Active Family Chiropractic

Empowering Your Health

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Why it’s important to stay hydrated in the winter.

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Believe it or not, you can become dehydrated during the winter so it’s important to stay hydrated. Your body is almost 80% water. This means that every body function that you have requires hydration.

Whether it be digestion, excretion, circulation, any of the body systems that you can think of like your immune system and vascular systems all require water in perfect balance with electrolytes for your body to function, even your brain. Your spinal column has fluid in it as well, so everywhere in your body, there is fluid.

If you are sitting around in the winter and not exercising, you may think that you don’t need to drink water but you are wrong, because every body process requires water to function. Even when you breathe you are respirating. When you breathe out you are breathing out water droplets, it’s one of the by-products of respiration.

It’s important to drink water in the winter. Many forget to drink water in the winter because you may not sweat or you are less active. Instead, you may find yourself drinking more hot beverages like coffee, hot chocolate, or tea. These all contain caffeine which dehydrates so not only are people not drinking enough water because they are not sweating but they are increasing their dehydration by consuming more caffeine.

Many people will feel very lethargic and worn out in the winter. This may cause you to think it’s because of the lack of sun but it’s really because you’re dehydrated. You also may not realize it but heat is dehydrating so the fact that you’re spending more time indoors in a warm environment will dehydrate you in the winter as well. If your skin is dry on the outside your body is dry on the inside. Dry skin is a good indicator of dehydration.

During the winter it’s important to still have to consume at least half your body weight in ounces per day in order to keep your body functioning and not become dehydrated. If you find yourself drinking more hot beverages containing caffeine you need to drink the same amount of water to replace the water lost. Also, if you find yourself tired in the middle of the day, take it as a sign that you’re dehydrated and drink some water.

So this winter make it a point to drink water, even if you think you don’t need it, more than likely you do!

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

Tips for a healthier New Year.

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Happy New Year everyone! Let’s start the new year off right by establishing good habits. Here are some tips for a healthier new year.

Meet the four fundamental needs of your body.

#1. Your nervous system.

Without your brain telling your body what to do through your spinal cord, your body doesn’t function. If you’re not taking care of your spine through regular CBP (Chiropractic Biophysics) adjustments. Your spine cannot work at 100% or at it’s highest potential. As a result that can give you lower health, give you more physical problems, more pain, more limitations, and, less energy.

Many people think that to be healthy you need to just eat well and exercise but it’s more than that. However, it’s so much more than that and the first step is to get regular adjustments by a CBP chiropractor.

#2. Oxygen in your cells.

The best way to keep your cells oxygenated is through exercise and movement. That doesn’t mean you have to run marathons or do aggressive workouts. You are able to do this by walking, swimming, stretching, or just moving. That is how old cells in your body get replaced with new cells. That is also how you stay young and disease free. It is through the oxygenation of the body. The best way to oxygenate your body is through movement, aka exercise.

#3. Water intake.

To be healthier this year one of the best things you can do is to increase your water intake, slowly. If you increase your water intake too fast you will, more than likely urinate it out and it won’t be absorbed. The best thing to do is to sip it throughout the day. The goal for each person should be to intake half your body weight in ounces. That is your minimum hydration levels, needed to maintain good function in your body. Anything above that would be great! Anything below that means you are dehydrated.

Dehydration will help to slow down all of your body functions, which ultimately will affect your health. So, in order to be healthier, you have to get more water into your body. Make sure that if you are consuming beverages with caffeine you want to consume the same amount of water in addition to your daily minimum.

#4. Nutrition and eating the right foods.

This is different for everyone. Some people need to eat raw foods only and some people cannot eat raw foods because of their digestion. Some people can eat gluten and some people can’t, etc. Nutrition is not a single answer. Every person has to figure out what is going to work best for their bodies.

Your body will tell you whether or not it likes what you are putting into it. If you feel energized after you eat, if you feel healthier, if you feel good then you know you’re eating the right foods. If you are feeling gassy, or have heartburn, or any of those other signs of incomplete digestion then you’ll know that you are not eating foods that are good for your body. It’s a good idea to consult a registered dietitian in order to get a specific diet plan together.

Use these as a guideline

That’s the best way to be healthier in the new year. Working on these four fundamental needs listed above will help to give you a good foundation for building a healthier you for the new year. So make a plan to see a CBP chiropractor, drink more water, eat better for your body and move more!

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

 

 

 

 

How to manage stress during the holidays.

