pain science and this idea.
Now the, the other incredible thingis like, probably this, okay, so pain
science is, they're working on it.
It's a theory, it's in testing.
It's a good theory, but it'snot a hundred percent proven.
(15:05):
But it's, it's a solid working modelthat we have to work with right now.
And the interesting thing aboutnociceptors is what they understand
is, like I was saying, they can beactivated 75% of the way to tissue damage.
So you don't necess necessarily haveto be all the way to tissue damage.
And like I said, the brain modulates painaccording to the history in the area,
(15:29):
um, and your beliefs about the area.
So you can imagine if you've had.
A a couple year history in an areaand you believe there's a real problem
there that anytime there's no subceptioncoming from that area, 'cause the
brain, it's not really good at specific,it's being really specific about
the area because it's a non-specificmessage that goes to the brain.
(15:50):
So the brain's just going to.
Err on the side of caution.
Send back.
Send back a pain signal.
So this is why long afterinjury, you might still be
getting feedback from an area.
And I'm not saying don't payattention to pain coming from an
area where you've had a problem.
You can, you can, you can modulatethe way you approach activity there.
You can drop it down a bit, youcan change the way you do it.
(16:13):
You can switch to cross training.
There's all kinds of thing.
Um.
But don't just push throughpain, um, just because of this
understanding of pain science now.
So the problem with, uh, chronic painis what they're starting to understand.
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What they, they believe is thenociceptors, if they keep on being
triggered over and over and overagain, and I don't know how long,
I don't think they do either.
Um, they start to.
Get more sensitive.
And if you've ever heard of, youhave a sensitive nerve pathway.
This is what they're talking about.
The, the, that nociceptor keeps ongetting more and more sensitive.
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So rather than 75% of the weightto tissue damage, 65, 55, 40 30.
And so basically it takes nextto nothing after long-term pain
in area to cause nociception.
And your brain goes, ohyeah, I know that area.
Like that's my weak back.
And they remember the rope back CECcommercial with the stabbing pains in the
(17:19):
back and the shocks, and they're like,oh, send back a pain signal on people.
Oh, my back, my back's so weak.
And this belief that the back's weak.
And then you also have therapiststhat are selling the backs weak.
Um, drives me crazy becausethe back is not weak.
So.
(17:40):
What I, what I had to come up with, um, myvery first actual episode in conversations
with Kim and is called Crack the Door.
And I was trying to figure out away I could change the conversation
around, uh, pain, especially whensomebody would be sitting in my office,
they come in the first time and go.
I know I'm gonna be in painforever, but if you can just help
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me, I'd really appreciate it.
And I created this little conversationbecause like, I don't want to go
outside of my scope of practice.
I don't wanna, I don't wanna tryto counsel people, but I just
want to put a dent in that belief.
And what I chose to do was I would say, Ipointed at the door and go crack that door
just a little, that there's a possibilitythat one day that pain won't be there.
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I can't promise you, and I can'tguarantee you, but crack the door.
That is possible.
And the really coachable peoplewould crack the door open,
which I thought was amazing.
You see, that's directly in theface of I know you're gonna,
I'm gonna be in pain forever.
And the, and the story about chronicpain and the whole bit, and you
(18:51):
know, most of those chronic PA painpeople that I worked with six to nine
months later, there was no more pain.
So this works, but it's not just there.
This is, this is one of the issueswith manual therapy research is
when people research something,they pick one little thing and they
try to see if that works right.
(19:14):
But it's a whole arrayof things that we do.
So.
First, I wanna breakdown that belief, right?
The next thing you, you, I, I do withthese people, of course, I tell 'em the
body's built and designed to heal itself.
I talk to them about, if you took alook, if you're comfortable looking at
that, you could look and see how strongthat back structure is by looking at,
(19:35):
uh, at a dissection of a, of a spine.
I mean, some people aren't comfortablewith that, so we wouldn't go there.
Um, from there I would be.
I'd be talking to them about pain science.
I teach them how this works, and Iwould try to get, we would try to
see how far can they move in eachdirection without creating pain?
(19:58):
Because movement is medicine.
Motion is lotion.
If you can start moving in a pain-freezone, remember I was seeing all these
lymphatic fluid, uh, venous blood flow.
Uh, synovial fluid.
These are all healing fluids of thebody that only move with movement.
(20:18):
So start getting them to moveand sometimes the movement would
only be an inch or a centimeteror whatever in each direction.
And I start them there because what Iwant to do is start getting them to move
and I'm keep on convincing them how thebody's strong so we can kind of break down
the belief that the body is a weak thing.
I get them to move in each directionslowly and over time we'd increase the
(20:42):
movement and I'd, I'd work on the musclesaround the area to loosen them up.
