Activity Breaks

This is a repost from the Millar Chiropractic Clinic website.

Activity Breaks

Why Lean Muscle is So Important

It is often said that increasing your body's percentage of "lean muscle tissue" is a major benefit of performing regular, strenuous exercise. Building lean muscle tissue is one of the ways your body adapts to certain types of physiologic stress. Lean muscle tissue acts like a metabolic furnace - burning extra calories even while your body is resting. You can think of it as though your increased percentage of lean muscle tissue turns up your internal thermostat, causing your body to burn fat in order to satisfy the increased demand for energy. Lean muscle tissue is more dense than body fat, so as you increase your percentage of lean muscle tissue, you may notice your waistline and other measurements decreasing faster than your weight on the scale.  For some people, their weight may even increase a bit while they become slimmer and more toned.  That's why it's best to not rely on a scale to chart your fitness progress.  Increasing your lean muscle tissue will give you a stronger, firmer, and more shapely body that increases your vibrancy, and makes it easier to stay in shape.

You may have heard that regularly performing just thirty minutes of strenuous exercise each day will reward you with many health benefits.  The greatest difficulty for many people though is finding the time to exercise consistently. We only have twenty-four hours each day to accomplish everything we need to do.  In many cases, working, shopping, cleaning, cooking, taking care of the kids, and all the other daily duties we need to perform often take precedence and may leave little room for working out.

Most of us have at least some motivation to exercise¹ - we want to workout regularly and we realize it's important and good for us.² But how and when can we manage to fit it into our busy lives?  A small minority are motivated enough to get up at 5:00 a.m. to workout - making more time in their day but sacrificing their precious sleep. Others wait until the end of the day to exercise, but that can often be stressful and counterproductive, and much more difficult to remain consistent long-term. Clearly though, many people make a good effort to exercise at least a few times each week, wherever they can fit it in.

Over time however, many of our good intentions get thwarted by our daily concerns. Scheduling concerns and deadlines end up taking precedence, and the item on our to-do list that is easiest to cast aside - exercise - ends up getting lost in the time crunch. When this happens, it usually doesn't take long before we're back to not exercising at all. So how can we overcome this tendency, other than getting up very early and exercising first thing in the morning before other concerns vie for our energy and attention?  One way is by performing short bursts of activity throughout each day. Studies have shown that "activity bursts", lasting from three to five minutes, provide significant health benefits for people who would otherwise find it difficult or impossible to exercise in more traditional ways.

The idea of activity bursts is slowly catching on. You may even find that some people at your place of work are starting to take "activity breaks" instead of taking coffee breaks.  Spending a few minutes walking briskly outside, climbing the office building stairs or performing a brief set of calisthenics is all it takes. Six to ten of these short, three to five minute bursts will fulfill the minimum daily requirement of thirty minutes of exercise. You won't even have to find time in your schedule for a typical workout. You're already at work, and you're already taking breaks. It's easy to convert your breaks to exercise breaks. And by the time you've finished your work day, your exercise for the day has also already been completed. The other nice thing about it is that you end up feeling great all day, due to the increased amounts of endorphins that are being released throughout the day.

You don't have to work in an office building to take advantage of this type of exercise.  These "activity bursts" are also great for those who work from home, as well as for school children. Studies in schools are showing that short bursts of intense physical activity increases attention spans and results in increased learning.


This is a way to exercise that makes it easy to fit physical activity into your life.  Finally, everyone can have a workable system for getting the exercise they need. Your Millar chiropractor is a fitness expert and will be happy to help you design an exercise program that works for you.




¹Vallance JK, et al: Maintenance of physical activity in breast cancer survivors after a randomized trial. Med Sci Sports Exerc 40(1):173-180, 2008
²Heckman GE, McKelvie RS: Cardiovascular aging and exercise in healthy older adults. Clin J Sport Med 18(6):479-485, 2008

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Chiropractic for Kids

This is a repost from the Millar Chiropractic Clinic website.

