Remember When?

Most of us 30 years of age and older may recall the tradition that when you were found to have an ailment or early sign of disease you were told to change your diet, exercise, or reduce stress and then prescribed a medication for a short period of time until you could be re-evaluated to see if you’d made the appropriate changes.  Do you wonder what happened to those times?  Not long ago, I saw a presentation by one of the world’s top economists who explained why things have changed. 

The change did not start with your doctors; it started at the pharmaceutical companies where this economist worked before going to work at the White House.  He explains that drug companies are public traded corporations, thus decisions are made largely at shareholder meetings where economic prosperity rules.  Around 25 years ago, a trend came about to promote what are called “lifestyle drugs.”  These are drugs that manage your symptoms and blood values but these drugs would be recommended for extended periods of time and often the rest of a patient’s life.  In a corporate shareholders’ meeting, this was the right decision because it made the most economic sense.  I believe it was an easy sell for the doctors too because they were tired and frustrated of making lifestyle recommendations such as proper diet and exercise that patients often did not comply with and as a result not many were getting better.  Lifestyle drugs lowered blood pressure and cholesterol numbers, reduced symptoms of arthritis, depression, and indigestion and so everyone was happy.

My question is this – if you are diagnosed with, let’s say, high blood pressure and you use a drug to manage your numbers, do you still have high blood pressure?  What happens when you go off the drug?  100% of the time, your numbers will go back up unless you’ve made the appropriate lifestyle change to address the cause of your high blood pressure (or virtually any other illness) in the first place.  My challenge to you is this – surprise your doctor.  Ask what you could/should be doing to address the cause of your symptoms so that you can eventually get off your medication and then go do those things!  This is the only way you move out of a symptoms management “sick-care” model and back into a model of true health. 

Think Posture is Insignificant?

As a professional who looks at the spine, I believe we’re at an all-time low in postural awareness.  In my experience, you will find less than 10% of the general population who displays the ideal anatomical posture.  Why is this?  Most likely there are a multitude of reasons from too much time sitting in desks, in cars, on the couch or in front of the computer, to a general lack of exercise, to the stress of heavy backpacks and purses, to improper mattresses and chairs.  In regard to the neck and shoulders I believe all the time people spend looking down to play handheld games, to text, and even to read, places undo stress on the neck and shoulders.  Get the books and gadgets up so that you aren’t looking straight down!  More than anything, I believe the problem is poor habits simply because most people don’t care that much about proper posture.  Here’s some research to hopefully make you care.

In the past I’ve discussed the model of tensegrity which proves that the bones of our spine and skeleton are never supposed to be rubbing together.  Only when posture and alignment are compromised do our joints “rub” creating the imbalanced stress that contributes to arthritis.  If this greater risk of arthritis is not motivation enough, a recent journal article proved the relationship between head/neck posture and pulmonary (lung) function.  As the head goes forward in posture (as it does with most) the resulting loss of the proper curvature of the neck will reduce normal motion of the head neck and shoulders and as the study showed, it will reduce breathing, oxygenation to the cells, and proper nerve flow.  They even found that incidence of asthma was greater in those with improper neck curvature.  This really should come as no surprise as the first chapter of any physiology book will state that our anatomy dictates our physiology!  The researchers found that proper posture is critical to your autonomic nervous system which contains the nerves that run all your organs and glands.  In particular, they found that changes in neck posture affected the Vagus nerve that controls the heart, lungs, and much of the digestive system.  The positive side of the study is that they found that loss of curvature to the neck could be restored through, chiropractic, specific exercises and improved habits and awareness.  And when the curvature improved, so did breathing, oxygenation, and nerve flow to the organs.  Watch your posture and especially make proper posture a priority to your kids!

Inflammatory Insights

In the past I’ve vilified inflammation and pointed out that inflammation is at the root of every disease.  However, I’ve also been known to point out that the body is always smart and most everything that occurs inside the body is actually a perfect response to a stimulus or stressor from our environment.  Thus, if the latter is true, there must be a reason for the redness, swelling, and pain associated with inflammation.  In this article I’d like to point out some of the benefits of this natural reaction of the body and provide strategies for dealing with chronic inflammation.

The inflammatory response is a natural defense mechanism that is triggered whenever body tissues are damaged or threatened by trauma, irritating chemical toxins or viral/bacterial infection. Most of the body’s defense tools are located in the blood and inflammation causes swelling and stretching of the blood vessels so that white bloods cells, large proteins focused on tissue repair and different hormones can move into the tissue to initiate the healing process.  The swelling also helps to dilute any harmful chemicals in the area and bring in large amounts of oxygen and nutrients.  Acute inflammation has even been shown to be important for immune function including increasing the body’s ability to mediate T-lymphocytes which are the white bloods cells associated with fighting infection and eliminating cancer cells.

The problem occurs when acute inflammation becomes chronic as this is a sign that the body is not healing appropriately.  This phenomenon is much more common with people that have a lower level of health due to high stress, poor sleep, lack of exercise, poor diet, toxicity, and a generally weakened immune and/or nervous system function.  The typical approach to treat chronic inflammation is to use corticosteroids.  Dr. Andrew Weil, in his book Spontaneous Healing, reports “I consider them (steroids) dangerous drugs, much misunderstood, abused and over prescribed. Steroids are toxic, cause dependence, suppress, rather than cure disease, and reduce the chance of healing by natural treatment. Moreover, they weaken immunity.”

My experience is that you have to start by restoring health to the body in order to heal from chronic inflammation.  First, get rid of the chemical toxins by doing a detox and cleaning up the diet while drinking large amounts of water.  This is imperative!  Next, supplement with an omega 3 such as fish oil, heal the gut with probiotics, and take in adequate minerals or green food supplements to alkalize the body’s pH.  Focus on stress reducing methods such as meditation and yoga and make proper sleep a priority.  Chiropractic, massage, acupuncture, cold laser, and physical therapy can often be of huge benefit.  Finally, once you start feeling better, start off slow, but commit to regular exercise to finish it off.  While there are other factors that can help, this is a basic formula for recovering from any chronic inflammatory condition.

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.