Month: August 2017

You don’t normally think to go to the chiropractor to get dietary advice. In fact, to most people’s ears, chiropractic and dietary advice sound pretty far apart, and sound like they don’t have anything in common.

The reality, though, is that proper nutrition plays a major role in the healing process. In fact, according to a recent survey, 80 percent of the chiropractors who responded indicated that they did indeed provide some form of nutritional counseling as part of their service, with half of the respondents indicating that they considered proper diet to be a crucial part of their overall treatment plan.

While it’s true that everyone’s dietary needs are different, there are a few general guidelines that are healthy and highly recommended, no matter who you are. Here are a few key points to remember:

• Your gut health impacts your overall level of health. Did you know that your own cells are a minority in your body? You’re outnumbered by bacteria by a factor of at least 10:1. Most of those bacteria are beneficial and do an amazing number of things including helping to regulate your sleep cycle, helping to digest your food and bolstering your immune system, which facilitates healing.

Given this reality, probiotics are a vital part of any healthy diet. Some foods are especially powerful probiotics, including fermented foods (sauerkraut and kimchi), and yogurt. If you like either of these, eat them in whatever quantity you like, guilt free. They help to foster the “good” bacteria in your body, and crowd out the bad ones.

• The Mediterranean Diet is a great thing to consider. People in this part of the world are healthier and live longer than just about everyone else on the planet, and their diet plays a major role in this. It’s heavy on fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and light on meat. That makes it significantly different than the standard American diet, which places meat at center stage with the rest playing a supporting role.

• Stay away from High Fructose Corn Syrup. This stuff is used by big companies as a sugar substitute because it’s cheaper. It’s also incredibly toxic and just awful for you, providing nothing in the way of nutritional value. Avoiding HFCS means reading some food labels, but it’s well worth the effort to do so, your body will thank you for it!

The bottom line is that proper diet helps you heal from any injury more quickly by giving your body the raw materials to facilitate that healing.

If you have a job that sees you on your feet for several hours a day, then you know how hard it can be on not just your feet, but your back and neck as well! By day’s end, especially if you’ve recently switched from a desk job to one that sees you standing or moving around more, your feet are positively killing you!

Sure, over time, you’ll adjust and get used to it. But even so, after an especially long, trying day, that pain can return. The following tips can help keep it at bay.

1) Posture matters! Be mindful of how you’re standing and maintain a good, erect posture with your shoulders and back, and keep your chest out at all times. As the day grinds on, it’s all too common to begin to slump or slouch, and over time, this can and will cause pain and discomfort.

2) Wear the right shoes. This is another one that most people don’t think about, but everyone’s feet are shaped differently. If you don’t have well-defined arches (flat feet), then you’re going to experience pain by the end of a long day standing unless you’re wearing shoes with great arch supports.

On the other hand, if you tend to have rigid arches, then buying a shoe with good arch supports will do more harm than good. If this describes your feet, then what you really need are shoes with extra cushioning and padding. If you have any questions, talk to your chiropractor and he or she can steer you in the right direction.

3) Don’t stay in one place! Even if you’re working, say, a cash register that requires you to be in the same location, you can still shift the position of your feet on a regular basis, and you should. Take any opportunity to walk, bend and stretch to keep your muscles from stiffening up on you.

Over time, you’ll build the strength and stamina your new standing job requires, but for now, adopting the simple tricks described above will help minimize your discomfort.

Are you enjoying some fun in the sun? We certainly hope so, but be careful. The summertime heat can really sneak up on you, and if you’re not careful, it can cause you no end of trouble. Here are the major things to watch out for:

 

Oedema

Ever notice that sometimes, after you’ve been in the sun for a while, it feels like your hands and feet are starting to swell? You’re not imagining things; that’s exactly what’s happening!

It tends to be more commonplace in women than in men, but make no mistake – nobody’s immune. It’s caused when the blood supply to your skin increases, which radiates heat. This, in turn, causes fluid to move out of your blood vessels and into your soft tissue.

It can range from a minor annoyance to being moderately painful, and it generally goes away on its own once you’ve properly acclimatized to the heat and humidity. If it doesn’t, head into the shade, or even better, indoors to enjoy some air conditioning for a while.

“Prickly Heat”

This mostly happens in areas with both high heat and high humidity. Children experience it more than adults, but again, nobody’s immune. It happens when your sweat glands become clogged, leading to a decidedly unpleasant prickling sensation in the affected area.

When it happens, it’s time to take a cool, refreshing shower to unclog those pores. To avoid it, wear calamine lotion and wear light, loose-fitting clothing.

Heat Exhaustion

This is mostly a matter of overexerting yourself in the hot sun, and it can be avoided with good planning. You’ll know you’re getting close to the threshold when you start feeling fatigue or dizziness, and it’s a sign that you need to take a break and rehydrate. Water’s good, but Gatorade (or similar) is even better, because it replaces the electrolytes you lose when you sweat.

Go out and enjoy some fun in the sun, but take care not to overdo it. Keep a good supply of water at hand and watch for the most common symptoms of heat-related issues.

Are you suffering from chronic pain in a localized area of your body? If so, you could be suffering from an RSI, which stands for Repetitive Strain Injury. This broad term describes injuries caused by long term use of the same muscle groups, so if you have a job that sees you performing the same motion over and over again, that’s exactly the kind of thing that can lead to the development of an RSI.

Common symptoms of this type of injury include:

• Shooting pain, and persistent aching or burning which makes it difficult to perform normal, day-to-day activities
• Fatigue and general lack of strength
• Numbness, limited motor control and tremors
• Chronically cold hands or fingertips

If you perform repetitive motions without sufficient breaks or time to recover, then odds are excellent that you’ll eventually develop an RSI. When it happens, it’ll start with simple muscle and tendon pain, which is annoying, but usually not unbearable.

If you don’t change what you’re doing or start taking more time to recover between the repetitive movements, then this will ultimately progress to joint, and possibly nerve damage. This is more serious, more painful and takes longer to recover from.

Fortunately, RSIs are completely treatable and in most cases, avoidable. It comes down to listening to your body, stopping when things begin to get uncomfortable, and when and where possible, wearing protective gear to help keep you safe.

If you have an RSI, or if you’re not sure but think you may, your best bet is to set up an appointment with your local chiropractor.

He or she can do a complete evaluation, then devise a treatment plan that’s custom tailored to your needs. With proper care and attention, you’ll be pain free in no time, and you can get back to enjoying life to the fullest!