Understanding Chronic Pain: The Truth Behind the Symptoms

[00:00:00] Leigh Brandon: And so, my identity was really challenged. And it makes you think, well, who am I now?
[00:00:06] Stretch Raynor: Mhm.
[00:00:07] Leigh Brandon: Because I’m not what I thought I was. I’m not what I identified myself as being. I’m no longer this beacon of health, this fit person, right? But going through that experience myself made me really realize really empathize what people are going through when it’s, you know, it is challenging your own identity. And that’s a really scary thing to go through. You know, and as we’ll probably talk about a little bit later, being scared is a really bad thing if you want to get out of pain as well.
Introduction
[00:00:39] Leigh Brandon: Welcome to Beyond the Pain, the podcast that explores what it really takes to break free from chronic pain and reclaim your life. I’m your host, Leigh Brandon, and someone who’s spent over two decades helping people get to the root cause of pain that no one else could explain. Whether you’re dealing with long-term back issues, joint pain, nerve discomfort, or mysterious symptoms that just won’t go away, this show is here to help you go deeper. Because beyond the pain, there’s clarity, strength, and power waiting for you. Each week, we’ll uncover the physical, emotional, biochemical, and energetic causes of pain and how to transform them. Let’s dive deep into this week’s episode. Welcome to this very first episode of Beyond the Pain. I’m Leigh Brandon, and I’m generally grateful to have you here. If you’ve been with me since the Radical Health Rebel days, thank you for coming along on this new journey. And if this is your first time tuning in, a big warm welcome. You’re absolutely in the right place. So, why at the change? Why a podcast focused entirely on chronic pain. Well, that’s exactly what we’re diving into today. The real reason behind this new direction, why pain deserves to take center stage, and how this show is going to help you uncover what’s really going on beneath the surface. Over the years working with clients and deepening my understanding of health, one thing became crystal clear. Chronic pain is a massive issue and it’s so often misunderstood. For instance, 1.5 billion people worldwide live with chronic pain. That’s nearly a quarter of the global population. And in the UK, it’s around 43%. And here’s something even more striking. Studies show that 30 to 40% of people who visit their doctor because of pain are diagnosed with what’s called an idiopathic pain condition. In simple terms, that means that there’s no obvious injury, no clear disease, and no visible damage, yet the pain is very real and often life-altering. So, this tells us something crucial. Pain isn’t always about damaged tissues. It’s much more complex involving the nervous system, the brain, emotions, and often hidden root causes we don’t typically consider. I’m also narrowing the focus to chronic pain because, well, you guys have made it clear. The episodes about pain have consistently been the most popular with my loyal listeners. So, it only made sense to give you more of what resonated with you most. Now, I had actually recorded a solo episode to kick off this new version of the podcast, but recently I was interviewed by Stretch Raynor on his podcast, which is called Midlife Mavericks, and honestly the conversation we had captured the essence of Beyond the Pain better than anything I could have scripted, Solo. It really brings to life what this show is all about. So, thanks for being here and I truly hope you enjoy it this podcast episode where I’m interviewed about pain from my new brother from another mother, Stretch Raynor, on his Midlife Mavericks podcast. Enjoy.
Discussion
[00:04:12] Stretch Raynor: Leigh, welcome to the Midlife Mavericks podcast. I’m excited to have you here.
[00:04:18] Leigh Brandon: Stretch, it’s great to be here and it’s interesting talking to you. We’ve got a lot in common, so this should be a lot of fun.
[00:04:24] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, I’m sure it will be, mate. I can’t wait to dive in and learn more about, you know, your story, a little bit more about the CHEK work and what you’ve done there in terms of your practice. and also we’re going to talk a lot about chronic pain today, which I think is a very relevant topic for a lot of men in midlife, which is my main listeners, so they’re going to get a lot out of this. But before we dive into that, I’d like to start the podcast with a couple of questions. if you and I were to be boarding an airplane, where in the world would we be going? Do you have a favorite holiday destination or is there something on the bucket list that you would like to tick off?
[00:05:00] Leigh Brandon: Well, that’s a good question. As you As we were discussing before, I’m relatively well-traveled. and if you’d have asked me that question 20, 30 years ago, I would have said my favorite destination is Ibiza. but my party days are pretty much behind me now. And the island has kind of gone in a direction that I’m not particularly happy with, but I mean, Australia I love. As again we were saying, I’ve lived in Australia, got lots of family there. I love the United States. I love Florida. I love California. I’d imagine if I went to New York again, I would be a bit disappointed cuz I think London’s gone in a similar way. Hence I don’t live there anymore. I’m trying to think of somewhere I haven’t been that I would like to go to. I guess maybe somewhere in Far East is probably somewhere I like hot places, which might sound strange coming from someone that lives in a cold climate. Actually, you know what? Where you live sounds quite good to me actually. You We know we were discussing before you live kind of the middle of nowhere in Southeast Australia. that kind of place would appeal to me right now. but I guess somewhere in the Far East Yeah. I think is probably where I haven’t been that I would probably like to go.
[00:06:28] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, awesome, mate. Yeah, you’ve named a lot of great places there. A few that I have been to and a few that I haven’t been to. but yeah, I mean the world’s just so many places, but it’s always changing, isn’t it? you know, what you used to love when we were at a different age, 20 and 30, doesn’t sort of appeal now that we’re in our 40s now and beyond maybe. So
[00:06:47] Leigh Brandon: Yeah, the other place the other area I guess would appeal to me would be South America as well. I’ve not been to South America. I’m quite into languages. I’m I can’t speak any other language apart from English fluently, but I do love kind of the Spanish language. Yeah. I’m a single guy as well and I think South America would be quite a good place for me. So yeah, may maybe somewhere like Venezuela, maybe.
[00:07:14] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, beautiful, mate. Yeah, that’s a part of the world I’ve never been to, either, so I’d love to be able to get there at some point as well, definitely. If we were to sit next to each other on this plane, and we were to spark up a conversation and I was to ask you about what you do and what your mission is, what would you say?
[00:07:32] Leigh Brandon: So my mission is something I would say I’ve been living for 20 odd years. And my mission is to help as many people as possible optimize their health, their productivity, their quality of life, and the amount of fun that they have. That’s really what I feel I’m here to do. On top of that, I’m also here to have fun myself. So that for me that for me is really important. And one of the biggest ways for me now that I have fun is playing tennis. That’s kind of my real passion, my outlet. I almost feel like if I didn’t play tennis, I would probably have some kind of mental health problem. It kind of just really uplifts me when I play tennis, even though I’m not a great player. But I just really enjoy it.
[00:08:26] Stretch Raynor: Awesome, mate. A good way to take that frustration out, just go and whack that little green ball around the court for a while, eh?
[00:08:30] Leigh Brandon: Absolutely.
[00:08:31] Stretch Raynor: Absolutely. Are you Are you playing competition tennis, or is it just recreational? What’s
[00:08:35] Leigh Brandon: Yeah, I’ve been playing been playing some competitions this year. So I haven’t played for a couple of seasons. I did actually have a torn labrum in my shoulder. So I didn’t really want to go down the surgery route, cuz again, without getting too technical, when as soon as you cut into your shoulder, it completely decompresses the shoulder in a way that makes it unstable. And you can never get that optimum stability back in your shoulder. So I didn’t really want to go down that route, even though I probably could have got back playing sooner, I thought I’d rather take the slower route and actually have a healthier shoulder for the next you know, 20 or 30 years. But I still intend to continue playing tennis. So I’ve come back this year. I played in my club tournament. got drawn against number two seeds, so I didn’t get too far into that tournament. but I’ve been playing some national league matches the last few weeks. We’ve got the last one this weekend. So yeah, I’m still competitive in despite my years. I can still I can still get around a tennis court pretty quick. And the intention is to do that you know, well into my 70s.
[00:09:44] Stretch Raynor: Beautiful, mate. I love that. That’s a great intention to have and also you mentioned it’s better to help other people do something very similar with that and enjoy life like you say. it’s great that you talk about the slow path to recovery there and it’s not like, okay, I’m going to go and get cortisol injections and I’m going to jump under the knife and try to take the shortcut here. and I’m sure that’s something we can talk about in the conversation today. But before we dive into that, like I’m just curious to know, you know, before you sort of got into chronic pain and you got into, you know, doing what you doing now, what drew you to the health and fitness space or what drew you towards maybe I know you’ve studied Paul Chek.
[00:10:22] Leigh Brandon: If I go back to I can talk about Ibiza again cuz this is where it kind of in one way in one in one respect it started. So, you know, in my younger years I used to go to Ibiza every year for two weeks, party hard. And I’ve done that for several years in a row. I came back one year and I think it’s the day after we got back, me and my girlfriend at the time. And I looked in the mirror and I looked like one of those Cambodians I used to show on TV, skin and bone with a pot belly. Yeah, and I was what, 23 at the time. And I just said to myself, this stops here. That’s not good. That look is not good. So, I said, right, I’m going to do something about this. And I thought, okay, so what do I What is it I need to do? And you know, until the age of 21 I’d always been playing competitive sports, the age of 6 to 21, football, cricket, basketball, tennis, whatever I played it. And to a reasonable level as well, not a high level but a reasonable level in all the sports. And I thought, I need to join a gym. And this was in the time when gyms weren’t that popular as well. It was, you know, not many people went to a gym back then. So, joined a gym and then realized quick pretty early on, even though actually we had a gym at my school, which again was very unusual back then. So, I’d done a little bit of lifting, a little bit of weights at home, but again, you never you never do it properly when you’re at home. So, I joined a gym and soon realized I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. So, I thought, okay, what do I need to do? So, I started buying magazines, Muscle and Fitness, Flex, Muscle Media 2000, Natural Muscular Development. I bought them all. And I would just be on my commute into work in London where I was at the time, I’d just be reading constantly. And this was in the day when you used to get magazines sent to your home, right? Didn’t have the internet back then. And every time a magazine would land on my doormat, I’d just be really excited. I wanted to learn more and more and more and more. And I went from I’m trying to trying to work out how much I would have weighed in kilos cuz we worked in stones back then. I think I would have been about 45 kilos. Now, I’m 1.78 tall, so I’m average height. 4 years later, I was 80 kilos. Right?
[00:12:56] Stretch Raynor: Nearly double, mate.
