Eating Your Fruits & Veggies

Recently, a couple studies came out regarding diet that recommended what we should already know.  The first study performed by Harvard nurses, monitored the diets of 110,000 people for 14 years.  They found that the people who ate more fruits and vegetables had lower risk of developing heart disease.  Heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S. accounting for almost 1 out of every 2 deaths!  The nurses concluded that increasing your daily fruit/vegetable intake will decrease your risk of heart disease by 4 percent per serving.

A similar study done at University College London found that diets including plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, and fish help decrease the risk of depression.  In the study, those who ate a diet based on fresh, whole foods had a 26% lower risk of depression.  Furthermore, those who ate diets high in fried food, processed meat, high-fat dairy and sugar had a 58% higher incidence of depression.  Despite their risk of suicide, deeper depression and outcomes that are often not any better than placebos, anti-depression drugs are one of the most common prescriptions in the U.S.  What if simple changes in diet along with regular exercise could eliminate depression for most people?

The recommendation on fruits/vegetables is five-to-thirteen servings per day depending on whether your sources are organic or lower quality mass produced sources.  As I’ve discussed in the past, fruits, vegetables, and fish are the foods rich in omega 3 fatty acids that reduce the inflammation associated with heart disease, depression and most other common ailments.  One of the best health tips you could ever implement is to include a fruit or a vegetable with every meal.  Plan this for yourself and your family and you will see the results within a very short time.  I don’t care if it’s the same vegetable every single meal; just do it!  The only thing I would recommend is that you try to keep your fruit/vegetable sources raw or lightly cooked.  Heavy cooking, freezing and canning can destroy the fiber, enzymes, and vitamin/mineral complexes you are trying to gain by eating these foods.

Bacteria and Your Immune System

With flu and the immune system being such a hot subject, I have been asked about any concern of taking antibiotics.  I often explain to the members of our practice that taking an antibiotic will work like a nuclear bomb – it will often kill the bad bacteria, but it can eliminate all the good bacteria as well.

We have become a society obsessed with germs, but the reality is that there are over 70 trillion cells in the body and for every one of these cells, there should be about 10 “good” bacteria to support our system.  In a healthy individual there should be approximately eight pounds of these good germs just in the colon alone!  They exist in the body to digest waste products and toxins and to assist the digestive system by breaking down waste in the bowel.  Most importantly, these good germs seem to act as a first line of defense for the immune system by attacking any bad germs that enter our body when we eat, drink, or swallow.  When these good germs are killed off by excessive antibiotics, the immune system will be compromised leaving us even more susceptible to the bad germs.

My standard recommendation to people is to use antibiotics sparingly and only when the body is unable to fight off infection on its own with the help of a healthy lifestyle.  If antibiotics are used, try following them up with a protocol of probiotics.  These are the good bacteria that should be in our systems.  You can find these in a liquid or capsule form and what you will be looking for is something that contains lactobacillus acidophilus.  Yes, you can get some of this by eating natural yogurt, but many of the commercial yogurts are so laden with sugars that undermine the function of the immune system and promote yeast. 

Gratitude

If you read last week you learned that science knows the precise point where positive and negative thoughts originate in the brain and the only way to shut off harmful negative thoughts is by replacing them with healthier positive ones.  Like anything, our way of thinking is a habit and like any habit it can be relearned.  I thought this week would be a good time to share a strategy to begin strengthening your habit of positive thinking that I’ve seen work for many people.

The Christmas Season is a great time to start a gratitude journal.  

You need a notebook kept bedside so each night, right before you go to sleep, you can write 5 things for which you are thankful and grateful in your life.  Really feel this!  This will put your subconscious mind (that runs your body) in a relaxed, positive state and help keep you there while you sleep.  First thing in the morning before you get out of bed, grab the journal and begin reading all that you have written over the previous nights until you “feel” that you are in a true state of gratitude.  This should not just be a list of stuff – it should be a list of everything meaningful in the past, present and even future.  Doing this in the morning will help you start your day in the right state.  This strategy sounds simple, but I’ve seen it be extremely effective.  Even if you believe yourself to be a positive person, commit to doing this for one month and see what changes take place in your life.

The Power of Positive Thinking

Several times, I’ve discussed the importance of lowering stress and monitoring your thoughts to promote health and prevent disease.  I even cited the studies showing negative thinking changed the expression of our DNA (in a bad way).  Massive amounts of medical research have been performed in the last few years looking at this brain-body connection.  The basis of this research is that the brain runs the body and what the brain puts out will be expressed in the body.  This is precisely why many experts are now coming to believe that our thinking may be the most important lifestyle factor even over diet and exercise. 

