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SouthGASpineAndJoint-A Drug Free Way to Treat Headaches Chiropractic Care

A Drug-Free Way to Treat Headaches: Chiropractic Care

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More Americans complain about headaches than any other health condition, including back pain; in fact, approximately 45 million Americans say they suffer headaches each year.

That’s one in every six people or more than 16 percent of the population. More than 8 million Americans visit their doctor seeking relief for symptoms of headaches each year. Unfortunately, the most popular treatment is over-the-counter pain relievers or prescription medication.

There is some good news when it comes to headaches. There are safe and effective natural solutions available to help reduce or eliminate the symptoms of various headache types. For example, chiropractic treatment is a highly sought-after alternative treatment for the debilitating effects associated with headaches. Let’s learn about that headache you may be suffering from and how chiropractic can help you get rid of it.

Headaches 101

Tension headaches: The most common type of headache is the tension headache. It is estimated that 80-90 percent of the U.S. population suffers from tension headaches at some point in their lives. There are two primary types of tension headaches:

  • Episodic: Headaches appear occasionally, usually less than 15 times per month.
  • Chronic: Headaches occur more than 15 times per month or on a consistent basis.

Tension headaches are intimately connected to abnormal posture, muscular tightness, joint stiffness, and restricted range of motion in the body. To obtain optimum health and function, it is important to remember that everything is connected and everything matters. Dysfunctional patterns of movement and posture affect how much tension and stress your body holds. The body must compensate for these dysfunctional patterns by any means necessary, and it accomplishes this by altering tension points.

Muscles attach to anchor points on bone and act as primary movers and stabilizers for your body. Mover muscles are used get you from point A to point B, such as a getting up out of a chair. Stabilizer muscles control that movement so you don’t fall down while standing up. Abnormal posture and altered tension points on bone anchors puts too much wear and tear on muscles and joints. Your brain and nervous system must compensate for this dysfunction by altering blood flow, muscle movement patterns and breathing. These alterations often lead to tension headaches.

Migraines: The second most common type of headache is the migraine headache. Approximately 16-17 percent of the population complains of migraines. These headaches are far more debilitating than the tension-type headaches. More women than men suffer from migraine headaches, leading researchers to believe there may be a hormonal component to migraines. The majority of migraine sufferers report some sort of trigger that kicks of their headaches (food, drink, smell, etc).

How Chiropractic Can Help

Chiropractic care can help alleviate the symptoms of tension and migraine headaches by improving and restoring normal postural patterns. Chiropractic treatment is aimed at normalizing muscle tension, restoring joint range of motion, and stabilizing the body to reduce abnormal stressors. Optimizing postural control of the head and neck reduces the workload your muscles must apply just to keep your head up during the day. Proper spinal alignment and muscle control helps give the body a fighting chance of avoiding a tension headache.

Proper breathing is essential to relaxation, blood flow, and oxygen supply to the brain and body. Abnormal posture, which can include such dysfunctions as rounded shoulders, neck forward over the shoulders, slouched positions and tightness in the hips from sitting all day, decrease lung capacity. This decreased capacity alters how much you breathe, how often, and from where.

Headache sufferers tend to breathe more from their chest and shoulders as opposed to their diaphragm. This leads to repeated elevation of the shoulders and upper back muscles hundreds of times a day, leading to increased tension in the head and neck. Chiropractic restores function to the spine, ribs, and hips to maximize breathing and good postural control. Better breathing equals better health.

If you’re suffering from headaches and are tired of taking pain-relieving medication day after day, your doctor of chiropractic will work closely with you to determine likely triggers for your headaches and make subtle changes in your activities of daily living to empower you to take back control of your life.

SouthGASpineAndJoint-Get Fit Burn More Fat Especially If Youre a Woman

Get Fit, Burn More Fat – Especially If You’re a Woman

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Think of a boulder that shakes free of its fixed position at the top of a mountain and begins to roll downward. The farther it travels, the faster it goes, picking up momentum that only stops when it a) hits the bottom or b) hits something in its path that changes its trajectory or otherwise slows it down. The same general principle works when it comes to burning fat.

