Health Lesson’s from 2009

Greetings golfers. Tyler here with the first in a series about the different things that I have gone through this year in trying to get back to competition level.

First, for those of you who don’t know me personally, let me give you a brief background of what I battled this year. At the beginning of the year I had a “neck” injury. It built slowly over a few weeks until one day I did one of those, “use my fist as a lever on my jaw to crack my own neck” and BAM! The room started spinning, I had trouble breathing and for the next few hours I felt very uncoordinated. For a 27 year old, this is some scary stuff. I went to a neurologist, a chiropractor, an ENT, a physical therapist, another chiropractor, another physical therapist and finally a CHEK practitioner. While this was going on, I was consulting with some of my TPI super nerds about people to see and questions to ask. I tried lots of different treatments from pills to lifestyle changes to exercise to diet to you name it. But it wasn’t really until I met the CHEK practitioner who sent me to a NUCCA chiropractor and recommended a complete evaluation from a CHEK level 3 that I made big strides (feeling ok for more than a day in a row). Over the next few posts, I’m going to share with you the lessons that I learned and why you might want to give them a try as well. I’m certain that not everyone had a bad car accident, subluxed a shoulder, and ate like crap for 20 years resulting in this kind of skeletal muscle dysfunction, but I’m sure there are things going on that are quite easy to fix if you knew what to look for.

Anyway, after battling this thing for almost a year I am really just now starting to feel somewhat in control of these “weird” symptoms. Things ranging from trouble thinking of the right words, a grinding sensation in my neck when rotating, dizziness, trouble breathing, trouble swallowing, and vision blurriness just to name some of the more annoying. Going from a pretty severe case to somewhat normal has made me even more hyper sensitive to my body’s changes and given me some insight into the nagging issues facing your everyday life. You don’t have to be tired and in pain if you don’t want to be. And on that note, let me share my first lesson.

Gluten free has worked for me!

If you don’t know someone who is avoiding gluten then you soon will. I see it more and more on websites. I hear it every now and then on TV. It’s only a matter of time. Why am I putting this first as far as things to consider? Well, it’s relatively the easiest change that I have made. There really is no need to visit a doctor or practitioner on this one. All you do is try cutting out certain foods and monitor if you feel better. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it really could be life changing – so let the experiment begin!

A little background on Gluten

Gluten is a protein found in many grains (wheat, oats, spelt, barley, and rye). The major one that you have to avoid is wheat because it is hidden in lots of things other than bread and pasta. Read the labels and become familiar with how much you are eating because if you’re like me, you may surprise yourself.

If you asked people around me, they would have said that I lived a very healthy lifestyle and ate very healthy meals. but I did consume a lot of whole grains (mostly wheat). I must admit, it took a bit of planning and was a little tricky giving up gluten at first but it resulted in one major difference for me. Within 3 weeks of giving up gluten my lower abs were flatter and more active than they had ever been in my life. As a skinny person, few would believe, but I always had a little level of abdominal distention. After a few weeks of giving up gluten that was gone and my lower stomach was flat. In addition, when I’d do my abdominal exercises they became much more effective and I finally felt the lower portion. If you do lots of exercise and have trouble getting your lower abs to flex and flatten, gluten may be a big contributor. How does this help the golf swing?

Well, without having a strong and stable pelvis I had developed what we call a hip trigger. When I went to take the club away, my hips would move first and then my arms and shoulders. Now 3 months on no gluten and I can finally stabilize my lower body which has helped my wedges and short game tremendously. I was stunned with how easy it was to keep my lower body quiet on short shots after my lower abs developed as a result of getting off the G.

If you’re skeptical as I was, here was my confirmation. I slipped up one night and had a breaded cutlet at a Japanese steak house. For almost a week following, I had great difficulty doing the basic lower ab drills that have become part of my nightly routine. I had to use my upper abs and hold my breath to get the same level of control in my pelvis. This was all the confirmation that I needed that cutting out gluten was the key to my golf improvements this year.

For what it costs to make this change, I highly recommend giving it a try. Now here is the kicker. If you are going to try it, you have to completely cut it out for at least a month before you will see benefit. That is how long it takes for your intestinal wall to replenish the Gluten damaged cells with new ones and you won’t see a big change until you have new cells processing nutrients more effectively. When I say Gluten free, I mean free. As little as 1/8th of a teaspoon could cause an inflammatory response in gluten sensitive individuals. So this isn’t one of those, “you can cheat once a week” programs. If you’re going to do it, do it right.

I highly recommend giving this a try and if your improvements are half as dramatic as mine you will definitely thank me. Stay tuned for more info on life changing topics that may make great New Year’s resolutions for 2010.