We live in an age of mass delusion where so many are pursuing misplaced and misguided priorities. There is only one truth and the truth is that you, and me, and every MF on the planet is pretty lazy. It's our nature to be as lazy as possible. Back when we were being chased by saber-toothed tigers it didnt matter if we *wanted* to sit idle. But in an age of the PS5 and UberEats, we can sit down and do little for years without fear of being eaten. Such INactivity is something we were not evolved to experience. 

The design of the human tells us about our intended function and that is that we were made to run. If you know me personally, you probably spat out your coffee reading that sentence! How could I acknowledge such an inconvenient fact!? I also have many excuses not to run; for decades I made fun of runners as technophobes who eschewed the multi-thousand year-old technology of the wheel. My mishshapen, once-shattered leg and the two pounds of titanium it still contains make a convincing enough story that I should probably not run. However, I chose running as my aerobic activity as it is know to increase the endocannabinoid AEA, producing what is known as the "runner's high." 

In today's episode I want to snap you out of your old way of thinking and consider how recent discoveries in cannabinoids and fascia might fit with your symptoms. As you are now the only person responsible for you getting better, I hope to convince you of the importance of living in truth and embracing the possibility of your recovery. 

I talk quite a bit about lessons from grad school in here. Y'all should listen for a few minutes because that knowledge cost me much more than the time it takes to tell the stories. My earliest takeaway from them was that the truth is robust and stands up to repeated testing by experimentation; and that there is great value in efficiently testing a hypothesis. My health today is a direct result of following this same philosophy.

Support the show:

https://paypal.me/OrigamiVancast

Thank you for liking, listening and sharing! If you would like to *speak with me* one on one about surviving and exiting *chronic pain*, navigating *medical cannabis* or aspects of *minimal\vanlife*, I offer my time in 15 minute increments at a rate I will post elsewhere. I can help you with perspective on your pain, to get started healing, to survive and to stay motivated; for anything else you should seek qualified professional help, which again, I am not. 

*I DO NOT OFFER MEDICAL ADVICE OR ENDORSE ANY SPECIFIC PRODUCTS * 

Music by:  XTaKeRuX - Pursuing Darkness from the album Victim 2021 

Episode Cover Image taken half-way through a run four miles from my van in March 2022. A mile beyond my van is the base of Boundary Cone mountain near Oatman, Arizona. The run back is all uphill and into the wind, it sucks.

#SMCOGVC #vanlife #CHONICPAIN #FASCIA #MEDICALCANNABIS #IBS #FIBROMYALGIA #HUNTINGTONSDISEASE #PARKINSONS #DIABETICNEUROPATHY #ANOREXIA #BULIMIA #PTSD #MIGRAINE #CLUSTERHEADACHE #AUTISMSPECTRUM #MYOFASCIALPAIN

In todays episode, recorded near Felicity, CA on 9 Feb 2022, I kick off the new season of the Vancast and begin discussion of your role in your recovery. In this season of the podcast, I intend to provide an outline of key steps that have lead to my recovery. In doing this, it is not my goal to prescribe what I have done for anyone else. However, I believe these individual steps can be used to help cope, improve, and recover from intractible chronic illness(es) that are likely related to either or both of the endocannabinoid and fascial systems. The hashtagged conditions were linked to the endocannabinoid system by Neurologist Dr. Ethan Russo in publications beginning some 20 years ago. . .few MDs seem to be aware of these papers today and I have linked the most recent publication below; please print it out and take it to your doctor!

Are you already on a path to healing? If not, or if you are not progressing as quickly as you should, it's time to begin doing more. It is time to exert your best effort with a little bit of guidance. I credit becoming a vegetarian as being the first concrete step in my recovery. The benefits I felt from making this change, inspired me to try even harder and cut more vices and bad behaviours.

It is much easier to cut calories as a vegetarian and my weight loss (5' 10" and 190lbs down 155lbs) started immediately. However progress was very slow as I was not able to excercise until a few years later. Over those years, I came to appreciate how much easier it was to control my diet as a vegetarian and stay on track. There was also an explosion of vegetarian food options that have made not eating flesh easier for me; I particularly enjoy some of the soy-based "sausages."

As time passed after changing my diet, I also stopped vaping nicotine, which was a habit I developed along with drinking four espressos and several cups of coffee each morning, in order to (barely help) counteract Fentanyl. Nicotine and caffeine addiction are both fairly hard to break, but do it anyway, no excuses. I also stopped drinking alcohol. Quitting booze wasn't originally planned, but it cut out unnecessary calories. As I used alcohol less and less, I began to notice the negative effects more distinctly. Now if I drink one beer, it makes me feel a little bit ill, so I only drink a few beers a year these days, mainly for nostalgia and comraderie.