I, I get them to start moving morebecause there's this fear of movement.
But as long as you can movein a pain-free RO range, and
you're not causing no ception.
Right.
Then what happens with these nociceptorsis, this is the other side of it, like
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when you're getting no ception over andover and over again, they're downing,
downing down, regulating down, and thenwhen you start, stop like moving, but
not cau causing no ception, they startup regulating 30, 40, 50, 60, 75, and
they might go right back to normal andthen you might not experience pain and
(21:25):
that that is a basics of pain science.
So next I really want to talkabout is how is is some of
the science around injury now?
Because they used to say that injuryis a result of overwork, but it
(21:49):
sounds like they got that one wrongbecause the conversation is changing.
And I like this because likeoverwork sets you up for a fear.
Like fear in the body.
Like it's, I gotta be careful, right?
And I'm not saying you don't haveto be careful, but within sense you,
because if, as soon as you thinkthat the body has a chance of being
(22:10):
injured, now you're scared of injuryand that opens up a different door.
And you don't wanna keepthat door open if you can.
'cause the body is strong and resilient.
It can do amazing things.
But the truth is what theyfigured out about injury,
injury is not due to overwork.
It's due to under recover,
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so you can add any load you want, as hardas you want, as crazy as you want, as long
as you match your recovery to your load.
And one of the things you, you mightfind interesting is, say, say I am doing,
say I'm doing 200 repeats, like on thetrack, um, and I might have 30 seconds
(22:55):
of recovery each 200, and maybe I goup to 400 and I get maybe a minute to a
minute and 30 if I'm doing really hard.
And then if I'm up to a kilometer,I might be getting two minutes.
And then if I'm doing a mile, I mightget two minutes and 30 seconds recovery.
And that's pretty impressive, eh?
But then you start looking at a sprinterwhen they're doing their repeats.
(23:18):
They're getting 10, 20 minuterecovery between intervals.
See, 'cause when they're going,they're going way harder than I am.
So they've learned to matchrecovery with the effort.
Now recovery isn't just like rest.
Recovery is super important.
(23:39):
Um.
Yeah, recovery is sleep.
Are you getting enough sleep?
And science shows that the best sleephappens at the same time every night.
Um, probably not going to bed at one inthe morning, probably around nine and
getting your eight hours and consistentlygetting it every night at the same time.
(24:00):
Because apparently, from what I understandfrom a sports med I talked to, um.
The, the majority of your hu humangrowth hormone, one of the big
healing, um, hormones of the bodyhappens in the first two hours.
And if you go to bed later,you're gonna lose some of that.
So the idea is sleep and sleepproperly and sleep enough.
(24:25):
Next off is nutrition like, and thisis something not only eating enough.
Because if you don't eat enough,you could put, put your body
in, in a system called Reds.
Reduced energy, um, deficiency syndrome.
And this is when you can be atrisk of a lot of different issues,
(24:50):
especially bone, um, bone issues,
stress fractures.
But nutrition isn't just eating enough.
It's eating the rightthings at the right time.
So I think the best idea withthis one is to talk to somebody
who's a sports dietician.
Dietician who's been properly.
(25:12):
Like, uh, dieticians in, in Canada area regular regulated health profession,
and there's a bunch of really incredibleones that have gone and taken the
IOC uh, sports dietician course.
So they understand all the researchabout like, what do eat, when do we, uh,
how much, how to balance it, and thoseare the people to talk about this with.
(25:34):
Now.
Next of course, is your mental health.
Mental health is sucha big important thing.
Because if you're sitting under a lotof stress and your cortisol levels
get to a certain point, then you gointo the sympathetic nervous system
and that cascade can be pretty bad.
So the idea is like if you really,really want to recover properly,
(25:55):
it's good to have your mental healthbe a part of, um, your recovery.
Then mental performance.
There's specific mental performancepeople who can help you deal with the
anxieties around racing and thoughtprocesses and breaking things down
into process base instead of outcomebase, which would just be really good.
(26:18):
Um, getting enough rest, sleep, andrest are a little bit different.
Like the idea of not pushingyourself all the time.
Working with a specific strength andconditioning person who understands your
sport and knows exactly what you shouldbe doing, and able to maybe even physio or
(26:38):
or another sports physiologist or any ofthese people who are really well trained
to see what you need to strengthen tohelp you, uh, be the best at your sport.
And then there's.
Massage therapy, chiropractic,physiotherapy, all these different
(26:58):
therapies that do have benefit andthinking about getting treatment regularly
to keep you, like a lot of people willsit down and think, oh, well, I'll
just, I'll just go in when I get hurt.
