Peventive Health Care

Health Statistics and You

Preventive Care is the Best Care

In health care, an ounce of prevention is worth very much more than a pound of cure. If you can prevent health problems from happening, you save a great deal of time, effort, and money. Also, by avoiding the frequently ongoing stress and anxiety associated with treatment of a chronic illness, you and your family conserve precious, irreplaceable personal resources such as peace of mind. A comprehensive preventive care program incorporates a healthy food plan, consistent regular exercise, and regular chiropractic care. Regular chiropractic care, focusing on the spinal column and targeting nerve interference, is a key resource in your health care program. Regular chiropractic care provides the framework so that your body can function at peak efficiency, thus helping ensure your long-term health and well-being.

We are awash in numbers, thanks in large part to the proliferation of personal mobile devices and the wrong-headed use of so-called big data.¹ But applying statistical tools to the same set of data can support competing theories and lead to contradictory results. Such conflicting outcomes, known as antinomies if you remember Philosophy 101, cannot logically co-exist, and the field of statistics gets a bad reputation as a result. But big data can provide substantial value for people as individual patients. The key is to set some ground rules and understand the limitations of statistical investigation.
First and foremost, it's important to gain some clarity regarding the concept of false positives in regards to health. This statistical construct is familiar to all of us, although we may not be aware of it. If one of your doctors sends you for a laboratory test and the results are "positive", you'll be sent for follow-up tests until a final determination is made. If the final test turns out "negative", then the earlier results represented a false positive. The test results said you had the condition or disease, but in fact you did not.
False positives create numerous serious problems, not the least of which is the emotional toll of stress, anxiety, and fear experienced by the patient and her family and close friends. This is especially true when the suspected disease is a malignancy or other serious, life-threatening condition. It's useful and empowering for people to learn that 5% of all test results are falsely positive right from the start. Medical tests are designed this way. The 5% false positive rate is a necessary part of statistical analysis. It's built-in to the statistical design. In other words, test values that represent "normal" are obtained by cutting off the bottom 2.5% and the top 2.5% of a large sample of results from people who are "normal" for the thing being tested, such as white blood cell count or hemoglobin level.
Thus, 5% of normal people automatically have false positive results. Another way of stating this outcome is to consider that if you undergo a panel of 20 blood tests, one result (5% of 20) will be positive no matter what.
The vast majority of patients are not familiar with the statistical concept of false positive results.² With a basic understanding of this construct and its implications, patients could ask their doctors meaningful questions such as, "What do the test results mean?,", "Have you considered the possibility of a false positive result?," and "How will the additional tests you're recommending affect decision-making in my case?"
Posing such questions is tremendously empowering for you, the patient, and helps reestablish equity in the doctor-patient relationship.³ As a health care consumer, a little knowledge goes a long way. Gaining more than a little knowledge by reading articles on diagnostic methods and health care decision-making will further strengthen your own process as a patient.
¹Bates DW, et al: Big data in health care: using analytics to identify and manage high-risk and high-cost patients. Health Aff (Millwood) 33(7):1123-31, 2014
²Paddock SM: Statistical benchmarks for health care provider performance assessment: a comparison of standard approaches to a hierarchical Bayesian histogram-based method. Health Serv Res 49(3):1056-73, 2014
³Stacey D, et al: Decision aids for people facing health treatment or screening decisions. Cochane Database Syst Rev 28;1:CD001431, 2014

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Health tips from Skrien Chiropractic Clinic

 

 

Rice and Beans

Regular Chiropractic Care and a Healthy Lifestyle

The importance of making healthy lifestyle choices is becoming increasingly well known. Vigorous exercise, a healthy diet, and sufficient rest are key components of a healthy lifestyle, regardless of a person's age. But in order to get the most out of the good things you're doing on your own behalf, your nerve system must be functioning at full capacity. Nerve signals, messages between your brain and the rest of your body, need to be transmitted accurately and on time. "Service interruptions" result when spinal misalignments and nerve irritation are present. Your musculoskeletal system and digestive system are prevented from working efficiently. Such problems may lead to pain, symptoms, and even disease. Regular chiropractic care corrects spinal misalignments and helps reduce and resolve nerve irritation. As a result, regular chiropractic care helps maximize the benefit of all healthy lifestyle choices, enabling everyone to achieve greater levels of health and well being.

