It is a shame that modern medicine has largely ignored one of the best weapons against disease- nutrition. At True Health Family Chiropractic, we hope to guide patients to regain control of their health outside of our office by eating well and by eating clean, health promoting foods.
The first step is to actively remove all of the unhealthy food choices in your house so you have room to fit all of the good things you are going to buy. To successfully improve the quality of what you eat, remember we often eat what’s convenient, and if you buy it and keep it in the house, you’ll eat it – so don’t buy it in the first place. The following are some basic ground rules to follow when eating clean.
Eating Clean Checklist:
- Eat more organic and/or local fruits and vegetables, and remember the fresher the food, the more potent the nutrients
- Drink more pure filtered water (Divide your weight by 2, aim to drink that number in ounces)
- Eat hormone and antibiotic free meats and dairy (Choose products where animals live as close to their natural state as possible -free-range, cage-free, grass-fed, raw milk etc.)
- Eat foods that have not been genetically modified (Click here for a non-GMO shopping guide)
- Eat more alkaline foods (lots of vegetables)
- Lower your intake of inflammatory/mucus producing foods (dairy, sugar, wheat)
- Eat more raw foods that contain powerful enzymes and phytonutrients (try juicing)
- Eat more fresh whole foods and less processed man made foods
- Eat or supplement anti-inflammatory foods (Omega-3 fatty acids, fish oil, flax seed)
- Increase the amount of good bacteria in your GI tract by eating foods high in fiber and supplementing with probiotics
- Eliminate soft drinks, sugary drinks, and artificially sweetened drinks loaded with neurotoxins
- Eat a handful of raw nuts/seeds everyday
- Limit caffeine intake to one cup of coffee/day, instead aim to drink up to 3 cups of green tea
AND For a detailed grocery list of nutrient dense, fresh, whole (or in some cases minimally processed) foods which promote optimal health, click here.
If you are having trouble sleeping at night, you are not alone. More than one-quarter of the U.S. population report they occasionally do not get enough sleep, while nearly 10% admit to experiencing chronic insomnia.
Getting a good night of sleep is one of the cornerstones of health, your body needs this time to repair and heal. Six to eight hours per night seems to be the optimal amount of sleep for most adults, and too much or too little can have adverse effects on your health. Research shows that inadequate sleep can have disastrous effects on your weight loss efforts, impair your concentration, and weaken your immune system.
There is good news though, because starting tonight, you can improve the quality and quantity of your sleep. Here are 5 ways to get back on track:
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We all know it is important for babies to get good nutrition so that they can be healthy and strong. However, some mothers find it really difficult to breastfeed for various reasons. It is so important that mothers understand that there are ways to improve the breastfeeding experience, and that chiropractic can offer a helping hand with many of these issues.
“It’s painful to breastfeed”
One of the reasons why it may be painful to breastfeed is that baby has a problem with TMJ function and/or the muscles around the jaw, including the tongue, which is causing baby to suck in a strange way that may cause pain for mom. An injury to the jaw can take place during the birthing process, especially with breech presentation, or a shoulder dystocia. Sometimes even a normal, incident-free birth can cause problems with the way the jaw moves and can create a lot of tension in the muscles in the area.
La Leche League identifies chiropractic as an effective option for babies damaged by vacuum or forceps, and for those whose muscles and bones are not working well together causing the baby to be in pain, or become a poor feeder. A poorly feeding baby does not drain the breast sufficiently, therefore the mom suffers the secondary impact of reduced milk production.
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Welcome to True Health Family Chiropractic’s Weekly Health Roundup, where we’ll take a look at what’s making news in the world of health.
Research of the Week
Sugar is toxic. According to a new study, obesity doesn’t cause diabetes: sugar does. The study demonstrates this with the same level of confidence that linked cigarettes and lung cancer in the 1960s.
Interesting Articles
With spring coming soon (hopefully!), the NY Times explores the benefits of exercising outdoors. In virtually all of the studies, participants reported enjoying the outside activity more and, on subsequent psychological tests, scored significantly higher on measures of vitality, enthusiasm, pleasure and self-esteem and lower on tension, depression and fatigue after they walked outside. Bottom line – get outside when you can – there are benefits to exercising outdoors that can’t be replicated on a treadmill, a recumbent bicycle or a track.
Food for Thought
This chart (The Shelf Life of Food) does a great job at listing some common foods and how long they’ll stay fresh and safe to eat based on different storage methods (along with a few that you might be tempted to freeze but really shouldn’t).
Blog Posts Worth Reading
What most people don’t know about chiropractic care… This article explores the connection between your spine and your digestion. Nerves from many regions of the spine have a definite digestion connection. The consequences of disturbing these spinal nerves are not necessarily limited to spinal pain, but can potentially involve any function affected by these nerves, including digestion.
It’s the end of February and most of us are spending more time indoors and getting less daily sun exposure. When we don’t get enough sun, or supplement right, it’s very easy to become deficient in this essential nutrient. When that happens, our health suffers. This is why it is one of The Core Four supplements that I recommend.
There’s a lot of research out there talking about the importance of vitamin D, and it can be very confusing. The following will help you to make sense of it all, so let’s start at the beginning.
What is vitamin D?
Vitamin D is a fat-soluble nutrient that is closer to a hormone, like cortisol or testosterone. This is important to note because it means vitamin D has a deeper functionality than a simple vitamin compound. Vitamin D is used by our bodies to absorb calcium and, along with exercise, to make strong bones. Vitamin D also has cell-normalizing (anti-proliferation) properties, and because cancer is cell proliferation gone mad, it protects against many cancers. It also plays a vital role in our immune system and its ability to fight off pathogens. There are tons of studies showing the importance of vitamin D.
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