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| Transcript Guang Zhou, China May 17-20, 2007 |
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The Stoxen Approach to Reestablishing the Body's Elastic Recoil Mechanisms Through Therapeutic Exercises
2007 World Anti-aging Congress & Exposition
My 17-20, 2007
Guang Zhou, China
Lecture by Dr. James Stoxen DC
Team Doctors
Treatment and Training Center of Champions
6432 S Pulaski, Chicago Il 60629
To contact Dr James Stoxen DC
teamdoctors@aol.com
(773) 735-5200
Good morning.
I’d like to first of all thank the organizers for inviting me to this first conference in Guang Zhou, China. I wanted to honor you for coming because you are taking initiative to advance yourself in the study of prevention of earliest detection of prevention of age related diseases.
The average doctor is at home in bed or on vacation and you, the above average doctors have decided to come and advance yourselves to become better in your field.
First of all I’d like to talk about how anti aging medicine is different from the medicine you are now practicing. Anti-aging medicine exceeds or is advanced from the standard of care because it is the earliest detection and prevention of age related diseases. In that sense we try to predict the problem before it happens.
As the introduction mentioned, I specialize in the field of sports and treatment of entertainers. My patients are breaking world records winning title fights or winning Grammy awards. The demands that are placed upon the doctor of the entertainer industry are very high because these entertainers are going from city to city to city living in a bus. Even though it’s a million dollar bus and they travel from hotel to hotel, they have to entertain at the highest level at all times like an athlete.
We had a discussion last night with a very prominent doctor from the government here in China who stated that we are practicing anti-aging medicine as Chinese traditional doctors because we are practicing prevention medicine. I agreed with her, however, I told her that anti-aging medicine is more like training a 55-year-old man for the Olympic games. A 55 year old man says that if his muscle mass decreases 10 percent per decade, and he says that if he can use the newest medicine and technology to maintain the muscle mass as he did when he was 18, then why don’t we take advantage of these medical technologies.
This is a videotape of a world championship in its final moments of an athlete that I trained in my facility. In my doctor’s office I have a training center where I take care of patients as well as world champions. I train people for world championships.
So what can we learn from sports that we can apply to anti-aging medicine. First of all, in sports there is what we call ‘elastic recoil mechanisms’. The elastic recoil mechanisms are spring mechanisms of the joints, muscles, tendons and ligaments.
For instance, in boxing we start with the foot and turn with the foot, the hips, then the upper body, then the shoulders and then the fastest would be the snap with the wrist. It has applications in sport but also it has application in every day life. First of all, what we’re trying to do is keep our patients active as part of the anti-aging process. Get them involved in team sports, because with team sports they have competition to look forward to and the enjoyment of winning or participation in competition.
The sports should involve all ranges of motion, especially in the feet and the legs. It should include cardiovascular for the heart and increase bone density. The most important factor in choosing a sport or activity for your patients is that it creates minimal inflammation because the increase in inflammation will increase the likelihood of aging and systemic diseases. Inflammation cannot only come from the joints from arthritis-degenerative joint disease, but also from diet as well as pollution and allergies. The increase in inflammation is linked to many systemic diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinsonism, cancer, diabetes and poverty.
Therefore, the most likely is the inflammation from degenerative joint disease that affects all of the joints as well as the systemic inflammation from diet. The combination of aging from the joints and the aging from poor diet causes very fast aging.
The chart here represents the speed of aging. Patients have to be more educated on how aging occurs. I urge all of you to come and meet me after the conference to give me your business card and I will give you this chart.
The red section represents the inflammation, which indicates how much pain the patient will feel; that’s called ‘painful inflammation’. This is what brings the patient to your office. 
The yellow section represents there is no pain, however there is still inflammation- non-painful inflammation. If you have ever had a cold, then you know that your body aches everywhere; your sinuses are inflamed and you are very tired. Increased inflammation can cause you to be very fatigued-very tired.
Today we are going to talk about Phase II and Phase III, which are phases I have been practicing for 15 years. This represents where we are going to start to rebuild the patient or reestablish the spring mechanism or the energy to the body. The traditional weight lifting, like you read in the magazines is not considered the method of reestablishing the normal energy or spring to the body.
First of all, one thing you want to understand when training is that you're not training muscles and joints, you're training the central nervous system. Muscles have no power to train themselves they're guided by the nervous system. The nervous system learns from guided patterns that are practiced over and over again.
We’re trying to promote movements that are stress free for our patients so they can benefit from maximum performance with minimum effort and very minimal inflammation. If you watch the performance of athletes, you will see that they are practicing these movement patterns, which are called ‘engrams’. I’ll call it ‘muscle memory’. There are positive engrams and positive muscle memory and negative muscle memory.