Rice and beans is a well-liked combination of foods that is not only delicious, but also good for you. Other well-known examples of food combinations, such as corn and lima beans (succotash), tomatoes and avocados, and even orange juice and oatmeal, provide benefits beyond those gained by eating these sound nutritional choices individually.¹
For example, the combination of rice and beans provides complete dietary protein (containing all the essential amino acids we need to build all the other proteins in our bodies). Similarly, the succotash combination of lima beans and corn contains high concentrations of essential amino acids. When you combine avocados and tomatoes, the fat from the avocado helps your body more efficiently use heart-healthy and cancer-fighting antioxidants such as lycoprene contained in the tomato. A heart-healthy breakfast consisting of real oatmeal, such as oatmeal made from rolled oats or steel cut oats, and real orange juice (not from concentrate) provides a potent combination of phenols that are associated with reduced atherosclerosis and cancer. ^2,3
These combinations are specific examples of the more general principle of food combining by which you combine proteins and complex carbohydrates at every meal. When you combine these complementary sources of nutrition on a regular basis, you retrain your body's metabolism. By consuming a "slow-burning" energy source, you're providing high-quality fuel for the next three to four hours. Several very good things occur as a result. Energy utilization is optimized, that is, your body gets more benefit out of every calorie it's burning. Additionally, insulin levels are stabilized throughout the day. Over time, food combining helps a person become a leaner machine and helps reduce the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes. These benefits are especially important for people who have been told they are hypoglycemic or pre-diabetic. Of course, you should always check with your doctor to make sure a food combining strategy is right for you.
When you add a program of regular, vigorous exercise to your food combining lifestyle choice, you obtain even more profound benefits. The vigorous exercise you're doing raises your body's basal metabolic rate. Your body begins to burn calories even when you're asleep. Owing to the increase in lean muscle mass you're gaining from exercising over time, you're burning more calories throughout the day. You find yourself craving more nutritious foods, that is, those that will provide higher-quality nutrition, such as the nutrition contained in such combinations as rice and beans and oatmeal and orange juice. Thus, your positive lifestyle choices contain their own positive feedback system. The better choices you make, the healthier you become, and the healthier you want to be. The long-term results are enhanced health and well being for you, your family, and your friends.
¹Liu RH: Health-promoting components of fruits and vegetables in the diet. Adv Nutr 4(3):384S-392S, 2013
²Hu D, et al: Fruits and vegetables consumption and risk of stroke: a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Stroke 45(6):1613-1619, 2014
³Thomburg KL, Challis JR: How to build a healthy heart from scratch. Adv Exp Med Biol 814:205-216, 2014

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Avoiding Diabetes

Avoiding Diabetes

Regular Chiropractic Care and a Healthy Lifestyle

Regardless of the prescription medication you may or may not be taking, regular chiropractic care helps provide a strong platform for managing the effects of chronic disease. Although the ultimate causes of chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes are largely unknown, nerve interference may be reasonably postulated as a key contributor to the development and maintenance of these conditions. If as a result of nerve interference, your body's cells, tissues, and organs are not receiving timely and accurate information from your brain, then a host of symptoms may develop. Over time, chronic disease may be the unwanted outcome. Regular chiropractic care helps eliminate nerve interference by detecting, analyzing, and correcting spinal misalignments that result from normal, everyday circumstances involving work and stress. By helping restore spinal function and reducing irritation to the nerve system, regular chiropractic care provides an environment in which chronic disease is less likely to flourish and your health and well-being can be maximized. Click here to find out how we may help

