For too long we focused on improving the appearance of our body’s musculature physique. We dieted to look thin. Lifted weights to improve arm and leg tone. Pounded out thousands of crunches and situps to develop our abs, and spent countless hours on cardio equipment and in exercise classes, all to appear and feel strong.

Fitness equipment became more advanced as the years progressed. We went from hand held free weights and flimsy looking universal gyms, to Nautilus, Hammer Strength machines, and other lines of weight loaded equipment. Through all of the fitness buzz and fancy equipment it is very possible that we may have been missing out on an essential workout component to strengthen a portion of our body that is absolutely crucial for improving overall agility, stability, and strength as well as for preventing injuries to the spine and extremities.

Often overlooked because it is buried beneath all of that hard earned, toned physique, the missing link is the core muscle group. A strong core provides a powerful and supportive infrastructure for the body. The core is capable of predicting and interpreting information from the external environment and stabilizing the body to prevent slips and falls. The core is also the foundation for providing the initial explosion behind a kick or punch. A weak core will lead to an overall decrease in functional movement ability and will lead to more susceptability to injury.

Dancers, Yogis, and Pilates practitioners have always had the right idea. They have always embraced core development as the center of their practice. Over the years, health and fitness communities have also caught on. “Core strength” has now become a common buzz word. New core strengthening fitness equipment such as stability balls, medicine balls, Bosu balls, and balance boards have become great additions to gyms. Some people have even incorporated core strengthening programs while at work and utilized their fitness balls in place of office chairs.

We know the word “Core strength” but what exactly is “the core”? How do we know that we are doing the necessary exercises to properly isolate and strengthen those muscles? Which pieces of core building fitness equipment are good purchases?

Anatomically, the core is the body minus the legs and arms. The primary core muscle groups are located in the abdominal region, mid back, and low back. Secondary core muscle groups are located in the hips, surrounding the pelvis, and deep inside the pelvic cavity. Building and maintaining a strong core is essential for maintaining proper posture, stabilizing the entire body (in particular the hips, pelvis, and low back), maintaining spinal, rib, and pelvic alignment, interpreting nervous system information for coordinated movements of extremities, and maintaining balance.

Core weakness can be the result of a sedentary lifestyle, weight gain, poor posture, previous injury, pregnancy, and lack of flexibility. An underdeveloped core leads to instability in the pelvic region, hips, and low back. A weak core can lead to discomfort when standing or sitting for long periods, bending, twisting, and lifting, and will inevitably lead to injury. Low back pain and injury is the most obvious, however, core weakness will quietly disrupt proper posture by altering the normal curvature of the low back, and can lead to poor balance.

The core distributes the stress of weight bearing activities, such as running, jumping, and lifting weight. Besides providing stabilization, a powerful core is at the center of all movement. All explosive movements originate from the center of the body (the core) and move outwards to power all active limb movements. The more stable and powerful the core is, the more powerful the force of the extremities.

Now that we know what the core is and have established that a developed core is the foundation for coordinated movements, stabilization, balance, agility, and posture, we need to know how to strengthen it. A core exercise should target all core muscles to be most effective. The workout should optimally be performed at a frequency of at least three times per weeks. Check out the Mayo clinic website for safe and effective core workouts. Look for instructions on performing basic planks, side planks, crunches, bridges, and other core exercises. Go to a Pilates Reformer or mat class. If you work out at home purchase the Core Secrets video featuring Gunner Peterson. To mix up your workout, throw in medicine balls, stability ball exercises, or balancing on wobble boards or Bosu Balls. If you are new to working out or have sustained a past injury, seek out a qualified personal trainer or other trained individual who can help you to safely and effectively utilize the equipment.

Be ready to feel stronger and more agile. Core strength comes more quickly and is far more important then sought after washboard abs and chiseled arms.

