Tag: liver

Is the Liver the Root Cause of Your Neck Pain?

Posted on by Arianne Missimer

Are you experiencing right-sided neck pain, right shoulder pain, or sciatica? Are traditional treatments failing to provide relief? Perhaps you’re also dealing with frustration, anger, skin issues, or digestive problems. If so, your liver might be playing a significant role. Today, we’ll explore the connection between liver and neck pain, helping you look deeper into potential root causes.

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The Connection Between Liver and Neck Pain

The liver is an incredible organ, essential for detoxifying blood, metabolizing nutrients, and producing bile. It’s vital for overall health, yet many factors can compromise its function. Genetic variances, toxic exposure, inflammatory diets, and chronic stress can all impact the liver. Additionally, there’s an emotional link to our organs; the liver is often associated with anger and frustration.

If you frequently feel stuck in a fight-or-flight state, constantly frustrated, or angry, it could indicate liver issues. Our main focus today is the liver’s connection to musculoskeletal problems, particularly in the right neck and shoulder. However, the liver can also affect the thoracic spine and cause sciatica on either side. Fascial connections, ligaments, and the liver’s relationship with the diaphragm mean liver issues can manifest as common musculoskeletal pain.

Self-Assessment for Liver-Related Pain

Let’s begin with a simple assessment. Even if you’re not currently in pain, checking for restrictions or mobility issues can be helpful. Turn your head fully to the right, then to the left. Tilt your head to each side and bring your chin down to your collarbone. Notice any tightness or restriction.

If you do experience pain, try this: place your left hand over your liver area, just below the right rib cage. Apply gentle pressure and turn your head to the right again. Notice any changes in range of motion or pain reduction. You can also test your shoulder: raise your arm without pressure on the liver, then with pressure, and compare the differences.

This assessment can reveal whether liver input affects your musculoskeletal system, suggesting fascial or joint restrictions linked to liver function.

Addressing Neck and Shoulder Pain 

Here’s how to address neck and shoulder pain potentially linked to liver issues:

Cross-Body Stretch

Cross your arms over your chest, each hand on the opposite shoulder. Inhale as you rotate to one side, hold briefly, then exhale and return to the center. Repeat on the other side to stretch the fascia and create rib cage expansion.

Alternating Arm Movements

Inhale as you lift one arm up and the other down, then switch sides. Repeat several times to promote mobility.

Liver Motility Exercises

Imagine a 3D motion for the liver: out, up, and back, then down, front, and in. Perform this gentle practice for 45 seconds to a minute, mimicking the liver’s natural movement during breathing.

After these exercises, recheck your range of motion. You might find your neck and shoulder movements feel freer and less restricted.

Supporting Liver Health

To maintain a healthy liver, focus on a nutritious diet and incorporate lymphatic drainage practices. By supporting one of your body’s key detoxification organs, you can enhance overall health and potentially reduce musculoskeletal pain.

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You can always join us in our app, the Movement Paradigm. We have lots of challenges every other month—everything from movement to the nervous system, nutrition, and so on. And we have a great community of people. 

You can also reach out to us for an individual appointment for functional medicine or holistic physical therapy. If you really want to get to the root cause, please reach out to us.

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What is your liver telling you?

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What is your liver telling you?

Posted on by Arianne Missimer

Your liver is your metabolic workhorse. It is one of the most powerful digestive organs that we have and is important for metabolism, detoxification, hormone balance, production of bile, and more. You want to know what your liver is telling you.

What types of emotions might be correlated with liver function? What physical symptoms may be correlated with your liver function?

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What You Need to Know About the Liver

Not only is your liver one of the most powerful digestive organs, but it also weighs between two and up to 5.5 pounds in each person. I had the opportunity to see my husband donate his liver to his father, which was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.

So just know that our liver has so many important functions in our body, but it’s also, from an emotional standpoint, considered our life energy, or life force, along with the kidneys. So our psyche and our liver work hand in hand, and our liver specifically can be a release of very strong emotions.

The Liver and Our Emotions

Let’s dive into the emotional piece of how the liver and liver symptoms can present themselves. We want to remember that our body stores memories and trauma and emotions in our cells, and sometimes when we have a triggering or life-altering event, our body can pass this on to specific organs.

So many times, we each have an organ that tends to be our emotional organ, where we often hold emotions. How might issues with your liver present themselves emotionally?

This could be present as having a hard time knowing yourself, having some type of dependency on your mother, or perhaps lacking self-esteem. You might also feel depressed, have an absence of creativity, maybe not feel as motivated, have episodes of moodiness, and you could also be a prisoner of routine.

You may not experience every one of these, but these are some of the more common symptoms, just indicating that your organ of emotion may be the liver.

The Liver and Its Physical Symptoms

Now, how could some of the physical symptoms present themselves? This could present as a sharp sense of smell. It could present as facial swelling, chronic sinusitis, really greasy hair, or even hair loss. It can also present as unrested sleep and have issues with temperature regulation in the right side line during sleep.

We want to remember that our musculoskeletal system protects our viscera. However, our viscera are what are in our organs or what drives our system. So it’s really important to also remember that we have seven times more interoceptors than we do proprioceptors, and that just means that we have a lot of information relaying to the brain from our viscera. This is what actually gives us our internal awareness of self.

As we take a deeper look at our body, our concerns, and our symptoms, we want to be able to look at it from all aspects, and including the organs can be really powerful in helping you heal your body.

Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, The Movement Paradigm, for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement. Of course, make sure to check out our other videos, especially on the vagus nerve.

And if you need help, please reach out for a consultation, so we can do a free discovery session to see if we are a good fit to help you on your healing journey. Thank you.

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Liver and brain connection | vagus nerve

Liver and brain connection | vagus nerve

Posted on by Arianne Missimer

Our livers can become deeply affected by stress, inflammation, toxins, alcohol, and other pollutants in the environment. Did you know there’s a deep connection to the brain?

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What you need to know about the liver

In traditional Chinese medicine, the liver is responsible for all other organs and for moving Qi throughout the body (i.e., energy). It also stores blood and other essential bodily fluids, and it helps cleanse the blood, especially while we sleep. Even from a spiritual perspective in Traditional Chinese medicine, it is really the seat of the soul and can help provide our life purpose. So, in essence, the liver is one of our most powerful organs; It’s also one of our most powerful detoxification organs.

Unfortunately, however, in modern society, we are eating inflammatory foods, drinking alcohol, and being exposed to an exorbitant amount of toxins—internal and external toxins—and our livers can become deeply affected. This has a direct connection to the central nervous system, which is also connected via the autonomic nervous system, i.e., a vagus nerve.

The connection between the liver and the brain

The vagus nerve innervates the liver via the hepatic branch, and what’s interesting is that 80% of the information from the vagus nerve is going TO the brain. So that means that what we are doing to our livers, putting in our body, and how hard we’re making our livers work can cause stress on this amazing detoxification organ. In turn, that can influence our brain, especially as it relates to neuroinflammation.

We want to appreciate this deep connection between the liver and the brain because the brain can also affect the liver. The vagus nerve sends 20% of information from the brain to the liver. Because of that, we also want to respect that our thought, beliefs, and emotions can influence our liver health.

Whether we’re looking at this from a Traditional Chinese medicine or Western medicine standpoint, we really want to appreciate this deep connection and recognize that what we eat and the stresses that we put on our body will affect the relationship between the liver and the brain.

If you’d like to reach out to us for an appointment, please do that as well. Schedule your appointment here: https://p.bttr.to/3MvopdB.

Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, The Movement Paradigm, for weekly tips on mindset, nutrition, and movement.

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