Chiropractic for Kids

To Be Healthy, Kids Need Plenty of Exercise and Good Nutrition

There is a raging epidemic of obesity among America's youth. The number of American adolescents who are obese has risen an astounding 300% in the last 40 years. Fortunately, in almost all cases, obesity is a lifestyle disorder. What this means is that most of the time, children who have become obese have done so due to behaviors they learned from their family, friends, and advertising media. To ensure your child maintains a healthy weight, it is critical that they eat a proper diet and get plenty of exercise throughout the day.  For a healthy diet: Eliminate all trans fats (including almost all fast foods). Eliminate sweet drinks and encourage water-drinking instead. Eat plenty of vegetables a some whole fruits each day. Avoid processed food as much as possible, and keep junk food out of your home. Serve pastured and organic meat and poultry if possible. Don't push your child to clean their plates.  Instead help them to recognize when they are full and to stop eating as soon as they've had enough. Children need a minimum of an hour of daily physical activity, which can include outdoor play, dance, calisthenics, gymnastics, and sporting activities.  Make sure your kids are getting an appropriate amount of exercise each day!

Grownups aren't the only ones who benefit by being checked by their chiropractor.  Kids do too!  Most kids probably don't need to have their blood pressure and glucose levels checked regularly.  Having these simple procedures done during their annual physical is usually enough for the majority of children. On the other hand, because kids are normally very active, more frequent chiropractic check-ups are usually a good idea.

Because most of us were never introduced to chiropractic care until we were adults - we had to play catch-up for a certain length of time before we really started to feel truly healthy again.  If we were one of the luckier ones who began chiropractic care as a younger adult, it probably didn't take too long to restore good health. If we were older, then the process probably took significantly more time.

If chiropractic care is valuable for you, imagine how valuable it is for your children. Kids are natural explorers - they run, jump, climb things, fall down, and generally bounce around a lot. Fortunately, kids are resilient - their quick recovery ability is one of the great benefits of being very young.

Occasionally though, one of these activity-related injuries negatively impacts a child's spine. It may not have been anything that was obvious, and nothing hurts, but there still may be subtle injuries to spinal ligaments and muscles that will have a long-term effect on spinal nerve function.^1,2

Proper functioning of the spinal nerves is dependent upon the mechanical integrity of the spine itself.  If spinal ligaments and muscles are irritated or inflamed, spinal nerve function is compromised to a certain extent. In a child, the short-term and long-term effects may include muscle pain and stiffness, reduced range of motion in the low back or neck, frequent headaches, colds, asthma, allergies, and gastrointestinal problems.

Of course, when it comes to protecting your and your family's health, it's always much easier to prevent a problem before it begins, rather than treat the problem after it occurs. Prevention also costs much less over the long-run.

We all want our kids to be as healthy and well as possible. We want them to play full-out, having a lot of fun and engaging in all sorts of athletic activities.  Regular spinal check-ups are as important for ensuring your child's optimal health as their annual physical exam.

Your Millar chiropractor is a spinal health expert. He or she will be happy to help you ensure your child's continued good health.


¹Fecteau D, et al: The effect of concentrating periods of physical activity on the risk of injury in organized sports in a pediatric population. Clin J Sport Med 18(5):410-414, 2008
²Spinks AB, McClure RJ: Quantifying the risk of sports injury: a systematic review of activity-specific rates for children under 16 years of age. Br J Sports Med 41(9):548-557, 2007

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Strong and Healthy Bones

This is a repost from the Millar Chiropractic Clinic website.

Strong and Healthy Bones

Healthy Bones and Chiropractic

Exercise is an important part of attaining and maintaining a lifetime of health and vitality. One of the often overlooked benefits of regular exercise is a strong and healthy skeletal system. There are other things we can do to help our bones stay healthy, such as making sure that we get enough calcium in our diet and, if possible, getting 15 to 30 minutes of unprotected mid-day sunlight on our bare skin several times each week. Receiving regular chiropractic care is another important aspect of staying healthy.  Getting regular chiropractic treatment helps to ensure that our nerve system is functioning at peak efficiency. When our nerve systems are fully online, all our tissues, cells, glands and organs are able to do precisely what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it. With a properly functioning nerve system, bone cells are supported in building strong dynamic structures that will last. In this way, chiropractic care helps to optimize the positive results from all the other good things we're doing for our health, including eating a nutritious diet, and making sure we get enough regular exercise and proper rest. For the best results, make regular chiropractic care a part of your strategy for maintaining strong and healthy bones.