[00:12:58] Leigh Brandon: Yeah. So, I went from I don’t know, 25% body fat to 6.7% body fat. And it was like, “Wow, you know, I can create such a change in myself. Why can’t I help other people?” And I remember one night I was in a I was in a health club. I was chatting to these two guys. These two guys were the first personal trainers I ever met. I’d never heard of personal training before. So, this is in the mid-90s. And we were having dinner. I’d just done a workout. We three of us were having dinner and we were talking. And one of them said to me, “How do you know all this stuff?” And like, “What do you mean?” He said, “We both went to Loughborough University, the best sports science university in the UK. We both got first-class honors degrees in sports science. And you’re talking to us like you were in our class. How do you know all this stuff?” And I just said, “Well, I love to read.” So, you know, you’ll know who I’m about to say. Some of your listeners might not know, but you know, I was reading Paul Chek, Charles Poliquin, Charles Staley, Dan Duchaine. All these guys, and I was just lapping this information up. And one of them said, “Why don’t you do what we do?” So, at the time I was working in IT. So, I used to run a facilities management software database. And I thought, “What? I can I can get paid for working in a gym? That’s like telling a child they can get paid for playing with toys all day, right?” And so, that was my lightbulb moment. And I said to one of them, “Okay, so what do I do? What’s my next step?” I was literally I was sold in that second. I was like, “This is what I need to do.” And one of them said, “Ah, just don’t worry about it. Just work in a gym. You don’t need qualifications.” And I just thought, “No. That’s not right. I need to get qualified.” And the other one said, “Well, you know, you can either do what we did. You can do a sports science degree. It’s going to take you 4 years.” And I thought, “Well, that’s not going to pay my mortgage, so that’s not going to happen.” And I said, “What’s the What’s the another option?” And he said, “Well, what I would recommend,” he said, “probably the best organization to train with is the American College of Sports Medicine.” So, I was like, “Right.” So, that’s what I did. I went off, I got qualified with them, and then literally I started working back end of ’96 as a trainer, and then we had a really cold winter towards the end of ’96, and I thought, I’ve had enough of this. I’ve just changed career. Why don’t I go and work in Australia? And that and that’s when I went and lived in Australia for a year and got some really good experience working around Australia. So, that’s kind of what got me into the industry, and then I went back home, and I started working in a leisure center with a group of personal trainers quite local to where I was living. And one of the first clients I had, I remember this, I was in the gym, and this lady was doing a lat pulldown exercise. And as she pulled the bar down, she went, oh, you know, really winced, and she had this really sharp pain in her shoulder, and I was going, oh, yeah, stop what you’re doing. Stop. Okay, let’s do something else. Right, that obviously hurts. Let’s move on. But part of me was like, but why did that why did that hurt? I don’t understand. Like I’ve done all this training, the American College of Sports Medicine, the best training organization in the world at that time. I don’t understand what just happened, and I was I really anxious cuz I obviously I didn’t want her to hurt herself, but I felt like I don’t know enough. Like I need to know more. I need to understand it. I need to make sure that A, I’m not going to hurt people, but also what about what about people that are already in pain? How Like how do I help them? I’ve got no idea. So what happened was so I’ve been reading articles by Paul Chek by this point, And he really stood out to me. And I think it was in the year 2000 he started advertising that he was going to start teaching courses in the UK and I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting. I’m up for that.” And then I looked at how much he was charging and I thought, “Oh, maybe not.” So, it actually took about a year to kind of think, “You know what? I need to do this training because I need to know more. I don’t know enough.” I felt I felt even though compared to my contemporaries I actually felt like I knew a hell of a lot. Deep down inside I felt like I didn’t know enough. I needed I needed more to be able to help people and I was seeing how many people were in pain and it was a lot of people. And I didn’t want to make their pain worse and be actually wanted to help them. So that’s kind of what really pushed me to learn more. So, you know, over the years I you know, I dived into things like biomechanics, pain science, nutrition, and you know, nervous system work. So, you know, I trained with the CHEK Institute for 5 and 1/2 years and I went on to do other things. Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. I got I did lots of manual therapies like sports massage and Active Release Techniques, which is a which is amazing. And when I when I look back now I remember it was not long after I did my first ever CHEK course. So, the training with the CHEK Institute is a bit different now. But in my first course we did what’s called lumbar spine pathology. So, how to help people with lower back injuries, which you know, as you know, is very common. And I remember I was working in a health club by this point in London. And I remember this lady came in and she had really severe lower back pain. And it was the club manager who sold her the membership. And she said he said to her, “I’m only going to allow you to become a member if you also sign up to work with Leigh. He’s our fitness manager and he’s trained in helping people with lower backs. He said, “Your back injury is so bad, I can’t let you A train on your own or with anyone else.” And she said, “Yeah, fine. That sounds great.” So I started working with this lady. So her name was Caroline. So again, I remember her really clearly. She was in her 40s. She was a professional dancer. And she her back pain was so bad, she hadn’t danced for a few years. Right? And also her back pain was so bad, she couldn’t work full-time. So what she was doing was she was working part-time in an office in a job that she hated. All she wanted to do was to get back to her passion and start dancing again. And so I took her on as a client. I did all my assessments that I’d learned through my training with the CHEK Institute, designed her a corrective exercise program. And she was training with me three times a week. And then week five came along and she disappeared. I thought, “Oh no, what’s happened? Is she Is she in hospital? Has she hurt herself? Have I done something? I you know, didn’t know and I’ve damaged her and what’s you know, and I was really concerned, right? So I’m trying to ring her, couldn’t get through to her and I’m thinking, “Oh no, what’s happened? You know, is she crippled? Is she paralyzed?” You know, cuz I know this is where some lower back injuries can end up, right? People can literally become paralyzed. So I went to the office and I said, “Look, can one of you guys chase up this lady Caroline?” I said, “I’m really worried about her. I’ve been training her for 4 weeks and now she’s disappeared. I you know, I’m really concerned.” Anyway, I kind of forgot about it cuz I know you know, I was working with other clients. And then one day one of the office staff came up to me and she said, “Oh, I’ve just spoken to Caroline.” I’m like, “Oh god, how is she? How is she?” And they said, “She’s amazing. The reason The reason you haven’t seen her, she’s gone away on a dance tour. She’s traveling around the world dancing.” And I was like, I was blown away. I was like, “What?” And you know, and looking back in you know, my career over 20 plus years of doing that kind of work, it doesn’t often happen that quickly, right? And even if she’d have said to me in week five, “Am I ready to go back on a dance tour?” I’d have said, “No, you need a bit more strengthening yet.” So, she was back doing her passion. She was back earning a full living. You know, she was really happy and she you know, she said to the office staff, “Look, please thank Leigh because you know, he’s really turned my life around.” And it made me realize, “Wow, like I’ve now got like this superpower.” And this is what it felt like. And it was so it was so rewarding because I saw what she was like when she walked in. And you know, she was in so much pain she could barely walk. And 5 weeks later she’s gone back to doing her passion on a dance tour. You know, so I it gave me that taste of oh my god, I can really help people with this information that I’ve learned, you know, so you know, that was just such a powerful moment for me and you know, obviously since then I’ve gone on to help multiple people and even you know, in 2013 I had the same injury that she had. And all I did was I know how to deal with this now. As serious as it was, okay, I know how to deal with it. To be fair, it took me nearly 2 years to heal properly. I’d completely herniated one of the discs in my spine. And I had what’s called a dropped foot, so I had to drag my left leg along instead of walking properly. But what it gave me was the confidence that I knew I was going to get better. Even though it was frightening, right? Because you think, “Oh, am I ever going to be able to work again? Am I ever going to be able to lift weights again? Am I ever going to be able to play tennis again?” Because my whole identity, and I didn’t even realize that until that time, my whole identity was wrapped up in being healthy, in being active. And I never forget I was walking down the street where I live to go and get an MRI on my spine. I wanted to just double-check that the damage I thought I had done was right. And it turns out I was spot on. My injury was so bad, I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t put shoes or socks on. Luckily for me, it was in June, so I slipped into my Birkenstocks. But I couldn’t get in a taxi. I couldn’t drive cuz I couldn’t sit down. So I had to walk to a bus stop, or drag my left leg along to a bus stop. And as I was walking down my street, I was living in London at the time, and for the first time in my life ever I felt vulnerable. Right? Because first of all, I’m a fast runner. I’ve always been quick, right? Even now at 56, I can probably do a sub 12-second 100 m. If an 8-year-old girl had come up to me and attacked me right there and then, I would not have been able to defend myself. Right? But I’m living in North London, right? Not one of the safest places to live, right? And I’m thinking, well, first of all, I can’t run. And second of all, I couldn’t even throw a punch. Right? I’ve done a lot of boxing training, so I know how to throw a punch, but I was in such bad condition that I wouldn’t have been able to defend myself against anybody. Right? So, I felt so vulnerable, and it was scary, and I think, wow, that’s what it must feel like to be, you know, really old. You can’t run, you can’t protect yourself against anybody. And so, my identity was really challenged. And it makes you think, well, who am I now? Mhm. Because I’m not what I thought I was. I’m not what I identified myself as being. I’m no longer this beacon of health, this fit person, right? So that was that was an important, I guess, part of my own journey is that it made me understand so much better what other people are going through. Because, yes, I’ve had amazing training. You know, you know, to be taught personally by Paul Chek for 5 and 1/2 years is, you know, I’m so fortunate because the students coming through now, so I teach for the CHEK Institute now, you know, poor students, they get me. They don’t get Paul Chek, right? But going through that experience myself made me really realize really empathize what people are going through when it’s, you know, it is challenging your own identity. And that’s a really scary thing to go through. You know, and as and as we’ll probably talk about a little bit later, being scared is a really bad thing if you want to get out of pain as well. Yeah, people so that’s kind of that’s kind of my journey as to how I got into pain, but also, more importantly, why I still focus on it now.
[00:26:47] Stretch Raynor: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that story, mate. It was really good, and there was a lot, I think, I can resonate with there. I’m not a I’m not a person who’s been through chronic pain. I’ve definitely had my fair share of injuries and I know the frustration of being pain, but for me most of the time it’s been for short periods of time and it’s been stuff I’ve been able to rehab and get out of. But to walk that and to experience that yourself, just like you say, it just brings a whole new level of empathy and understanding to your clients and to the people you’re trying to serve and you know the space they’re in. The identity stuff is super powerful because, like you say, we identify with, you know, the person we are and if we are a physically active, capable person being able to do everything we want in life and then we’re, you know, hit with chronic pain and that takes us takes everything away from us, you know, it can have such huge mental impacts, which is something we definitely want to touch on today and talk about because I think that’s a very powerful, and key component of chronic pain. Like you sort of said, it brings up that fear, and it’s something else we need to learn to manage not just the physical, but the emotional side of that. But before we do, I’d like to just rewind back there because I see a great love of learning and curiosity in you and you’re very passionate about what you do, which is similar to myself. And we work in an industry of health and fitness where that’s rare. There are a lot of great coaches out there that have such a great depth and love of learning and such passion for what they do and help our clients, but there’s also probably more trainers out there that really don’t give a And I think that’s a valid point you sort of touch on and we need to touch on because there are people going to fitness experts that have probably done a life for degree or, you know, done some university course and yet they’re still not seeing the results that they want to see because the person they’re working with or the trainer they’re working with just isn’t that passionate about what they’re doing or they don’t have the skill set, or the knowledge.
[00:28:47] Leigh Brandon: Mhm.
[00:28:48] Stretch Raynor: So, it’s like anything, really, isn’t it? You can go to an accountant that’s a good accountant, or you can go to an accountant that’s an excellent accountant. A doctor, a mechanic. You could name any industry where we can see the difference between low-level and high-level. And it doesn’t always come back to qualifications. what are your thoughts around that? Have you experienced similar thing, or what would you say to people that are maybe going, “I’m not going to go back to a PT because it didn’t work.”
[00:29:15] Leigh Brandon: I want to take a moment to share a story that really stuck with me because it’s about more than just pain. Catherine was once a fit, active runner. But after a back injury, she could barely get out of bed. The worst part, she couldn’t even pick up her toddler without wincing in pain. She felt helpless, exhausted, and scared of what the future might look like. Together, we figured out the root of the problem. Just 5 weeks later, she was off painkillers, and within 10 weeks, she was jogging and lifting her son pain-free. If pain is stopping you from living the life you want, grab my free chronic pain breakthrough blueprint at www.bodychek.co.uk/freepainguide.
