Leaky Brain

Before we talk about the solutions to Leaky Gut in part 2 of the series, let’s talk about Leaky Brain.

What is a Leaky Brain?

Leaky Brain refers to a malfunction in what’s called the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). The BBB consists of specialized cells that form a chemical and physical barrier between the blood and the brain. It keeps toxins and microbes that might be present in the blood from coming in contact with the brain cells.

Just as the gut could be said to be a barrier between your food and the bloodstream, the BBB is a barrier between the bloodstream and the brain.

The BBB can microscopically break down similar to the gut. Just like a Leaky Gut allows undigested foods to enter the bloodstream, a Leaky Brain allows toxins, microbes, or other unwanted substances to affect or even damage the brain.

What are the symptoms of a Leaky Brain?

Poor memory, foggy thinking, fatigue, moodiness, insomnia, random aches and pains, to name a few.

How do I know if I have a Leaky Brain?

It’s hard to know, but one way is with the GABA test. GABA is a neurotransmitter made in the brain that helps calm the brain. GABA does not cross the BBB. There are over-the-counter supplements containing GABA that people take to help them relax. But since GABA doesn’t cross the BBB, it actually shouldn’t work because it shouldn’t be able to reach your brain. So one test for a Leaky Brain is to take a GABA pill three times a day and see if you notice any calming effects. If you do, we assume that the only way it could have worked is if your BBB was damaged enough to let the GABA reach your brain.

What causes a Leaky Brain?

A Leaky Gut causes a Leaky Brain. Why? Because when undigested whole food particles, microbes, and toxins are entering the bloodstream via the microscopic holes in the gut, they end up damaging the BBB too. Over time, the damage to the BBB turns into a Leaky Brain.

How can I fix a Leaky Brain?

Fix the Leaky Gut and usually the Leaky Brain goes away automatically because the source of the inflammation and irritation to the BBB has been corrected. In the next article “Leaky Gut 2” I will write about how to fix a Leaky Gut.

Looking Forward!

Yours in health,

Dr.Campise : )

559 930 1034

Leaky Gut Part 1: signs, symptoms, and consequences

What do autoimmune diseases, digestive distress, chronic body pain and inflammation, headaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, foggy brain, poor memory, chronic recurring infections, and fatigue have in common? Often the common denominator is something called “Leaky Gut.”

What is Leaky Gut?

It's microscopic holes in the intestinal lining that allow undigested food particles to enter the blood stream. Leaky Gut happens when your intestines have become so inflamed that the intestinal lining can't repair fast enough the daily damage sustained from your food passing through.

Why is this bad?

When whole food proteins enter the bloodstream via a leaky gut, the immune system identifies these as foreign proteins and assumes they must be pathogens. It then begins to attack your food. Talk about a waste of energy! When this goes on long enough it can lead to the immune system attacking your own body tissues and an autoimmune disease ensues.

The immune system kills pathogens when it finds them. It finds them by looking for the foreign proteins that make up the structure of the pathogens. Food comes from foreign plants and animals and so has foreign proteins in their cellular structure. The gut is supposed to break these proteins down into the building blocks called amino acids. The body then uses these amino acids to build uniquely human proteins to repair our own cells. When the immune system is busy attacking your food and your own body, it often can get distracted from it's real job, fighting foreign microbes.

The biggest side effect of too much immune activity (attacking food and self) is lots of unnecessary inflammation. Inflammation leads to the symptoms listed above: headaches, pain, insomnia, foggy brain, and so on.

So what causes the inflammation in the gut that leads to the leaky gut in the first place?

Almost always, gluten from bread and pasta products and casein from dairy products is the culprit. Gluten and casein are proteins that irritate the gut in some people. Depending on how sensitive you are and depending on the amount of these products you eat daily, you could develop a Leaky Gut from eating dairy and wheat laden foods.

Is it possible to have Leaky Gut but not have an autoimmune disease?

Yes. Some people never get an autoimmune disease from Leaky Gut, they just feel unhealthy in some way: tired, depressed, achy, and so on. Having an inflamed intestine doesn't always cause abdominal pain or discomfort, it may not even cause indigestion. But the inflammatory chemicals released by the immune system in your gut spill into the blood circulation causing low grade chronic inflammation anywhere in the body. If it's in your brain, then you may not have any symptoms other than just “feeling not quite right.”

I only have wrist pain, but otherwise I feel fine. Can this be from Leaky Gut?

In the case of localized pain, as in a single wrist, usually physical dysfunction causes this, not Leaky Gut. That being said, Leaky Gut will increase the amount of inflammation in a physical injury site, delaying its recovery. So even if there is a known injury, let's say a fall where the wrist is sprained, but the wrist doesn't heal in the usual six weeks time, this could be a sign of delayed healing due to excess inflammation from a Leaky Gut.

How do I know if I have Leaky Gut or not?