If you are in pain, you cannot begin to take responsibility for your recovery soon enough, so I strongly urge you to invest in your own body and make the necessary changes to become more healthy, whatever they may be.
___________________________________


2021 unveiling video of the first fascia-focused full body plastinate:
https://youtu.be/vCzX0c_D6kY
(Unveiling begins at 11:30)

Here is Dr. Russos's most recent (2016) paper on Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency:
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/can.2016.0009

Support the show:
https://paypal.me/OrigamiVancast


Thank you for liking, listening and sharing! If you would like to *speak with me* one on one about surviving and exiting *chronic pain*, navigating *medical cannabis* or aspects of *minimal\vanlife*, I offer my time in 15 minute increments at a rate I will post elsewhere. I can help you with perspective on your pain, to get started healing, to survive and to stay motivated; for anything else you should seek qualified professional help, which again, I am not.

*I DO NOT OFFER MEDICAL ADVICE OR ENDORSE ANY SPECIFIC PRODUCTS *

Music by:
XtaKeRuX - Pursuing Darkness from the album Victim 2021

#SMCOGVC

ln the fall of 2020, I still had large regions of frozen, dessicated fascia throughout my body.  After much driving to get to New England and then Maine, knots reappeared in my neck causing pain that I describe in this episode. This pain brought my spirits down for several weeks. But now that I look back on it I can smile and laugh! I was able so stay the course and continue treating myself, and my body and neck are now stronger and more mobile than at any time in my life. I describe a little of what I thnk, as a laser engineer, is going on with the tissues in my body in this episode.

Support the show:
https://paypal.me/OrigamiVancast?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US


Thank you for liking, listening and sharing! If you would like to *speak with me* one on one about surviving and exiting *chronic pain*, navigating *medical cannabis* or aspects of *minimal\vanlife*, I offer my time in 15 minute increments at a rate I will post elsewhere. I can help you with perspective on your pain, to get started healing, to survive and to stay motivated; for anything else you should seek qualified professional help, which again, I am not.

*I DO NOT OFFER MEDICAL ADVICE OR ENDORSE ANY SPECIFIC PRODUCTS *

Music by:
XtaKeRuX - Pursuing Darkness from the album Victim 2021

#SMCOGVC #vanlife #CHONICPAIN #FASCIA #MEDICALCANNABIS #IBS #FIBROMYALGIA #HUNTINGTONSDISEASE #PARKINSONS #DIABETICNEUROPATHY #ANOREXIA #BULIMIA #PTSD #MIGRAINE #CLUSTERHEADACHE #AUTISMSPECTRUM
#MYOFASCIALPAIN

In this episode I sit down with my mother and step-father to discuss their perceptions of the last two years of my journey. It was never my dream to tell my mom that I was dropping out of the workforce, divorcing my wife and moving into a van, even if it was so I could explore the national cannabis stock and find the cannabinoid that was helping me. I have assumed that she/they must have their doubts. All that I can do is live my life as an example of what is possible and continue to underscore how well I am now. If you have your doubts and care to go for a run, bring it.

Please do not take my experience or anything I post or say as endorsing recreational drug use. I do not endorse drugging oneself for fun. I do endorse responsible drug use with specific intentions for each treatment. No drug, pharmaceutical or otherwise should be used habitually. I especially encourage youth, below age 25, to abstain from as many drugs (including alcohol and nicotine) as possible.

*Cover photo is a shot of the inside of my van shortly before setting out to build it in November of 2019. I had installed floors and solar electricity by December and built a working version of the present design by February 2020. Living a minimal, solar-powered life in this vehicle was meant to, and has enabled and facilitated my recovery in many ways.

Support the show:
https://paypal.me/OrigamiVancast?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US


Thank you for liking, listening and sharing! If you would like to *speak with me* one on one about surviving and exiting *chronic pain*, navigating *medical cannabis* or aspects of *minimal\vanlife*, I offer my time in 15 minute increments at a rate I will post elsewhere. I can help you with perspective on your pain, to get started healing, to survive and to stay motivated, for anything else you should seek qualified professional help, which again, I am not.

