Thursday, 30 November 2017

Bursts of Exercise Can Make Kids Healthier


Exercise is one of the main pillars of good health. Your body was designed to move throughout the day, constantly and in many directions. With well over 200 joints, your body has the ability to do amazing things. This can include an impressive display of balance, power and flexibility with hardly any discernible effort. However, unfortunately with the improvement in efficiency of our every day life with digital technology, a sedentary lifestyle has been adopted. This lifestyle discourages movement and leads to more sitting behaviours.
Most people sit between seven to fifteen hours each day. Excessive sitting increases your risk of metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity.
It’s not just adults that face these challenges. Children are becoming increasingly sedentary and the rising number of children suffering from obesity is sky-rocketing. About one third of all children and adolescents are either overweight or obese. This trickle down effect means that there are a staggering number of adults who are now at higher risk of multiple health concerns, ranging from obesity to degenerative arthritis.
Contributing factors to declining health include poor food choices, insufficient exercise and lack of quality sleep.
Getting kids to exercise has become increasingly difficult over the past 20 years. What used to be common daily activity for children playing with their friends has turned into a chore. The effect of this attitude shift is evident with the growing number of children suffering from obesity.
Recent studies have shown that children may benefit from very short periods of high intensity physical exercise. Researchers have modified the term “high-intensity interval training” (HIIT) to a more kid-friendly version of “Fun Fast Activity Blast” (FFAB).
The study evaluated 101 adolescents, measuring triglyceride levels in the blood, waist circumference, blood sugar, heart markers, blood pressure and aerobic activity. They monitored a group that continued their normal activity and a group that participated in three 20-minute high intensity exercise sessions per week for 10 weeks.
They found that the group that exercised had lower triglyceride levels and reduced waist circumference. They also found that this group increased the amount of overall physical activity (not including these sessions) by 16 minutes per day compared to the group that didn’t exercise at all.
This increased activity during non-exercise hours suggested to researchers that increasing structured exercise actually increases overall activity levels during unmonitored hours. This discovery is a step in the right direction to finding a program that works to make daily exercise both practical and sustainable.
Finding exercises that children enjoy may be the key to unlocking the desire to move throughout the whole day. Unfortunately, reduced time in physical education classes and recess, combined with spending the majority of the day sitting at desks, significantly adds to the problem of sedentary lifestyles.
There isn’t time to wait for the schools to change their physical activity requirement. Therefore, it’s important to encourage them to be active in the hours they are outside of school and on weekends. Competitive sports, interval walking, biking, basketball, dance or any number of 20-minute high intensity interval training workouts can be beneficial. Joining the kids for these workouts would be beneficial not just for their health but for yours as well. Kids are more likely to do what you do and not just what you say.
A healthy lifestyle involves many factors such as nutrition, sleep, exposure to toxins, low stress levels and exercise. Essentially, you become what you do each day. The more you move, the easier it becomes to move and vice versa.
The more physically active your child is, the better they do in school, the better their mood and the better the family functions as a whole.
Chiropractic care is another great way to ensure both you and your kids can get moving and keep them moving. Bring in the kids for an assessment and treatment to get their spine moving optimally and keep them playing the activities they love. This ensures proper function and keeps everyone feeling great!

