Causes of Inflammation

Causes of Inflammation

Medication Covers Up Sickness

Medications don't make us healthier humans, 

they treat problems and help people cope with symptoms.

Yes, there is definitely a time and place for certain medications. However, exercise, nutrition, stress management and avoiding destructive habits - that's where health begins.

Get Moving!

One of the aims of chiropractic care is to get people moving better.

But why is that important for people who aren't professional athletes?

The more you move the longer you live!

Movement is anti-inflammatory, especially inside joints. Lack of motion increases pain signals inside the joints leading to the feeling of pain.

Chiropractors get motion back into joints that aren't moving and help to break the inflammatory cycle reducing pain and preventing long term joint problems.

Healthy Doesn't Have to be Hard

You can try to choke down raw kale or you can find a recipe that makes it taste delicious.

Healthy doesn't have to be hard.

Releasing Stress Hormones

When you are stressed the best thing that you can do is exercise.

Our bodies have a stress response mechanism called "Fight or Flight."

What this means is that when someone got stressed out they would either fight the other person or animal or run away. In our world that seems silly, but stress at work, home, or that we place on ourselves all trigger this reflex, releasing stress hormones.

If those stress hormones aren't dealt with by a massive use of energy, they build up and cause damage.

Looking to release these hormones? Don't fight...exercise!

Exercise Reduces Risk of Disease

Improving your fitness reduces the risk of dementia and Alzheimer disease.

Exercise improves white matter in the brain which is highly correlated with improved brain function. White matter is comprised of millions of bundles of nerve fibers used by neurons to communicate across the brain.

If you find yourself out of breath throughout the day during simple tasks like going up the stairs, it's time to get into shape otherwise you are setting yourself up for reduced brain function!

Tips:
-run up stairs at your house instead of walking
-take a fast lap around the grocery store before shopping
-Make physical work park of your regular routine: Home improvement projects, gardening, carrying wood or anything that makes you use your muscles.

Nutrition Is The Key To Weight Loss

Exercise is healthy.

But it's not the key to weight loss...nutrition is.

Physical activity reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia and some cancers, but increasing your physical activity doesn't guarantee you'll lose weight.

The problem is that the more calories you burn during exercise the more calories you are going to crave afterwards. If you aren't eating healthy foods, you are going to magnify the problem with just eating more unhealthy foods. Depending on the kind of exercise you're performing or if you're brand new to exercise, muscle mass can increase while body fat decreases, improving body composition but not decreasing the number on the scale.

Over and over we see people lose weight the easiest by putting their focus 100% on nutrition and not exercise. In fact, many people who see the best weight loss results are only doing low intensity walking, riding a bike, or other similar low-intensity exercise on a regular basis.

Learn how to eat healthy first and THEN implement an exercise routine! Your body will thank you.

Sitting Is Killing Us

Weightlifting, Zumba, running, Peloton, walking...whatever you’re into, move every day!

#getupandmove

Full Article: https://www.forbes.com/sites

Chronic Pain and Medication

Chronic pain now affects 116 million Americans, and our medical system's first line of defense is powerful pain medications. This is a problem for a variety of reasons, but here are a few reasons that it's a ridiculous route.

1) Pain pills don't do anything to fix the problem, they only cover it up. For example, why fill your car with oil when you can just disable the oil light on your dash?

2) Powerful pain killers take away the pain, but they can also cause serious addiction problems - the destruction of health, relationships, and death.

It is not always the doctor's fault either. Patients need to take responsibility for their own health. You need to be your own advocate.

If you keep going to your doctor for chronic pain but haven't tried to make a change in your lifestyle (nutrition, stretching, posture, chiropractic, massage, acupuncture), you're exposing yourself unnecessarily to the risk opiods bring.

Why Exercise Won't Make You Lose Weight

Abs are made in the kitchen.

Article: https://www.cnn.com

Intermittent Fasting 101

Intermittent Fasting 101:

Intermittent fasting is when someone is going longer periods of time than normal without eating food.

Not long ago this was something humans did on a regular basis, if you had an unsuccessful day hunting/fishing/gathering food then you didn't eat! This allows your body to burn up all the readily available sugar/carbohydrates in your system and then switch over to burning fat and protein for energy. Most people have more than enough fat on their body to not worry about burning the protein/muscle on their body for energy.

Every night when you go to bed your body is going to be switching over to ketosis for a short period of time before you eat again in the morning. After you eat breakfast your body is now using carbohydrates for energy again given you ate something that has carbohydrates.

When your body switches over to ketosis during a fast it will first start to burn the extra fat stores on your body. The fat you store on your body actually has a purpose! It's there for times when there is no food around, but in this day and age there will always be food around so we just keep on storing it as fat.

Research has shown intermittent fasting to be very valuable from a weight loss standpoint and even potentially in different types of cancer treatment when done properly. Extra sugar is stored as fat on the body, and many forms of cancer use sugar as their main source of food, so it just makes sense!

You don't want to stay in a fasted state long term though because your metabolism will drop and cause other long term problems. just doing it for a day here and there is the best way. Plus if you do it long term you won't have the energy to work, workout or be active.

The best way to do any sort of fasting would be to do it on days where you aren't exercising or as active as normal. Try eating less food on your inactive days and don't eat right when you wake up in the morning or right before bed. Keep your meals to the middle of the day so the length of time between meals is the longest. The day before and after a fast you would want to go back to eating like you normally would.