[00:30:05] Leigh Brandon: It’ll show you the seven reasons you might be stuck in pain and how to start moving forwards. Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. To be honest, like qualifications to a degree don’t mean anything. Mhm. Is what I would say. What counts is how someone can help someone else achieve their dream at the end of the day. Of course, qualifications help, right? But they’re not the be-all and end-all. And you know, you’re talking to someone that’s spent well into six figures on my own education. And there are some things that I mean, I would say everything I’ve studied has been of use, everything. But there have been some qualifications where, like now, I probably don’t use any of what I learned. So, going back to my study with the American College of Sports Medicine, apart from some of the extremely basic anatomy that I learned from them, probably don’t use any of it. Right? There was probably a lot of information in that course that’s just completely irrelevant to being a personal trainer. Yes, it’s good to know the background information, but actually when it comes to working with a real human being, a lot of it is just irrelevant, really. It’s almost It’s almost like you need that information to pass the exam, but when you get into the real world, it’s like it’s like when you pass your driving test, right? That’s when you start to learn. It’s when you’ve already passed. You don’t I mean, yes, obviously you get to learn to you know, use the pedals and change gear if you if you’re driving a manual, but you really learn after you’ve passed your test, right? When you’re when you’re in your car on your own. And then obviously when you when you get much older, you know, I mean, I often drive 200 miles to teach the CHEK Institute, and it’s almost like I leave my home and I don’t think about driving and I get to the other end 200 not miles away. I haven’t even thought about driving because it’s become so automatic, right? So, you know, do I think about what I learned in my driving lessons when I’m driving a car? Well, no, because it’s become automatic. But I would say everything I learned when I was driving is useful, but I don’t drive the way that my driving instructor taught me to drive. Right?
[00:32:35] Stretch Raynor: And it’s a good analogy, mate. I like it. And I think, you know, you’re on the money there. I think it’s also just a very valid point to point out because I think there is a lot of fear with people who are in chronic pain or have got an injury and getting back into training or having that fear of I’m going to go to a trainer and they’re just going to beat me up and make me worse. And yes, that can happen. And I think it comes down to like you sort of say, it’s trying to find a reputable coach. And it can be tricky because qualifications aren’t the be-all and end-all. and results are really, you know, what we need to be looking for. But I mean, just talking to you, I can tell that you’re very passionate and hearing your story, I think that’s quite valuable as well. And the fact that you’ve been through chronic pain yourself and come out the other end of it, well, you’re already starting to climb the ladder there, aren’t you? So, a few good questions to sort of ask a coach, I suppose, if you’re going to start to work with a coach and get a good understanding and understanding there. I’m guessing that you know, you have you have people come to you and they’re coming to you with chronic pain. And there’s probably that question in their mind. They’re like, is this guy going to be able to help me or should I be going to the doctor and getting a cortisone injection or should I be going under the knife and having an operation?
[00:33:41] Stretch Raynor: Mhm. What would you say to that client?
[00:33:49] Leigh Brandon: So, it would depend on the client. Right? So, I’ll give you an example. I’m working with someone at the moment and when she first came to see me, she told me she’d had a lot of issues with her knee. She sent me her x-rays and she said, “Look, I’ve been told I need a complete knee replacement. And these are my x-rays. What do you think?” Now, I’m not a radiologist, right? But I took one look at her x-rays and I said, “You need a knee replacement.” It was just so obvious, right? So, if you think of someone’s knee, you know, your femur, your thigh bone, and your tibia, your shin bone, at the ends, they’re parallel, right? Well, in hers, one of the ends was they were touching each other, and then the other end they weren’t. Right? So, there’s so much wear and tear. And straight away, I just said to him, “Yeah, it seems to me that the advice you’ve been given is the correct advice from my opinion. Right? So, that would be that would be that. But, the other thing I would say is the way that I work with someone in pain is that I try to find out what the root cause of the problem is. What because pain is often trying to tell you something. Okay? Someone once said that pain is the way that your subconscious mind makes your conscious mind aware of something. So, if you think of it this way, if you’re walking along the street and you tread on something sharp, like could be a nail, let’s say. Now, obviously, you haven’t consciously stood on a nail. Right? You’ve done it unconsciously. Well, as soon as your foot feels that sharpness on the base of your foot, there’ll be a receptor on the surface of the skin, a pain receptor, it’s called a nociceptor, and that will send a signal via your nervous system up through your spinal cord to your brain to make your conscious mind aware that you’re about to tread on something sharp. So, then your brain has got a decision to make. So, your brain will probably fire up muscles in your leg to stop you pushing down on that nail. It’s there to protect you. Right? So, with any pain, it’s important to understand what that signal is trying to tell you. Whether it’s you’re about to step on a nail or your hand is on a radiator, if you don’t take it off, you’re going to burn your hand up, or whatever it might be. So, the way the way that I work with people is three basic levels: at the structural level, the nutritional level, and the neurological level. Because at any of those levels and often it’s more than one, and it can also be all three levels that are involved in creating pain. So, from the structural level, I explain it a little bit like a bicycle wheel. So, if you’ve got a bicycle, you want the wheels to spin straight and true, right? Well, the bicycle The shape of the bicycle wheel is reliant on the length and the tension of the spokes in the bicycle wheel. If you’ve got a crooked bicycle wheel, it’s because some of the spokes are too tight and some of the spokes are too loose. So, what you would do if you were a I don’t know what you call it, a bicycle engineer, I don’t know. If you If you spun the wheel and you saw it was crooked, you would look for spokes that are too tight and you’d want to loosen them. You’d look for spokes that are too loose and you’d want to tighten them and that would straighten the wheel, right? Well, our body works in a very similar way. So, our body is aligned predominantly due to the length tension in the muscular system. Okay? So, you might have muscles on one side of the body that are excessively tight. And then on the opposite side of a joint, you’re going to have muscles that are lengthened, so they’re under tension, right? So, what that does is it doesn’t just potentially create issues for the muscles, which again, it could do purely just from the tension or you could end up you know, straining a muscle. But what it will do is it will pull the joint out of alignment. So, now you Now with movement or even long prolonged positions such as sitting in a chair which most people do most of the time. What can happen is it can put excessive stress through specific areas of a joint that the body can’t cope with. So now that can start to create wear and tear. Okay, so that in itself can create pain. And the wear and tear can end up being, you know, it could be a ligament sprain. It might be the joint itself starts to wear out so you could have meniscus or cartilage or whatever starts to wear out. It might be an arthritic condition. And that in itself can start to create pain in its own time. Now one example of someone who I helped that had purely a structural issue was a was a fellow called Billy. So Billy came to me, he was a rugby player. He was a fly-half. He was semi-professional. He had played for Saracens. So that they’re for the last 10 years have been the top Premier League side in the UK. But he dropped down a league so he’s playing for a team called Rosslyn Park. Well, again, pretty good team but he was now semi-pro. And he’d had thigh and groin pain for 3 years. And what was happening was he would play three matches. He would get injured. He would go and see the physio. He’d get some sports massage. He’d get some acupuncture. He’d go back and play again. He’d play for three matches. He’d get injured again then he’d go back and see the physio. Get some massage. Get some acupuncture. And what was happening was for 3 years, there’s a lot of threes in this story. He would play three matches, get injured, sit on the sidelines for three matches. Then he’d go and play three matches. And it was pretty much like that for 3 years. Right? So really frustrating for him. And ideally he wanted to get back to playing in the Premiership, but now he’s worried that he’s not even going to be able to keep his place in the team at Rosslyn Park, right? So, Billy played for England actually at junior level. So, you know, he was a talented lad. So, he came to me and he said, “Look, do you think you can help?” He said, “Look, I’ve literally got 2 months before our preseason starts.” And he said, “I just need to deal with this issue. Can you help?” And I said, “Look, I’ll do my best.” So, again, I did my assessment on him. I found all these let’s call it dysfunctions structurally in his body, you know, some muscle imbalances. And I designed an exercise program for him. So, the first month we just really worked purely on Okay, let’s get your foundations in place. Let’s get your structure optimal. Let’s get you well aligned. Let’s get your core stability working really well. So, we did 4 weeks, and then I got him in for another assessment. Everything’s going well. Like, he was definitely realigning better. Not optimal, but after 4 weeks he you know, he made a lot of improvement. And I had a decision to make. He’s going to start preseason in 4 weeks. And I said, “Okay, what are you going to be doing in preseason?” He’s like, “Well, we’re going to be tackling bags.” He said, “We won’t be tackling each other yet, but you’re going to be tackling bags. We’re going to be kicking. We’re going to be doing agility work.” And I thought, “Well, he needs to be strong enough to cope with that.” Now, I would have loved longer to get him ready for that, but I had another 4 weeks, and that was it. So, I took a bit of a gamble. And so, I kind of really ramped up his training. Still doing a little bit of work to maintain what we’d done in the first 4 weeks, but now I had to step him up a levels. Now, I’m getting more into strength and a bit of power work. So, we did that 4 weeks, and then he basically went off for preseason. So, he went through that season. He played every game. And at the end of the season, he said to me, he said, “Not only did I not get injured, he said, I was running faster, I was turning quicker, and he said, “I was kicking further than ever.” So, he had an absolutely perfect season. So, that was an example of someone that had a purely structural issue. We solved his structure, and now he wasn’t in pain. And he’d been in pain for 3 years, and Billy’s retired now, but he spent the rest of his career following my programs. So, he would just swap every 4 weeks, he would just swap the program. He never got injured again. So, that was pretty cool.
[00:42:50] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, definitely, mate. Definitely. What when you assess him, can you think of Can you remember what sort of was red flag there? What came at What came up for you?
[00:43:00] Leigh Brandon: Yeah, it was It was a long time ago, so I can’t remember in detail, but one thing I do remember is there’s something called the lateral system. Are you familiar with the lateral system? Yeah. So, for the listeners, there’s a muscle on the side of the hip called the gluteus medius. And on the opposite side of the hip you’ve got your adductor muscles like in the groin area. And whenever you’re on one leg, those muscles work to keep your torso stable and upright above that one leg. So, if you think playing rugby, running, and kicking, he was spending a lot of time on one leg. He was right-footed, so he was spending a lot of time on his left leg. So, there’s also a muscle on the opposite side that attaches to the spine and the pelvis called the quadratus lumborum. So, those three muscles work together to maintain the stability of your body when you’re standing on one leg. And I remember there was a real issue on one side. I can’t remember exactly what side it was, but there was a real issue with his lateral system on one side. And I remember we did a lot of work to rebalance those muscles so they were working optimally together. And from what I remember, it was mainly that I believe that was causing his issues. So once we got that sorted, you know, he was he was great. So from my memory, that’s that was the main issue that was really going on there.
[00:44:29] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, awesome, mate. Yeah, it’s a good one to hear, isn’t it? When I hear that, I just think, okay, well, so you’ve got a guy he’s at a high level athlete and yet he can still be in pain even though he’s a high level athlete. And often, you know, when we do play sport, you know, we’re using certain muscles repetitively really in our sport over and over again, but other muscles could be untrained or they could be getting tight and this can create this structural imbalance. So I like this you know, the bicycle wheel analogy that you used there. 100%. which can obviously lead to chronic pain or it can increase the chances of injury. And you know, the work that you’ve doing there to assess and find out what’s going on and then creating a corrective exercise program to maybe lengthen the tighter muscles, relax the nervous system a little bit there and to strengthen the weaker muscles can just make a huge or significant difference. And it sounds like it’s done that for your dancer and it’s also done that for the rugby player. You mentioned there that in the season before he came to see you, he was getting lots of physio done and he’s getting a lot of acupuncture done and you know, that’s obviously being a temperamental fix, but it’s not getting him back to the level where he needs to be. Can you talk to us a little bit about that because I think a lot of people, you know, when they get injured, their first course of action is to go and see a physio or go and see a chiropractor or go and get some acupuncture or something like that. Is there a place for that and where does that stop? Where do we think, okay, that’s enough of that, it’s time to get into the gym and start doing some strength?