And then we get the smart ones that arelike, well, you know what, I'm gonna
(27:18):
book ahead and what I'm gonna do is ifI'm injured, then we can focus on that.
Um, if, uh, if we're not injured, wecan work on maintenance and prevention
and just keep everything loosened up.
So I'm as healthy as I canbe so I can, I can adapt.
(27:39):
Uh, another thing you canreally look into is mindfulness.
So what about coming back from injury?
And we'll go back to working with amental performance person or, and a mental
health person is a really great idea andbeing guided through a proper program.
(28:00):
By SNC physiotherapists, like somekind of a medical professional, just
to make sure that you're going in theright direction and you're going at
the right speed, and you're giving yourbody a time to enough time to adapt.
But let's talk about gradual return, justspecifically with runners for a minute.
So there's this thingcalled a walk run program.
I'm sure a lot of people haveheard of it and a lot of people
(28:23):
will start running this way.
And when I came back to running, uh, this,I did a super, super gradual walk run.
And you know, there's this confusionthat's thinking, well this is about like
increasing my cardio, but what if I'malready have a high level of fitness?
And it's not actually about cardiowalk run's, not about cardio.
(28:44):
Okay, walk run is specifically aboutloading the tissues of the body to prepare
them for the new load, like progressivelyand gradually loading the tissue, the
joints, the ligaments, the tendons,so they can start adapting to the new
load that you're about to put on 'em.
And the longer, the more timeyou can take, the better.
(29:07):
Um, and a lot of people who'vegone back too fast have found
this, found out this the hard way.
Now the other thing about coming backfrom injury, like I was, I was talking
about, um, think about pain science.
'cause your brain really rememberswhat, what happened in that area.
(29:30):
And if you built up some fear around,like say you've had a bone injury and
you're scared of having another one,
it's valid to be afraid.
And you gotta understand that it's okayto not have trust in your body for a time
because like trust is earned over time.
It's not something thatautomatically comes back.
(29:54):
So you need to be patient.
You need to trust thatyou're gonna find the way.
Now healing is going on 24 7, 365.
All these cells in your bodyare working all the time.
But it's gradual and it's super gradualfor you to notice the difference.
(30:15):
Like it's so incredibly, so incrediblygradual for you to notice the difference.
If you think about it, think abouta a time that you were injured
and you had this thing going on.
We call 'em niggles.
Um, so sometimes it's just a niggle.
There's this problem going on and it'sgoing on, it's going on, it's going on.
Suddenly you're like.
(30:35):
Oh yeah, the last time I thoughtabout that was two weeks ago.
And it's like, and that's how itgoes because things are happening so
gradually that they might have resolvedbefore you know they've resolved.
So that's another thing you can put inthe back of your mind and one of the
ways to like help you see these things.
(30:56):
It's one of the things I always, afterI see a person the first time on their
way out of the door, it's like, listen,the brain is really interesting.
It, it, if there's something goingon in a similar area that you had
something recently, it's gonnatry to make it all seem the same.
(31:17):
So what I want you to do for thenext little while is pay attention
to how it's different Now.
It may be worse, it may bebetter, it may have moved.
Um.
It may be less intense.
It may, maybe now it starts before,but it warms up and it doesn't,
and then you feel it after, or nowyou don't feel it before or during,
(31:38):
but you feel it after, or sometimesnow you just feel it the next day.
Pay attention to how it'sdifferent and if it's moving, pay
attention to where it's moving to
because I don't have aproblem when pain is moving.
I am worried when it's staying thesame and we can't affect it in any way.
(32:00):
But as long as it's moving,um, I'm pretty happy with that.
So, in conclusion, the body'sbuilt and designed to heal itself.
It can in a well.
You've got multiple cells thatare designed working 24 7, 365
(32:22):
to heal and keep you healthy.
You've got multiple fluids thatare moving through your body
monitoring and working on healing.
You've got this incredible pain sciencethat's monitoring for potentials, right?
And remember, always remember that.
(32:43):
The brain is gonna modulate whether ornot to send back his pain signal, and it's
based on belief and it's based on history,
and this whole system can reset.
Remember that when pain's moving,I'm not so worried when it's staying
the same place I'm concerned.
(33:07):
And remember, this body is builtand designed to heal itself.
It can and it will.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of Conversations with Kimen.
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(33:32):
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. Conversations with Kimen is aboutinspiration, life lessons, and wisdom.
Your host, Kimen Petersen shareshis stories to inspire you to live
a more soulful and illuminated life.
The topics covered in this podcastare as personal opinions inspired by
life, experience, and conversationsshared with amazing people.
Kimen hopes to encourage you tobe guided by life in the flow.
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So the whole journey is moremanageable and joyful and fulfilling.
Welcome back.
