Prepare to have your health questions answered here on Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions
with Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center in downtown Ventura.
Now, here's Dr. Todd.
Good afternoon.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley, board certified doctor of non-force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine.
Most of the time I talk about functional medicine for metabolic issues like rheumatoid arthritis
or diabetes or heart disease or high cholesterol or most recently Alzheimer's.
But last week I switched and started talking about neuropathies.
Neuropathies are basically damage to nerves, impingement on nerves from nutrient deficiencies,
diseases like diabetes and impingement from conditions like pressure on nerves that cause
sciatica.
So last week we talked a little bit about the causes of diabetic neuropathy.
So liver disease can also cause diabetic neuropathy, mainly though because it causes deficiencies
and especially vitamin B12.
So alcoholics, people with hepatitis, people with fatty liver disease and people with diabetes,
almost anything that damages the liver will cause a deficiency, can cause at least and
often causes a deficiency of vitamin B12.
And this is so important to know about because it's easy to fix.
It's very difficult to fix those diseases, but it's easy to fix the deficiency.
You can just take a vitamin B12 supplement, but don't buy a vitamin B12 supplement from
Costco or whenever you buy a vitamin B12 supplement, check the label.
You want to make sure that it says methylcobalamin, methylmethylcobalamin.
This is the active form of B12.
It's essential for healing, repairing nerves throughout your body.
And 99.99999% of B12 supplements on the shelves in stores are cyanocobalamin.
Cyanocobalamin is the precursor.
It's cheap.
That's why it's so common.
But methylcobalamin only costs maybe 15 or 20% more.
It's not expensive.
20 bucks.
You can buy a bottle of methylcobalamin three months worth, two or three months worth for
20 bucks.
Don't buy cheap B12.
Get methylcobalamin to heal your nerves.
Pyridoxine, vitamin B6 is also an important overlooked nutrient for deficiency, often because
of liver disease, but also just from crappy food.
People not eating vegetarians in particular, vegetarianism is a good idea, or at least
eating less meat is a good idea.
Eating vegetables is a good idea.
I'm always perplexed or sort of conflicted when I talk about vegans and vegetarians because
it's a really good idea to not kill animals.
And it's a really good idea to not eat too much protein from really horrifically produced
farms that produce most of the meat we eat.
But we need protein and that's the conflict.
So eggs are an excellent source of protein.
I personally eat mostly chicken and fish and some of the chicken and fish I imagine is
probably produced and slaughtered in horrific ways as well.
So no insult to the vegans and vegetarians out there, but every vegan and vegetarian
I've ever tested shows up on blood tests functionally deficient in B vitamins, especially B12 folate
B6 and others because our bodies usually get these things from animal protein.
So make sure, the only way to know for sure is to get tested.
Restless leg syndrome is another common condition that people experience and have no idea what's
causing it and they often get no relief when they go to most doctors and it's often a combination
of tight muscles and B vitamin deficiency.
So this is what we're talking about, the causes of damage to nerves, neuropathies, damage
to nerves, pressure on the nerves, which in the legs and lower down to the feet usually
occurs in the hips and nutrient deficiencies from things like inadequate B12 folate, B6
calcium, magnesium and a host of others.
Last week I talked about a young teenager who had a severe muscle spasm that was severely
impacting her life because she couldn't do the cheerleading that she wanted to do anymore.
But it was also painful even to sit or walk or do her homework and she had a dramatic
recovery just from releasing the tension on that muscle.
So I had another man, he was in his early 50s and he fell off a 57 foot cliff.
He was, he had borrowed a wheelbarrow from a neighbor and was dumping some rocks that
he had been digging up in his backyard and his backyard happened to back up to a river
bed and he was throwing these rocks over the river bed and it was dusk and he was tired
and he just had one more load to dump and in his effort to dump this load the wheelbarrow
started to slip over the edge of the cliff and he tried to yank it back and in the process
the wheelbarrow yanked him over the cliff and he fell 57 feet onto a rocky bottom river
bed.
