Many people look for a short cut to regain their health by trying to find that magic pill, certain exercise or gadget that will give them instant health.  None exist.  True health is not obtained or maintained by doing one thing often or doing it really well.  True health is a lifestyle which has five factors contributing to the overall performance of the human body.  These factors are stress management, good nutrition and hydration, regular exercise, a good night sleep and regular chiropractic adjustments.   Health is like excellence, they are both created by being consistent with self discipline and great habits.

The best way to eliminate or dissolve bad habits is to create new ones to replace the old.  We must make sure we see the big picture as to “why” we want to create new habits in the first place.  If our “why” is not strong enough, we are setting ourselves up for failure from the start.  What is the end result we are looking for?  Is it weight loss, more energy or getting better performance out of our bodies? We must have a specific outcome and picture it in our mind’s eye.  Then we must create a plan of specific steps that we can do daily to achieve our goals.  Once a plan is created, all we have to do is focus and execute our plan.

What lifestyle habits do you need to create to incorporates all the factors for great health?  Let’s look at them one at a time.   

The first factor and the most important one, is stress management.  You may not realize this but the more stress you are under, the more the overall function of your body goes down.  When your body becomes exhausted and can’t adapt to stress anymore, it will let you know by causing symptoms.  If you don’t manage or reduce your stress efficiently, it does not matter what treatment you do, you will only get marginal results at best.  According to Dr. Hans Selye in his book “The Stress of Life,” stress is the only disease we have to fight, but it comes in 3 forms: mechanical, emotional and nutritional [i].

When I mention mechanical stress, I am talking about the musculoskeletal system and the structure of your body.  Examples are poor posture, flat feet, subluxations in your spine or old injuries that did not heal properly.  Chiropractors are excellent at assisting you in correcting and maintaining the structure of your body.

Emotional stress has to deal with relationship difficulties with your spouse, family, friends, coworkers or boss.  Everyone has emotional stress to some degree.  It is not about how much stress you have.  The better question is, what do you do to diffuse your emotional stress, daily or frequently?  Exercising, yoga, meditation, journaling and talking issues out with a trusted family member or friend are all examples of how to diffuse emotional stress.

Nutritional stress consists of two things: quality of food you consume and your body’s ability to digest, absorb and assimilate the nutrition from the food.    When you are eating a very clean diet and are still having health problems, it is not a question of the diet but one of your digestive system and if it is functioning properly.  (I see this all the time in my practice.)  The process of digestion, absorption and assimilation are three processes that work independent of one another.  A domino effect occurs when your digestion is weak.  If you can’t digest your food well, the chances are that your absorption and assimilation are off as well.  Even if you don’t have any digestion symptoms, it could be a subclinical condition.

The second factor that contributes to a healthy lifestyle is good nutrition and staying hydrated with water.  The human body is a machine, like a car.  You need to fuel your body with high quality nutrition so it can run efficiently.  This is done through eating a clean diet.  There are a lot of people out there that try to make diet complex.  Diet is not complex, it is very simple.   If man makes it, don’t eat it.  85% of what you eat should be plant based: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds and nuts.   15% should come from animal products: free range chicken and eggs, wild caught fish and grass fed beef.

Proper hydration with water also plays a significant factor in your overall health.  60-70% of the human body is composed of water.   Symptoms of mild dehydration include chronic pains in joints and muscles, lower back pain, headaches, hunger pangs and constipation.   The rule of thumb for water consumption is however much you weigh in pounds divide that by two and that is how many ounces of water you should consume daily.  If you exercise, you should consume even more.

The third factor is regular moderate exercise.  There are 3 components to exercise; stretching, strength training and cardiovascular fitness.  The Center for Disease Control recommends for adults 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity (i.e., brisk walking) every week and muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest,  shoulders, and arms)[ii].

The fourth factor a good sleep.   My patients that have sleep problems take longer to heal if they can even heal at all.  Sleep is very important to our health.  The quality of your sleep directly affects the quality of your waking life, including your mental sharpness, productivity, emotional balance, creativity, physical vitality, and even your weight. No other activity delivers so many benefits with so little effort[iii]!

