That Spare Tire Around Your Middle Can Be Hazardous to Your Health!

Pot belly. Spare tire. The middle age spread. These are just a few of the endearing names bestowed to the extra layer of fat that accumulates around the abdomen. But aside from the amusing nicknames, this type of fat is a serious danger. Unlike fat that appears on other parts of your body, belly fat increases your risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, sleep apnea and some types of cancer.

Subcutaneous fat is the jiggly fat that rests between your skin and abdominal wall. Visceral fat is the next layer and surrounds your internal organs. Visceral fat is biologically active. It produces an excess of hormones, which increase the risk of insulin resistance - a key factor in type 2 diabetes. This hormonal imbalance puts women at higher risk of breast cancer. And visceral fat boosts inflammation throughout your body. Your chiropractor can tell you how inflammation is closely tied to numerous diseases and health conditions.

Why does belly fat affect so many people? Genetics play a role, so you may see the problem from one generation of a family to the next. Hormone fluctuations in the body can increase fat. After menopause, hormonal changes in women cause fat to gather more in the belly than hips or legs. As you age you lose muscle mass and your metabolism slows, which makes it easier to acquire fat in the abdominal area.

Poor dietary habits and lack of physical activity are also big contributors to this problem. Our increasingly sedentary ways have unleashed an explosion of obesity across North America and other industrialized areas of the world. Our love of unhealthy fatty foods and refined carbohydrates has made it all too easy to surge the waistline well past the appropriate size.

What to do?  In our next issue we will look at ways to combat this through diet and exercise. In the meantime, talk to your Chiropractor about things you can start doing today!

  www.atlanticchirofl.com

(386) 492-4881

Your Personal Health Insurance Policy

Everyone is aware of the extremely high cost of most health care services. These costs can be measured not only in cash outlays, but also in time spent at a doctor's office. Waiting times can often be an hour or more for a comprehensive physical examination at a family physician's or internist's office. If you have a problem that requires same-day attention, the waiting time at a local hospital emergency room is open-ended and can easily range into several hours or more.

Those fortunate enough to have health insurance are able to buffer some of the monetary expenses. But even with an individual or family health insurance policy, annual out-of-pocket costs continue to rise steeply as monthly premiums, co-payments, and deductibles increase substantially year-over-year. For example, during the past five years monthly premiums for many policies have increased 15% or more annually. This means that monthly payments in 2013 would be approximately double those paid in 2008. Twice the cost for the same coverage. That's a tough situation. Of course, the fees don't stop at the monthly premium. Many policies have deductibles in the range of $5000 or more.

Thus, if we want to enjoy good financial health as well as good physical health, we might consider getting a "personal" health insurance policy. Such a "policy" requires more effort than that involved in writing a check. Your personal health insurance policy involves taking action in the two main lifestyle areas of diet/nutrition and exercise. A third lifestyle area, often ignored, involves personal well-being. This area includes building increasingly positive family relationships and friendships and developing a broader set of interests beyond one's favorite television stations and websites.

 

It is now well-established that lifestyle matters greatly to one's long-term health and well-being.^1,2 Numerous studies have shown that one in three Americans have one or more chronic diseases - diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. The personal and family costs, the financial costs, and the costs to society of chronic disease are high. By establishing habits of good nutrition, regular vigorous exercise, and rewarding relationships and activities, we help prevent these major health problems.³ By engaging in healthy lifestyles, we are taking action that will reap many rewards for ourselves and our families down the years.

The only requirement to begin receiving the benefits of improved health is the willingness to get started. Even if you haven't done any regular exercise for many years, or if you can't remember the last time you ate a serving of broccoli, fennel, or kale, you can still start the journey to better health today. And if you begin, it's very possible that you'll look back after 12 months, 6 months, or even 3 months and be very glad you did.

 

 Chiropractic Care and Your Personal Health Insurance Policy

When we talk about lifestyle and good health, we usually only consider exercise and nutrition. A third area - rewarding and fulfilling relationships and interests - may be added as an afterthought. But a fourth area - chiropractic care - is in fact the key to gaining the benefits from all the other lifestyle areas and activities.
Chiropractic care focuses on how your body is doing its job. This "job" is to link harmoniously all the various separate physiological activities - to make sure all your body's systems are working well together. The responsibility for this harmony lies with the nerve system, the master system that ties together the functioning of your heart and lungs, your stomach and other digestive organs, your endocrine system, and your immune system. By identifying and correcting misalignments in the spinal column, chiropractic care helps ensure that your nerve system is functioning optimally. When your nerve system is doing its job, the rest of your body has the opportunity to produce the maximum health available. As a result, chiropractic care helps you get the most out of all your other activities and helps you gain and retain good health.

