Tag: nutrition

Posted on

Can Chiropractic Help with Breastfeeding?

chiropractic helps breastfeeding

We all know it is important for babies to get good nutrition so that they can be healthy and strong. However, some mothers find it really difficult to breastfeed for various reasons. It is so important that mothers understand that there are ways to improve the breastfeeding experience, and that chiropractic can offer a helping hand with many of these issues.

“It’s painful to breastfeed”

One of the reasons why it may be painful to breastfeed is that baby has a problem with TMJ function and/or the muscles around the jaw, including the tongue, which is causing baby to suck in a strange way that may cause pain for mom. An injury to the jaw can take place during the birthing process, especially with breech presentation, or a shoulder dystocia. Sometimes even a normal, incident-free birth can cause problems with the way the jaw moves and can create a lot of tension in the muscles in the area.

La Leche League identifies chiropractic as an effective option for babies damaged by vacuum or forceps, and for those whose muscles and bones are not working well together causing the baby to be in pain, or become a poor feeder. A poorly feeding baby does not drain the breast sufficiently, therefore the mom suffers the secondary impact of reduced milk production. Continue reading “Can Chiropractic Help with Breastfeeding?”

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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”

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.