Your fitness is the boulder. For many people, it starts at a fixed position – sitting on the couch, doing nothing, wishing you could shake yourself free and start “rolling” toward a healthier, happier, fitter life. And then something happens that gets you up and moving. That’s an important moment, because new research suggests that as you get more fit each and every day from that moment forward, your body is capable of burning more fat. Just like the boulder picking up speed, your continually fitter self picks up fat-burning speed.

In the study, published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition & Exercise Medicine, healthy adults ages 19-63 participated in a cycling fitness test while researchers measured their fat-burning ability (“peak fat oxidation”). Across the age ranges included in the study, physical fitness predicted fat-burning efficiency when exercising: the fitter the person, the more efficiently their body burned fat. Interestingly, this relationship appeared to be stronger in women than men.

The moral to the story? The fitter you get, the more fat your burn! Now if that isn’t motivation to get back in the gym, call your fitness buddy for an outdoor workout, or talk to your doctor about starting an exercise program for the very first time … what is?

SouthGASpineAndJoint-4 Ways to Shape Up for Spring

4 Ways to Shape Up for Spring

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Have you been effectively (or not so effectively, if you think about it) hibernating this year? What we mean is, have you taken a hiatus from your exercise routine – even though it was working and you were feeling great? Trust us, you’re not alone.

For various reasons, many of us struggle with consistency, and that starts with our commitment to working out regularly. Unfortunately, once we set the wheels of inactivity in motion, it can be tricky to turn things around.

Let’s change all that starting today. After all, spring is just around the corner, bringing with it warmer, longer days, more sunshine, and with all that, a spirit of renewal and growth that can translate directly into your life. Here’s how:

1. Make Movement a Daily Priority: Committing to exercise starts with a simple step: taking one. It’s said movement is life, so start living by making daily activity a part of yours. Find creative ways to take more steps and move more body parts, whether at home or at work. One of the best (and easiest) ways is to set your phone / watch to alert you periodically (every 45 minutes or so) to get up from your desk / chair and walk around for five minutes or so. Another great tip: Take a short walk after dinner every evening. It will assist in digestion and burn calories at the same time.

2. Early to Bed, Early to Rise: Sleep (or lack thereof) is increasingly implicated in health issues, with some even attributing chronic sleep dysfunction to just about every disease imaginable. Poor sleep also can sabotage your workouts, making you lethargic and all-too-unwilling to find your way to the gym.

Sleep needs to be consistent, restful and restorative; set the stage for proper sleep by regulating your sleep-wake cycle; avoiding foods and activities that could disrupt your sleep (drinking too much at night is one of the most common); and overall, making sleep a priority – something a surprisingly small percentage of people does.

3. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: As research suggests in another article in this issue of To Your Health, chronic stress can actually contribute to weight gain / obesity. Stress can be oppressive if you let it, but you can manage your stress by dealing with stressful events before they come up. That can start with better organization (e.g., a To-Do List that helps with smooth completion of your daily tasks) and what we call “better stress processing”: reducing the importance of stressful events so you have the power, not the stress.

4. Set a Goal – and Then Another One: Motivation is the key to consistent, lifelong fitness and health. Stay focused by setting a small, measurable, achievable goal – for example, jogging 1 mile, twice a week, for the next month. When you’ve met the goal, set another one: a longer distance, more frequent runs, or another activity you can add to your jogging regimen (e.g., two days a week at the gym).

If your winter hasn’t been what you’d hoped in terms of physical activity, don’t fret: skies are clearing and brighter, warmer days are on the horizon. It’s time to shape up for spring (and every season after that); work with your doctor to help design an exercise program suitable to your goals and health needs.

SouthGASpineAndJoint-Eating on a Budget

Eating on a Budget

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Many of us are feeling the economic crunch these days. Money is tight and the bills continue to arrive in our mailboxes. Stressful times such as these demand resiliency on our part, particularly in terms of our exercise and diet habits. Interestingly, a mentally stressed state can promote inflammation throughout the body. Avoiding mental stressors is not likely to be easy during these times, so we must consider the importance of avoiding inflammation caused by other factors, such as poor diet and lack of exercise.