And he was lucky he lived because he broke I think nine bones in his body or more and
he was in the hospital and he had to have back surgery and they wanted to fuse five
of his vertebrae together.
He basically flexed forward like closing a knife and crushed a vertebra in his spine
and I did some research and found a surgeon that would only fuse three vertebrae.
He had to have a vertebral fusion because one of his vertebrae was completely disintegrated
by this fall and so obviously they have to rebuild something and connect it to a vertebra
above and below but instead of fusing five vertebrae I helped him find a surgeon that
would only fuse three vertebrae.
But before that long before that happened he's in the hospital and he's had multiple
procedures and he's in his room and when I got there after he called me in there's a
sign on the door that says do not touch the patient or the patient's bed and when you
walk in there's another sign on the bed that says do not touch anything and he was this
guy is a tough guy he was strong he was fit but because of the surgeries he'd had to repair
the all the broken bones somebody nicked a nerve that was their diagnosis somebody nicked
a nerve that ran down to his leg and so he had this collar around his big toe kind of
like the collars that they put around a dog if they've had any kind of procedure where
they don't want the dog to lick and disrupt the procedure he had this white plastic collar
around his foot and another sign there saying don't touch because it was so this is a tough
man he was not he could take pain but for whatever reason because of this nicked nerve
if you touched the railing on his bed or even came close to touching his foot he would scream
in pain and jump off off of the bed even though he was in agony to try to defend himself it
sounds like hyperbole but this is a I've never seen somebody in this much pain and such a
specific spot with you know these particular situations so he called me in because he knew
that I did unusual things this was a lot this years ago and I came in and I said I'm not
going to touch your toe got a pretty good idea that that would hurt but what about if
I touch your opposite foot would that be okay and I started probing around and checking
his opposite foot in the same area as the foot that was in pain and I said does it hurt
a little bit here if I pinch if I push there is a hurt a little bit there our bodies are
designed our brains are designed to regulate pain receptors by perceiving dangers and threats
so his left foot was in such a heightened state of alert that breathing on his foot
would cause him to scream out in pain and again I want to stress this was not a sensitive
man he was a pretty tough guy and so I said can I press on your other foot he said yeah
sure go for it and I checked out and I said right so is this the spot on the other foot
that hurts and I pushed on whatever part of his foot I don't remember it was a while ago
and he said yeah and I said is it a little tender here he says yeah and I held that part
of his foot this is not first this is an example of non-force chiropractic chiropractic means
done by hand anything you do by hand to relieve pain is on force chiropractic so I'm holding
his opposite I think it was his big toe some part of his foot I'm pretty sure it was his
big toe I'm just holding this spot and saying this is a little tender here he said yeah
and I held it for a while and I said okay after a period of time is it not tender now
and I said yeah and I said how does your other foot feel the one that he wanted to kill people
for breathing breathing on and he said oh my god how did you do that the pain in his
opposite foot was about 50% less I came back the following day did the same process again
so then the pain was almost gone I came back a third day and it was completely gone so
the point is the surgeon didn't nick a nerve when he had his surgery it just irritated
a nerve that caused the brain to become super hypersensitive to something that it perceived
was a threat and I by helping by sending different signals to the brain from the opposite side
the brain always compares the one side to the other and the front to the back this goes
on behind the scenes and you don't even know it your brain is constantly deciding whether
or not you need to be in pain for that bump on your shoulder that whenever you stubbed
your toe the pain goes away anytime you've ever experienced pain that went away that
was the result of your brain checking in comparing one side with the other front to back to see
if there's really any threat there does the pain need to be on a heightened state of alert
forever or can we let that go and so I helped his brain realize that it wasn't necessary
for him to have pain on that other foot there was no damaged tissue that needed to be protected
while it was healing it was just an overreaction and so once his brain realized that it changed
the sensitivity it re-regulated the sensitivity in those nerves and his experience of that
was the pain disappeared I'm Dr. Todd Binkley you're listening to safe effective natural
solutions to almost any health challenge this week we're talking about neuropathies neuro
