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Weekly Health Roundup

veggies fruit

Welcome to True Health Family Chiropractic’s Weekly Health Roundup, where we’ll take a look at what’s making news in the world of health.

Research of the Week

Sugar is toxic. According to a new study, obesity doesn’t cause diabetes: sugar does. The study demonstrates this with the same level of confidence that linked cigarettes and lung cancer in the 1960s.

Interesting Articles

With spring coming soon (hopefully!), the NY Times explores the benefits of exercising outdoors. In virtually all of the studies, participants reported enjoying the outside activity more and, on subsequent psychological tests, scored significantly higher on measures of vitality, enthusiasm, pleasure and self-esteem and lower on tension, depression and fatigue after they walked outside. Bottom line – get outside when you can – there are benefits to exercising outdoors that can’t be replicated on a treadmill, a recumbent bicycle or a track.

Food for Thought

This chart (The Shelf Life of Food) does a great job at listing some common foods and how long they’ll stay fresh and safe to eat based on different storage methods (along with a few that you might be tempted to freeze but really shouldn’t).

Blog Posts Worth Reading

What most people don’t know about chiropractic care… This article explores the connection between your spine and your digestion. Nerves from many regions of the spine have a definite digestion connection.  The consequences of disturbing these spinal nerves are not necessarily limited to spinal pain, but can potentially involve any function affected by these nerves, including digestion.

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Everything You Need to Know About Vitamin D

vit d guide

It’s the end of February and most of us are spending more time indoors and getting less daily sun exposure. When we don’t get enough sun, or supplement right, it’s very easy to become deficient in this essential nutrient. When that happens, our health suffers. This is why it is one of The Core Four supplements that I recommend.

There’s a lot of research out there talking about the importance of vitamin D, and it can be very confusing. The following will help you to make sense of it all, so let’s start at the beginning.

What is vitamin D?

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble nutrient that is closer to a hormone, like cortisol or testosterone. This is important to note because it means vitamin D has a deeper functionality than a simple vitamin compound. Vitamin D is used by our bodies to absorb calcium and, along with exercise, to make strong bones. Vitamin D also has cell-normalizing (anti-proliferation) properties, and because cancer is cell proliferation gone mad, it protects against many cancers. It also plays a vital role in our immune system and its ability to fight off pathogens. There are tons of studies showing the importance of vitamin D. Continue reading “Everything You Need to Know About Vitamin D”

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Weekly Health Roundup

weekly health roundup

Welcome to True Health Family Chiropractic’s Weekly Health Roundup, where we’ll take a look at what’s making news in the world of health.

Research of the Week

Stanford University researcher and geneticist, Dr. Gerald Crabtree, believes that our human intelligence is slowly declining – mainly due to adverse genetic mutations. But human intelligence is suffering for other reasons as well. This piece points to studies showing the effects of growing up with toxins, GMOs/pesticides, and processed “food” on our children.

Interesting Articles

Ever wonder what other countries do during flu season? Well, they certainly don’t get the flu shot: Only the U.S. and Canada actually encourage everyone older than 6 months to get the flu vaccine. CNN also points out that this year, a year in which the vaccine is supposed to be a good match to the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the vaccine is only 62% effective.

Time has a great Q&A With neuroscientist Bruce McEwen. He explains the effects of toxic stress – where bad things happen, perhaps because you don’t have the inner or external resources needed to cope, which makes us more vulnerable to adverse outcomes. So what can we do? Be physically active, get a good diet, adequate sleep, create a social support, have a good hobby, meditate. {This is also where chiropractic care comes into the equation: Spinal alignment coupled with a healthy lifestyle means the body is at its best and has the best chance to adapt to stress we may encounter.}

Blog Posts Worth Reading

Lifehacker has a very cool post on how we can actually rewire our brains to think positively and break out of that negative feedback loop that so many of us experience.

Time Capsule

One year ago this week we held our Ribbon Cutting at True Health Family Chiropractic! Thank you to all of our patients who have trusted us with their health and everyone who has supported us in this past year.

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What is True Health?

Have you ever thought about what True Health means to you and your family? What is your definition of True Health? Dorland’s Medical Dictionary states that True Health is a state of optimal physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease. In other words, health is not limited to how you feel, but rather refers to your level of function and performance as a whole individual.

In simple terms, the premise of chiropractic is that, if the body’s frame is in alignment, then the nervous system – the brain, spinal cord and the millions of nerves extending throughout the body – can function at its best. And the nervous system, medical science now readily admits, is the master controller of all other bodily organs and systems. Having known that since 1895, chiropractors have always had a holistic approach to health care.

As Peter Senge, the leading exponent of systems thinking, says about the “crisis state” of today’s health care: “The need in health care is very simple. We need to think about health. Health is a systemic phenomenon. What makes you or me healthy is not just what diseases pop up. We need to think about the totality of health – how we live, how we work, what we eat, it’s our exercise – the totality of how we live.”

Chiropractic care views all areas of life as equal contributors to promoting or detracting from optimal health. So, we incorporate practical help and education about “how we live, how we work, what we eat” and how we exercise. Spinal alignment coupled with a healthy lifestyle means that body is the best it can be to throw off potential illness. That’s prevention, pure and simple. But that optimum condition of the body also means the best chance for optimum development – in the mental, emotional, social and spiritual aspects of our lives. The chiropractic perspective even heightens a person’s awareness of the critical importance of environmental health because if the environment is sick – we will be too.

In short, chiropractic offers the systemic, holistic, broad-view approach that facilitates getting better, staying well and realizing one’s full potential in life. Now that’s True Health.

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The Importance of Motion

movement is lifeOne of Albert Einstein’s well known quotes is, “Nothing happens until something moves.” Motion is life. Lack of motion is death. Movement is a vital nutrient to your body, just as much as food, water or oxygen.

It feeds the brain, producing essential nutrient stimulation (called proprioception). It’s also a foundational reason why chiropractors adjust spines – to restore normal motion to joints, mental impulse transmission through nerves, and subsequently, life throughout your entire body.

When your spine is not moving properly it begins to degenerate and become inflamed. The spinal joints begin to send stress signals to the brain that can lead to stress hormones being released (cortisol and catecholamines). Lack of proper motion results in a decrease in proprioceptive messages being sent to your brain. This can also (but not always) lead to pain. High levels of stress hormones in the body will lead to fatigue, illness and ultimately – early death.

This is why – regardless of disease or symptoms – a healthy, properly moving, aligned spine is so essential to our health. By restoring motion to the spine (via the chiropractic adjustment), changes will begin to occur, such as: decrease in stress signals and stress hormones, decrease inflammation, and pain (if present) will subside. Most important of all, it results in a healthy body-brain neurological communication which is essential for overall health. This is why we often see patients who will have significant changes in their health, in areas that they were not expecting at all (digestion, sleep, etc…) when they began care. By restoring motion and removing this stressor on the body – you can begin to function how you were designed to.