Alicia Silverstone May Not Be So Gross
I heard a sentence or two on the radio regarding this upset with Alicia Silverstone chewing her baby's food, and then giving it to her. One word: gross! was the host's comment.
After hearing this I didn't take a second thought about this. I didn't think it was that gross or upsetting. Scanning topics today, I guess this issue is still circulating. Some parents are even angry about it, going so far as to say child protective services might get involved because of child abuse.
OK, serious?
In the midst of our beautiful, modern, sanitized culture we forget our roots. We forget that in some tribal cultures that first baby food is parent-chewed liver. Keep in mind that one of the English scientists who pioneered much of the research regarding omega-3 fatty acids and brain health observed African societies feed young children mammal brains as a first food (extremely rich in the fat that makes up your brain: DHA). We forget that a child's gut flora is practically a child's first immune system while what we may consider the classical immune system gets its grounding. We forget that most children will be getting their probiotics from the saliva of those around them (maybe that's why we have the innate urge to hug and kiss on those cuddlies so much).
Finally, we forget that most kids are fed crap.
Now, is a mother chewing up her child's food and giving it to her all that bad?
No, not at all. Now let's move on and get back to arguing about our next President...
About Josh
Josh holds a Doctor of Chiropractic from Parker College of Chiropractic, is currently enrolled in The Carrick Institute studying Functional Neurology, and runs a full-time practice in Farmington, NM. His interests are in neurology of movement, pain, and what a human being needs to express health. He also likes to read and write, hence this blog.
The Financial Aspect of “Fat”
I saw this on Facebook, and I know this deserves a post.
"Why are kids obese?
Because burgers are $.99.
Salads are $4.99."
Have you ever really thought about this fact and how ludicrous it is from an economic perspective? I'm not a farmer, but somehow this doesn't add up. It doesn't make sense that a hamburger would be cheaper than a salad.
Economics of a Hamburger:
GROUND BEEF PATTY
• Animal feed
• Upkeep on facility that houses animal
a.) Heating cost in winter
b.) Cooling cost in summer
c.) Cleaning staff for facility
• Medical cost of animal (vaccinations, hormones for quick growth, etc.)
• Cost of personnel to slaughter and butcher
Add on top of the patty cost the cost for a slice of cheese (which is also an animal product), the bun, sauces, and three pickles.
Economics of a Salad:
• Seed cost
• Soil preparation
a.) Fertilizer
b.) Cost to til the soil
• Cost of personel to weed, prune, etc.
• Herbicide and pesticide costs.
• Add on this the cost of the dressing, and any other bits that go on top of it.
This makes no sense, and is economic lunacy. How is it cheaper to pay for animal product than some simple vegetables? I mean, I've grown plants and raised pets. Sad to say, my childish forgetfulness killed two innocent iguanas. I've never killed a potted plant. They're just easier, they require less effort.
It makes a nasty loop like this (drew it myself):
We pay taxes to the government, lobbyists spend bucko bucks to convince government to give farmers subsidies for planting corn, corn is fed to us, is broken down into corn syrup and is officially the number one sweetener for everything. Corn is also made into feed to feed our animals. Then we get sick due to a lack of diversity in diet. If everything we eat is wheat, corn, soy, or wheat, corn, and soy-fed, then we are in trouble. Then we go to the hospital, and our taxes and ourselves end up paying those large bills... and hopefully we don't end up in the downward spiral of drugs to treat symptoms, not alleviating the cause of our dis-ease, and end up dying with a big note left to the hospital.
It's crazy! What if, instead, we allocated resources to eating better food in the first place? We'd avoid more of the "downward spirals," we'd have healthier animals to eat, we'd have a greater diversity of food, and we'd probably even out the "hamburger vs salad" cost. It's lunacy that something so complex as a hamburger should be more expensive than a few leafs with some oil as a dressing on top of it. Keep it simple, stupid. Or, as one famous dude said:
Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food. -Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine.
About Josh
Josh holds a Doctor of Chiropractic from Parker College of Chiropractic, is currently enrolled in The Carrick Institute studying Functional Neurology, and runs a full-time practice in Farmington, NM. His interests are in neurology of movement, pain, and what a human being needs to express health. He also likes to read and write, hence this blog.