Friday, 17 November 2017

How to Combat Text Neck aka “Tech” Neck


How many times in a day do you find yourself staring down at a screen? How many times do you look across the room and see every member of your family looking down at a screen? Whether this is cell phone use, watching a movie on your laptop or playing a game on your iPad, the act of holding your head flexed down and forwards while looking at your device, places your neck in a stressed position. Our neck normally has a slight curve in it that gives it the strength and power to keep our head on our shoulders. However, when this curve is straightened with prolonged forward posture, it places a lot of strain on the structures in the neck.
Maintaining this head-forward posture can lead to muscle strain, disc injury, nerve impingement, and arthritic changes in the neck. This increases the potential for ongoing neck and shoulder pain, headaches, and pain that goes down the arms. Thus, “text neck” or now more appropriately “tech neck” because it’s not just texting, was born. All this screen time has the potential to damage the neck.
For every one inch of forward head posture, the weight of your head increases by 10lbs. The more your neck drifts forward, the more weight it has to carry and support. This disorder is associated with chronic headaches, upper back pain and neck pain. Medical research has also uncovered evidence that this forward posture can be related to early onset arthritis and can even decrease lung capacity. Try this experiment: Have your head tucked back over your shoulders and take a deep breath. Now push your head forward and try to take that same deep breath. Was it more difficult to take the second breath?
So what can we do to fight “tech neck”? These devices are going to be a part of our life for a long time, so we need to find a way to modify our behaviours to prevent serious health issues from occurring. Here are seven simple ways to incorporate change in your everyday life to prevent the negative effects of this condition:
1. Exercises and Stretches- Postural exercises can help improve your posture, strengthen your neck and create better habits for everyday life. To aovid developing degenerative neck changes due to posture, incorporate these exercises and stretches into your daily routine.
2. Set Time Limits- Limit the amount of time and frequency that you use your device. If you have to use it for an extended period of time, take plenty of breaks. Develop a habit of taking a three minute break for every 20 minutes that you use your device. Make sure that you change your posture during these breaks and ideally move around to get your blood flowing.
3. Set Automatic Reminders- Utilize an automatic alarm with your device to remind you to take a break. These reminders will ensure that you don’t get too focused on your task to take a break and the automation ensures that you don’t forget to stop. Make sure you don’t ignore these reminders, or you may pay for it later on.
4. Use a tablet holder- Purchase a holder to elevate your device to significantly reduce the amount of neck flexion and forward posture. Try to keep the device as close to eye level as possible to prevent the strain in the neck when looking down for long periods of time. A tablet holder, cell phone holder, and propping your laptop up to eve level are all easy options that can reduce the amount of strain on the neck.
**For students out there, propping up your textbooks in the same manner will prevent the same issues from happening when studying for prolonged periods of time.
5. Sit in a Proper Chair: Switch to a chair with a headrest, proper lumbar support and one that prevents you from slouching forward. By making sure that the back of your head is always in contact with the headrest while using your devices, you can ensure that you’re not looking down with your head flexed forward. No matter the quality of the chair though, it’s important to still take breaks!
6. Use Pain as a Warning: If you’re experiencing headaches, pain in your neck, pain between the shoulder blades, or numbness and tingling going down into your arms, there may be a serious issue going on. Pay attention to these warning signs and act quickly to make changes to reduce or eliminate the head-forward posture that is straining your neck.
7. See a Chiropractor: Chiropractic treatment is the best option for any of these issues. Getting an assessment and adjustment can help not only with the symptoms but can also help prevent this issue from occurring in the future.
If you are having any of these symptoms, or simply just want a checkup for you or your children, book an appointment today. The sooner you seek treatment, the more likely it is that you’ll find success in treating the problem.

Wednesday, 1 November 2017

Eight Simple Ways to Prepare for Pregnancy with Chiropractic Care




 Many couples are planning for a family and preparing your body for the journey of conception, pregnancy and delivery is important for both the parents and the baby. There are many ways that people can prepare physically and emotionally for pregnancy, but the following are some tips that can help with the process.



 
1.     Vitamins/Supplements- Moms, start by taking a high quality prenatal vitamin, Omega 3’s and a B-complex to reduce stress. The father should be supplementing as well, focusing on a B-complex, Vitamin C and Zinc.
2.     Eat Real Food- Eat real, whole food. Stay in the outer perimeter of the grocery store. And remember, if your grandmother wouldn’t recognize what you are eating as food, you probably shouldn’t be eating it.  
3.     Cut Out Processed Food- Refined sugar, white flour, prepackaged food, and trans fats/hydrogenated oils should all be avoided in general. These foods have been proving to be extremely unhealthy and should be actively avoided.
4.     Increase Water Intake- People don’t drink enough water. Nowadays, everyone tends to be dehydrated without even realizing it. Water consumption has decreased, while caffeine, sugary drinks, energy drinks and alcohol use is increasing. These trends need to be reversed for expectant parents. Water consumption needs to be increased, while all of these other drinks should be eliminated.
5.     Analyze Medication Use- Look at your medication use and work with your healthcare provider to reduce if possible. If you are using over the counter pain medications, see if there is an alternative for pain management. Perhaps conservative management or manual therapies, such as chiropractic, massage therapy, physiotherapy, acupuncture, physical therapy, or osteopathy can help to reduce pain.
6.     Reduce stress for both future parents- It’s important to identify your stressors, whether it’s from work, home, relationships, or family and determine where you can make changes to reduce these stressors. It’s important to reduce stress for both mom AND dad, as this can affect fertility. 
7.     Chiropractic Care- Support a healthy nervous system through routine chiropractic care for both of the parents.
8.     Detoxify and support your body- Discuss this with your chiropractor, naturopath or healthcare provider. This can include digestion, elimination, hormonal and immune system support.