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Mastering Your Emotional Brain

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Emotions can be disorienting, detrimental, and downright challenging. One moment our life can be peaceful and easy, the next chaos! As we all have experienced, in the blink of an eye, everything can change. 

Whether it be pandemics, political unrest, challenging transitions, the passing of loved ones, or a stuck emotional pattern, our Nervous System is taxed with the responsibility of helping us process what is happening in our life. If we are clear and connected, emotions can become a guiding compass for us understanding ourselves on a deeper level and thriving regardless of the circumstances around us.

Processing

We love seeing many of the people in our chiropractic practice, as their nervous system becomes healthier, find clarity through all sorts of life’s crazy challenges. Processing and learning from our emotions is a journey. As you continue to make decisions with your Ideal 100 Year Lifestyle in mind, it may be beneficial to consider the possibility that your emotions hold more value than you think, and the individual parts of your emotional brain are interconnected!

The Limbic System

Our emotional brain is essential for our body’s ability to process. It is called the “Limbic System.” It is a complex compilation of different nerve groupings. Each with a specialized function. Here is a quick guide to understanding the key aspects of your brain’s Limbic System:

Amygdala: This tiny almond-shaped structure is known for helping the Nervous System evaluate potential threats. It can trigger the “fight or flight” response. And is also responsible for conditional learning (based on reward or punishment).

Hippocampus: Memory formation and storage. 

Thalamus: This is the “Amazon Prime” of the brain. The Thalamus delivers messages coming up from the body to the appropriate processing centers. It plays an essential role in connecting the rest of the Limbic System to other aspects of the Nervous System. 

Hypothalamus: This is the key regulatory center. The Hypothalamus is constantly taking in physiologic messages. Such as breathing rate and metabolism. This is the part of your brain that triggers you into “hanger” when your blood sugar levels have dropped.

Cingulate Gyrus: Associates sights and smells with pleasant memories of previous emotions. It also plays a role in processing our conscious emotional experience. 

Basal Ganglia: Think of this as the “dimmer switch” for the brain’s motor output. It’s capable of inhibiting certain behaviors such as talking out of turn. 

Crucial Role

All of these parts of the Limbic System play a crucial role in directing our Nervous System. We want to respond with the appropriate “fight or flight” response should a big grizzly bear appear during a hike. Sometimes, it is necessary to use this adrenaline-boosting response. But not always. How often is our body stuck in this type of stress pattern when there is no emergency?

When there is interference to the Nervous System, its ability to respond appropriately is distorted. With this distorted signaling, our emotional response may become unregulated and downright dramatic. We may become overly aggressive or act out in a way we later regret. Maybe, we find ourselves in a recurrent emotional loop. And we replay the same pattern again and again. 

A Clear Nervous System

When our Nervous System is clear and connected, it is much easier to step outside of the recurrent loop. With healthy decisions such as receiving Chiropractic Lifestyle Care, our brain and body have a leg up in processing emotions. When the Nervous System is balanced out, the brain and body can work together. They provide clarity and depth to the wisdom our emotions hold. Once we make healthy decisions and take responsibility for our emotions, we truly learn from them. 

Perhaps most importantly, we need community. Reach out to family, friends, and other supportive roles in your life. By reaching out you are taking the first step towards forming a more healthy relationship with your emotions. Also known as vulnerability. This act of bravery goes a long way and can lead us to brilliant discoveries and experiences. When we make vulnerability a regular occurrence in our life, emotions become healthy opportunities to learn about ourselves and move through life challenges.

Create communities that support your 100 Year Lifestyle.

Become a Least Vulnerable Person and Family

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You and your family can take steps right now and become ‘Least Vulnerable People’. Here are 15 things you can stop doing and start doing that will make a difference.

Becoming A ‘Least Vulnerable Person’

There is growing concern about COVID-19, the flu, and other infectious diseases affecting the most vulnerable people. Who are these most vulnerable people and what choices can you make for yourself and your family to become a Least Vulnerable Person. Fortunately, most of these options are under your control!

Who Are The Most Vulnerable People

Seniors

Elderly people are the most at-risk population for infection and serious complications due to COVID-19 or any other virus. The reason is not just because of their age. In fact, there was a recent report of a 102-year-old woman who recovered from the COVID-19 virus. What makes them most vulnerable is that many of them are living lifestyles that include all of the additional factors listed below.