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The best way to manage your stress during the holidays is to make sure you’re meeting all of the fundamental needs of your body. First, you need to make sure that you get a CBP adjustment before you travel and when you get back. That way the adjustment will help to take away a lot of the stressors which come from sitting in airplanes, cars, and trains and just sitting in general.

The second step is to make sure that you are drinking ample amounts of water. A lot of people don’t drink enough water during the holidays. They tend to drink other things like alcohol, hot chocolate, and things that are dehydrating, so you want to make sure that your water levels are high.

Then you want to make sure that you’re managing your stress with some form of exercise. Whether it be yoga, running, or meditation, anything that is mental or physical exercise will be great for managing stress. Stretching when you get to your location and if you’re sitting a lot around the dinner table get up periodically. Move around, don’t get caught sitting on a couch for 5 hours.

You also want to make sure that you are eating as well as you can be. Even though the holidays tend to be very focused on sugar which is very bad for your body. You just want to be really careful about your sugar intake and making poor food choices and minimize those choices.

You can also take some extra vitamin C to support your body and some extra vitamin B complex is very good for anti-stress. B Complex is an anti-stress vitamin. B complex is really good for people who are under stress on a regular basis. Nowadays a lot of companies make something called adrenal support. This contains a lot of Bs, vitamin C and a lot of herbs that are helpful to support the adrenal glands because it is the adrenal glands that get overworked. Most Americans have overworked adrenal glands because of the stress levels we are under on a regular basis. Taking a supplement like that would be helpful to your body through times of stress.

Another thing you can do is to try to get quality sleep, whenever you can because that is when your body heals when you are sleeping. Lack of sleep can lower your body’s ability to handle stress.

There are other things that you can use to help with stress management, topical things. Lavender oil is very helpful for relaxing the body. Some people like melatonin to help with sleeping in a different place. There are a lot of teas out there that are helpful to relax the body, like chamomile.

Lastly, if you can detach from your electronics at least a half an hour before bed and do something that isn’t stimulating your brain as much like reading, praying, or meditating, doing something that would relax your body will make it easier to fall asleep.

So don’t stress out this holiday season and use this guide to help battle holiday stress. Make sure that you’re keeping up with your CBP adjustments and try to sneak an additional one in.

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

Is it flu season or sugar season.

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A lot of people are hearing on the radio and on television that this is flu season. The flu is around all year long, it isn’t just here during one season. The thing is that the other months of the year people make better health choices. That means that they are making wiser choices on what they eat and they tend to exercise more. They also get a lot more natural sunlight which gives them natural Vitamin D and they tend to drink more water because they are hot.

When the weather starts to get colder, people start to change their habits. They don’t exercise as much, their water consumption goes down, they aren’t seeing as much sunshine and they start to fall off of good habits like eating healthy. People start to eat more comfort foods which are laden with refined sugars, such as Pumpkin Spice lattes, hot chocolate, cakes, and cookies.

When you look at the holidays, the major holidays start in October, during Halloween. Every holiday after that encourages some sort of sugar eating. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter are all major sugar holidays. During these holidays there is a lot of encouragement to eat a lot of pies, cakes, and sugar.

The problem with sugar is that it destroys your immune system functions. It actually suppresses your immune system for 6 hours after eating it. When your immune system is suppressed, it is not working at optimum levels, your immune system is distracted from other things, other jobs it normally has like identifying the flu virus and getting rid of it before it becomes a problem for you physically.

This is what happens in the summer. When you are eating less sugar and are making better health choices your immune system has the opportunity to fight off the flu virus and remove it from your body.

The flu is around all year long, so why the press for the flu vaccine now, during this time of the year? It is because people are making bad health choices. The medical community knows that people are going to be over-consuming sugar in all forms and they are trying to stop an epidemic of the flu.

Should I get the flu shot?

It is a totally personal preference. If you are taking care of your body, making sure you’re eating right, taking vitamin D, drinking enough water and getting adjusted regularly, you should have no need for the flu shot. If you choose to not take care of your body, don’t get regular adjustments, and over-indulge then you might want to consider it.

The biggest take away is that you need to make your health a priority in order to stay healthy. During this holiday season if you know that you’re going to be eating sweets, pies, and cakes, moderate your intake a taste of each dessert will do. You don’t have to consume the whole pie!

Make sure that if you’re going to eat sweets you are drinking more water, getting more sleep and try to get some exercise in. Also, try to schedule an adjustment with your CBP doctor and get your spine right for the holidays.