means nerve pathy means disease or damage so anything that can put pressure on or cause
damage to a nerve is what we're going to be talking about today I've previously discussed
damage from diabetes liver disease nutrient deficiency and pressure on nerves we've just
talked about a patient who fell off a cliff and had thought he had his doctors thought
he had a knick nerve from the extensive surgeries that he had to undergo after breaking several
bones throughout his body from falling off a 57 foot cliff but there are several other
things that can cause damage to nerves surgery again is another good example I had a 65 year
old woman who had liposuction and the surgery was a success but the patient couldn't lift
her foot up her whole left leg was numb and she couldn't lift her she was dragging her
left foot and the doctor thought oh we might have nicked a nerve that's a phrase you don't
want to hear but he assured her that it would go away in time it would just been a small
insult and it would heal on its own well it pat time that time that predicted he predicted
passed and it was not healed and she came to see me and I checked for tightness in her
hip rotators tension in her spine this is the thing if you have any kind of nerve symptom
nerve symptoms are classically you have pain it happens in the upper body too we're kind
of focusing on the lower extremities today but you have pain in your butt in your back
of your leg front of your leg in your calves in your feet and your low back basically anywhere
in your body but we're kind of focusing on the loker lower extremities today if you have
pain in these regions that's not explained by any injury that you had you didn't have
a trauma you didn't fall you didn't break anything you didn't have a car accident just
you have these pains that persist and probably been there for a while and are getting worse
and no one else has no one else been able to help you with these well these are symptoms
of pressure on a nerve or damage to a nerve from inability to heal and repair that nerve
tissue from lack of nutrients so I specialize and I've helped thousands of people deal with
both sides of this removing the pressure from the nerve and identifying the nutrient deficiencies
so that you can consume them and fix the deficiency and the deficient it's really inexpensive
to fix these deficiencies it's usually B vitamins vitamin B12 proper forms and adequate amounts
of vitamin B12 so don't make the mistake of thinking oh I'm taking centrum silver and
it says there's B12 in there no don't do that you need to be you need to have testing done
proper diagnosis and identify the amounts of if you're taking a multivitamin and if it's
a one-a-day multivitamin it's not providing adequate amounts to heal any disease multi
one-a-day multivitamins are useless the good multivitamins that provide adequate nutrients
to prevent disease are almost always three or four capsules a day and more and even more
importantly even if you're taking one of those if you have a severe nutrient deficiencies
deficiency that's causing a neuropathy then even if you're taking an excellent multivitamin
you may need to take a significant higher amount of some B vitamins like methylcobalamin
vitamin B the prop the proper absorbable form of vitamin B12 B6 in the p5p form the form
that your body actually uses in methyl folate the active form of folic acid and there's
you know several other things that are important to consider if you have damage to or pressure
on your nerves creating nerve symptoms so here's another case I had a woman who came
to me who had lipo suction I think she's about 65 late 60s had liposuction surgery was a
success she looked a lot better she felt a lot better you know and certainly hopefully
liposuction is not a first line therapy for most people but she was in you know she was
she was eating well that people's it's important to be sensitive to people with this issue
because she was severely overweight but she was otherwise fit healthy she was eating an
excellent diet she had an organic veggie garden in her backyard and she was just struggling
she could not lose the weight and she you know she was well off and so she had the surgery
and she you know they law I think she reduced her body weight by 60 pounds or something
like that but then she came into me because she had she had foot drop her left foot she
couldn't she couldn't properly she was you know limping not limping but it was hard for
her to walk properly because she would her her left foot would catch she had foot drop
she couldn't lift her left foot well that's nerve damage she had some nerve damage because
of the surgery that's what she blamed it on and I said well you know let's see so there
it is often the case that when you do surgery it can nick nerves and they mostly ignore
this because they're focused on the procedure they're doing and preventing blood loss you
know there's much higher priorities and it is true that a lot of times a little tiny
branches of nerves that are cut during surgery will easily regenerate themselves so when
she complained to her surgeon that you know her foot was dropping she was dragging her