Health Is a Lifestyle

"I think that focus on the scale and what it says or how we look in the mirror too often derails the bigger picture of how we’re living our lives. Exercise doesn’t have to be something we dread. Food doesn’t have to be tied into guilt. We can choose exercises that we enjoy and put healthy food on the table that actually tastes delicious."

Come into our offices, and you'll hear all of our doctors talk about health being a lifestyle. It's easy to compartmentalize health into the 60 minutes at the gym, or the moments of eating vegetables instead of sugar.

But like this author writes, health and the lives we live should be the same things, enjoyed at the same time.

Read the full article here: https://theascent.pub/

Weight Loss Starts With Nutrition

You can't outrun a donut.

Slaving away for hours on a treadmill or bike trying to lose weight? While exercise WILL make you healthier, it isn't the key to losing weight.

The problem is that the more calories you burn during exercise the more calories you are going to crave afterwards. If you aren't eating healthy foods, you are going to magnify the problem with just eating more unhealthy foods.

Over and over we see people lose weight the easiest by putting their focus 100% on nutrition and not exercise, in fact many people who see the best weight loss results are only doing low intensity walking or bike riding on a regular basis.

How it needs to be done:
Learn how to eat healthy first and THEN implement an exercise routine! Or if you're currently exercising, get a nutrition plan and STICK TO IT. Your body will thank you.

Pharmaceutical Drugs and Our Body

The idea behind pharmaceutical drugs seems great from a superficial standpoint.

Have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety? Take a pill and you will be cured!

Unfortunately it’s not that simple.

Our bodies are far more complex than research could ever prove. Drugs typically only work on one reaction, such as inhibiting the conversion of a single enzyme that produces cholesterol (statins). However, when you change one reaction it can impact the way everything else functions in the body, hence the reason all medications have a list of side effects 3 pages long.

This graph is one I used in biochemistry to show the basic cycles of our metabolism and cellular function, you obviously can’t read all the names because the real chart takes up half a wall, but the main point is that everything on this chart (aka in your body) is highly connected and proper function is critical to be healthy. If you change one reaction with a medication it’s going to alter every other reaction in the body eventually.

Are there conditions and situations where pharmaceutical drugs are necessary? ABSOLUTELY.

But there are also plenty of conditions and situations which are simply better treated by regaining how the body is naturally designed to function, and this comes through education, nutrition, exercise, and stress reduction.

Exercising Without Exercising

Would you like an hour of daily exercise without actually exercising?

The way you eat could be equivalent to an hours worth of moderate intensity exercise every day.

This study showed that when total calories were kept the same a low carbohydrate diet (10%) with moderate to high fat (60%) burns 300 more calories per day than a high carbohydrate (60%) low fat (20%) diet.

This difference in diet alone is equal to 1 hour of moderate intensity exercise per day.

Doing this type of diet in conjunction with exercise is going to magnify your results. However you always want to make sure to have control of your diet before incorporating exercise.

Link: https://jamanetwork.com

High Intensity Exercise Delays Parkinson's Progression

High intensity exercise delays Parkinson's progression: 

The more intense the exercise the better the results. Those that exercised at 85% maximum heart rate had no change in disease progression. Those that exercised at 65% maximum heart rate had a 7.5% worsening of symptoms. Those in the no-exercise group which experienced a 15% worsening of symptoms.

Research is also showing that intense exercise is beneficial for many other health problems. Even some cancer treatment centers are starting to recommend it!

Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Exercise Protects Vital Memory and Learning Functions

When you are stressed the best thing that you can do is exercise. 

Our bodies have a stress response mechanism called "Fight or Flight." 

What this means is that historically when someone got stressed out they would either fight the other person or animal or run away. In our world that seems silly, but every animal has this mechanism. If those stress hormones aren't dealt with by a massive use of energy, they build up and cause damage. 

When you are stressed out a much better idea than fighting someone would be to simply exercise! Not only for your cardiovascular health but for your brain health as well!

Article: https://news.byu.edu

Move More to Live Longer

The more you move the longer you live! 

Movement is anti-inflammatory, especially inside joints. Lack of motion increases pain signals inside the joints leading to the feeling of pain. 

Chiropractors get motion back into joints that aren't moving and help to break the inflammatory cycle reducing pain and preventing long term joint problems.

Poor Fitness Linked to Weaker Brain

Improving your fitness reduces the risk of dementia and Alzheimer disease.

Exercise improves white matter in the brain which is highly correlated improved brain function. White matter is comprised of millions of bundles of nerve fibers used by neurons to communicate across the brain.

If you find yourself out of breath throughout the day during simple tasks like going up the stairs, it's time to get into shape otherwise you are setting yourself up for reduced brain function!

Make sure that during your exercise routine you are getting out of breath enough so that it would be hard to have a conversation with someone.

Source: www.utsouthwestern.edu

Strength Exercise as Vital as Aerobic

Doing body weight exercises or weight training has been shown over and over to be beneficial is almost all aspects of health.
"The largest study to compare the mortality outcomes of different types of exercise found people who did strength-based exercise had a 23 percent reduction in risk of premature death by any means, and a 31 percent reduction in cancer-related death."

Create a routine and stick to it. Even if it's just 20 squats a day, start somewhere!

Read the full article here: sydney.edu.au