*I DO NOT OFFER MEDICAL ADVICE OR ENDORSE ANY SPECIFIC PRODUCTS *

Music by:
XtaKeRuX - Pursuing Darkness from the album Victim 2021

#SMCOGVC #vanlife #CHONICPAIN #FASCIA #MEDICALCANNABIS #IBS #FIBROMYALGIA #HUNTINGTONSDISEASE #PARKINSONS #DIABETICNEUROPATHY #ANOREXIA #BULIMIA #PTSD #MIGRAINE #CLUSTERHEADACHE #AUTISMSPECTRUM

Over 4 years since I first happened upon my personal miracle cure, I now have some perspective on it. In this episode, recorded in the spring of 2021, I re-summarize the most important things I've learned.  In addition to presenting concepts from published research (linked below), I want to reiterate some of my thoughts on chronic pain. Pain can be addressed, suppressed, repressed, masked, intensified, expected, modified and pondered about for an eternity. But that does not change it's meaning. Pain is a message from your body. Y.O.U. need to figure out the message. Your conscious mind needs to interpret pain's meaning and address it with your behavior, when we receive the message, our unconscious mind will help eliminate the pain. 

Beyond the meaning of pain, I am also trying to communicate to a wide audience, what I feel I'm learning through what is happening to my body, in nearly real time. The changes are due to my beginning to understand my own endocannabinoid and fascial systems. I know it may all sound far-fetched, and many of you will discount that I am still, necessarily and nearly always, high on cannabis. To which I respond: 

1) Read my references...

2) Have you seen my abs?

3) You are invited to run a few miles of trails at altitude with me, please RSVP at your earliest! 

I am still very much a work in progress and I continue to try to minimize my use of phytocannabinoids. But, I am compelled to share the information in this podcast with my fellow humans and I appreciate y'all's consideration. I would especially appreciate your help in getting this information to victims of extreme physical trauma such as crushing, or those hopeless and in extreme pain. 

A Final Note to the CP Patient: It helps me to break cycles of addictive behaviours frequently and NON-cyclically, even if I have no intention or expectation of quitting whatever drug...this is to observe and reconfirm the patient-drug relationship. I believe doing this provides an important reset. Humans seek the comfort of cycles; we seek predictability. But self-administered predictability is false and a waste of resources. I almost always reduce my consumption or collect new insight by breaking a cycle. 

A Final Note for the Scientist Types: Not accounting for the pain, this ongoing 21 year-long experience seems to have an overarching theme of drying and dessication. It seems my fascia cannot produce sufficient hyaluronan without being prompted by phytocannabinoids. I believe this is likely a maternally-transmitted congenital condition that was exacerbated in my case, by the crushing of my body that occurred in the accident compounded by weight-gain and aging over the following 17 years. Obviously, I could be way off, but this is my working theory in a nutshell. 

 ___________________ 

Neurologist Dr. Ethan Russo appears on Mary Bile's Cannabis Voices Podcast

https://www.marybiles.com/podcast/episode/4d3edd25/dr-ethan-russo-clinical-endocannabinoid-deficiency-explained 

Greg Gerdeman, Ph.D. appears on Mary Bile's Cannabis Voices Podcast

https://www.marybiles.com/podcast/episode/4af48803/dr-greg-gerdeman-a-deep-dive-into-the-endocannabinoid-system 

Caterina Fede, Ph.D. discusses hyaluronan in fascia:

https://youtu.be/Spz2vBNXqAg 

Fede et al. on cannabinoid receptors expressed in fibroblasts

In this episode I use the PAIN section to tell the intense story of the first time I climbed a multi-pitch route outside Las Vegas, somehow avoiding catastrophe and liberating myself from the burden of fear. Most of my story takes place 3 times higher off the ground than the anchors shown in this video:

https://youtu.be/46b_BXWTv7c

In the MEAT section I discuss some of the particuar changes I am undergoing in the latest phase of my recovery. In the WEED section I give some of my personal thoughts and experience on addicition and breaking addiction. Even as I write I fail, but it is to be expected and will make for an interesting show #12.

Finally, I thank Dr. Thomas P. Janssen of the McBride Orthopedic Clinic in Oklahoma City for having the knowledge, skill, inclination and general disposition to help me out a couple of decades ago. Thank you for the use of my right lower leg.

Check out the Origami.Vancast Instagram page AND see some of my pretty campsites at free_space_propagation on Instagram.

Here is the paper on Tibialis Anterior immobilization.

#smcOGVC #chronicpain #fascia #cannabis #fibromyalgia #fibrosis

Episode #11 Timeline
0:00 Rights/Intro
0:59 Climbing Physical Graffiti with Shawn
4:56 Knocking out Pitch #1
6:31 I understimate how much farther I have to climb by 4x.
7:17 From a precarious position, I begin realizing I have made a mistake that could result in a 100ft+ fall
8:45 Shawn informs me of mistake #2
9:31 The universe informs me of several additional mistakes
10:51 The state of my underpants is henceforth undisclosed
11:56 A mind-warping perspective on my own actions
14:05 SPOILER: We Lived
16:22 MEAT SECTION
17:24 My leg needed a minor surgery after original reconstructure
19:00 Some notes from a stretching session somewhere in Utah
20:59 My tibialis anterior and the visibility of the Tib/Fib non-unions
24:20 Alternating tearing and re-orientation of the related bones
26:00 The quality of a motion matters to my body
28:00 WEED SECTION - ADDICTION BUMMER SEGMENT
29:55 Disrupting the routine
30:25 Have strength in bits
30:57 Be public AF
31:36 Replacing the time your addiction steals
33:05 We can break addiction, keep trying and do not beat yourself up. I've failed since recording this :(
36:45 My thanks to Dr. Thomas P. Janssen for the ongoing usage of my lower right leg

