Monday, September 14, 2020

It's a Veggie! It's a Fruit! It's Full of Vit. C!

         Often thought of as a vegetable, red bell peppers are actually classified as a fruit, because they have seeds.
        Red bell peppers are an excellent source of Vit. C---one cup contains 117 mg---and they are low in sugar.
They also contain multiple antioxidant compounds---a single red bell pepper has 30 different antioxidants. They are one of the most nutrient-dense foods one can eat.


Monday, September 7, 2020

Yep, It's All Connected

  “The thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone, the knee bone’s connected to the.....” as the saying goes. 
And it’s true. The technical term is “a kinematic chain.” Meaning the movement of one part affects or is linked to movements of the other parts.
Thus a problem at the hip affects the knee and possibly the foot, a problem at the ankle affects the knee & in turn the hip, a distorted pelvis reverberates down into the lower extremities, etc.
So if you come in with hip pain, I'm going to also check your pelvis, knees, ankles, and feet. If you have knee pain, I will likewise check your lower extremity above and below your knee, as well as your pelvis. 
Unless the whole kinematic chain is addressed and corrected, you're not likely to get lasting relief.

Monday, August 31, 2020

A Common Issue at the Base of the Neck

        Stress at the juncture of the cervical spine with the thoracic region, at the lower neck, may cause compression between the parts of the vertebrae that touch each other and the neighboring soft tissues.
The vertebral parts that touch are called the facets. Here the compression causes a “jamming” of the bone areas together. The adjacent soft tissues become involved, and the result is similar to a clenched fist. 
This causes pain to be referred out into the shoulder, and it can be persistent, usually needing precise intervention to resolve.
Most often the patient presents with complaints of a shoulder problem. However, the real cause of the problem is not in the shoulder at all, but in the neck.
I see this problem often in my office. Specific, precise adjustments with the Activator instrument release the compression and bring patients relief.

Monday, August 24, 2020

Distortion of the Rib Cage

  Often when patients present with pain in the thoracic region, an underlying, global aberrance of the rib cage is involved. 
The patient may say, “I feel twisted,” or “Something feels pulled.”’ They may have been coughing, may have tripped on a curb, fallen, or lifted something while their upper body was turned to one side.
After adjusting misalignments in the thoracic spine, including relieving jammed ribs at their articulations with vertebrae, I always check the status of the rib cage.
Nine times out of ten, I find a torquing of the ribs, in which one side is stressed superiorward, while ribs on the opposite side are stressed downward.
Precise, vectored, subaxillary adjustments with the Activator instrument correct the global rib cage distortion, and put the “finishing touch” on relieving the patient’s discomfort. 

Monday, August 17, 2020

Got Toxic Oils??

If you have grapeseed oil or rice bran oil or canola oil in your kitchen cabinet, you have TOXIC OILS. 
     "Designer oils" such as rice bran and grapeseed oil, commonly promoted as "healthy," are, in fact, extremely toxic. Here's why: these oils are highly processed. Canola oil, which many people assume is healthy because, like olive oil, it is monounsaturated, is also in the HIGHLY PROCESSED category. 
     Processing is necessary to extract the oil from rapeseed (canola), rice bran, and grape seeds, and may include extraction with heat and solvents, as well as chemical bleaching, degumming, and deodorizing. 
     Because the raw oils have monounsaturated and polyunsatured components, when exposed to heat, they readily oxidize. Oxidized oils are toxic and very inflammatory to our bodies.
     Avoid these oils, and use cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil instead.