Chronic pain is a terrible thing, keeping you up at night, aching all day long, affecting your work and stopping you from doing the things you love.

As you know, I teach people how to do self-treatments for chronic pain and sports injuries. I also speak at conventions and teach self-treatment clinics, which is what this blog is all about. It’s so important to me to bring this information to as many people as possible that I love it when I find out that someone has been able to improve their daily life because of my work.

The message below came from a lady who attended a talk I gave in NH two weeks ago, which ended up have people leaning against walls (to treat their shoulder, hip, or back), lying on the floor (same areas), and learning how to self-treat the muscles that cause hand/wrist pain and numbness.

I am amazed by how much better I feel since meeting you two weeks ago. I’ve been reading and re-reading your book and performing the techniques on my quads, illiopsoas, and gluts, and hamstrings since then. First of all, my pain level is greatly reduced. More importantly, I’m able to sense a spasm coming on quickly (now that I am so much more mindful about what is causing the discomfort) and treat the spasm immediately. For the first time since 1998, I have days without pain and discomfort and more importantly, I have HOPE! Thank you so much Julie. ~ B. McDermott, Hudson, NH.

If you are in an association that has speakers at their conference, please let me know so I can put in a request to be a presenter.

Thanks a lot,
Julie

Shaklee has done so much research on the Cinch® products, and all the other nutritional products, that Dr. Gallagher knew this was the only program he wanted to share with his patients. Dr. Gallagher was also impressed with the fact that Dr. Chaney had put together a group of 42 participants with a common goal of “1,000 Pounds Lighter, 1,000 Times Healthier” by the end of the year, and the group had already lost a total of 549 pounds in just 3 months!

Meanwhile, Dr. Steve has been running an online webinar and consultation program that is called the Cinch Lifestyle Program. This is a free 12 week program that is open to select participants who are using the Cinch® products to lose weight. It teaches people how to make the lifestyle changes that lead to permanent weight loss. It teaches people how to internalize those lifestyle changes so that they just become what you do without even thinking about it. Dr. Gallagher was so impressed with Dr. Steve’s group that he’s going to invite his patients to join the program.

We are having a meeting on May 30th to introduction the Cinch Weight-Loss program to everyone in Apex and Cary, NC. The meeting will begin at 7PM and will be held at Chiropractic First, 1011 W. Williams St., Ste. 104, Apex, NC 27502. If you’re in the area you are invited to join us.

It’s a fantastic program, I’m going on it myself to eliminate the final 20 lbs I want to lose. While the Introduction will be held at Chiropractic First, people can join from anywhere in the USA as this program is done via an online webinar and telephone conference calls with Dr. Steve. Shaklee also has an online program to track food consumed (including breaking it down to carbs and proteins), and also has a Registered Dietitian who takes calls and answers questions.

If you know anyone who is interested in losing weight in a very healthy manner that also works on changing lifestyles, please tell them to contact me (Julie@julstro.com). We’ll be opening up a website for people, but for now the best method is to contact me directly.

Wishing you well,
Julie

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s out there, hope your day was as nice as mine.

Today I was talking to a woman who spent many hours on a computer finishing up a project and her eyes hurt. Here’s a real simple self-treatment:

Close your eyes and put the side of your pointer finger, all the way up by your fingernail, along the very top of your eyeball. If you wear contacts either remove them, or look all the way down so you aren’t pressing into them.

Then just press your fingers into the back of your eyeball (or as far back as you can go. You’ll be pressing on the very tiny muscle that moves your eyeball to the left and right. Just stay still on the point for about 30 seconds. Then go to the very outside point of eye and do the same thing. You may even get a color and geometric shape show while you’re doing this.

You are relaxing the spasms in the muscles that move your eyeball, and it feels wonderful. You don’t need to press too hard, just enough that you feel a slight discomfort, which will lessen as you hold the spasm. If you’d like pictures of how to do this, they are in my book, Treat Yourself to Pain-Free Living.

Your eyes will feel so refreshed and if you have a little bit of a headache, it usually disappears.

