central nervous system

What The Keto Diet And Chiropractic Have In Common

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Keto Diet and Chiropractic

What is the Keto Diet?

The ketogenic diet aka the Keto Diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet for which research is showing to have many health benefits.  Over 20 studies demonstrate that this diet can help drop fat and improve your health.  Furthermore, Ketogenic diets may do more than help you shed a few pounds by offering other health benefits preventing diabetes, cancer, epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17332207
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2633336
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11581442
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1819381
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367001

Keto and Chiropractic?

It may be difficult to see the connection between the Keto Diet and chiropractic however, as your chiropractor will tell you, a well-adjusted spine allows your brain’s signals to easily and effortlessly get to all parts of your body through your central nervous system.

I learned this when I was 26 and first started to see a chiropractor. Since then, I’ve been going to a chiropractor regularly for almost 24 years now.  Remember, if the brain isn’t functioning properly, one of the things it cannot do is send the proper signals down that central nervous system to your organs and your other body parts.  This is where ketones can help in addition to your chiropractic adjustments.

how to improve brain health

“When Your Brain Works Right, You Work Right”

 Dr. Daniel Amen, #1 New York Times bestselling author, double board-certified psychiatrist, professor and brain health expert.

What Is Fueling Your Brain?

Despite the fact that your brain is only 2% of the weight of your body, it uses up 20% to 30% of the total energy your body uses every day. So, how are most people giving their brain the energy it needs to keep it running efficiently? Well, most people’s diets consist primarily of carbohydrates and some proteins.

Unfortunately, not enough of those carbohydrates are coming from fibrous good carbohydrate vegetables and people are not eating enough healthy fats. Infact, many calories that are used to fuel the body are coming from processed foods and refined carbohydrates (sugar). This wreaks havoc on your body’s ability to manage your energy needs and thus the energy needs of your brain.Eventually your body resists the onslaught of all these refined sugars. But how does this affect your brain?

We have all heard of type 2 diabetes and how it wreaks havoc on our bodies. However Type 2 diabetes is not only a disease of the obese. Click here to read, Why Children Living With Type 2 Diabetes Is Drastically Increasing .

“Normal-weight people are getting diabetes at the same rate as the obese …”

– Dr. Robert Lustig

Mayo Clinic Minute: Is Alzheimer's Type 3 diabetes?

Have You Heard Of Type 3 Diabetes?

Now being referred to by doctors and researchers as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other brain diseases, type 2 diabetes is your body’s inability to get enough energy from carbohydrates due to insulin resistance (carbohydrates cannot be used for energy unless they are escorted into each cell by insulin).

Insulin resistance also affects your brain’s ability to get energy from carbohydrates. So, if your brain is not getting enough energy to function properly you can suffer from brain fog, forgetfulness and tiredness, to name a few of the more obvious symptoms. Also, if your brain is not functioning properly, it won’t send proper signals down your nervous system to your organs and other body parts which can affect you mentally and physically.

ketogenic diet

Ketones And The Keto Diet

You may have heard a lot lately about ketones and the keto diet. How ketones fuel your brain better than carbohydrates. But what exactly is this magical ketone? Well it’s what your body creates when it burns your fat and what your body uses for energy when it’s not using carbohydrates.

What ketones have been shown to do is to fuel your body better than glucose (carbohydrates/sugar) and to create much less waste in the process (making them more efficient). Put simply, your body just runs better on ketones. Ketones have a neuroprotective effect and they reduced inflammation. Neurons are found in your brain, spinal cord and in your nerves. Chiropractic is all about your nervous system.

antioxidants

Antioxidants And Their Effect On Your Brain

We have all heard of the many benefits of antioxidants. How important they are to reduce the damage done by our food choices and the environment on our bodies. But what about our brains?

“Ketones preserve brain metabolism in the face of an oxidative challenge”

– Dr. Domenic D’Agostino

Most people’s bodies never run on ketones because the food industry provides us with an abundance of low-quality processed sugars (simple carbohydrates) either directly or hidden in processed foods and we don’t have enough of the right fats in our diets.

The keto diet is fast becoming mainstream news. However there are few who can maintain the lifestyle longer term. This is because many find it difficult to eat so few carbohydrates (we are not referring to vegetables) with today’s carbohydrate-rich grocery stores and fast-food outlets.