When you hear the word inflammation, you probably think first about swelling, redness, pain, etc., that can occur following an acute injury, irritation or infection. In general, this is short-term, localized inflammation (confined to a certain area of the body). But inflammation can also occur without physical injury. This is general, body-wide (systemic) inflammation, and it can cause subtle biochemical injuries to body tissues, increasing the risk of developing a number of serious diseases over time.

We promote the development of systemic inflammation by avoiding exercise and remaining sedentary. Not surprisingly, we should exercise daily to help prevent inflammation, and we must also modify our dietary habits. Believe it or not, diet is actually the most important factor affecting inflammation. Scientific research suggests that most diseases are caused by chronic, diet-induced inflammation. The average American diet is high in calories and low in fiber and nutrients. Approximately 80% of the calories consumed by Americans are derived from refined flour products, refined sugar, refined seed oils (concentrated source of omega-6 and trans fats) and fatty meat. It is now common knowledge that eating excess calories from sugar and fat leads to postprandial (following a meal) inflammation, which is thought to function as an insidious promoter of heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, hypertension, asthma, depression, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis and cancer. That’s a long list of serious health conditions, all linked to a single culprit: inflammation.

Good Nutrition Is Inexpensive

Lean meat, fish, chicken, fruits, vegetables and nuts form the foundation of a diet that limits a postprandial inflammatory response. This is referred to as an “anti-inflammatory diet.”  Not surprisingly, this diet is recommended to help prevent the above-mentioned pro-inflammatory diseases, the treatment of which represents a massive drain on financial resources, both personally and for businesses.

A common argument is, “I can’t afford to eat lots of fruits and vegetables,” or “Healthy foods are expensive.” I tend to strongly disagree with these arguments. A cup of coffee and a doughnut can cost up to $5. A 20 oz. bottle of soda costs more than $1. In contrast, a 5-pound bag of frozen carrots, broccoli and cauliflower costs $5 at Sam’s Club, and a 1-pound container of pre-washed organic salad greens costs about $4. Both of those items can be consumed over several days by several people.

A large sweet potato that can be split between two meals costs about 75 cents. While certain nuts are very expensive (macadamias, for example), many are very reasonable. Lean meats, fish and chicken are reasonably priced and can be added to the vegetables and sweet potatoes. Fresh fruit remains very reasonable and should be one of the snacks of choice.

Dark chocolate is inexpensive and can be mixed with raw nuts and raisins for a great snack or dessert. I often melt a 50-calorie piece of dark chocolate with a little coconut oil and add some nuts and raisins. I place this combination on a piece of wax/freezer paper and place it into the freezer for about 10 minutes. My reward is an anti-inflammatory candy bar.

It is not more expensive to eat healthy, anti-inflammatory foods, if one shops wisely. Certainly, preventing the expression of chronic disease will save countless dollars and heartaches associated with the accelerated morbidity and mortality associated with pro-inflammatory living. In short, we cannot afford to eat any other way but anti-inflammatory.

Inexpensive Supplements for Health Promotion

There are also key supplements that support the reduction of inflammation and free-radical generation, and they’re also reasonably priced. (Free radicals are unstable molecules that can damage surrounding molecules in the body. They have been linked to an increased risk of cancer, among other diseases.) The basic supplements include a multivitamin without iron, magnesium, fish oil and vitamin D. The total cost is approximately $60 to $80 per month, which is less than $3 per day. If you can only afford one supplement, vitamin D seems like the best choice because research has demonstrated that vitamin D insufficiency is pandemic. The next best financial choice for a supplement would be a multivitamin/mineral without iron. After that, fish oil should be added, and finally magnesium. If a fifth supplement can be afforded, probiotics are the best choice, as they have a strongly anti-inflammatory effect in the gut.

