The Benefits of Chiropractic Care

When people think about chiropractic they typically think about adjustments being made to the spine.

But did you know that chiropractic was originally based on getting people healthy through trauma, thoughts and toxins? Reducing physical stress, getting people moving better, reducing mental stress, getting people to be happier, and then removing toxins through nutrition and through our environment are all ways to help people get healthier.

The foundation of chiropractic is improving total health, and that foundation has never been more important than it is today.

Stop Eating Cereal for Breakfast

Stop eating sugary cereal for breakfast!

Cereal is not healthy and should be treated as a dessert, even Kellogg agrees!

Link to Article: https://newfoodeconomy.org/kellogg-sugary-cereal-healthy-label

The Primary Purpose of Eating

Most of the talk around nutrition revolves around weight loss.

And while being overweight is definitely a prevalent issue - especially in American culture - the primary purpose of eating is to provide our bodies with the things they need to function, to heal, and to prevent disease.

If you're not seeing success on the scale, it might be time to flip the script by thinking about your health first and then the number on the scale.

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.

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.

Roundup Chemical In Your Cereal

Many genetically modified crops (GMO's) are created to be resistant to glyphosate. When glyphosate-containing Roundup is sprayed over the fields, it would kill basically everything in the field except for the crops.

At the surface, this seems like a good solution for farmers to control weeds, but it's a chemical disaster happening to our health because humans are not resistant to glyphosate.

"Out of 61 food samples tested, 48 had some glyphosate in them. The most heavily contaminated were made with conventionally grown -- as opposed to organically grown -- oats."

Source: https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news

Ultra-Processed Packaged Food

"More so than any other Western country, Americans are being bombarded with food products that are high in sugar, saturated fat, salt, and calories. More specifically, after analyzing over 200,000 U.S. packaged food products including bread, snacks, salad dressings, sugary sweets, and sugary drinks researchers found that a whopping 71% were classified as ultra-processed. Furthermore, 86% of the packaged foods sold by the 25 top manufacturers were found to be ultra-processed.

For reference, the term “ultra-processed” was defined as foods that “are industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch and proteins).” These foods are usually created in laboratories and derived from hydrogenated fats and modified starch."

😦😦😦

#eatrealfood

Source: https://www.studyfinds.org/

Recipe: Healthy Popsicles

A fun way for kids to get the benefit of veggie shakes... make popsicles!

Popsicles are typically just flavored syrup with food dye. Making your own is very easy and you can load them with real foods loaded with nutrients. Our girls absolutely love these homemade popsicles!

Blend:
- Organic Greens
- Frozen Mango
- Banana
- Almond Milk
- Water

Mix in blender and freeze in popsicle molds!

Recipe: Peppermint Mocha Protein Shake

Unhealthy drinks can really add up, especially if you're someone who likes your coffee any way but black. 

Skip the coffee drive thru, save money and get a healthy breakfast by making this peppermint mocha protein shake at home. 

Recipe:
1/3 cup full fat, canned coconut milk
1/3 cup ice
1 scoop chocolate whey protein powder
1/2 tsp peppermint extract (or less, try a drop or two and add more if necessary)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 packet of instant coffee grounds (organic is best)

Blend and enjoy!

Most Breakfasts Today Should Be Called Dessert

“One of the biggest mistakes I see is eating dessert for breakfast. They might not even know it, but a bowl of Frosted Flakes has about 15 grams of sugar.

We shouldn’t be having sugar for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Sugar in all its forms is the root cause of our obesity epidemic and most of the chronic disease sucking the life out of our citizens and our economy — and, increasingly, the rest of the world. You name it, it’s caused by sugar: heart disease, cancer, dementia, type 2 diabetes, depression and even acne, infertility and impotence.

There are so many different kinds of sugars – honey, maple syrup, agave, cane sugar, etc. And while there are some small differences among these sugars, for the most part, sugar is sugar is sugar. It can all wreak havoc on your health.

Now, as far as this question is concerned, it’s important to take a look at the whole diet instead of just focusing on one ingredient in your coffee.

Are you consuming sugar throughout the day? What about hidden forms of sugar?

The truth is: food manufacturers put sugar into everything from ketchup to bread and all food products in between.