The last factor is getting regular chiropractic adjustments.  Your brain communicates and controls every organ, tissue and cell in your body.  It does this through the spinal nerves that exit from your spine.  If your spine is misaligned or subluxated, research shows that you can have up to a 60% loss of nerve conduction in that one spinal nerve [iv]. This will have a significant impact on the function of the muscles and organ(s) that nerve communicates with.   Notice that I didn’t say you will have pain with the subluxation.  Pain only shows up in the most extreme or acute situation.  You will have varying degrees of loss of function before you experience pain.  This will show up as fatigue, headaches, digestion difficulties, numbness or tingling, continual tightness or stiffness regardless of how much you stretch, just to name a few.  Making chiropractic as part of your wellness lifestyle will add years to your life and life to your years.

Health is very simple.  Your body will tell you everything you need to know about your health.  You just need to learn to listen to it.  And when it speaks, do something about it right then and there or that day.  The problem is that we tend to put ours head down, ignore our body and barrel through life.  Then we wake up 20-30 years later and are diagnosed with one or multiple chronic degenerative diseases in awe of where they came from.

I am a fan of baby steps.  Out of all the things I mentioned in this article, pick one habit to change and do that one habit for 1 month.  Pick the easiest thing for you to start with and fully commit to it.  Then the following month start with another one.  Then at the end of the year, you have 12 new habits and it doesn’t seem so overwhelming.  Starting with 3-4 habits, you are likely to become overwhelmed and set yourself up for failure.  Baby step your way to better health.  Your health is what you make of it, ignore it and your health will leave you.

Do you think that there was a flaw in the design of the human body so that some people are plagued with allergies and not others?  Do you experience mild sinus congestion or post nasal drip on a daily basis?  Or do you experience seasonal allergies spanning 2-4 episodes of sinus congestion a year?  Sniffles after eating a specific food or when you overindulge with the amount of food you eat in one sitting?  Can you identify with any of these scenarios?  Are allergies more of a functional problem with your body or are they a pathological condition?  What really causes allergies? 

There are 3 causes to ALL symptoms and disease: mechanical, emotional and nutritional STRESS.  When there is too much stress on your body from a mechanical, emotional or nutritional source or a combination of the three, your digestion system becomes compromised.  When you can’t digest your food properly, you can develop leaky gut syndrome which then challenges your immune system to work harder do to it’s job.  When your immune system is challenged beyond its capabilities, it causes your lymphatic system to become slow and congested.  This is also known as autointoxication.   Now your internal environment becomes filled with toxins and forces your kidneys to work harder.  The kidneys are the endpoint of your lymphatic system.  The main function of the kidney is to filter out and eliminate waste and toxins in the blood stream.  When your kidneys can’t filter out your blood due to the amount or size of the toxins, these toxins keep circulating around and around in your blood stream and clog up your lymphatic system.  This situation stresses the kidneys and they can’t perform well due to the work load and being undernourished.  These toxins then deposit in your body where circulation slows down.  A great place for them to deposit are in the sinuses.  When you breathe in pollen, animal dander, dust, smoke or whatever it is that you are allergic to they adhere to these toxins already in your sinuses causing an inflammatory or allergic reaction. You then get sinus congestion/infection or one of the conditions I mentioned above. What people don’t understand is that if the toxins weren’t there to begin with, you wouldn’t experience that inflammatory or allergic response. (i.e. no toxins, no allergies) 

For natural solutions to these conditions you can follow me on:
Facebook: Keith Giaquinto
Twitter: DrKG
Website: www.YourDigestionDoctor.com

I understand that people are concerned and do get effected by what is going around.  At the same time your body is perfectly capable of handling what is going around provided that you take responsibility for yourself and own health.  The human body is an awesome self monitoring and regulating machine.  It knows exactly what to do every time we get sick or injured.  We don’t need to out smart our body, we just need to give it what it needs to function optimally.  Inside us, we have this amazing police force called our immune system.  The immune system can fight off anything that comes its way when it is strong.  What the immune system needs is a properly functioning nervous system, nutritional support and efficient waste removal.

Here are 6 things you can do to make your immune system stronger and keep it there.

1.  Awareness of your body.  You can’t change things if you are not aware of them.  If you are tired, slow down and rest more. If you are stressed out, make time for yourself to re-charge.  Your body will tell you everything you need to know, you just need to listen to it.

2.  Sleep more.  When we sleep we aren’t spending energy on moving, thinking or digesting our food.  All of our body’s energy can be used for our immune system to clean up and restore our body.  Therefore, our immune system is the strongest when we sleep.