foot he told her that it would eventually heal itself and a certain amount of time well
that time passed and it didn't heal itself so she came in to see me and I examined her
and she had tremendous tension in these same hip rotator muscles that I've been talking
about before that impinge on the sciatic nerve well that didn't change when she had her surgery
so you know whatever happened during the surgery caused some kind of irritation but that's
not the only thing that that's not necessarily determinative of what her symptoms have to
be the point is there's always other options when something suddenly starts hurting you
and you know that something happened recently that probably caused it and especially if
you're worried that oh my god no one can fix that well that's not often the case because
several things contribute to your symptoms you most of you myself everyone we're all
walking around accidents waiting to happen we all spend times in chairs in cars looking
at the screens and computers all day muscles get tight we're accidents waiting to happen
so if something like this like this surgical procedure this woman that had the liposuction
done maybe you know the that procedure caused a problem but the bottom line is she came
in to me identified patterns of tension and muscles in her hips that were ridiculously
tight and no one ever checked that on her before and I released those patterns of tension
and in a very brief period of time it was this was a few years ago I don't know it might
have been two or three months her doctor would told her it would take a certain amount of
time for those nerves to heal it didn't and after two or three months we got her back
to where she was completely feeling totally back to normal to recap if you or someone
you know has burning tingling numbness or unexplained pain in your buttock leg front
of your leg back of your leg upper lower leg or foot that's probably some kind of pressure
or damage to a nerve caused by pressure on the nerve in the hips or nutrient deficiencies
such as folate and b12 b6 deficiencies which are super easy and effective inexpensive to
fix most doctors never look for these things unfortunately and most doctors never look
for the most common causes of impingement on nerves in the hips the piriformis muscles
and other hip rotators in your hips this carniation's cause neuropathies as well diabetes etc these
are common but if you've already ruled those things out then there are other options so
let me know if someone you love needs assistance with this I'd love to be able to help them
I've helped thousands of people with similar situations that were told there was nothing
they could do and it's just it's just not true there's always almost always something
that can be done especially if you haven't done the proper testing that most doctors
don't do so disc herniations are important anytime somebody comes into me with a neuropathy
pain nerve but numbness burning tingling going down their legs especially or their arms I'll
try to cover the upper extremities in another episode I've covered some of this before in
previous episodes but if you have a bulge in a disc or anything in your spine that can
arthritis is another example to compress on your nerves then you can experience some of
these same symptoms so we always have to consider the big picture several things can cause pressure
on your nerves numbness burning tingling a radiating pain these are very confusing things
but the very fact that it's difficult to identify what the problem is is almost guarantees that
it is pressure on or damage to a nerve from some kind of injury or nutrient deficiency
they can often be reversed so whether you have a neuropathy from diabetes from liver
disease from nutrient deficiencies that you probably don't even know about or pressure
on nerves from sciatica or plantar fasciitis plantar fasciitis I could do a whole show
just on this plantar fasciitis the plantar is the bottom of the foot the plantar means
the bottom of the foot where you plant your foot when you walk and fasciitis means inflammation
of the fascia on the bottom of your foot this is a really common condition that is also
just horribly inadequately treated by most doctors if the bottom of your feet hurt it
is probably because of tension in muscles but also because of things that can irritate
your nerves so please if you know anyone who has plantar fasciitis have them shoot me a
text or an email I've been getting a lot of texts and emails about neuropathies and other
nerve conditions and that's why I did this show and I'm happy to answer your questions
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley you've been listening to safe effective natural solutions to almost
any health challenge please tune in next Friday right here on KDAR 98.3 FM you've been listening
to safe effective natural solutions with Dr. Todd Binkley if you have a health question
you want discussed on the show email your health questions to Dr. Binkley at Binkley
Healing Center dot com take advantage of this opportunity to ask questions for yourself
and for your loved ones because our health matters join him next Friday at 4 p.m. for
safe effective natural solutions right here on 98.3 the word KDAR