Negative muscle memory would be what causes damage to the body. When a baby is born they have no memory of movement in their brain. Engrams are comparable to an open hard drive, such as a computer disk to develop the memory in the baby’s brain. As the nervous system matures, the baby begins to stand up and begins to take their first steps. It’s exciting to watch a baby begin to walk, however, these nervous mechanisms are beginning to be burned into the hard drive of the baby’s brain.
When children walk sometimes we take for granted or we don’t pay much attention to their pattern of walking and it is very important. Children are going to develop either positive walking patterns or damaging walking patterns. Essentially the study of anti-aging medicine practice is practicing at the age of a one or two year old.
In my office we notice how people run. Here on the screen is an example of an athlete running in their basement. Certainly injuries can occur. But these are not the injuries we look for in our office.
Some of the natures of aging are not so obvious. Engineers would look at the body’s foundation, but doctors do not. Sometimes doctors sometimes don’t use common sense in their approach. We don’t think simple. Number one is to reestablish the normal mechanics or movements of the foundation because all bones stack on top of the foot.
Understanding of the movement pattern of the foot and the foundation will help you to understand the secrets why your patients are not improving. There are an estimated 80,000 articles on inflammation which is the after-effect of the abnormal movement pattern which is what happens after we have back problems.
There are only 160 articles on abnormal movement patterns that cause the actual arthritis. First we look at the architecture of the foundation. The green is the calcaneous of the heel. We have a joint called the subtalar joint between the calcaneus and the talus. Essentially there are two moveable joints that are locked within the shoe.
It’s very important that the shoe actually locks up two of the very important moveable joints of the foot. The reason is because human beings save energy for walking and running in the elastic structure in their feet and legs. The shoe locks up these elastic structures and does not allow full expression and development.
The sprained ankle is the number one injury in sport and the number one recurring injury in sport. Thus it makes sense that we have to pay particular attention to development of the number one injury area of sport. Nevertheless, we don’t have many treatment methods for this area. We have very minimal treatments and some patients do no training for this type of exercise for this area. Therefore, much of the energy is stored in the big and powerful Achilles tendon and also, a cuff of muscles that wrap around the arch and hold up the arch. The elastic energy is stored in the big Achilles tendon in this muscle. As you can see, the elastic energy is stored in those muscles that wrap around the bottom of foot. Can you see the tendons?
Because we are so focused on looking good rather than having good function and structure, we don’t exercise these important structures and supportive muscles and our arches collapses. As you can see from the picture, in walking is right and running is on the left, you can see a deeper compression of the arch. This energy absorption comes in two forms: either as heat or as elastic spring.
The shock absorption is maintained through the act of rolling off the foot when the foot steps down when it rolls. The foot plants on the outside, rolls to the middle and pushes off on the inside. When it rolls over too much, they call that ‘excessive pronation’. Ninety-two percent of the foot and leg problems result from over pronation. The doctors have not really qualified that amount of supination-pronation. I refer to it as the “safe range”. What is safe is called the safe range of supination-pronation. What maintains the safe range is that cuff of muscles.
Therefore, it’s important to have balance and development between the cuffs of muscles from either side to maintain the foot in a safe range. When the foot lands, the muscles are coming from the top down and suspending the arch to give it that spring so these muscles are actually stretching when the arch is depressing. I have noticed that when patients age, they lose that spring to the muscles and the foot becomes rigid.
Fifty percent of the energy required to run or walk is recycled through the spring mechanism. When the spring is lost, you become extremely tired and also have to use bigger accessory muscles to do common walking.
Therefore, the loss of energy is less energy the patient can use for healing and daily activities; they're not able to heal faster and drain the system. I’d like to direct you to the monitor and watch this picture very carefully. This is slow motion high definition photography of walking and running - the difference is in the plant.
As you can see, this is the walking on the side and the tendons cannot be seen. This is walking, and this is running. You see the tendon showing through the skin. These tendons are stretching and lowering the spring. This allows for maximum power and speed in sports as well as efficient movement in walking and running.
Essentially the human being runs like a bouncing ball. Fifty percent of the energy needed to accelerate the body is recovered from this spring mechanism.
As you can see from my study, it’s interesting that the spring mechanism on the running actually has a bit of a delay but springs off faster. (Running is on the left and walking is on the right.). The tibialis posterior is what allows the muscle to maintain. This muscle, which you can see in the attachment, is very strategic at the bottom or middle of the arch. This is the muscle that needs particular attention. I find this muscle to be weak in all of my patients with foot pain, knee pain and back pain that don’t heal.
