I'm often surprised myself at how well children respond to even a single adjustment.  We've seen remarkable restorations of health with everything from "failure to thrive" to asthma, from bedwetting to adhd.  I think the reason so few parents take their children to a chiropractor is because they see chiropractic as a treatment for neck and back pain, rather than as a way to increase and sustain optimal health.  

I often ask new patients 'what animal is unhealthy in it's natural environment?'  The answer, of course, is none.  No species of animal is generally unhealthy in it's natural environment.. but move them to the zoo, and what happens?  Gorillas routinely get high blood pressure and die of heart disease, snakes and lions get cancer, monkeys get diabetes, elephants live half as long in captivity as they do in the wild. 

If you were the zookeeper and you wanted to help these animals be healthy, what would be the best and fastest way?  To return them to their natural environment of course.. but that isn't possible.  So you must try to approximate their current environment as closely as possible to what would be natural for them.. good luck.

The same is true of us.  Our genetics go back a long way in time, to when our environment was very different than it is today.  We're just like the animals living in the zoo.  Whatever you can do to help restore a child's environment to what it would have been naturally, the better their health will be.  That includes how they move, how they eat, even how they think.

Environment includes everything about your life other than genetics.  The closer your environment to what would be natural for us, the better your health.  With a single spinal adjustment, a child's internal neurologic environmment is restored closer to what it would be in nature, and whatever symptoms they're having often disappear very quickly.

I have an antique clock that my mom gave me.  You may have seen it, hanging behind the front desk at my office.  It quit running on St. Patrick's Day in 2009, two years to the day since my mom had passed away.  It hasn't run since. 

Mom's death was especially difficult for me.  My brothers and sisters disagreed with me on how her health should be managed.  They wanted her taking the drugs and I didn't.  She was on 11 prescription drugs when she died, and though I can't prove that the drugs killed her, it's quite obvious that they didn't prevent her sudden death.  

Medication involves risk.  You hear it on tv.  The lady is running carefree in the sand at the beach or the man is making a putt on the golf course, while the pleasant voice in the background talks soothingly about possible side effects, often up to and including death.

Pharmaceuticals are a for-profit industry.  Their obligation is to stockholders, not consumers.  Drug sales are going through the roof, with the US comprising half the world market.  There are 12 prescriptions written yearly for every man, woman, and child.  One a month.  Yet the incidence of chronic illness (now at 48% of americans) goes up every year.

Consider our leading chronic illness, high blood pressure.   One for which my mom was on several drugs.  According to the CDC, prescriptions for hypertension tripled from 1996 to 2005, from 31.7 to 91.5 per 100 people. 

Did it make a difference?  Yes, but not what you might think.  American Heart Association stats at their website show that deaths due to hypertension went up 48.1% in nearly the same time frame, 1996 to 2006.

We have the most stringent guidelines for blood pressure of any country, set in 2003 by the JNC VII Committee.  If your blood pressure exceeds 140/90, drugs will be prescribed--even earlier if you're diabetic. 

If the first drug doesn't work, the guidelines say to add another, and another, until you reach 140/90.. if you can.  Only 46% ever do reach goal (30% do so on placebo).  The ones that don't are likely to be on a lot of medication.   

In the UK, the mandate for drugs doesn't kick in until you're at 160/100, and in New Zealand, it's 170/100.  Kind of like this country in the 60's, when a good blood pressure was "your age + 100." 

Their approach is different too.  They don’t add more and more drugs without taking any away.  They work to achieve the best result with the fewest drugs.

So are the people in the UK and New Zealand dropping like flies from these inferior guidelines?  Not quite.  According to the most recent WHO stats for all three countries, the death rate from "hypertensive disease" is 13 per 100,000 in the UK, 13.8 in New Zealand, and 38.6 per 100,000 in the US.

As I said above, drugs are a for-profit industry.  More drugs mean more money.  Not to imply conflict of interest, but if you review the "financial disclosures" of the doctors that authored the JNC VII guidelines (recommendations on drug management for hypertension), you'll find that eight of the ten committee members disclosed financial ties with at least four of the top five hypertension drugmakers, and four had relationships with all five.

