There is so much conflicting information about the best way to exercise. How do you know what is best for you?
Our bodies were designed to withstand the need to make surges of speed, but not to withstand long distance running. Our ancestors would run short distances to get out of harm’s way, to chase down dinner or to help a friend in need. We were not designed to run for great distances over long periods of time.
There are many forms of exercise that bring this principle into effect, such as High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), where you work out as hard as you can for a short duration of time, potentially even for only 45 or 60 seconds (which seems like a lifetime when you’re doing as many push ups as you can!!) and then resting for the same timeframe or a little less. This kicks your metabolism into high gear, adds a significant surge of adrenaline into your body to keep up with this form of exercise and pushes your body to grow and develop muscle and improves your fitness.
The opposite form of exercise would be traditional cardio. You jump on a treadmill or hit the road for 30-60 minutes of fast walking or jogging until the time is up. Sustained movement for a long period of time, generally at the same pace and difficulty level to make your body move and cooperate. Cardio can help to lower your resting heart rate, increase your good HDL cholesterol and lower blood pressure, as well as improving circulation, blood flow and lymphatic drainage.
But cardio can also cause your body to produce higher levels of cortisol which can stimulate your appetite, increase fat storage and inhibit recovery.
How is this possible when exercising is supposed to be helping you lose weight and/or get fit? It has to do with the hormones that are released with each type of exercise. Cardio can decrease testosterone production and HIIT can improve your growth hormone levels while lowering your insulin resistance to help regulate blood sugar and reduce fat storage.
What is the best form of exercise for me? How do I know?
The best form of exercise for you is the one that you will actually do!! The risks of a sedentary lifestyle are much worse than the risks involved with either HIIT or cardio. Additionally, there are many other forms of exercise that offer corresponding benefits and risks, such as yoga, pilates, rebounding, kickboxing, hiking, crossfit and many others!
So talk with your natural health practitioner about what he/she would recommend as the best form of exercise for your personal situation and do that! Fall in love with joyful movement – find something you love to do and do it often. Or mix it up and take on different forms of exercise to keep your body guessing and working toward your optimal fitness levels. Have fun!
Jo-Anne Richardson has almost a decade of experience managing a chiropractic office and educating patients on how chiropractic can allow your body to express optimal health. She is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and holds a Degree in Communications. She loves to experiment with raw vegan recipes, loves to salsa dance, travel and learn new holistic health information to share tips with everyone who visits the office.
There is an abundance of information all over the web with suggestions about how to eat, what to think, what herbs and supplements to take and not to take. It’s confusing especially if you or a loved one is now battling a life-threatening illness.
It’s not knowing exactly what to eat to fight disease or create healing that is important. It is knowing how and why to change where you are at currently, to a healthy eating plan, make it stress-free, and a lifestyle change that is sustainable forever. However, here are some vital facts that apply to health and healing that are absolutely necessary to know. These are absolute truths, and apply to anyone, at any age, at any stage of health or disease, regardless of what treatment that individual may be receiving.
There are thousands and thousands of nutritional products, plans, diets, and advice out there that are accessible to anyone if you search for them. However we do understand that there are indisputable truths that are pertinent when it comes to creating better health and healing from within. There are nutrients and factors that are absolutely necessary to improve immune system function prevent disease and allow the body to Flourish.
We start our nutritional planning with one simple philosophical understanding: We don’t get sick because we have cancer,… We get cancer as a result of being sick.
Cancer is simply an opportunistic disease. It is the body’s natural response to adapt to an unhealthy environment. Although there are genetic factors involved, it has been largely proven that lifestyle plays a much bigger role than previously thought and a much bigger role than genetic factors ever will.
Therefore since the body created the disease as a result of an unhealthy environment, our first response is to change the environment by making it healthier to therefore stop, or reverse the progression of the disease.
We need to change the body’s metabolism from that of sugar burning for energy to a fat burning machine. This can be done completely with dietary changes. Cancer feeds on sugar. Sugar compromises a natural immune response. Fat cells are a storage locker for toxins.
Immune system function becomes week and damaged when the body’s environment remains in an acidic state. Our nutritional goals need to revolve around changing the pH of the body to that of alkalinity instead of acidity.
Most diseases proliferate in an environment that is lacking in oxygen. An effective plan should be designed to provide nutrients and decrease toxins that deprive the body of an oxygen-rich state.
Over the years, myself and our team have been extremely successful in helping people that have been diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses achieve a much better state of health and success in beating those diseases and building a better quality of life.
No matter what medical or invasive procedures the patient may be experiencing or have undergone previously there is always a way to improve the body’s innate ability to heal through natural methods.
When my sister was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 44, I immediately sat down and talked with her about improving her lifestyle choices. Her life up to this point was full of poor Nutrition, no exercise, and a great deal of stress. She had poor posture, and poor nervous system function because she never visited the Chiropractor.
