This is part five of a series. If you haven't caught up on what I'm doing with Human Garage, see the other posts here!
Today is my fifth session at Human Garage and I feel totally amazing I feel light, my head feels like it's further back in alignment and my neck isn't really hurting anymore. I'm excited because I get to do my first bio mechanics session tomorrow retraining my body's movement patterns. So that is super exciting! (It can take as little as 5 unwinding sessions to go into biomechanics or up to as many as 8, everyone is different.)
I was with Alex today and this session was just sort of like a general "feeling around for wherever there is tension left". So, we did a lot of calf work because calves are connected to the neck and posterior chain which is where a lot of my tension still is. He used the TheraGun on my calves and I was laughing because it's so ticklish. He worked out a huge knot in my hamstring that I didn't know I had. It was crazy painful and I was breathing through it trying to use what I've learned from all these releases. I did feel some abdominal convulsing as it was releasing and as soon as it let go, a bolt of electricity shot up and around my glute on the left side.
I told Alex that I rolled out my quads when I was in Canada with Dustbowl and wanted to see if it had any effect on the state of that tension. I'd also been doing a ton of emotional and spiritual work to help release it and was so curious if it had helped. He said they felt amazing, really great and so he didn't have to work on them at all. I was so worried it would take a long time to work through all those layers. The knot in my neck is still there but he worked on it for quite a bit and it feels better.
I was curious about why the scheduling of the sessions was so specific and how the package is sold at a discount rather than individual sessions (though, those are available too) to encourage people to go through the whole program. I assumed that if you stopped coming, because you felt better, that it would be such a waste because your old movement patterns would just set you back in your old habits. Alex said when they release the tension in the body and it corrects a lot of alignment, your body doesn't actually regress unless something traumatic or stressful happens like a car accident. Your body might actually hold really well. So, that was interesting and something i didn't really expect. (I would not recommend not doing the whole program, I'm just extrapolating on new information I found out about the body.)
That is why people can come in 2 times over 3 weeks to do the releases (the usual schedule of operations) and daily life won't reset their misalignment. I am on a crazy accelerated track and people keep saying "no one really does it this fast, you might experience things a little differently" and I'm surprised actually at the small amount of brain fog I've had during the process. i have been really tired but I'm just drinking a lot of water and making sure I get enough rest to heal while I'm completing the program. It sort of reminds me of getting rid of SIBO or Chelation and detoxing all that junk.
I forgot to take pics today bc i felt so good i got distracted.
QurEcology!
So, Human Garage includes a test within the basic package that I got and it takes urine and saliva samples and tests C protein as markers for things like Carbohydrate Metabolism, Adrenal Function etc. I submitted samples on Day 1 and had my follow up call with them today. I will be honest, throughout my journey I've become skeptical of "all the tests" you can get these days which may or may not really tell you anything about your journey. Some of the offenders I'll mention are microbiome diversity tests (usually a stool test): your bacteria change after a meal, let alone hourly so this test doesn't tell the dr. much that they can already find out from your symptoms. Another test that I don't appreciate is the food allergy test. Unless you are at an allergist, getting a scratch test, taking a test to tell you what foods you're reacting to is a waste of your money. Your reaction can be caused by the level of inflammation you're experiencing from another food and cause you to think you can't eat apples, but it could be the fact that you're eating eggs all the time and now are reacting to apples because your system is all jacked up. The only (current) gold standard for food sensitivities is an elimination diet. I really appreciate that Dr. Ruscio's approach is to get the most information possible from as little testing (and money spending) as possible. Similarly he tries to keep patients on the bare minimum of supplements for the same reason. Some functional medicine practitioners go a little crazy and i think forget that most of this is not covered by insurance and therefore some restraint would be appreciated.
That being said, I wanted to go through the whole HG process and this was part of it so I went in with an open mind, ready to ask questions and stand by what I knew worked for me.
I was actually pleasantly surprised! Asia (the person who walked me through my results) was super familiar with the steps I’ve taken so far. She was like "i don’t want you to introduce anything that you know you can’t tolerate right now but i do want to focus on your adrenals"… (Dr. Ruscio seemed to think my adrenals/thyroid are fine, based on blood tests and I’ve been taking an adrenal support as needed but not in any real long term supporting way. So that could be something that was a missing link.)
Stuff that kicked up for me (see my results to get the picture) were carbohydrate metabolism (i'm on a v low carb diet), protein metabolism (I need to take a digestive enzyme and i didn't buy more when i ran out last time), adrenal analysis (my adrenals are low functioning, this is not great for my ability to handle stress or have energy and is connected to carbohydrate metabolism which is why the markers are almost neck and neck.) Liver Analysis (I'm doing some liver support but it could use a little boost) and I'm inflamed (shocker!)
I'm willing to do the things she suggested which were to go on a small amount of supplements, mostly ones I'd already be taking anyway like the adrenal support and digestive enzyme with HCL. I also really appreciated that she was like "it’s a challenge because your digestion is giving you issues and what I would like to do to support your adrenals is have you eat more carbs, but a lot of the carbs (not grains or anything) you don’t tolerate well." So i’m going to start taking an adrenal supplement, continue with my lifestyle and diet (and liver support) and just inch up on how many carbs I’m consuming, and see if that will help my adrenals settle down without wreaking havoc on my digestion by adding too much fiber or stuff I know makes me inflamed.
Deep breathing will be added to my lifestyle, i’m not really focusing that as much as I have with meditation, and doing it more regularly will help me stay parasympathetic. Deep breathing will chill me out, which will reduce my inflammation/adrenal/catabolic markers. A lot of her other suggestions i’m already doing: prioritizing sleep, blue light blocking glasses, meditation, light exercise etc.
The big update is that i’m going low histamine diet (in addition to my mostly-keto and low fodmap) to help my body rest and repair. I’ve experienced this being an issue and talked to Dr. Ruscio about it, but I have not committed to doing it because I’ve been so focused on microbiome rebuilding and probiotic foods.
I do a round of treatment as listed above for 30 days and then we adjust for 60-90 days and then from there there's an ongoing plan. I'm about to leave for Europe so I'll be starting this then, it'll be just over 30 days of travel. No booze in Europe but I've done it before and I really do feel better when I don't drink so I'm sure it'll be easier done than said.
We forgot to take a progress pic this week bc I was so chatty :)