People with high blood pressure are at greater risk.  But how much of the risk is due to elevated blood pressure and how much is due to medication?  In the studies cited that show correlation between higher blood pressures and sudden death, the people with the highest blood pressures who are dying are also the ones on the most medication.

At best, the "presented" success of treating hypertension with medication is misleading.  Studies confirm it does not confer the same reduced risk of coronary events as having normal blood pressure without medication.  

At worst, the treatment itself may carry a greater risk, as illustrated by the highly regarded Framingham Study:

"Men receiving antihypertensive treatment had more than twice the risk of sudden death compared with those who were untreated, whether or not they had prior manifestations of coronary heart disease. More than twice as many men who died suddenly were receiving antihypertensive therapy compared with those in the population at risk of the same age. In those with overt coronary heart disease, 34% of those dying suddenly were on antihypertensive treatment compared with 18% of those of the same age in the general population... These data suggest that some feature of antihypertensive treatment as practiced in the general population may contribute to sudden death incidence in an ill-defined subgroup of hypertensive persons."

Well, it looks as if the weather is breaking.. 68 degrees today!

Time for all of us groundhogs to get out of our holes and get some movement.  Take advantage of these nice days and get out for a round of golf or some early yard prep.  

Being deficient in movement is a major contributor to stress response and ill health.  Your risk for most chronic illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes is substantially reduced when you increase your daily movement.

So how much movement shoulde we get?  If you want to approximate the amount of movement our ancestors got when living in a natural environment.. you'd have to add as much as 12 miles of walking each day!  Researchers estimate that our total energy expenditure (TEE) for a day barely touches our ancestors resting metabolic rate (RMR).  

It's unlikely that most of us are ever going to get as much movement as our genetics were engineered for, but getting that 1/2 hour a day of brisk exercise or walking is very reasonable.  It's also what's recommended by a number of experts as an amount that will greatly reduce your risk for chronic illness, especially when coupled with improvements in diet.

Much of aging and chronic illness is related to insulin metabolism.  Barry Sears, author of the zone books, would tell you that every marker of aging is tied to insulin production.  Increasing your movement increases your insulin sensitivity, and reducing your consumption of refined carbohydrates.. particularly breads, pastas, cookies, cakes, and processed foods, reduces your production of insulin.  Both will improve your health and increase your length of life.

Your health will always be your genetic expression of your environment (primarily how you eat, move, and think), and since your genetics haven't changed since birth, the state of health you're in today is a direct reflection of your lifestyle choices and the environment you've built around you.  If you want to change your health, there's only one way to do it.. by changing your environment.

So get moving!

          Regular Maintenance Extends Life

    No one likes paying for oil changes on their car, but they do because it saves money in the long run.  It shouldn't surprise you that the same logic applies to your health.  

    Chiropractic wellness coaching and spinal adjustments help you stay healthier, and as you'd expect, that saves money too. 

    One recent study of an insurance company database compared people that included chiropractic in their health care with people in the same age group that didn't include chiropractic care. 

   The chiropractic patients reported better overall health, used fewer prescription drugs, and spent 21% less time in hospitals.  Considering that the average day in a hospital is more than $7,000, that's a big savings.₁

    Another study followed 311 seniors who had received regular chiropractic adjustments for five years or longer.  Over that five years, these seniors spent only 31% of what the average senior spent for health care.  They also recorded only half as many medical visits as the average US senior.₂

    A third study reviewed 70,274 "member months" (one person for one month) in a 7 year period in an insurance group whose primary providers were all chiropractors, and compared them to medical care. 

   They found that the chiropractic patients had 60.2% fewer hospital admissions, 59% fewer days spent in the hospital, 62% fewer outpatient surgeries and procedures, and an amazing 83% reduction in drug costs.₃

    Not only does chiropractic save money, it does so by improving your health.  Furthermore, while the risks of medical care are making headlines, chiropractic care is extremely safe.

1. Coulter ID, Hurwitz EL, Aronow HU, et al: Chiropractic patients in a comprehensive home-based geriatric assessment, follow-up and health promotion program. Topics in Clinical Chiropractic 1996;3(2):46.

2. Rupert RL, Manello D, Sandefur R: Maintenance care: health promotion services administered to US chiropractic patients aged 65 or older, Part II. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2000;23(1):10.