She agreed that a change was necessary. Although she was very receptive, her and her husband made decisions to receive intense medical treatment including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Within two weeks of her first diagnosis she had surgery to insert a colostomy bag to her lower intestine. I know that fear was a major contributor to her decision.
Within weeks she was well into a process of radiation and eventually chemotherapy treatment. My sister became very ill as a result of the treatment and her quality of life went downhill very fast. She quickly lost her freedom and spent most of her days lying in a hospital bed.
I continued to watch my sister’s health decline rapidly and knew that we were losing hope.
Within two years of her initial diagnosis my baby sister lost her fight passing away at the age of 46. I know in my heart that things could’ve been different and I know that some of the choices that she made in her lifestyle including the aggressive medical treatment that she received accelerated the process eventually leading to her death.
The question that you need to ask yourself now is “If I were diagnosed with Cancer tomorrow, what changes would I make in my diet and lifestyle to help overcome the illness and improve my function?”
If change is necessary, do it today before you get the diagnosis. Disease like Cancer needs to be attacked proactively not reactively.
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Guest Blog by Dr. Colin Elkin
“Chiropractic is my life. The Principle of Chiropractic has changed the person who I used to be. The way I think, the way I care for myself, the way I care for my family, the way I eat, and the outlook that I approach every day with.
The major premise of Chiropractic states that there is a Universal Intelligence that exists in all matter. This is the basis on how I mange my life, my business, my patients, my wealth, and my future.
I love caring for my patients and sharing this principle with them. I have a deep desire to attract and care for those people afflicted with life threatening illness, especially Cancer diagnosis.
I have a beautiful, intelligent, and strong wife named Kim and 4 healthy, unsubluxated, unvaccinated boys, Austin, Carter, Harrison, and Curtis. My family has given me the privilege of becoming involved in many activities, sports, hobbies. When I am not in the office caring for patients, you can usually find me at the hockey arena playing or coaching, at the dirt bike track cheering on my son, or at home jamming on the guitar.
I owe Chiropractic my life. I suffered a near fatal motorcycle accident in 2013, that caused 4 severe cervical fractures. It was only by God’s grace that the surgeon who cared for me understood that the only reason I survived and had no permanent neurological injury was because my spine was in perfect alignment before the accident. The normal cervical curvature was able to withstand the impact and prevent any fractured bone from shifting and severing or damaging my spinal chord. Thank God for Chiropractic. Over the following year I have returned to full function and I am as strong as I have ever been and have my spine adjusted regularly…and yes, including my neck.
I am truly blessed to be part of Maximized Living. This is the future of health care in the world. My mission is to see this model gain world-wide acceptance during my lifetime.”
Are you confident in your ability to read food labels?
Maybe you haven’t really taken the time to ever read a label properly before, or you are so overwhelmed by the information presented on the label that you just don’t bother.
It is time to get on the label reading train so you can be properly educated on what you are feeding your family and you can get in and out of the grocery store in half the time. No more staring at a label for 5 minutes trying to decipher if you should put it in your cart or not.
First off, it is critical to note that you won’t find a label on anything in the produce section of the grocery store – and this is where the majority of your food should be found!
The reason for that is that those foods haven’t been processed. The focus of your grocery shopping trip should be concentrated to the produce department, filling your cart full of wonderfully nutrient rich fruits and vegetables. It is important to be mindful on what produce should be purchased organically if funds and availability allow for it.
Leafy greens, strawberries, grapes, celery, and apples are some of the most highly sprayed crops and therefore should be purchased organically if possible.
As you move into the packaged food section of the grocery store, you will want to focus on the following tips to ensure you are reading labels properly.
1. Check the serving size first, and consider what a realistic serving size is for your family.In the case of most packaged products, the serving size is an unrealistic estimate of what a typical person would eat and therefore causes the caloric values, fat and sugar content to appear more acceptable.
2. Most people only focus on the top half of the label where you will find the caloric content and nutritional breakdown. While this information is important to know, the list of ingredients will be more helpful in determining just what additives might be present. Remember that the ingredients are listed in descending order based on their volume, so if a harmful item is listed as one of the first five ingredients then you may want to reconsider what you are buying.
3. Choose products with the fewest number of ingredients. But, also make sure that you know and feel comfortable eating what all the ingredients are.
4. Purchase frozen vegetables and fruit instead of canned to eliminate exposure to preservatives that are used in the canning process.
5. Beware of endorsements on products and clever marketing campaigns that make any special product claims. Just because a label claims it is sugar-free, diet, all natural or trans fat free doesn’t mean that it is healthy.
6. Finally, avoid ingredients like monosodium glutamate (MSG), artificial sweeteners (Splenda or aspartame), sodium nitrate, food dyes, high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, refined grains, and any other items on the label that are almost impossible to pronounce.