If money is not particularly an issue, additional supplements should be considered, including coenzyme Q10, lipoic acid, acetyl-L-carnitine, ginger, turmeric and garlic. These supplements help to promote ATP synthesis and reduce free radicals and inflammation.

The Bottom Line

While finances have been tight lately due to external economic forces, and may get worse in the near future, we can easily make this situation a lot worse by pursuing disease expression due to a pro-inflammatory lifestyle. Medical care for pro-inflammatory diseases is extremely expensive and generally preventable by adopting an anti-inflammatory diet that is no more expensive than one that is pro-inflammatory. Key supplements can be added based on financial ability.

We should consider that paying for expensive medical care will put most of us into debt even when economic times are good. So it makes no sense to pursue disease and expensive medical care with a pro-inflammatory lifestyle when economic times are not so good. In short, nutrition does not need to be compromised, even when the economy is down. Talk to your doctor for more information.

Make Every Month Heart Health Month

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February is American Heart Month, but heart health is really a global issue; after all, we’ve all got hearts and these days, we all do things that put our health in peril, in the form of heart disease, stroke, heart attacks and other life-threatening conditions.

Your heart deserves to be treated well every month of the year, but let’s get started during this time of awareness by highlighting the latest research on how men and women can maximize heart health and reduce their risk of heart problems.

Heart Health for Women: Avoid Diet Drinks:Drinking two or more artificially sweetened beverages a day is associated with an increased risk of heart attack, clot-based death and early death in women over the age of 50. Published in Stroke, the study found that women who drank more than one diet drink daily had the following increased risks compared to women who drank one or fewer artificially sweetened drinks:

  • 23 percent more likely to suffer any type of stroke
  • 31 percent more likely to suffer a stroke due to an artery block
  • 29 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack
  • 16 percent more likely to die from any cause

Of particular concern: Even women in the study with no history of heart disease or diabetes had more than double the risk of a clot-based stroke if they drank two or more artificially sweetened beverages a day.

Heart Health for Men: Power of the Push-Up: Is the number of push-ups a man can perform in one minute a predictor of heart disease risk? Yes, according to new research in JAMA Network Open. Men who can do at least 40 push-ups within a minute’s time are 96 percent less likely to develop heart disease compared to men who perform less than 10 push-ups in the same time.

Findings are based on a 10-year evaluation of more than 1,000 male firefighters (average age: 40 years) that included timed push-up tests and evaluation of V02 max (maximum oxygen consumption during intense exercise), body-mass index (BMI), blood pressure and other variables at baseline. During the decade-long study period, initial push-up capacity proved to be the strongest predictor of heart disease among the variables assessed.

What You Can Do

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the world, pure and simple, and in many cases, it’s avoidable with proper diet, consistent physical activity and other lifestyle choices such as stress reduction, avoiding smoking, etc. While the above studies examined specific age groups, it’s reasonable to assume that limiting your artificial sweetener consumption and maximizing your fitness (whether or not you can actually do a full 40 push-ups in one minute) are smart choices when it comes to heart health – regardless of age or gender. Talk to your doctor for more information.

We All Need a Regular Bedtime

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Most parents put their children to bed at fairly specific times, depending on age: generally sometime between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. until they reach puberty. But what about you? Parents – in fact, all adults – benefit from a consistent sleep time as well.

Here’s why: Adults who go to bed at a regular time are more likely to weigh less, have lower blood sugar, and are less likely to develop heart disease and diabetes compared to adults with more erratic bedtimes.

In analyzing sleep cycles among more than 2,000 older adults, people with irregular sleep cycles had a higher 10-year risk of heart disease, and higher obesity, blood pressure, fasting glucose and risk of diabetes. Stress and depression were also more likely in adults with irregular sleep cycles.

Beyond health risks, the study also evaluated day-to-day consequences of sleep irregularity. Adults whose sleep time varied tended to go to bed later, sleep more during the day and less at night, and experience more daytime sleepiness compared to adults with a consistent bedtime.

What’s your sleep schedule? Do you go to sleep at the same time every night (or at least most nights)? As you can tell, whether you do or don’t can make a big difference when it comes to your health. The value of consistent sleep: it’s not just for kids!