3.  Stay hydrated.  Being consistent with our water intake can keep our lymphatic system moving and cleaner.  Rule of thumb for water intake.  However much you weigh in pounds divide that by two and that is how many ounces of water you should drink every day.  (150 lbs. divided by 2 = 75 ounces of water intake)

4.  Eat more fruits and vegetables.  Nutritionally supporting your body and immune system with nutrient dense foods like apples, oranges, pineapple, cranberries, peaches, cherries, papaya, carrots, parsley, beets, kale, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, and tomatoes.  For a convenient way to get all that nutrition everyday, click here.

5.  Avoid sugar.  Foods like bagels, breads, pasta, soda, candy, fruit juices unless your juice them yourself weakens and slow down our immune system.  Multigrain breads are okay. 

6.  Get adjusted.  Chiropractic research shows that an adjustment of the spine boosts your immune system 100-200%. 

http://www.sitochiropractic.com/immune.html

Below is an email I received from my pediatrician that I completely agree with.

From Jay Gordon, MD FAAP

Swine Flu/Tamiflu April 26, 2009

Just wash your hands.

Every year, hundreds of viruses pass through the pediatric and adult community. Many of the bugs are disruptive and keep kids out of school and adults away from work. Some of the viruses have unique signs and symptoms, but most just cause amorphous aches, sneezing, coughing or intestinal upset.

Influenza viruses, especially new ones, trigger more news stories and can be made to seem much more frightening and dangerous than they really are. Government agencies and media don’t supply statistical context and make it sound like you’ve got a “fifty-fifty” chance of contracting this new virus. They then make it sound like a lot of people who get this influenza end up in the hospital and may die. Statistically, nothing could be further from the truth: The chance that the new virus is really dangerous is small. The chance that you’ll get it is much, much smaller, and the possibility that you or a family member will be harmed by the virus is so slim that the news should be on page twenty, not page one.

Swine Flu is a virus for which there is no vaccine, no threat to your family and there are undoubtedly tens of thousands of harmless undiagnosed cases throughout the world. The news stories are probably taking a hundred questionable respiratory deaths in Mexico and guessing.

There actually is a very, very small chance that this virus could cause severe illness and whenever this occurs hospitalization and even fatalities are reported. The likelihood of a pandemic is miniscule, but newspapers, governments agencies and the manufacturers of pharmaceuticals do their best work and make their biggest sales when people are scared.

Tamiflu is recommended for treatment and prevention of this influenza virus. The company which gets the drug’s royalties (Gilead) has as a major stockholder–previously Chairman–one Donald Rumsfeld.

Local pharmacies are already running low on Tamiflu.

Connect these dots. 

http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKN2445216420090424

http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/tamiflu.asp

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/fortune_rumsfeld/

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE53O17O20090425

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=200904251215dowjonesdjonline000319&title=who-says-initial-findings-show-swine-flu-responds-to-tamiflu

The usual boring admonitions apply: wash your hands, stay well-rested and well-hydrated. You do not need to buy Tamiflu. It is an effective antiviral drug but has possible side effects.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/health-illness/treatment/medicine/medications/tamiflu-psych.htm

As far as our office prescribing Tamiflu, we would rather not, but we will if you insist. I promise you that I personally am purchasing none for my family and would recommend the same to you.

Best,

Jay

For natural solutions to these conditions you can follow me on:
Facebook: Keith Giaquinto
Twitter: DrKG
Website: www.YourDigestionDoctor.com

]]> http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/swine-flu/feed/ 0 keithgiaquinto http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/to-sleep-or-not-to-sleep/ http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/to-sleep-or-not-to-sleep/#comments Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:16:07 +0000 keithgiaquinto http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/?p=47 ]]>  As I see patients over a period of time, I start to see patterns in their health, behavior and lifestyle choices they make on a daily basis.  One thing that I am seeing recently is that people tend to get up, get ready for work, hit the automatic pilot button and go, go, go until they run out of energy at the end of the day 12 hours later.  Then the weekend comes, they go out with friends and are still on the run.  They do this week in and week out.  Does this sound like any of you?  Don’t get me wrong, we need to work and spend time with family and friends.   But what about YOU?  You need time for you to slow down, relax, breathe and sleep to recharge your battery so you can keep going.  Let’s take a look at what happens to people as they live the above example.