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

Ergonomics of Raking

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Now that we’re in the full swing of fall it’s time we talked about how to rake those leaves properly. Granted leaves don’t weigh much but if you employ poor raking techniques you could easily throw your back out.

This is a time when a lot of people are trying to get their yards prepped for the winter and what winds up happening is they strain their bodies and they hurt themselves. In order to prevent this, one of the first things you should do is hydrate well.

Hydrate!

If you’re going to be out in the yard working you want to make sure that you are properly hydrated not only during the work but before you leave the house to do the lawn care. The next thing you want to make sure you do is to get your body warm.

Get the blood moving!

You want to make sure that you warm up. Take a walk up and down your driveway to make sure that you get the blood flowing. Do some arm and leg swings to get the blood circulating through your body.

How you position your body raking matters!

You never want to bend at the waist if possible. If your rake does not support that, look into getting a more ergonomic rake or get a rake that’s taller so you don’t have to bend over to rake. Also, make sure that you’re alternating sides when you rate. If you start on the right, do 10 strokes and then switch to your left and do 10 strokes.

Try to rake out in front of you an toward you with your hips pointing forward. Try not to twist to move the leaves behind you. Once you have completed all of your raking there are a couple things left to do.

Stretch!

You want to make sure you drink lots of water and stretch for at least 15 minutes when you’re done. Pop on the tv and stretch while you’re watching.

Get some protein.

Drink a shake or eat some eggs, find a way to get some protein in your body to help speed the repair of muscles that you just used. Eating protein after will help reduce soreness and inflammation.

Repair and replenish

Remember to drink plenty of water to help flush the toxins from your system. You can also take an Epsom salt bath to help soothe aching, tired muscles.

See your CBP Chiropractor

Another thing you can do to help with muscle soreness is to get a CBP Chiropractic adjustment. Doing all that manual labor can throw your body out of alignment and cause subluxations. Seeing your chiropractor will remove those subluxations and reduce the amount of pressure on your spine. So make an appointment with your Chiropractor after you do any strenuous activity.

(repost from September 2018)

What causes a muscle knot?

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What causes a muscle knot?

Muscle knots can come from a lot of different things. In terms of CBP, when you have poor spinal structure, subluxations, which are misalignments in your joints, can cause severe problems with your muscles. If your head is shifted all the way to your right then all the muscles on your right side will be shortened because the attachment sites are closer to one another. So everything on that side is going to get very short and tight. Then everything on the opposite side gets very stretched, elongated and weakened.

A poor spinal structure could be the root of the issue.

Depending on what structural problems you have, you could be overworking some muscles and underworking others. This is where a lot of muscle knots come from and it’s also where a lot of injuries come from. It is a muscular imbalance due to a bad spinal structure. It is also one of the most overlooked things by Physical Therapists, Osteopaths, Fitness Trainers, Massage Therapists, just about anyone in that world, they overlook the fact that spinal structure dictates muscular function. So that’s where muscle knots come from and that’s why you seem to get the same ones over and over again. Because your muscles are pulling unevenly due to what your structure is doing.

The issue could be a lack of stretching!

You can also get muscle knots if you don’t do proper mobilization after exercise. So say you go out to weed the garden, you’re pulling, tugging, bending, and twisting, your muscles are getting a workout but instead of stretching you go inside and flop on the couch. This will cause muscles knots. After any type of activity, you need to stretch. If you don’t all of the muscle byproducts, metabolic waste, that you just caused by using your muscles will settle into your muscles and cause muscle knots, instead of being flushed out of your system by drinking water and stretching.

Dehydration also plays a role.

The last thing that can cause muscle knots is dehydration. If you don’t have enough hydration in your muscles then the metabolic waste will stay in the muscles and that will give you even more aches and pains. It’s important to stay hydrated. You can become dehydrated even if you don’t think that you’ve done a lot of activity. Something like weeding a garden, even if you are not sweating, will dehydrate you.

How do I get rid of muscle knots? Where do I start?

In order to decrease and eliminate the frequency of muscle knots, it is important to stretch, hydrate, and above all else make sure your spine is in good alignment by getting regular check-ups with your CBP Chiropractor.

For more information ask Dr. B at [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 is the definition of health?

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CBP Definition of health.

The definition of health for everyone is different. If you ask the general populace to write down what their general definition of health is, a lot of people would write down, not having any pain, which is a very limited view of health. In Chiropractic Biophysics they promote 100% nervous system function as being healthy. If you have 100% nervous system function then your body should work at 100% as well.