Sarah Deam, DC

Human diets have changed substantially over the decades. Unfortunately, many of the changes have been to our demise. Todays diets are high in saturated fat, loaded with preservatives, are often super-sized portions, and contain poor produce quality to name a few. Each has played a part in increasing rates of obesity, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, chronic pain, inflammatory diseases, chronic headaches, among many other health issues. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that supports how significantly poor food choices can have an adverse effect on our health and well being. Simply put, we are in charge of our diets. We can make the choices to consume foods that will be beneficial to our body’s physiology and our good health. What happens when we think we’re making the appropriate food selections but we continue to experience symptoms such as poor digestive, chronic pain, head fog, and neurological issues such as depression and anxiety. It is possible that you may be suffering from a food sensitivity.

Food sensitivities and allergies are more common than we are aware of. A food sensitivity can occur when the immune system perceives a certain protein in food as being a threat to the body. The immune system responds by releasing inflammatory chemicals to “fight off” the invador. Normally, this response is what keeps us safe from illness and infection. Unfortunatly, repetitive consumption of the food’s allergenic properties enable this process to occur again and again, with no chance for the body to recover. Inflammation throughout the body leads to a variety of symptoms and illnesses. You may have symptoms of food sensitivities that you are unaware of, or that you have come to accept as “just a part of your immune system dysfunction”. The following are common conditions that can be associated with a food sensitivity or allergy:

Acid reflux
Constipation
Diarrhea
Chronic headaches
Migraines
Sinus problems
Arthritis
Eczema
Asthma

Irritable Bowel Disease
Chronic Fatigue
Hypothyroidism
ADD/ADHD
Type 1 Diabetes
Gallbladder problems
Osteoporosis
Dementia
Multiple Sclerosis

Gluten, dairy, and eggs are some of the most common foods that people can be sensitive to. Unfortunatly, these ingredients are abundant in our diets.

Gluten is a protein found in wheat, spelt, kamut, barley, and rye. Immune systems of those who have a gluten sensitivity perceive gluten antigens as a foreign invader and activate an inflammatory immune response. This response causes destruction of the intestinal wall and leads to an inability to adequately absorb nutrients from food. This can lead to malnutrition issues such as anemia and osteoporosis. Worse yet, gluten is everywhere in our food supply! Baking powder, pasta, cottage cheese, soy sauce, beer, marshmallows, even stamp adhesives and envelopes. You can view lists of gluten containing foods at www.celiac.com. For more information on gluten sensitivity, visit www.celiac.nih.gov.

Symptoms associated with gluten sensitivity:

Gas
Recurrent abdominal pain and bloating
Chronic diarrhea
Nausea with or without vomiting
Acid reflux
Weight loss or weight gain
Fatigue
Unexplained anemia
Bone or joint pain
Osteoporosis/Osteopenia
Behavioral changes
Tingling or numbness in the legs (from nerve damage)
Muscle cramps
Seizures
Missed menstrual periods (from malnutrition)
Infertility or recent miscarriage
Delayed growth
Failure to thrive in infants
Pale sores inside the mouth (Apothous Ulcers)
Tooth discoloration or loss of enamel

Dairy is a common sensitivity. We are the only species who, for years, have consumed the milk of another species. Human milk and cow’s milk have an entirely different chemical makeup and because humans were never intended to ingest cow’s milk, we lack the proper enzymes to properly digest dairy products. Worse yet, cow’s milk is known to possess 30 antigenic primary properties. Despite all of this information, dairy has become known and is advertised as the “elixer of health” for strong bones and muscles. Many of us began consuming dairy products at a very early age. In addition to the symptoms of lactose intolerance (inability to digest lactose) there are a multitude of other adverse reactions that have been linked to dairy consumption.

Symptoms associated with dairy sensitivities:

Gas
Abdominal bloating/pain
Diarrhea
Constipation
Gastrointestinal bleeding
Anemia
Nausea and vomiting
Acid reflux
Chronic headaches/migraines
Joint pain/arthritis
Rhinitis
Ear infections
Hay fever
Asthma
Eczema
Depression and mood swings
ADHD
Bed wetting in children

Eggs have long been known to be an allergen in children. Most sources recommend that eggs not be introduced into the diet until the age of 2 years. The proteins in the eggs are the culprit of allergic responses. Unfortunately, eggs are in most processed foods in our diets, pastries, pastas, processed meats, some margarines, candy, ect, but can also be hidden ingredients in lotions, shampoos, vaccines, and medications. You may find eggs referenced as Albumin, Globulin, Livetin, Lysozyme, and Lecithin.