But with the help of a grant from the U.S. Military Navy Seals, smart researchers at the University of South Florida found a way to make a ketone supplement that is identical to what the body makes when it’s burning fat.

For the average person, this is a much easier way to get ketones into their bodies rather than to try to reduce their carbohydrates low enough to allow their bodies to switch to burning their own fat. Why is this important? Because if your brain can run on ketones, you get heightened brain function and your brain just runs better.  Even your brain volume increases.

“Brain mapping shows that the volume of the brain increases with a ketogenic diet.  When you eat the right fat, your brain gets bigger.”

– How Ketogenic Diets Improve Memory and Brain Health, Dr. Venter, MD

healthy nervous system

Final Thoughts

A more efficient brain can send better signals through your central nervous system, which makes your whole body run better. Ultimately that’s the goal of chiropractic and hopefully of everybody in the medical field.

I resisted the urge to put a lot of the relevant science on ketones in this article. So, if you have any questions or would like more information about ketones or healthy eating, feel free to send me an email or follow me on Facebook.

What The Neck? Are You Short-Circuiting?

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Have you ever thought about how how much you strain your neck throughout the day?

You look down to:

  • Text
  • Reply to your email
  • Check Facebook
  • Send a tweet
  • Type on your keyboard
  • Read
  • Speak with your children

…And the list goes on and on!  This can potentially add up to several hours each day that your neck is tilted forward and/or down.

Why Does This Matter?

Your neck is the connection between your brain and the rest of your body.  The messages your brain needs to send must travel through your nervous system which is encased by the bones of your spine.  Therefore, if the spinal bones in your neck are continually forced into a forward (or looking down) position, it puts a great deal of pressure on your nervous system.

This interference causes “electrical problems”.  Whereby, the information that needs to flow freely in the nervous system can no longer do so.  It can cause a “short-circuiting” effect in your body.  This is where certain areas of your body develop illnesses or issues because they are lacking all of the information they need to function at 100%.

Additionally, these misalignments can lead to Forward Head Posture.  This is a serious condition that must be addressed by a chiropractor.  The doctor must work on bringing the carriage of the head back into alignment with your neck and shoulders.

alignment

What Is The Proper Alignment For Your Neck?

If we look at you from the side, your ears should be centered on your shoulders.  This gives your cervical spine (your neck) the correct curve to allow your nervous system to function properly.  Free of any misalignments.

However, if your ears are lining up closer to (or surpassing) the front of your shoulders, your neck is no longer in proper alignment.  This means you are experiencing a significant loss of curve in your neck.  Therefore aren’t able to allow the messages to travel properly within your nervous system.

This is a very serious problem, because even a loss of curve by 1 degree puts significant pressure on your nervous system, never mind the potential for a couple of inches.

Misalignment can actually develop into a loss of curve, or even a reversed cervical curve and can put immense strain on your health.

This Condition Can Lead To Experiencing:
  • Migraines
  • Breathing problems
  • Heart disease
  • Various nose, throat and ear problems
  • Learning difficulties
  • Emotional problems

This is such a critical area of your spine that must be free of misalignments to allow your body to express real health.

Have you noticed this problem in your spouse or your children?  It is especially worrisome for children to have reversed cervical spines, as it can compound into many problems throughout their lives.  And as we all know, when problems are left unaddressed, they tend to get worse, not better.

As we are spending more and more time on our devices and computers, the unnatural strain we are putting on our necks becomes even more prominent.

Click here to read, ” Is Today’s Technology Destroying Your Health?”

What Is The Solution?

Find a chiropractor in your area that can help you to express optimal health.  Follow the care plan laid out for returning the proper curve to your spine.  Especially in children as the rate of complete correction can be quite high, as they are growing and developing quickly.

Nervous System – What Conventional Medicine Doesn’t Want You To Know

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nervous system

Your body is a self-healing and regulating organism.  It doesn’t require help from any chemical drugs.  In fact, you were not born with a deficiency of drugs that need to be supplemented for or too many organs that need to be surgically removed.  The master system controlling all your body’s function and healing is your nervous system.  It controls all your muscles, cells, glands, organs, and tissues.  Removing interference to your nervous system and addressing the underlying cause of your problem is the only way to truly heal.

