Your Body’s Circuit Panel

Your Body's Circuit Panel

Think of the electrical system in your home. When a power surge stresses the system, a circuit breaker trips to prevent the house from burning down. Now, what if the circuit that was tripped powered the refrigerator? The food inside would start to spoil unless you could get the power turned on before it was too late. As you can see – the problem is not the refrigerator, but the power to the refrigerator.

The tripped circuit breaker OBSTRUCTS the refrigerator’s power source preventing the refrigerator from operating efficiently. In regard to your body, when a structural shift is present, your nervous system is underpowered.

Why is this important? Your nervous system connects to every system in your body. From your muscles and bones, down to your organs like your heart and stomach. It even controls things like your immune system. In many ways, it’s like the electrical system of your house with your brain stem acting as the power source.

When our body has stress beyond our ability to adapt properly (like too many Christmas light strands plugged into a circuit), then the breaker will keep tripping (a recurring shift in the spine and associated secondary conditions).

Make sure your electrical system is working by getting all the necessary structural corrections, at True Health Chiropractic.

January 5, 2015

Your Best Year Ever

power of potential — Our brains contain over 100 billion neurons each may have the ability to connect with 5,000 to 20,000 other neurons. The possibilities are endless…

No matter what’s going on, no matter what your past experience has been, this new year is packed with POTENTIAL.

There is every reason to feel good about the coming of any new year. After all, we are designed to be extraordinary. Every cell in your body is hardwired to be healthy. So don’t let cynicism about abandoned resolutions, broken promises, and “it’s never worked in the past” get in the way of what promises to be the starting point of something amazing.

Create an environment where you can be encouraged to be your best. Reactive health care is failing and we are seeing more degenerative disease (cancer, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis) than ever before. We must be pro-active and optimize our health so that we too don’t follow that path. Research tells us that genetics accounts for only about one-third of how long and well we live – the rest is under our control. In other words, our state of health is a result of how much we do to be healthy. Drugs and surgery aren’t designed for health. They are for sickness and disease. Health is built by lifestyle choices – day in and day out.

At True Health Family Chiropractic, we choose to focus on the untapped potential for health and vitality available for your body – we will walk you down the path to your best life. It is only getting better and better.

Launch 2015 proactively. The only one who can make this a great year is you.

August 14, 2014

Infantile Colic? What You Can Do

Infantile colic can be very stressful for parents whose baby is inconsolable during crying episodes. Colic is often defined by the “rule of three”: crying for more than three hours per day, for more than three days per week, and for longer than three weeks in an infant who is well-fed and otherwise healthy.

Medications available in the United States have not been proved effective in the treatment of colic, and most behavior interventions have not been proved to be more effective than placebo. So what options do parents have?

Pediatric Chiropractic

A recent systemic review published in the Cochrane Library, evaluated the results of studies designed to address the efficacy of hands on therapies (specifically, chiropractic, osteopathy and cranial manipulation) for infantile colic in infants less than six months of age.

The authors concluded that majority of clinical trials seemed to indicate parents of infants using this type of care for colic reported fewer hours of crying per day and was statistically significant. The trials also indicate that a greater proportion of those parents reported improvements that were clinically significant.

George Lewith, MA, DM, FRCP, MRCGP, professor of health research at the University of Southampton commented “the majority of the included trials indicate that the parents of infants receiving manipulative therapies reported fewer hours crying per day than parents whose infants did not. This difference is statistically significant and important for those families who experience this condition. These studies show that in this small sample there were no adverse effects from using these treatments.”

Few parents understand the importance of the brain’s control over the digestive system in their child. The brain controls digestion, along with many other functions, through the Autonomic Nervous System. However, the messages have to travel unimpeded from the head to the body. As a Structural Chiropractor, I know that stressful births (even C-sections) can strain the head and neck (a typical birth can place 60-90 lbs of force onto an infant’s head and neck), causing subtle shifts in the spine leading to interference in the nerve signals between the brain and the digestive system. Early check ups can help prevent structural shifts from becoming a chronic problem. Continue reading “Infantile Colic? What You Can Do”

June 16, 2014June 16, 2014

How to Avoid Chronic Inflammation

inflammation

Our lifestyle is so far off track – particularly from a dietary perspective -that nearly all people today are living in a state of unhealthy, chronic inflammation. It’s no wonder that we’re seeing ever-increasing rates of inflammatory related conditions and diseases. Chronic inflammation is an issue because it results in putting our body into a reactive mode sustained over time that results in destructive physiology. In other words, chronic inflammation could be described as being sick all the time, throughout the body.

The good news is that it’s almost always caused by our lifestyle choices. There are a number of choices that we can make (or not make) that will result in an inflammatory response within the body.