Symptoms associated with egg sensitivity:

Abdominal bloating and pain
Diarrhea
Constipation
Nausea and vomiting
Chronic headaches
Migraines
Rhinitis
Asthma
Dermatitis
Eczema
Hives
Itching of the mouth and tongue
Wheezing

Sensitivities to all or even one of these foods may seem overwhelming. The though of illiminating these foods may seem impossible. No so! Todays grocery stores, like Whole Foods, PCC, and Fred Meyer provide many options for gluten, dairy, and egg free diets. Some of the information contained in this article was extracted from the second edition of The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook by Alissa Segersten and Tom Malterre. This book is an excellent source of information on food sensitivities and is loaded with recipes to help your quest to eliminate your food sensitivity related health issues.

Sarah Deam, DC

By Heather Denniston, DC

Sometimes I live in a box. Not a cardboard throw-away that used to house somebody’s new big screen TV. I mean that figurative box that you snuggle up inside when your life is coasting along and things are safe and familiar. That box comes in many shapes and sizes and goes by a plethora of aliases; the comfort zone, the status quo, net neutral existance. You look around and say, “Life isn’t exceptional but it is pretty darn good.” Then you notice that it’s quiet…too quiet. That kind of quiet when clouds roll over your head and you say to yourself, “Huh, I wonder what that rumbling noise is?” Then with a crackle and snap your world as you know it opens up and the ground falls out from your firmly planted feet. It still goes by the same name. Change is a sudden loss of a job. Change is a poor report from the doctor. Change is scary. Change is hard.

In the book, Tuesdays With Morrie, Morrie is a wise professor suffering from the terminal repercussions of ALS. He speaks of his situation and says that he allows five minutes in the morning to feel sorry for himself and then he mentally moves past it and onto what he needs to do and experience to get the most out of his final days. I appreciated his insight because his philosophy relates to change as well. When faced with a big, scary, unanticipated changed, allowing a few minutes to say, “why me” and reflect what you’re losing is okay and a natural part of the process of moving forward. However, you then must pull yourself out of the mire and put one foot in front of the other to create the forward motion needed to navigate the eye of the storm. This forward motion is the only means by which you can emerge on the other side and look back to say, “I understand what I was supposed to learn,” or “I had no idea I was this strong,” and if you’re lucky, “I see why this all had to happen this way and what good things were a result.”

When change hit my life, like the death of my father, or the loss of a valuable friendship, did I say, “Hey, I would like my life to be thrown into upheavel so that I can learn some new things?” No, I am human. I like comfortable, not crazy. But because of the changes in my life, am I more clearer, am I stronger, and am I more prepared for the next snowball that life intends to throw in my face? Yes. Would those character strengthening transformations have happened if the thunder hadn’t rolled and the ground hadn’t opened up? Definitly not.

Change is the obstacle course that we must navigate to achieve wisdom. It is our learning playground. Change forces us outside our metaphorical box into the unknown where are senses are heightened and we can be open to learn new things. Change will ask you what you’re made of and allow you to prove to yourself that you are stronger than you ever imagined.

