Active Family Chiropractic

Empowering Your Health

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Heat Management & Hydration

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It’s summer, time for BBQs and playing outside. It’s also the hottest time of the year. It’s important to think of your heat management and hydration.

Can CBP Help with Heat Management?

In Corrective Chiropractic care (CBP), the goal is to get your spine as close to structurally normal as possible, which keeps the least amount of pressure on your nervous system. Your nervous system controls your whole body. It controls your circulatory system, your vascular system (your veins and arteries), it controls all of the messages in your body, so just about every cell in your body is controlled by your nervous system, which is encased in your spine.

In terms of heat management, your thyroid gland has a lot to do with heat control. People who have thyroid problems they are either too hot all the time or too cold, there’s no in-between for them. A lot of times people who have nerve compression to the nerves that control the thyroid gland or to the kidneys, which have a lot to do with water and hydration, if they have any pressure on those nerves and those nerves are not working at 100%, there is potential for problems.

What about hydration?

This time of the year, when it’s super hot out people are reaching for cold beverages, that aren’t necessarily water. They may be going for an iced coffee, iced tea, or a frozen drink, which is essentially ice, sugar, and potentially dairy. During hotter times, people could be reaching for ice and alcoholic beverages such as beer, because they think it cools them down. In fact, drinking something cold when you’re hot is counter-intuitive, because it can actually cause your body to shut down. If you’re hot you should be drinking luke-warm water or a luke-warm beverage. Beverages like coffee, tea, beer, and other alcoholic beverages take water out of your cells, which makes you more dehydrated. In order to stay hydrated, you want to steer away from these on hot days.

In order to stay hydrated, you need to consume about half your body weight in ounces. If you decide to have coffee or iced tea or even a beer make sure that you drink an additional 8-12 ounces of water per drink to counteract the dehydration effects of caffeine and/or alcohol. Also, make sure to add more water also if you are sweating.

How can dehydration effect me?

If you become dehydrated you will have the potential for your body’s systems to stop or to slow down. This can cause mental confusion, headaches, generalized aches and pains, and lethargy. It can also lead to kidney failure or diabetes if you don’t have enough water.

Along with water, it is important to have an electrolyte balance in your water. If you use a water source like a Britta, which filters out everything from your water, you can go to your health food store and by mineral drops, which you can add to your water. Make sure to stay away from drinks like Gatorade which is basically sugared colored water with salt, it does not have enough active electrolytes to be effective.

You can also find electrolytes in the foods you eat, such as bananas, oranges, and spinach. You want to look for foods that contain potassium, magnesium, and sodium. Eating these foods can help to replace lost electrolytes as well.

Taking care of your spine can help you manage the heat better.

If your nervous system, at the get-go, isn’t working well, because you are not getting your spine adjusted by a CBP chiropractor and you’re not having enough hydration on top of that, you’re going to have a really hard time managing heat. However, if you have regular CBP adjustments and drink a good source of water with electro-lights, you’ll find that you’ll be able to tolerate the heat much better than you had before.

I noticed that I’m sick less when I get adjusted regularly, why is that?

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Do you see a CBP Chiropractor? Have you noticed that you are sick less than you have been in the past? Ever wondered why? It’s because regular adjustments help to boost your immune system.

Why is that?

Getting adjusted helps to increase all body functions, all body systems, and that includes your immune system. Any time you get an adjustment, white blood cells are released into your bloodstream. White blood cells help to fight bacteria, infection, and stress in the body, so it’s very important that you keep your immune system strong and one of the best ways of doing it is to get regular spinal adjustments.

I’ve also noticed I have experienced fewer allergies.

This will also help with seasonal allergies, which is an overstimulation of the immune system to a stimulus. If you are having seasonal allergies it is usually because you have an over-reaction of your immune system. The idea of getting adjusted regularly will help your immune system to work more properly so that it can handle an allergic stimulus a lot better than without.

How do adjustments work, exactly?

Adjustments help your nerves have less pressure on them. Your spinal nerves come from your spinal cord which is encased in your spine itself, in the bones. So if you have pressure from a misalignment on your spine it’s going to prohibit your nerves from working at 100% and that’s going to make your immune system work twice as hard and it will affect your body’s function. If you are taking care of your nervous system all other systems will function better and you will be sick less and experience fewer allergies to name some of the benefits.