Today, I want to talk about somethingthat is probably one of my favorite
things to talk about in this world, andnot only because it's so relevant to
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the athletic population I work with, butit's actually relevant to anyone who's
had injury, pain, struggle of any kind.
Although when I talk about things,sometimes I talk about a story
from an athlete's point of view orsomething, but you could actually take
a look at it as a metaphor for life.
(01:10):
This is specifically something Isay to most of my patients when
they come in for the first time whenthere's, um, dealing with injury.
And recently, uh, a newer patient ofmine said the first time she heard this.
It just changed her mind about herbody and now she lives it and also
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shares it with other people, whichI think is absolutely amazing.
If you can inspire someone, not onlyto see how incredibly resilient they
are, their body is, and life is tothe point that they want to take that
and share that with another person.
I think that's the biggestone you can have in this life.
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So specifically what I'm gonna talktoday about, and this is what I would
tell you if you came in to see me.
If you're an athlete or any human beingwho's dealing with pain, the first thing
I'm gonna tell you is the body is strong.
It's resilient, it's builtand designed to heal itself.
It can and it will.
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Now, if your ligament's torn,it may need to be sewn together,
but once it's sewn together.
Then your body will take over.
You know, there's a lotof confusion out there.
There's a lot of, I don't know,it's almost like they're trying
to talk you into the fact that,um, you know, the back is weak.
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It's a weak structure.
I'll tell you of honestly,um, in my education.
We did cadaver lab and I have held a humanspine in my hand, and it's heavy and it's
strong, massive bones, massive ligaments,and massive muscle all around it.
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It is not a weak structure, soI don't know how people get off
saying that this structure is weakbecause it's incredibly strong.
Not only, not only is it built strong.
But the body is completely packedwith these amazing cells that are
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completely dedicated to healing.
And these things are working 247, 365, um, monitoring for issues.
And as soon as something happens,for instance, we've got fibroblasts
and there's these little guysthat are attracted to mediators of
inflammation from tissue damage.
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And so when tissues damage, it letsout a tissue factor and it's really
strong at the source, and then itkind of, it spreads out from there.
And these fibroblasts are attachedto it, uh, are attracted to this
or this chemical mediator, and theyfollow it to the strongest source.
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And when they find the tissue damage,they lay down a collagen elastin formula.
Um, kind of, they, peoplecall it scar tissue.
I don't like that word.
I like to say adhesive tissue.
And what I talk about with people,it's funny, these little fibroblasts,
they're not very accurate, sothey spray it all over the place.
So you have all these crossadhesions that can happen.
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Um, and that's when stuff likerolling and treatment could help.
So.
You've, you've also got all theseother little cells, um, part
of your inflammatory system,uh, for illness or, you know,
invasion by bacteria or whatever.
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Um, it's a whole inflammatory system,the lymphatic system, and we've got
monocytes, macrophages, neutrophils,
and all these, all these littlecells have appropriate little, um,
ways of protecting the body from.
Invaders and cleaning up dead tissue.
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And then even with bone, bonehas these very, very specific
cells, osteoblast and osteoclast.
Now if there's say a, a jaggedfracture, not, not hugely jagged, but
jagged enough, the osteoclast willbreak down the shards and the, and
the osteoblast will rebuild more bone.
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And the funny thing is thebody is really interesting.
There's this.
There's this law called Wolf's law.
And Wolf's law says that the body will laydown extra bone along the lines of stress.
And this is why we talk about resistancetraining, like lifting weights.
All the resistance training will helpactually increase your bone density.
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And what I also believe this Wolf'slaw might say is that after injury, um,
the way the body heals that in injury.
Like after a fracture, that areashould be stronger than it was
before, and it should be highlyunlikely that you would get a break.
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And as long as it, it healed properly,um, it should be very unlikely that
you ever get a break in the same place.
So literally when the body healsthings, it heals it stronger
than it was in the first place.
So this is the intelligence ofthe human body, but not only that.
The body is filled with fluids that,that a lot of 'em circulate, um,
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through muscle movement or you probablyheard that sitting is the new smoking.
Now that research was misinterpreted, it'snot actually sitting is a new smoking.
'cause if you got up for, say,five to 10 minutes every hour and
moved around, you could sit for12 hours without hurting yourself.
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The truth is, it's the lack ofmovement is the new smoking.
And why is that?
It's because lymphatic fluid, venousblood flow, synovial fluid, all circulate
through muscle movement, throughmoving compression movement of joints.
So movement is incrediblyimportant for health.
(07:22):
Right here.
I want to like dispel another myth forvery, for a very, very long time they
were saying that, Ooh, like running,running, um, puts you at risk for joint
damage, cartilage damage, all this stuff.