In the media, as of lately, there has been intense examination of this question as it relates to manipulation of the neck. Much of this information has been taken from an article by
Dr David Phillips. Maybe this will shed some light on the subject and dispel any concerns that you may have caught wind of.
Everything in life that you do has to be assessed as to its risks vs. its rewards. Getting into your car and driving to the store has its risks, but it sure beats carrying groceries in the rain. That’s the reward…convenience. Sure, some neck treatments are safer, but they dont help much either. The reward of getting one’s neck manipulated (or adjusted, as we chiropractors call it) is that you derive the benefit from the procedure to offset the risks. Cervical adjustments are fast, effective, and mainly painless. Acute neck pain, chronic neck pain, whiplash, headaches, equilibrium disorders, arm pain and numbness and many other conditions all respond well to this type of treatment.
Can neck manipulation harm people? Yes, of course it can. Anything that can do good can also do harm. One of the side effects now being scrutinized in the media is the possibility of suffering a stroke after having your neck manipulated. Chiropractors, however, are not the only ones who perform neck manipulations. Lots of other professions do it too: physiotherapists, physiatrists, medical doctors, osteopaths, some massage therapists, and others. Is it safe? In the right hands it is probably the safest medical procedure involving the neck. What is safer? Certainly not drugs, absolutely not surgery, not traction, not short wave, not passive exercise, not any of the common therapies that can effectively be applied to the neck.
There are numerous other scientifically valid connections between people’s necks and suffering a stroke. Such everyday activities as backing up your car, having your hair washed at a hairdress/barber shop, painting a ceiling, sneezing, thrill rides at the fair, wallpapering, yoga, dental work, many sports activites, and the list goes on. These have all been recorded as causes of strokes. Whenever your turn your head to an extreme, you theoretically stretch blood vessels within your cervical spine. Potentially, this momentary stretch can block or tear blood vessels or dislodge a clot. We know that these occurrences are exceedingly rare, but they do happen. In the same manner, complications following neck manipulations are exceedingly rare. It is quite possible that unfair correlations happen, or coincidence, when a patient presents in the chiropractor’s office for a headache; common symptom associated with a pending stroke. Most chiropractors see many patients for headache pains on a daily basis because chiropractic is extremely effective for managing headaches. So the problematic scenario happens when the chiropractor assesses the patient with the headache, and adjusts the patient. Later that evening, the patient is admitted into the ER after having a stroke. The patient could have chosen to stay at home and rest to rid the headache, or could have visited their MD. There choice was to visit their chiropractor because chiropractic adjustments have been effective in the past. The stroke was inevitable. It would have happened regardless of where or how this patient chose to handle their headache symptoms. Unfortunately, for the chiropractor, the stroke will likely be attributed to the adjustment.
So why are chiropractors being singled out? I’m sure there are many reasons for this unfair spotlight. Partly because we do more neck adjustments than anyone else, partly because we have always been the whipping boy of medicine. Partly because the media loves to sensationalize. In addition we have attained great strides in acceptance over the past few years, mainly for lower back pain, and because there is a good deal of interprofessional jealousy over our domain and success of spinal care.
As mentioned above, the all too familiar scenario is that when a person enters the hospital with a stroke and mentions having seen a chiropractor recently, the attending medical personnel attributes the blame to the adjustment. In many cases the time lapse between the chiropractic visit and the stroke symptoms can be an unreasonable period of time, days, or weeks. The patient is not assessed for having been to a hairdresser, or an air show, or asked if they have painted a ceiling, or backed up their car recently. This accusation is grossly unfair and even blatantly dishonest. In 1992, an Australian researcher compiled a list of 430 cases of what he called “cerebrovascular catrastrophies” the majority of which he blamed on chiropractors. It turned out that he played fast and loose with his definition of the word “catastrophe” and that only 50 cases could be fairly attributed to chiropractic. The rest were manipulations by some of the other professions listed above using techniques he called “chiropractic”. Considering that our profession is over 107 years old, 50 cases by any standard is remarkable. To put that number into perspective, the American Medical Association recently stated that the leading cause of death in the US is from drugs, and the third leading cause is from mistakes in the hospitals.
So how often does harm result from an adjustment of the cervical spine? Recent studies have placed the risk ratio to anywhere between 1 in 1.3 million to 1 in 6 million. Again, this is exceedingly low for an effective medical procedure. A revealing glimpse of the size of the problem can be seen by asking the firms that supply us with malpractice insurance. An Australian researcher and professor, Allan Terret examined data from one of our largest insurers, NCMIC. This company covers 24,000 chiropractors for malpractice. Terret found 1 case in 2 million. This means that for ever 25 chiropractors, who practice full time for 40 years, may see 1 case of stroke in his/her practice lifetime. In other words, the vast majority of us chiropractors practicing every day will never see any serious side effects from the neck treatments he/she delivers and we won’t know any other chiropractor who will.