Blood tests can diagnose you with gluten or casein intolerances but they are not 100% accurate. Stool tests can identify certain markers for Leaky Gut, but sometimes they are absent even though you have it. The best way to know if you have Leaky Gut is to avoid all dairy and all grains for three weeks. I call this the three week test. Keep a symptom journal each day for a week before during and after the 3 week test. Then continue tracking symptoms while reintroducing these foods one at a time. If you have substantially less symptoms (at least a 25% improvement) by the end of the three weeks off, and then they return after reintroducing them, you likely have Leaky Gut. At a minimum you have an allergy to wheat or dairy.

Could it be only gluten or only dairy that I need to avoid?

Yes, but generally those who are sensitive to one are sensitive to the other at least slightly, and so it's best to avoid both for 6-12 months while your gut heals.

More on this in part 2…. stay tuned!

Shoulder, elbow, and wrist pain: the missing link

Anyone who suffers from chronic shoulder, elbow, or wrist pain knows how it makes you feel: it’s like you’ve lost half your body.

Often certain positions will allow you to avoid pain, but move just a fraction of an inch the wrong way and the pain returns. After days of babying the joint the pain can subside, only to forget and use the arm for something you shouldn’t and the pain returns.

The maddening part is that there often isn’t any one major injury to point to as the cause. The medical doctor says that it was caused by over use: just take pain relievers and anti-inflammatory drugs or cortisone shots and then wait. He might say to wear joint braces while you sleep or during repetitive tasks. But often nothing seems to make it go away.

Medical imaging of the joint usually shows that nothing is wrong. Years later imaging may show a small tear or an inflamed nerve, “requiring” surgical intervention. Often even this doesn’t really completely make it go away. The nagging pain keeps you from sleeping at night. You start to think that maybe this is just what happens when you get old.

Not so fast. You don’t have to live this way.

The missing link 99% of the time is an irritated nerve in the neck from a jammed facet joint, or more commonly from a bulging disc called a hidden cervical disc (HCD). It’s called “Hidden” because most of the time there is no neck pain, just arm pain. Sometimes medical imaging of the neck will find the bad disc, but often it is missed on the imaging because they only scan you when you are lying down in a neutral posture. Were they to scan your neck while in varying positions, while lift, pulling, pushing, walking, or bending, they might see it encroaching on the nerve space.

The astute practitioner will be able to find a pattern of weakness upon examination in the muscles around your affected joints and trace it back to the specific nerve in the neck that is being affected. A surgeon may want to do surgery if he can find something on the imaging. But with correct chiropractic treatment to the neck, the nerve irritation can be alleviated after a series of treatments. Often the muscle strength will return before the pain is gone, which is a sign that the treatment is beginning to work.

Sometimes, additionally, the weak muscles will need to have specific digital pressure where they attach to the bone in order to speed up their recovery. The treatment to the neck is generally painless, but if needed, the treatment to the shoulder muscles can be sharply painful, but the treatment pain subsides immediately along with improved range of motion.

Once the nerve is freed up to function normally, then the muscles around the affected joint can enable the joint to track correctly during daily activities. Now that the proper function is returned, movement begins to make it feel better rather than worse.

When the pain has been there for years, often there can be layers of stuck emotional tension built up that needs to be released with the NET and homeopathic treatments (netmindbody.com). And if your diet isn’t perfect, then anti-inflammatory supplements may be needed temporarily to speed up the healing.

To recap:

Shoulder, elbow, and wrist problems are almost always caused by a hidden neck problem. Fix the neck and the arm problem goes away. Surgery is almost never needed when proper chiropractic neck treatment is given.

Kids Vits

What supplements my kids should be taking. 

Firstly, focus on a whole food diet void of junk food. Junk food can be rated on a scale from slightly bad to very bad, but any processed food can be considered junk food. Sugar and fried foods are very bad for you foods, brown rice and noodles are slightly bad for you foods. So put most of your efforts into keeping your kids away from the worst offenders. But if they have any health conditions like asthma, allergies, chronic ear infections, acne, and so on, then a completely strict whole food diet is a necessary step in the healing of these conditions. (Inhalers, medications, and antibiotics don't heal these conditions, they only put out the fire until the next flare-up.) Cutting out all junk foods and eating only whole unprocessed foods can often clear up such conditions for good. If you think this is too difficult, then find a support group. There are hundreds of them full of parents in your situation, many of whom have been successful. You can flatten the learning curve by getting or reading the advice of these parents. Many of these groups can be found online.

If your kids don't eat a completely whole food, non-processed diet, then they certainly will need to take supplements to make up some of the difference. But even if your kids eat a “perfect” diet, they will still need the following supplements.