Today I discuss the effects of rationing to "half" doses and I argue from experience that the purpose of pain is to communicate a problem from the unconscious body to the consciousness. Chronic pain serves no purpose toward your survival. If you have been in pain for years, this is because you do not understand the purpose of your pain. In part I lacked the courage to impart any more pain onto myself to be cured. . .and I suffered more than necessary because of it.

If you are like me, I want to continue to encourage you to face your fears, take the steps necessary to heal yourself and stop being a pussy! Buck up little camper, mop up your own tears and get to work on yourself; you are wasting time thinking you can change anyone or anything else or that the cold black abyss gives one zepto-damn about your suffering.

Sink or swim. . . I chose stand up paddle boarding in Moab with SPF50.

The deer I discuss in this episode can be seen here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/COYABnHlN7Y/?igshid=1boz32i15m34k

In the PAIN SECTION, I walk you through the simple assesment that I have used for nearly 3 years to help understand what it is that  I am doing to my body with the treatments that I have discovered. This tool has been a useful tool for me that I think will help guide you in your recovery. All you've got to do is stand there and pay attention.

Today in the MEAT SECTION I attempt to describe how fascia connects the small bones in my feet to those in my neck and the role of adhesions  in encoding distortions into how all of my bones move relative to one another.

In the WEED SECTION I focus on listing some strains that are high in CBG and a few guidelines for those that have been good at treating my extreme pain. I use my understanding of the purpose of pain to push the chronic pain patient to take responsibility for their condition and their rehabilitation by listening to what their body is trying to tell them.

Episode #9 Timeline
0:00 PAIN SECTION
1:08 Got a Vision?
2:00 How to make your first step right now
3:58 Observing how you stand
5:30 My feet did not feel right
6:57 My Right tibialis anterior muscle
7:40 Assessment of 'The 8 balls'
9:30 Ankle flexibility and chronic pain
10:00 MEAT SECTION
10:40 The link between injury, fascia, and skeletal distortion (my thoughts)
12:45 The code written into my tarsals, metatarsals and cervical vertebrae are connected through fascia
16:54 WEED SECTION
17:15 How to buy a dozen strains
18:55 If you just want to make one or 20 experiments, go ahead and quit now
20:20 When the dispensary 'just sold the last one'
21:30 Steve's List of CBG-centric Marijuana/Cannabis Strains
27:13 Weed can INCREASE MY PAIN - A Warning*
28:25 Find some time to experiment
29:45 Strains that worked for pain
31:10 Being high is a side-effect and you may not enjoy this medicine...duh?
34:20 Getting a feel for different strains, test results dont dictate effects
36:18 YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOURSELF
37:25 You will need to tolerate (a little) more pain
38:10 How I understand pain today
38:55 Care and feeding of your recovered body (time to grow up and take responsibility for yourself)
40:53 My leg was shattered, healed crooked and still contains a titanium nail (rod); do you want to run a couple miles with me?
43:25 Better = Change


Steve's List of CBG-containing Cannabis Strains
Green Crack, aka Green Cush

Chem Dawg

Most Any Diesel

AK47 (and AK47 Extreme)

Panama Red
Blue Dream
Blueberry Cobbler (lowest THC strain that "worked" for me)
Pineapple Express
Durban Poison
Alaskan Thunderfuck
Strawberry Cough
OG Kush
Sours and Super-Sours
Lemon and/or any red fruits (cherry, strawberry), but watch out for added terpenes!

Sativas, Kush, or Indicas that are "16-25% THC AND  0.2 -0.5% CBD" (and DO NOT give a strong body high)

*The negative efects of marijuana that I have encountered can be difficult to endure. If you find yourself in such a situation, taking CBD may reduce the effect or cause it to dissipate more rapidly. . .or not! In most cases, except for oral ingestion, effects should subside within 2-4 hours. Patients may also be helped with soothing distractions like warm blankets, light touch, or similar mildl stimulation. Know that it is very unlikley that YOU or your loved one will become the first documented cannabis death in human history and maintain yourself for a few hours. Even amplified pain, will pass.
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