If you’re eating a whole-food, low-sugar diet, a little bit of honey in your morning coffee or tea might not be a problem, but if your diet has a little more sugar than you’d like, it might be time to detox completely from sugar.”

Buying Local Honey

Eating local food is great for the community and the environment but also for your health. Many people suffer from seasonal allergies (also known as hay fever or allergic rhinitis) especially in the spring when trees and plants start to release pollen and mold spores into the air.

When these tiny particles come into contact with your immune system it creates an allergic reaction inside most people's body leading to the sneezing, runny noses, sinus congestion and other allergy symptoms.

When bees fly from plant to plant collecting nectar to make honey they also collect pollen and mold spores on them. While making honey, small amounts of these particles are in the honey. Eating honey that contains these small particles can mildly stimulate your immune system preparing it for other pollen or mold particles that you might come into contact with in the air. If you do have an allergic reaction, this can help to reduce or eliminate the symptoms you are having.

For honey with health benefits, buy honey that is made as close to where you live so that the bees are in contact with the same plants you are in contact with.

Where do you purchase locally produced honey?

Firmicutes and Weight Gain

Firmicutes and Weight Gain:

Firmicutes are a type of bacteria found in the human colon that are very efficient at extracting extra calories from any food causing more calories to be absorbed in the body leading to extra body fat stores and weight gain.

They must be in balance with another type of bacteria called bacteroidetes. These two types of bacteria make up 90% of the bacteria in the colon and have to be in the right ratio for proper digestion. When the ratio shifts andfirmicutes outnumber the bacteroidetes weight gain starts.

Processed carbohydrates feed firmicutes causing their population to explode in the colon leading to major imbalances and weight gain.

1. Reduce processed carbohydrates to under 100 grams per day, 50-70 grams is ideal.
2. Load up on lots of vegetables and berries
3. Increase healthy protein and fats
4. Intermittent fast and only eat your meals between 11 AM and 7 PM

Food Journaling

Start a food journal:

(Share one thing you have noticed about your sensitivities below for others to see.)

There is not a single food on earth that is healthy for everyone because we all have different metabolisms, food allergies, sensitivities and digestive tracts.

Keeping a close eye on how you feel day to day can really help you clean up your nutrition protocol and get you feeling, sleeping and thinking at your best all the time instead of sporadically.

For example this is just a list of a few things I have personally noticed:

1. Too many raw nuts irritate my stomach
2. Eating apples plain makes me extremely hungry an hour later
3. Too many grains of any sort causes bloating and swelling for 12-24 hours. 4. All forms of beans irritate my stomach and cause bloating
5. White potatoes make my hands itchy and also make me feel bloated
6. Hot coffee just makes me go to the bathroom every hour and makes me lose focus
7. Too much cauliflower irritates my thyroid
8. Drinking the recommended 8+ glasses of water per day just causes it to sit in my stomach causing me to feel out of it and uncomfortable.
9. Too much raw spinach causes my kidneys to ache
10. If I take 400 mg of magnesium before bed I don't wake up at 3 AM
11. If I eat mostly meat, vegetables and berries along with intermittent fasting 3-5 days per week I feel extremely good physically and mentally.

How you do it:

1. Start seeing how you look (bloated or not), feel (mentally and physically) l and preform (how's your energy or if you are an athlete how was your workout?) on a daily basis, if anything is different day to day look at what you have been eating. Especially look at days where you feel really good and really bad.
2. The next time you eat the suspect food see what happens.
3. Start to remove things that don't sit well with you and customize your diet by the things you tolerate the best.

Remember, just because your family and friends does well with a certain food doesn't mean you will.

Depression, Anxiety and Nutrient Deficiency

Depression, Anxiety and Nutrient Deficiency:

Our bodies require certain nutrients from healthy foods to function properly. When we replace those foods with processed junk food we start depleting our body of those vital nutrients.

Anytime your body is lacking nutrients you will start to feel different, and not in a good way. This feeling usually comes across as depression, anxiety and just feeling blah. Your body then tells you to eat more food because it needs more nutrients but eating more junk food that has no nutrients will only magnify the problem leaving you more anxious, depressed and deficient but now you start gaining weight! The cycle only stops when you change what you are eating.