It’s overwhelming to see a lot of my patients experience this.  I am constantly advising them to take more time for themselves and sleep more.  Sleep is a very important part of our health.  Getting into the R.E.M. sleep is the only time our body has the ability to repair itself from the daily wear and tear.  It is also when our immune system is the strongest.  When my patients don’t take this advice, they don’t get better or it takes them a lot longer to heal and they get frustrated.  When they do sleep at least 7- 8 hours a night consistently, it is amazing to watch firsthand how the human body knows exactly what to do with their stressful circumstances and it heals very quickly. 

For natural solutions to these conditions you can follow me on:
Facebook: Keith Giaquinto
Twitter: DrKG
Website: www.YourDigestionDoctor.com

]]> http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/to-sleep-or-not-to-sleep/feed/ 0 keithgiaquinto http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/stress-levels-on-the-rise-health-on-the-decline/ http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/stress-levels-on-the-rise-health-on-the-decline/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:37:46 +0000 keithgiaquinto http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/?p=36 ]]>

Everyone knows that when we have increased stress levels in our lives, whether it’s at work or in our personal lives or in these times of financial uncertainty, in due time our health also gets compromised.   We all have had an ongoing stressful situation at one point or another and after a while we tend to get sick. You might not notice it, because it has been happening over a period of time, but one day you wake up and say… “What happened to my body?” 

Well here’s a snapshot of what happens when the body is stressed.

Hormones are released from the adrenal glands to physiologically combat the stress.  Our subconscious nervous system gets locked into the sympathetic mode (fight, fright or flight). Over time our body becomes exhausted, nutritionally depleted and full of excessive waste and toxins.

Chances are you have probably stopped exercising, eating nutritionally sound meals and have numbed some of the stress with food, alcohol, or other unhealthy choices to combat the stress itself.  At this point, our bodies can no longer adapt to the stress and we start to feels the symptoms of exhaustion.

Some of the most common signs that our body is not functioning as it should include:
Insomnia, fatigue, headaches, sinus congestion, cough, sore throat, general body aches or flu like symptoms.   These signs are often seen as a quick blame on “whatever is going around” and the behavior continues on in the same manner.  Often an over the counter medication is used to alleviate the symptoms, but it fails to address the REAL reason your body is breaking down. 

What most of us don’t understand is that stress is really the only disease that we have to fight. You may ask, well how would I or my physician physically IDENTIFY stress on my body?  Here are some simple things you can do to combat stress so it doesn’t slow you down, and interfere with your health:

There are three forms of stress: Mechanical/Physical, Emotional/Energetic, and Nutritional/Chemical. 

MECHANICAL/PHYSICAL STRESS
Our body is like a car and needs regular mechanical tune ups. To release the physical stress you can do things like exercising which would entail cardiovascular and or strength training, Yoga, Pilates, stretching your body, resting or sleeping more.  To support the times when you are unable to manage self care or are experiencing pain or discomfort, I highly recommend turning to professionals that can offer you massage, physical training, chiropractic care and so on.

EMOTIONAL/ENERGETIC
To release emotional stress use techniques like journaling, meditation, or talking things out with a trusted friend or family member. There are also many practitioners in this area to support your well being. Some of my favorite people to go to in these situations are Energetic practitioners or Spiritual counselors.

NUTRITIONAL/CHEMICAL
The best way to deal with nutritional stress is to eat a balanced diet, limit your intake of processed foods, eat more nutritionally dense foods like fruits and vegetables and take whole food nutritional supplements to support your body’s extra needs are essential. 

In paying attention to stress in these 3 forms we’ve gone over are just a few examples that can help you deal with how stress takes its toll. Please remember that it may also be wise of you to seek a professional’s help.  Ask around for referrals from your friends and family if you don’t have any professionals on your team yet.  It is great to have these people in your pocket when you need them because it is hard to see the picture when you are in the frame yourself.

For natural solutions to these conditions you can follow me on:
Facebook: Keith Giaquinto
Twitter: DrKG
Website: www.YourDigestionDoctor.com

For people who have digestion problems, understand what I am talking about.  In the most severe case, someone who eats a very narrow range of food because every time they eat, they experience bloating, gas, cramps and diarrhea.  These people have a diminished quality of life because their health condition is in control of their life.  I see this all the time in my practice. 

