Episode 156: Overcoming Chronic Pain with Vinny Crispino

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Back on Track Achieving Healthy Weight Loss, where I help you get on track and stay on track with your weight loss journey. I'm your host, Dr. Alicia Shelly, so let's get started. Hello and welcome to the Back on Track Achieving Healthy Weight Loss podcast.

[00:00:32] I'm your host, Dr. Alicia Shelly. One major challenge that I see in my practice and with my patients is chronic pain. Whether it's chronic pain in their knees, chronic pain in their back, chronic pain in their whole body, it is a challenge.

[00:00:50] And a lot of times because of this pain, it limits people from being physically active and of course with losing weight. And so today I have the expert Vinny Crispino to share with us simple strategies to improve pain and to get moving.

[00:01:09] Vinny is the CEO of the Pain Academy and he has a really interesting story that you all need to hear that led him down this journey and I can't wait to hear it. So welcome to the podcast Vinny, we're so happy to have you.

[00:01:23] Yeah, thank you for such a warm welcome and great introduction. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Well before we get started, tell us a little bit more about your story and how you got into this space.

[00:01:34] Yeah, so I didn't get into helping people with chronic pain because it was always a passion of mine. I didn't really care about pain and movement until I literally couldn't move because I was in pain. So I started out gifted in athletics.

[00:01:50] I was a division one, eight time all American collegiate athlete. I was only used to pushing my body and it performing with what I needed it to do. I had a really abrupt experiential change with my body when I broke my back surfing.

[00:02:08] So I went from being this young, strong, capable man to I can't even stand up for more than a few minutes without significant pain and this is what led me down the path that I think probably most people who are listening to this will resonate with.

[00:02:24] What are you doing with pain? It's hard enough to get motivated and inspired and work out and take care of yourself when you're feeling good. Now you've got all these other obstacles that you've got to work through, pain and

[00:02:37] limitation, dysfunction, stiff type bodies going to do a workout, pushing your body a little bit in it, pushing back severely to where you're on the couch for days afterwards. I mean this was my entire twenties and I did what most people do.

[00:02:51] You go see the doctors and the PTs and the chyros, the acupuncturists, massage therapists, just all of it. You get a little bit of information and maybe a little bit of help here and there

[00:03:04] but at the end of the day I was still missing something that I could actually rely on and do and participate in daily. Talking about a daily self-practice that uses gentle, simple movement to take care of your body in between the gym workouts, in between the doctor

[00:03:21] appointments, in between all the therapeutic modalities you're doing. And this is what ultimately led me to start Pain Academy which is to help people fundamentally develop a movement practice. That's amazing. Well, let's delve a little bit deeper here. How does movement heal the body?

[00:03:38] What does it do exactly? Yeah, so I think we've all heard movement is medicine or most of us heard that. Well, let's break that down. If you've ever gone to the gym and you've done a set of an exercise

[00:03:52] like let's say you're doing arm curls, you do a specific motion again and again, what you're going to notice is that muscle kind of gets a little pumped up. It's a little swollen from blood, oxygen and nutrients being delivered to that area.

[00:04:07] So when you go to move or use a muscle group, what you're doing is you're sucking and pulling fresh blood, oxygen and nutrients into the area as well as you're removing waste products from damaged cells out of the area.

[00:04:23] So movement literally flushes what's good into the tissue and pushes what's bad out of the tissue, what's no longer needed, waste products, damaged materials, etc. So when you hear movement is medicine, that's exactly what it's doing at a cellular and a physiological level, which it is

[00:04:42] revitalizing the soft tissue structures. And when it can be done very methodical, very gentle and very slow, what you start to get is just this almost like lubricated sense of the nerves and the muscles and proving communication and things just feeling a little bit more mobile, capable, stable

[00:05:03] and strong. Movement is one of the best tools out there for managing almost any kind of chronic condition that's out there. And how can movement lead to better quality of life? Once it is releasing, I understand it's releasing on a cellular level all the different thoughts.

[00:05:22] But how does that correlate to people feeling better or out having a better quality? Yeah, so the more you move, one of the biggest misconceptions I want to clear up is moving more doesn't equal moving better. So if you've got, let's say, a poor foundation of movement,

[00:05:40] like you've got a significant muscle imbalance, one side works different than the other, just moving more doesn't necessarily mean that problem goes away. For many people, it means it gets strengthened, which is why a lot of people notice when they start to do more activity,

[00:05:55] things tend to sometimes feel worse. But when you learn how to move better and you get the left side to work just as well as the right side, when these movement patterns get better, what happens is something called neuromuscular efficiency. Nerves and muscles can communicate and work better

[00:06:15] together. And the better nerves and muscles work together, your strength improves, your endurance improves. And this means you use a human being become more capable. Maybe you can take more steps. Maybe you can play with your kids a little bit more.

