Lift Weights!

Most people know about Jack LaLanne, world-famous fitness guru and nutritional expert. Did you know that he was a chiropractor? It is true. His passion for natural health led him to study human anatomy and to get his degree in the best holistic health philosophy that he knew of: chiropractic. He was a pioneer for many things in natural health, including weight lifting for the regular person. Jack LaLanne advocated for seniors practicing weight lifting. Considering that he lived to be 96 years old and was still in great shape, I would say one could do worse than follow his ideas.

Basic weight lifting is an excellent idea for everyone. Here are just a few reasons to start weight lifting. Gently stressing the bones with weight triggers a natural mechanism inside your body that strengthens them, actually laying down more calcium. Weight lifting builds healthy muscle mass that burns fat even when you are not exercising. Weight lifting in conjunction with chiropractic care helps posture and spinal alignment, which leads to better bodily function and less pain.

You do not have to spend much money on a weight lifting routine; in fact, you can spend zero money to get started. Find some cans of food at home and do some basic curls and butterfly exercises with them. Use your own body weight to do push-ups, pull-ups, and squats. If you decide you need someone to help you get used to lifting weights, go ahead and spend a little money on a gym membership or home DVD and hand weights. Investing in this preventative and maintenance health care will save you thousands down the road in catch-up health care. 

Whatever you do, get a routine going. Your body thrives on schedules. You will notice that you sleep better, have better metabolism and happier moods, and get sick less often if you keep a regular exercise schedule. Do you have pain between the shoulder blades? Bend at the waist, “chicken wing” your arms with your elbows out to the sides, and pinch your shoulder blades together while holding 3 to 5 pound weights. Do you have stress headaches? Stand straight and shrug your shoulders up and down while holding light weights. Come up with a routine that works opposing muscles like low back and abdominal muscles, or biceps and triceps in your arms. 

Lifting weights is a relatively cheap, simple lifestyle change that can make you healthier and happier. Make 2012 the year that you decide to take your health into your own hands by picking up some weights.

Cholesterol is Healthy!

There is much hoopla in the media today about the terrible effects of cholesterol in your body, and how even previously considered “normal” levels of cholesterol can cause arterial and heart disease. As a doctor who has studied the human nervous system in great detail, I think it is necessary to put out a logical perspective on the cholesterol discussion. Here is the big shocker: cholesterol is good. Cholesterol is fantastic, even. You need cholesterol for everything that you do. How can I make this sweeping claim? I have two compelling reasons. Reason number one: hormones, such as testosterone, androgens, and estrogen. These are important chemicals that your body makes…out of cholesterol. Reason number two: your brain. This organ is so important that if your body loses connection with it, you die. Your brain cannot function without cholesterol. Your nervous system is bathed in cholesterol, enabling it to relay messages from the brain to the body, and enabling thoughts and memories to form through synapse connection. In addition, cholesterol is the building block for many tissues throughout your body.

Even a cursory internet search on the helpful effects of cholesterol in the human body will yield solid, scientific facts in support of cholesterol. In July of 2005, Chris Masterjohn wrote an article, published at www.cholesterol-and-health.com, about the effects of cholesterol on the brain. What’s more, this article shows that drugs which destroy cholesterol in your body have the effect of disorientation, memory loss, and aches and pains in the body. I ask new patients who present in my office with back pain whether they are on cholesterol medication. Cholesterol-lowering drugs are often a contributing factor to joint and muscle pain.

Then why is it that cholesterol levels are so high when someone has a heart attack? Let me put it into perspective: do umbrellas cause rain? Think about cause and effect for one moment. If cholesterol is the building block for nervous system function, as well as skin and membrane creation, then of course it will be high after the body experiences a traumatic event. Your body knows how to fix itself innately, and it will send in the reinforcements when there is a problem. Your body does indeed concentrate plaques of cholesterol in damaged arteries, because it is trying to fix the artery. 

Cholesterol is made by your body, in the amount that your body needs. Excess cholesterol is removed by fiber, naturally, through feces. And blood cholesterol levels are lowered when you eat well and exercise in a healthy lifestyle—because you are healthy, and need less internal repair. Having too little cholesterol mimics the disease Multiple Sclerosis. M.S. is caused by de-myelination—the loss of the insulating layer which enables the nervous system to function. Myelin is made of at least one-fifth cholesterol. I am not asking you to take my word for it; go to www.cholesterol-and-health.com. Read the evidence for yourself.

Sinus Drainage = Good Health

This year’s wintery weather is typical of Tennessee. Warm, almost balmy days change abruptly to wet and chilly to downright cold. This kind of weather can cause some serious discomfort as nasal passages expand and contract, and sinus drainage ensues. Sometimes sinus drainage is intrinsically linked to neck pain and headaches. Remember that all bodily systems are interconnected. Blood circulation is linked to lymph circulation. Both of these systems interweave throughout muscles like plumbing through the walls of a house, and everything is controlled through signals from the nervous system. 