3. Clinical Utilization and Cost Outcomes from an Integrative Medicine Independent Physician Association: An Additional 3-year Update  J Manipulative Physiol Ther 2007 (May);   30 (4):   263–269

Reconsider that cell phone for your 4 year old. 

A September 2009 article in Surgical Neurology looked at 11 long-term studies and found that "using a cell phone for >10 years approximately doubles the risk of being diagnosed with a brain tumor on the same side of the head."  That's scary, especially for children, who are starting much earlier than we did.

Cell phones emit microwave radiation.  There are studies from 7 countries now that show cell phone emissions can break DNA strands or alter it structurally.  I don't think it's a coincidence that the Central Brain Tumor Registry has reported a 36% increase in brain tumors in less than a decade.

The effects add up over time, so starting young increases the danger.  The risk is already greater for children because of their thinner skulls, higher water content in the brain (remember that's how a microwave heats, it acts on water), and smaller brains.  According to studies I've seen, a cell phone call of only two minutes can alter the electrical activity of a child's brain for up to an hour!

The most dangerous area is the 4 to 5" radius around the antenna, so holding the phone even an inch further from your head will make a difference.  Power intensity increases as the signal gets poorer, so exposure is greater if you're in a metal building, a car, or a low coverage area.  Power is also higher while the call is first being connected.

Conventional wired headsets may reduce exposure.  Bluetooth headsets reduce power intensity, but they operate in the same frequency range as microwave ovens;  because they're relatively new, we really don't know if they're safer.. or more dangerous. 

There are headsets hitting the market now that are like the old airline headsets, where the sound travels through the air in a tube.  These airtube headsets may be the safest option.  They're easy to find on the internet.

What else can you do?  Hold the kids off as long as possible... my 17 year old quadruplets didn't get cell phones until their 17th birthday.   When kids do get a phone, educate them about the risks and limit their use. 

Use a wired land line when available (cordless phones are also a risk); hold the phone away from you when first connecting and avoid long conversations on a poor signal. Use speakerphone when possible, alternate ears, and don't talk when you can text. 

You can check the relative safety of your phone emissions at www.ewg.org/cellphoneradiation/Get-a-Safer-Phone.  

 I had a patient a few years ago that only came in on an occasional basis, usually when she was hurting.  I hadn't seen her for several months when she came in with a very serious complaint.

Not only did she have neck and upper back pain, she had radiating pain in the arm and hand.   She also had muscle weakness and loss of reflexes in the left arm.  These are signs that something was interfering with nerve transmission into the arm.

Tipping the head to the left increased the pain in the neck and arm, and tipping it to the right decreased the arm pain.  This showed that the problem was related to the point at which the nerves exit the spine in the neck and then move into the arm.

We took x-rays, and the side view of the neck showed a complete reversal of the natural curvature of the neck, focused right at the disc between the 5th and 6th cervical vertebrae (spinal bones in the neck).  The nerve root that leaves the spine from this level correlated with the muscle weakness and loss of reflexes in the left arm.

We started care with this patient right away, but at the same time, I also sent her to get an MRI.  Not because I needed it.  I already knew what the problem was and I knew what I was going to do to try to help her.  I sent her for the MRI just in case we weren't successful.  If I couldn't help her, I wanted to have already started the process necessary to be able to send her along to a surgeon with very little delay.

I shouldn't have worried.  She responded very well to our care.  It was only a short time before the left arm was back to normal and she was feeling much better.  

Unfortunately, getting the MRI had led to a consultation with a surgeon, and he recommended surgical fusion.  Her parents, who were very concerned about her, had no previous experience with chiropractic and declined her requests to speak with me about our plans for her care. 

They pressed their daughter to go ahead with the surgical fusion, despite the fact that her symptoms were almost fully resolved there was a good chance we could correct the curve reversal in her neck without surgery.

She relented, and the surgery was scheduled.  It was to be an "anterior single level fusion with instrumentation."  They were going to go in from the front of the neck, cut out the disc at the C5-C6 level, insert a bone fragment, put a metal plate over the front of the two vertebrae and attach it with two screws in each vertebra.