Choosing a Workout That’s Right for You

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Everyone wants to get in better shape, lose weight, tone and tighten, etc., but that doesn’t mean they know where to start. It is important that anyone beginning an exercise program completely understand a few basic principles first. In fact, beginners and experienced exercisers alike can benefit from this information; if you’re just starting out, it will help you choose the most appropriate, effective workout for you, and if you’re more seasoned, it will allow you to better help other people with their exercise programs. After all, if you go to a gym, or even if people know you exercise, you are likely to get asked questions by someone with less experience.

 

Here are some of the key questions to ask yourself before beginning a workout. Answering these questions will give you some general guidelines on how to get started and types of exercises to do (or avoid) based on your age and fitness level. They will also help you determine, among other things, how many sets and repetitions to perform for different exercises (repetition = doing a particular activity once, such as one abdominal crunch or one pushup; set = a particular number of repetitions to be performed consecutively before resting).

 

The Key Questions

How long have you been training?
What is your basic fitness level?
What is your age?
What is your body type?
What are your goals?
Are you training for a particular sport?

How Long Have You Been Training?

This seems like a straightforward question, but consider the following before answering: if you have not been participating in an active exercise program for at least 45 minutes a day for at least three days per week (for more than just the past few days or weeks), then you must consider that you have not been training at all.

When beginning any exercise program, it is important to possess at least some aerobic/breathing capacity. That means that before you begin training, you should begin walking or doing some activity that is repetitive and raises your heart rate for a minimum of 5 minutes every day. You can think of that as one set for however many reps it takes to reach 5 minutes. In most healthy individuals, you should be able to add 5 minutes every three days, and continue on until you have established a daily exercise program of 30 minutes per day for two weeks.

It is important not to become too eager and jump into a full-fledged exercise program too quickly. Many times, individuals become very distressed because their training causes them to become too sore to participate. You don’t want to overdo it, especially if you’re a beginner, but even if you have some experience and are either “stepping up” to the next level or restarting exercise after a period of inactivity.

Exercise is beneficial because it allows the body to adapt to physical stress. If you over-exercise, your risk of suffering an injury increases exponentially. This happens more commonly than many people realize. Some soreness may be manageable, but excessive soreness is unnecessary and will limit your ability to train. Microscopic tears may form in your tendons and ligaments , causing damage that may later lead to a more significant injury.

The body requires time to rest and recover. Submaximal effort is necessary for the beginner to recover from the physical stresses exerted on their bodies. So, for the first three to four weeks of exercise, it is important that you leave the gym with the attitude, That was nothing, I could have done more. Too many people begin an exercise program and expect overnight results, but only produce overnight injury.

How to Prevent Holiday Weight Gain: Weigh In

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If you’re concerned about your weight this holiday season, you’re not alone. Millions of people stress about how to enjoy the festivities – and at least a few of the treats, sweets and other holiday foods – without packing on the pounds they’ve worked so diligently to lose all year.

According to research published in the British Medical Journal, weighing in – both about your weight and about what you’re eating – is an effective way to prevent holiday weight gain. People who tracked both their weight and their energy intake actually lost approximately one-third of a pound over the 45-day study period, which spanned the holiday season and was marketed as a study on “winter weight gain.” Control subjects who did not weigh themselves or track what they were eating, on the other hand, gained almost a pound.

Members of the intervention group were advised to weight themselves every day, record their weight and reflect on any weight gain / loss. They also received weight-management tips, including eating and exercise suggestions; and a list of holiday foods and how much exercise would be required to burn the calorie total for each.

Your doctor can provide you with more information about weight maintenance in general and specific to the holiday season; and offer you more advice on how to enjoy the holidays without sacrificing the great work you’ve done all year to build the healthy body you deserve.

Treat Your Brain Like a Muscle: Exercise It

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Anatomically, your brain isn’t a muscle; although it contains a bit of muscle, it’s predominantly gray and white matter, with cellular structure and function far different (and more complex) than that of muscle. However, there’s good reason why many people compare the brain to muscle – in both cases, the “Use it or lose it” principle applies.