[00:06:32] Maybe you can spend more time on the ground helping them with homework or Legos or whatever it is that you're doing, your body becomes more capable because it works better because you practice movement. Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense.

[00:06:48] It allows people to be as they continue to practice, they become more flexible, they become able to do things decreasing their deconditioning. Well, what are some movements or what are some strategies that people can do to help move better instead of adding more quality instead of quantity?

[00:07:07] I've put together some incredible resources. So that's a great question, which is what a lot of people ask me. I give people that first step for free. So if you're listening to this, if you have any problems with your ankles, knees, hips or shoulders,

[00:07:19] you feel like your movement could be better. I've laid out really specific routines to help people do just that. And surprisingly, it's not really vigorous. Oftentimes it's really calm, gentle stuff. I'll give you an example lying down on the ground.

[00:07:36] So you're lying on your back with your legs over a couch or a chair. So you're on the floor in a really simple, accessible position doing gentle arm pullovers, getting both shoulders to move overhead can be a great, beautiful, simple restorative way to start

[00:07:53] bringing motionality back to your shoulders. Getting on the ground doing very gentle, easy hip rotation can be a great way to improve that neuromuscular connection. It doesn't need to be complicated, but it does need to be specific. One of the first things I teach people is actually

[00:08:11] how to move on the ground, because the ground does a great job at almost providing training wheels. Right? Think about doing an exercise standing up. There's a lot of things that can get a little weird and funky with it. But doing an exercise lying on the ground, you've

[00:08:25] got the floor that supports you. You can use objects around you to support you. And this really helps you find these altered states of balance or improved states of balance. So it's actually by making motion very simple and supported that you can then really kind of

[00:08:41] reign in whatever movement problems that you're having. Now, I like what you said. It can be simple. It can be something that even the beginners can start with. Is there a certain amount of time that people need to invest in this?

[00:08:56] Or is this something that they can do before they go to work afterwards? What are your suggestions on this? As far as the timing and how frequency? Yeah, it's a great question. And it depends on a few things. As always, most great questions usually answer with it depends.

[00:09:12] It depends on what your goals are. Right? Do you just want to get a little better? If you want to just get a little better, we don't need to do hours and hours and hours of work a day. Maybe 15 to 20 really specific targeted minutes

[00:09:27] could be enough to give you that boost of extra that you need. If you're somebody with a severe history of movement impairments, a lengthy list of past injuries or current injuries, the body's not that capable. We get tired very easily. We get sore very easily.

[00:09:46] Those are people we probably want to start looking at 30, 45 minutes maybe, even 60 minutes a day. Because what we're trying to do is offset not only the years of movement problems that have worked kind of stacked up against us, but many people.

[00:10:02] I think most people will find that we've actually engineered movement out of our lives. Technology makes it so easy to do things. We get in the car and we drive to the store. The shopping cart holds our heavy bags. We then drive these bags home.

[00:10:16] Like there's not a lot of manual labor to exist that. We don't need to do manual labor for survival, most of us. And so if you're somebody who finds himself with kind of a sedentary lifestyle or maybe getting a few thousand steps a day in at the most,

[00:10:32] we probably want to start to move into the upper range of close to an hour of really gentle targeted movements because we're trying to offset a sedentary lifestyle. So it really depends on you and how severe the problem is and what your goals are.

[00:10:46] Now, are there any postures or different strategies that people can use daily basis in order to improve or reduce their pain? Yeah, absolutely. So probably the number one myth that continues to be out there is you have to sit.

[00:11:02] There's a perfect posture, perfect way to stand or to sit. There could be ways to stand or sit that could make you feel better, no doubt. But the question always becomes how long can you hold those positions? How long can you stand upright in your shoulders back

[00:11:19] before that either gets exhausting or your attention goes elsewhere? So one of the biggest myths with posture is that we need to override what our body's naturally doing. Your posture in whatever shape it is is your natural function.

[00:11:36] It is the outcome of how all of your nerves and muscles and joints are working together. So the goal is not to achieve perfect posture, the goal is to get your body to work as best as it can so it naturally has better posture without thought, without force,

[00:11:55] without you always trying to be the posture police on yourself and be rigid and stiff and tense. We want good posture to be a byproduct, an outcome of everything working the way it should. Okay, so it is the outcome of you having different strategies and moving?