Can I also use holistic methods to prevent sickness and allergies in addition to getting adjusted?

There are many natural remedies for sickness and allergies as long as you make it a priority to get adjusted regularly. Herbal teas can help with allergic reactions as well as herbal elixirs such as elderberry syrup, which is antiviral and high in antioxidants. No matter what you do make sure that you schedule an extra appointment with your CBP Chiropractor when you feel a bit run down, you’ll be surprised by the extra immune boost you’ll get from it.

For more information ask Dr. B at [email protected]

 

Why Won’t My Child Sit Up Straight?

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All of us has been told as a kid to sit up straight. Did you find it impossible to do? It always seemed more comfortable to slouch, doesn’t it? However, you always see parents telling their children to sit up straight.

Why won’t my Child Sit up Straight?

A child won’t sit up straight for a number of reasons. Usually, it’s because the child has something wrong with the structure of their spine. Because of that, it is impossible for them to sit up straight, no matter how much you try to encourage them to do so. A lot of the habits they do every day, such as using handheld devices, playing video games, sitting slumped at school, all those things can lead to bad posture habits. However, usually, they stem from the structure itself, because we know structural abnormalities start in-utero. They can also happen at birth.

That is why we encourage parents to have their babies and children spinally assessed because they are acquiring subluxations at birth which can influence their posture, which can then influence how they present themselves later on in life as young children, teenagers, and adults.

Are there any exercises that my child can do to help them sit up straighter?

You want to encourage your children to have good posture as they are growing. However, most adults don’t know what good posture is. You see it every day. Parents let their children sit slumped while playing games or using their handheld device for hours on end and don’t realize that this is bad for them. The first step is to understand what normal is and the only way to know what normal is is to see a CBP chiropractor and get a check-up. Regardless of whether or not they have pain every person should have a spinal check-up because that is how you learn what “normal” is. That is how you learn how to identify good posture versus bad posture, not only in yourself but in others.

Is there potential for a child’s growth to be stunted from poor posture habits?

Yes, you can see that the child may grow unevenly. One leg could be longer than the other or their bones will grow in the direction of which they are slumping. Now we’re seeing because of the influx of handheld devices, forward head position on a lot of young children that never existed before. Because these kids have never spent so much time looking at these devices before, it’s actually pulling their head forward and creating structural changes. This is something that previously had only been seen in adults.

How can we correct this?

The first thing to do would be to bring your children to see a CBP Chiropractor for a check-up. Having an understanding of how your child’s spine is structured is very important to identify any structural abnormalities. Knowing to restrict time on handheld devices and encouraging your children to have good posture should be in addition to your CBP care, so make an appointment today.

For more information contact Dr. B @ [email protected]

How do I continue my CBP care while traveling?

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Wouldn’t you rather look like this…

Instead of this? 

How do I keep up my CBP care while traveling?

There are Chiropractors who practice CBP worldwide, with the exception of maybe some rural parts of the world, you would be able to locate a doctor to take care of you while you travel. A great resource is www.idealspine.com. This resource allows you to locate CBP Chiropractors in whichever area of the world you are looking to travel to.

You can always find a CBP chiropractor if you wish to continue your CBP adjustments while traveling. It’s a simple phone call to the CBP office in the are you are looking to travel to and tell them what you’ve been doing with your CBP doctor and they should be able to see you. Because CBP doctors speak the same language it is really easy to send a patient to another CBP doctor for care.

When in doubt exercise & stretch.

The second part is the keep up your exercise routine. Your CBP doctor will have given you some regular exercises to do on a daily or weekly basis. By maintaining these exercises you are maintaining your treatment, especially if you are not able to make it in to see a CBP doctor. If you are not able to do the exercises at least stretch. Especially if you are doing excessive walking or sitting, you want to make sure that you are stretching after every day. If you find yourself on a long flight, make sure to take frequent bathroom breaks, so that you can stretch. Being compressed for a long amount of time is not good for the spine.

Don’t forget about your traction device.

If you have a home traction device that the doctor has provided for you, make sure that you bring it with you because you can do those exercises anywhere and although the units may be bulky they are extremely light and portable. This way you can continue to do your home exercises.

Try to stick to your routine from home.

Make sure that you reign in your diet. You do not want to be eating sugar every night. People tend to use vacations as an excuse to overindulge. However, if you maintain your diet and stay fairly consistent your spine will thank you for it. Try to be mindful of what you are eating and make sure that you are drinking enough water.