Wishing you well,
Julie

Mary’s shoulder was so tight that it looked like she had a golf ball under her skin at the top of her shoulder, and she couldn’t turn her head to either side. I’ve worked with a lot of people over the past 24 years (thousand actually) and her shoulder was among the worst I’d ever seen.

The good news was that the doctors had cleared all of the serious possibilities, and in the past the only relief she had ever gotten was during a massage and an Atlas/Axis chiropractic adjustment. This confirmed that muscles were the most logical cause of her pain.

As we worked together I found that all of the muscles that go along her spine (erector spinae) were very tight, and her pelvis was rotated down in the front. Her quadriceps were like shortened, tight ropes of muscle, which were pulling down on her pelvis — causing the pelvis rotation. It took a LOT of work to release the muscles, but they did start to loosen, and then I worked on all of the muscles that have an impact on the pelvis. Then I taught Mary how to do the self-treatments on the muscles at the front of her neck, called the scalenes. It was very painful, even the slightest pressure caused pain, but that’s one of the benefits of self-treatment, you can adjust the pressure to be perfect for yourself and then gradually go deeper and deeper. Mary told me that she not only didn’t have a curve in her cervical spine, but that it was actually a reverse curve that the chiropractor has been treating and having some success at moving. After 1 1/2 hours she was turning her head much better and the pain wasn’t as severe.

Then we began to discuss nutrition. I’m really grateful that Steve Chaney, PhD is the Director of my Shaklee team. Steve is the Professor of Nutrition and Biochemistry at UNC Medical School (I’ve mentioned this before, but it makes me so happy that I wanted to mention it again). I learning about nutrition and the Shaklee products, but Steve is an expert on both. He called and spoke to Mary and found out that her diet was seriously lacking calcium of any kind, and also devoid of vitamin D. Mary didn’t eat green vegetables, and she didn’t drink milk. They had a lengthy telephone consultation and Steve recommended several of Shaklee’s products, but especially Osteomatrix and Vitamin D for the missing nutrients that build bones, and because a lack of calcium in the diet will cause the muscles to spasm for no apparent reason. He also recommended Alfalfa because of it’s anti-inflammatory properties, and Vitalizer as an overall multivitamin.

When Mary went to her chiropractor immediately after our session, the doctor was amazed at the ease of adjustment. It’s so logical that when the muscles are released they aren’t putting pressure on the bone, so the bone moves easily.

Mary lives in New York, near my daughter Anne-Marie, who is an excellent muscular therapist trained in the Julstro techniques, so she’s going to continue her weekly treatments, both massage and chiropractic.

I feel in my heart that Mary is going to get 100% better, it may take a little while, but she’s definitely on the road to recovery.

If you or someone you know, is suffering from joint pain or repetitive strain injuries, I hope you’ll go onto my website and read why muscles can cause any number of problems including; headaches, neck pain, tinnitus, low back pain, sciatica, pain in any of the joints, and even plantar fasciitis (foot pain).

Wishing you well,
Julie

This past weekend two things happened that I want to share with you. First of all, I was speaking/teaching at a convention of electrologists in New Hampshire and while having two of the attendees modeling how to do the Julstro self-treatment for the low back, one of the ladies said “my foot has been numb for YEARS and it just came back!!!” WOW, that was so fantastic that I couldn’t wait to tell others. Apparently the muscles had been tight, rotating her pelvis and putting pressure on her sciatic nerve, and that was the source of her numb foot. She had been to multiple doctors, had many different tests, seen a variety of therapists, and had given up looking for an answer. And it turned out to be as simple as releasing the tension in her quadriceps (rectus femoris to be precise) to release the tension on her pelvis, and the numbness suddenly stopped.

The second lady was with a small group of people I was teaching in NY. She had been told she had arthritis in her neck and was on some very strong arthritis medications (with all the potential negative side-effects) that weren’t doing any good, but she was afraid to stop them for fear that the arthritis would get worse. I was teaching the group how to do the treatments for the neck and shoulder, and slowly she was able to turn her head without pain. We found many spasms all along a muscle called levator scapulae, and along the muscles at the very back of her neck (splenius capitis and splenius cervicis). She had so much relief, and so quickly, that she’s going to speak to her doctor about getting off the drugs. When these muscles are tight you can’t turn your head because it’s like having a metal strip holding the bones tightly in place, preventing them from lengthening as required to turn in the opposite direction.