Underlying Health Conditions

People with underlying health conditions such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other conditions, are more vulnerable as well. Their immune systems are already stressed and challenged, which makes them less able to ward off other types of infections.

https://youtu.be/1EXplnxo0Wo

PolyPharmacy

Polypharmacy is a term used for people who take multiple medications. This can alter blood and brain chemistry causing immunosuppression, hindering the body’s innate ability to fight infections.

Marlo Sollitto, author of Polypharmacy in the Elderly, states that “Being on too many medications can lead to potentially dangerous drug interactions and exposure to many side effects at once. Keep in mind that this applies not to just prescriptions, but also over-the-counter medications… The average adult takes four or more prescription drugs each day.”

Obesity

According to the National Institute of Health, obesity, and overweight together are the second leading cause of preventable death in the US, close behind tobacco usage. An estimated 300,000 deaths per year are due to the obesity epidemic.

Poor Posture

Chiropractors have been labeled Essential Service Providers by the US Department of Homeland Security, which is why we are open, taking the proper precautions, and serving our community.

Poor posture can make you more vulnerable by increasing stress, reducing lung capacity, straining muscles, causing fatigue and contributing to many other factors that affect your immune system.  A recent Harvard study showed that people who sat with good posture showed a 25% decrease in Cortisol, the stress hormone.

Sedentary

On average, Americans sit for about 11 hours per day. Sedentary lifestyles are a contributing factor to every lifestyle disease and a risk factor including cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Erin Michos, the associate director of preventive cardiology at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease explains “A large review of studies published in 2015 in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that even after adjusting for physical activity, sitting for long periods was associated with worse health outcomes including heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and cancer. Sedentary behavior can also increase your risk of dying, either from heart disease or other medical problems.”

Smokers

Smoking is known to compromise the immune system. This increases the risk for many immune and autoimmune disorders, conditions that occur when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s healthy cells and tissues.

Becoming a ‘Least Vulnerable Person’

Here are some important lifestyle changes you can make to help you and your loved ones become ‘Less Vulnerable People’.

Positive Psychology

Positive psychology can improve your health and immune system function. According to Johns Hopkins expert, Lisa Yanek, people with a family history of heart disease who had a positive outlook were one-third less likely to have a heart attack or cardiovascular event within 5-25 years compared to those with a negative outlook.

Another study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology compared optimistic vs. pessimistic first-year law students regarding their performance in the upcoming school year. The study showed better functioning immune cells in the optimistic students versus the pessimistic students.

Physical Activity

Physical activity and movement is a keystone in maintaining optimal health. A study published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science illustrated the following:

  • Acute exercise is an immune system adjuvant
  • A clear inverse relationship was found between moderate exercise training and illness risk
  • Habitual exercise improves immune regulation, delaying the onset of age-related dysfunction

Reduce Stress and Get Plenty of Sleep

Stress is not an outside thing, it’s an inside thing. You have the opportunity to choose how you react to any situation. It is true that chronic stress reduces the capabilities of your immune system and makes you more vulnerable to disease. According to Bruce Lipton, Ph.D and author of the Biology of Belief, your body cannot be in positive production mode and defense mode at the same time. He explains this concept in detail in this video.

Quality sleep is important. Minimize your stress so that you sleep well. This will certainly make you reduce your vulnerability.

Improve the Function of Your Nervous System

Your nervous system is your body’s main communication highway, relaying nerve signals to every single, cell, tissue and organ in the entire body, allowing the body to perform all vital functions in order to sustain life. It is ESSENTIAL to maintain the integrity of this communication highway in order to live a healthy lifestyle. More importantly, the nervous system supplies communication to the thymus, spleen, adrenal glands, and lymph glands, all of which play pivotal roles in the function of your immune system.

Chiropractic care improves posture which can improve the health of your nervous system In addition, correcting spinal imbalances can influence basic physiological processes affecting oxidative stress and DNA repair. Reducing oxidative stress is an important factor in immune function.

In a study by Ronald Pero Ph.D, subjects under chiropractic care demonstrated higher mean serum thiol levels than patients with active disease and produced some values that were higher than normal wellness values.

Social Interaction

Community equals immunity. The NCBI states that Social relationships-both quantity and quality- affect mental health, health behavior, physical health, and mortality risk…..Social isolation of otherwise healthy, well-functioning individuals eventually results in psychological and physical disintegration, and even death.