[00:45:59] Leigh Brandon: Yeah, there’s definitely a place for that for sure. And, you know, like you alluded to earlier, there are there’s good people in certain professions and there’s really good people in certain professions. So, this is where it’s important to I guess ask questions of someone before you go to work with them. I’ve taught a quite a few physiotherapists at in the CHEK Institute. And you know, their anatomy knowledge is really good. Quite often their hands-on skills are really good. But where, for instance, then that they’re not trained is prescribing exercises. You know, I mean, perhaps they do get some training, but it’s a very different type of training to what we might teach at the CHEK Institute. So, you know, we go into a lot more detail in terms of how to design an exercise program. We go into a lot detail in terms of you know, exactly how many reps you do, how many sets you do, what’s your rest period, what kind of intensity should you do. Because, as you know, there are different types of muscle fibers, as an example. So, what it what I guess I’ve seen from physiotherapists is that they’re kind of taught, “Whatever exercise you do, it’s three sets and it’s 10 repetitions, and it doesn’t really matter how fast you do them or there’s no focus on the tempo.” so, you know, what I see when I when I teach a physiotherapist, they become the best physiotherapists is kind of is kind of what I’ve seen. So, I think you do need to ask someone how they look at pain. Do they look at it from the three aspects that I discussed, the structural, which is where, you know, you’re going to get help from with a physiotherapist, chiropractor, etc. But what about nutritional and what about the neurological level? Do they Do they look I mean, listen, for some people, they’ll go to a physiotherapist. I have in the past, you know, when I was training like a bodybuilder, I remember getting this It wasn’t even pain, but all of a sudden my right arm stopped working. I was bench pressing and the right side wasn’t doing anything. And so I went to see a physio and he did a treatment on me and it was working again. Right? But obviously that wasn’t necessarily a chronic issue. so but there’ll be some pain issues where literally you’ll go and get a treatment and it will solve the problem. You know, I mentioned, you know, I’m trained in Active Release Techniques. You know, one example I remember a lady came to me and she said, “I’ve had carpal tunnel syndrome for a year. I’ve had three sessions a week with a physiotherapist for a year.” She said, “It’s not really done anything.” So using my training of active release, what I did was I literally just went systematically down the nerve. So again, for the audience carpal tunnel can be a nerve entrapment on a nerve that runs right way from the neck all the way down into the hand basically. So I went through every point where she could potentially have a nerve entrapment probably about six different areas right the way down to her wrist and a little bit of treatment on her hand. It took me about 10 minutes to do the treatment. And then she got off the table and she looked at me confused. She’s like “What did you just do to me?” I said, “Why do you say that?” She went “I can’t feel any pain.” And she hadn’t felt pain but she hadn’t been pain free for a year. And I was a bit surprised, right? I was I was kind of shocked and I thought, well, yeah, maybe you know, she’ll walk down the street and it’ll come back. So, I said, look, you know, book in again for another day another couple of days time cuz these treatments generally work better if you have a few sessions 2 days apart. You get the maximum effect. So, she came back 2 days later and she said, I’m still not in any pain. And she was like surprised and I and I was a bit surprised as well. And I said, well, look, let me let me just do the same treatment again. Took 10 minutes. And again, I was still a bit like, did that did that 10-minute initial treatment really get the job done? And I said, look, you know, if you want to come back in 2 days time, you can. It’s up to you know. Anyway, she came back in 2 days time. She said, I’m still not in any pain. I’m like, okay, well, let me just do the treatment again. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I saw her a year later and she’s like, yeah, and the pain never came back. So, there are some instances when purely working on a structural issue will solve the problem. But, I would say they’re in the minority to a large degree. but basically, her issue was she had a trapped nerve. Right? So, basically, she may have had some damage, bruise, or something somewhere along that shoulder to arm region. And obviously, when you get If you imagine something bleeding, right? It sticks. You get scab, right? Well, that can happen on the inside, too. And if it sticks to a nerve, it’s going to cause nerve pain. Now, she was experiencing it in her wrist, but it could have been anywhere could anywhere happening from the neck all the way down through. And it might have been you know, I don’t remember exactly where I remember feeling the tension. It might have been the first actual part of the body I treat might have been in the neck. Mhm. It might have literally taken a minute to actually release that. But it was just having that knowledge of okay, so it could well be a nerve entrapment. Let me just go all the way along the nerve, see where it could be trapped, and maybe that will get the job done. Again, I’m not going to say that’s going to be the case in every carpal tunnel syndrome case. But that was that was the case for her. So there’s definitely a place for things like hands-on therapy. There’s definitely a place for things like corrective exercise, but just want to add a point there. So corrective exercise is great. It definitely takes stress off tissues. But that’s not Generally, that’s not the end of the story because, you know, take Billy for example, not only did I need to straighten up his bicycle wheel spokes, so to speak, I had to get him so that he was strong enough to be and resilient enough to not get injured playing rugby, getting hit by massive guys, right? You know, guys weighing, I don’t know, 120 kilos at speed, right? So where I think some people often miss the important thing is not just getting out of pain, it’s becoming robust enough so that the pain doesn’t come back.
[00:53:14] Stretch Raynor: Well, said.
[00:53:15] Leigh Brandon: That is a that is a really important aspect.
[00:53:17] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, I agree with that. I’ve worked with plenty of physios and ART specialists like you’ve mentioned before. You know, we even know a couple in common when we were chatting before the podcast. and I think that they’re great. And the connection that we can have as a as a personal trainer or coach to a physio or a chiropractor can really help. And there is definitely time and place for it, but I agree with you, too. It’s sort of like when they’re in chronic pain or there’s a lot going on there, the therapy stuff can get them to a certain level, which might even be out of pain, which is great, but then if we don’t actually start to strengthen those muscles and start to realign the bicycle wheel and get everything working properly again and making those structural changes, then chances are that pain’s going to come back in the long run and they’ll end up back in therapy again. I also like the fact that you pointed out there that you know, you here you are treating you know, you’re treating the whole nerve, but you could be treating the neck even though the pain is in the wrist. And I think that can be a big thing, too. We can go to a physio or someone with like knee pain and it could be something further up the chain. It could be the hip or it could even be below the chain. Could be the ankle and you know, wrist pain it could be the shoulder, could be the neck. You know, just because the pain is in that location, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where the problem is. That might be where you’re feeling the sensation. yeah, so there’s a lot to take into consideration when we’re sort of talking about that physical aspect. Before we move on and we start talking about nutrition, which is your next one, is there anything else you want to touch on there Leigh in terms of the physical side?
[00:54:43] Leigh Brandon: Well, the other thing to bear in mind is I guess so I’m kind of saying that this is just structural. It’s very difficult to completely separate the structural from the nutritional
[00:54:58] Stretch Raynor: Mhm.
[00:54:58] Leigh Brandon: From the neurological. Cuz in a way they do all overlap. So in a way yes, you can do something structural. So for instance you know, the person with the carpal tunnel syndrome you could say it’s structural, but actually it was a nerve issue. Mhm.
[00:55:16] Stretch Raynor: Right?
[00:55:16] Leigh Brandon: Yes. So you kind of could say well that’s neurological, but it’s it was the structural causing the neurological issue. Mhm. You know, and as we’ll come on to discuss, if there’s a structural issue, it could be because of a nutritional issue. So they do all overlap and I’m just trying to simplify it for people to understand. But it’s more So, for instance, in Billy’s case, it was more structural than anything else. If that makes sense.
[00:55:44] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, 100% mate. And that’s a good way to point it out. Like there are obviously all these connections in between that and they’re all very closely related to it, you know? We can go to the gym and we can train really hard, but if our nutrition’s not in check, we’re not really going to see the results that we want. and obviously the neurological system as well. We’ve got to be able to work on that, especially if we want to get strong in the gym. So, they’re all intertwined. so, let’s step into it now because I think that maybe nutrition isn’t something people think about when they’re in chronic pain. They don’t stop to think of, like, “Hm, the food I’m putting in my mouth could be causing or could be part of what’s causing the pain that I’m feeling.” So, where do you start with someone when it comes to talking about nutrition? If they’re in chronic pain and nutrition’s the topic.
[00:56:28] Leigh Brandon: Yeah, so the thing is if someone’s eating a let’s call it a poor diet, that could include inflammatory foods, so foods that we know cause inflammation in the body. Now, again, when we look at pain, as I’ve alluded to, pain is basically a communication pathway, often between let’s call it the outside of the body and the brain. It’s making the unconscious or the conscious mind aware of the unconscious, right? Well, when we have inflammation in the body, that’s going to set off receptors. Okay? It’s also going to set off the immune system cuz that’s what creates the inflammation. So, the immune system is basically attacking something that it doesn’t see as being part of us, right? And there are certain foods that we know are very inflammatory. And, you know, probably the most spoken about today, I think, like seed oils and vegetable oils, like processed seed oils, vegetable oils, things like rapeseed
[00:57:28] Stretch Raynor: Mhm.
[00:57:29] Leigh Brandon: And such like. And they can ramp up the nervous system again, which will increase your likelihood to feel pain or more appropriately, it reduces your threshold before you feel pain. Okay? So, you’ve got inflammatory foods. I mean, again, there’s plenty. So, you’ve got the seed oils, vegetable oils. You’ve got things like processed sugars, alcohol. for a lot of people, things like gluten. And again, some people say it might not be the gluten. It might be the glyphosate that they spray on these crops to dry them, which again, we know is absolutely horrendous for the body. People can have food sensitivities. So again, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an inflammatory food to cause inflammation. So, again, the most common foods that we know people are sensitive to are again, gluten-containing foods. processed or pasteurized dairy is a big issue for people. in the US, I know corn is a big issue. So again, quite often in countries where they eat a large amount of a certain food, tends to often be a food that people in that country become sensitive to. And sensitive just means will create an immune response. So, in America, we know that, you know, whereas in the UK and I believe Australia as well, you know, we tend to sweeten things with sugar. In the US, they tend to use high-fructose corn syrup. So again, there’s a lot of that in the American food supply. In Asia, rice tends to be quite a big one, not so much in the Western world. soya can also be a big issue for people. They’re the common ones, but you can literally be sensitive to any food.
[00:59:18] Stretch Raynor: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:59:19] Leigh Brandon: And we’re And we’re all different.
[00:59:21] Stretch Raynor: Yeah. Do you do testing for that? Would you do an IGG or you do a gut testing? What are you What are you doing to point out that maybe or highlight that with your clients?
[00:59:30] Leigh Brandon: Yeah, so I do run a blood test and I’ve used different blood tests over the years. I think it’s fair to say there’s not a 100% accurate blood test yet. I think they are getting better. but I found them to be very useful. And again, I know they get a lot of criticism. I know some people use muscle testing to assess whether someone’s sensitive to a food and that’s simply where you know, you might take a food and what one way of doing it is you get you get person to hold a food and I near their belly button near their navel and it’s best if you cover it. So, maybe put it in a brown paper bag so they don’t actually know what it is. And then you ask them to hold their arm out to the side and you test how much strength they’ve got in the shoulder. If it’s a food that’s going to make them strong healthy and stronger they’ll be able to resist your stress on that on that shoulder very strongly. If it’s a food that potentially going to do them harm, they’ll go weak.
[01:00:33] Stretch Raynor: Really? Didn’t know that one. There you go.
[01:00:35] Leigh Brandon: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that Paul Chek Paul Chek showed me that one and I remember we did it in a class and we had things like raisins, we had table sugar. Yeah. we had something else I can’t remember now. Every single person in the class tested weak to table sugar. Every single person. There’s about 40 something people in the class. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, which is not really a surprise if you know what table sugar does to your body.