The x-ray below was taken when she came back after the surgery to tell me what had happened.  She was very upset.

When you look at this picture, you'll see that they did a lot more than the procedure I described above.  I never spoke to the surgeon, but I can see from the x-ray what must have happened.

The complete procedure was intended to consist only of the metal plate and four screws at the front of the spine (left side on the x-ray).  They first removed the disc and inserted the bone fragment.  So far so good.  Then they put the plate over the vertebrae and screwed in the lower two screws.  Everything still going according to plan.  Now they drill in the upper two screws.  But this doesn't go well.  It appears that the plate is too short.  The screws are too low and project out the bottom of the vertebral body.. notice that they're just right above the bone fragment they had just placed.  The result?  The screws stripped out!

Now what do you do?  Not much choice.  You can't leave her like this.  You just took the disc out and put in a piece of bone, but there's nothing to keep it there and the plate won't stay put because the screws are stripped out.  Her spine is unstable.  She could be paralyzed if she turns her head sharply!  No choice but to stabilize it some other way.  So they turned her over and did a three level instrumented fusion from the other side.. 

So what happens to this girl now?  When she came to see me after the surgery, she told me that she is already rated as being 100% disabled.  That's not the worst of it.  If you look at the spinal disc immediately above the fused segments, you can see that it is already showing some evidence of stress, with the vertebra above being displaced forward.  The load from the three discs that are no longer functional will now be picked up by this disc.  How long do you think it will last?

The above patient rolled a GMC Safari van, almost tearing the spine in two.  She was referred for surgery, but chose not to do that.  Ten years later, she never has undergone surgery.

This fellow was in a lot of pain when we started.  It took us a couple weeks to get the pain knocked out.  We continued on and were able to achieve a good postural correction.

If you look carefully at the lower part of the neck in these films, you can see the beginnings of arthritic change resulting from the reversal of curvature.  That's why we were able to achieve a better correction up above than below.. we were limited by the "scarring" in the lower area.

I know there are times when surgery is necessary.  To me, that's when there is a significant crisis that can't be addressed any other way.   Surgery is required to either save their life or resolve the crisis. 

This patient in this story wasn't in crisis.  She was showing steady improvement under conservative care.  This was a surgery that never should have been performed.  And this is a life that will be permanently and significantly altered.. unnecessarily.

If you cut your finger, do you apply a bandaid or amputate?

I was telling a patient this morning that we have nearly a 100% success rate in starting patients who have been referred for neck or back surgery, and helping them fully recover--without undergoing surgery.

I have a patient right now who showed advanced degenerative disc changes in the neck, and had weakness and loss of reflexes in the left arm.  He came here first (on the referral of a friend) but I have no doubt that had he gone to a medical doctor first he would have ended up with a recommendation for surgery.  He's not fully recovered yet, but we're over the hump.  The arm is back to full strength with normal reflexes and his pain is reduced more than 75%.  He's continued to work throughout his course of care.  Now begins the more challenging work of correcting the alignment of his neck ( it was a loss of normal curvature that led to the degenerative disc damage) and teaching him how to keep it that way.

Although I really want to help these people and keep them out of surgery, it's comforting to know to know in the back of my mind that if I can't help them, they can still go with surgery.  There's nothing about our care that reduces or eliminates any of the other options available, should we be unsuccessful.  It doesn't work the other way around.

It isn't just spine surgery either.  We recently helped a very nice lady that had been removed from work and told she needed a total knee replacement.  I took a film and found that there was thinning of the lateral meniscus (outside knee cartilage), and there was a lot of instability when I held her knee firmly and moved her leg side to side.  We talked about the recommendation for surgery and agreed that it made sense to do everything we could to improve her knee function, and if at any time she decides she'd rather go ahead and have the surgery, she could do so.  The next time she went back to the surgeon, he told her she was doing well enough that she could postpone the surgery for now and return to work with some restrictions.  She may eventually undergo knee surgery, but she has a better quality of life now, and because of the progress she's made, I believe she'd recover better and faster from surgery if that ever does occur.  She's continuing to work hard to make sure it doesn't.

