Why Vitamin C

Colds, flu’s, bronchitis, and allergies seem to be at an all-time high this winter and many people are looking for relief.  As for myself, I’ve always had luck taking doses of Vitamin C and a product made from coconut called Lauricidin.  But does Vitamin C really work, and if so, why does it work?

Vitamin C is well documented to repair collagen – in fact, it’s necessary.  Collagen is fibrous connective tissue that lines the surfaces of the skin, blood vessels, bone, and tendons. Likewise, recent research showed that 3000 mg of Vitamin C had the same anti-inflammatory effect as the prescription Celebrex for symptoms of joint pain.  This is likely because Vitamin C helps the body produce the steroid hormone Cortisol.  This makes it a great supplement for joint injuries and inflammatory conditions.  Vitamin C is also proven to thin the blood and raise HDL – the good cholesterol.  At the same time, evidence shows that the nutrient helps clean artery walls thereby helping prevent arteriosclerosis.  Finally, an Oncologist named Dr. Simone reported that high doses of Vitamin C with its strong antioxidant properties deprives rapidly dividing cells such cancer cells, viruses, and bacteria of oxygen and glucose.  This is the key for fighting infections.

Vitamin C competes for the same receptor sites on the cell membrane as glucose.  These sugars are known to increase inflammation, stress the immune system, and feed the unpleasant cells just mentioned.  By blocking glucose from entering the cell, Vitamin C helps prevent these unpleasant consequences.  The lesson to learn here is that it’s sugar that is the real problem.  Yes, supplementing with Vitamin C appears to help your body fight off infection more quickly by diminishing the negative effect of glucose.  But you can accomplish the same results by eliminating or at least limiting sugar from your diet.  The last thing to remember about Vitamin C is that your kidneys will only process 1000 milligrams at a time and if you take too much during a day, water will be drawn into your colon resulting in loose bowel movements.

Maintaining Balance

Since chiropractic is about restoring proper alignment and motion to the spine to remove pressure and tension off the nervous system, once you’re aligned or adjusted, why do you go back out of alignment?  This is one of the best questions I’m frequently asked and the answer is not only the key to success with your chiropractic care, but success with health in general.  Just like everything else in the body, the spine and nervous system are dynamic and in a state of constant adaptation.  I’ve written in the past that we are designed for health.  This is not 100% true.  We are designed to maintain a state of balance or homeostasis and health is related to your ability to maintain that homeostasis. Maintaining homeostasis is directly related to the ability to adapt to your individual level of physical, chemical and emotional stress.

In terms of spinal alignment, the physical conditions that may get you out of balance can be traumas, repetitive activities at work, poor posture or something as simple as a poor mattress or chair.  Many times what prevents people from “holding” their adjustments especially as we age is a lack of muscle tone and stability.  This is why spinal exercises are such an important part of your care.  Chemically, different toxins can insult and imbalance the body.  We are what we eat.  A great deal of research has proven that people will not hold their adjustments or maintain other aspects of homeostasis when they are acidic.  When you are acidic, you become more easily inflamed.  To reduce acidity, minerals are required which means you must eat the proper amounts of fruits and vegetables.  Emotional stress can often be the biggest one.  Feelings such as worry, guilt, anger, and frustration put us in a state of stress physiology which alters the function of our organs, hormones, muscles, and joints.  Replacing these feelings with positive thoughts and practicing stress reduction is critical. 

Understanding these guidelines of homeostasis and health are relatively simple.  Making change and putting them into practice can sometimes be a challenge.  Your doctors should act as a coach to help guide you, but applying these principles is up to you.  If you’re interested in more information on making lifestyle changes for better health, contact our office to learn more about our wellness program.

Workout Wisdom

Last week I shared some tips from the world-class performance coach, Jeff Spencer.  He advised that whether you were a beginner or a top athlete, you absolutely need to plan rest/recovery time in between hard workouts.  This week, I’d like to share some of the other advice Dr. Spencer provided regarding proper training.

First or all, you need to remember that regardless of age or fitness, your body will always adapt and it will become more efficient with repetition.  As you continue to exercise, what at first might have been a hard workout will become easier.  Spencer stresses that you need to have a proper balance between hard and easy workouts.  Here’s some ways to know if you’re getting this balance.  After the first couple weeks of exercise, it should only take around 30 minutes to rebound from a workout.  Slight temporary soreness is o.k. but regular soreness is not.  If you’re sore for days, you’re probably pushing too hard.  Successful workouts sessions should leave you feeling better than when you started.  You should expect to feel more vitalized and energetic.  Watch your perspiration as well.  As a rule, you should stop sweating within a few minutes after exercise.  If perspiration continues for 20-30 minutes, the workout was probably too hard.  Possibly the best way to gauge is by watching your heart rate.  It should go up and back down easily.  If you have a hard time elevating your heart rate, you’ve probably trained too hard for too long.  Assuming you are getting your heart rate up, just like perspiration, your heart rate should return to normal within around five minutes after workouts.

I hope these exercise guidelines help.  Please remember that we provide tips just like these along with other diet and lifestyle guidelines as part of our Wellness Program.  For the month of January, we are running a special for anyone who pre-pays for two months of training. A month of unlimited sauna use will be included at no additional charge. Call or text our office at 812-273-4325 for more information.

The Right Workout

I wanted to share a great article I found by Dr. Jeff Spencer.  Dr. Spencer was an Olympic cyclist who came to even greater fame as Lance Armstrong’s coach and chiropractor and now trains many world-class athletes.  In this article, Spencer addresses the question, “How much exercise is too much.”  Obviously, this is only relevant to those who are exercising regularly.  But whether you’re a beginner or a peak athlete this advice is critical.

Dr. Spencer points out that those that adopt the “more is better” approach will not usually get the results they are working for and will likely be nagged by continuous low-grade injuries that can ultimately interfere with workouts, create more stress, and zap motivation.  All levels of training must be balanced with appropriate recovery.  He breaks workouts into easy, moderate, and hard categories.  To simplify, an easy workout would be one where you could maintain a conversation through the workout.  A moderate workout is where you could talk, but wouldn’t want to -- especially in full sentences.  A hard workout is where you simply could not carry on any conversation.  His biggest rule to prevent overtraining is that hard workouts should only be done once or twice per week with three days recovery in between.  Likewise, you should allow two days of recovery in between moderate workouts.  Understand that you still can plan easy workouts on these in between recovery days.

Dr. Spencer admits that high intensity training is the best way to get results and stay fit, but his experience is that most people overdo it.  He recommends doing two hard workouts per week, but allowing two easy workouts in between these to provide balance.  I think this is great advice for those already training in order to avoid setbacks and injuries.  I also think this is helpful for those looking to get started to understand that you don’t have to kill yourself every day in order to get the same results the pros get.  If this interests you, please read next week for another set of tips from this world-class trainer and coach.