What a wonderful, fulfilling, weekend. I LOVE what I do for a living!

If you know any massage therapists who would like to learn Julstro Muscular Therapy, please tell them to contact me here on my website.

I hope to meet you one day as I continue to travel around the USA.

Wishing you well,
Julie

I’m visiting with Ana Johnson, my partner in TriggerPoint Yoga and it’s always so incredible how I grow professionally and personally just from our lively discussions. TriggerPoint Yoga is a teaching that we have created together to first release the spasms that hold the muscles tight and then to safely do yoga. Ana is an amazing yoga teacher, but the thing I love the most is how she is always looking for even more ways to help people stretch and become more flexible, stressing the safety of each movement.

This morning we were watching a DVD series she just received, by an expert teacher named Paul Grilley. Paul was teaching anatomy for yoga and how the joints can prevent movement that is too often thought to be caused by tight muscles. I’ve had many years of training in anatomy and a special focus on the physiology of muscles, yet I’ve never had anyone discuss the differences in bone structure of joints. It was fascinating!

Ana and I spent time discussing it, practicing yoga movements and how the bone differences just between the two of us make our yoga positions esthetically different. I will never be able to do what Ana does simply because the bones of my joints stop at different angles.

Ana also introduced me to her newest passion, Yin Yoga, which was influenced by Paul and his passion for the anatomy of the body. What a wonderful morning for me, so much growth in such a short time.

I’ll be talking about this a lot more in the future because I plan on taking the same training courses that Ana has started, and TriggerPoint Yoga will be the avenue of our sharing this with others.

Lots more to say about TriggerPoint Yoga, but I respect that you’re busy and we’ll keep that discussion for another day.

Wishing you well,
Julie

The name of this blog is Pain-Free Living and it has always been my intention to share not only information about how muscles cause pain, but also to share information I find about other topics that cause both physical, mental, and spiritual pain.

Today I was reading something that made me realize I needed to really look into the nutritional cause of muscle pain, and I’m starting with the way cholesterol-lowering drugs, specifically the statins that are now so common, are a cause of muscle pain. Here’s the statement that started me researching about this important enzyme…

In a preliminary study, statin users reported a 40% decrease in statin-induced muscle-pain intensity after taking 100 mg of CoQ10 for 30 days. (reported by the Center for Nutritional Research)

I never thought too much about cholesterol before, my HDL has always been so good that I’ve been told I’m just fine, so I ignored it until it moved into my world of muscle pain, and then I became interested.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the use of cholesterol-lowering statins has increased tenfold over the past two decades. In fact, Americans spent a total of $14.3 billion on statins alone in 2009! The CDC reported that 102 million Americans have high cholesterol, a major contributor to heart disease, and that 34% of Americans over age 45 and 86% of Americans over age 65 report taking statins. That is appalling, and it’s primarily diet related so it can be changed.

Although statins are highly effective at lowering LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, their use comes with potential side effects, including muscle aches and rare but serious muscle damage.

Statins, commonly prescribed cholesterol-lowering medications not only lower LDL cholesterol but also inhibit the body’s natural production of coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10). Statins have been reported to reduce CoQ10 levels in the blood by up to 50%. CoQ10 is naturally present in all cells of the body and is vital for cellular energy production – especially in the heart. Without adequate levels of CoQ10, energy production in cells would decline and the function of the heart would be seriously compromised.

CoQ10 is also known for its potent antioxidant activity and, as a result, helps protect arteries from damaging effects of oxidized LDL cholesterol. Oxidized LDL cholesterol is thought to damage blood vessels and may trigger the development of arterial plaque. The build-up of plaque leads to the narrowing of arteries and eventually can block blood flow to the heart and brain, causing heart attack or stroke.

Factors such as poor diet, exposure to free radicals, and the use of certain medications may increase your body’s need for CoQ10. Eating a diet rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids (e.g., fish, walnuts, and flaxseed), along with losing excess weight and doing as little as 30 minutes of exercise every day, can help to lower cholesterol. Also, I’ve read that smoking is a loaded-gun, not only for cholesterol but for a long list of other serious health problems.