[01:00:58] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, 100% mate. It’s that ultra-processed diet and it’s like just not aligned with our human biology and the food that we’re meant to be eating. So, you can tell that it’s going to cause impacts. And it’s one of those things where a little bit is probably not going to kill you, but it’s like you know, it’s like picking a scab or scratching a scab. If you scratch it once, probably nothing, but if you keep picking at it, you keep scratching at it, eventually it’s going to be inflamed and you know, that’s sort of what’s happening, isn’t it? People think I get away with this. I’ve eaten this for years.” It’s not the cause, but when we start to do tests, what I like about test two is it’s the data. This is sort of the thing that comes up. And like you said, they’re not 100% accurate, but I think they are definitely a good way to point people in a good starting direction. But back when I was in London at the gym, one of the first tests I’d often do with clients would be just a food sensitivity test. Just a basic IgG test. And the foods that would come back there, when you talk to them about it, they’d be like, “Well, eggs are coming up for you right now.” And they’re like, “Oh yeah, well, I do eat eggs. I feel a bit off.” And you’re like, “And gluten’s coming up for you, and dairy’s coming up for you.” And they’re like, “Oh, okay.” And then you get them to take those foods out of their diet for a little while, and the inflammation goes down. So, they lose weight. And it’s not because of the training we’re doing in the gym, it’s just cuz they’ve, you know, changed their diet. They sleep better, they have more energy. They’ve got skin irritations, you know, sometimes that sort of stuff can clear up. and you just see, you know, people going, “Ah.” And the penny dropping. And I always found that when we did like tests like that, then it would spark more curiosity for them to go deeper. Okay, so if I tested that and I got this result, well, what else can I test? Or where can I take this a little bit more? yeah, so I really like that idea. You’re talking about food sensitivities, what else is coming up in nutrition? Okay, so you obviously bring this up with clients, but where else do you go with that conversation?
[01:02:41] Leigh Brandon: Here’s a story I think a lot of you might relate to, especially if you’ve ever trained for something big. Chris was working towards his first marathon. Everything was going well until just 6 weeks out, his back gave in. He couldn’t walk, let alone run. He was devastated. Months of training felt wasted. But we built a plan together, and Chris followed it with full commitment. On race day, he ran pain-free, and finished in under 4 hours. If you’ve been sidelined by pain, and feel like your goals are slipping away, don’t give up just yet. Visit www.bodychek.co.uk/freepainguide and download the chronic pain breakthrough blueprint. You might just find the solution you’ve been looking for. Yeah, so again, toxins is a big one. Again, a toxin in the body is foreign. Your immune system will attack it. It will create inflammation. So, toxins well, I would say at least 95% of the food in our food supply is toxic. So, you know, it can be the NPK fertilizer that’s grown in if it’s not organic. Right? You can have pesticides residues. And you know, people think, “Oh, I can just wash that off.” No, it’s in the food. It’s not just on the surface, right? Or I can peel the apple. No, it’s in the food. herbicides, again, I’ve mentioned glyphosate. Glyphosate is deadly. Right? It Some people call it an antibiotic. It kills the good bacteria in your gut. Right? And you know, as Hippocrates said, all health and disease starts in the gut. So, also, depending on the soil that any food is grown in, it could be heavy metals in there. Right? So, you got pesticides, you’ve got NPK fertilizer, you’ve got herbicides like glyphosate, and you’ve got heavy metals. So, ideally, what people want to be doing is eating the best quality food that they can get. You know, that’s organic, biodynamic. When it comes to fish, wild. Don’t buy organic cuz it’s still farmed, right? And you know, these fish are swimming around in their own poop and you know, they get really sick and they get given antibiotics and all sorts of medications because they’re living in a really sick environment. And things like salmon, if it’s not organic, they actually pump a red dye into it to make it look like a normal salmon cuz they’re actually gray.
[01:05:18] Stretch Raynor: Yeah.
[01:05:19] Leigh Brandon: So, yes, so bio- biodynamic organic wild fish is the way to go. My advice is always buy foods that has no label on it. And what I mean by that is if you buy an apple, there’s no ingredient list. It’s an apple, right? If you buy potatoes, it’s potato. Hopefully they’re not putting anything else in it. You know, if you’re buying beef, check the label and make sure it’s just beef. Because then you know what is in the food. If you’re, you know, buying, let’s say, a mayonnaise, you know, it’s probably going to have some kind of horrible seed oil in it, you know? I know it takes time, and I’ll probably talk a bit more about time a bit later on, but someone once said, “If you don’t make time for your wellness, you’re going to have to make time for your illness.” Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. So, rather than going chasing from doctor to doctor, treatment to treatment, maybe spend 10 minutes and make your own mayonnaise if you want to eat mayonnaise as an example. Yeah. So, that’s really important. And the other thing with nutrition that’s really important is there’s something called leaky gut, and I’m sure a lot of people have heard of what leaky gut is, but just in case people haven’t heard. So, in your gut lining, you have tight what’s called tight junctions, and they’re meant to be semipermeable, but it is it is the barrier between the outside world and your bloodstream, basically. So, you know, we have a gastrointestinal tract. It goes from your mouth, and it comes out the other end. What your gut lining does, it only allows things into your bloodstream that are meant to be in there. Now, for several reasons, that barrier can become what we call leaky, okay? And things can get into your bloodstream that shouldn’t get in there. So again, that’s going to create an immune response. It’s going to create inflammation. It’s sending more signals back to your nervous system. It’s ramping up that nervous system, and your likelihood of feeling pain is going to go up. And you know, things like rheumatoid arthritis, as an example, is believed to be caused by a leaky gut. Yeah. So if you’re eating foods that can cause a leaky gut, and again, it’s most of the bad stuff I’ve already been mentioning, then you know, potentially that’s where you could end up. Leaky gut, more inflammation, more pain. So it’s really important to eat I would say try and try and think about what your ancestors would have eaten 400 years ago, and try and eat as close to that as possible. So that would include seasonal. So for instance, I don’t eat fruit in autumn and winter. Because my ancestors, and that’ll probably be yours to stretch, I would imagine, they wouldn’t have been eating fruit in autumn and winter. Unless they dried it, you know, cuz 400 years ago, our ancestors wouldn’t have had freezers. Right? So eat foods that are in season, and try and eat as close to how your ancestors would have eaten hundreds of years ago, because that’s how our bodies evolved. And if you move away from what we call your ancestral diet, the more the more chance you’re going to have problems. So when people get into let’s just call faddy diets, it generally doesn’t do you much good. You know, think about how your family would have eaten for thousands of years, and if you can eat as close to that as possible, you’re probably going to be on the right track.
[01:09:14] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, I like that. That’s a good baseline, mate. I think that aligns with a lot of what I sort of recommend as well. you know, cutting out a lot of the ultra-processed foods, cutting out, you know, seed oils, refined sugars, a lot of grains, a lot of gluten, a lot of things like that can definitely cause issues. So, it’s a really good place for people to start. and lots of underlying gut issues. I’ve suffered from leaky gut myself. Used to be an endurance athlete, doing way too many hours of training, too much stress on the body, and ended up having to go down that path and learn all about that myself. you know, then we’ve got, you know, SIBO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth. You’ve got SIFO with fungus overgrowth. There are so many things that can go wrong in the gut, and then that just has downstream impacts on every system in the body. You know, like you sort of said, our stomach lining absorbs that nutrients into our body, and nutrients is key. Like, our body functions on nutrients, and if we’re giving it the right nutrients, and it’s getting them in the right amounts, it’s going to thrive. And if it’s not, then it’s not going to thrive. We’re going to probably just survive. and that’s what we’re seeing a lot of, and that’s causing the inflammation. And, you know, there’s a lot of great research coming out around just about every chronic disease that you know is related back to your gut health. So, improving your diet is one of the best things we can do to manage any chronic disease and chronic pain. and yeah, I think it’s an overlooked piece of the puzzle sometimes. People are trying to do more work, more exercise, more training, more rehab, more sauna, more ice baths, more of these external things, but yeah, they’re not looking at the nutrition. And start to think about that as well, mate. So, it’s great to hear that, you know, you start to point your clients in the right direction.
[01:10:54] Leigh Brandon: You do got I’ve got a really good story of how someone healed their pain pretty much purely with nutrition. So, this was a fellow his name his name’s Trail. He was a CEO of a company and he was getting chest pain quite severe chest pain. And whenever he ate, his throat would swell up close and he couldn’t swallow. And he and he couldn’t breathe. Right? So, he couldn’t eat and every time he did eat, he couldn’t breathe. You think how stressful is that? How scary is that? Right? So, he’d been to see a number of doctors. One diagnosed him with what’s called costochondritis which just means inflammation of the of the ribs, right? Or the cartilage in the ribs. Didn’t really tell him anything. All the other doctors just shrugged their shoulders. One of them said what we can do is we can cut down your sternum open up your rib cage and have a look inside in case we can see anything. And he was just terrified at that thought, right? But it was he was getting to the point where he just stopped eating because it was so frightening cuz imagine every time you ate you can’t breathe. Right? Cuz your throat’s you know, swollen. So, when he came to see me so I’m I’m naturally quite slim, right? And he’s a little bit taller than me, but he weighed about the same as I did. And of course, I hadn’t seen him before, so I didn’t think anything. But he’d actually lost 17 kilos when he came to see me cuz he couldn’t eat, right? So he came to see me and he said, “What do you think? What do you think’s the issue?” And I said, “Well it makes sense to me that every if you eat something and you’re getting inflammation, it’s got to be something you’re eating. That makes complete sense to me. He said, “You know what? I mentioned that to my doctors and all of them said, ‘No, it’s definitely not that.'” And I said, “Well, that sounds I said, ‘Look, what I think we should do, just to rule it out, let’s get a blood test done. Let’s see if you’ve got any food sensitivities. Let’s cut them out and let and let’s see what happens.'” I said, “Look, from where you are now, surely that’s worth a try.” And he said, “Yeah, that sounds great.” So, the test that I was running back then was called a MRT. It’s quite a well-known test, mediator release test. I use a different one now, but that’s the one I was using back then. And it came back and there we go, there’s a whole list of foods that he was sensitive to. So, we rearranged his diet. We eliminated those foods that came up positive on the test. And within a few days, he started to feel better. And his throat stopped swelling up and the pain in his chest started reducing. And within about I can’t remember the exact timings now, but within about a month, he was pretty much eating a normal amount of food. And a few months later, all the pain had gone, all the swelling had gone. He was doing great. And then, I can’t remember it was several months later, I was I was at the place I used to work and there was someone at the door, so I went to the door. I opened the door and I said to this guy, “Can I help you? Like, who are you here to see?” And he looked me in the eye and he went, “Leigh, it’s Trail.” And I went, “Oh my god.” Right? Because I was looking at this guy that looked like an international professional rugby center. That’s what he looked like. Right? This guy had just packed with muscle and I just I was just in shock. I was like, “What?” I was literally stunned. And he said, “Yeah, this is me. I’m doing great. I just want to come and say hi.” Cuz you know, he didn’t He lived quite a long way from London. and I was like, “Oh my god, it’s so good to see you.” kind of thing, you know? And you know, since then I’ve gone on to help his family members with certain issues, and that you know, they’re doing really great. But that was purely a nutritional issue. Yeah. And it was a simple and it was a simple fix, and you know, sadly he’d been to see so many doctors, and probably cost him a hell of a lot of money. Mhm. And all it really required was a simple test, a simple alteration of the foods he was eating. Yeah. Yeah, he was still eating a fair amount of foods. It wasn’t like it was very restrictive diet. Mhm. And he was doing great, and you know, I’ve spoke to him relatively recently. He’s doing great. He’s you know, he’s got two He’s had two more kids since you know, since I worked with him, and you know, life is great. So, you know, that’s a really again, for me that was one of the most rewarding clients I ever worked with, because he was seriously thinking he was going to die. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you can’t eat I mean, how scary is It’s like It’s almost like not being able to breathe. Right? Well, he couldn’t breathe when he ate something.
