Fruits & Vegetables

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.

Sauna Benefits

We have recently added an infrared sauna to our office and are excited about the potential benefits this can offer to our patients. Perhaps you have used a sauna in the past. Most of us are familiar with steam saunas which generally operate at a lower temperature than a dry sauna. An infrared sauna simply relies on heat and not steam for its overall effects. A traditional sauna heats you from the outside in. Infrared saunas heat you from the inside out. “By heating your tissues several inches deep, the infrared sauna can enhance your natural metabolic processes and blood circulation.”  There are numerous reasons to implement sauna use in your wellness routine.

Researchers in Finland did extensive studies to discover multiple benefits of sauna use. In relation to brain health, they “found that men who used a sauna four to seven times a week for an average length of 15 minutes had a 66 percent lower risk of developing dementia, and a 65 percent lower risk of Alzheimer’s.” An added benefit is that the stress hormones, norepinephrine and prolactin were released increasing focus and attention as well as repairing nerve cell damage.

In addition to brain health, the Finnish researchers also found numerous benefits to the heart. “Men who used the dry heat sauna seven times per week cut their risk of death from fatal health problems in half.” The stress placed on the body during a sauna session can mimic that of exercise. Athletic endurance is increased due to the blood flow to the heart and other muscles.

Use of the sauna can aide in detoxification and skin purification by increasing blood circulation which stimulates sweat glands. Heavy metals such as cadmium, arsenic and mercury are excreted from the body while sweating.

One of the most popular reasons for sauna use is weight loss. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, “regular use of a sauna imparts a similar boost on the cardiovascular system to running. As you relax in the gentle infrared heat, your body is hard at work producing sweat, pumping blood and burning calories.”

Additionally, sauna use reduced pain in fibromyalgia and arthritis. “In one small study, 44 patients with fibromyalgia found a reduction in pain between 33 and 77 percent.”

The information contained in this week’s article was derived from the following Mercola.com article and Clearlight Infrared Sauna website:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2017/02/09/benefits-of-sauna-therapy.aspx

http://infraredsauna.com/infrared-sauna-health-benefits/

Think Happy Thoughts

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.

Antibiotics & Probiotics

With flu and the immune system being such a hot subject, it’s important to address my 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. 

Eating Late

Certainly there are several effective strategies out there to help with weight loss and promote a healthy way of eating.  I came across this recent study and wanted to share it with you to prevent self-sabotage when it comes to preventing weight gain.

Researchers from Northwestern University have found that eating at the wrong time leads to more than twice as much weight gain as when eating at appropriate times.  These findings were consistent in all the subjects studied.  So what is the wrong time to eat?  Apparently eating after dark is the problem. While still uncertain to the ultimate cause, they believe that metabolism slows at night in response to darkness and circadian rhythms in the body. Calories taken in after dark will not be burned up and will be moved to storage instead.  While we all have different sleep patterns, nighttime is a time for rest and for the body to repair and recharge.  Regardless what time you actually go to sleep, at night your thyroid functions at a lower level dropping your body temperature, lowering your metabolism and encouraging sleep.  This lowered thyroid function and metabolism is likely the cause of this dramatic difference in weight gain at night.

I suspect many of us are guilty of late dinners and evening snacks, but hopefully knowing that these habits deliver twice the punch will make us all modify our habits and plan meals accordingly.  

Could you live to be 100?

How old are you going to live?  More importantly, what will your life look like in the later years?  The average American lives to be 78 years of age.  However, scientists believe that one in ten thousand people can and will live to be 100 years and they can do this without complications of so many age-related diseases.  In fact, some research has shown that our bodies and organs are designed to function normally up to 135 years!  This means that most Americans are living 30 to 60 years short of their potential.

Why are we aging less than our potential?  A recent study identified two factors that may dramatically increase our age and decrease risk of disease.  Not surprisingly, both of these are related to diet.  The researchers found that decreasing our daily caloric intake by 30-40% can extend life by up to 60%!  This is consistent with other studies that report daily caloric intake should be less than 2000 calories in order to control insulin levels and enhance DNA repair.  The second factor identified in greater longevity is again related to omega 3 fatty acids.  They found that people who lived longer typically had very high levels of HDL (good cholesterol).  The thought is that high amounts of large molecule HDL helps remove free radicals that damage DNA.  If you’ve been reading these articles, you know that you get a higher HDL from omega 3 sources such as fish, fish oil and green vegetables.  For more secrets of longevity, check out the book, “Healthy at 100” by John Robbins. 

What is Out of Balance in Your Life

As a chiropractor, I see all kinds of physical complaints and pains especially involving the back.  I recently heard a speaker ask the question, “Is back pain really a back problem, or is it a health problem?”  The point he was making is that pain is not really the problem.  Pain is a programmed response that the body provides to let us know that there is a problem.  Pain is an electrical signal received in the brain.  You see, pain is like the smoke alarm that tells us there is a fire.  We spend money, time and effort fighting aches and pains without ever uncovering or even looking for the real problem.  We should be looking for cause rather than fighting the symptoms of pain.

The body is designed to heal on its own and when we have pain, especially chronic pain, this is the result of a problem that is failing to heal.  In other words, this is a health problem.  If you’ve been following this column, you know by now that most health problems can be linked to improper choices regarding lifestyle.  For this reason, when someone is having a pain, symptom, or health problem, I like to ask the question, “What is out of balance in your life?”  The common answers to this question include excess emotional stress, lack of exercise, poor diet, dehydration, poor posture, excessive caffeine, reactions to medications, lack of sleep, and all the other things discussed in this column.  The point is that many times the ultimate cause of problems is simple and yet we turn to complicated solutions rather than make changes.  I can’t tell you how many times a person’s pains are the result of a bad chair, pillow or mattress.  If you are dealing with any kind of health problem, please take time to analyze your lifestyle – more often than not the answer is right in front of you.