This has been a roundabout way of leading up to a new study that was just published, showing that 60% of patients who were confirmed surgical candidates for low back and leg pain recovered fully under chiropractic care.. and didn't undergo surgery.  These were patients that had already undergone 3 months of medical management and failed to improve.  These were patients that would have undergone surgery.

This was achieved with "run of the mill" average chiropractic care, consisting only of "standardized spinal manipulation."  I believe that some of the specialized knowledge and applications we offer allow us to achieve a much higher degree of success.

Here's another important point:  Three patients that had undergone surgery first and didn't improve--then underwent chirpractic care, didn't improve.  Of eight patients who underwent chiropractic care without improvement and then surgery.. all improved as well as the others had.  jAt the very least, chiropractic care didn't hamper their potential for improvement with surgery, and at best, it may have actually increased their chances for recovery with surgery.  None of them were worse as a result of their chiropractic care.

If the average low back surgery costs $40,000 (it's more), and the average course of corrective chiropractic care was $2,000 (it's less), and these relatively poor statistical results were reproduced--with every candidate for back surgery first undergoing a complete corrective trial of chiropractic care, routine chiropractic utilization would reduce the expenditure for back surgeries by more than 70%!

Here's the abstract from the study.

J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 2010 Oct;33(8):576-84.
Manipulation or microdiskectomy for sciatica? A prospective randomized clinical study.

McMorland G, Suter E, Casha S, du Plessis SJ, Hurlbert RJ.

Chiropractor, National Spine Care, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. gmcmorland@nationalspinecare.com
Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to compare the clinical efficacy of spinal manipulation against microdiskectomy in patients with sciatica secondary to lumbar disk herniation (LDH).

METHODS: One hundred twenty patients presenting through elective referral by primary care physicians to neurosurgical spine surgeons were consecutively screened for symptoms of unilateral lumbar radiculopathy secondary to LDH at L3-4, L4-5, or L5-S1. Forty consecutive consenting patients who met inclusion criteria (patients must have failed at least 3 months of nonoperative management including treatment with analgesics, lifestyle modification, physiotherapy, massage therapy, and/or acupuncture) were randomized to either surgical microdiskectomy or standardized chiropractic spinal manipulation. Crossover to the alternate treatment was allowed after 3 months.

RESULTS: Significant improvement in both treatment groups compared to baseline scores over time was observed in all outcome measures. After 1 year, follow-up intent-to-treat analysis did not reveal a difference in outcome based on the original treatment received. However, 3 patients crossed over from surgery to spinal manipulation and failed to gain further improvement. Eight patients crossed from spinal manipulation to surgery and improved to the same degree as their primary surgical counterparts.

CONCLUSIONS: Sixty percent of patients with sciatica who had failed other medical management benefited from spinal manipulation to the same degree as if they underwent surgical intervention. Of 40% left unsatisfied, subsequent surgical intervention confers excellent outcome. Patients with symptomatic LDH failing medical management should consider spinal manipulation followed by surgery if warranted.
Copyright © 2010 National University of Health Sciences. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

    We have 17-year-old quadruplets, Connor, Grant, Paige, and Clare.  I remember a meeting at our children's school years ago.. I think they were in about third grade.  The psychologist and teacher laid out a sheaf of test data and worked hard to convince us that our son Grant was learning disabled.  

   We resisted their attempts to label him and made it through the year with extra work at home.  That summer I learned about omega 3's, and started the whole family on them right away.  

  The next school year was a changed one for Grant.  He went from being a C and D student that required constant oversight to an A and B student who was completely self supervising.  He's been that way ever since.

   I didn't know it until then, but Grant had obviously been severely deficient in omega 3s.  Not uncommon when you consider that he was "gestated" at the same time as three other babies.  There's only so much omega 3 to go around, and Grant was the one that got the least.  How fortunate that we filled that hole early on.

What are omega 3's?
Omega 3's are fats.. oils, more specifically, and they're something you must have to be healthy.  They were always there in our foods.. until about 100 years ago when food started coming from factories instead of nature.  Omega 3's are so important that your body can't work right without them.  Like water for a plant, they're such a basic requirement to health that not having them promotes virtually every chronic illness, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, and many neurologic illnesses, including dementia, depression, and ADHD.

