Don't Let Housework Be a Pain in Your Back

Household chores can be a pain in the sacroiliac. Unless you're careful, routine activities around the home— washing dishes, vacuuming, even talking on the phone— can strain your back, including the sacroiliac area near the tailbone, and result in debilitating discomfort.
But you can protect your back by knowing the right way to go about such activities, according to the American Chiropractic Association (ACA).
Consider lifting. It doesn't matter whether you're picking up your child or a heavy bucket of water, you need to do it the proper way to avoid injury.
How? Bend from the knees, not the waist. As you lift, hold the item as close to your body as possible. If you have to turn to place it, step in the direction of the turn. That way, you're not twisting your body and straining your spine.

Back-Saving Tips

The American Chiropractic Association suggest the following do's and don'ts for chores and relaxation:

• When you wash dishes, open the cabinet beneath the sink, bend one knee and put your foot on the shelf under the sink. Lean against the counter so some of your weight is supported in front.
• When ironing, raise one foot a bit. Place it on a small stool or a book to take some strain off your back.
• To vacuum, use a "fencer's stance." Put all your weight on one foot, then step forward and back with the other foot as you push the vacuum forward and back. Use the back foot as a pivot when you turn.
• While talking on the phone, don't cradle the phone between your ear and shoulder. That can lock up the spinal joints in the neck and upper back, and cause pain. Instead, hold the phone with your hand or use the speakerphone.
• While watching television or relaxing, don't use the sofa arm as a pillow. The angle is much too sharp for your neck.
• Use a cold pack if your back begins to hurt. Wrap an ice pack in a towel moistened with warm water. The warmth gives way to gradual cold, which likely will alleviate the discomfort. (No ice? Try frozen veggies instead.)
• If pain persists for more than a day or two or if you experience numbness, tingling or weakness in your arms or legs, see a doctor of chiropractic. A doctor of chiropractic is an expert in spinal health and can help identify and treat your problem. 

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A Fresh Coat of Paint

Regular Chiropractic Care and a Plan for Good Health

Worldwide, the number of people with diabetes, heart disease, and cancer continues to increase. Despite the expenditure of well over $100 billion in pharmaceutical research and new drug development, the impact on global health in the area of chronic disease has not been significant. It is reasonable to conclude that solutions to these dire problems lie elsewhere. In fact, lifestyle has come to be recognized as the key factor in both causation and treatment of these life-threatening disorders. A healthy diet, regular vigorous exercise, and sufficient rest are the cornerstones of such meaningful lifestyle change. Regular chiropractic care is a critical supplement to these healthy lifestyle choices, as it provides necessary support to the functioning of the nerve system, your body's master system. With a healthy nerve system, your body is able to make the best use of the good things you're providing in terms of food, exercise, and rest. Adding regular chiropractic care to your lifestyle plan contributes substantially to your overall health and well-being.

As all real estate brokers know, a fresh coat of paint will make any property look good. Whether your home is a row house in Baltimore, a Paris atelier, or even a Winnebago, a new coat of paint will bring a shine to the interior and put a smile on the faces of both residents and guests. You may find that a similar smile will appear on your face and the faces of your friends and family members when you engage in activities that provide you with a metaphorical fresh coat of paint. Specifically, you'll obtain your "new look" by incorporating a healthy diet and regular, vigorous exercise in your daily routine.^1,2
But what exactly is "a healthy diet," and what is really meant by "regular, vigorous exercise"? A healthy diet consists in a daily practice of consuming food from all five food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, and dairy. Importantly, a healthy diet includes at least five daily servings of fresh fruits and vegetables. Overall, the more colors on your plate, the better. If you're consistently eating yellow, green, red, blue, orange, and purple foods such as squash, corn, grapefruit, kale, broccoli, apples, peppers, blueberries, carrots, oranges, potatoes, and eggplant, you're well on your way toward a lifelong healthy diet.
The grains food group contains whole grains such as whole wheat, brown rice, bulgur, and barley. For those who require gluten-free whole grains, the numerous choices include amaranth, buckwheat, quinoa, brown rice, and teff. The protein food group includes beef, lamb, chicken, eggs, fish, beans and peas, and nuts and seeds. There are plenty of protein sources for vegetarians and others who don't eat meat or other foods derived from animals such as eggs and milk. The dairy group is included to provide sources of calcium.³ These foods include low-fat and fat-free choices such as milk, yoghurt, and cheese. If you're a vegetarian or have allergies to dairy products, other sources of calcium include kale, collard greens, spinach, salmon, sardines, blackstrap molasses, and beans. For men and women aged 19 to 50, the recommended daily requirement for calcium is 1000mg. For women over age 50 and men over age 70, the recommended daily requirement for calcium is 1200mg.
Regular, vigorous exercise means doing at least 30 minutes of exercise five days a week. Walking, running, bike riding, swimming, using an elliptical machine or treadmill, and weight training are all good choices. Lifting weights three times a week and doing some form of aerobic exercise two times a week is one example of such a program of vigorous daily exercise. For some people, walking five days a week for at least 30 minutes each day represents an optimal program. Find out what works best for you and do that consistently. Change your program every few months to keep both your mind and body challenged. Again, the specific form of exercise is not critical. What works for one person will not work for another. The key is consistency. Five days a week, at least 30 minutes a day.
Your fresh coat of paint is not merely metaphorical. Once your new lifestyle changes take effect, probably within three to six weeks, you'll begin to develop an inner glow and an outer glow that will be visible for all to see.
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¹King DE, et al: Impact of healthy lifestyle on mortality in people with normal blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, and C-reactive protein. Eur J Prev Cardiol 20(1):73-79, 2013
²Lopresti AL, et al: A review of lifestyle factors that contribute to important pathways associated with major depression: diet, sleep and exercise. J Affect Disord 148(1):12-27, 2013
³Nachtigall MJ, et al: Osteoporosis risk factors and early life-style modifications to decrease disease burden in women. Clin Obstet Gynecol 56(4):650-653, 2013

