Packed Lunches Pose A Health Risk

If you're a parent of a child or teen, you or your spouse are likely the ones responsible packing your kid's lunches and placing them in a lunchbox or paper bag. New research from Texas indicates in a testing of more than 700 preschoolers' lunch packs, less than 2 percent of those temperature critical foods (meats, dairy and vegetables) were within a safe temperature zone. This, despite the fact that 45 percent of the packed lunches included an ice pack. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends perishable foods be kept cool and that any perishable foods that have reached 40 degrees Fahrenheit or higher for 2 or more hours not be consumed. After all, the latest stats from the CDC indicate that one in six Americans get food poisoning each year. Experts recommend including several ice packs with packed lunches and having perishables placed into a fridge once kids arrive at school to reduce the risk of food poisoning. Author: ChiroPlanet.com Source: Pediatrics, online August 8, 2011. Copyright: ProfessionalPlanets.com LLC 2011

Packed Lunches Pose A Health Risk

If you're a parent of a child or teen, you or your spouse are likely the ones responsible packing your kid's lunches and placing them in a lunchbox or paper bag. New research from Texas indicates in a testing of more than 700 preschoolers' lunch packs, less than 2 percent of those temperature critical foods (meats, dairy and vegetables) were within a safe temperature zone. This, despite the fact that 45 percent of the packed lunches included an ice pack. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends perishable foods be kept cool and that any perishable foods that have reached 40 degrees Fahrenheit or higher for 2 or more hours not be consumed. After all, the latest stats from the CDC indicate that one in six Americans get food poisoning each year. Experts recommend including several ice packs with packed lunches and having perishables placed into a fridge once kids arrive at school to reduce the risk of food poisoning. Author: ChiroPlanet.com Source: Pediatrics, online August 8, 2011. Copyright: ProfessionalPlanets.com LLC 2011

Putting a Price Tag on Health

It’s hard to put a price tag on something as important as health, but we all do by the choices we make and priorities we set.

We who work in health care place a high value on health. So when we find out someone has discontinued their chiropractic care because they can’t afford it, we’re concerned. Are our fees out of line?

Turns out, it’s usually a matter of priorities and finances are a convenient excuse. Each of us has the free will to value our health in the way we see fit. True, most of us take our health for granted until we lose it, but that may be just human nature.

If other issues in your life require more attention than your health, we understand. No need to make excuses or feel self-conscious. You won’t get a scolding, a sermon or even a raised eyebrow. After all, it’s your health.

You’re the boss. We strive to offer the finest chiropractic care possible. You decide how much of it you want. No guilt. No shame. No problem.

Have You Been Suffering From Chronic Knee Pain?

Chronic knee pain is notoriously difficult to treat successfully. Persons with these problems often become discouraged as they shuttle from specialist to specialist, from rheumatologist to orthopedic surgeon to physical therapist to acupuncturist and back again. Lack of progress and improvement becomes understandable when one considers that typical evaluation and treatment are directed at the symptoms. But with chronic knee pain, and many other pain syndromes, actual benefits may be obtained by addressing underlying biomechanical problems.

Faulty biomechanics are at the root of many ongoing knee problems. Of course, various other diseases and orthopedic conditions may cause the same type of chronic pain. The most likely of these possibilities need to be considered and ruled out before a diagnosis of biomechanical knee pain is established. Osteochondritis dissecans, a torn meniscus, and synovial effusion are all frequently encountered in persons over age 40 with chronic knee pain. Rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and ankylosing spondylitis are a few rheumatologic conditions which may result in sporadic or chronic knee pain.¹

When these medical entities have been eliminated as possibilities, a biomechanical causation becomes probable. How does a person develop "faulty biomechanics"? In fact, most of us have never received effective instruction in how to use our bodies. We stand and sit in all kinds of unsound postures, slouching and slumping and generally giving in to every available force of gravity. We stand with all our body weight on one leg, neck and shoulder muscles gripped tightly and abdominal muscles sagging and protruding. When we sit we slump down, stressing the lower back with poorly tolerated mechanical forces, or sit for hours with legs crossed, stressing the lower back, hips, and knees.

Over the course of a lifetime, our bodies have continually tried to adapt to a range of inefficient and stressful postures and habits. But eventually no more adaptation is possible.² As a result joints, muscles, ligaments, and tendons break down and fail. We experience this failure as pain. And once this type of pain has started, it is not going to go away unless the underlying causes are corrected. Specifically, the person's biomechanics need to be restored closer to normal.

Correction of posture takes time and can only be accomplished gradually. The key is to learn what to do, learn how to do it, and to be working on posture every day.³ The most important thing is to begin. Three basic biomechanical corrections are as follows: (1) When standing, be sure to have your weight over the balls of your feet and to have your weight evenly distributed on both legs. (2) Activate your deep abdominal muscles by visualizing an "inner lift". (3) Have straight lines of force running down your legs (rather than lines of force crossing at your knee, creating torsion and tension). Visualize "straight energy" flowing from your hip sockets, straight down through the center of your knees, straight down to your feet, between your first and second toes.