How can being deficient in omega 3's cause so many different problems?  To begin with, omega 3's help regulate inflammation.   Omega 6s and omega 3s are both necessary in our diet.  Omega 6 fats are the precursors for the "hormone" that turns inflammation on, and omega 3s are the same for the hormone that turns it off.  We get plenty of omega 6s--because they're in everything we eat, as corn, soy, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, and peanut oils--but very little of the omega 3s.  That means we have a very strong tendency to turn inflammation on, and a poor ability to turn it off.  It has recently been discovered that chronic low level inflammation underlies virtually every chronic illness.

Omega 3's are also an important building block--like 2x4s for the body, especially for the brain and nervous system.  The cell membrane in particular requires omega 3's.  If they aren't there, your body isn't "up to code" and it affects the "fluidity" of the cell membrane, and that affects the ability of important substances to get in and out of cells.. things like serotonin, dopamine, and insulin, and that affects your health.  One reason trans fats are so bad for you is that they'll replace omega 3 fats in the cell membrane--even if omega 3s are present, severely impairing the ability of important substances to get in and out of the cells.

Why aren't omega 3's in our foods anymore?
The omega 3's we're talking about come almost exclusively from animals.  When foods began coming from factory farms, profit was the primary objective, not quality.  They started feeding slaughter animals (beef, chicken, pigs, etc.) in ways they would never eat in nature, to fatten them faster for greater profit.  Unfortunately, it affects the quantity and type of fat.  For example, grassfed beef is 3:1 omega 3 while feedlot beef is 20:1 omega 6!

Is it possible to get enough omega 3's in your diet without supplementing?
It's very hard, without making big changes in your diet.  Your need for omega 3's is mostly determined by how much omega 6's you eat.  You need a balance of omega 3 and omega 6 in your diet for your body's inflammatory process to work right.. the more omega 6 you consume, the more omega 3 you need.

When omega 3's were taken out of our foods, they were replaced with omega 6's (corn, soy, cottonseed, safflower, sunflower, peanut, canola).  Many people get 20 or 30 times as much omega 6 as omega 3, because of the high amount of processed foods they eat.

The only person I know who might get enough omega 3's in his family's diet is my brother Eddie that lives in Alaska.  Ed fishes and hunts enough that all of their meats come from the wild.  Even then, depending on how much omega 6 they get in other foods, they could still need to supplement.

Here's Ed cleaning red salmon in the Kenai river, Alaska.

I take flax oil, is that good enough?
No.  The omega 3's we need most are called EPA and DHA and they come from animals.  Plant source omega 3's are great.. but they're "short chain" omega 3's, and the ones we need are "long chain."  You have to have EPA and DHA.

How much EPA and DHA do I need?
For your inflammatory process to work right, you need close to equal amounts of (long chain) omega 3 and omega 6 oils in your diet.  Remember, omega 6's tend to turn inflammation on, and omega 3's turn it off.  You need both.. in equal amounts to maintain a normal inflammatory response.  The good news is that as you improve your diet and lower your intake of omega 6 fats, your need for omega 3's will decrease also.

Barry Sears, a PhD in biochemistry and author of the "Zone" books is one of the foremost experts on omega 3s.  Here's what Dr. Sears recommends:

Current State of Health                              EPA & DHA Recommended
No known existing illness                             2.5 grams/day (2,500 mg)
Obesity, heart disease, or type 2 diabetes   5    grams/day (5,000 mg)
Chronic pain                                                 7.5 grams/day (7,500 mg)
Neurologic illness                                     >10    grams/day (10,000 mg)

I suggest a ratio of EPA to DHA of 2:1.  The product we carry has 400 mg of EPA and 200 mg of DHA in each gel cap.  For a healthy person with no known illness, 4 each day would provide 2,400 milligrams at a cost of $16/month.

When you first start taking omega 3's, take one or two right at the start of a meal, once or twice a day before 6pm.  As your body becomes accustomed, you can increase the amount taken at one time and can take them with just water.