Once therapies are applied to this muscle to strengthen it and relieve the spasm and release of the arch, there are about 10 arthritic conditions that disappear: anything from spurs or calcium deposits on the heel, chronic knee pain or back pain or discs that don’t heal.
Remember, when the spring mechanism is lost, mechanical stress travels through the whole body. When the patient comes in, they may have severe back pain; but in reality, they may have inflammation released from all joints, but just not painful. If you treat only the area of pain and leave the foundation disrupted, you’ll still have chronic release of inflammation. An anti-aging doctor would not allow that. An anti-aging doctor seeks perfection in movement. I don’t give up on my treatment until every spasm and restriction in the body is removed completely. Because we take 10,000 steps per day, even minor degeneration can add up to rather severe consequences in patients in their 70’s and 80’s.
Degenerative arthritis shouldn’t be a mystery. It’s actually a simple formula. It is stress and strain on the joints multiplied by how many steps per day times your general health. (General health is a variable). The lack of elastic recoil also causes problems in the spine. It disrupts the swivel of the pelvis area. What kind of exercise can we use to correct it?
They have 3 categories. There is nonfunctional – it does you no good. Dysfunctional causes damage to body. You’re exercising to get healthier but actually causing more aging. Functional means that it is excellent form and technique and good balance around the joints.
This is an exercise for the calf area, which makes the calf look beautiful. If this is the only exercise done for the calf, it’s called a dysfunctional exercise because it causes more damage. It causes an imbalance in the foot because the muscles that support the arch with this exercise are not being developed. Also the problem of this exercise is wearing shoes. Thus, he’s wearing a restrictive device on the two very important floors of the movable joints. The shoe restricts the joints.
I have all my patients in my office train without shoes. In fact a patient of mine when to four health clubs and none would allow her to exercise without shoes. She asked to come back and begin her exercises with us. I said no problem and asked her why the health clubs would not allow her to train barefoot. The health clubs said this was due to hygiene. Although our hands are dirty and we grab the bar, our hands can’t be any dirtier than our feet. The health clubs also say it’s a safety factor because you can drop the weight on your foot. This shoe is not going to prevent you from having an injury if you drop the weight on your foot. There’s really no good reason why you must wear shoes while you're training. Because there are certain motions that require barefoot movement to exercise to develop, which are these movements on the screen.
These are the movement patterns that will develop the arch muscles. We did that when we walked up the hill or walked to the market, formulating during different terrains, but now the terrains are flat. We walked barefoot to the park. Now we wear restrictive shoes that change the architecture of our foundation.
In fact, no doctor in China has probably ever seen a normal foot. If you look at the screen, these are normal feet. The toes are spread for good landing. They are not beautiful, but they are normal. This is what happens when we start to wear shoes. The shoe reforms the foot and destroys the foundation of the frame. These problems can become extreme, can’t they?
This is an example of extreme deformity for fashion. To show how extreme, this fashion deformity of the foot was in your country for over a thousand years. We are not any better in the United States or Europe. We wear pointy shoes that deform our feet. In this extreme example, 10% of the ladies did not survive this procedure; they died of infection and other complications. Binding of the foot for any purpose can cause weakness.
What we need to do is take off the shoe and rebuild the spring mechanism. Why should we fear barefoot training? As children we run around in the grass and never have a problem.
In the black and white photo is a
Is a sample of the fastest marathon runner of all time.
The fact that he broke the world record and won the Olympic gold in 1960 running the marathon barefoot and he repeated the marathon in 1964 running the marathon in the Olympic games but this time wore shoes. His name is Abebe Bikila from Ethiopia.
African runners are constantly winning marathon races; we think it’s because they are from Africa. African Americans don’t win any marathons. We feel the reason is they cannot afford shoes as youth and run barefoot most of the time as children to have maximum development of the spring recoil mechanism.
Other sports are martial arts and are performed without shoes. We can stretch our feet and take the effects of the restriction of the shoes by daily stretching.
This is a simple stretch that patients pay me a lot of money to perform on them. When you take your shoes off at night, you should do this stretch to redevelop the spring mechanism of your foot.
And you ladies with the pointy shoes – and men should do this stretch for spreading your feet and spreading out your toes to maintain the elastic nature of your feet.
This prevents nerve impingement called anti neuroma stretch. This is a stretch that I invented and use in our office. Here are exercises that we use to develop the foot in ranges of motion that we don’t usually perform.
This is strapped to a low pulley mechanism a low weight stacking mechanism. These are the movements that you perform to develop your feet to be strong to bring spring to them. These are some exercises, which I invented in my office. These were adding the other mechanisms from the upper body and were bringing in as a system.