Your Body’s Ability To Heal

Health comes from within us.  We are told by allopathic or conventional medicine that we can’t heal on our own.  That we need pills, potions, and lotions to heal.  Can you remember back to a time you fell on your knees as a child?  You looked down to see your skin was scraped open, smudged with dirt, with a drip of blood starting to form.  What would you do next?  You would remove any dirt or stones that may have embedded themselves into the skin or cut.  Rinse the area clean with water, and then cover it up with a band-aid.  However, the band-aid didn’t heal the cut.  It simply removed the chances of more interference to your body’s ability to heal.  Preventing your pant to rub against it or allowing additional foreign objects to land on your open wound.

You didn’t have to go to the best doctor in the city to heal. All you needed to do was remove any interference from your body’s natural ability to heal, and it would do exactly that with time. Heal.

Action Steps For Natural Healing

You see, your body has the exact same healing ability as it did when you fell and scraped your knee.  It has the same ability as it did the day you were born but years of physical traumas, emotional stresses, as well as chemical and toxic bombardment has caused interference to your body’s innate ability to heal.  The Family Health Advocacy community is going to continue to remind you of your body’s incredible ability to heal and how to allow it to do exactly that.

What we provide is information on practical action steps to remove the layers of interference in your life so you can bring your body back to its natural state of healing.  For some of you, your trauma’s, stresses and exposures are layers and years deep.  For others, not so much.  Everyone heals on their own timeline, some faster than others.  Click here for a 6-Step Guide To Radical Self-Healing.

Let The Journey Begin

One thing is for certain.  If you do exactly what we recommend in this community, in any of our courses or books to be released this year, you are going to see results!  You will find that one day you are doing the things you thought you would never be able to do again. You will catch yourself smiling and enjoying moments with family and friends that you would not normally be able to enjoy because you were struggling through the pain, just trying to “show up.”  We know this for certain because you are not different from the thousands of other patients we have helped along the way.

If you are willing to put in the work, you will get results.  Don’t be intimidated by the word “work.”  We refer to it as work because this healing journey is going to take time and energy.  However the benefits will repay you one hundredfold in more energy and time for the rest of your life.  Click here for more information on true health and why most of us get it wrong.

The Family Health Advocacy Movement

The Family Health Advocacy community is ALL about healing.  I think it’s fair to say that everyone’s ultimate value in life is health.  Often most people don’t recognize this until they have lost it.  We often explain this to our patients by using the analogy of car keys.  Think about your car keys.  The only time you really acknowledge just how important they are is when you lose them.  Most people have been treating their health the same way.  Until now!

Thanks for joining the Family Health Advocacy movement.

10 Desk Exercises You Should Be Doing Every Day

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9 Desk Exercises You Should Be Doing Every Day

A sedentary lifestyle has recently been coined the new smoking.

Can you imagine! The negative effects of sitting for a living are now rivalling the known health dangers of regularly inhaling deadly poisons! Wow. Let’s do something about it!

Yes, many of us have jobs that require us to sit long hours at a computer, driving, sitting in meetings, sitting at our desk, or sitting on the subway or train.

Let’s take a few minutes every hour or two, to move, stretch, and get our blood flowing. It will not only help your body feel better, but your mind will also reap the benefits of added oxygen flow and feel the joy of movement and stretching!

It is important to be mindful of your posture while at your desk or sitting in various positions. Try to sit up as straight as possible, and don’t lean in toward your computer.

If you are straining to see your monitor, make the font larger or reposition it, as the very last thing to want to be doing is tilting your neck forward to see your screen.

Over time, this can cause your neck to begin to curve forward and create a ‘forward head posture’. This is incredibly problematic for your body because your brain must be able to send all of the information your body needs to be able to function through your central nervous system. If your bones in your neck have shifted forward out of alignment from straining to see your screen, it puts an immense amount of pressure on your nervous system (which is encased by your spinal bones) and makes it very difficult for the information to get to all of the places it must reach to have your body function and heal at 100%.

Focus on stretching your neck and back muscles, arms, shoulders and legs when you take a few moments regularly to move that body! Get your coworkers involved, as they are in the same position as you – hunched over your screen for hours on end!