Visualizing and implementing these three biomechanical corrections on a daily basis represents the first series of steps toward improving knee mechanics and reducing chronic knee pain.

A Too-Easy Tip for Controlling Nausea and Queasy Stomach

Do you ever get airsick? Seasick? Car sick? Are there foods that give you a queasy stomach? Here's an easy tip from the Chinese practice of tui nai acupressure that will help you control nausea when there isn't time to take a medication or (what I think works better) ginger or vitamin B6.
Find the webbing of the skin between your thumb and index finger on either hand. With the other hand, press gently on both sides. As straightforward and simple as this is, it actually helps reduce nausea most of the time.
Is that a little too simple for you? Then try these acupressure rescues:

• For a headache, take off shoes and socks and find the groove between your fourth and fifth toes. Gently press on the tendon for 30 seconds.  Doing both feet at the same time relieves headache pain.
• To stifle sneezing, press the ridge between your upper lip and your nose. Or press your index finger against your thumb.
• To restore energy levels, massage the shin just below the kneecaps for a few minutes. This can be helpful in an athletic competition.

Acupressure costs nothing, can be done anywhere, and has no side effects—as long as you don't press too hard. Try this and other acupressure techniques when you need a quick fix and other remedies are not at hand.

Is Your Bucket Overflowing?

Allergies are so common, many people don’t even recognize the many ways our bodies alert us to allergic reactions, such as:

• Sneezing, runny nose, itchy eyes • Sinus congestion • Asthma • Heartburn • Skin rashes, acne, itching • Fluid retention

Yet, the problem isn’t the pet dander, pollen, chemicals or spicy food. The problem is actually the person—not the allergen. If it were the allergen, everyone would react.
The ability to adapt to allergens involves the nervous system. So, it’s no surprise that many people with allergies also have vertebral subluxation(s) that may impair their body’s ability to adapt.
Think of your body’s ability to accommodate stressors like allergens as an empty bucket. Fill your bucket with the stress of poor nutrition, lack of rest, a stressful commute and your bucket is full.
Now, along comes tree pollen season, or a cat and you start wheezing. Why? Because your bucket is overflowing! The pollen or the cat may get the blame, but only because your ability to adapt has been overwhelmed.
Do you know someone with allergies? Introduce them to chiropractic. Perhaps we can help them enhance their ability to adapt!

The Next Ten Years!!!

What does the future hold in store? None of us can know with certainty, although some predictions are possible. Stock market indexes will rise. Then they'll fall. Then everyone will hope that the indexes will rise again. Hemlines will fall. Then they'll rise. Then in two or three years they'll fall again.

The French have a saying for all this - plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But is this really true? Superficially, it appears as if things have changed a lot in 10 years. The Internet exploded. Cell phones are everywhere. In the United States an African-American man was elected president. Longstanding dictatorships were toppled in the Middle East.

But if we look below the surface, not much is different. Cell phones are primarily used to indulge in time-wasting chatter. The Internet serves three main functions, all of which embody the most mundane aspects of human existence - as a shopping mall, a center for interminable and meaningless gossip, and a convenient platform for gambling and other illicit activities. The U.S. federal government is embroiled in policy debates which have stagnated for more than 40 years. Global geopolitics appears similarly entrenched.

So the French saying gets it right. The more things change, the more they do stay the same. But if this is true for us personally, the existential bind we encounter can have disastrous results. If in ten years our lives are exactly the same as they are now, if neither growth nor development has taken place, what is the point of it all? If nothing I do makes any difference, why do anything at all? Why exert any effort? Of course, many people find themselves in exactly this position. Personality disorders are the direct result of such ennui. Many global pharmaceutical companies have been built on the billions of dollars spent annually on antidepressant medications, anti-anxiety medications, and sleep aids by millions of people in great distress.

But the next ten years have the possibility of being gloriously impactful.^1,2,3 Things do not necessarily remain the same. The actress Betty White has reinvigorated her career at age 89. Jeff Bridges won a Best Actor Academy Award at age 61, highlighting a 40-year career. The 2010 Best Original Screenplay Academy Award went to the 73-year-old first-time winner David Seidler. Leon Russell, the beloved musician/songwriter, was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Well into his 60s, Russell observed that he had been "lying in a ditch on the side of the highway of life" when he his career was suddenly, unexpectedly resurrected by Elton John.

In the next ten years, for us, anything is possible. But in order to move beyond the "same old, same old" we are required to make a choice. Another old saying, "if it's going to be, it's up to me", remains true today. We need to make choices on our own behalf, choices that will further our growth and development and the growth and development of our loved ones. We can create a spectacular next ten years.

¹Fosha D: Positive affects and the transformation of suffering into flourishing. Ann NY Acad Sci 1172:252-262, 20093

²Bunkers SS: A focus on human flourishing. Nurs Sci Q 23(4):290-295, 2010

³Culbertson SS, et al: Feeling good and doing great: the relationship between psychological capital and well-being. J Occup Health Psychol 15(4):412-433, 2010