¹Thorgeirsson T, Kawachi I: Behavioral Economics: Merging Psychology and Economics for Lifestyle Interventions. Am J Prev Med 44(2):185-189, 2013

²Anderson AS, et al: Promoting changes in diet and physical activity in breast and colorectal cancer screening settings- an unexplored opportunity for endorsing healthy behaviours. Cancer Prev Res 2013 Jan 16 (Epub ahead of print)

³Mitra A, et al: Mechanistic studies of lifestyle interventions in type 2 diabetes. World J Diabetes 3(12):201-207, 2012

Atlantic Chiropractic and Wellness Center is dedicated to helping you achieve your wellness objectives.

Click here or call us at 386-492-4881 today!
www.atlanticchirofl.com

Don't Worry...Be Healthy!

Ever woken up in the middle of the night wondering how you were going to pay the bills? Then you know that a car payment or the electric bill can affect your health!
There are three types of stress: physical, emotional and chemical. Financial worries (and other anxieties) fall into the emotional stress category. And chiropractic can be helpful.



All three types of stress affect your nervous system. Like a chain that breaks at its weakest link, stress tends to show up where we are most vulnerable. Our neck. Our low back. Tightness between our shoulders. Stress can increase the frequency of headaches and compromise our ability to get enough restful sleep.


Chiropractic care, with its purpose of reducing neurological stress, can be helpful. Of course chiropractic care can't eliminate stress, but it can improve your ability to tolerate it. Regular chiropractic care now could be a wise investment for a healthier, happier and financially secure you!

Give us a call, and let us help you take that first step on the road to wellness!!!
 (386) 492-4881
www.atlanticchirofl.com

Exercise Smarter, Not Harder!

We all want to get the most out of the time we spend exercising, and it's natural to think that exercising harder is going to provide a bigger, faster payoff. But exercising harder without adequate preparation often leads to injury. Then there's recovery time, possibly the need for rehabilitation, and ultimately you're back at the beginning in terms of fitness, strength, and endurance. Injuries are to be avoided, if at all possible. The best way to avoid injury is to exercise smarter. Exercising smarter is also the best way to achieve continual, progressive gains in fitness, health, and well-being.

Exercising smarter means doing what you're capable of doing, and then doing a little bit more. For example, if you're a runner and typically run three miles a day, three times a week, it wouldn't be smart to do an eight-mile run the next time you go out. The likely outcome would be a strained muscle, shin splints, or worse. If you lift weights and typically bench press 100 pounds, it wouldn't be smart to find out what it feels like to bench press 150 pounds. What it could feel like is a back, neck, or shoulder injury. In either scenario, the price paid for attempting to train "harder" is at least two weeks of down time, possibly much longer, while you recover from your injury. Of course, we've all made mistakes and sometimes training injuries just happen, but tempting fate by doing too much is not, in fact, "smart."

The goal with any type of exercise is to progress gradually over time.¹ For example, if you're 60 years old and haven't exercised for many years, a walking program is a good way to begin. On your first day, walk at a comfortable, steady pace for 10 minutes. That may not feel like much, but you will be increasing your total time over the next four to six weeks. The next day, add a couple of minutes. As long as you're continuing to feel good, add a couple of minutes on every second day or so, building up consistently to a total of 30 minutes per day. At this point, you're walking 30 minutes per day, five times per week. Next, every second day or so, increase your pace by a bit.

Don't increase your pace if you feel uncomfortable or feel as if you're working too hard. Be in tune with what you're doing. After four to six weeks of gradually increasing your pace, you'll probably be able to walk 30 minutes per day, five days a week, at a nice brisk pace.² You may also notice that you've lost some weight,³ you feel more flexible, you're standing more upright, your skin has a nice, healthy glow, and you're sleeping more soundly and more restfully.

Use the same gradual approach with strength training. Start with lighter weights, not heavier weights, than you think you can use. With lighter weights, you can build up your strength over time. With weights that are too heavy, there's always the danger of incurring an injury that will set you back and interfere with your training. Exercising smarter leads to consistent gains in strength, muscle mass, ability to do physical work, and overall health.