Having a good water source is important. If the water where you are is not potable, make sure to load up on bottled water or stock up on iodine tablets which will help purify water. People tend to become dehydrated when they travel, which leads to swelling of the extremities and compression of the spine. Try to drink at least 1/2 your body weight in ounces. If you find you’re sweating you will need to drink more.

You’re going to be sitting and standing and walking and doing things that you may not normally do so there is going to be some bodily response to that. However, you can minimize it by continuing with some of your routines. Talk to your CBP Chiropractor and work out a travel plan together.

For more information talk to Dr. B at [email protected].

 

What percentage of the nervous system feels pain?

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Have you ever wondered why you might feel pain immediately sometimes and other times it doesn’t show up until days later? Did you know that only a percentage of your nervous system is set aside to deal with pain? It may seem arbitrary why we don’t feel pain immediately when we injure ourselves but there are reasons as to why this happens.

What percentage of the nervous system feels pain?

Only about 10% of our nervous system is set aside, in your spinal cord, for the perception of pain. The good thing about that is, if that were not the case, we would be feeling pain a lot more often than we do. However, your nervous system has a lot of jobs.

It has to decipher things like hot from cold. It has to be able to filter out noises and understand them and put them in your brain in a way that is understandable to you. You have to see things that your eyes perceive and then your brain then has to transmit them into messages. So there are a lot of things that your nervous system does besides the sensation of pain. That’s why a lot of people think that it’s more than that because when they have pain it’s noticeable. Typically it’s only 10% of what is perceivable.

Pain is one of those things that is an arbitrary thing because a lot of people have abilities to sustain pain. Some people have low thresholds for tolerance. It just depends on the person and how their nervous system responds to the stimulus.

Why is it that some pain is delayed and some more immediate?

Your body is perceiving things all day long. For example, you could rake on Sunday and you could have done some damage to your muscle tissue at that time. However, your body had been pumping out adrenaline up to that point because you had been raking leaves, really hard all day Sunday. Your body had been pumping out adrenaline to help with the demands your body had been putting on it to get that hard work done.

Once the adrenaline system, the sympathetic nervous system, has had a chance to slow down, the parasympathetic nervous system starts to work. And then that’s when your body does an inventory of “how’s my body doing today?” Sometimes at that point, you’ll say, “oh here’s a pain” and your body will register it in your nervous system as pain and you will feel it. So it’s not always something that happens right away unless it’s a stimulus that is strong enough.

What is a pain threshold?

There is a threshold that has to be reached in your body for the perception of pain. For example, we’ll just use some arbitrary numbers, you have to have a 50% pain stimulus for you to perceive pain, so anything below that you won’t perceive, until you hit the 50% stimulus. Then an action potential happens in your body and you say, “oh, I recognize that as pain.”

The other problem is, every time you have a stimulus there is a neural pathway that gets developed in your spinal cord so that you remember it. Sometimes you may not have a neural stimulus for that perception of pain, which is why sometimes it takes a while for that pain perception to show up.

How does my body handle pain?

The biggest answer is this, a lot of times people do injure themselves and your body just handles it. Your body sends out white blood cells to fix the injury, it helps by sending out endorphins, it will send out hormones so that you don’t feel the pain. The injury is there, but you don’t necessarily feel it.

Sometimes the injury is just there, and your body is not able to heal it because you are not letting your body heal or you are doing something that is continually reinjuring it. Finally, it gets to the point where that stimulus is met, the action potential is met and then your body says, “ok, I can’t do this anymore, or I can’t cover this up naturally”, and then you feel the pain.

It really depends on how severe the injury is and how much your body can handle it. Some people who are very healthy don’t feel half of the injuries they have because their body heals it. The people who are unhealthier are the ones who feel every little thing, every misstep, every little slip or fall because their bodies are unhealthy to begin with so they can’t heal themselves. Then what winds up happening is a small thing like a misstep off a sidewalk can put them in bed for five days.

People always ask, “why am I in pain? How did I do this?” You have to retrace your steps and figure out what you did to yourself and not do it again.