Businesswoman stretching herself or exercise while working at office - office syndrome concept
Stretch your arms and shoulders.
Portrait of a young smiling woman at the desk with books on her head, sitting straight, looking at the camera. Education concept photo
Can you do this? Can you balance a book on your head and continue working? This will help to train you to sit up straight and correct your posture.
Young attractive woman at modern office desk, with laptop, stretching, getting a little exercise during the day, office workout, completing difficult task, time for lunch. Business concept illustration
Stretch! Move your arms, reach for the ceiling and feel your blood circulating.
Young attractive woman at modern office desk, with laptop, stretching, getting a little exercise during the day, completing difficult task time for lunch. Businesswoman against white isolated background. Business concept illustration.
Arch your back and stretch your arms up, reach your neck back and up and hold for 10 seconds.
Young Happy Businesswoman Doing Fitness Exercise On Yellow Pilates Ball In Office
Stretch your arms and use your chair to rest on, extend your legs and feel a stretch.
male office worker,exercising during short break in work at his desk in office
Stretch your arms out and forward, and let your arms reach back to stretch your shoulders and expand your chest with your breath.
The image of business woman doing exercise at the office
Move your body side to side and let your spine move freely and stretch.
Portrait of smiling executive exercising in office
Stretch your legs and hamstrings with the support of your desk and feel the blood reach down to your toes.
Young Businesswoman Sitting On Chair Meditating In Office
Take a moment to centre your thoughts with a mini meditation over lunch. Focus on your breath and bring your thoughts back to your breath when they flit about to other ideas.
Portrait of young smiling woman wearing suit sitting at home office desk in front of laptop stretching with enjoyment after the work is done looking at screen with happy expression
Stretch your arms and wrists regularly throughout the day and remember to smile often! 

 

‘Biggest Loser’ Host Bob Harper Suffers Heart Attack

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Bob Harper has a heart attack

How is it possible for someone who is so fit, so in shape, and eats properly, to suffer a major heart attack?

That is what Bob Harper, celebrity trainer, has just experienced. He is known for his role on The Biggest Loser, as a trainer from 2004 to 2015 and is now the host.

Obviously, not knowing any of Bob’s medical history, it’s hard to say for sure. But a very significant factor for any health issues (for anyone) is how healthy the central nervous system is.

The central nervous system is an information super-highway that flows from your brain to the rest of your body as it is protected by the bones of the spine.

If any of these bones shift out of alignment, it puts pressure on your central nervous system, and your body cannot function and heal at 100%.

Bones shifted out of alignment are called subluxations.

Subluxations cause interference.

Interference causes health issues.

Your body can live for weeks without food, days without water, but not one second without your central nervous system. This is why your skin heals if you get cut, your bones repair themselves if there is a break, and why you recover from a cold or flu bug.

Your central nervous system controls every single function of your body, 100% of the time.

If there are interferences in your central nervous system, i.e. a spinal bone is out of alignment, putting pressure on the messages that are travelling through, it is impossible to be expressing 100% health.

If there are inferences on the nerves that run from your brain, through your central nervous system and out to your heart, your heart is not functioning at 100%.

So, over time, is your body getting sicker or healthier? Yes, it’s getting sicker.

And over time, are you building health or are you building disease? Yes, you’re building disease.

The problem is that often, the very first symptom of heart disease is a heart attack. The thing is, you can eat low saturated fats, exercise daily, meditate and control your stress and be the healthiest possible version of yourself as you can, but if you have subluxations in your central nervous system causing interference, you are simply unable to function and heal at 100%.

The same is true throughout your spine and for every single organ and function that your body does to keep you alive.

For example…
Again, if there are subluxations interfering with the messages that are reaching your digestive organs, it is impossible for them to function properly. This makes way for the development of irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, constipation, even Crohn’s and colitis.

These conditions may take the same length of time to develop as heart disease, but their symptoms tend to come on slowly, rather than the very first symptom being a full blown heart attack.

How do you remove subluxations and begin to express health?

Only a trained chiropractor is able to detect and correct subluxations. Having a subluxation-free spine is the foundation of living in a truly healthy body. Find a chiropractor in your area who can remove the subluxations in your spine and help you return to living a full, healthy life!

With Sources from:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/entertainment/entertainment-news/Biggest-Loser-Host-Bob-Harper-Suffers-Heart-Attack–414878563.html