The best way to fix this ASAP is to overload your body with healthy food and to take a natural anti-inflammatory and a multi-vitamin. I find that smoothies loaded with greens and berries are an excellent way to do this along with reducing processed carbohydrates and drinking lots of water.

Benefits of Magnesium

1. Magnesium is involved in hundreds of biochemical reactions in your body

In fact, it’s involved in more than 600 reactions in your body, including:

Energy creation: Helps convert food into energy.
Protein formation: Helps create new proteins from amino acids.
Gene maintenance: Helps create and repair DNA and RNA.
Muscle movements: Is part of the contraction and relaxation of muscles.
Nervous system regulation: Helps regulate neurotransmitters, which send messages throughout your brain and nervous system

2. It may boost exercise performance

Studies have shown that supplementing with it can boost exercise performance for athletes, the elderly and people with chronic disease

(Source: healthline.com)

To read about benefits of magnesium, follow this link: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition

Almond Flour Crepes

Making Sunday breakfast for the family? Try these blueberry crepes! 

Eating healthy doesn't mean eating food that doesn't taste good. Most people should be eating 100 grams or less of net carbs per day. (Total carbs - Fiber = Net Carbs) 

Replacing flour with almond flour is a simple way to reduce net carbs and still make delicious breakfasts. 

Recipe:
4 eggs
½ cup almond flour
¼ cup water
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix all ingredients together, heat pan on medium with coconut oil. Add crepe mixture and cook for one minute on each side or until brown.

Remove crepe from pan, load it up with blueberries and roll it up, add a few blueberries and sprinkle cinnamon on top!

Go Grain Free

“Researchers have known for some time now that the cornerstone of all degenerative conditions, including brain disorders, is inflammation. But what they didn’t have documented until now are the instigators of that inflammation—the first missteps that prompt this deadly reaction. And what they are finding is that gluten, and a high-carbohydrate diet for that matter, are among the most prominent stimulators of inflammatory pathways that reach the brain.”

― David Perlmutter, Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers

#Gograinfree

Poop 101

Let's talk about poop.

Snickering aside, what comes out of our bodies can be an indicator as to what's happening inside our bodies, and here's a great guide on Robb Wolf's site by Ben Greenfield about signs, symptoms, and health-minded strategies for eating.

Source: https://robbwolf.com/2017/05/08/poop-101

Food and Depression

                                  

                                Feeling depressed? It might help to look at what you’re eating.

                            Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-food-that-helps-battle-depression

The Benefits of Grass-fed Butter

Butter was given a bad rap in the 1950s when Americans started their fat-phobia phase. This inspired a common, but untrue, belief has been that butter causes heart disease, cancer and obesity.

But if this were true, how would some of the world's healthiest populations have always had butter as a continuous staple in their diet? It just doesn't make sense, or does it?

There is a huge difference between grass-fed cow's butter and grain-fed cow's butter. It is like calling a golf cart and a Cadillac the same thing just because they both have a motor.

Cows are meant to eat grass. When they eat grass, they are healthy and produce healthy butter. It also means they are getting exercise and living in an environment that they should be living in. Grain-fed cows are fed an unnatural diet, typically don't have much room to move around and are at a higher risk for disease. This, in many cases, causes acidosis in the cow leading to liver problems, nutrient absorption issues, digestive problems, dehydration and many other issues that can be fatal. Grain-fed cows do not produce healthy butter.

One of the main differences between grass-fed butter and grain-fed butter is the Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio. When you have more Omega-3's compared to Omega-6's, it helps to reduce inflammation. Grains increase the amount of the unhealthy Omega-6's leading to excess inflammation. Cows that are fed grass have 50 percent of their fat in the healthy Omega-3 form, while cows fed grains have almost none. This makes grain-fed butter very inflammatory, potentially leading to many health issues from fibromyalgia to cancer.

Eating grass-fed butter on a regular basis can have many health benefits:
• Full of Omega-3s: reduces inflammation, therefore reducing pain and disease.
• High in CLA: has been shown to help with weight loss and to prevent cancer.
• Contains Vitamin A: provides positive benefits for your eye health. Vitamin A is what gives grass fed butter the bright yellow color.

The next time someone tries to tell you butter is bad for you, you are welcome to teach them about the differences between grass-fed and grain-fed cows. And don't even get me started about margarine and other fake butter... it is even worse than butter from grain-fed cows.