With the use of functional MRI, they have identified the origin of negative and positive thinking and have discovered that positive thoughts originate in the front of the left side of the brain and negative thoughts originate from the same spot on the right side.  The importance of this discovery is when they had someone think a negative thought and then asked them to stop thinking that, nothing changed on the MRI.  Researchers quickly learned that the only way to turn off the right side of the brain associated with negative thinking is to turn on the left side associated with positive thinking.  This means that feelings of depression, anger, frustration, fear, and regret cannot just be turned off!  They have to be replaced with feelings of joy, peace, love, faith, and gratitude.  My belief is that these thought patterns, positive or negative, are habit forming.  Like anything, we get better at repeating these patterns with practice.  What are you practicing?  Even if you are practicing the negative thoughts that have a devastating effect on your health, you have the choice to change even just a little at a time.  Next week, I will share some tested strategies on how to start making this change.

It’s That Time Again

If you’ve been a regular reader you may recognize that this is a repeat article on seasonal affective disorder or S.A.D.  This condition is more commonly referred to as the “winter blues” and it is characterized by a sense of depression that starts in the fall and ends in the spring and is accompanied by decreased energy and initiative.  While this condition is commonly treated with prescription drugs and antidepressants, often its ‘cure’ is intimately related to its cause.

The reason many people get S.A.D. in this part of the country at this time of the year is because the weather forces us into hibernation with a deficit of sunlight exposure.  Regular exposure to sunlight stimulates our skin to release vitamin D.  In truth, vitamin D is less of a vitamin than it is a hormone precursor.  Optimal levels of vitamin D simulate and balance our hormones to help regulate our normal physiology.  When we are lacking adequate sun exposure causing a deficiency of vitamin D, our hormones become imbalanced resulting in depression, fatigue and numerous other problems.  If you worry that you suffer from these winter blues and weekend trips to the Bahamas are not an option you can try a couple options.  First, you can supplement with vitamin D.  While this often works, you need to take much more vitamin D than is in your multivitamin as it does not get into the system easily.  When supplementing, you do need to practice caution because it is possible to get too much vitamin D and the only way to truly know your level is a blood test.  The second option is the use of light therapy using a light box that runs about $60 and is intended to provide synthetic sunlight.

I repeat this article because it affects so many people this time of year.

Boost Your Immunity

In the past couple articles, I’ve discussed how sugar decreases a person’s potential for wellness by compromising the immune system and limiting a person’s defense.  In this article, I’d like to point out one of the many ways to strengthen the immune system and improve defense.

One of the studies that inspired me to pursue chiropractic in the first place was performed in 1989 by Ronald Pero, Ph.D.  Dr. Pero was the chief cancer prevention researcher at New York University.  Since cancer is recognized as an immune system problem, Dr. Pero decided to check the immune systems of people under chiropractic care as compared to people in the general population and to people with cancer or other serious disease.  In a 3 year study of 107 individuals who had been under regular chiropractic care for at least 5 years, he found that this chiropractic group had a 200% greater immune function than the general public.  More than this, he found that the chiropractic group had a 400% greater immunity than people with cancer and other disease.

In his conclusion, Dr. Pero reported, “I have never seen a group other than this chiropractic group to experience a 200% increase over the normal patients.”

In addition to regular exercise, proper diet and reduced stress, maintaining the proper function of your spine and nervous system through regular chiropractic adjustments is proven to be a vital component of optimal health and wellness.

Sugar - Part 2

If you missed last week’s column, I picked on sugar.  If you missed it, that’s o.k. because this week I’m going to do it again!

Last week I reported how cutting sugar in schools improves student performance and behavior.  We all know that sugar contributes to obesity and of course is the main cause of type II diabetes.  This week I’d like to talk about how sugar adversely impacts your body’s defense or your immune system.

I’ve heard it reported that the amount of sugar in a single soda (which is about 12 teaspoons!) will virtually shut down your immune system for about two hours.  This makes you much more susceptible to all types of infection.

Did you know that about 75 years ago the Nobel Prize was given to Dr. Warburg of Germany when he discovered that sugar caused cancer?  Dr. Warburg reported that almost anything can cause cancer, but that there is only one prime cause and that is the fermentation of sugar in normal body cells.

A similar 2004 study concluded that women who ate more sugar-laden foods were nearly three times more likely to develop colon cancer.

We all know that sugar is bad for us, but hopefully this information can serve as motivation to avoid the sweets more often for better health.