What can you expect when you start supplementing with omega 3's  Some of the benefits take time, some are more immediate.  Many report weight loss.  I lost 8 lbs within a few weeks, probably because it improved insulin sensitivity.  Many report better digestive function, better elimination, better hair, skin, and nails, better concentration, relaxation, better sleep.  One study I read showed that 59% of chronic back pain patients enjoyed enough pain reduction by virtue of "normalizing" their inflammatory response that they quit taking their prescription pain medication.

You may not notice much at all.. but it's still a required component for health.  Give it time.  You can feel good about the fact that you're putting something back that has to be there in order for you to be healthy.. like water for a plant!

Dr. Chestnut (my favorite speaker) says that probably the worst thing that's ever happened to human health is that we've allowed ourselves to be convinced that we're not animals, that we don't now and never have had a place in the natural world.  

Why is that so damaging?  Because it leaves us completely disconnected from nature, without any kind of a "model" of how we were intended to live, or any maps on how to get there.

Can you think of any other animal--anywhere in the world--that is unhealthy in it's own natural environment?  Can you think of even one?  It doesn't happen, does it.  Every animal is genetically programmed for health in its own "genetically congruent" environment.  

What about animals that live in ecosystems that have been changed by man?  These animals have problems surviving, don't they?  In fact, many have gone extinct.. and many more are endangered.

How about animals that we take from their natural habitat and place in captivity, such as a zoo?  Did you know they routinely get the same diseases we do.. gorillas get heart disease, snakes get cancer, antelope get diabetes.. diseases they don't get in the wild?  They get the best "healthcare" in the form of drugs and surgery, and they live sicker and die younger than necessary, just as we do.

As humans, we're the sickest species on the planet.  No other animal even comes close to the chronic illness, disability, and premature death that we bring upon ourselves, except those that we force change upon, like the zoo animals.  

If you can step back out of the picture and look at this from a different perspective, it'll make more sense to you.   Animals living in habitats which are congruent with their genetics are healthy.  Animals that have endured great change in their natural habitat, or even worse--been moved to a totally different habitat--develop chronic illness and die early.  Sound familiar?

Is there any evidence to support this idea?  Yes.  There are small pockets of humans in the world today that still live in a more natural way, and they've been the subject of a great deal of study.. for this reason:  They exhibit virtually none of the chronic illness that is so common for us.. no high blood pressure, no heart disease, no cancer, no stroke, no diabetes, no osteoporosis, no Alzheimer's.. nothing. 

Beginning to get the picture?  It isn't us that's sick.  It's our environment.  We've taken ourselves from nature, and moved to the zoo.

If you were the zookeeper, what would be your first choice if you were charged with restoring any sick animal to health?  Return it to it's natural environment (if possible), or create the most similar natural environment possible in all respects, right?

The same is true of you.  There's only one way to recover your health, and it isn't drugs and surgery.  You have to start making changes in how you live on a daily basis, changes in how you eat, move, and think, in the direction of what would be present in your natural environment. 

We can help you do that.  We've got a map.

You've probably seen some press recently on vitamin D.  It's been on our list of recommended supplements for years.  It's an essential nutrient that virtually everyone is deficient in unless they supplement.. at least in the winter.

Here are some selected quotes from recent (mostly) research on the relationship between vitamin D supplementation and type A flu.  Please remember that vitamin D isn't a "treatment."  It's something that you need to be healthy, and if you don't have it, you're going to be more susceptible to flu.  Because of vitamin D's important role in your body's immune system, you can't be healthy without it, and there are several other health problems that are related to vitamin D deficiency, as you'll see toward the end of this article.  

Here are the quotes and references:

"UVB calculations show that at high latitudes very little, if any, vitamin D is produced in the skin during the winter.  Thus, it appears that a low vitamin D status may play a significant role in most influenzas."
Int J Infect Dis. 2010 Dec;14(12):e1099-1105  The seasonality of pandemic and non-pandemic influenzas: the roles of solar radiation and vitamin D

This study looked at the incidence of flu in schoolchildren that were given either vitamin D or a placebo.

"Influenza A occurred in 18 of 167 (10.8%) children in the vitamin D3 group compared with 31 of 167 (18.6%) of children in the placebo group.  In children with a previous diagnosis of asthma, asthma attacks as a secondary outcome occurred in 2 children receiving vitamin D3 compared with 12 children receiving receiving placebo." Am J Clin Nutr.  2010 May; 91(5): 1255-60  Randomized trial of vitamin D supplementation to prevent seasonal influenza A in schoolchildren.