It's natural to want to exercise harder. But exercising smarter is the way to go for long-term benefit without the danger of time-wasting injuries. Exercising smarter is the effective way to maximize the value of our investment in physical fitness.

www.atlanticchirofl.com

¹Braham R, et al: Can we teach moderate intensity activity? Adult perception of moderate intensity walking. J Sci Med Sport 15(4):322-326, 2012

²Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Vital signs: walking among adults - United States, 2005 and 2010. MMWR Morbid Mortal Wkly Rep 61:595-601, 2012

³Exercise training and impaired glucose tolerance in obese humans. McNeilly AM, et al: J Sports Sci 30(8):725-732, 2012

The Snack Trap

We've all heard that snacking is great for the metabolism...but have you taken it too far?
In other words, your excessive snacking may be killing your fitness results.

Let's face it, there are only so many extra calories that the body can take before it adds those on as unwanted fat. Even if you're eating perfectly healthy meals and putting in your time at the gym, if your snacking is out of control then your results will be disappointing.

Here's what you need to know to avoid The Snack Trap:

1) Calories Count. Even when you're snacking on "healthy" food, you've got to keep track of how many calories that you're taking in. Almonds are healthy, but if you down 800 extra calories in them you'll quickly gain weight.

2) Fill Up on Protein & Fat. A lot of well-meaning people are still afraid of fat. They think that if their snack is high in fat then it will end up on their body as fat. This is simply not true. Healthy fat, such as avocado or almonds, is a wonderful thing to snack on as it fills you up and keeps you full longer.

3) Avoid Sugar Calories. Sugar is an awful thing to snack on when weight loss is your goal. Refined sugar is a catalyst for fat storage, so avoid any snack that contains sugar. Remember that eating sugar will satiate your hunger for a very short period of time, and then you'll quickly be hungry again.

4) Don't Be Fooled By 100-Calorie Packs. A popular marketing technique is to package junk food into 100-calorie packs. These could be crackers, cookies, chips...basically any guilty snack food you could think of. The premise is that since you're only eating 100 calories, the snack is healthy. I'm sorry, folks, but eating 100 calories of junk food is not a healthy snack. You are better off avoiding the junk completely and eating something wholesome.

5) Use The 'Is It Real' Test. As a rule of thumb, you should use the "Is it real?" test when deciding if a snack is worth eating. The test goes like this: If your snack can go bad, then it's good for you. If your snack can't go bad, then it's bad for you. The idea is to eat fresh, real foods that are unprocessed and wholesome. These real foods are naturally filled with fiber, vitamins, and minerals and will assist you in achieving your fitness goals.

6) Avoid Refined Carbohydrates. Processed and refined carbohydrates make up the bulk of popular snack foods. Take a look around the snack aisle at the grocery store and you will see that most packaged snacks are made with grains. When your goal is to lose weight and increase lean muscle then eating refined grains will work against you. If you only take one tip away from this article, let it be to remove grain-based snacks from your life. This single change could very well recharge your weight loss.

Now you know how to snack in a healthy way that will not derail your fitness goals.

Remember that exercise plays a huge part in getting in shape and losing weight.

Call or email our office today to get started on a results-driven nutrition program.
www.atlanticchirofl.com
(386) 492-4881

5 Fitness Snacks

1. Hard Boiled Egg and Sliced Veggies.
2. Sliced Apple and Almond Butter.
3. Natural, Low Sodium Jerky.
4. Seasonal Berries with 1/4 cup of Almonds.
5. A Bag of Homemade Kale Chips. See recipe below.

Guilt-Free Kale Chip Snack

Salty, crunchy snack foods are a weakness for most people. Instead of eating chips or popcorn or crackers, which quickly add up in unwanted pounds, make a batch of these delicious, crunchy kale chips. Kale chips are low in carbs and make a delicious crunchy snack.
Servings: 5

Here's what you need

• 1 bunch kale, washed and torn, stems discarded
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• dash of salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl mix the kale pieces with all of the ingredients.
3. Spread evenly on foil-lined baking sheets.
4. Bake for 12 minutes, watching closely that they do not burn. Remove from oven when crispy.

Nutritional Analysis: 51 calories, 3g fat, 68mg sodium, 5g carbohydrate, 1g fiber, 2g protein

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Yoga May Improve Common Heart Ailment

The University of Kansas Medical Center recently reported that regular yoga classes appeared to decrease occurrences of a common heart condition known as atrial fibrillation in patients, as well as decreasing stress and improving their overall well-being.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a condition in which the heart's upper chambers quiver chaotically instead of contracting normally. The attacks are painful and often prevent the patients from enjoying regular activities. People with AF are often prescribed drugs such as beta blockers to help control their heart rate and rhythm, but the medicines don't alleviate symptoms for all patients. The American Heart Association estimates that about 2.7 million people in the U.S. have the heart condition.