Good nutrition

Make good nutrition your new lifestyle by choosing QCs over ECs, quality calories over empty calories, every time you’re faced with a food choice. A proper nutritional regimen consisting of lean proteins, organic green leafy vegetables, whole grains, healthy sources of monounsaturated fats such as avocados, nuts and seeds are important to help provide your body what it needs to be healthy, and strong.

  • Choose Quality Calories over Empty Calories
  • Supplement Your Diet
  • Avoid Processed Foods
  • Avoid Canned Foods
  • Avoid White Rice, Sugar, Flour and Pasta
  • Avoid Regular and Diet Soda
  • Minimize Caffeine and Alcohol

Technology

Limiting technology use can improve your health dramatically. Diagnoses of ADHD, autism, coordination disorder, developmental delays, unintelligible speech, learning difficulties, sensory processing disorder, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders are associated with technology overuse, and are increasing at an alarming rate.”1

Raise a Least Vulnerable Family

Apply these principles to raising your family and everyone you love will be healthier for it, becoming less vulnerable to infections and experiencing better health now and for a lifetime.

A Lasting Holiday Health Plan

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The holiday season has begun and now is the time to commit to a lasting holiday health plan. Enjoy the healthiest holiday season ever and start your new year with a mindset of staying healthy for a lifetime.

The Lifestyle Care Continuum

The three elements of the Lifestyle Care Continuum are Crisis Care, Critical Transition and Lifestyle Care. Too many of us make unhealthy choices during the holidays which results in a crisis, and then use the crisis to motivate us to get healthy again. Every year millions of people begin exercise programs, diet plans, and chiropractic regimens to get themselves healthy. When you choose to live your ideal 100 Year Lifestyle, you will get off the roller coaster ride and enjoy good health without extreme ups and downs and, you will never feel deprived.

The Critical Transition is the transition from Crisis Care to Lifestyle Care! To help you make this transition, remember this acronym for FitNESS every time you are faced with a choice during the holidays or any other time that you feel tempted or get off track.

FitNESS: Neurology, Nutrition, Endurance, Strength, and Structure.

Neurology comes first for a reason. Muscles are attached to bones and controlled by nerves. In fact, your nervous system controls and coordinates all of your conscious and unconscious functions including your muscles, organs, and systems. You must have a spine and healthy nervous system for your heart to beat, your lungs to breathe, your brain to work right and your balance to be stable. The transition from Crisis Care to Chiropractic Lifestyle Care will keep your nervous system functioning at its optimum potential and is the foundation for everything else that follows. This is one reason why many of the top athletes in the world utilize chiropractic care to optimize their training and fitness program.

Nutrition comes next. Make healthier food choices this holiday season and as a part of your lifestyle. Learn to love the things that are good for you. It is true, you are what you eat. Consuming a diet filled with organic fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and very low in sugar, white flour, white rice, and pasta, should be your lifestyle and not just as a weight-loss crash. This will sustain you not just while getting into shape but as you stay in shape. It’s making your new shape your lifestyle.

Endurance develops through cardiovascular exercise which includes walking, running, hiking, bike riding, and ellipticals that will increase your heart rate and strengthen your cardiovascular system. Start slow and steady, be consistent and as time goes on increase the frequency, intensity and duration of your endurance training.

Strength gives you confidence and is necessary if you want to be independent as you age. Whether you use weights or you do strength training through yoga, Pilates or other types of plyometric training, it is important to keep yourself strong as a part of a lifestyle.

Structure is also vital, especially when you consider the overuse of technology, cell phones and computers. Even children are developing postural imbalances at a very early age and it is wreaking havoc on their health and posture. When it comes to your 100 Year Lifestyle fitNESS plan, having a healthy, straight, strong spine and posture is vital to your quality-of-life in the short and long-term. This is another reason why chiropractors have become the central figure in the healthcare team for millions of people including nearly every professional and collegiate sports team.

Statistics show that you will probably live longer than you ever thought. If you want to get there in style with health and vitality, you must make your lifestyle fitness a priority. Any time of year is the right time to shift to a lifestyle of fitNESS and enjoy the journey on your way to a sensational century.

Schedule an Appointment for yourself and your family today and give the gift of health and chiropractic this holiday season.