When your head feels stuffed up, whether you are draining mucous or dry, you can bet your lymph system is working overtime. Lymph is like the gray water system in your body. In your house, gray water pipes drain away used bath water, dirty dish water, and used water from the washing machine.  Among other functions, lymph circulation carts away dead immune cells and vanquished invaders, like bacteria. When the mucous membranes inside your head work overtime to protect your body from viruses and bacteria during these damp winter months, the obvious results are usually found in your Kleenex. Your lymph system is also working overtime, doing its thing to clear away old cells and make way for new, healthy tissue. This can cause extra pressure in the base of your skull, and even in your neck, where there is a heavy concentration of lymph nodes. You may feel these swollen lymph nodes as little tender lumps under the shelf of your skull, or in the muscles of your neck.

This added pressure from lymph can irritate the muscles and nerves in your neck. If you have an existing subluxation, or misalignment in the spine, added lymph pressure can cause head and muscle aches. Getting your spine adjusted can have a double effect:  1) Removing subluxations can jump-start the nervous system, which is responsible for getting the message to your circulatory system to move the junk on out, and 2) Removing pressure on the cervical nerves can relax your neck muscles and relieve the pain signals being beamed to your brain. 

Drainage is a good thing. Drying up your mucous-producing membranes will allow foreign critters like bacteria and viruses to set up shop inside your body. It may not be pretty, but health is often not pretty. Instead of stopping the symptom of sinus drainage, get it jump-started with a chiropractic adjustment. You’ll get over the sinus invasion much faster, and actually help the cause of your problem instead of masking it.

Practice Health Consciously

Do you clean your house just to keep the dirt from showing? Do you eat just to shovel in nutrients, or do you enjoy the way your favorite foods taste? Do you maintain a relationship just to have someone else’s backside make a divot in the couch next to you? Do you pay attention to your health only when it is going downhill? The depth and quality of your relationships, health, and life depends entirely upon you.

Trudging through life like it is a chore is a waste of time. Your attitude makes all the difference. As a chiropractor, I observe people in my office who hurry through their days to get home, only to hurry through feeding their families, getting the kids to bed, then becoming a tube zombie for the evening. Then they start the whole process again the next day. At some point, these people’s bodies rebel against them. Their backs start to ache, they fall and injure themselves, or they wake up with excruciating neck pain. These incidences seem like just more proof that life is tedium, just an obstacle to get through.

 I have a different perspective. When you feel aches and pains, realize that your body is sending you a signal to wake up! Smell the roses! Take a walk, spend an afternoon building something with your kids. Take care of yourself, and those you love, because you enjoy it. The healthiest people I know are those who maintain their health before it starts to crumble. Instead of playing catch up, they stay ahead of the game. They wake up ready to conquer whatever comes their way. When they do get an injury (probably from playing ultimate Frisbee or climbing mountains), they accept the challenge and get to doing what needs doing in order to heal.

 When you ignore those you love, they drift away from you. The same thing happens to your health. The funny thing is, when you start really taking care of yourself by making proactive decisions about diet and exercise, then the rest of your life gets better. Visit your chiropractor before you feel aches and pains. Get your health up and running, and maintain it! 

Live your life to its fullest. Nobody else can do it for you.

Triple Omega Fatty Acids--Go Eat Some!

I often advise people to take a triple omega fatty acid supplement. Omega fatty acids are essential fatty acids—so called because we can’t make them, so we need to consume them. We can make other fatty acids by metabolizing our foods, but essential fatty acids come from a diet of healthy fish, vegetable oils, and flax seeds. You may have heard of eating fish oil for improved vascular health. Fish oil is one of the healthy omega fatty acids. There are three that you should be consuming regularly; omega 3,6, and 9 fatty acids. The number denotes where on the carbon chain the double bond exists in the structure of the molecule.

The potential benefits of consuming triple omega fatty acids range from cancer prevention to lowering the risk of a heart attack. These essential oils may help with depression, varicose vein symptoms, and digestive health. The benefit that most concerns me, as a chiropractor, is the role this supplement plays in the health of your nervous system. Triple omega fatty acids help form the insulating sheath called myelin, which protects and enables your nervous system. I first began taking the supplement during my pregnancy with my baby boy, to ensure that his brain and the rest of nervous system had the best tools possible to form and function optimally. I still take the supplement because I am breastfeeding, and because I can feel the benefits of better health in my own body.

Eating appropriate nutrients and taking appropriate supplements boils down to two things: giving your body the raw materials it needs to grow, heal, and protect you from invading micro critters, and giving your body these ingredients in the most usable form. Try to find vegetarian, or whole-food forms of your supplements. These products are derived from an actual, natural food. Synthetic supplements are often more difficult for your body to utilize, so you don’t get the full benefit of the supplement. In some cases, a simple shift in position of one part of the molecule makes the whole thing totally useless to your metabolism…so you have essentially thrown away your money on a product that is just passing through. Of course, getting your nutrients from a natural food source is best, but often we don’t know how nutritious modern food really is. Strip-mined tomatoes from Texas are missing more than just taste; many health benefits are lacking as well.