Vitamin F: Get F-ed Up
Your gut flora eats this to survive. If you like b-vitamins and you like energy, you have to have this vitamin to get some of those vitamins.
This vitamin cleanses your body, getting rid of junk that can get stuck in nooks and crannies just like a swiffer.
This is the one vitamin your juicer destroys.
A lack of this vitamin has been correlated with increased rates of heart disease.
... and syndrome X.
... and diabetes.
... and acne.
... and colorectal cancer.
... and hemorrhoids.
Well shiz. Are you scared yet?
No, I'm not talking about "vitamin F," as in fatty acids, I'm talking about fiber. It's not really called "vitamin F," but it should be. It is so vital to our physiologic processes — especially anything involved with our intestinal system, the "tube of life" — that it should be called a vitamin, it should be called an essential nutrient. Make sure your diet is fiber rich, and you'll also be increasing your intake of all other vitamins, because fiber just so happens to be rich in veggies, fruits, and whole grains. Plus, if you start making sure you eat fiber now, you probably won't have to poop into a plastic bag taped to your abdomen later.
About Josh
Josh holds a Doctor of Chiropractic from Parker College of Chiropractic, is currently enrolled in The Carrick Institute studying Functional Neurology, and runs a full-time practice in Farmington, NM. His interests are in neurology of movement, pain, and what a human being needs to express health. He also likes to read and write, hence this blog.
Arthritis 101
Today I’m going to go off on joints. Shoot, I’m a chiropractor, I LOVE joints. Plus, arthritis is a big ol’ best here in the US of A. To understand it, the first thing we need to do is clear up some vocab:
Arthritis is the vaguest of these terms, whenever you see arth- , you’re dealing with joint. The -itis refers to inflammation, a joint being swollen and irritated (like when you sprain an ankle). Arthritis includes a broad spectrum of disorders: rheumatoid arthritis, to the metabolic arthritis gout, just to name a few.
Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common of the arthritides. OA happens with wear and tear to the joint, when cartilage — the cushiony protein that serves as a padding in between two hard bones — starts deteriorating. OA is usually more painful after repetitive motions with the suspected joint, not before. The medical term your doctor may use for joint pain is arthralgia; it literally just means “joint pain," so don't let the fancy word scare you too much.
So now that you now know more about the semantics of this disorder, what causes it?
That’s a very, very, very difficult question to answer. OA is tricky, individual thing with many different contributing factors. It is one of the few prevalent diseases of Western Civilization that is still found in hunter-gatherer societies (diabetes, obesity, acne, heart disease are not easily found in such societies). It seems as if wear and tear on the cartilage seems to be inevitable, like aging.
But here’s a funny story. A guy walks into a doctor’s office with pain in his right knee. After a thorough exam, complete with orthopedic testing, neurological testing and x-rays, the doctor comes back in the office and tells the patient, “I’m sorry, you have osteoarthritis in your right knee.”
“Well, doctor,” the patient responds, “what’s that from?”
“Old age, nothing you can do about it” the doc replies (isn’t that what we always say).
After a few seconds of pondering this answer, the patient looks up and asks,
“But doc, isn’t my left knee just as old? Why doesn’t that side hurt?”
The doctor was stumped.
As silly as this story may be, there is truth to it. Although OA will most likely develop in a human sooner or later, there are environmental factors that seem to make this happen closer to the "later" part.
MOVEMENT
Exercise and OA are clearly linked, but tricky. Too much activity in certain joints causes earlier OA, elite soccer players frequently have OA of the knees much sooner than others; on the other side, those elderly individuals who run regularly showed decreased signs of OA compared to their same-aged counterparts who didn’t run at all. Not too much, not too little, but just the right amount.
The theory behind this is fairly solid: exercise maintains muscle function so that the muscles can take most of the “wear and tear” that comes with use, or, so that the muscles can increase the joints function and avoid unnecessary “wear and tear” altogether.