Big Stimulus = Bigger injury

If the body has experienced a car accident or a major trauma, it’s enough of a stimulus for your body to recognize it as a pain and there is so much pain stimulus that your body cannot handle it at one time. So what will happen, and you’ve heard these stories of people who are in serious car accidents and they get out of the car, are seemingly find and then once the adrenaline wears off they realize they aren’t fine.

If the stimulus is really strong, your body will experience an adrenaline dump and you won’t even notice that you’re injured until that adrenaline dump stops and you’ll realize that you’re injured and that’s when your body will feel it. The greater the stimulus the more quickly you’ll feel the problem.

What do I do if I experience pain?

The first thing to do is to go to a CBP chiropractor and get a checkup to see what is wrong. You may have a muscle injury or a subluxation but it’s important to get the facts and know what you’re dealing with. The difference between pain and soreness is that pain is sharp and soreness is aches. If the issue is a result of a subluxation, CBP adjustments can help your nervous system to function uninhibited and allow you to determine the difference. When your spine is working at optimal levels your body is better equipped to handle pain and heal. The first step to wellness is seeing a CBP chiropractor.

For more information or to set up a checkup contact Dr. B @ [email protected].

Can the weather cause migraines?

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Have you ever been going about your day and gradually feel an intense pressure headache come on? Have you noticed that the wind has picked up or the air might feel heavier? Changes in atmospheric pressure have been thought to be a trigger for inducing migraines. According to the Mayo clinic, weather may cause imbalances in brain chemicals, including serotonin, which can lead to migraines. However, there is still no scientific proof that the weather can trigger a migraine.

As a CBP practitioner, Dr. B. has seen it a lot. If there is a storm coming in or some kind of pressure system, such as a tornado or high winds, people tend to have more trouble with headaches and migraines. She believes that there is a correlation but nothing has been proven, scientifically, yet.

If the weather can contribute to migraine occurrence, then what is a migraine?

A migraine headache is a complicated type of a headache. It usually involves hormonal reactions in the body. Sometimes it can be triggered by stress and it’s a different complex of headaches, a different complex of symptoms that attribute to a traditional stress headache.

Can anything be done to curb or prevent migraines? 

One of the best ways to combat headaches and migraines is to receive regular adjustments from a Chiropractic Biophysics practitioner. Having proper spinal alignment leads to better nervous system function and that can help your body to function better. It can help to combat any of these weird weather-related occurrences that might interrupt your body’s natural flow.

What type of subluxation would trigger a migraine?

The top vertebra C1, the atlas, which rests at the base of the skull, is usually responsible for a migraine if it is a physical stressor because it has a direct attachment to the small muscles at the base of the head called the suboccipitals. When those get irritated they can compress what is called the Vagus nerve, that comes out of your brain, travels through the suboccipitals and into the stomach. This can lead to nausea, seeing auras, light sensitivity, and noise sensitivity, those pre-migraine situations.

Can migraines be caused by something other than subluxations and the weather?

Migraines are not always caused by subluxations in the neck, but subluxations are absolutely contributory. Stress is another factor. Both physical and emotional stress can play a role. Stress affects your hormones. It changes your hormones. When you are stressed your body pumps out a lot of adrenaline, which releases more cortisol, which is really bad for your body. Cortisol is the stuff that holds on to fat cells and it lays fat depositions in your arteries. Stress is a very dangerous thing that needs to be managed and it can certainly contribute to migraines.

Weather for some people is a stressor. Especially if they do not like rain or snow or sun. If there is something happening in their environment that they do not like, it can create stress which can lead to migraines.

Do you experience migraines?

Changes in the weather can be a stressor for many and for some unlucky few, it can lead to migraines. If you’re one of these people, you should get regular CBP adjustments. Not only will they allow your nervous system to work more efficiently but they will minimize the severity and frequency of your migraines. If you’re not already seeing a CBP chiropractor, get a checkup and see how a CBP chiropractor can help you.

For more information contact Dr. B @ [email protected]

How Does CBP Chiropractic Adjustments Help Boost Energy?

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Have you been feeling run down? Is it a struggle to get out of bed in the morning? Do you want more energy throughout the day? Have you ever considered, instead of reaching for an energy drink or another cup of coffee you should be making an appointment with a CBP chiropractor? Well, you should.

Corrective adjustments can boost energy levels.

The specific corrective adjustments we do with Chiropractic Biophysics (CBP), reduces pressure on the nervous system, the spinal nerves, and the peripheral nerves, and ultimately that is how the body functions.