By following these tips, a trip to the grocery store should be a lot less confusing and time consuming. Remember that life isn’t perfect, and neither will your grocery shopping experience be.
Select products that are as close to natural as you can and always keep your eyes open for higher quality alternatives.
Jo-Anne Richardson has almost a decade of experience managing a chiropractic office and educating patients on how chiropractic can allow your body to express optimal health. She is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and holds a Degree in Communications. She loves to experiment with raw vegan recipes, loves to salsa dance, travel and learn new holistic health information to share tips with everyone who visits the office.
“ohhh I go to the chiropractor, but I don’t let him/her touch my neck.”
Or, “I would never go to a chiropractor, they crack bones!”
Well let me “crack” it open for you and dispel any myths about chiropractic that you may have heard.
First off, let’s define what an adjustment is and what the benefit is to the body.
A chiropractic adjustment is the manual manipulation of the vertebrae of the spine to correct structural alignment and improve the body’s physical function. When the bones of the spine are not in proper alignment (also called a subluxation), pressure on the nervous system can result, leading to health problems, pain, and diminished information flow from the brain to the rest of the body.
Now that we understand what a subluxation is, let’s examine four of the most common myths of chiropractic.
Myth 1: An adjustment to the neck causes stroke
Based on current data, the chances of having a stroke after having a chiropractic adjustment to the neck is 1 in 8 million. However, the benefit of removing subluxations in the neck region is to provide a clear path for the brain to be able to communicate with the rest of the body via the spinal cord. As blockages occur over time, the messages from the brain are not able to travel as efficiently to the rest of the body, so removing these blockages is crucial to maintaining health.
Myth 2: Getting an adjustment hurts.
The most common response of a chiropractic patient is relief and relaxation. Taking the pressure off of the nervous system allows the body to function better and that leads to a feeling of comfort. Occasionally, a patient will report muscle tenderness after an adjustment that can be likened to muscle soreness after a workout.
Myth 3: Once you go to the chiropractor, you will have to be a patient for life.
Once you truly understand the benefits of chiropractic care, you will want to be a patient for life! Most people begin seeing a chiropractor because they are experiencing a particular complaint (ex. back pain, headaches, frequent illness). Once that complaint is under control, it is up to the patient to decide how they want to proceed with their care. It is important to understand that continuing on a maintenance plan will help to diminish the effects of a stressful lifestyle, repetitive movements at work, and can help to boost the immune system, energy levels and overall level of health, while preventing illness and problems in the future.
Myth 4:Chiropractors Crack Your Bones
Yes, the sound that is made during a chiropractic adjustment does make a cracking noise. But the reality is that your bones are not being cracked, but rather as the joints of the spine are moved back into proper alignment, the fluid around the joints releases a gas, which makes a popping sound. Remember, eggs get cracked, your bones get adjusted!
If you have further questions about chiropractic care, feel free to discuss your questions and concerns with your chiropractor, they are experts in their field.
Jo-Anne Richardson has almost a decade of experience managing a chiropractic office and educating patients on how chiropractic can allow your body to express optimal health. She is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and holds a Degree in Communications. She loves to experiment with raw vegan recipes, loves to salsa dance, travel and learn new holistic health information to share tips with everyone who visits the office.
During my 20 years of practicing Energy Healing I have found one Universal Truth: PAIN means “Pay Attention Inwards Now”
Pain stems from unresolved and unacknowledged repression of emotions. E-motions mean energy in motion. If energy is repressed then dis-ease and pain results. We label these pains Arthritis, Allergies, Anxiety, Angina, Headaches, Migraines, Frozen shoulder, Fibromyalgia, Cancer, Carpal Tunnel… the list is endless.
Pain is just information. Neither negative nor positive, pain is just ongoing feedback, “an indication of our current energetic vibration”. Or an indication of parts of our body that are not in sync with our total energetic vibration.
PAIN lets us know that we have something to discover and resolve. Stressful thoughts, limiting beliefs, worrisome stories replaying in our unconscious mind… these are reflected in your body. Often we inherit them from our ancestors, other times we pick them up from the energy around us, our environment, our media, our families and circumstances. When communication within the body cells is disrupted, we blow fuses, set up handicaps, and our perfect blueprint is derailed.
Your BODY is your GPS, or rather it has the key to an effective built-in Human Guidance System that unlocks these hidden blocks preventing our mind and soul to communicate effectively. When we experience emotions that don’t feel good, it simply means that we are not in-line with our ‘true’ or ‘higher’ self. Our spirit is the part of us that lives at the top of the Guidance Scale in joy, love and self empowerment.
This is where we embrace the basic spiritual truths that:
We are worthy, deserving, loveable, loving, brilliant eternal BE-ings and each of us is an important significant part of the Divine plan we have a miraculous perpetually healing organism we call a body.