As you know I’ve recently become more active in learning about the amazing products produced by Shaklee, so I went to the Shaklee site and looked to see what was offered for lowering cholesterol. There are actually three products that are formulated to lower cholesterol: OmegaGuard, which reduces the risk of heart disease by delivering a full spectrum of ultra-pure omega-3 fatty acids; Cholesterol Reduction Complex, which helps lower cholesterol naturally and includes 2,000 mg of plant sterols and stanols; and CoQHeart, which contains a unique blend of CoQ10 and resveratrol, which helps to produce energy and power your heart.

If you’re like me, and your HDL is high enough to balance out your LDL, maybe you’re not interested in this information, but if you have chronic muscle pain that doesn’t seem to be helped by muscular therapy (self-applied or done by a good massage therapist), extra fluids, or stretching, than perhaps you should take another look at this and give it a try. And, if you know your LDL cholesterol is high, it behooves you to do the lifestyle changes mentioned above and take a look at the Shaklee products to naturally lower your cholesterol.

My next topic of research on nutrition and muscles is calcium, magnesium, and potassium, and how deficiencies cause horrible muscle cramping.

Wishing you well,
Julie

My grandson Martin loves to play soccer and is a really good player, and even though he’s only 14 YO, the injuries he and his teammates experience are the same as any adult soccer player.

Today I received a message from a father of a 9 YO girl who also loves soccer, and whose coach isn’t warming up the kids properly before they play. As a result the little girl is suffering from pain in the groin area. Fortunately for this girl her dad was a massage therapist 20 years ago so he has some knowledge of the muscles and how to treat them, it was just a matter of telling him where to treat.

Soccer players are constantly kicking the ball with the inside of their foot/ankle, therefore repetitively straining the muscles of the inner thigh, called the adductors.

While they kick with the outside of their foot less frequently, the muscles of the hip and quadriceps of the anterior leg, and the hamstrings will get strained because of all the running, and naturally the lower leg is also involved because of the running. AND, the knee is a major area of concern for soccer players because the ball is moving fast (and it’s also heavy) when it’s being stopped by the foot, therefore there is a severe jolt to the knee joint.

To keep this blog post shorter than a full book, let’s just look at the inner thigh for now. If you press your flat hand into the inside of your thigh and then bring your leg across the front of your body to your opposite side, you’ll feel the muscles contracting. These muscles originate on your pubic bone and insert along the length of your thigh bone, all the way to your knee.

If your adductors are tight they are pulling your leg hard to the midline, and then you try to make a movement that will bring your leg out to the side (ie; kicking the ball with the outside of your ankle/foot) and the muscles will pull so hard that you can get pain from your groin all the way down to your inner knee joint.

Try this treatment: sit on the floor, bend your knee and have the outside of your leg totally resting on the floor. Now use the heel of your opposite hand to press into the muscles of your inner thigh, starting all the way up at your pubic bone and ending at your knee joint. If you find a painful point, stay on it for at least 30-60 seconds, maintaining deep pressure.

Do this to both legs even if you’re only feeling discomfort in one leg.

If you need more information or want to see pictures of the treatments, I suggest you look at my book, Treat Yourself to Pain-Free Living.

The best part of what I do is that I teach people how to self-treat. To me that is really exciting because then people don’t need to come to see me, and they don’t need to live in pain.

BTW, if you’re a parent of a young soccer player, I hope you’ll learn how to treat your child. Try the techniques in my book on yourself, and then do them to your child. It’s become such an important topic for me that I’m beginning to put together ideas for a book to teach parents how to treat their athletic child. Hopefully it will be ready by next year as it’s a long project.

Wishing you well,
Julie

In fact, Shaklee has been the nutritional consultants for the USA Olympic Ski Team and other Olympic athletes since 1960, winning a total of 59 Gold, 30 Silver, and 15 Bronze medals. Shaklee was also the nutritional consultants for 7 of Time Life Magazine’s compilation of the 25 Greatest Adventures of All Times. That’s pretty impressive! Will Steger, an arctic explorer since 1986 has had all of his expeditions fueled by Shaklee, and he’s preparing for yet another trip to the arctic circle.