The Triune of Triathlon

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The Triune of Triathlon includes the three sports of swimming, cycling and running that create one of the most challenging and fulfilling competitions one can find. It is also one of the fastest growing sports across the country. The key to success in triathlon is to condition your body in all three sports in order to perform at your best.

Triathletes spend months of training and dialing in their nutrition leading up to the race. There is a lot of planning that takes place in order to prepare your body to endure the many miles you will cover with limited food and water. It would be extremely difficult and dangerous to show up at the starting line unprepared.

On the day that an athlete signs up for their first event, there’s usually no way they could complete the race and it seems like a crazy idea. But as they train, their body steadily changes and come race day they are primed and ready to go. This phenomenon that happens in endurance sports is the change that occurs in an athlete over time. Getting ready for a race doesn’t happen in one day, one week, or even one month.

What exactly is this phenomenon that enables your body to adapt to the training and compete? It is a second Triune of Triathlon that is as follows…

Innate Intelligence: Your body has an innate intelligence that is allowing it to adapt and change according to your training and nutrition. This intelligence conditions your muscles and improves the metabolic pathways to use your energy stores effectively throughout the race. Your body will adapt as long as your nervous system is healthy.

Interference: There can be interferences to your body’s ability to adapt. These can be lifestyle related such as lack of sleep, poor nutrition, over training, alcohol, work and relationship stress. There can also be nerve interference. Dysfunction in your spine and nerve system has a negative impact on your body’s ability to adapt to your training and may lead to injury or poor performance. Since your nerve system controls your body’s ability to adapt, interference here will slow your training plan and you will not get the maximum benefit out of your workouts.

Adjustments: Remove the interferences in your lifestyle and in your nerve system to optimize your training. By eliminating the things that are holding you back, and making small changes and corrections, you will improve your overall health, respond more efficiently to your training, eliminate and prevent injury and optimize your performance.

The chiropractic care our office provides addresses this triune to help Triathletes and all other types of athletes heal quickly from injury, adapt to their training and perform at their highest level.

Casual athletes and anyone for that matter who addresses this triune as a foundation of their health and lifestyle, often sees great results.

Many people begin to feel less pain, have more energy, take less medications, sleep better and set personal records in the gym. Others have more stable emotions and improve their relationships with their family and loved ones. Others see allergies clear up and their immune systems get stronger. Kids often become more focused, stand up straighter and demonstrate a greater sense of well-being.

Just as training consistently will allow you to race at your best, getting checked for nerve interference regularly will allow your body to function properly so that you can achieve optimal health and peak performance.

Whether you’re thinking about taking on a Triathlon, or you just want to get more out of life, apply this triune. Take your Innate Intelligence out for a test drive and you will be blown away by your own capabilities. Remove the interference from your life and make the critical transition from crisis care into lifestyle care. Adjust your lifestyle and enjoy a sensational century.

Stop Chasing Symptoms

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Isn’t it time you stopped chasing symptoms? These signals that you get from your body are frequently misunderstood. More importantly, treating symptoms without getting to the cause of a problem can lead to mismanagement of your health and more severe health problems as you age.

When you get sick, for example, and your temperature goes up, your body is naturally fighting off the infection. Bacteria thrive in a climate that is 98.6 degrees so your body’s Innate Intelligence raises your temperature to help fight off the infection on its own. The symptoms of this elevated temperature can be muscle aches, fatigue, weakness and general malaise. At the first sign or symptom of a fever, many people will immediately panic and try to bring the temperature down with medication, treating the symptoms rather than letting the body do its job and heal itself.

The medications that are used to treat these symptoms can lead to side effects and even weaken the body’s natural immunity. In recent years, the overuse of antibiotics has created an epidemic of superbugs within individuals that are untreatable and pose a serious threat to our long term health.

The CDC states, “If antibiotics are used too often for things they can’t treat-like colds or other viral infections-they can stop working effectively. Antibiotic resistance has been a concern for years and is considered one of the world’s most critical public health threats. Widespread overuse and inappropriate use of antibiotics is fueling an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

In the U.S., antibiotic-resistant infections are responsible for $20 billion in excess healthcare costs, $35 billion in societal costs and $8 million in additional hospital days.”(1)

A report commissioned by the Canadian Coordinating Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance estimated that infections caused by antibiotic-resistant organisms increased direct hospital costs in Canada by $15-25 million annually(2).