Knowing this truth, is not the same as embodying it. I love witnessing my clients RECLAIM their health and life after sessions. I love doing demonstrations and talks (group healings) at corporations and watching employees have ah-ha moments.
Helping people Reclaim their healthy body, by Refreshing their Mind, and Renewing their Spirit keeps me in my energy vibration of truth, joy and awe. We can all attain Complete BE-ing Clarity, if we listen to our body. Are you listening? What is your body saying to you?
The really fascinating truth is that all of this can be reversed and healed. Energy consciousness work is quick, easy and fun, you don’t need to rehash the past, get stuck in the story, or stay in the pain. If you are in pain, explore energy healing … Reiki, BodyTalk, Psych-K, Acupuncture, and other modalities. You will be amazed at the quick results, and love your new found understanding of your Self and your energetic vibration.
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Blog by Guest Author:
Jessy Morrison
Jessy Morison has tremendous success in helping those to whom doctors have given no hope of recovery at all to Reclaim their Life, Refresh their Mind, Reclaim their Body, and Renew their Spirit.
A Reiki Master Teacher, BodyTalk & EFT Practitioner, Soul Genesis Facilitator, Founding Member of the Ontario BodyTalk Assoc., and Founding Member of The Whole Life Learning Collective, and Transformational Tuesdays, Jessy is also a contributing author to “The Joy of an Ex”, Women With Vision Magazine, and Another View Magazine.
Jo-Anne Richardson has almost a decade of experience managing a chiropractic office and educating patients on how chiropractic can allow your body to express optimal health. She is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and holds a Degree in Communications. She loves to experiment with raw vegan recipes, loves to salsa dance, travel and learn new holistic health information to share tips with everyone who visits the office.
This information is courtesy of bon appetit and the research they have put together from a massive study on how we buy food.
Here, we summarize the most interesting pieces of information discovered about how supermarkets are designed, how and why we buy what we choose, and how it’s all a trap!!
I want you to be aware of these things the next time you go to the grocery store so you can be mindful about why you’re walking the direction you are, what you are choosing to put in your cart (with which hand!) and how many items you are walking past to get to what you actually wanted in the first place!
The five experts who contributed to the original study are:
• BA senior food editor Dawn Perry
• Environmental psychologist Paco Underhill and author of What Women Want: The Science of Female Shopping
• Architect and supermarket designer Kevin Kelley, of the firm Shook Kelley
• The director of the graduate nutrition program at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, Sharon Akabas
• Efficiency expert Gwynnae Byrd
• “Upward of 50 percent of what we buy in a supermarket we had no intention of buying as we walked in the door,” psychologist Underhill says.
• The average supermarket has 64,000 products (you’d have to eat or use more than 175 different products every day for a year before you tried everything once).
• There are too many choices!! With this vast array of options, our brains overload and instead of the two items on our list, we come out with 20! Marketers are really good at getting us to buy stuff we don’t need.
• The primary goal of supermarkets is to subtly convince shoppers to spend more time inside, to give products more opportunities to fly into your cart!
• Very similar to casinos, it is rare to see many indicators of the time, like clocks, skylights, or even windows.
• Dairy is generally in the back corner—the deepest section of the store, because virtually everyone who walks in has some dairy product on their list. (aka stop buying dairy!! check out this blog for the reasons why!)
• About nine in ten people are right-handed, and a counterclockwise route through the store makes it easier for right-handed people to put stuff in their carts. (really!! can you imagine who studied and realized this!)
• Most stores work better with a counterclockwise circulation pattern because you tend to push your cart with your left hand and pick things up with your right hand.
• Of every ten people who walk through the entrance, only one will go down the soda aisle, so supermarkets hijack shoppers’ subconscious to linger in these aisles, often by literally slowing them down with bumpier or tackier floor surfaces. (or giant bins in the centre of the aisle that need stop lights to navigate)
• It is not a coincidence that brightly coloured, sugar-laden cereals with the new kiddie-cartoon craze is on the shelf at knee level – it’s in the perfect line of sight for a six-year-old kid.
• The point of those bite-sized food samples is not only to get you to buy a particular product. It’s to trick your body into thinking it’s hungry. And we all know what happens when we shop hungry!!
These are really interesting points to consider when you are navigating your grocery store. Be aware of these subconscious tricks to get us to buy more, eat more, spend more and consume more and be sure you are only buying what you set out to buy! (Stay in the produce section as much as possible!)
Jo-Anne Richardson has almost a decade of experience managing a chiropractic office and educating patients on how chiropractic can allow your body to express optimal health. She is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and holds a Degree in Communications. She loves to experiment with raw vegan recipes, loves to salsa dance, travel and learn new holistic health information to share tips with everyone who visits the office.