1) Vitamin D: This comes from sunshine close to noon on bare skin without sunscreen or, from wild fatty fish. If your kid is eating wild salmon 2x daily or is sunbathing in the nude for 20-40 minutes at noon each day, then no Vitamin D supplement is needed. Otherwise, in general here's how much D they need:

Age 0-2 = 1,000 iu daily
Age 2-12 = 2,000 iu daily
Age 13-18 = 3,000 – 4,000 iu daily depending on body size

For extra credit: Before vaccines (should you chose to use them) and during cold and flu season they can take a double dose daily for 7 days to boost the immune system. When taking extra D, give some extra vitamin A with it. If the child is eating mostly whole foods including lots of and a wide variety of greens and veggies, then they get plenty of A from these during the off season. But when you double the D to boost their immunity, give them vitamin A at 50% the level of D. So for a 4 year old getting a vaccine next week, increase both his D to 4,000 and add in 2,000 iu of A for 7 days prior to the vaccine. Or if he is exposed to a friend with a bad flu, do the same thing except do it for 7 days after the exposure. And of course, if your child comes down with the flu, increase to these levels during the course of the bug.

Breast Feeding moms: Vitamin D typically is not part of human breast milk. But not because it's naturally absent, but because the mom has low levels of vitamin D. Studies show that the mom has to have blood levels around 60 ng/ml in order to have enough vitamin D in the breast milk. They also show that unless mom is taking 8,000 iu daily of a vitamin D supplement, she won't reach the necessary levels for D to spill over into the milk. I recommend that mom's take a minimum of 8,000 iu of Vitamin D daily throughout the entire pregnancy and nursing years. And, to be completely responsible, she needs to check her blood levels of D twice yearly to make sure that she is in the 60-80 ng/ml range.

2) Omega 3: This comes from wild fatty fish, some seeds like flax and chia, and certain animal tissues from wild game. So again, no one eats this twice daily. So instead we all need to take an omega 3 supplement for optimal health. The most important time to supplement with this is when we are in the womb and developing through childhood.

Age 0-2 = 300 mg
Age 2-12 = 600 mg
Age 12-18 = 900-2000 depending on body size.

Warning!!!: DO NOT TAKE RANCID OMEGA 3 OIL! Many brands on the market are partially rancid, taking rancid omega 3 is worse than taking no omega 3. The solution is to make sure you give your kids high quality omega 3 supplements. In my experience, Nordic Naturals brand is never rancid. You can find these at my office or at most health food stores or even on Amazon.com.

Extra credit: Omega 3, like vitamin D and A, can be increased for 7 days before or after known immune stressing events like vaccines and illnesses. Vitamin D and A help to increase the immune action of the body, while omega 3 helps to keep the immune action from going up too high. Allergies are an example of an immune system that in some ways is over active. Omega 3 deficiency (along with junk food) is often the culprit in childhood seasonal allergies.

Pregnant and nursing moms: Omega 3 is essential for the developing fetus and nursing infant. Mom's need to take 2,000 mg of omega 3 daily during pregnancy and breast feeding years to make sure that baby gets enough from mom.

3) Iodine: This is rarely deficient in the American junk food diet simply because salt sold in the US has iodine added to it. But just because you aren't “deficient” in a nutrient doesn't mean that you have “sufficient” levels of the nutrient for optimal health and performance. Also, just because you ingest your daily minimum of iodine, doesn't mean that it is doing its job once inside the body. There are three toxins, bromide, flouride, and chlorine that interfere with your body's ability to utilize iodine. One or more of these three toxins are found in our water, our dental products, and just about anything made from petroleum or plastic in the case of bromide. It's impossible, and in the case of plastics even undesirable, to avoid these toxins completely, so the antidote is to ingest higher amounts of iodine. Iodine cannot build up to toxic levels in the body so it's difficult to overdose with it.

Ages 0-2 = 50 mcg daily
Ages 2-12 = 100 mcg daily
Ages 12-18 = 150 to 300 mcg daily depending on body size

Extra Credit: Similar to D, A, and omega 3, iodine helps the immune system to kill microbes. Iodine by itself is an antiseptic as you know. Before, during, or after a known immune exposure or event like a vaccine or flu, increase the daily dosage of iodine up to 100 times the doses listed above. The way you can tell you have dosed them high enough is that their mucus is thinner, even watery. Thick mucus, either in the lung, sinus, throat, or even stool, is usually a sign of a need for temporary high doses of iodine. Iodine stimulates the mucus thinning enzyme call mucinase. It's the same enzyme that the drug “Mucinex” stimulates. Iodine works better and usually corrects the cause of the thick mucus in the first place. Thick mucus can also be a result of a dairy sensitivity or dairy allergy. Cutting out the dairy for 2 weeks will correct the thick mucus issue if it is the cause. But if no dairy allergy, then increase iodine intake for overly thick mucus.

But don't use the red iodine that you can paint on your skin. This can burn the skin in some kids. And it is not intended to be used orally. Instead use “Liquid Iodine” by Biotics. I carry this at my office but sometimes you can find it illegally on Amazon.com. It is a food grade iodine that is safe and effective for kids and adults, can be used internally or topically. I use it topically for cuts as an antiseptic and for any skin infections like acne or fungus laden toe nails.