Scoliosis is an abnormal, and unhealthy, curvature in the spine affecting millions of people, both younger and older, worldwide. The curvature causes rotation of the spinal vertebrae and ribcage and results in abnormal posture. If left untreated, scoliosis can progress and can cause disfigurement, respiratory and digestive issues, and pain. Some sufferers have difficulty breathing and develop neuropathies. Scoliosis is a progressive condition that begins in early childhood. The cause is unknown. Most people are diagnosed with scoliosis between the ages of 12-16 years old. The severity of scoliosis can vary and unfortunately many cases go undetected as most of the early presentation is lacking in symptomatology. It is important to assess your child on a regular basis. A quick and easy assessment can be performed to pick up on abnormalities.

Have your child stand with their back facing you. Start at the head and work your way down the body. Look for the following signs:

Start by checking the tops of the shoulders. Are they even or is one side higher than the other? Move downward and check the bottoms of the shoulder blades. Is one blade higher than the other? Place your hands on your child’s hips with your palms facing the floor. Check to make sure that the hips are level. Have your child bend forward to touch their toes and hang. Observe the mid back. Does one side look higher than the other (”rib humping”)? With the child still bent forward and their hands hanging loosely towards the floor, check the tips of the fingers. Is one hand hanging lower than the other? Have the child straighten up to a stand. Run your fingers down the child’s entire spine, starting shoulder level. Is the spine straight, or does it curve to one side? Check the bottoms of the child’s pants. Does one pant leg appear chorter? Lastly, look at the bottoms of your child’s shoes. Do the shoes wear evenly? Most uneven wear can be most noticable at the heel and indicates the presence of biomechanical gait abnormalities associated with poor arch integrity and hip unleveling.

If you notice any of the above in your child, or have any concerns in regards to your child’s posture, have them evaluated by a Chiropractor. Doctors of Chiropractic are the most skilled professionals to evaluate, treat, and monitor scoliosis.

Sarah Deam, DC

Chiropractic is a form of alternative healthcare based on the relationship between bodily structure and associated nervous system function. The integrity of this relationship is integral in sustaining optimal health. The practice is based on the principle that many health concerns are associated with inadequate spinal motion. This lack of proper motion occurs in joints and is termed “Subluxation” to express a vertebral motion unit that has lost it’s ability to move properly. Proper spinal motion is essential for stimulating surrounding nerves and motion sensors that provide proper sensory feedback between the brain and body. Lack of motion can cause resultant musculoskeletal tension and imbalance as well as inflammation, irritation to vital surrounding nerves and vasculature, and compromised nervous system function. These subluxated regions are the result of cumulative physical events and injuries, toxic food and environmental exposure, and chronic stress and emotional patterns. Doctors of Chiropractic locate spinal subluxations and adjust these regions to restore proper motion and to directly influence the balance of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems. A chiropractic adjustment is a safe, direction specific force to restore balance to the musculoskeletal system, motion into a subluxated joint, and nervous system integrity. Your healing capabilities will be restored and increased energy and vitality will follow. A Chiropractor will also address any causative external (i.e. nutrition, exercise, environmental) or internal (i.e. thought, biochemical) factors that may result in subluxation and resultant decreased nervous system function. Patients who recieve regular chiropractic adjustments may note better balance, improved bodily awareness, and a more generalized sense of well being and emotional relaxation.

Sarah Deam, DC

This is the first official Lifetime Wellness Chiropractic blog post. Stay tuned for more posts, as we will be updating often with health and wellness updates. We would love your input. Leave us a comment or topic that you would like covered.