If you're like most people, you probably don't think about the various components of your physical body unless something goes wrong. Take your bones, for example.  They are there, unseen and under the surface, supporting your body and playing an important role in its movements. You probably never give your skeletal system much thought except in the case of a traumatic injury or other significant problem.

If a bone is bruised or fractured due to trauma, it is common for most of these injuries to heal on their own in due course. You may need to use a brace, sling, or cast to protect a fractured bone while it's rebuilding, and perhaps have it reset so it will heal correctly, but usually within a month or two everything is back to normal.

On the other hand, many actual diseases can have a negative effect on the skeletal system long term, sometimes even for the rest of a person's life.  The good news is that at least some of these serious conditions can often be prevented or minimized. Osteoporosis is a disorder which can have serious consequences, including disabling hip fractures and crippling fractures of the lumbar vertebras. For many people though, osteoporosis can be prevented, and it's very important to understand how to minimize your risk.

First of all we need to understand what Osteoporosis is.  Basically, it's a disorder that involves both the loss of bone substance and the disorganization of bone structure. "Osteo" means bone and "porosis" means pores or the state of being porous. In osteoporosis the biochemical bony matrix is broken down and some of the bony tissue itself is resorbed, which weakens the bone structure and creates holes causing the affected bone to become porous. Metabolic factors involved in the process of osteoporosis include vitamin D and calcium levels, as well as the activity of bone cells called osteoblasts, which are responsible for producing the bone matrix.

 

You have probably heard the saying, "if you don't use it, you'll lose it."   This is commonly applied to things like cognitive function, muscle strength, flexibility and endurance.  Over time, if you fail to challenge your mind and body in various ways, you will most likely begin to experience a decrease in these aspects.  The same is true for your skeletal system.

Because bone appears to be so hard and durable, we tend to think of it as a finished product.  In actuality though, bone tissue is highly dynamic and responds to physiological stresses such as weight-bearing exercise.  Additionally, bone is constantly being broken down as it responds to metabolic needs elsewhere in the body. This creates a dynamic tension between these two processes of building up and breaking down bone tissue.  Unfortunately, in the case of osteoporosis there is much more breaking down of bone tissue than building it up. The most obvious and serious consequence of this imbalance is the weakening of bone's structural strength. Eventually, primary weight-bearing bones such as the hip or thigh bones or the lumbar vertebra have lost so much structural integrity that they fracture under the pressure of normal weight-bearing loads.

Like the rest of the components of our bodies, our bones are a precious natural resource. Unlike global natural resources such as coal or natural gas, our bones are a renewable resource. But in order for that to happen, we have to pay attention to what our bones need to renew themselves. If a bone isn't being used effectively, higher-priority metabolic needs in other locations will cause important biochemicals to be removed from bone. Then a bone, such a hip bone, begins to lose its structure.

The most important question is "How can we ensure that our bones are being used effectively so that they continue to remain strong and dynamic?"  The answer is to make sure we perform regular, weight-bearing exercise.^1,2,  To put it succinctly, bones will retain their metabolic structure if they are required to do so. The body is very smart and locates precious resources where they are needed. If weight-bearing loads are consistently placed on your spine and long bones, these dynamic structures will not only retain their shape and strength, but will build more bony layers - becoming even stronger. And of course, if we want to have a lifetime of vibrant health, it's important to have strong and healthy bones in order to achieve that.

¹Bababtunde OO, et al: A meta-analysis of brief high-impact exercises for enhancing bone health in premenopausal women. Osteoporos Int Sept 28 2011 (Epub ahead of print) PMID: 21953474

²Ragucci KR, Shrader SP: Osteoporosis treatment: an evidence-based approach. J Gerontol Nurs 37(7):17-22, 2011

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Being Connected

This is a repost from the Millar Chiropractic Clinic website.

Being Connected

A "Clean Restore" for Your Body?