One failure of chiropractors

One specific failure of the chiropractic profession   

**Note to chiropractors: In keeping with the study referenced below, in this article I will refer to the body of the vertebra when discussing vertebral segment rotation, not to the spinous process like we were taught in school.**

A chiropractor is a specialist in the treatment of spinal dysfunction. If the joints within your spine are not moving correctly, a chiropractor should be the expert of choice. The spine is the main focus of his study.

Yet, strangely, there is a fundamental mistake being made by most chiropractors when they treat the neck for vertebral motion dysfunction.

According to this published review, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16949947, the cervical spine normally moves in what’s called a coupled way. This means that not only do cervical vertebrae tilt in the direction of head tilt, but they rotate simultaneously. But they don’t rotate randomly, they rotate in a very specific direction.

For example, when you tilt your head to the right, the vertebrae also rotate to the right at the same time. When tilting left, they rotate left. They never rotate away from the side of tilt. You could say they always go the same direction. This is called “coupled motion” since the two motions always occur together.

But for those of you who have been to a chiropractor before, you might remember how he “popped” your neck. As you are lying on your back, facing up, the chiropractor takes your head and neck, he puts your right ear toward your right shoulder, and then he rotates your head to the left as he “pops” it. Remember? Close your eyes and picture what position your head is in when he treats your neck. Head toward the shoulder and then the chin toward the opposite shoulder. Yes? Hmm.

Those having received lots of neck treatments might learn that the treatment relieves pain but often only for a short time. So some patients learn how to “pop” their own necks (not advisable). What do they do? They mimic what the chiropractor did: tilt the ear toward the shoulder and twist the chin to the opposite side. If you don’t do this (which you shouldn’t), you may have seen other people doing it, using a hand on the chin to twist the neck into that unnatural position until it pops.

But the neck naturally rotates to the same side, not the opposite, as mentioned in the above paper. So the chiropractor essentially treats the neck in a way that is completely opposite to normal motion. This has been called “uncoupled motion,” because it’s inducing an unnatural pairing of motions.

Okay, fine, it’s backwards, who cares? Well, sadly, there aren’t enough good studies to know for sure much of anything about “alternative” treatments like chiropractic. So we’ll have to look at it from a philosophical and a clinical perspective.

During a chiropractic treatment of the neck, there are at least two things going on. One is the cavitation of the joint, this is what makes the “pop” sound. Another is the resetting of the tone of the muscles surrounding the joint, this is what makes the neck tension go away. Both have benefits to the patient.

Chiropractors could argue that the popping of the joint using an uncoupled versus coupled motion makes little difference to the joint itself, and they might have a point. But it’s harder to argue for this when discussing the resetting of the muscles around the joint because this “resetting” is accomplished through neurological pathways from the joint and muscle stretch receptors firing into the spinal cord and up to the brain.

These neurological signals from the treatment stimulate spinal cord reflexes, and brain relay centers, all of which help regulate the tone and sensitivity of the neck muscles. In this way, the chiropractic treatment of the neck could be said to be “teaching” the muscles something, usually to be more relaxed, if not more responsive to head motion (hopefully in a good way).

If one goal of the treatment is “teaching” the neck muscles how to move normally again, then why would the chiropractor “pop” your neck by using uncoupled motion? You are right, it makes no sense. It would make more sense to treat the neck using coupled motion.

Clinically I have noticed that those patients with the worst neck dysfunction, in general, tend to be the ones who have had the most chiropractic treatments to their necks in the past. This could be a coincidence, perhaps those with bad necks go to the chiropractor the most because they need it the most?

I think that the uncoupled chiropractic treatment can be somewhat helpful to the joints of the neck in the short run, but over time these uncoupled motion treatments begin to confuse the nervous system causing long term joint dysfunction. In other words, the joints aren’t tracking correctly, over time causing joint inflammation and perhaps degeneration. To be fair, it may have been a physical injury, like a car accident, that caused the abnormal neck motion in the first place, and perhaps the chiropractic uncoupled motion treatment didn’t cause it. But it seems to at least have not fixed the motion either.

I do see plenty of patients who have never seen a chiropractor before, and many of them also have poor neck motion (almost always having a clear history of neck trauma). But they tend to need fewer coupled neck treatments to correct the issue than those patients with a long history of chiropractic uncoupled neck treatments. Like a lot less.

The sad state of affairs is that to the best of my knowledge, every chiropractic college teaches only the uncoupled neck treatments. Of course they don’t call them that, nor do they acknowledge such a thing exists. And certainly there isn’t tons of scientific knowledge on this topic, but there isn’t a ton of it on most everything else chiropractic does either. A lack of scientific studies has never stopped the colleges from theorizing before.

There used to be a post-graduate program that taught chiropractors how to perform coupled neck treatments. The post-grad teachers asked some of the undergrad chiropractic colleges to allow them to teach this better method to the undergrad students, but the colleges refused, essentially saying that there was nothing wrong with the old way of doing it.