Along with that, you have to make sure that you are exercising. You also need to make sure that you are hydrated with a good source of water. That you make sure to minimize and manage stress. Lastly, you need to make sure that you are eating properly for your body. That means finding out what fuels you better and on the reverse what drags you down.

Health is very different for everyone and it is up to each person to individualize and really think about what it means to be healthy for them. Then they have to figure out what steps they need to take to make that happen.

How do you achieve optimal health? 

Always start with your spine because that controls your whole body. Having a spinal check up done with a  CBP chiropractor, which is a complete exam and x-ray analysis.

Once any structural issues are addressed the next step would be to stay with whatever you can stay consistent with. If adding extra water to your body every day is what you can do then start there until it’s a habit. If exercise seems more doable, start there. You have to start with baby steps and commit to them. Don’t add anything until you have done them regularly for about a month’s time before you add something new and then you can be consistent with it. Otherwise, you’ll get overwhelmed if you try to change everything at once and then you won’t do anything.

Health is very different for everyone and it is up to each person to individualize and really think about what it means to be healthy for them. Then they have to figure out what steps they need to take to make that happen.

And as mentioned earlier the first step is to make an appointment at a Chiropractic BioPhysics office. Get your spine checked and start the path to optimal health.

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

How to stay healthy during the cold and flu season.

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Once the weather turns cold, our immune systems are onslaught with attacks from colds and the flu. It seems like everyone around you has one or the other. There are ways to protect yourself and stay healthy.

Supplements, Vitamins, and Herbs!

Our bodies are amazing organisms that have the ability to heal themselves. One of the ways we can help it along is by adding much-needed supplements to our daily regimen. Here is a list of supplements that can help boost your immune system and keep you out of the sick bed.

  • Elderberry – the Danes have been using this as a health elixir for centuries. Elderberry extract has been found to cut the length of the flu to three days and has also been known to kill several viruses. It is an all natural health remedy.                                                                                                   
  • Garlic – found in just about every kitchen in the known world. This tuber has anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties. Next time you’re feeling a little run down, add some fresh garlic to your sandwich or salad and get an immune boost.                                                               
  • Vitamin C – This classic home remedy is one we don’t get enough of it. However, it can be found in citrus fruits, strawberries, kiwi and brussels sprouts, to name a few. Making a quick salad out of these ingredients can not only stave off colds but also tastes amazing.                                     
  • Ginger – Not only is ginger a powerful antioxidant, but it is also a powerful anti-inflammatory. It also helps to relieve nausea and can help you get your appetite back. Eating ginger can also help to cleanse your lymphatic system. Sprinkle ginger in your tea, water or add it to your favorite meal for a little zing and let your body reap the benefits.                                                                                                 

Clean Eating

Clean eating can give your body a much needed immune boost by cleaning out your organs and helping them to function correctly. By eating cruciferous vegetables such as kale, broccoli and lettuces, you’re giving your body a boost and detoxifying your liver. Eating foods high in vitamins like D and C can give your immune system a kick start and stave off colds. Eating foods high in sugar while you’re sick can lengthen the stay of your cold, increase the inflammation and increase the build-up of mucus causing you to become more stuffy and less able to breathe. So do yourself a favor and eat clean.

Drink plenty of fluids

Not just fluids but water in particular. It is important to keep hydrated, especially in the winter. We tend to drink less water when it’s cold because we’re not sweating it out. So, be mindful to drink water, even when you don’t think you need it. We’re made up of mostly water. When we become dehydrated, we are allowing ourselves to become run down and that’s when your immune system can become compromised and we can get sick. Water also helps our bodies to flush out toxins and impurities, which helps keep our systems working at an optimal level.

Get plenty of rest

When we’re constantly on the go we forget to take care of ourselves, that includes not getting enough sleep. As with not getting enough water when you don’t get enough sleep you are also compromising yourself. You’re allowing your body to become run down and opening it up to attack. The best way to make sure you’re getting enough sleep is to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up the same time every day. This will create a natural sleep cycle that your body will be able to function optimally on.

Help yourself stay healthy.

These are things that we can do on regular basis and if you are already doing them, keep up the good work. For many, we need constant reminders of how to care for our bodies. Do you have any immune boosting remedies you can recommend? Let us know in the comments below.

If you have further questions about how to boost your immune system or creating a healthy lifestyle contact Dr. B at Active Family Chiropractic.

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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