When you do a clean restore or recovery on your computer, you reestablish its initial factory condition. You wipe the slate clean of all the accumulated junk - viruses, spyware, and unnecessary programs you've amassed. This results in a clean, lean machine that runs significantly faster and works much better. Extending the connectivity metaphor, is it possible to do a "clean restore" on your body? In one sense, no you cannot and in many ways that's a good thing. You wouldn't want to erase all the things you've experienced and learned in your lifetime that help make you who you are. These memories are also retained by the cells of your body, and your environmental experiences can significantly impact your DNA. In another sense, though, it is possible to do a "clean restore", on a cell-by-cell basis. As a matter of fact, your body's cells are constantly renewing themselves and in effect doing their own versions of a clean restore. If you provide the appropriate inputs in the form of nutritious and healthy food, plenty of exercise, and get enough sleep, your new cells will be smarter, faster, and even better than the ones they are replacing.

We live in a time when being connected is very important for most people.  Have you ever experienced anxiety when you are out and about and realize you've left your cell phone at home? For teenagers, having a cell phone can be considered a status symbol, but it's also a connection to their social network.  Cell phones can be lifelines for many people.

And how about the internet?  How many of us begin to experience withdrawal symptoms if we're separated from our Internet connection for even a short while?  Have you experienced the angst of suddenly being without access to the web?  Do you tend to check your email or Facebook constantly throughout each day?

 

Being electronically connected to the the external world may help us to feel secure, but it's even more important to be well connected in the physical world - both physically and socially. In the electronic world we are connected to networks, primarily by our internet connection. In the world of our own physiology, networks are also the crucial element.  In this case we are referring to the neurological networks which comprise our nerve system.¹

This nerve system consists of the brain, cranial nerves, spinal cord, spinal nerves, and miles of peripheral nerves which connect the spinal cord and spinal nerves to every other cell in the body.
In the body, the rules are simple. If there is a problem with a cell's connection to the nerve system, the result is that the cell's activities become disorganized. If the disconnection or interference continues, the cell eventually becomes diseased and may even die.

In a similar scenario a cell may be connected, but because of problems in the nerve system itself, the cell is receiving nerve signals that are inappropriate or inaccurate. The end result is the same - the cell's activities become disorganized until it becomes diseased and eventually dies. If enough cells are affected in this way, the person develops symptoms and becomes sick.

 

"Problems" within the nerve system are often the result of what we refer to as spinal subluxations.  This simply means that there is reduced mobility between one or more pairs of spinal vertebras, with associated spasm or spinal muscle tightness, spinal nerve irritation, and spinal joint inflammation. When this happens, the free flow of information between the nerve system and the rest of the body becomes compromised - causing both ends of the network to receive information that is ineffective and inappropriate.  This results in what can be thought of as a "system crash" in the form of symptoms and disease.

Chiropractic health care is especially designed to restore effective connectivity and communication between your nerve system and your other body systems.² Your Millar chiropractor specializes in identifying the spinal subluxations at the root of the problem, restoring proper balance to your spine and nerve system by applying safe, gentle and affective chiropractic care.  As optimal functioning begins to be restored, improved levels of health and well-being naturally result.

Social Connections - Do You Need to "Unplug"?

Are you spending more time communicating with people electronically while your in-person social interactions are diminishing?  Human beings are social creatures who evolved over countless millennia interacting with their local "tribe" and other social groupings.  Our social interactions remain an important part of our well-being.  Research suggests that having at least two or three close friendships significantly improve a person's health, happiness and even longevity.

Taking the time and energy to develop and maintain your close friendships will pay many dividends throughout your lifetime.  If you are raising teenagers, encourage them to avoid becoming dependent on electronic social networking, and help them to understand that electronic relationships and accumulating a lot of Facebook "friends" are not good substitutes for real relationships.

Many people who have decided to "unplug" from their electronic lives for a month or longer - by limiting online activities, texting, television, video games, or any other activity that has become too much of a crutch or distraction - are amazed at how much more productive and satisfying their lives become.  They report a surprising feeling of relief and freedom, after adjusting to being unplugged from the constant distraction of their smart phones and other devices, along with improvements in their personal relationships and an increased sense of inner peace.



¹Coward LA: The hippocampal system as the cortical resource manager: a model connecting psychology, anatomy and physiology. Adv Exp Med Biol 657:315-364, 2010

²Taylor HH, Murphy B: Altered central integration of dual somatosensory input after cervical spine manipulation. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 33(3):178-188, 2010

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