From what I’ve heard, this post-grad school has now stopped teaching the correct coupled motion neck treatments even to post-grad students. Unfortunately, for a chiropractor to change his neck treatments from uncoupled to coupled, it’s not as simple as just reading this article. It’s like learning how to ride a bike. You can’t learn it by reading about it, you have to fail at it over and over until you get it right. Most established chiropractors don’t want to go through the effort, and even if they did, they need a teacher to help them just like they did when they first learned the traditional uncoupled treatments at school.

There are perhaps some ways around this. The chiropractor could use a mechanical device like an “activator,” making sure to position the head in lateral flexion together with chin rotation to the same side when using it, or keeping the head in neutral. He could employ any of the hundreds of “non-force” chiropractic treatments. Or he could stick to any neck treatments he already knows how to do where the head is in a neutral position. But bad habits die hard.

I have been fortunate enough to have learned coupled motion neck treatments from one of the best. Unfortunately he is a dying breed, and he doesn’t teach anymore. The results I have observed from using coupled neck treatments compared to the traditional uncoupled treatments are profound.

The human neck is unique among all animal necks on the planet. It allows us to walk upright, and some might argue that the specialized human neck allows us to have a human brain in the first place. When the neck segments move correctly, our standing posture improves effortlessly, and all the other joints of the body are allowed to align and move properly too. Clinically, I see improved posture and walking motion immediately after resetting patients’ necks with coupled motion treatments. I see this every day at my clinic. I never saw this when I was using uncoupled treatments at the chiropractic college.

At best, I would say that an uncoupled neck treatment takes pain out of the neck for a time. At worst, it creates never ending spinal dysfunction, or at least perpetuates the dysfunction that was already there. By contrast, a coupled neck treatment at worst relieves neck pain, and at best allows us to be more fully human.

Really? My “bone on bone” joint can be pain free without surgery?

That's right, just because a radiologist (who has never examined you in person) writes a report stating that one of your joints has lost most or all of its cartilage and is then regurgitated to you by your primary doctor or surgeon as being “bone on bone,” doesn't mean that surgery is a necessity. And no, I don't mean just live on pain meds the rest of your life. I mean, it's possible to fix the cause of your joint dysfunction. Really? Hmm... How's that possible? Are you sure?

Even though I routinely help people get out of “bone on bone” joint pain in my practice, I never was 100% sure that I could help a new case each time he/she came to me. At least not until I read Stu Mittleman's book, “Slow Burn.”

In his book he tells his personal story about how he damaged his knee ligaments requiring surgery at the age of approximately 25. After the successful surgery, and after his physical rehab, he asked his surgeon when he would be able to start running again? His surgeon laughed at him and told him that he had no cartilage left in that knee and it was in fact bone on bone. He told him that he would never be able to run again without significant knee pain.

Stu didn't like that answer so he found a doctor like me who found out why his cartilage wore out and then helped him fix these underlying causes. After 6 months, Stu was able to run again without pain! And not only that, he went on to become a world class ultra-marathon champion!!! All without knee pain! Now that is impressive!

No, Stu's cartilage did not regenerate..... So if his cartilage did not regenerate, then how did he get his knee to be pain-free? Well, it was unique to his situation, just as each patient I treat has a unique situation along with a unique treatment process. But I'll give you the basic formula.

Before I do, I want to say that once I read this story of Stu Mittleman's, I realized that if he can run hundreds of thousands of miles over his lifetime on a knee that's bone on bone with no pain, then it is definitely highly possible for anyone to get out of pain without joint surgery, especially since they likely don't strive to be a long distance runner, but instead just want to walk around the house or at the grocery store without pain.

Plus, my success rate at helping bone on bone cases has gone up to nearly 100% since my advanced training in 2015 in Michigan and my subsequent implementation of cox flexion distraction treatment tables.

So with all the stars aligning, I thought it was time to write this article for you guys and for your friends and family who may be needlessly suffering and contemplating surgery, or who have had a failed joint surgery.

First let's briefly go over what causes a knee to wear out in the first place:

1) Weak muscles surrounding the joint, causing the joint to track poorly, causing the two cartilage surfaces of the joint to bump into each other every time you move the joint, over time wearing out the cartilage.

2) Low level body-wide chronic inflammation, including in the joint that's wearing out. This inflammation swells the cartilage slightly so that the two surfaces bump into each other even more, wearing them out even faster.

So now that we know generally what causes the joint to wear out, all we have to do is fix numbers 1 and 2 above and, believe it or not, the pain goes away! So in other words, it's the grinding and internal bumping of the two cartilage surfaces into each other, during normal daily movements, combined with inflammation that causes the pain. If we can somehow get rid of the inflammation and help the joint to track properly by increasing the strength of the surrounding muscles, we're golden.

That's it!

Of course I could write a whole book on the specifics of what causes the joint's muscles to be weak (there are 100's of causes) and what causes the body to be inflamed (again, hundreds of causes). But let me just say what is NOT the cause of the muscle weaknesses around your bone on bone joint: wait for it...... weak muscles. Huh?