The new study included 49 people who'd had atrial fibrillation for an average of five years. Researchers began by tracking study volunteers' heart symptoms, blood pressure and heart rate, as well as their anxiety, depression and general quality of life. The participants then went to group yoga classes at least twice a week for three months, again reporting on their symptoms and quality of life. All of the patients were on stable medications throughout the study period. The patients reported a 50 percent drop of AF occurrences, which was also confirmed by heart monitors. Anxiety scores declined from an average of 34, on a scale of 20 to 80, to 25 after three months of yoga. Reported depression and general mental health improved as well. The researchers pointed out that the classes may make their arrhythmia "more tolerable" and reduce visits to the emergency room when symptoms flare up. However, the classes were not suggested as an alternative to regular medical care.


Source: Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2013. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2012.11.060
www.atlanticchirofl.com

The Problem With Stress!

We live in stressful times. The economy is tough, global conflicts rage, severe weather events are affecting people in every corner of the globe, and our numerous technological devices don't seem to be making things any easier. Of course, this is nothing new. Every generation thinks theirs is the best of times and the worst of times. But the result is that people everywhere have high levels of stress.






Sometimes stress is a good thing. Mechanical stress, such as exercise, causes your muscles and bones to become stronger and your nerve system to become smarter. Taking on a new assignment at work or taking a challenging class in school may be stressful, but the effort involved in achieving a successful result will cause you to grow and develop in ways that you might not have imagined. After all, the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously said "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

But chronic, ongoing physical and mental stress, the kind that affects us every day, is not good for us. Chronic stress causes real psychological and physical problems. People undergoing chronic stress may develop anxiety, which if not managed effectively may lead to depression. Chronic stress may lead to a variety of disorders and diseases, including arthritis, inflammatory conditions such as Crohn's disease, gastrointestinal problems such as peptic ulcer, diabetes,¹ high blood pressure,² and even heart attacks and stroke.³ As we are all subject to numerous stresses every day, both personal and work-related, it's very important for us to develop strategies that will be successful in helping us manage ongoing stresses.

The most important method for managing stress is to attempt to focus your point-of-view, your frame of reference, on the present moment. Our minds are constantly in motion, constantly at work creating new thoughts and new scenarios regarding some potentially stressful situation, or rehashing old conversations, old conflicts, and old problems. The result is that we're almost never at peace. When we try to sit down and relax for a bit, it's never too long before our minds start bringing up the exact things we'd like to be able to forget or ignore, at least for a little while. Most of us can't flip a metaphorical switch and shut off our incessant stream of mostly negative self-talk. But we can learn to remind ourselves to return to the present, to come back to this moment, the one that's happening now.

The best way to do this is to ask yourself, "is this [what I'm thinking about] happening right now?" If you can see that what's happening now is that you're sitting in a chair reading the newspaper, you have a good chance of being able to let go of what your mind is talking to you about. Say to yourself, "I'm right here, right now, and none of that other stuff is actually happening right now." This will help you create some distance from your self-talk, and the self-talk may even recede into the background for a while. The feeling of calm you might then experience is one you can build on. The more you practice returning to the moment, the more power you gain in being able to manage the stress in your life.

 

 Our office uses various techniques and methods to restore proper spinal alignment. The direct result is improved functioning of your nerve system, which directly improves the functioning of all your other body systems.

One of the structural problems addressed by chiropractic care is a "facilitated segment." This is a section of your spinal cord that is being bombarded by too many nerve signals. These nerve signals arrive at the wrong times and in too great a quantity. Physical pain and other diseases and disorders can develop as a result of a facilitated segment.

Stress makes facilitated segments (and their effects) worse. By aligning your spine, we can help reduce and resolve these irritated segments of your spinal cord. As a result, the stresses in your life have less physiological impact. You become better able to interact with people and situations, and become better able to manage stress.

Look for our upcoming Wellness Workshop on Stress Management to learn strategies for better dealing with stress.

www.atlanticchirofl.com

¹Bener A, et al: Association between psychological distress and gastrointestinal symptoms in diabetes mellitus. World J Diabetes 3(6):123-129, 2012

²van Dijk, AE, et al: The association between prenatal psychosocial stress and blood pressure in the child at age 5-7 years. PLoS One 7(8):e43548, 2012

³Pereira VH, et al: Stressed brain, diseased heart: A review on the pathophysiologic mechanisms of neurocardiology. Int J Cardiol 2012 Apr 20 [Epub ahead of print]

 

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