Much of what I work with in my office is the result of shock trauma.  What is shock trauma?  Think of the moment before a car accident; the breath is held in on inspiration, the shoulders tense upwards, and the eyes are opened wide.  Then the force of the accident is delivered.  Most physical traumas are shocking and elicit that same response described above.  After the event is over, our body's structure is not the same.  The force has traveled through like a lightning strike and created either increased or decreased resting tone in the fascia and ligaments of the body and locking in the tension created by the shock response decribed above.  The change may only present itself to our awareness briefly, for a day or two, or it could become a chronic companion.  If our body is able to accomate that change well enough we will not have any problem other than an unoticed loss of fluidity, but if it can't then some sort of undesireable symptom will develop (frequently pain, but can be many different disease processes).  Either way, the balance of tension is changed in the body.  What do I mean by balance of tension?  One way to understand it is to imagine the body totally relaxed and floating in space.  What position would it take?  Would it twist to the right?  Bend off to the left?  Flex forward?  etc.  The ideal balance of tension is for all structures to be symmetric around the mid line without perfering motion in any direction over another.  In this ideal balance, there is a minumum amount of tension in the body and all of the channels (lymphatic, blood vessels, nerves) are free to do their jobs without resistance.  
    Now imagine how a side impact car accident could effect the balance of tension in the body.  For this thougt experiment let's imagine that the driver of a car is hit hard on the left side of their car.  Their spine abruptly bends to the left, perhaps throwing their head into the driver side window (or airbag if it deploys).  Then it will whip back the other way.  Typically the first motion will set the tone for the change in the bodies balance of tension because it is the point of greatest force delivery, by the time the body whips back much force has already dissipated.  This sort of force trauma would likely result in the person's spine overall preferring to go into left sidebending over right sidebending.  So their new balance of tension would be found with them in slight left sidebending.  This balance of tension would require the muscles along the right side of the spine to be kept at a greater length, which will result in them trying to pull back to their normal length.  This new increased resting muscle tone sets the muscle up to become painful.  This can be confusing to body work practitioners because they think they should work on the painful muscle, but if we consider the underlying change in the balance of tension in the fascial ligamentous system that gives us a totally different window in on how to resolve the problem.  Now, this is a very simple, 2 dimensional  explantion.  We can imagine of more complex changes could be made through force that produces a combination of motions (flexion/extension, rotation, sidebending, compression, traction) with more complex problems resulting from it (impingement of nerves, arteries, veins, lymphatics, etc)  
    My job it is find my patient's balance of tension and gently coax their structure to let go of the traumatic holding so that treatment by treatment they move closer and closer to their ideal balance.  The great thing about this approach is that as they let go of their shock trauma they do not need to come in an see me as oftens and they do not need to do as much homework (exercise prescription) to stay out of pain.  

For my next entry I will discuss the means by an Osteopath can help patient  release their shock trauma.

    One of the principles of Osteopathy is that the body has the ability to heal itself.  It is, in fact, constantly tending towards health.  Why then do we get sick?  We get sick because, for the most part,  we are choosing to do things that suppress our bodies natural ability to heal.  Let's look at this in greater detail through the lens of the digestive system to understand this claim better...
      It is helpful to look at our overall health as starting with our digestive system because we can usually make the biggest positive impact by making improvements here.  Also, this is where all of the nutrition we use to maintain and heal our bodies enters our system.  We can think of our digestive ability like a fire.  If the fire is strong, we can throw almost anything on it and it will burn it up.  If the fire is weak, then it will struggle to consume heavier, wetter fuels and leave more incompletely burned material.  The same is true of our digestion. thus it is crucial to learn how to cultivate a healthy digestive fire.  There are 2 downsides to incompletely digesting food.  First, we don't get the nutrients we are trying to give our cells.   Second, we accumulate incompletely digested food products that are toxic (such as of arterial cholesterol plaques) in the channels of our bodies (intestines, lymphatics, blood vesels, end organs).  This then sets the stage for diease to set in.
    
    Here are some simple rules to keep your fire strong; eat seasonally (no salad in the winter, little or no wheat in spring and summer, buy from local farmers markets), avoid ice water (especially with meals because it dilutes stomach acid and lowers the temperature which decreases the efficiency of digestive enzymes), have the biggest meal in the middle of the day and smallest at dinner, keep regular sleeping hours, do not eat heavy foods if you are not hungry, avoid red meat, fried foods, ice cream, and refined sugars, do not combine fish and milk, fish and fruit, milk and carbohydrates, milk and fruit, meat and dairy, do not eat/snack in between meals, avoid very spicy food, cook with mild spices like turmeric, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, ajawan, black pepper, cardamom, parsely, cilantro, and ginger, avoid heavily processed foods (cook at home as much as possible), cook with high quality oils (organic grass fed ghee, organic raw coconut oil, organic raw sesame oil, organic raw olive oil, take beneficial medicinal herbs.
    
Stay tuned for the next week when I will discuss how shock trauma compromises our natural healthy state.