Except in very very rare conditions (like Myasthenia Gravis, which you don't have or your doctor would have told you by now), the only cause of a truly weak muscle is having it in a cast for 6 weeks. I call this primary atrophy, or “small muscle.” The cure for this is physical therapy, aka exercise. But unless you've been in a cast over that joint for 6 weeks, you don't have primary atrophy, and therefore, physical therapy won't fix the underlying cause of the muscle weaknesses around your joint. And, more likely, the physical therapy will wear out the joint faster because it's not tracking right during your physical therapy exercises.

So, pretty much in virtually all cases, the “muscle weakness” is actually due to poor nerve or poor nervous system function. The nerves and nervous system tell the muscle when to contract, how hard to contract, and when not to contract. In other words the muscle is stupid because it has no brain, instead your brain directs and coordinates the muscles via the nerves. So a weak, or more accurately, dysfunctional muscular system, is really a dysfunctional nervous system. You have to fix the nervous system, including the peripheral nerves that supply the muscles to that joint, in order to enable the muscles to do their job of moving the joint without it grinding the two surfaces of cartilage together.

This is what I specialize in. Once the nervous system coordinates the muscles correctly again so that the joint tracks right, the pain goes away.... as long as there is no body-wide inflammation.

The most common causes of body-wide inflammation are: bad oils in the diet, especially trans-fats and rancid oils, too many omega 6 oils, deficiency of omega 3 oils, hidden food sensitivities, too much sugar feeding yeast or other dysbiotic organisms in your gut, or liver congestion from all of the above. And, sadly, all too often, there is a body-wide inflammation as a side effect of prescription medications. 

But never fear, I've got plenty of simple and natural things to fix these things too. Stay tuned for more on this.

So in summary, if you have a joint that is painful and your doctor says it is bone on bone and needs surgery, you would do well to come see me so I can diagnose why your nervous system can't control the joint's muscles correctly. I find this out by combining the specific information you give me about the history of your condition with the information I glean from physically examining your neuromuscular system using mostly traditional neurological tests (that neurologists rarely use anymore because they have become overly reliant on radiologist reports from your MRI or x-rays). Your history and examination (and MRI findings if available) must correlate to make a solid diagnosis. Once this is accomplished, the treatment can be rather straight forward.

Please forward this to anyone you know who has joint pain.

Best Wishes!

Dr. John B. Campise, D.C.

Dentistry Part 2: What was underneath my crown, and other updates

So upon cutting off my “permanent” crown (that had been installed less than 2 months prior), a small amount of tooth decay was found in the underlying tooth! This could mean only one of three things: 1) the last dentist did not see the decay and so left it there accidentally, 2) the last dentist did not sterilize things well before gluing on the crown and so decay developed in the last two months due to operator error, or 3) … well, I just refuse to believe the third possibility.

Needless to say, the decay is now gone and a thorough sterilization took place before the new metal-free, perfectly fitting, crown was installed (did I mention same day?).

Another eye opening story:

Of course my new first hand understanding of how many dental mishaps are going on out there has led me to investigate the tougher cases at my clinic with a new eye for possible dental causes. So I found a patient who wasn't getting better fully and it turns out, after George Goodheart inspired testing at my office, that two of her teeth may be the culprit to her ill health. So I referred her to a great dentist (yes, the one who fixed my crown), asking her to let me know when she makes an appointment with him so that I can attend.

Two weeks later, I'm at her dental visit waiting for the doctor when she confesses that she went to her usual dentist the day before just to get his opinion. According to him, she needs three root canals! Yikes! I know that the dentist who's about to walk in doesn't do root canals, instead he extracts the tooth and implants a non-metal post. Three seems like a lot. Well, anyway, the doctor walks in and after introducing himself to my patient, he proceeds to do the exam and look at the x-rays. He explains that she does have severe decay on three teeth but that he can save them! She will need crowns on them, but she can avoid implants or worse, root canals. What a wonderful thing! And why can't the other dentist save her teeth? Not sure. But perhaps one of the three reasons listed above?

Root canals are not only unpleasant, but they kill the tooth, allowing bacteria to take up residence in the tooth pores, slowly excreting toxins into your body. Not a good idea.

And yet another personal dental lesson:

A family member of mine recently had a tooth extracted and a post implanted. She heard about my story and decided to switch dentists in order to get her fake tooth/crown put onto the post with the CNC machine so it would be a one day process. Her implanted post (by a different dentist) was a two step process: 1) extract the old tooth (which who knows, maybe it could have been saved?) and on the same visit implant some pig bone into the hole and sew it up, then 2) four months later cut open a hole in the socket and implant the post. The next step was to wait 2 more months, then put the crown on the post. So out of curiosity, we asked one-day-crown doctor, “What is your process for post implants?” Well, we were both surprised to find out that there is a nicer alternative. They do same day implants! And they use a vegan mineral patch instead of a pig bone! Amazing. Of course you then wait four months before having the same day crown put on. So overall 2 months faster for the post, only one surgery instead of two, and who knows how much less time making the crown. Oh well, now we know.