And actually, you know what, they'vedone massive, massive studies over
years and years, like N 30,000,and what they actually found was
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runners have stronger joints.
As long as they don't have a geneticproblem with cartilage, that is, but if
they have, in the absence of any geneticissues, uh, predis disposition to problems
with joints or cartilage, runners havethe healthiest and the least, least number
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of knee and hip replacements of all, so.
The truth is, if somebody says running'sgonna hurt your joints, it's gonna hurt.
Your cartilage gonna hurtsome, um, they're wrong.
They're absolutely wrong.
There's massive studies to prove it.
So, like I said, so the body's gotthis whole system to keep us healthy.
Uh, lymphatic system, which, um, haslymphatic fluid flow flowing through it.
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Um, the synovial, uh, fluid in the joints,atrial blood flow, which is the the pulse.
Um, the fresh, fresh oxygenatedblood and the venous blood blood flow
that's heading back towards the heart,which is pu pulling carbon dioxide
and waste products back through.
(08:55):
So the lymphatic system is the,is the inflammatory system really,
and people, people talk aboutinflammation as being a terrible thing.
Um, and people are always going,well, do I use cool, do I use heat?
And I think the researchright now is, is pretty good.
(09:16):
Um, with the understanding that if theinflammatory, uh, if the inflammatory
reaction is the healing reaction, doyou want to inhibit that reaction?
And that's a really good question.
You probably don't right now if it'sblack, blue, swollen out of control.
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I am a fan of applying cold, um, onfor 10 off for five, not directly to
the skin, with a thin layer of crossbetween so you don't do tissue damage.
So basically you, you put cool on,say a sprain ankle on for 10 minutes.
You take it off, let the tissue warmup, do it again, keep on repeating it.
(10:01):
You can repeat that up for,you know, for up to, I believe
72 hours is about the max.
It's gonna have any effect.
You do have to understand there'sa potential of you slowing the
healing process doing this, but wheninflammation's outta the control and pain
is an issue, uh, it might be a good idea.
(10:22):
So, um,
synovial food, synovial fluidis in the joints, right?
And cartilage is reallyinteresting because it doesn't
actually have a blood flow.
Right.
So how, how cartilage cells, uh, getfed and get oxygenated is oxygen and
(10:47):
glucose diffused into the synovial fluid.
So you can imagine if you're sedentary,if you're not a runner, if you, if
you sit around a lot, there's not alot of movement of that sonova fluid.
So the waste product, pro productsfrom the cartilage cells will sit
on top of the cartilage cells.
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Glucose will not make its way very well,oxygen will not make it its way very well.
So there's a good chance thatthe cartilage cells could be
unhealthy and possibly die.
And this is why movement is so important.
Of course, um, atri, uh, atrialblood flow, super important.
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And then venous blood flow, ofcourse for pulling carbon dioxide
back to the lungs and wasteproducts back through the system.
So that's like, this is kind ofthe healing system of the body.
It's amazing.
It's got all these cells, it'sgot all these fluids and these
things are working 24 7, 365.
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Okay, next we're gonna talkabout pain science because
it's an interesting thing like,
and a lot of people don't understand pain.
They used to think we had specificpain sensors in the body, but
we actually don't have specific.
Pain sensor.
We have what we call nociceptorsand they're free nerve endings.
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And yes, they can be triggered bymediations, mediators of inflammation
from tissue damage, but they can alsobe triggered in the absence of the
mediators of inflammation, which meanswithout tissue damage you can have pain.
So what they talk about is these,these free nerve endings can
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be activated by like stretch.
By pressure, uh, by other mediators,by extreme heat and extreme cold.
And the interesting thing is theycan be activated at 75% of the way
to tissue damage, so they don'tnecessarily need tissue damage
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to send a signal to the brain.
So that's the nociceptors.
And the interesting thing is they spsend a non-specific message to the brain,
and when the brain receives thismessage, it'll modulate whether
or not to send back a pain signal.
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And the idea is, um, you know, somepeople have misinterpreted this as well.
That's saying that thepain is in the brain.
And I say, no, it's painis not in the brain.
Pain is an output of the brain in responseto a danger message from the body.
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So it's not in the brain, it'sa response from the peripheral,
from a danger message.
So if anybody ever tries to tell youand you're not in pain or tell you
it's all in your head, um, they don'tknow what they're talking about.
They really don't.
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I've, I've worked with so many peoplein pain and I've had people come in
and my doctor says I shouldn't be inpain or I'm not in pain, and I'm like.
If, if you do work with people, ifyou're a therapist of some coin and you
do work with people, the first thingyou need to do is validate the pain,
validate the fact that they're in pain.
I and I can do it very easily.