For people with more of a mild to moderate digestion difficulties, they may or may not experience any digestion symptoms at all.  Instead they may experience a chronic pain or tightness in their midback, shoulders and/or neck areas.

Why is digestion so vital for our health? 

The raw materials needed for our body to function optimally are protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, enzymes and water.  We are going to focus on the big guns or macro-nutrients: protein, fat and carbohydrates.  These nutrients are used in the body for growth and repair, a source of energy and regulating body processes.  If one cannot digest their food then these main functions of the body do not receive the raw material they need to continue functioning properly. 
Think of digestion as the first domino of health.  If your digestion is strong, then everything else in your body will fall in place and function well.  However, if your digestion is weak, then this starts a cascade of events in the body which lead down the road to symptoms, degeneration and disease.  You can trace anyone with symptoms, disease or chronic unresolved health conditions back to improper digestion.  They go hand and hand and cannot be separated.  How does one know if they are digesting their food well?  The visceral stress reflex for carbohydrate digestion is under the left anterior rib cage.  The visceral stress reflex for protein digestion is under the right anterior rib cage.  60 minutes after you have eaten a meal, firmly palpate these areas and compare the two.  Let say the right anterior rib cage is tender or tighter then the left side.  Then you are having problems digesting protein.  If the left side is tender or tighter then the right side, then you are having problems digesting carbs.  If they are both tender and/or tight, then you are having a problem digesting both.  And lastly, if neither is tender or tight, then you can digest both well.  Most people can tolerate digestion problems for years, but the impact on the nutritional status of the body can be great.  Ultimately, the accumulative effects of decades of nutritionally depleted body are degeneration and chronic diseases.  Plant enzyme supplementation can help improve digestion along with stress management and chiropractic adjustments.

For natural solutions to these conditions you can follow me on:
Facebook: Keith Giaquinto
Twitter: DrKG
Website: www.YourDigestionDoctor.com

]]> http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/digestion-the-cornerstone-of-health/feed/ 0 keithgiaquinto http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/knee-pain-%e2%80%93-what-causes-it/ http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/knee-pain-%e2%80%93-what-causes-it/#comments Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:09:19 +0000 keithgiaquinto http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/?p=26 ]]> Primary Cause or Secondary Effect?

Knee pain can be very debilitating for some people, especially if you are a physically active person.  If you are used to being active and exercising regularly, knee pain can really set you back.  What most people don’t understand is that even though you experience symptoms of some kind in your knee, the knee itself may not be the primary cause of problem.

If you have recently twisted your knee or have an old injury it’s safe to assume that it may be the cause of the pain.  But, if you have NO HISTORY of stress or trauma to your knee, then the likelihood the knee is the cause of your symptoms is very small.

 Let’s explore what could be happening.

It’s very possible that the cause of your knee pain may be coming from the pelvis and lower back.  In this case,  your knee pain would be the symptom of this misalignment.  If your pelvis and lower back are out of structural alignment, then you will have an imbalance in the length of your legs. 

One leg will become longer and the other will become shorter. This is what is known professionally as a “functional short leg” as opposed to an “anatomical short leg.” An anatomical short leg is when you have fractured one or more of the bones in your leg sometime in your life. 

This can be easily determined by taking a few measurements.  If it is your pelvis or lower back misalignment,  this is now causing a functional short leg and adds more stress to the knee on the side of the short leg.  This would be like walking around all day, everyday with one shoe one and one shoe off.  Over time this will cause extra mechanical stress to your structure.  With every step you take your wearing down the structures of your knee and knee joint. 

Over time your knee cannot adapt to the extra force and wham, you have knee pain. Down the road, if that is not corrected you could find yourself with degeneration and arthritis. Once the structure of the pelvis and lower back are aligned, the extra stress on the knee is normalized and the symptoms disappear.

It starts with strengthening your knee joint  and making sure that your lower back and pelvis are in proper alignment. Symptoms are your body’s way of saying to you that something is not functioning properly. Once you find the  source of stress on your body minimize it and restore normal function, your body has no choice but to be healthy!  

For natural solutions to these conditions you can follow me on:
Facebook: Keith Giaquinto
Twitter: DrKG
Website: www.YourDigestionDoctor.com

]]> http://keithgiaquinto.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/knee-pain-%e2%80%93-what-causes-it/feed/ 0 keithgiaquinto