[01:16:15] Stretch Raynor: The two worst things that can happen to you, mate.
[01:16:17] Leigh Brandon: Yeah.
[01:16:17] Stretch Raynor: Not going to breathe, not going to eat. it’s a good It’s a really valid point that you make. And you know, as someone who’s been through leaky gut, you know, I had issues with eggs, I had issues with That was his main issue. certain foods. Yeah, and I’ve got I’ve got histamine intolerance, so there’s certain foods with histamine that I know if I eat that causes more inflammation. Histamine makes you more alert, so if I eat foods high in histamine at night, it keeps me awake. That affects my sleep. And it really dumbfounds me sometimes how people overlook nutrition or they just really don’t understand the power of food. And sometimes just making such small changes in your diet can have transformative effects in your whole life around so many different things. Building muscle, energy, mood, sleep quality, so many things. We’re so focused in this industry and we’re so focused in our society on counting calories and counting macros and thinking about losing weight, but we’re not thinking about nutrient density and we’re not thinking about health and we’re not really thinking about performance cuz we’re just thinking about calories in versus calories out. And nutrition is food is information. It’s telling your body what’s going on in the environment around the body. And if you’re not giving it what it needs to thrive, well then it’s just going to go into survival mode and it down-regulates so much in our body, shuts down so many processes that make us feel terrible. And yet people want to try and get around food and they think it’s a hard thing. Like, “Oh, I can’t give up eating this or I can’t give up drinking alcohol or I can’t give up gluten or I can’t give up this.” I sort of get it, but at the same time it’s like, “Well, how important is your health to you?” Like, it’s going to come back. You’re the person in the driving seat and if you’re not going to do the work to make these changes, well then you’re going to put up with the consequences at the end of the day. And no amount of medication, pharmaceuticals, I don’t is I think it’s going to be the solution. It’s not going to fix the root cause of a bad diet. it might mask some of the symptoms, but in the long run it’s going to have worse health implications. and that’s the biggest problem with our conventional medicine system, you know? Our doctors aren’t trained in nutrition, they’re not trained in lifestyle. They won’t even stop and ask you questions about that sort of stuff. It’s just like, “You’ve got symptom A, B, and C. Hm, in my little booklet or in my education that tells me you’ve got X, Y, Z label disease. So, here’s a drug that’ll fix that or here’s a drug that will mask those symptoms. and we put so much faith into that system because, you know, that’s what we have done for decades, but the reality is we’ll step back and let’s have a look at your lifestyle. You know, let’s be honest about really what’s going on for you. And if health is important, well, what are you going to do about changing that lifestyle? And it’s the hard work and you said it yourself, mate, you went through chronic pain and it took you 2 years to get out of that chronic pain. But about you were eating well and you were training smart and you were looking after your health. It’s better to do that, but it wasn’t easy, it was challenging, but you’ve come out the other side a better person because of that. So,
[01:19:11] Leigh Brandon: Do you know one thing you said there was really important. You said food is information. It’s information about your environment. And that again emphasizes how important it is to eat seasonal, but also the one thing I didn’t mention, eat local. Mhm. Right? Because, you know, so I’m in the south of England. So, I tend to buy foods, as much as I possibly can, that were grown or raised in the south of England. If I’m eating fruits, vegetables, whatever that were grown in North Africa, it’s giving my informa- giving my body the information that I’m in North Africa. Right? Where the sun is completely different. Right? It’s confusing your body. Mhm. Now, again, that’s another thing that people don’t realize. You know, the sun up, the sun down is very different in North Africa now than where So, where I’m living, we’ve got very long days, right? We’re in the middle of you know, we’ve just had summer solstice. Sun’s coming up about 3:00 in the morning, it’s going down about half past 9:00 at night. Mhm. But in North Africa, I’m guessing they’re probably getting 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness. That’s very It’s very much a different information. Mhm. So, your body’s getting confused as to where in the world it is because you’re buying food from a different place. Mhm. Again, that’s something else that people often don’t realize. And the other the other important thing that you just mentioned there was about you know, doctors don’t take the time and listen, they don’t have the time. right. Right? Yeah. They don’t take the time to ask you questions about your lifestyle, you know, what stresses have you got going on, you know, how’s your family life, how’s your work life. You know, what kind of waters are you drinking? Are you eating organic food? What time are you going to bed? All that stuff. First of all, they’re not they’re not trained to ask those questions. They don’t know about nutrition, don’t know about lifestyle. But this is an important point and I’m not throwing stones at anybody here. But the situation we have with our medical system now and it’s pretty much the same in the entire Western world and probably the non-Western world as well is that doctors have now become sadly algorithm followers. Mhm. As you alluded to, you come in, you’ve got X. They go on their computer, they type in you’ve got X. Pop pops on the screen, this is what you need to prescribe them. Yeah. Right? So, you know, you might as well be you might as well be talking to AI Mhm. rather than a human being who’s really concerned. And you know, listen, I’m not having a pop at doctors. Doctors are being manipulated themselves. Right? I A friend of mine was a medical doctor, he’s handed in his medical license. And he said, “When I look back now at my medical training, it was trauma-based mind control.” Mhm. Right? They stress the hell out of you. You’re studying 24/7 for 7 years. You don’t get time to ask questions. You just have to learn what you’re being told and you have to regurgitate what you’ve been taught. Mhm. Right? Again, I’m not saying there aren’t good medical doctors because there are. Mhm. But I think it’s very important to understand you know, again, if in the UK as an example, and again, I’m sure it’s the same everywhere else, if you don’t follow the algorithm, they take your medical license away. Right? So, if you’re helping people, but you’re going against the algorithm, you can no longer basically support your family and pay your medical loan off, right? Which is tens and tens of thousands, because you’re not following the algorithm. You might have saved someone’s life by not following the algorithm, but you’re going to lose your medical license. If you follow the medical license, and you kill sorry, follow the algorithm, and you kill someone, you’ll get rewarded for it. And I know that sounds probably a bit harsh, but that’s the reality of the situation that we’re in right now. I guess the last the last 6 years probably underlined
[01:23:25] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, it’s so it’s terrible, mate. I think, you know, if you’ve got an acute injury, if you’re in a car accident, you break a bone, you’ve got a cut, the hospital’s the first place you should go. That’s the That’s the best place to go. But, if you’ve got a chronic disease, or if you’ve got something going on in terms of your health around that, then I would say that the current medical system is just failing us. And we can see that, you know, just looking at the statistics, it’s not working, and we need to change. Unfortunately, Australia’s the same. You know, it’s not about preventative medication, it’s not about looking at the trends and looking at the data, and getting on top of it before it becomes an issue. It’s all reactive. It’s very binary. You’re healthy, you’re healthy. You’re sick, you take a drug. and that’s unfortunately the state that we’re in right now, and hopefully it’s something that we’re going to change. I’d love to work with functional medicine practitioners or integrated doctors, like you say, the doctors that are making the time, and also coming at it from a more holistic perspective, but also coming at it from a data-driven perspective. and I often tell my clients that this is the path that they It’s a look into. and those that do, you know, reap the rewards. One more thing before we go on and start to talk about the neurological side of things. Supplementation, does that fit into your prescription?
[01:24:34] Leigh Brandon: A quick pause because I want to tell you about Amina. She was a personal trainer and busy mom of three training hard for a marathon until sciatica and back pain stopped her in her tracks. She couldn’t run. She felt frustrated, defeated, and afraid she’d never get back to where she was. We created a focused, realistic plan tailored to her body. A few months later, she crushed her goal, ran a half marathon 5 minutes faster than her personal best, and now she’s back running full marathons completely pain-free. If pain has forced you to put your goals on hold, download my free chronic pain breakthrough blueprint at www.bodychek.co.uk/freepainguide.
[01:25:25] Leigh Brandon: Let’s get you back to doing what you love. Yeah, it can do. So, my kind of philosophy is I try to recommend as little as possible. As much as possible, I try and cover all angles from a real food perspective. Now, there are situations where people will definitely benefit from supplements. Again, I’m not saying I don’t recommend supplements because I do. So, as an example, you know, someone’s not digesting food very well. First of all, I’m going to say, “Are you sit Are you eating in a relaxed environment? Are you chewing your food until it’s liquefied?” Okay, are you hydrated before you eat? Right? That’s That’s where I would start. Possibly even are you preparing your food with love as well? I would probably say is an important part of that process. And if you grow your own food as well, even better cuz you appreciate it a lot more. But let’s say you’ve got those things nailed and you’re still don’t have optimum digestion, do you need support in terms of creating enough hydrochloric acid in your stomach to start to break the foods down? So might be, you know, bitters maybe, it might be hydrochloric acid supplementation. you know, it might be that someone needs digestive enzymes to help break the foods down. They might need bile salts again to help break fats down. And again, everyone’s different and this is where again, where testing can really help. Again, I know I know there are people that don’t like testing and I and I try to be again I try to test as little as possible. Mhm. But obviously testing does give you information. so in terms of digestion can be very important. other areas like you know, there’s prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics. There’s certainly a lot of research to suggest benefits to those. I’m starting to question some of that and I’m and I’m certainly not in a position to say I’ve definitely changed my mind around those things. It’s an area I want to delve into deeper. Mhm. I’ve just got a gut feel that some of the research might not be quite the reality. But listen, I’ve been following that kind of protocol and I’ve been helping people. So I’m not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Things like multivitamins, minerals again, you know, because our food supply even if you eat the best food you can get your hands on, Mhm. still probably nowhere near the quality that it was 60, 70, 80 years ago. things like binders can be really useful to help attach to and release toxins, heavy metals, fungus from the body. things like collagen can be really useful. Again, you know, if you’ve got joint injury, it can help to repair the tissues. there’s lots of supplements that can help repair the gut, things like L-glutamine, aloe vera can be really good, licorice root can be really good as well. Yeah. Yeah, it’s yeah, there’s lots there’s lots of areas where they can help. Yeah. But as I say, I try and minimize you know, the things that people take. I mean, we could do a whole episode on supplementation.
[01:29:06] Stretch Raynor: Do, mate. Yeah. It’s I think we need to have a reason why we’re taking that supplementation. And I think sometimes we can get caught up in the marketing and the advertising of supplementations, and everyone wants to take everything. We can be on 26, 27, whatever crazy amount of supplements for no reason. But I’m it’s one of those things, if a client tells me they’re taking a supplement, I’m like, “Okay, why are you taking that supplement?” And if they can’t explain why, well then it’s probably not a supplement they should be taking. Also, I think it’s very important to do tests. And I think, yeah, okay, tests are expensive, but, you know, I really recommend my clients, especially men in midlife, like, just invest. Like, what’s what are you investing in your health? Let’s say those tests are going to cost you a thousand bucks right now. Okay, that’s a pretty good investment to put into your health, and when it comes back, and you get those results, you’re going to have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on in your body right now, and you’re going to be able to make some very educated decisions around nutrition, training, lifestyle, supplementation, all that sort of stuff. And in the future, let’s say 12 months from now, if we want to retest, we don’t have to retest everything. We’re not going to spend a thousand bucks and redo all the tests. We’re just going to look at, okay, where were the areas where things might be going optimally well, and we can just test those individual markers at a fraction of the cost. And then maybe every sort of three to five years we could be doing the whole test again, depending on how you going in life. If things going well, are you energized, are you feeling great? If you’re ticking all the boxes, awesome. We probably don’t have to worry too much. But underlying issues going on, chronic pain, whatever it is, all right, let’s start to look under the hood and see what’s going on for you cuz it can be very individualized. and having that data just, you know, can really speed up the effectiveness of the program or of the, you know, the process that we put in place to help clients get the best out of every aspect of their life, I suppose. so, it’s good to hear that, you know, you’re looking to that and support that cuz I think some sometimes the supplements are sort of frowned on and we shouldn’t need to do this and we shouldn’t need to do that. But, you know, you make a good point with, you know, our food system isn’t what it used to be. Lots of chemicals, lots of toxins. We could even go into cleaning products and beauty products and all the things that we’re exposing ourselves to, but let’s not open that chapter just yet.