The worldwide type 2 diabetes epidemic has been thoroughly documented.^1,2 Yet despite extensive study and analysis, there has been little actual progress in slowing the spread of this chronic disease. Numerous medications such as metformin and glyburide are available to help counter the severe problems that result from unchecked diabetes. But if the person with diabetes doesn't assist in the process of getting well, the disease will continue on its unrelenting course. There are many important  steps a diabetic patient can take to improve his or her health status. Better still, these same steps may be implemented by healthy persons to ward off type 2 diabetes in the first place.
In type 2 diabetes, the cells of your body become resistant to the effects of insulin. Normally, the hormone insulin promotes the absorption of glucose from the blood by muscle cells and fat cells. With insulin resistance, glucose fails to be properly absorbed by these cells and blood levels of glucose rise. Over time, some of this excess glucose is converted into fat, increasing the person's weight, causing high blood pressure, and placing undue stress on the heart. Further, prolonged exposure to excess glucose damages small blood vessels and nerve fibers, leading to significant pain along large nerve tracts (neuropathies), loss of circulation to and even amputation of a lower limb, kidney disease, kidney failure, eye disease, and blindness.
Thus, diabetes can be devastating for both patients and their families. The annual public health costs related to diabetes treatment are huge. Diabetes costs in the U.S. were $245 billion in 2012, representing $176 billion in direct medical costs and $69 billion in lost productivity. Worse, in 2012, 9.3% (29.1 million) of Americans had diabetes, up from 8.3% (25.8 million persons) in 2010. Costs of diabetes to patients, families, and society continue to rise.
The only feasible method of combating the worldwide diabetes epidemic focuses on individual initiative. Medical treatment, by definition, arrives after the fact, typically years after the diabetes process has been set in motion. Prevention is the best strategy. Adopting a lifestyle that, indirectly, leads to appropriate utilization of insulin rather than insulin resistance offers a real, effective solution to diabetes prevention. More than 20 years of research has demonstrated that 30 minutes of vigorous exercise a day, combined with a healthy diet and sufficient rest, will substantially assist a person in avoiding chronic diseases such as diabetes.³ Personal accountability and personal responsibility are called for. It is up to each of us to make such choices in the best interest of ourselves and our families.
¹Vollenweider P, et al: HDLs, Diabetes, and Metabolic Syndrome. Handb Exp Pharmacol 224:405-421, 2015
²Skrha J: Diabetes mellitus--a global pandemic. Keynote lecture presented at the Wonca conference in Prague in June 2013. Eur J Gen Pract 20(1):65-68, 2014
³Orio F, et al: Lifestyle changes in the management of adulthood and childhood obesity. Minerva Endocrinol 2014 Dec 17. [Epub ahead of print]

The Fast Lane

Regular Chiropractic Care and Core Fitness

Many exercise-related injuries are caused, in part, by deficiencies in core muscle strength. Weakness in core performance leads to a lack of biomechanical support for movements such as bending, lifting, pushing, and pulling. You're not aware of such lack of support until, for example, you attempt a dumbbell squat or try to run a little faster in an interval training session. Even a simple exercise such as a lat pulldown or triceps pressdown requires sufficient core stabilization. A strong core is critically important for a successful exercise program. The core muscular system consists of numerous inner layers of sheets of muscle and a vast array of small muscles that help maintain coordinated movement among your spinal bones, pelvic bones, and hip joints. By detecting and correcting spinal misalignments that cause nerve interference, regular chiropractic care helps ensure that your core muscles are receiving the nerve information they need to function properly and help you get the most out of your exercise time.

Driving fast is not necessarily a good thing. We want to get where we're going as quickly as possible, but we also want to arrive safely. If we drive too fast, we may encounter all sorts of problems. If we drive too slow, we're wasting time and may be causing traffic problems behind us. These competing considerations will both be fulfilled by maintaining an average velocity that is at or close to the posted speed limit. We want to find the "sweet spot," the happy medium that both saves time and helps keep us safe.
The same principles may also be applied when we're exercising. We want to improve, get stronger, and build more endurance as soon as we can, while simultaneously avoiding injury and staying healthy. Very often, these goals may conflict. It's important to ensure that we're exercising efficiently and making certain we're deriving the greatest benefit from our exercise time. These benefits are obtained by a steady approach, one that focuses on incremental gains accomplished over time.¹
It's natural to want to arrive at a desired outcome quickly. But as with any other form of training, whether learning to play the piano or becoming a competent chess player, substantial time is required to produce long lasting results. In the case of exercise, trying to hurry the process will usually cause an injury. You'll be set back at least weeks, if not months, and you'll have to start over, pretty much from the beginning.
For almost all of us the "tortoise" approach, rather than that of the "hare" in the well-known fable, will produce the health benefits we're hoping to achieve from our daily exercise. If you've never walked before and want to incorporate this aerobic activity as part of your exercise routine, start with a 10-minute walk. This doesn't sound like much, but that is precisely the point. Start by doing a little and build up gradually and consistently. Within 6 or 8 weeks you'll be doing 30-40 minute brisk walks several times a week, which will represent a very good aerobic exercise program. Incorporating strength training into your routine will employ a similar method. For each of your exercises (such as bench press, one-arm row, squat, toe raise, shoulder press, biceps curl, and lying triceps press), begin with a weight with which you can comfortably do 10 repetitions. If you can't do 10 reps, the weight is too heavy. Start with that weight and do 3 sets per exercise. Build up gradually by increasing the weight by 5%, if possible, each week or every 2 weeks. After 10 to 12 weeks you'll be noticeably stronger and your metabolism will begin to be more efficient.^2,3
By progressing slowly and steadily, you will build a solid base and make consistent and possibly substantial gains in your exercise routine. You will get where you want to get safely and effectively. The long-term outcome will be enhanced health, wellness, and well-being.