Root Vegetables

Regular Chiropractic Care Makes Good Food Better

Under the hood, the deceptively simple process of eating initiates an exceedingly complex chain of events. From the first bite of that apple, pasta dish, or corned beef sandwich, countless cells, tissues, enzymes, and hormones are called into action to enable you to derive the maximum nutrition from the good food you're eating. Of course, the activities of the digestive system are tightly coordinated. But such coordination requires a master plan. Your digestive system's master plan unfolds under the direction of your brain and nerve system. Your nerve system transmits information between your brain and your organs of digestion, making sure that everything is done timely and effectively. But spinal misalignments and nerve interference can cause problems, leading to gastrointestinal symptoms and even disease. By detecting spinal misalignments and correcting the cause of nerve interference, regular chiropractic care helps make sure your digestive system is working the way it was designed to work. In this way, regular chiropractic care helps make sure your family and you get the most out of your good food and enjoy long-lasting health and wellness.

In decades past, very few urban kids had ever even heard of a parsnip, a fennel bulb, or a bunch of kale. In those days, fruit and vegetable consumption typically consisted of apples, bananas, corn, potatoes, peas, and lettuce. Oranges were infrequent and grapefruit was a rarity. Today a veritable cornucopia of produce is available year-round, providing the possibility for substantial variety in a family's daily diet. But with the exception of families that include dedicated foodies, most diets could still be considered reasonably barren with respect to consumption of a range of healthful fruits and vegetables. Importantly, taking the single step of providing a variety of produce for the daily table will lead to multiple benefits in terms of health and wellness.1

Eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables is so valuable that this daily habit ranks high on the list of federal health and public policy recommendations focusing on nutrition. In the United States, the Department of Agriculture has launched the ChooseMyPlate campaign to support public policy, highlighting the five main food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, protein foods, and dairy. The ChooseMyPlate program recommends that fully one-half of every plate of food consist of fruits and vegetables.

Physiologically, all bodily systems, most especially the gastrointestinal system and immune system, depend on nutrition gained from fruits and vegetables.2,3 Consuming fresh produce daily enables the gastrointestinal system, that is, your stomach, small intestine, and large intestine, to process food effectively and facilitate the transit of food throughout the stomach and intestines. Deficiency of fresh fruits and vegetables will slow transit time, resulting in blockage, bloating, and compromised regularity. Similarly, immune system functioning depends critically on the availability of specific nutrients derived from fresh produce. These nutrients, known as phytochemicals, provide biochemicals that aid immune system cells such as neutrophils, macrophages, and natural killer cells in defending the body against bacteria, viruses, and other microscopic disease-causing invaders.

Nature has provided us with an easy means of identifying the types of produce that contain the most healthful nutrition: the more colorful the fruit or vegetable, the more phytochemicals and other nutrients it contains. For example, foods rich in phytochemicals include blueberries, carrots, greens such as kale and chard, broccoli, apples, oranges, beets, rutabaga, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. Produce such as bananas do not contain many phytochemicals, but are still valuable sources of complex carbohydrates.

Thus, all of us, both children and adults, need our daily portions of fresh fruits and vegetables. Of course, merely having this information is not sufficient. Action is required. A four-week trial of adding fresh produce to your family's daily diet should provide many indicators of the available health benefits of these marvelous foods. Such evidence will likely be sufficient to cause a healthful long-term shift in your family's dietary habits with numerous positive outcomes in the years to come.
Sources
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1Zhang YJ, et al: Antioxidant Phytochemicals for the Prevention and Treatment of Chronic Diseases. Molecules 20(12): 21138-21156, 2015
2Guillermo Gormaz J, et al: Potential Role of Polyphenols in the Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases: Molecular Bases. Curr Med Chem. 2015 Nov 27. [Epub ahead of print]
3Ghosh N, et al: Chronic Inflammatory Diseases: Progress and Prospect with Herbal Medicine. Curr Pharm Des. 2015 Nov 12. [Epub ahead of print]