[01:31:15] Leigh Brandon: Yeah. With an eye on the clock. Which
[01:31:19] Stretch Raynor: On the clock I want to now go into the neurological side. So, we’ve got our three, we’ve covered physical, we’ve covered nutrition. Now, we’re just going into the neurological stuff. Can you talk to us a little bit about why is that important when it comes to chronic pain?
[01:31:33] Leigh Brandon: Yeah, so just to re-emphasize what I said earlier is that you got to look at pain as an alarm system. Pain is a gift. Without it, we’d be in trouble. Right? So, if you think, you know, think of any type of alarm system, whether it’s fire alarm, burglar alarm, if your house is on fire, now if you’re in bed at night, your house is on fire or you a burglar has just come in, wouldn’t you not want to know? Right? So, if there’s an issue in your body, your nervous system is making you aware of it. And one of the ways it can make you aware of things is pain, right? But, when we’re talking about a neurological aspect, I’m really talking about where there might have been an initial injury. The injury is healed, right? And if you think about it this way, according to latest science, every cell in our body turns over at least every 2 years. So, our bone tissue is the thing that takes the longest to turn over. So, if you had pain 3 years ago like Billy did, but yet had no cell in his body that existed 3 years ago, how is there still pain? And it’s because now, let’s say your house was on fire, the fire brigade have turned up, they’ve put the fire out, but the alarm’s still going, right? You’ve rebuilt your house, and the fire alarm’s still going off, right? It’s a different house, but the alarm’s still going, right? So, that’s really the main aspect of what I’m talking about when I talk about neurological. So, what causes the alarm to stay on? And there’s a simple word to sum it up, stress. So, it could be emotional stress, financial stress, relationship stress. It could be childhood trauma. And that’s another big one, right? So, unresolved childhood trauma. Because any one of those things just lights up your nervous system. It could even be gut information, right? Anything that’s pumping signals into the nervous system Again, poor diet will come into that. Anything that’s pumping more input into that nervous system makes it hypersensitive. So, another analogy back, you know, if you can think back to the ’80s and ’90s, car alarms weren’t quite as sophisticated as they are now. So, you could live on a street, you could be in bed at night, and every time a car goes by, three alarms go off, right? Cuz they’re too sensitive. And that’s what can happen when we’re under excessive stress. But even though there’s no tissue damaged, your pain threshold is so low that any slightest little thing can cause pain. Right? So, I’ve got an example for you. So, I worked with a lady about 20 years ago now. She came to me, so her name was Karen. It’s not her real name, but I don’t have permission to tell her story. So, Karen came to see me 25 years Sorry, she came to see me she had 25 years of pain on the left side of her body. So, she had So, she bumped into something sharp that had caused lower back pain on the left side. She also fell off a mountain bike landing on her left arm. So, now she had pain on her left shoulder, left neck, left shoulder, and it radiated down into her left arm. Okay? So, she was a marine biologist, so it really affected her work. She was She loved hiking, but she couldn’t walk more than 30 minutes without the back pain making her stop. She also had to drive a lot for work. And so, being in the car for long periods of time was really problematic. So, it was really affecting her work, and it was affecting the thing that she loved to do, which was which was hiking. So, this was a bit of a different story. So, I actually saw her I was actually finishing my CHEK training in California. She actually flew in from Hawaii to see me. I only had four days to work with her. It’s but it’s so it’s like four intensive days. So, yeah, I assessed her physically, of course I did. We looked at nutrition. We did those things and we worked on it over the four days. But when I was looking at her initial paperwork, I looked at it and I thought, okay, left neck pain, left shoulder pain, left arm pain, left lower back pain. Now, if we if we look into Eastern philosophies, so traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, that kind of thing, they suggest that the left side of the body is related to female energy and the right side of the body to male energy. So, I thought, okay, well, I definitely know I definitely saw there were structural things she did need to improve. There was definitely nutritional aspects she needed to improve. As I say, we did work on those. But I just had this gut feel that the root cause of her issue was something to do with female energy. Now, the neck, shoulder, and arm in the in what we call the chakra system relates to communication. So, I just said to her, I said, “I’m just curious, what’s your relationship like with your mom?” Right? And she might have said, “Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, we’ve always got on really well. Great enough.” Okay, fine, I’ll move on, you know? And she said, “Don’t talk to me about my mother. She never loved me as a kid. She treated me really badly. She loved my sister, but not me. We haven’t spoken for years.” I just opened up a big can of worms and I thought, ah, okay, I might be on to something here,
[01:37:43] Stretch Raynor: Yeah.
[01:37:46] Leigh Brandon: So, as part of her coaching over those four days, as well as teaching her exercise nutrition, so we went out for lunch every day, I taught her a communication tool called nonviolent communication. Yeah. And I said, “What I would like you to do, when you go home, I want you to reach out to your mom. And I want you to use nonviolent communication to see if you can’t rescue your relationship with your mom. Tell her how you feel. Tell her that you didn’t feel loved as a child. And but obviously put it in a way that she can, you know, not be offended by it. And see if you can work on that relationship.” And, you know, she lapped it up. She was loving this nonviolent communication that I was teaching her. So, I came back to the UK. She went back to Hawaii. We didn’t We didn’t speak in between. Anyway, 6 months later, I get a letter from Hawaii. And I thought, “Ah, that’s obviously from Karen.” So, I open up the letter and it says, “Leigh, I can’t thank you enough. Not only is my back pain, shoulder pain, and neck pain gone away, she said, “but me and my mom have got a great relationship now. We see each other every day and we’re loving every minute of it.” Mhm. So, looking back at that story, it showed me how pain can be telling you something, but you just need to understand what the message is. And because of my training, I was able to read what the message was. So, the pain that she was in was telling us she needed to heal her relationship with her mom. But cuz you think about it, if you’ve Again, that You could potentially say that was some kind of childhood trauma. If you don’t feel loved, that’s Yeah. That’s childhood trauma. Yeah. That’s a stress on the nervous system. If you don’t feel loved, that’s a stress on the nervous system. That’s going to ramp up everything. So, yeah, she fell off you know, she bumped her back. Yes, she fell off the bike injuring her arm and shoulder. But, that probably healed within a few weeks or months. Mhm. But, the fact that her nervous system was so ramped up, it kept sending messages to her brain to say that these parts of the body were still injured. Mhm. What her own conscious mind couldn’t work out was it wasn’t those areas that were still injured. If you like, it was her psyche or her ego that felt threatened because she didn’t feel loved.
[01:40:25] Stretch Raynor: Yep.
[01:40:27] Leigh Brandon: So, you know, pain or the physical body isn’t always the problem when it comes to pain. Sometimes what we need to do, we need to decode the message so that we can heal ourselves. And that’s where if you again, not throwing stones at anyone, but if you go to physiotherapist, chiropractor, osteopath, medical doctor,
[01:40:52] Stretch Raynor: Mhm.
[01:40:54] Leigh Brandon: You might be lucky and that they’re trained in also the Eastern philosophies and they’re able to read the body and tell you or help you work out what the root cause of that problem is.
[01:41:09] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, it’s a powerful stuff. Sorry, mate. And I like it because I think sometimes we can think a lot of that’s woo-woo, especially if we’re a stoic masculine man. but, those unprocessed emotions can lead to chronic pain, physical pain in the body. And I like the way that, you know, we’ve had this whole conversation because you’ve said how the physical is linked to the neurological and it’s linked to nutrition and it’s all just linked and intertwined together. But, I think the big missing thing can be those unprocessed emotions. I’ve got a good mate and he works in like the field of meditation and sound healing. And he runs retreats in Australia, in Bali, and actually over there in Europe as well. And he tells me of the people that he has that comes to come to his retreats and some of the most incredible transformations happen. A story that he did share with me was this lady who had a locked shoulder or you know, she couldn’t lift her arm above her head. Frozen shoulder. Hadn’t been able to lift her arm above her head for 10-15 years and it had been, you know, some sort of physical injury that had caused that. But over the course of the weekend between doing the meditations and really connecting in with, you know, what’s important to her and the sound healing and all that sort of stuff, at the end of the weekend she could put her arm above her head. Now, they’d done no physical exercise, they’d done no rehab, they’d done no stretching, none of that sort of stuff. it was purely just her being able to let out her emotions and in some of those, you know, workshops that they had, she, you know, she’s breaking down, she’s crying and she’s just feeling all of this emotion that she’d just buried for so long, but yet when that came out it had a physical impact that changed something that, you know, that fixed shoulder, that locked shoulder there. and then when he told me that story, I was a bit blown away by it, but it really started to open my eyes to a lot more around, okay, there’s a lot that we need to think about outside of the basics of, you know, nutrition and movement and you know, physio that could be causing that chronic pain. So, I like your story there and thanks for sharing that because I think that’s a big piece that we can often overlook.
[01:43:12] Leigh Brandon: Do you know, I mean, that’s a really important point that you brought up. So, things like breathwork, breathing, meditation, music, sound, they can all help to calm down the nervous system. Now, everything is vibration, right? So, that’s where sound, music can be really healing. I’ve heard of people going to a sound bath and coming out and their issues are solved.
[01:43:43] Stretch Raynor: Mhm.
[01:43:44] Leigh Brandon: Right? When I When I had my lumbar spine injury, I actually I had actually had to fly to California 4 weeks after it happened, right? And the first time I sat down was to get into the taxi to take me to the airport. I hadn’t sat down for four I couldn’t I couldn’t sit down. So, I got to California. So, we had a meeting amongst all the CHEK faculty members and what one of the things we would do, we did it a few times, we’d do drum circles. So, we’ve got Native American drum and we’d be drumming, which I which I absolutely love. And I remember I was drumming and I was you know, I was in another zone. Mhm. And I thought, “I can’t feel any pain in my back.” Like, this is really strange. And for about an hour afterwards as well, I had no pain in my back at all. And then each time we did the drumming, the pain would go away. Now, obviously, it didn’t solve the problem, Mhm. but it just showed me the power of vibration. Mhm. Cuz obviously, you’ve got the skin of the drum and you’re banging the skin of the drum and it’s creating a specific vibration. You know, there was like 13, 14 of us all in harmony drumming. And it was just absolutely incredible. So, again, it just shows you that there’s so much more to pain and how the body works than a lot of us realize. Again, not throwing stones at anyone, but imagine going to a medical doctor and them saying, “You know what you need to do? You need to either go to a sound bath once a week or maybe start Native American drumming. That will help with your back pain.”
[01:45:24] Stretch Raynor: Yeah.
[01:45:25] Leigh Brandon: Right?