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I can see the way you're holding yourself.
When I put my hand in that area, I canfeel how your muscles are tightening up.
You are in pain, I can tell.
See if you can validate the pain.
If somebody can feel heard by you, that'sthe first step to making a difference.
The trick is you don't validatethe story about the pain.
(14:44):
And I'll get more tointo that in a second.
'cause I just want to figure, finishup pain science and this idea.
Now the, the other incredible thingis like, probably this, okay, so pain
science is, they're working on it.
It's a theory, it's in testing.
It's a good theory, but it'snot a hundred percent proven.
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But it's, it's a solid working modelthat we have to work with right now.
And the interesting thing aboutnociceptors is what they understand
is, like I was saying, they can beactivated 75% of the way to tissue damage.
So you don't necess necessarily haveto be all the way to tissue damage.
And like I said, the brain modulates painaccording to the history in the area,
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um, and your beliefs about the area.
So you can imagine if you've had.
A a couple year history in an areaand you believe there's a real problem
there that anytime there's no subceptioncoming from that area, 'cause the
brain, it's not really good at specific,it's being really specific about
the area because it's a non-specificmessage that goes to the brain.
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So the brain's just going to.
Err on the side of caution.
Send back.
Send back a pain signal.
So this is why long afterinjury, you might still be
getting feedback from an area.
And I'm not saying don't payattention to pain coming from an
area where you've had a problem.
You can, you can, you can modulatethe way you approach activity there.
You can drop it down a bit, youcan change the way you do it.
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You can switch to cross training.
There's all kinds of thing.
Um.
But don't just push throughpain, um, just because of this
understanding of pain science now.
So the problem with, uh, chronic painis what they're starting to understand.
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What they, they believe is thenociceptors, if they keep on being
triggered over and over and overagain, and I don't know how long,
I don't think they do either.
Um, they start to.
Get more sensitive.
And if you've ever heard of, youhave a sensitive nerve pathway.
This is what they're talking about.
The, the, that nociceptor keeps ongetting more and more sensitive.
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So rather than 75% of the weightto tissue damage, 65, 55, 40 30.
And so basically it takes nextto nothing after long-term pain
in area to cause nociception.
And your brain goes, ohyeah, I know that area.
Like that's my weak back.
And they remember the rope back CECcommercial with the stabbing pains in the
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back and the shocks, and they're like,oh, send back a pain signal on people.
Oh, my back, my back's so weak.
And this belief that the back's weak.
And then you also have therapiststhat are selling the backs weak.
Um, drives me crazy becausethe back is not weak.
So.
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What I, what I had to come up with, um, myvery first actual episode in conversations
with Kim and is called Crack the Door.
And I was trying to figure out away I could change the conversation
around, uh, pain, especially whensomebody would be sitting in my office,
they come in the first time and go.
I know I'm gonna be in painforever, but if you can just help
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me, I'd really appreciate it.
And I created this little conversationbecause like, I don't want to go
outside of my scope of practice.
I don't wanna, I don't wanna tryto counsel people, but I just
want to put a dent in that belief.
And what I chose to do was I would say, Ipointed at the door and go crack that door
just a little, that there's a possibilitythat one day that pain won't be there.
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I can't promise you, and I can'tguarantee you, but crack the door.
That is possible.
And the really coachable peoplewould crack the door open,
which I thought was amazing.
You see, that's directly in theface of I know you're gonna,
I'm gonna be in pain forever.
And the, and the story about chronicpain and the whole bit, and you
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know, most of those chronic PA painpeople that I worked with six to nine
months later, there was no more pain.
So this works, but it's not just there.
This is, this is one of the issueswith manual therapy research is
when people research something,they pick one little thing and they
try to see if that works right.
(19:14):
But it's a whole arrayof things that we do.
So.
First, I wanna breakdown that belief, right?
The next thing you, you, I, I do withthese people, of course, I tell 'em the
body's built and designed to heal itself.
I talk to them about, if you took alook, if you're comfortable looking at
that, you could look and see how strongthat back structure is by looking at,
(19:35):
uh, at a dissection of a, of a spine.
I mean, some people aren't comfortablewith that, so we wouldn't go there.
Um, from there I would be.
I'd be talking to them about pain science.
I teach them how this works, and Iwould try to get, we would try to
see how far can they move in eachdirection without creating pain?
(19:58):
Because movement is medicine.
Motion is lotion.
If you can start moving in a pain-freezone, remember I was seeing all these
lymphatic fluid, uh, venous blood flow.
Uh, synovial fluid.
These are all healing fluids of thebody that only move with movement.
(20:18):
So start getting them to moveand sometimes the movement would
only be an inch or a centimeteror whatever in each direction.