This is very simple, but not part of a Hollywood exercise program. Of course, these are very commonly done to develop balance. But that does not increase the elastic recoil. In this situation we’re going to go from rebuilding the strength of the arch to hold the body better to actually be able to run again, but going from walking to running is very tricky. It’s not as easy as it seems. That’s why 16 million runners are injured out of 23 million or 70% will be injured the first year. The reason is because they don’t understand the engineering requirements between walking and running. Walking is 1 –2 times the body weight of pressure on the foot. Running is 5 times the body weight on the foot. If you have 150 kilos of pressure on the arch in walking then that’s 450 kilos in running.
If we have a person who walks all day long and then decides to run in the afternoon, that may be okay, but if they sit all day and don’t get any stimulation to the muscles of the feet and legs and then puts 450 kilos of pressure–that’s not okay.
Therefore, as a doctor it makes common sense to start a patient by walking, then fast walking, then jogging then running.
By using graduated increases, you are developing the muscles stronger. With good recoil he could jump so high. That’s because he’s developed the muscles in his legs and his feet through adaptation. He stressed the muscle and broke down, then became stronger for the next day.
Sometimes doctors and therapists are afraid to stress the patients’ tissues for fear that they may get hurt. The stress is what helps them get stronger to prevent them from getting hurt.
The critical protein in the muscle that is developed is called the ‘titan protein“. This protein can be tuned to have more spring to it. When you walk or run, the pressure of the brain will make an adjustment for the amount of pressure on the foot.
The brain makes an adjustment in the tension on the supportive muscles based on what’s been learned in the past. The problem is that if we don’t teach the muscle and develop it in the brain then it won't be able to respond properly to the pressure of the foot landing.
I’m going to mention that just running straight ahead does not develop these muscles that support the landing spring of the foot. This requires exercises that are done outside of the straightforward running plane. Simple things you can tell your patients to do are to run in circles changing direction each time. (This is a good example here).
This picture was taken at a facility outside my office, but we did it with shoes because they wouldn’t let him run barefoot.
The arc media is where the muscle weakens because of age. Fifteen percent of the muscle decreases per decade until the 6th and 7th decade and then 30% per decade after that. The method of developing the spring mechanism is what we call ‘eccentric jumping’ which is hops and jumps. Of course doctors are afraid to have their 70year old patients hop and jump. It is perfectly okay with proper monitoring to have your 60 and 70-year-old patients do some light hopping and jumping.
In fact, in an 11-week study for patients over 75 years old hopping and jumping, a major increase in muscle strength bone density was noticed. When all you're doing is walking in one path, that’s the only path you learn, but if you teach your patients to walk in other terrains, the brain will learn that. So if you put them in a circumstance where they have to reach to the side, the brain has no memory of that then they will fall, but they will have good movement during that
The number reason for accidental death in 60 and 70 year old people is falls because it requires balance and elastic recoil in walking down the stairs.
So I s suggest that you have your patients do something more than walking and don’t tell them ‘Don’t do this and don’t do that.’. Allow them to do more than just walking.
With that I would like to thank the audience for your participation. I really enjoyed my time here and thank you very much. Any questions?
Question 1:
The best exercise is no shoes. No shoe is going to bring normal movement to the foot. In fact, if you remember, when I mentioned that when the foot hits the ground, when it plants, the sensory nerves capture information on the blow of the force on the foot. This is based on previous stored memory of walking and running in the past. So when we buy these running shoes that have thick cushioning, it actually desensitizes the landing of the foot.
It decreases the stress on the tissues, which doesn’t allow it to get stronger. It fools the brain to think the stress is less. So it does not allow the proper tensile of the spring muscles of the foot to absorb the shock. Essentially very cushioning shoes don’t help you as much with reducing stress on joints they could actually cause more damage than good. However, the large footwear manufacturer companies would like you to think differently to buy the next most expensive high tech shoe. Just run out in your yard and run barefoot.
Question 2.
If you’re running in the woods, are you better off with running shoes or hiking boots?
If the support mechanism of your foot is good, then it won’t allow your foot to come out of the safe range of pronation to supination, then you should go barefoot. The Indians walked through the forest in moccasins in a lightweight leopard canvas style without hiking boots. But if you don’t know the terrain or if there’s glass, then obviously hiking boots are better. That’s the only problem. Actually barefoot walkers and runners are more attuned to the terrain because they're always looking and watching for any potential injuries.
People with hiking boots are overly confident because what they do is feel that they're safe or they could never get injured, then they observe poor mechanics.
Thank you and I’d like to thank my interpreter.
Applause
1.12.12
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