[01:45:25] Stretch Raynor: Yeah.
[01:45:26] Leigh Brandon: Yeah. Where’s Where’s that on their algorithm on their computer room on their desk? Yeah, we’ve
[01:45:31] Stretch Raynor: You know? we’ve lost so many, let’s say, tribal ways of healing. Like, you know, we could talk about humming and gargling and stuff like that can be really good. you know, for calming the nervous system. And there’s so many things that we could be doing to calm the nervous system and you know, it’s incredible to hear about the stories and the impacts that’s having on people’s health. And it’s just not even thought about in our conventional medicine system. But yet such a powerful tool. Breathwork as well, you know, all that nervous system stuff that we’re starting to learn more and more about, which is fantastic. and I the curiosity, mate. I love your curiosity and it sounds like, you know, you’ve put your finger in so many different pies and you’re still learning. And I’m on that same journey as well, mate. So, I love that you’ve shared so much. And we could probably talk for another 2 hours just as easily. just as we start to finish up, mate, like, what would you say to, you know, obviously my podcast is men in midlife, but I’m sure it’s, you know, a pretty common sort of thing that you’d say to most people. But if someone is experiencing chronic pain, where should they start? Or what’s the starting point? What do you recommend?
[01:46:37] Leigh Brandon: Yeah, good question. So, the first thing I’d say is you’re not broken. Mhm. That’d be the first thing. You’re just stuck in a loop that your body doesn’t know at the moment how to get out of it. The answer isn’t more pills. It’s getting to the root cause of the problem. So, for me, the first the first or the most important thing is your belief. That is number one. To deep down believe that you’re going to get better. Now, I’ve been there. I know that can be really difficult. Right? When I had injured discs in my spine, because discs don’t have a lot of blood supply, they take a long time to heal. So, from day to day, it just didn’t feel like it was getting any better, and it would seem like month to month it wasn’t getting any better. You know I’ve been sporty all my life, pretty much. So, if I tear a muscle, 2 3 days later, it’s back to normal, right? Might get a bit of massage, bit of treatment on it, back to normal few days. But, I had this deep belief I was going to get better. All right, so that’s the first thing I would say, have belief. The next thing I would say is just understand that if it’s If you have chronic pain, be aware that it might not be that there’s anything injured in your body. It might just be that your nervous system is hypersensitive right now. And what you need to do is everything you can to calm down that nervous system, whether it’s eating better foods, whether it’s you know, speak to your spouse if you’re having relationship issues. maybe do heavy metal detoxes, whatever it might be. Movement is really important, and again, it’s like, “But movement hurts.” Find some kind of movement that doesn’t hurt. Go and find a swimming pool and walk up and down it. Get in the pool, walk up and down. You’ll be surprised how that will actually feel absolutely okay. If there’s anything you enjoy doing, try that. If there’s anything you love to do, try it even if it’s at a low intensity, then it might surprise you. Get to bed on time. Get to bed early. Your body only recovers fully when it’s asleep. And you need to get to bed early, as close as close to dusk as possible, right? That’s when your body it And then if you need to, reach out to someone who can help you. Someone who is aware of all the different potential causes of pain and someone that can help you find out what the root cause is.
[01:49:34] Stretch Raynor: Awesome, mate. It’s sound advice and I think there’s a lot that we can do ourselves if we’re ready to make that change and ready to make, you know, not get stuck and not feel that we’re broken. I think that’s very wise and have that belief, but it’s also that curiosity that you’ve brought to this conversation. You know, if someone’s stuck in pain, what’s like you’ve got to explore. Your choice is to stay where you are or you can get out there and start to try and do something about it, whether it’s nutrition, whether it’s breath work, whether it’s acupuncture, whether it whatever it is, you know, find what works for you and be willing to experiment. I think that’s, you know, having that permission to experiment and keep trying different things. I love that you said find something you enjoy because joy and just bringing up that positive energy can make such a big impact. journaling, you know, if you’ve got a lot of buried emotions and there’s a lot you want to get out, sometimes just putting pen to paper can make a huge difference. When you were sort of talking about that, one thing that we sort of haven’t covered that just popped into my mind as we finish up is do you believe all chronic pain is curable?
[01:50:39] Leigh Brandon: I would say yes. I do. I like it, mate. as you asked that question, I was thinking about phantom pain. Mhm. So, phantom pain is So, for instance, someone’s had an arm amputated. They can still get pain in their hand.
[01:51:01] Stretch Raynor: Yeah.
[01:51:01] Leigh Brandon: How? Mhm. The hand isn’t there anymore, right? But what it shows us is how misunderstood pain is. Mhm. The body still thinks the hand is there and energetically it is. It’s just physically it isn’t. So, what’s causing the pain in the hand? It could be you know, let’s say let’s say it was someone’s a tree surgeon, right? And they slipped and they’ve got a chainsaw and they chop their arm off, right? It happens, right? Well, let’s say at the time they did that there was a immense sense of fear, which would be a normal reaction, right? Well, what if that fear hasn’t left the nervous system yet? What if What if that fear is causing a pain signal from the hand that isn’t there through the brain? What they might need to do in that situation is find someone that can help them clear the fear from their body. The fear The fear was a normal reaction when they first had the accident. But now, you know, whatever part of their arm is left has healed. So, there shouldn’t be any pain. What they need to do is to clear the fear.
[01:52:23] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, it’s that unpro- unprocessed emotion, isn’t it? Again, you’ve still got that unprocessed fear and you haven’t dealt with that fear and it’s going to have lasting impacts of feeling pain in a hand that’s no longer there. Or it could be, you know, someone that’s injured a knee in an accident or something’s happened there and it’s been that fear in the accident. and then physically, structurally, they’re back to normal. They can squat, they can move, everything’s fine there, really, but they still feel pain because they haven’t yet dealt with the fear or the trauma or whatever happened at that during that accident potentially. Am I right in saying that?
[01:52:58] Leigh Brandon: Yeah, absolutely spot on. Yeah.
[01:53:00] Stretch Raynor: Cool. It’s interesting still I still I think the chronic pain thing it’s like, yeah, there’s obviously a lot that can be done. And maybe just to rewind right back at the start, you sort of said the first one of the clients you saw who had, you know, bone on bone in the knee and they’ve got to have that knee reconstruction. That might be the only time when you’ve got to go down that path where it’s just degenerated so much structurally that you can’t fix the structural issue that maybe it’s probably not healable. Would you agree with that or was that
[01:53:31] Leigh Brandon: Yeah, well, I think some people would say even in those situations Mhm. you could potentially reverse the pain. And there are examples of people that have. The issue with it is when you’ve got So, for instance, that knee situation, you’ve got constant inflammation because you’ve got bone on bone. There’s no cartilage there anymore. so, you’ve got a constant what I would call a nociceptive signal rather than just a purely neurological signal going up. So, I think some people would say even in that situation you could be pain free.
[01:54:11] Stretch Raynor: Mhm.
[01:54:14] Leigh Brandon: I might argue against that, but hey, I might be wrong.
[01:54:17] Stretch Raynor: Yeah, it’s a tough one, isn’t it? So, yeah, I’ve seen some people heal themselves from pretty remarkable injuries. but in my mind when I see a client like you did, a client like that’s got to go through surgery and have that knee reconstruction, without that I just think that it’s a long road back to recovery. you know, can the cartilage heal? Can we get those bones not to be grinding against each other? you know, it’s a tough one to sort of answer, isn’t it? Maybe it’s case by case. Maybe it’s not going to happen for everyone, but there are some people out there that, you know, have healed themselves from that point of view. and it’s a tricky one to navigate cuz, you know, I think I’ve got I’ve got clients right now who have got pretty bad knee pain. and it’s car it’s cartilage is missing and, you know, we’ve tried a lot. Let’s do what you can without pain. What movements can we do? you know, RDLs are good. You know, hamstring curls might work, this, that, the other can work, and we avoid the stuff that causes pain. and it keeps them at a point where, you know, I’m not going to say they’re pain-free, but the pain is a lot less. but if we go back into deep knee flexion or, you know, squats, lunges, any of that sort of stuff, bang, it’s just going to flare up straight away, and there’s nothing we can do physically that seems to battle get to that point. So, yeah, I think it’s case by case. but
[01:55:25] Leigh Brandon: There are also newer treatments coming out, and I’ve interviewed a couple of guys on my podcast.
[01:55:31] Stretch Raynor: Mhm.
[01:55:32] Leigh Brandon: You know, things like Again, this is not definitely not 100%, but things like protein-rich plasma. Mhm. you got things like, it’s What’s it called? I forgot the term they called.
[01:55:50] Stretch Raynor: You’ve got me, too. You made me think you were going to say like stem cells or something like that, maybe. But
[01:55:53] Leigh Brandon: Yes, stem cells would be one, but there’s another one that I’m thinking of that’s Mhm. along a similar line. Yeah. I’m brain farting. Yeah. But there are lots of other kind of let’s call it surgical Yeah. options for when things like cartilage has gone. It’s annoying me now that I can’t think of what it’s called. It’s a really big It’s a really big thing as well these days. Yeah. I can’t think Oh, peptides. Peptides.
[01:56:19] Stretch Raynor: Yes, that’s it. Yeah.
[01:56:21] Leigh Brandon: Right? So, there are lots of other things out there that potentially could help people like that rather than having to have complete knee replacements. it’s not something that I’m expert in. I know a lot about. I’ve, you know, I’ve certainly not referred people for that kind of stuff, but probably worth looking into if someone has a has an issue like that.
[01:56:43] Stretch Raynor: Yeah. Stay curious. Be willing to experiment. I love it. We I really enjoyed your time. You know, we’ve talked for nearly 2 hours. It’s been great. We’ve covered so much, and we could go on and on, I’m sure, but to sort of sum this up, is there anything else you want to add to close? And also, if people want to get in touch with you, reach out to you, where can they find you? They’re the last few things I’m going to ask you.
[01:57:04] Leigh Brandon: Cool. so I do have what’s called a chronic pain breakthrough blueprint that people can have access to for free. If they go to my website, www.bodychek, that’s b o d y c h e k dot co dot uk forward slash free pain guide, they can they can access it that way. In terms of summing up if you’re in chronic pain just be curious as to what it’s trying to tell you. Maybe meditate on it. If you’re not getting answers then perhaps reach out to someone who can help. And I just want to I just want to say just to just to close up from my point of view. I’ve just really enjoyed chatting with you today. It’s been a really great interview. And 2 hours have flown by, which is always a good sign. So, I just want to thank you for having me on your show and for being a really great host as well.
[01:58:08] Stretch Raynor: Awesome, mate. No, I appreciate it too, mate. And easy to chat to, you and I think I’ve got a lot in common and we’re very passionate about what we do. So, we could sit in the room and chat all day, I’m sure. Might have to have you on again in the future, mate.
[01:58:20] Leigh Brandon: No problem. No problem.
[01:58:21] Stretch Raynor: All right. Cheers, Leigh. Thanks your time.
[01:58:23] Leigh Brandon: And that wraps up the very first episode of Beyond the Pain. I hope you’ve enjoyed the new format now with full video available on Spotify and YouTube. A big thank you to Stretch Raynor for such a thoughtful interview and a shout-out to the Midlife Mavericks podcast for making it happen. Thanks so much for tuning in and remember to join me same time, same place next week on Beyond the Pain. Thanks for listening to Beyond the Pain. If this episode resonated, please follow the show, leave a review, or share it with someone you know who’s been struggling. And remember, pain is not permanent. With the right insight and support, you can turn it into power. Until next time, stay open, stay strong, and keep moving beyond the pain.