Evidence suggests mental stimulation improves brain function and reduces the risk of cognitive decline and related diseases. Mental stimulation or “exercise” helps the brain grow stronger, faster and better able to complete the millions of daily tasks it is charged with, from memory to problem solving to attention; not to mention controlling every aspect of the rest of the body. Here are a few easy ways to exercise your brain every day:

1. Start a good conversation: It sounds too good to be true, but an engaging conversation is great exercise for the brain. Of course, some conversations are better than others for this purpose – talking to a friend about how great “The Bachelor” was last night is probably going to prove a lot less mentally stimulating than debating the pros and cons of “Obamacare” or brainstorming solutions to a challenging life problem.

2. Read a good book: Don’t tell us that our world of tablets, smartphones and 300-channel cable packages has stripped us of our love of reading, because a good book is another great way to exercise your brain. Reading a book not only stimulates the brain by forcing it to analyze words, sentence structure and storyline; it also stimulates our imagination because as we read, our brain makes mental images that explain the story.

3. Play games: No, we’re not talking about “Call of Duty” or “Angry Birds,” although video games that require you to strategize and otherwise figure out how to accomplish a goal can prove brain stimulating; we’re talking about “Old School” games, particularly endeavors like crossword puzzles, chess, cryptograms, etc., that require problem-solving. Faced with a problem, the brain is forced to consider various solutions, whether it be which word to choose, which move to make, etc. That thinking process is the perfect exercise to engage the brain.

4. Work with numbers: Unless you’re an accountant, engineer, contractor or math teacher by trade, you’ve probably forgotten more math than you remember. That’s a shame, not only from a practical perspective, but also from a brain health standpoint. The solution is to keep your brain focused on numbers. Replace the calculator with your brain the next time you need to multiple $134 by 6 or 12 feet by 9 feet. Challenge your brain (and yourself) to come up with the right answer – and then check it with the calculator, just to be sure!

5. Don’t stop learning: What happens when you stop exercising? Eventually, you lose your muscle strength, size and endurance. That’s called atrophy, and it applies to your brain as well. It’s said that Albert Einstein had a prodigious brain (at least certain parts of it), which not only explains his contributions to physics, but also makes perfect sense in our analogy – he “exercised” his brain all the time. Dedicate yourself to doing the same by committing yourself to lifelong learning. Pick a second language, download a “word of the day” list onto your phone, taking continuing-education classes on subjects that interest you; challenge yourself and your brain every day.

By the way, there are countless other ways to maximize brain health, including proper nutrition, adequate sleep and exercise (your entire body, not just your brain). Talk to your doctor for more information and start unlocking the full potential of your brain today.

Hormonal Contraceptive Use Can Be a Major Downer

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Hormonal contraception was introduced way back in 1960 with the release of the combined oral contraceptive pill (containing two hormones: estrogen and progestin). Now, more than 50 years later, an estimated 20 percent of women use some form of hormonal contraception worldwide, and in the U.S., that figure is significantly higher: more than 60 percent. Depression is also prevalent in women, who are more than twice as likely to experience symptoms than men. And that leads us to the troubling association between the two (contraceptive use and depression), as supported by recent research.

Women who use hormonal contraception are a whopping 40 percent more likely to experience symptoms of depression after only six months of use, according to the latest research published in the American Medical Association’s peer-reviewed journal JAMA Psychiatry.

The study tracked 1 million-plus women ages 15-34 for more than a decade. The risk increase was even more pronounced when evaluating specific contraception use: Progestin-only pills more than doubled the risk, while levonorgestrel IUD use tripled the risk. Risk also increased for users of hormone-based transdermal patches and vaginal rings.

While the researchers are quick to note that their findings don’t necessarily mean hormonal contraceptive use causes depression, the moral to this story is clear: All women should have an informed discussion with their health care provider regarding the relative risks and benefits of any type of contraception before initiating use.

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