The following is a timely press release by the International Chiropractors Association. Although intended for a national audience, it applies equally to Peoria families.
With the holiday season underway and increasing the tempo of daily demands, it is important to your good health to observe some simple guidelines to reduce the stress and strain of this busy time. This is especially important in light of the added concerns many of us our feeling individually and collectively with the shifts in the world economy and global health concerns. It may be especially important to slow down, recognize the need to approach activities and interruptions with a little more patience, and to plan ahead with the intention to reduce the stress of last minute efforts. Make a point during this holiday season to connect and communicate with those around you, and to share special moments with your friends and loved ones. As many traditional holiday observances include special gatherings for meals, you can start by taking extra care of yourself, your friends and your family at the dinner table. Taking care in your food choices will help keep the quality of your nutritional intake at healthy levels. The quantity of your intake also makes a big difference. Have you ever filled yourself with great holiday food but found yourself leaving the table in distress? The process of making healthy choices in both quality and quantity may help prevent an unhealthy scenario as you make your way through this holiday season. “A bulging stomach can put pressure on your body’s support systems, including your spine and spinal nerves,” cautions Dr. Gary L. Walsemann, ICA president. “Every extra pound in the abdominal region could generate 10 pounds more stress on the lower back. This stress can last a short time, such as just after eating a heavy meal or lifting a package improperly. It may also become chronic, as heavy eating during the holidays may lead to weight gain, and carrying extra pounds can put added strain on the supporting structures of the spine and nervous system.” Additional weight can force the pelvis and torso to shift and cause changes in spinal balance, leading to spinal misalignments (vertebral subluxations) and malfunctions in the entire body, explains Dr. Walsemann. ICA suggests eating in moderation and taking at least a 15-20 minute walk after a big meal to ease discomfort and burn a few calories. Fitness research findings indicate you can burn up to 100 calories in a 30-minute walk. ICA has prepared a series of health tips to help protect your spinal health and support your general health over the holidays: - Lift carefully and consciously. When lifting, whether it involves packages, firewood, your frozen holiday turkey or other items, remember the prompt “lift with your legs, not your back”. Rather than flexing forward and pulling back and up as you lift, maintain a slight arch in your lower back and bend at the knees before straightening up your legs to stand up, with the object held close to your body. That way, the lifting is done primarily with the strong muscles of the legs supporting the load close to the body’s center of gravity. - When standing for extended periods, whether waiting in line or cooking, elevate one foot and set on raised surface--a curb, cabinet shelf, foot rest or stacked books, depending on where you are standing. Alternately elevating each foot relieves tired back and leg muscles and shifts postural patterns, which helps prevent positional strain and faulty posture habits that can lead to abnormal spinal stress. - When seated and when traveling by car or plane, place a pillow or folded towel behind the small of the back to help maintain the arch in your lower back and support the rest of the body properly. Slouching places unnecessary pressure on the discs and joint structures of the spine, adding to micro-trauma and fatigue whether slumping on a couch or hunched in a moving vehicle. - In addition to fastening your seat belt for car trips, adjust your headrest to align with your head, at least up to ear level. This is important to support and protect the head and neck in the unfortunate event of a sudden stop. - Get sufficient rest! Many health problems that occur with the holidays are triggered or intensified by fatigue. By simply taking small breaks and getting adequate rest, you can help prevent structural strain, emotional imbalance, and cognitive fatigue, and a range of general health problems. - Don’t wait until you are hurting to see your doctor of chiropractic. Chiropractic adjustments can keep you going at your peak and help you get extra enjoyment from the holiday season.
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I was amused when recently reading an article from the BBC, in which the author reported (in a horrified tone) about the health risks of Vitamin E. Did you know that taking a Vitamin E supplement means that your chances of getting a hemorrhagic stroke in the brain... just increased? By 22%? Twenty-Two Percent! That's quite a bit. That's a quarter of One Hundred Percent. That's got to be Statistically Significant. Well, I guess that means that none of us will be taking Vitamin E pills any time soon. Or should it? What if we dig a little deeper into the story? Well, it turns out that of all the people they were following in this vitally important study, one extra person out of 1,250 persons ended up with a brain stroke. One out of 1,250? Boy, that suddenly doesn't sound significant anymore, does it? That tiny fraction is certainly going to be less than the 22% scare figure that led the story. A quick mathematical calculation (in my head, of course) comes out as 0.08%. Couldn't that be attributed to mere chance? Hmmm.... This sounds like a classic case of making a news story out of a pig's ear. (Perhaps I mixed a metaphor there) Here's a simple example of how easily statistics can be manipulated. Pretend that the city of Peoria is made up of 9999 persons. Two of you happen to have blonde hair, and the other 9997 Peoria dwellers (Peorians?) have brown hair. Then, you have a child who turns out blonde, just like you! There are now three people who have blonde hair out of the whole city of 10,000. Still not very many blondes, right? Only one more out of ten thousand, which any rational person would find impossible to pick out of a downtown crowd. However, statistically speaking, the number of blondes in Peoria just increased from 2 to 3, or an increase of 50%! Your chance of being born blonde in Peoria just increased by 50%! Call in the Journal Star, we're gonna have a press conference! So what does it mean if one's risk of stroke increases by a large number when the actual number of strokes increase by so few? Using the example above, it means that the number was already tiny to begin with, and hasn't increased by much. The researchers, however, who spent valuable time and resources on this rather useless project, have to justify their use of valuable time and resources, and... VOILA! A news story that looks scary but isn't. It's highly unfortunate for the poor fellow who suffered the stroke, naturally, but statistically meaningless. So many of these "increase your risk" news stories are based on faulty statistics like this. Don't be suckered. Look carefully through a story first, and make sure that the number of actual events are enough to worry you. You've probably heard about the Kansas State nutrition professor who decided to test a theory. He ate Twinkies. And other junk. And lost weight.