And I start them there because what Iwant to do is start getting them to move
and I'm keep on convincing them how thebody's strong so we can kind of break down
the belief that the body is a weak thing.
I get them to move in each directionslowly and over time we'd increase the
(20:42):
movement and I'd, I'd work on the musclesaround the area to loosen them up.
I, I get them to start moving morebecause there's this fear of movement.
But as long as you can movein a pain-free RO range, and
you're not causing no ception.
Right.
Then what happens with these nociceptorsis, this is the other side of it, like
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when you're getting no ception over andover and over again, they're downing,
downing down, regulating down, and thenwhen you start, stop like moving, but
not cau causing no ception, they startup regulating 30, 40, 50, 60, 75, and
they might go right back to normal andthen you might not experience pain and
(21:25):
that that is a basics of pain science.
So next I really want to talkabout is how is is some of
the science around injury now?
Because they used to say that injuryis a result of overwork, but it
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sounds like they got that one wrongbecause the conversation is changing.
And I like this because likeoverwork sets you up for a fear.
Like fear in the body.
Like it's, I gotta be careful, right?
And I'm not saying you don't haveto be careful, but within sense you,
because if, as soon as you thinkthat the body has a chance of being
(22:10):
injured, now you're scared of injuryand that opens up a different door.
And you don't wanna keepthat door open if you can.
'cause the body is strong and resilient.
It can do amazing things.
But the truth is what theyfigured out about injury,
injury is not due to overwork.
It's due to under recover,
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so you can add any load you want, as hardas you want, as crazy as you want, as long
as you match your recovery to your load.
And one of the things you, you mightfind interesting is, say, say I am doing,
say I'm doing 200 repeats, like on thetrack, um, and I might have 30 seconds
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of recovery each 200, and maybe I goup to 400 and I get maybe a minute to a
minute and 30 if I'm doing really hard.
And then if I'm up to a kilometer,I might be getting two minutes.
And then if I'm doing a mile, I mightget two minutes and 30 seconds recovery.
And that's pretty impressive, eh?
But then you start looking at a sprinterwhen they're doing their repeats.
(23:18):
They're getting 10, 20 minuterecovery between intervals.
See, 'cause when they're going,they're going way harder than I am.
So they've learned to matchrecovery with the effort.
Now recovery isn't just like rest.
Recovery is super important.
(23:39):
Um.
Yeah, recovery is sleep.
Are you getting enough sleep?
And science shows that the best sleephappens at the same time every night.
Um, probably not going to bed at one inthe morning, probably around nine and
getting your eight hours and consistentlygetting it every night at the same time.
(24:00):
Because apparently, from what I understandfrom a sports med I talked to, um.
The, the majority of your hu humangrowth hormone, one of the big
healing, um, hormones of the bodyhappens in the first two hours.
And if you go to bed later,you're gonna lose some of that.
So the idea is sleep and sleepproperly and sleep enough.
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Next off is nutrition like, and thisis something not only eating enough.
Because if you don't eat enough,you could put, put your body
in, in a system called Reds.
Reduced energy, um, deficiency syndrome.
And this is when you can be atrisk of a lot of different issues,
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especially bone, um, bone issues,
stress fractures.
But nutrition isn't just eating enough.
It's eating the rightthings at the right time.
So I think the best idea withthis one is to talk to somebody
who's a sports dietician.
Dietician who's been properly.
(25:12):
Like, uh, dieticians in, in Canada area regular regulated health profession,
and there's a bunch of really incredibleones that have gone and taken the
IOC uh, sports dietician course.
So they understand all the researchabout like, what do eat, when do we, uh,
how much, how to balance it, and thoseare the people to talk about this with.
(25:34):
Now.
Next of course, is your mental health.
Mental health is sucha big important thing.
Because if you're sitting under a lotof stress and your cortisol levels
get to a certain point, then you gointo the sympathetic nervous system
and that cascade can be pretty bad.
So the idea is like if you really,really want to recover properly,
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it's good to have your mental healthbe a part of, um, your recovery.
Then mental performance.
There's specific mental performancepeople who can help you deal with the
anxieties around racing and thoughtprocesses and breaking things down
into process base instead of outcomebase, which would just be really good.
(26:18):
Um, getting enough rest, sleep, andrest are a little bit different.
Like the idea of not pushingyourself all the time.
Working with a specific strength andconditioning person who understands your
sport and knows exactly what you shouldbe doing, and able to maybe even physio or
(26:38):
or another sports physiologist or any ofthese people who are really well trained
to see what you need to strengthen tohelp you, uh, be the best at your sport.
And then there's.