But I think the biggest miracle so far was the fact that one of my patients was actually laughing on several occasions during her dental exam with Dr. “One Day Crown.” This patient has severe dental phobia due to being slapped by her childhood dentist while crying and calling for her parents. She was having a panic attack because of an allergic reaction to the norepinephrine that is in the novacaine shots they give us to numb things. Back then they didn't know about this reaction some people have. She was not only slapped but strapped into the dental chair and knocked with other drugs. The fact that she was laughing during her recent visit with Dr. ODC and walked out having had a rather easy emotional time of things truly was a miracle. I have to admit, he makes me laugh too.

One last FYI:

If you too have a racing heart or other feelings of anxiety, you may have an epinephrine allergy. You can ask your dentist to use novacaine that doesn't have epinephrine in it so that you won't have this reaction.

Please contact with me with comments, questions, requests for a dentist referral, or for a George Goodheart inspired exam at my office to see if your teeth might need a better dentist.

My Dental Nightmare... Before you get another dental crown. A must read!

MY STORY I'm happy to report that I am currently doing very well dentally. However this was not the case for the past 7 months! It all started last June when a molar that had an old filling in it cracked in half! And of course, my dentist was out of town. There was no pain, but both halves were still attached and I couldn't chew on that side without food packing into the crack, spreading the tooth pieces apart. It was difficult to clean as you can imagine. I was at that time flying to Michigan every 2 weeks to help my chiropractor friend who had broken his back, so I had to get the tooth patched up before my plane left to go back to Michigan. So I naturally went to another dentist who could get me in right away. He did an amazing job extracting the broken piece and then patching the tooth. He said it needed a crown, but he wanted to wait 3 months to make sure the root wasn't infected. After 3 months I returned to the new dentist and he started the crown prep. (I could have gone to my dentist at this point, but this new guy had done such a good job with the temporary patch, and he got me in right away for the emergency cracked tooth, I figured the least I could do was to let him do the crown), Life lesson reminder: Follow your gut instinct. It usually keeps us out of trouble I had never had a crown before so I didn't know what to expect, though he did explain things as he went. Let's take a time out here with a short FYI on Dental Crowns: A dental crown is a tooth-shaped "cap" that is placed over a tooth to cover the tooth to restore its shape and size, strength, and improve its appearance. The crowns, when cemented into place, fully encase the entire visible portion of a tooth that lies at and above the gum line. A dental crown may be needed in the following situations: * To protect a weak tooth (for instance, from decay) from breaking or to hold together parts of a cracked tooth. * To restore an already broken tooth or a tooth that has been severely worn down. * To cover and support a tooth with a large filling when there isn't a lot of tooth left. * To hold a dental bridge in place. * To cover mis shaped or severely discolored teeth. * To cover a dental implant. * To make a cosmetic modification. Crowns can be made of: All metal Zirconia Porcelain fused to metal (PFM) Porcelain fused to zirconia All ceramic So he ground down the tooth, put some liquid rubbery stuff on it, had me bite down for 2 minutes as the rubber hardened into a mold of my bite, then sent the mold away to a crown-making company. He put on a temporary crown and sent me home. A few days later he called me back to put the permanent crown on. He gave me a shot to numb the tooth, pulled off the temporary and put on the permanent. It was the wrong color. So he put the temp back on, sent me home to wait for a new crown with the right color to be made. A few days later he brought me back in, tried the 2ndnew crown, but when I closed my teeth, it broke. So he took another mold, and sent me home to wait. In the meantime, the temporary crown didn't feel right... it came loose, so I went in to get it re-glued. Then the 3rd new crown came in, this time it was lined with metal underneath to make it stronger. This one too cracked the corner when I bit down. More waiting, more loose temps, a broken temp, more jaw pain, headache, fatigue from the bacteria that must have been trying to get in the irritated gum around the tooth stub. Several permanent crowns were not snug enough next to the adjacent teeth and had to be remade (the dental floss didn't “snap.”) A patient of mine is a retired dental assistant. I told her the story in the middle of the process and she said I should count myself lucky because in her experience many dentists will just leave a permanent crown that isn't right, then you get problems with it down the road and end up needing a root canal because of the crown not being right all that time. Finally, after countless shots and office visits, and 5 months later, the final permanent crown was glued in place. I should have been relieved, but the tooth and gum were very sore still. So I patiently waited for the soreness to subside, because now there was no reason for it to be a problem. 