Last week I shared some of the lessons I learned in Aspen about the links between foot function, breathing patterns and craniofacial development.
Today I want to join some more dots for you.
You see, it’s not just breathing and airway that are impacted by how well (or badly) our feet work.
There are multiple other organs and systems that rely on proper feedback from our feet in order function correctly.
Many of these connections are not obvious…
And they’re certainly not something I was ever taught in school…
But once you understand the mechanisms, they make complete sense. Really getting this, and applying it clinically, will place you in the top 5% of docs in the world. Many claim to treat the body holistically, yet they’re totally overlooking this critical piece.
Let’s get into it.
We’ve talked previously about the postural adaptations that occur when someone habitually wears shoes and walks on flat, neurologically-boring surfaces.. [#007 – More than just a pain in the neck]
As our arches dysfunction, our centre of gravity shifts back towards our heels, forcing us to compensate by swaying our pelvis forward. This lower body shift then requires an upper body compensation of slumping our head and shoulders forward in order to stay (more or less) upright.
This is the purely mechanical explanation of what we observe in practice… but like so many things in the body, there are multiple layers of causation at play.
The layer we are exploring today is the Foot-Viscera Connection.
It starts with the Deep Front Line (DFL.)
We discussed this last week, as the primary mechanism linking foot function to breathing and airway function.
It is also the primary link between foot function and core stability.
The DFL begins under the feet, with the insertions of the tibialis posterior muscles on the plantar surface of the navicular, all cuneiforms, and the base of metatarsals 2-5.
It also has a fascial connection to the insertions of peroneus longus on the base of the 1st metatarsal and medial cuneiform. These insertions form the base of the Lateral Line (LL), which then runs up the outside of the leg and provides lateral stability to the pelvis (which is critical for our ability to stand on one leg and perform bipedal gait.)
This musculofascial connection between the DFL and the LL forms a “sling” which runs under the foot and lifts and supports our arches.
From here the DFL runs up along tib post, through the adductors and blends with the muscles of the pelvic floor, the psoas and the diaphragm. This makes it essential for core activation… we simply can’t have a strong core without a functional DFL.
Here’s where it gets interesting though…
Research has shown that when we activate the intrinsic muscles in our feet, it reflexively activates the muscles of the pelvic floor.
Brain Connectivity Associated with Muscle Synergies in Humans
This synergistic activation goes one way only – activating foot muscles reflexively activated pelvic floor muscles, but activating pelvic floor muscles did not activate foot muscles.
When you think about it, this makes sense.
What’s the point of having a strong, stable core, if it’s not firmly anchored to the ground?
I see many programs, therapists and personal trainers out there working to help people activate their core… but it’s like they believe the core just floats along above the ground! There is no attention paid to building strong, functional feet and enhancing the foot-core connection.
The implications of this are obvious.
The effects of a weak core are well studied and understood…
Lower back and pelvic instability, vulnerability to injury, poor posture and muscle activation patterns and recurring subluxations.
This is one of the reasons why wearing Better Balance Orthotics is so helpful to patients with lower back issues.
I also believe it explains why I ended up with an abdominal hernia in my 30’s…
Years of walking on flat feet totally inhibited my DFL and LL and sabotaged my core, despite training hard as a rock-climbing instructor 5-7 days a week at the time.
But today we are going beyond simple mechanical explanations.
Today we’re digging into how this affects Visceral and Autonomic function (particularly our parasympathetic system.)
Years ago, I studied Visceral Biomechanics with Dr. Victor Portelli, an Australian AK diplomate.
Victor drew on his deep knowledge and decades of experience with chiropractic, applied kinesiology, anatomy, dissection and hunting to develop a comprehensive understanding of how organs move, and how this impacts their function.
His work revolutionised my practice and I highly recommend it… I believe he’s teaching in Naples next month.
One thing that Victor found commonly in his clinic was abdominal organs dropping inferiorly, known as Visceral Ptosis.
Organs frequently affected include the kidneys, large and small intestines, the stomach, the bladder, uterus, ovaries and prostate.
At the time I took his courses, I assumed this was largely due to gravity (which of course it is), but now I realise that pelvic floor dysfunction is a huge contributor.
How can you expect something to hold up when you drop the floor out from under it?
Not only that…
You also introduce slack into the walls (abdominal muscles) and even the roof (diaphragm.) Remember our tensegrity model [#004 – This changed my treatment approach forever]
Victor taught me that our organs are meant to slide and glide over and around each other, massaging and stimulating proper function.
All of this is orchestrated by the complex web of fascia they are embedded in, and primarily driven by the motion of our diaphragm (which takes us back to the importance of correct breathing from last week’s issue.)
The DFL is the master organising principle that choreographs this intricate dance.
When it isn’t functioning effectively, organs drop, their movement becomes restricted, lymphatic drainage is inhibited, blood flow is disrupted and they become stagnant and dysfunctional.
So who does this apply to in your clinic?
When I was studying chiropractic at university, I was taught to consider pelvic floor dysfunction in post-partum women… and maybe in cases of dysmenorrhea or chronic lower back pain.
That was it.
And for years that’s all I did.
