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[Below is a transcript of the video, followed by some more information and citations].
Hi, don’t be alarmed. Yes I am sitting on a western style toilet. Nothing gratuitous is going to happen here. My name is Dr. Sam Shay. I’m here to teach you a low-tech tool to improve your bowels.
I’m the founder of www.drsamshay.com. And I teach my patients low-tech strategies with high impact so they can have better health. You can think of it as how to MacGyver Your Health. I practice here in New Zealand as a Chiropractor, an Acupuncturist, and doing functional neurology and wellness coaching.
I have this model called the Ten Points of Wellness™. The second point of wellness is called “Bowel”, which is basically everything you need, all the ways your body gets rid of toxins, poisons, waste, etc. Whether it’s your:
- Bowels
- Urination
- Breath
- Even your hair and nails.
- [Skin and sweating would also be included]
In today’s video I will teach you a neurology trick to speed up the motility of your large intestines so you can actually push out stool much easier.
That is important because if you don’t get rid of your waste that is in your intestines, it will sit there and leach back into your blood and basically auto-intoxify yourself. The liver has to work overtime and all that nutrition that you take in, whether food or supplements, is now used to detox again what was already on its way out, instead of that nutrition going towards long-term healing, growth, repair, and long-term function.
I will teach you the OculoCardiac reflex. Oculo means “eye”. Cardiac means “heart”. I prefer this reflex be called the OculoColic reflex because of the colon.
Basically, take the palms of your hands and you gently cup them over your [closed] eyes. Don’t push so hard that you see lights or feel pain. But you gently press on your eyes. This will trigger a reflex to trigger the Vagus nerve or main nerve that does the ‘rest and digest’ function of the body and it will trigger it to move the Vagus nerve, and stimulate the organs for rest and digestion, meaning it will include the large intestine, at least the first 2/3rd of it to start moving and getting rid of stuff that makes you constipated.
This pressing on the eyes will also help slow down your heart, calm you down, improve digestion. This is why you see some people instinctively press on their eyes when they are stressed. We learned this in neurology class in chiropractic school where you have to take a pulse oximeter which measures your pulse rate and you can press on someone’s eyes and if their beats don’t drop by 5-10 beats within a minute or so, then that means there is dysfunction in the nervous system. This should slow down your heart rate but it will also move your bowels.
If you combine this with the last video on bowel care, which is how to squat on a modern toilet. I showed you the last video that you can either get a 3-legged camping stool or a simple box to prop your feet up like this.
What you can do is combine the two and press your eyes as you are sitting there, what you are doing is your are putting your body in the correct alignment to help move your bowels and you will also be stimulating your nervous system to move your bowels along.
I hope this helps you. This is another one of my tricks to how to MacGyver your health: low-tech strategies with high impact. My name is Dr. Sam Shay. please go to my website: www.drsamshay.com. If you haven’t already opt-in to my free ebook with some more low-tech tips with high impact. Feel free to leave a comment below.
Thank you very much.
[end transcript]
[Begin technical explanation]
WARNING: Only read the following paragraph if you are hunting for bowel-neurology-related scrabble words. This is only here for my fellow neuro-nerds who want more technical information.
The oculocardiac reflex is a neonatal reflex where pressure on the eyes is sensed by cranial nerve 5 (Trigeminal nerve) to then trigger cranial nerve 10 (Vagus nerve) to start slowing down the heart. The oculocardiac reflex is a parasympathetic or “rest and digest” reflex. The Vagus nerve will also trigger the small intestine and the first 2/3rds of the large intestine to start to move. The lower 1/3 of the large intestine (parasympathetically controlled by the pelvic splanchnic nerves) will also start to move via an indirect neurological pathway between the Vagus nerve and the pelvic splanchnic nerves because they share the same homologous columns in development in utero.
For the Wiki-Nerds, go to: Oculocardiac reflex. (2013, March 27). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 08:06, May 17, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oculocardiac_reflex&oldid=547165867