Recently I had the good fortune to go to a meeting that was held in Chapel Hill, NC. The guest speaker was Les Wong, VP of Health Sciences for Shaklee Corporation. I only wish I could write faster so I could give you even a small part of the incredible nutritional information he was sharing with us.

The awesome athletes mentioned above, and many more, use Shaklee Physique and Performance to replenish their missing nutrients and rebuild their muscles.

He also gave amazing information about preventing the top three killers of millions of people: diabetes (90% preventable), heart disease (80% preventable), and cancer (60% preventable). Each of these diseases are preventable by changing your dietary habits.

Did you know that in the USA, 2 out of 3 people are overweight! That’s pretty horrifying. I only drink water, seltzer, and natural fruit juice, so I was shocked when I heard that 21% of calories (for most people) come from sweetened soda’s and drinks, and that 25% of calories are coming from sweets (high fructose corn syrup is in just about everything!).

I think most of us know that in the USA we are a “treat the symptoms, not the cause” country, certainly insurance companies and drug companies don’t promote prevention even though it would save millions of lives and prevent the suffering that is almost commonplace in our country.

I remember the old adage, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” that my mother said over and over when I was young. When we go to the doctor we aren’t advised how to prevent diseases, we are just given drugs to hide the symptoms. A doctor friend of mine told me that in medical school he wasn’t even taught a 3-credit class on nutrition and anything he knows now is because he decided to read about it on his own. Doctors aren’t good nutritional consultants unless they independently decided to focus their attention on nutrition.

Shaklee has over 100 published articles in peer-reviewed medical journals such as the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (JAAP), and the International Journal of Food Sciences (IJFS). That tells me a lot about Shaklee, in fact, Les told us that Shaklee does over 80,000 tests on each of its products every year, even testing every single shipment of raw products before it is used in the supplements and other products.

Even the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, American Academy of Pediatrics (JAAP), the Linus Pauling Institute and the American Cancer Society have all been recommending that we take a multi-vitamin to maintain health.

We are in control of our own health choices and as many people know, we are what we eat. Unfortunately our foods have been adulterated with chemical fertilizers and herbicides, picked green and sprayed with chemicals to ripen them artificially when they get to the final selling point. There are thousands of chemicals used on our foods, no wonder we are so sick! BTW, have you ever paid attention to the potential side-effects of the drugs that are pushed on TV? Yes, your psoriasis may be gone, but according to the fast-speaking announcer at the end of the commercial, you could be dead! One of the potential side-effects of a depression drug is suicide! What is wrong with us…don’t we listen at all?

The presentation was fascinating, the information was so important that I’ve decided it’s time for me to learn more about nutrition, specifically sports nutrition. I’m happy to say that I have a mentor, Steve Chaney, PhD. Steve is the Professor of Nutrition and Biochemistry at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill, and he (along with his wife Suzanne) has been involved with Shaklee for over 30 years — Steve knows all of the Shaklee nutritional products. It’s going to be fun to re-learn nutrition, a subject that I loved so much it was actually my first choice as a career until life took me in a different direction.

I hope you’ll also enjoy reading all the information about the athletes and how Shaklee helped them “go for the Gold!”

Moving right along,

Julie

When you get the burning between your shoulder blades you have an automatic tendency to want to rub the area, but it’s not coming from your back, it’s actually coming from a neck muscle in the front of your neck. The muscle, called Scalenes, crosses over a bundle of nerves called the brachial plexus. When the scalenes go into a spasm they will press on the brachial plexus and refer burning/numbness/tingling to many different areas.

It depends on which nerve fibers are being impinged by the scalenes muscles as to where you will feel the burning sensation, it may be your upper back, upper chest, your entire arm and even into your hand. In fact, the scalenes are one of the key muscles that cause the identical symptoms as felt with carpal tunnel syndrome.

You can self-treat the scalenes by simply pressing on the spasms in the muscle fibers and then after all the spasms are released you can stretch your scalenes by tilting your head back and then turning it toward the opposite side.

When I’m driving and I feel that burning between my shoulder blades I just press on the scalenes spasms and the burning just disappears.

Have a great day,
Julie