¹Marongiu E, Crisafulli A: Cardioprotection acquired through exercise: the role of ischemic preconditioning. Curr Cardiol Rev 10(4):336-348, 2014
²Huxel Bliven KC, Anderson BE: Core stability training for injury prevention. Sports Health 5(6):514-522, 2013
³Granacher U, et al: The importance of trunk muscle strength for balance, functional performance, and fall prevention in seniors: a systematic review. Sports Med 43(7):627-641, 2013

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when the cure is worseb4han the disease

When the Cure Is Worse than the Disease

When the Cure is Worse than the Disease
Regular Chiropractic Care and Chronic Disease
Regardless of the prescription medication you may or may not be taking, regular chiropractic care helps provide a strong platform for managing the effects of chronic disease. Although the ultimate causes of chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes are largely unknown, nerve interference may be reasonably postulated as a key contributor to the development and maintenance of these conditions. If as a result of nerve interference, your body's cells, tissues, and organs are not receiving timely and accurate information from your brain, then a host of symptoms may develop. Over time, chronic disease may be the unwanted outcome.

Regular chiropractic care helps eliminate nerve interference by detecting, analyzing, and correcting spinal misalignments that result from normal, everyday circumstances involving work and stress. By helping restore spinal function and reducing irritation to the nerve system, regular chiropractic care provides an environment in which chronic disease is less likely to flourish and your health and well-being can be maximized.

Chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes have increasingly high prevalence in world populations.1 Such prevalence is rising despite extensive use of prescription medications. Problematically, many people have two or more concurrent chronic disorders and are taking multiple medications. But frequently the various physicians are not in contact and are not aware of the patient's complete list of current prescriptions. No single physician or nurse is managing the patient's array of medications. As a result, potentially harmful drug interactions are a common occurrence.2,3 Mistakes are made and patients may suffer serious side effects. In such adverse circumstances, the cure in fact may be worse than the disease.

In today's health care systems, people as patients need to be good custodians of their own care. In many health systems, a patient is lucky if he or she is able to spend more than five uninterrupted minutes with their doctor. Physicians are rushed and harried by numerous responsibilities related to management of their offices, all of which take precious time away from patient interactions. In such an environment, patients need to be proactive to do their best to ensure that recommended treatment is actually going to be helpful, rather than potentially harmful. This is a very difficult task, as most people do not have backgrounds that will help facilitate understanding of such decision-making. But especially for those with a chronic disease, it's critically important to master at least a basic level of information regarding their condition and various types of treatment.

In addition to expanding one's knowledge base, an important long-term strategy is to begin to make lifestyle choices that will support good health. Appropriate and effective lifestyle choices include regular exercise, a healthy diet, and sufficient rest. All three of these key components of good health can be started right now. An exercise program should consist of five 30-minute sessions of vigorous exercise every week. A healthy diet consists of daily selections from all five major food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, and dairy. A daily diet should include at least five servings of fresh fruit and vegetables every day. Regarding sufficient rest, 7-8 hours of sleep per night is a good average for most people. If you're not waking up feeling rested and refreshed, you're probably not getting enough sleep.

Ultimately, each of us is responsible for our own health and well-being. Prescription medication may be necessary, but of course such treatment is primarily directed toward the effects of a person's disease or disorder. Changes in lifestyle are required to address the underlying causes of such conditions. Beginning to institute and maintaining healthful lifestyle choices will provide long-term benefit for the welfare and well-being of our families and ourselves.

1Bauer UE, et al: Prevention of chronic disease in the 21st century: elimination of the leading preventable causes of premature death and disability in the USA. Lancet 384(9937):42-52, 2014
2Rotermann M, et al: Prescription medication use by Canadians aged 6 to 79. Health Rep 25(6):3-9, 2014
3Marengoni A, et al: Understanding adverse drug reactions in older adults through drug-drug interactions. Eur J Intern Med 2014 Oct 10. pii: S0953-6205(14)00282-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ejim.2014.10.001. [Epub ahead of print]http//www.chiropracticfamilyclinic.net

A Fresh Coat of Paint

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.
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

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