6 weeks later it was still substantially sore. I figured out that if I flossed it after EACH meal and snack, it didn't hurt so much. So I made an appointment with my original dentist (the one who had been on vacation) to have him examine the crown to see if it looked okay. He has a dental camera and video screen that he used so I could see what he was seeing. The crown had a slight gap on about 10% of the line between it and the adjacent tooth. He said I was packing food between the teeth causing microbial growth and irritation of the gum and tooth. He also used an electrical meter to test if there was any electrical current coming off the tooth. He explained that a battery consists of metal and an acid or electrolyte solution that interact together. He said that any metal in the mouth, surrounded by the electrolyte solution called saliva, can sometimes give off an electrical current. He said his wife had once had an electrical current of -4 mV coming off her crown that was causing chest pain and left sided facial droop. Once her metal lined crown was replaced with a non metal crown, her chest pain and facial droop went away! As he spoke, I remembered having a “potato” clock as a child. It was a clock with four metal probes, each attached to the clock by electrical wire. You just cut a potato in half, put two of the probes into each half of the potato, and the clock would turn on. It would run until the potato dehydrated which was usually weeks later. You could also use an apple or a lemon. So he tested my new crown (that had a metal underlayer) and it had an electrical current coming off it of -32 mV! Yikes! He was surprised I didn't have migraines or anxiety or other really bad symptoms. So needless to say, he said I needed a new crown! I had mixed feelings, as you might expect. As I sat there, like a deer in the headlights, he kept talking. I wasn't really hearing what he was saying, then off in the corner of my brain I heard him say, “So it's a one day procedure...,” I was confused. I asked him how it was possible to redo the crown in one day? Now he looked confused and asked me if I didn't know about their in-office crown making machine? It turns out that they have a laser scanner that digitally puts a 3D picture of your tooth stub and surrounding teeth into the computer, the computer generates a suggested new crown, the dentist tweaks the 3D crown so it looks just perfect, then a machine in the back room (a CNC machine) cuts an exact replica out of a “blank tooth” of the computer generated model of the crown that you need! Again, mixed emotions. Anger that I didn't know about this and do this the first time, saving me 7 months of misery; joy that I'm gonna finally get my life back once he fixes this, and fear about how much this is gonna cost. This has got to cost 3 times the price of the crown I just had put in, right? Nope. Same price!!! So I immediately scheduled for him to redo the crown. It took about 4 hours, but was completed same day. Immediately I felt like the rain cloud that had been over my head for the past two months was gone (was this from getting rid of the -32 mVs?). I had two other visits with him the next week to “readjust” the new crown so my bite was just right (no extra charge and no shots needed for this.) And about a week after, the crown feels like a normal tooth again! And just because you like your dentist, trust your dentist, and hate starting with a new doctor or dentist, i strongly consider going to a dentist who has a CNC crown making machine with a laser scanner so you can get your crown done right and done the same day. The thing to try and keep in front of your mind is that if you have had some very bad experiences, dentists have evolved, not only themselves but their equipment. Also, there's little reason to use metal lined crowns nowadays. Remember that most crowns today, though white on top, have a lining of metal underneath. And, it's not worth getting a crown that isn't perfect, because it can increase your risk for needing a root canal later on. If your dentist is using metal crowns or not using a CNC machine to do same day crowns, likely they will have good sounding reasons why they do what they do and why metal is harmless and so forth. I'm not a dentist, so I guess I don't know for sure who is right, but all I can do is share my experience with you. Now that I know about this, I have begun to find a few of my patients with lingering health issues who may need their metal crowns replaced. I'll keep you posted with their progress. If you live in the Fresno area, I'd be happy to share the name of the same-day-crown dentist above so that you can have a consultation with him if you are interested, just let me know. A word about replacing metal fillings: Please be careful if you choose to remove metal fillings. These are 50% mercury by weight. The mercury is relatively stable while in the filling, but when removing it from the tooth, the grinding process puts lots of mercury vapors into the air. If you breath this in, you are getting poisoned more than you were before removing it. So please, don't put any new metal fillings into your mouth or your kids' mouths, and be very careful when choosing a dentist to remove metal fillings. I can refer you to safe removal dentists if you want. A word about root canals: These are not a good idea. They can sometimes harbor toxic anaerobic bacteria in them, slowly releasing their poisons into your body, causing a mild background inflammation. The underlying ever-present component of all modern diseases (cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disease, mood disorders, digestive disorders, chronic pain) is inflammation. Toxins are one cause of inflammation. The alternative is a dental implant. These are more costly but my pay off in the long run if your health is better as you age, as a result of the implant vs. the root canal. Again, don't just go anywhere for a dental implant. Educate yourself. Again I can give you referrals if you wish. But most importantly, lets get you to the best dentist possible who can help keep your teeth and crowns and fillings healthy so you never need a root canal. Honestly, if you are living right, and you need a root canal, it's your dentist's fault because he either didn't do the right dental corrective procedures with the right dental materials, or he didn't educated you on how to protect you teeth properly. Lessons learned – and hopefully my experience will help you avoid such a nightmare! And, lets get you to the best alternative doctor (like me) so that you can learn how to eat the best diet, avoid the common exercise pitfalls, and take safe and effective supplements to prevent gum and tooth disease from the inside out.   Looking Forward! Yours in health, Dr.Campise : ) 559 930 1034