This is being hailed as something of a diet revolution. If a guy can lose weight while eating couch potato fare (and simultaneously improve his cholesterol count!), why even bother to do all that pesky exercise? And why bother eating broccoli and brussels sprouts? What is going underreported is the premise of the project. Mr. Professor wanted to prove that a low calorie count will result in weight loss. He ate Twinkies, yes, but only 1800 calories per day. Essentially, the project was to prove that calories in = weight gain/loss. If you want to fight obesity, he says, start with portion sizes. The project did NOT set out to prove that Twinkies were a healthy option to leafy vegetables. And what is going dangerously unreported is the long-term impact of such a diet. I think this diet has a potentially nightmarish effect. The body needs essential nutrients like iron, Vitamin A, Vitamin D, calcium, etc., etc., etc. In his short-term elation over his weight loss, Mr. Professor surprisingly neglects to consider the nutritional deficits in the foods he's consuming. When the first proponent of this diet falls ill from scurvy, perhaps we'll see that this wasn't such a good idea after all. In healthcare's back rooms of the last decade, the phrase "evidence-based care" has been bandied about so frequently that it has almost lost its meaning. However, you may never have even heard the phrase. What is evidence-based care? In its simplest sense, it means that a doctor ought to consider first those treatments which have been verified in a research environment. Very often, however, this interpretation of "evidence-based care" can end up being biased. Many research studies and articles are funded by (and therefore driven towards positive results by) interested parties. Negative studies are often discarded or suppressed. Results from a laboratory are often different than results found in the real world, since each paper must be quantifiable with results proven as statistical figures. Of course, as any pollster will tell you, numbers can be slanted to justify any desired interpretation. Those shortcomings being acknowledged, there are profound benefits to research. The most obvious is the verification of a treatment's effectiveness, which can affirm the clinician's on-the-spot decision-making process. As an Activator clinician, I need to know that what I do really does help my patients, even beyond the obvious benefits that they report and that I record. I need to have a resource available which will guide me towards treatments or referrals. I need to stand on the shoulders of giants in order to help one child. The co-founder of the Activator Method, Dr. Arlan Fuhr, recognized many decades ago that this chiropractic technique needed to be confirmed by extensive research. He dedicated many resources and recruited many researchers to probe the results and benefits of Activator treatments. Naturally, because he funded many of these studies, the charges of bias can be laid towards the hundreds of papers and studies, but the sheer bulk of the data has given many chiropractors the evidence and confidence that even many medical fields still lack.
Chiropractic was once considered quackery. Partly thanks to Dr. Fuhr's foresight, chiropractic is now rightly seen as the scientific method that it is. Even back in 2004, the Center for Disease Control was reporting that about half of all Americans take one prescription drug. Many of these drugs are recommended to be taken with a meal, so that 1) the powerful synthetic chemicals contained in the pills will irritate the stomach lining less and 2) some drugs may be more easily absorbed by "hitching a ride" on the food particles. However, it appears that you may want to be careful WHICH foods you consume.
I recently discovered a very interesting document from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration that I thought worthy of a comment. The booklet (almost a novella), is entitled "Avoid Food-Drug Interactions: A Guide from the National Consumers League and U.S. Food and Drug Administration". Obviously, we all know that a margarita is a poor choice to wash down that ibuprofen, but did you know that drinking a Coke with your asthma medication could severely increase your heart beat? Or that eating bananas if you're on heart medications could cause an irregular heartbeat? If you currently take a prescription drug, it will certainly be worth your while to investigate the booklet to see if there are potential problems with your diet and/or drug intake. As a licensed chiropractic physician in Peoria, Illinois, Dr. Johnson does not have the legal right (nor the desire) to prescribe prescription drugs. Nor should an Illinois chiropractor dispense advice about which drugs to take, how often, etc. Such prescriptions are outside the chiropractic physician's scope of practice, and all pharmaceutical questions should naturally be directed to a medical physician or a pharmacist. This blog post is intended for informational purposes only. |
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DisclaimerUnless otherwise attributed, all content is written by Kyle Johnson, DC, of Johnson Family Chiropractic of Peoria.
All images used are under Creative Commons license. Although every effort has been made to provide an accurate description of our chiropractic care and its benefits, the information given on this website and blog is not intended to be, nor should it be interpreted as, medical advice for any condition. If you have any questions regarding your condition, you should seek the help of Dr. Johnson in person, so that he may properly assess your condition. This blog is provided by Johnson Family Chiropractic of Peoria, S.C., proudly located in Peoria, IL. |