Many experts say that it is better to give the body a chance to heal itself with rest and fluids along with chiropractic adjustments that remove pressure from the nervous system. Unless there is an extreme elevation in body temperature, and depending on other symptoms, allowing your body to heal itself naturally helps your immune system build the resistance it needs to keep you healthy and fight infections more effectively.

Consider the case for “referred pain.” This means you can feel a symptom in one part of your body while the cause or the origin of that pain is somewhere else. For example, very often the cause of arm, hand or finger pain is in the neck. Leg and foot pain will often originate from a problem in the back. Problems with the gallbladder will often refer pain to the spinal nerve roots in the middle part of the spine and vice versa.

Because chiropractic works to restore health and vitality to the nervous system, we are always amazed at how the entire body often becomes free of symptoms through our work with the spine. Since nerves control every cell, tissue and organ of your body, problems in the nervous system can cause or mimic nearly any and every symptom imaginable.

It is very common to hear our practice members say things like “I know I came because my neck hurt, and my allergies and headaches are gone too.” or “I didn’t even tell you about my menstrual cramping but since I’ve been getting adjusted, my cramps have been reduced dramatically.” or “I sleep so much better since beginning my care.”

The list goes on and on. Isn’t it time you stop chasing symptoms and get to the cause? You will enjoy a much healthier life when you do.

The 100 Year Old Woman Who Died at 82

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This is an interesting story of a 100-year-old woman who died at 82. When she was conceived, just like you, 23 chromosomes from her mother and 23 chromosomes from her father united to make her a unique human being with the innate potential to live an active, healthy, quality life to 100 years of age and beyond.

Unfortunately, she was injured during the birth process. Pulling and twisting on her neck and spine caused a vertebral subluxation, placing pressure on her spinal cord and nerves. Since there was no bruising that was visible on the outside of her body, the injury went unnoticed and the newborn went home from the hospital on time.

Underneath her skin, this injury caused a disruption of the nerve supply between the brain and the body and her internal communication signals became distorted. Her stomach became sensitive to foods, and her first year of life was filled with numerous colds and ear infections that her parents and the pediatrician considered “normal”. She was given multiple doses of antibiotics and her symptoms came and went. Over the course of this first year, her underlying spinal injury caused her bones to develop unevenly, her nerve supply to be compromised, and her innate healing capacity to be altered.

During her toddler years, she fell a lot through playing and exploring her environment. This repetitive trauma caused additional areas in her spine to become imbalanced, causing more pressure on her nerves. While they were not enough to cause her a “backache”, the pressure was enough to cause her body to function abnormally. After all, research shows that nerve root compression can exist without pain and mild pressure can reduce nerve transmission. Deterioration can begin within two weeks.

As a teenager, she began to experience hormonal changes in her body which for unexplainable reasons were causing difficult menstrual cycles and severe acne.

Her caregivers labeled her as anemic since she was prone to overall weakness and dizziness. Her parents didn’t even think about removing the pressure from the spine and restoring the normal nerve supply to her body. Instead, they were scared into giving their child monthly treatments used for birth control. This symptomatic treatment approach seemed to work for a while, but each time she went off the hormones, their daughter’s symptoms became worse. Eventually, in her early 30’s, she suffered several miscarriages, was diagnosed with clinical depression and began taking an anti-depressant. As her symptoms and conditions multiplied, so did her medications. Even more significant, the pressure on the nerves had been there for decades of two weeks.

To make a long story short, what could have been a long healthy life, ended as a shorter, sicker one. This pattern of treating symptoms rather than eliminating the cause continued throughout her lifetime. Her body could never get centered. Her spine and nervous system were never balanced. Rather than thriving and enjoying good health, her body deteriorated over time.

The last decade of her life, she was unable to appreciate her family or travel far from home. Her savings dwindled while the cost of her medications and treatments rose. She spent the last five years dying a painful, deteriorating death in a nursing home instead of experiencing the quality of life that her body’s Innate Potential could have provided.

This woman’s story should not have started or ended like this. An immediate spinal examination after her birth and throughout her lifetime may have contributed to a much different life. How many two weeks will you wait? Whether your destiny is to live to 82 or 100 years and beyond, make them quality years and enjoy good health every day along the way with Chiropractic Lifestyle Care. Regardless of your age, Chiropractic Care will help you keep your spine and nerve system healthy and your body expressing its full potential.