"In a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, 104 women who were given vitamin D were 3 times less likely to report cold and flu symptoms.  A low dose (800IU/day) not only reduced incidence, it abolished the seasonality of reported colds and flu.  A higher dose (2,000 IU/day), given during the last year of their trial, virtually eradicated all reports of cold or flu."  
Epidemiol. Infect. doi:10.1017/S0950268807008308  12/March 2007

This graph shows the seasonal distribution of type A flu outbreaks correlated with latitude, which is directly related to sun exposure.  Look at the inverse relationship to sun exposure between outbreaks in the Northern and Southern hemispheres (top and bottom).  Even the temperate zones show an inverse relationship with sun exposure, though less pronounced.

Here's some quotes on how much to supplement:

"There are a number of factors to consider regarding he most appropriate dose of vitamin D.  One minimal exposure of the full-body to artificial UVB radiation triggers the release of about 20 000 IU of vitamin D into the circulation of light-skinned persons within 48 h."                             "Heaney has estimated that about 3000 IU/day of vitamin D is required to assure that 97% of Americans obtain levels > 35 ng/ml.  Some groups may require supplementation with 5000 IU/day during winter but less--or none--during the summer to obtain levels of 50 ng/ml.  These studies indicate that ideal daily doses of vitamin D exceed current recommendations (which set an upper tolerable limit of 2000 IU/day)."   "Single dose injections of 600,000 IU are given to the elderly without any evidence of toxicity."
Epidem. Infect. (2006), 134:1129-1140  REVIEW ARTICLE: Epidemic influenza and vitamin D

 Supplementing with vitamin D isn't a "treatment."  It's putting something back that you're deficient in because of changes in our diet and lifestyle.

In addition to greater risk for colds/flus, deficiency has been related to a bunch of immunity issues, including allergies, asthma, autoimmune disorders like autism and rheumatoid arthritis, inflammation, cancer, hardening of the arteries, and peripheral arterial disease.  It's a requirement for health that virtually all of us are deficient in if we don't supplement.. at least during the winter.

It appears that 5000 IU/day is quite safe (if they're giving seniors injections of 600,000 IU!), and that's the recommendation for adults from the Vitamin D Council, which is headed up by the lead researchers on the topic.  During the summer, reduce to 2000 IU/day or none if getting lots of daily sun exposure.

For children, I would suggest starting at 1000 IU/day for infants on up to 20 lbs, then add another 1000 IU for every 20 lbs, until they reach 5000 IU/day at 100 lbs.

My favorite speaker is James Chestnut, a Canadian--eh.  An important point he makes in his talks is that you'll never get the right answer unless you ask the right question!

 If you're not feeling well, and you're asking "I wonder what the diagnosis will be, I wonder what drug they'll give me," you'll never get as good of an answer as if you were to ask "I wonder what it is about the way I'm living or my environment that's causing me to feel this way, and what I need to change to get back to health." 

 Your health will always be your genetic expression of your environment.. how you eat, move, and think.  Your genetics haven't changed since birth.  In fact, our genetics have changed less than 2/10ths of 1% in 40,000 years, according to the literature.  That leaves environment and lifestyle.

 Right now, 47% of Americans are already diagnosed with a chronic illness, and that number is going up every year.  From 2003 to 2023, population will increase 19%, yet cases of cancer are projected to increase by 65%, heart disease by 51%, and the other chronic illnesses share similar projections.  If this is what you want for you and your family's health, just continue to eat, move, and think like everyone around you.  If you want something different, then you have to make different choices, and that's a big part of what we do here at Foster Chiropractic.

We get great results with back pain, neck pain, headaches, knee pain.. even things like high blood pressure and GERD symptoms.. we get great results with all of these and more. But what really gets me excited is helping someone change, helping someone move toward an accurate model of health by making new choices in their world.

I'm always amazed at how much recovery is available when people are really willing to make changes.  I think their "intention" is a big part of it.  So, regardless of where you're at now, your health can be better, and if you give us the opportunity, we can show you how to get there.