407 Tom Brady and his Guru [13 Feb 2017]

Did you see last Sunday’s Super Bowl game? I’m not a sports fan by any stretch but a news item about winning quarterback Tom Brady’s masseur-trainer caught my eye.

Tom Brady, at 39, played one of the best ever NFL football games and walked off the field feeling great. In his own words “I never hurt. My arm never hurts, and my body never hurts. I know how to take care of it…”

It wasn’t always that way. Brady had two knee surgeries and a serious infection in 2008. His shoulder hurt too. Brady confesses “When I was 25, I was hurting all the time, and I could never have imagined playing this long” [17 seasons].

Then he met Alex Guerrero and hired him as his personal masseur and trainer. Besides regular massage treatments Guerrero advised Brady on which exercises to do and which to avoid, with emphasis on keeping the muscles strong and pliant. Then there’s diet and supplements. Brady avoids “inflammatory foods” including dairy, white sugar and white flour. He satisfies his craving for sweets with foods like avocado ice cream. He also practices meditation and yoga.

A little background on Alex Guerrero is in order here. In 2003 he was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for unsubstantiated health claims for his product Supreme Greens and for calling himself “Dr. Alejandro Guerrero”. The study he used to market the product turned out to be a sham, and he was not, and is not, a doctor of any kind. He was investigated again in 2011 for promoting a new product, NeuroSafe, as an aid to recovery from concussion. I make no excuses for this – if you make health claims for a product, you need the science to back them up. I don’t know what’s in NeuroSafe – it could have helpful ingredients (see my article #331 Traumatic Brain Injury, Aug 2015) – but again you need the research to prove it.

Other trainers and the NFL medical staff consider Guerrero a quack and aren’t pleased with Brady’s decision to ignore their advice. But I believe that if he hadn’t made the changes he did, he would have been retired years ago with injuries that would still be causing him pain today. And you can’t argue with Sunday’s results.

Whatever our age and game in life, good nutrition, proper exercise and regular massage treatments should go a long way to keeping us pain free for life.

For more information on this or other natural health topics, stop in and talk to Stan; for medical advice consult your licensed health practitioner.