However, over time, as I learned more effective techniques for treating pelvic floor issues (like the Origin/Insertion Technique we discussed in Issue [#005] I didn’t notice my ankles aging… I began testing for it more frequently…
And finding that it was much, much more common than I had been trained to consider.
In fact, these days it’s something I check on every patient.
If you want a shortlist of the most obvious suspects:
· Anyone with lower back pain
· Anyone with incontinence (even just a little- it’s way more common than you think)
· Anyone who has been pregnant (regardless of the type of delivery)
· Any woman with hormonal/cycle related symptoms
· Any man with prostate problems
· Any male or female sexual dysfunction
· Anyone with nighttime urinary frequency
· Anyone with any type of hernia
· Anyone with digestion issues
· Anyone with recurring UTIs
· Anyone with poor posture
· Anyone who gets tired after being on their feet for a while
Over time I began to see that pelvic floor issues are almost universal (at least within the chiropractic patient population.)
Which puzzled me. How could that be possible?
It didn’t make sense… until I took on Better Balance Orthotics and dived down the rabbit hole of understanding foot function and its links to almost everything else in the body… especially the pelvic floor.
What I came to recognise, is that there’s one universal stress that almost every single one of us shares…
And that is- wearing modern shoes and walking on flat, unnatural surfaces.
Once I understood what that was doing to our feet…
And how it was sabotaging our pelvic floor through the DFL connection…
It suddenly clicked.
No wonder pelvic floor problems were so rampant!
And when the pelvic floor goes… the abdominal organs go with it.
This doesn’t just cause the mechanical, lymphatic and blood flow problems I described above… it’s also a major issue for the nervous system.
More or less all of the abdominal organs are innervated by the Vagus Nerve… it’s the basis of our parasympathetic nervous system and the driver of our “rest and digest” functions.
The vagus nerve originates in the brainstem and travels down through the neck to the thoracic and abdominal organs. When you drop the pelvic floor, and the abdominal organs with it, you create a stretching force on the vagus nerve and its branches.
For years we’ve talked in chiropractic about the negative effects of compression on nerves, but modern research reveals that stretch injuries can be just as bad, if not even worse, as described in this neurosurgery review paper: Nerve stretching: a history of tension
In it the authors state…
“Stretch injuries are among the most devastating forms of peripheral nerve injury.”
Another paper found that stretching the sciatic nerve 15–16% of its length completely stopped intraneural blood flow, leading to ischemia, conduction block, and axonal injury, similar to compression.
For this reason, the brain will not tolerate excessive stretch to the vagus nerve… so when the pelvic floor dysfunctions and the abdominal organs drop, the body is forced to compensate.
It does this by dropping the head forwards to reduce the distance between the brainstem and the abdominal organs…
One of the exact compensation patterns we see consistently resulting from poor foot mechanics.
I believe this is one reason we see such big improvements in Forward Head Posture when people start wearing Better Balance Orthotics. It’s not just that their Centre of Gravity shifts as their feet function better… it’s also that their pelvic floor activation increases, leading to less visceral ptosis and stretch on the vagus nerve.
These days I notice online that various vagus nerve stimulators are all the rage… they’re being sold to help all manor of symptoms and conditions.
While they may be helpful for some, like so many other applications within the medical system or the marketing industry, this is a short-sighted, symptom-focused approach of blindly stimulating the nerve without considering what’s causing it to dysfunction in the first place.
I wonder what would happen if all those people replaced their expensive vagal nerve stimulators with a simple pair of Better Balance Orthotics and a daily walk?
I shared last week the amazing synergy of how all the presentations in Aspen at the Ski For Wally seminar linked together, despite none of us having foreknowledge of what the others were presenting.
I’ll briefly mention 2 more worthy of note here.
One was a presentation by Dr. Phillip Cameron on the impressive results he was getting applying Injury Recall Technique (IRT) to organs, especially those containing smooth muscle, like the small intestine and the bladder.
(I have found this also applies to vessels, such as the abdominal aorta and the inferior vena cava.)
Phil described how persistent musculoskeletal problems were clearing up once he addressed the injury patterns to these organs.
And how would an abdominal organ become injured?
I believe the mechanism I’ve described above is a huge and common contributor.
Another presentation, by Dr. Tom O’Bryan, described how basically all diseases are diseases of inflammation… and basically all inflammation traced its root cause back to leaky gut.
The causes were many and varied… he shared an incredible amount of detail during his 4 hour presentation. I’ll speculatively add one more to the list here…
We understand in chiropractic that Structure Governs Function.
When you inhibit the pelvic floor, drop the abdominal organs and interfere with their natural movement, blood flow, lymphatic drainage and innervation…
Isn’t it likely that you hamper their healthy function, weakening digestion and thereby contributing to systemic inflammation?
The bottom line is this…
When you prescribe Better Balance Orthotics, and apply the techniques I’ve shared in my presentations and this newsletter…
You are doing far more than just helping your patients stand, walk and move better.
You are impacting multiple aspects of physiology, through multiple mechanisms, and taking advantage of one of the most profound windows for clinical intervention, that most practitioners are completely missing.
So next time you see a patient experiencing any of the challenges I described above… give them the gift of prescribing Better Balance Orthotics. They’ll thank you for it.
And if you know any other docs who’d love to up their clinical game… please pass this newsletter on to them. Their patients will thank you too.
Cheers,