If you have a lot of nerve pressure, the messages from your brain to your body will be slowed. When they are slowed your body components cannot work as quickly. That also includes metabolism and production of energy at the cellular level. Therefore, the adjustments provided by a CBP Chiropractor help to stimulate the nervous system to function at an optimal level, thereby increasing energy levels.

Adjustments can provide a metabolism boost

When your nervous system is operating at an optimal level, your cellular function increase as does your metabolism. Regular CBP care can open up nervous system pathways so that your brain can talk to your body uninterrupted allowing you to burn fat more efficiently. When your body is working more efficiently, you will find that you have more energy throughout the day.

Gravity can play a factor

If you have proper alignment in the spine then the forces of gravity will be distributed evenly throughout the body so your body doesn’t have to work twice as hard or three times as hard to maintain it’s frame in the state of gravity. When your body is not in alignment, it is expending more energy to maintain function. This causes a depletion of its energy stores and therefore causes you to be lethargic.

CBP care can give you more energy

If you’re someone who experiences a mid-day slump or seems to not have enough energy for your kids or loved ones, you owe it to yourself to seek out CBP care. CBP Chiropractic care has the most research done to help provide the best care to its patients. Give yourself an energy boost and set up an appointment with a CBP doctor today.

For more information, you can contact Dr. B @ [email protected].

 

How does CBP Chiropractic care help Allergies?

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Spring is right around the corner, fingers crossed, and with it comes blooming flowers and trees…and allergies. Did you know that seeing a CBP chiropractor can help alleviate your allergies, naturally? It’s true!

So how can a CBP chiropractor help my allergies?

CBP chiropractic care helps to increase nervous system stimulation from the brain to the body. There are many people who suffer from allergies because of compression of their spinal cord at the very top, at the brain stem.

When someone comes into a CBP office with allergies, the doctor will see a subluxation at C1, which is the first vertebra, the top bone in the neck. The C2 controls sinus function. So, people who suffer from sinus infections, allergies, or hay fever type could have a subluxation in that area. The lower neck area of the spinal cord controls the lungs. When people struggle with scratchy lungs and coughs it can usually be pointed to a subluxation in that area.

What is an allergy?

Ultimately, an allergy is an overreaction of your immune system to a stimulus. For some reason, your immune system is finding a stimulus incredibly aggravating to your body. And what usually starts off those things is exposure at a young age, before your immune system is developed. We get exposed to a lot of things, as babies, that we shouldn’t be exposed to, and because of that, we develop an intolerance later on in life to those items.

If you look at the very common peanut allergy, one of the reasons for that is because they started putting peanut oil into vaccines as a filler because it became cheap. Therefore, babies were exposed to peanuts before their immune systems were ready to handle it and they ended up developing an overstimulation reaction to it. That’s where that allergy stems from.

However, an allergy, in general, is your immune system overreacting to something for some reason. It usually is because your nerves are malfunctioning, sometimes it’s not, sometimes it could be because you were exposed to something at a young age that you were not ready for, that your body was not ready for and now it marks it as a toxin.

Can allergies happen at any time or do they only develop while you’re a baby?

Sometimes people develop allergies later on in life, because of over-exposure. For example, if someone eats too much gluten throughout their lives they can later become intolerant to it because they’ve had too much of it their bodies throughout their whole lives. However, keep in mind if you have bad nervous system flow, then you’re going to be allergic to things that other people might not be, who were exposed to the same stimulus.

It is important that people realize that they can help prevent some allergies. If you have babies, who you are making decisions for, you have to realize the implications of giving them thousands of doses of vaccines before their immune systems are developed. That means they are being exposed to things that their bodies are not ready to handle.

Is there something that can be done for allergy relief?

Getting regular adjustments by your CBP doctor will help increase your nerve system flow and minimize your reactions. Regular CBP adjustments can keep your nervous system subluxation free to flow uninterrupted and deal with overstimulation more quickly.

Have you been suffering from allergies and want a holistic way to “deal” with them? Find a CBP chiropractor like Dr. B who can help alleviate those subluxations that are causing your allergies.

For more information send an email to Dr. B @ [email protected]

 

About Us: Learn about Chiropractic Biophysics (CBP) through the stories of a CrossFit athlete, a passionate artist, and parents of twin babies

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