Foods That Cause Inflammation

Processed Vegetable Oils: These are some of the most chemically altered foods in our diets, yet they get promoted as healthy. They cause disease, and they’re in everything (think soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, etc)
Grains: Bread, cereals, pasta, pizza, bagels, crackers – aka the foods most people eat on a daily basis.
Sugars (and foods that act like sugar): Our bodies are not meant to break down as much sugar as we consume. (think bread, cereals, pasta, pizza, bagels, crackers – got it?)

How Our Lifestyle Contributes To Inflammation

Stress is also a major contributor to chronic inflammation for many people; stress results in a cascade of metabolic responses within the body, lead by cortisol, the chief stress hormone. Stress creates a perfect storm of disease-producing reactions, lead by an inflammatory response – causing increased blood pressure, heart rate, blood fats, insulin resistance, along with decreased immune function, digestion, reproductive hormones, and serotonin.

There are times when the body’s stress response is appropriate or healthy; for example, a normal or healthy stress response occurs when we stress our bodies during exercise, or get chased by a mountain lion; the body is designed to endure or cope with these relatively brief periods of stress. It becomes inappropriate or unhealthy when the stress is induced from unnatural things (bad foods, stress from bad relationships, bad jobs, lack of sleep, etc.), and/or when stress occurs over sustained periods of time (i.e. long-term stress from our hectic, over-scheduled, digitally demanding, sedentary, debt-laden, traffic-stuck lives).

How To Avoid Chronic Inflammation

Significantly reduce your intake of processed foods. By avoiding processed foods, you get extreme benefits because you avoid processed vegetable oils, sugar, and flour, ALL of which promote inflammation in the body (along with directly or indirectly causing obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, autoimmune, and dementia disorders).
Stop eating sugar and foods that act like sugar
Stop eating grains (grains present a triple threat – in addition to promoting inflammation, grains promote high insulin levels and intestinal permeability or leaky gut syndrome, which leads to a whole host of conditions)
Eat lots of organic plant foods (aim for more vegetables than fruit each day)
Eat pastured animal proteins (not feedlot, grain-fed meats)
Eat healthy fats – this includes coconut oil, raw nuts, avocado, butter from pastured cows, meat from pastured animals, wild-caught fish.
Exercise regularly and to the point of exertion. BUT when going for exertion, short-interval, high intensity is what you’re after, not sustained endurance exercise – meaning functional training type of exercise such as CrossFit or hour-long Bootcamp classes are what’s recommended, not training for marathons, or going to the gym for 90 minute sessions on a treadmill or bike.
Supplement with a high-quality omega-3 fish oil which helps to balance the critical omega-6 to omega-3 ratio in the body (people today get too much omega-6 from vegetable oils, grains, and grain fed animals; and disruption in the omega-6:omega-3 ratio leads to inflammation, disease, etc.).

April 9, 2014

Healthy is Normal

We are designed to be extraordinary. Every cell in your body is hardwired to be healthy. Unfortunately, in America the expectation is that we are supposed to be sick, and that there is always a solution (usually found in a bottle).

If we think about a flower – the seed contains all of the things that the flower needs to flourish and grow – as long as it gets everything it requires. Now, when a plant starts to wilt, we automatically wonder, “what is it missing?” But when it come to humans, our first thought is “what do I have?” meaning what condition or name is the current state of dysfunction in our body. We want a label – and the pharmaceutical industry is happy to oblige.

The truth is, you are not your condition. You’re simply the culmination of your body’s inability to adapt to the stressors placed upon it on a regular basis. When you come to this realization, it leaves you with 2 choices: remove the stress OR increase your body’s ability to adapt to it. Remember, we are just like the flower – our body has its own requirements – and as long as their fulfilled, the natural, default state is health. We do not have to discover health, we just have to allow it.

One of our body’s requirements (along with proper movement and proper fuel) is proper nerve supply. An impaired nerve system could reduce immune function, concentration, recovery from illness and injury; it could lessen athletic performance and digestive function. It could even alter behavior. Stressors (aka your life) cause spinal shifts within the inner framework of your body. When we look at the nervous system, any structural imbalance that occurs becomes part of your pattern as you get older. This cartilage system, this spine, if it’s shifted, altered or distorted, it’s automatically creating an inhibition or interference in the neurological system. That pattern becomes yours as you get older, and it’s much more difficult to correct or to set right.

The goal in our office is to maintain the integrity of your spine and nervous system. Instead of focusing on the health lost, deterioration created, energy decrease, immune system suppression and all the negative effects of nerve interference and not fulfilling all your requirements, at True Health Family Chiropractic, we choose to focus on the untapped potential for health and vitality available for your body.

All you really need to know is that we all are designed to function, heal and re-create from the inside out. No matter what other steps you add – diet, exercise, meditation – without a proper nerve supply, you can never be at your full potential. If you want to be healthy, you have to have a healthy nervous system.