Adding one serving of healthy fish to your menu weekly, sprinkling in some flax seeds to your bread or cereal, and cooking with extra virgin olive oil are all ways to increase your essential fatty acid intake. If you are worried about heavy metal poisoning from eating more fish, take the fish oil supplement. Look into increasing your consumption of triple omega fatty acids; your eyes, heart, immune system, nervous system, circulatory system and good mood will all thank you.

The Broken System

If I tried to sell you a snow suit to wear in the Bahamas, you would call me crazy. If I tried to sell you Twinkies as a weight loss supplement, you would think I was a liar. If I tried to sell you surgical operations that are unnecessary and prescription drugs that do more harm than good, you would have to call that par for the course in America’s current health system. Today, I read an article written by Donald Petersen, Jr in Dynamic Chiropractic that gives some interesting statistics. According to the NCHSData Brief No. 42, released in September of 2010, in 2008 the percentage of Americans on prescription drugs in a given month rose to 47.2 percent. It is four years later, and you can bet that now over half of the population of America is taking a prescription drug. 

Intrigued by these numbers, I did some more digging. I encourage you to follow my lead and find out some facts. A Google search should yield some good information for you. America spends almost 300 BILLION dollars on prescription drugs annually. If health comes in pill form, we should be oozing it. According to the CIA, we rank around 50th in life expectancy, and 47th in infant mortality rates out of 221 countries rated in 2011. These two categories are largely what the World Health Organization uses to rank the health of a nation. Granted, the actual numbers are not terrible; apparently, we can expect to live to the age of 78 and only 6 out of 1,000 infants born alive die within their first year in America. Here is the point I want to drive home: we spend BILLIONS more (on what pharmaceutical companies insist on calling healthcare) than any other industrialized nation, and we have worse health results than at least 47 of them. How is that logical?

Yes, we need healthcare reform. It will never happen on a mass scale. It absolutely will not happen out of government decree. You need to take control of your own body, and take responsibility for your own health. You do this by eating well, exercising and sleeping well, and taking holistic care measures. Yes, I am a chiropractor, and yes, I am promoting my profession in place of mainstream medical treatment for wellness care. From my perspective, nationalizing healthcare is about pushing a system that is broken. Follow the money trail. Sickness for profit is no way to get healthy. 

Ignore all those smiling, nodding faces during the voiceover and pay attention to the words at the end of the drug commercial: side effects include loss of function, loss of money, loss of control, and loss of life. If this is better than the symptoms you are experiencing, then by all means, take the drug.

Get Rid of Stress, Get Rid of Pain

Imagine this conversation in my adjusting room: “Doc, what is causing me to feel this pain?” “According to your health history and my exam, I’d say stress is causing your body to react this way.” “Stress…is that all?”

This is a conversation I have on a weekly basis. What many people fail to realize is that stress is a major factor in how your mind and body react to disease, pain, personal relationships, even your ability to reason through a situation. There are times when stress is a fantastic motivator. Marathon runners, stock traders (the Wall Street kind, not the kind that hears “moo” all day,) even college students all perform wonders when the stress of competition and survival is bearing down on them like a semi-truck. There is a breaking point, though, and if you follow those who thrive on stress, you’ll find that Wall-Street traders have a high rate of heart attacks, marathon runners have bodies that break down in middle age, and even college students—those kids stuck between childhood and the real world—have a high rate of sickness in the week after exams. The fact is that an excess of stress breaks us down.

Stress comes in all kinds of categories, but for our purposes please realize that your mind and body cannot be separated. Here is the main point that I try to drive home for every stressed-out patient that I adjust: physical pain is a manifestation of mental stress, and mental stress is absolutely tangled up in physical pain. I have seen people who, by all counts, should be laid up in bed with crippling pain. I know men who have broken their vertebrae multiple times, and women who naturally give birth with no medical intervention. I have observed these people enduring and living their lives with full function, because (and here is the crux) they deal with their stress! They do not ignore their stress or their symptoms. They take the time to understand their situation, instead of using avoidance techniques to run away from the situation. People who have a loving, nurturing home life and a strong sense of will come through physically painful situations with success. Notice I didn’t say “with ease.” Dealing with stressful situations is not easy.

For the record, I am a holistic, natural doctor, and I consider popping pain pills on a daily basis to be an avoidance tactic. Slapping duct tape over the “check engine” light will help you forget it’s there, but it won’t help you fix the problem. Pain pills are just duct tape for your nervous system. Getting chiropractic adjustments can help you break the stress-pain cycle. Realigning your spine to get your nervous system fully functioning is a healthy step toward recovering. If you are having a hard time getting through a sickness, ask yourself this question: what, in your life, is causing you to hang on to your stress?