Massage therapy, chiropractic,physiotherapy, all these different
(26:58):
therapies that do have benefit andthinking about getting treatment regularly
to keep you, like a lot of people willsit down and think, oh, well, I'll
just, I'll just go in when I get hurt.
And then we get the smart ones that arelike, well, you know what, I'm gonna
(27:18):
book ahead and what I'm gonna do is ifI'm injured, then we can focus on that.
Um, if, uh, if we're not injured, wecan work on maintenance and prevention
and just keep everything loosened up.
So I'm as healthy as I canbe so I can, I can adapt.
(27:39):
Uh, another thing you canreally look into is mindfulness.
So what about coming back from injury?
And we'll go back to working with amental performance person or, and a mental
health person is a really great idea andbeing guided through a proper program.
(28:00):
By SNC physiotherapists, like somekind of a medical professional, just
to make sure that you're going in theright direction and you're going at
the right speed, and you're giving yourbody a time to enough time to adapt.
But let's talk about gradual return, justspecifically with runners for a minute.
So there's this thingcalled a walk run program.
I'm sure a lot of people haveheard of it and a lot of people
(28:23):
will start running this way.
And when I came back to running, uh, this,I did a super, super gradual walk run.
And you know, there's this confusionthat's thinking, well this is about like
increasing my cardio, but what if I'malready have a high level of fitness?
And it's not actually about cardiowalk run's, not about cardio.
(28:44):
Okay, walk run is specifically aboutloading the tissues of the body to prepare
them for the new load, like progressivelyand gradually loading the tissue, the
joints, the ligaments, the tendons,so they can start adapting to the new
load that you're about to put on 'em.
And the longer, the more timeyou can take, the better.
(29:07):
Um, and a lot of people who'vegone back too fast have found
this, found out this the hard way.
Now the other thing about coming backfrom injury, like I was, I was talking
about, um, think about pain science.
'cause your brain really rememberswhat, what happened in that area.
(29:30):
And if you built up some fear around,like say you've had a bone injury and
you're scared of having another one,
it's valid to be afraid.
And you gotta understand that it's okayto not have trust in your body for a time
because like trust is earned over time.
It's not something thatautomatically comes back.
(29:54):
So you need to be patient.
You need to trust thatyou're gonna find the way.
Now healing is going on 24 7, 365.
All these cells in your bodyare working all the time.
But it's gradual and it's super gradualfor you to notice the difference.
(30:15):
Like it's so incredibly, so incrediblygradual for you to notice the difference.
If you think about it, think abouta a time that you were injured
and you had this thing going on.
We call 'em niggles.
Um, so sometimes it's just a niggle.
There's this problem going on and it'sgoing on, it's going on, it's going on.
Suddenly you're like.
(30:35):
Oh yeah, the last time I thoughtabout that was two weeks ago.
And it's like, and that's how itgoes because things are happening so
gradually that they might have resolvedbefore you know they've resolved.
So that's another thing you can put inthe back of your mind and one of the
ways to like help you see these things.
(30:56):
It's one of the things I always, afterI see a person the first time on their
way out of the door, it's like, listen,the brain is really interesting.
It, it, if there's something goingon in a similar area that you had
something recently, it's gonnatry to make it all seem the same.
(31:17):
So what I want you to do for thenext little while is pay attention
to how it's different Now.
It may be worse, it may bebetter, it may have moved.
Um.
It may be less intense.
It may, maybe now it starts before,but it warms up and it doesn't,
and then you feel it after, or nowyou don't feel it before or during,
(31:38):
but you feel it after, or sometimesnow you just feel it the next day.
Pay attention to how it'sdifferent and if it's moving, pay
attention to where it's moving to
because I don't have aproblem when pain is moving.
I am worried when it's staying thesame and we can't affect it in any way.
(32:00):
But as long as it's moving,um, I'm pretty happy with that.
So, in conclusion, the body'sbuilt and designed to heal itself.
It can in a well.
You've got multiple cells thatare designed working 24 7, 365
(32:22):
to heal and keep you healthy.
You've got multiple fluids thatare moving through your body
monitoring and working on healing.
You've got this incredible pain sciencethat's monitoring for potentials, right?
And remember, always remember that.
(32:43):
The brain is gonna modulate whether ornot to send back his pain signal, and it's
based on belief and it's based on history,
and this whole system can reset.
Remember that when pain's moving,I'm not so worried when it's staying
the same place I'm concerned.
(33:07):
And remember, this body is builtand designed to heal itself.
It can and it will.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of Conversations with Kimen.
Please remember to follow andlike this podcast on Instagram,
Spotify, apple Podcast, Pod Beanor wherever you find this episode.
(33:32):
Please share this podcast withanyone you feel would be inspired
and benefit from this content.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!