This is where a provider skilled in assessing the musculoskeletal system (i.e. me) may be helpful. If you feel joint pains with certain movements, manual therapies (therapies that are done by hand — i.e. massage, joint manipulation and mobilization) may be able to helpful option before surgery, and may even eliminate the need for surgury, period. If nothing else, an expertly crafted plan for exercise can be implemented and immediately help to restore and promote proper joint / muscle function and stop any further damage.
SUPPLEMENTS
Right now, glucosamine has been shown to decrease joint pain associated with OA, but not to slow down the pathophysiology of OA. Don’t spend too much money on these therapies, the research is still very out on the fence, or if anything, against such supplements. They just don’t seem to hold up against scientific scrutiny.
If inflammation is involved with your arthralgia, supplementing with omega-3 fatty acids is a sure-fire way to decrease your body’s inflammatory profile, thereby secondarily decreasing pain that may come with this dysfunction.
So use this info to get healthier and stave off “wear and tear.” Stay healthy, stay well, and move... not too much, and not too little, just like a little bear ticked off a Goldilocks would say. -JVB
Farmington’s Changing
Did you even know something like this (LINK) existed? How long has Farmington had a Farmer's Market? Before I left for graduate school there wasn't one... at least not one I can remember. Sure, three years of health and wellness school may have changed what I notice a bit, but still!
I mean, we have an awesome Farmer's Market now! Natural Grocer's even decided it was time that they could set up shop here (before there was just that place in Hutton plaza — what's their name? They're great as well). Would any of this been supported ten years prior? I think not.
No, more Durangatangs are NOT moving down into Farmington, Farmington itself is switching, growing, changing. It's getting WELL... er. It's following a national tidal wave that is realizing health is our greatest wealth, and that we should take control of it ourself — not waiting for some medical miracle cure to come and save us. It's exciting! It's exciting to see a place like Andrea Kristina's selling burgers made out of grass fed buffalo meat — come on! That's crazy!
So stop whining and complaining. It's so ghetto here. NO, YOUR ATTITUDE IS "GHETTO HERE". Take your pessy (short for pessimistic) perspective someplace else and get out of the way of those who are making a difference.
UPDATE:
Farmington has had a farmer's market for some time, I just didn't notice it (figures!). The farmer's market moved to a more visible and accesible location not too many years ago — there is clearly more demand. Something cool is happening.
Why Cheap Food Is Expensive
You know the principle behind this post. Perhaps you have had a shoe experience with this principle. You saw a cute pair of shoes in the window at a no-name outlet.
"What??! Only $15 for these shoes? They are soOOO cuYUTE! I'm getting them. They are a steal." You took them home, busted them out of the box, brought them to your favorite dance spot down town, and in an hour the heel broke. "Cheap pieces of crap."
Cheap food is like that, only the realization of true value isn't realized until YEARS down the road. We're not living in dog years, we're living in human years, and as a result things are much slower. It's hard to connect the cost of diabetes and obesity to the cheap fast food you ate for lunch because it was too time consuming and expensive to prepare and bring a quality salad with you to work.
So when you're saving money on cheap food, make sure you calculate possible future medical bills into the equation. Like a really smart kid once said, You can either pay the farmer, or the doctor.
Muscles and Pain
... is a big, hard, complicated question. I've been studying this for the last two week, and I've just come away with that The more you know the more you don't know feeling. A little depressing, but I'll share a little bit about muscles as they fit into your big picture.
Muscles Hold Stuff
This seems elementary, and it should be. I've coined a saying that a chiropractor who works on joints without working on muscles is like an orthodontist who works on smiles but never gives a retainer. Everything ends up falling apart. Muscles are those workers that hold everything together, that glide us through life.
Muscle Pain Is Much Harder
Now, pain associated with muscles is a more difficult case. It's hard. It's frickin' hard. Shoot, PAIN in general is frickin' hard. It's so elusive, so individual, so malleable and inconsistent. Plus, our (the medical community) understanding of pain is hundreds of years old. We used to think, and I thought (until a matter of weeks prior) that pain travelled along certain "pain" nerves (called nociception) and got to your brain, and viola, PAIN! No such thing. There are no "pain" nerves. Nociception, as it turns out, IS NOT the same as pain. It signals damage, usually, but damage IS NOT pain. That's why one guy breaks and arm and goes into work the next day; and his neighbor pulls out a hang nail and is crying on the floor for 10 minutes. You know this, inherently, innately! Pain is not a brain input, it is a brain manifestation, an OUTPUT; and it is therefore much more complex than I thought (I will be writing more on this as I learn more).
