Julstro Muscular Therapy

Do you know what Olympic Gold Medalists Billy Demong, Andrew Weibrecht, and Jeret “Speedy” Peterson, Jennifer Rodriguea, Adam Moore, Zach Krych, Eli Bremer, Sandra Gal, and the USA Space Shuttle astronauts all have in common? They all have had their sports nutritional programs planned and supplemented by Shaklee, the #1 nutritional company in the United States.

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

I’m doing a lot of driving as I go from North Carolina to upstate New York, and then I’ll be driving down to Texas and back to NC. Then I turn around and go back to NY and then up to New Hampshire before I head back to NC again. Whew! This brings me to the biggest problem I have when I drive these long distances…burning in the middle of my back between my shoulder blades.

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

The weather is getting more beautiful every day and I’m seeing more runners at my office. One of the primary problems seems to be foot pain, especially plantar fasciitis.

Before you consider getting very expensive orthotics, I suggest you read about how repetitive strain injuries and tight muscles will cause pain to be felt at the insertion point on the bone. In the case of plantar fasciitis the muscles involved are your tibialis anterior, peroneals, and the calf muscles: gastrocnemius and soleus.

Simply releasing the tension in these muscles will eliminate the foot pain in 95% of the people I see at my office, and that I work with online and through my forum.

Happy running!
Julie

I received a message on one of the forums that I moderate that made me think of a client I had when I was back in NY, several years ago. The message told of a person who has horrible jaw pain that started from simply yawning. His jaw immediately shifted over to the opposite side, nerve pain shot into his head, he was sick to his stomach from the pain, and it’s been going on for months at this point. How terrible!

The doctors have tried everything, MRI, URI, x-rays, bite plate (helped for a few days and then made it worse), massage, etc., etc. Not only is he not getting better, it’s getting worse.

This reminded me of a young woman (32 YO) who went to see the doctor I worked with in NY. Fortunately for her she had forgotten to go to her family physician and Dr. Cohen was open on Sunday as an Urgent Care facility, and fortunately for her I had stopped by just to visit. Her oral surgeon planned on severing the muscle of her jaw and needed an MD to approve her medical condition prior to the surgery.

When Dr. Cohen felt the masseter muscle of her jaw (put your fingers on your cheeks by your back teeth, clench your teeth and you’ll feel the muscle pop out) he said it felt like she was a squirrel packing nuts for the winter. He refused to sign her form until she saw me because this surgery would have meant that for the rest of her life her jaw would hang open, meaning she would be drooling all of the time. That would have truly been a nightmare!

Your masseter muscle is the one that tightens every time you chew, and if you chew gum it is repetitively strained (she did) or clench your teeth while you sleep (she did that too) it is held contracted for long periods at a time, causing it to shorten. She was unable to open her jaw and the oral surgeon was afraid that if she became sick to her stomach that she would choke on the vomit. I understand his reasoning, but he never even considered releasing the tension in the muscle by any means other than surgery.

It took only 15 minutes to release the tension, and then I taught her how to do the self-treatment. At the end of our brief session I had her pressing on the muscle while she opened her mouth as wide as possible, and then I had her release the press on the muscle and just open and close her mouth. She did it with ease and without any pain.

She started to cry, she had come so close to the surgery that would have had a lifetime of anguish, and it only took 15 minutes to resolve it.

I haven’t answered the forum posting yet, but I will today and I hope this man will make the decision that it’s a wise idea to learn how to self-treat his masseter muscle before someone decides he needs surgery to release his jaw.

Self-treatment is ALWAYS a great first-option when a situation isn’t life-threatening.

Wishing you well,
Julie