[00:12:13] Yeah, so if the shoulders could work well, then they probably would already be upright and naturally gently pulled back. If the shoulders don't work well and there's this collapse and either both shoulders are rounding or one shoulder is higher than the other, if that's your natural state given

[00:12:33] that's how your shoulders work, just telling you to sit up and pull your shoulders back that's exhausting. So the idea is to restore your shoulders with gentle motions so you've got better balance so naturally they just sit more level or naturally you sit more erect and open.

[00:12:50] Now what advice do you have for somebody who's maybe just getting started in their movement journey? Like you said, they may have chronic pain and very nervous about doing movements that would worsen their pain. What advice would you have? Yeah, so there's a couple pieces of advice

[00:13:09] and if somebody takes one thing from this interview, I want it to be this, focus on the basics before specifics. People get very overwhelmed and rightfully so when there's a chronic pain issue, chronic knees. Not only is there an overwhelm of you making the issue

[00:13:27] to be really complicated but there's also this fear of making it worse and that's pain doing its job. If we don't feel good now, there's almost this avoidance of even wanting to do anything in fear that it could get worse. This is why I tell everybody,

[00:13:44] let's focus on the basics. Let's get the knees and the ankles and the hips to just start working better together. Let's not go into the depth of knee pain specific solutions because those are often really aggressive. They're really targeting dysfunctional knees and maybe the knees can't actually stand

[00:14:04] that kind of targeted practice. I've had a principle that served me in thousands of people well, which is before you go looking for specific solutions and targeting your back pain or your knee pain, let's get your body to move and feel better.

[00:14:18] Let's get the right side to move and feel like the left side. Let's balance the muscles between the front and the back of the body. Let's make it simple. Let's make bending forward easier. Let's make squatting easier and you're gonna find that just by focusing

[00:14:32] on the basics of how can I be a little bit more well-rounded of a mover? A lot of the specific chronic issues that you have, many people are gonna notice actually start to clear up because you're improving mobility. You're improving strength and stability

[00:14:47] in the rest of your body, which provides more support to the chronic acute areas. Okay, well, well. The other thing that I was gonna say too is, yeah, it's really mindset. Look, I understand I was a guy with a broken back. I understand the fear and the emotionality

[00:15:04] that comes into people's life when chronic pain and chronic conditions are present. Half of this problem that you're trying to fix is physical, meaning it's mechanical. Biomechanics, how soft tissue, nerves and muscles work. That's true and valid. The other half of this issue is the mindset.

[00:15:23] It's your relationship with pain. It's the fear that shows up when you think about pain, the emotions that we attach. What is our relationship with pain? When you are exposed to pain long-term, it really changes the way you think. It changes the way you feel.

[00:15:42] It absolutely impacts your thought process. And if you would have told me in my mid-20s that my relationship with pain had anything to do with my broken back, I would have written you off as you have no idea what you're talking about. My back is broken.

[00:15:58] I saw it on an x-ray. I have a broken back. This has nothing to do with my self-sabotage mechanisms. It's got nothing to do with my relationship with my body image, my ability to cope, my ability to parent myself, my healthy mechanisms of dealing with stress

[00:16:17] or at the time I didn't have any. So my unhealthy mechanisms of dealing with stress, all of that matters because you are more than just a person with knee pain. You're a human being attached to this knee pain. How you experience the psychological impact

[00:16:34] of being in pain, having fear around that anticipating pain being there, altering and curbing your day to feel as minimal as pain as possible. That also has to be a part of the conversation if we want to truly tackle this experience of what you're going through.

[00:16:54] Does that make sense? It makes a lot of sense. Well Vinny, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and talking about how movement can heal the body and can improve someone's quality of life. Would you mind, Sherry, just kinda how someone can work with you?

[00:17:09] Yeah, so the best way to work with me is go to www.painacademy.net. That's my website. Like I said, I've got the free first step for everybody so that's a great place to start. I'll give you a free routine you can get down on the ground

[00:17:23] and I don't want you to just take my word for it. I want you to try it. Do the exercises, let's see how you feel and then we take it from there. You can also follow me on any social channel at Pain Academy.

[00:17:34] Awesome, and so we'll also have that in the show notes. So if you guys missed it, just go to the show notes and we'll have his website and how you can find him. Well thank you again for joining us on the back on track

[00:17:46] of TV Healthy Weight Loss. If you like this episode, please share it with others. Like it and subscribe and don't forget to leave a five-star review. All right, have a great day.