Then What Do Muscles Have To Do With Pain?
In reality, muscles themselves may not do a lot for pain. Yes, muscle knots are nasty, and are in muscles, but they may be the exception. Muscles work so wonderfully with pain because of proprioceptive barrage of information they drive to the brain when they are used for movement. The neurological signals from movement are amazing pain-reducers — at least, correct and timely movement signals are. Don't go running after you snap your fibula, please. Movement drives a healthy brain. Literally, you cannot have a healthy brain without moving your body, using those beautiful muscles, and thereby activating hosts of receptors (my favorite being the muscle spindle) and thereby exercising your brain via activation. A healthy brain, then, is better able to cope with and dampen pain (ever noticed how depression and chronic pain go hand in hand?), and will have a lesser likelihood of manifesting pain as an output.
So one way we can assure that we beat pain when we get it is to USE our muscles appropriately, as soon as we can. The old adage of REST, REST, and REST some more when you're hurting may be doing more harm than good when it comes to pain.
So give your muscles a pat on the back (maybe a good massage), they fight the good fight when it comes to your pain.
Fascia
...is a structure that I think gets missed in most treatments, although many of the manual and massage therapists have been ahead of their time evaluating and looking at this structure.
What is it?
Fascia is the web-like structure between these muscles.
If you're a hunter or a butcher, and have seen the inside of an animal, it is that white, net-like covering that is the "in between" substance covering muscles, ligaments, blood vessels, nerves, and more. It's a structure that is meant to be a lubricant of types — allowing muscles to easily glide, as well as providing structural support. It's recently been shown to be a great source for proprioception (the bodies neurological signals giving the brain general "body awareness"), which is why I think treating fascia can have great effects on pain.
For a great breakdown of some cool research a team out of Germany are doing, go HERE.
Honestly, fascia is a hot topic — some practitioners loving it, some thinking it's hokey pokey. Clinically, I find that working with fascia and muscles decreases healing time remarkably.
I use a technique called "direct myofascial release". A lot of pressure — and I do mean a lot — is applied in a specific direction to cause fascial restrictions to "release". Once these areas are "released", range of motion increases, muscle strength usually returns, and pain subsides. The body is more able to move through free-er motion because the snags are out.
I think treating fascia works because it is often overlooked. Fascia doesn't show up nice and clear on x-rays and even most MRI (although dynamic ultrasound looks promising). Secondly, it can be painful. It seems illogical to dig into a painful area to make you feel and work better, so fascial problems probably go untreated for a very, very long time (but if this is what is wrong, this can be a "miracle" treatment for you and take weeks — even months! — off of your healing time).
Next time you get an injury, check the fascia; it may just be your "missing link" in your treatment.
Tight Legs, Tight Back
Do you have that nagging tightness and pain in the back of your legs and in the lower back? Why would leg pain cause back pain? Watch this short video to see WHY, and then learn a simple movement you can do to alleviate this problem.
Fiscal vs. Physical Retirement
Things ending up working out. You made it. You created a business / raised a family / made lots of money / did something amazingly worthwhile and got compensated for it. Time's winding down, and the "r" word is coming up: retirement.
How do you see it? Close your eyes. See yourself retired.
What are you doing?
Who are you doing it with?
How do you feel?
I see beaches and khaki shorts, running with my wrinkly ol' lady, enjoying each others' laughter. I see kids, and grandkids, and I see that I can still play with them on the floor.
What do you see?
Now, the second question? Are you preparing for this fiscally? I bet you are. I hope you are. You've got a jar under the bed, slowly getting fuller.
Last question: Are you preparing for this physically? I would bet money that you see yourself doing active things in your retirement. I'd bet money you didn't picture something like this:
How will you retire?
What are you doing now to invest and insure that you are able to retire then?