Food Inc

Some patients from Crane Dance Farms told me about a movie about food,Food Inc., so on Saturday Sandy and I went with some friends.
Wow, is the only thing that I can say, it is terrible what fast food has done to our food chain. What we need to do is change the way we eat, stop buying the junk and the companies that sell us the food will give us what we want. I can’t go into what the movie talked about because the information was so great but if you get a chance to see the movie SEE it.
Special thanks to Crane Dance Farms, Jill and Mary, for telling me about the movie but also for making food the right way. What Jill and Mary are doing is amazing. All my patient should be buying food from them because they are doing food the right way. Thanks for all your work please keep it up.

HDL and LDL

Just a short note today. Over the weekend I was asked a number of times about cholesterol and what the HDL and the LDL meant. So the way that I remember them, is to think of the HDL ,the good cholesterol, as healthy=HDL. The bad cholesterol LDL you think of lousy. These are just two easy ways to think of cholesterol and to know which on is healthy and which one is lousy.

Fitness prolongs life

Dr. Grigg brought in his Guyton Physiology for me to look at, it has been updated since I used it in the mid 90’s. One of the updates that was put in the 10th edition was a section on fitness prolonging life. Guyton is saying that as we age we need to stay fit so if we do get sick our systems can handle the sickness better. He uses the example of the respiratory system, if you are fit and your lungs get sick you could have twice as much air reserves in your lungs to help you heal. Another advantage to being fit is you heart. If you raise your heart rate with a consistent exercise program your heart will be fit..
So bottom line stay fit: you will live longer and be healthier.

Sauna

This is a different topic, but I thought that it would be a good one. What is the use of a sauna? There are many uses of a sauna, relaxing the muscle, increase the ROM on the joint capsules, increase the elasticity of the ligaments, increase blood flow and increase metabolic rate.
According to Rehunen 1988, he recommends people use a sauna up to twice a week for up to 15 minutes.
One of the best uses of a sauna is to help speed up recovery after a hard workout.
Overheating is something to watch for in the sauna, some of the symptoms include the following: Nausea,dizziness,headache, frequent urination. Some of the later symptoms are sleepiness,fast breathing and lack of sweating. If these happen you need to get out of the sauna and rehydrate slowly. It may take a couple of days to feel normal again. For more information just goggle sauna. You will find more information then you ever thought was out there about saunas. Some days in Michigan you feel like you are in a sauna, so try to keep hydrated on these days. Till next blog.

Single leg exercises

The best way to maintain form and not get hurt is to get the movement down first. Start by going through the exercise with no weight at all, make the body know what the movement is before you add weight. Then as you get to the point that your body knows the movement you can start to add weight.
The difference between the RDL and DL is that in the RDL your leg that is not on the floor goes up straight behind you. Also, the RDL will work the glutes,hamstring and spinal Erectors and the DL will only work the glutes and hamstrings.
Thanks for the comment and keep checking out the blog.

Back to the single leg exercise

Sorry about not getting back to now, the last couple of days have been crazy. So the exercises today are the single leg deadlift and single leg good morning. Both of these exercises work the posterior chain which will include the glutes,hamstrings and the spinal erector muscles. Both of these exercises will help with deceleration which is a area of weakness in most people. People that struggle with these exercises usually have weak gluteus medius. The gluteus medius is often a neglected muscle that will stabilize the lower extremity in single leg movements. The body will often make the knee muscles and IT band do the work of the gluteus medius. By doing these single leg movement will help with strengthen these muscles.

More Single leg exercises

It seems that one of the most popular post on our blog has been the one about single leg exercises. So here is a list of singles leg exercises, that I will go through each one and talk about next week. So here is the list of single leg exercises: Lunge isometric hold,step-down,step-up,single leg dead lift,single leg RDL,single leg good morning,band stomp, single leg squat,Bulgarian split squat,static lunge,reverse lunge,split squat jump,cycle split squat jump,single leg vertical power jump,single leg tuck jump,single leg zigzag hop,single leg hop,single leg speed hop, and alternate leg bound. These are a few single leg exercises that we will go over the next few posts. Hope everyone has a great 4th of July weekend, enjoy the great weather and try to stay warm. Check back one Monday and we will write about the lunge isometric hold,the step up and the step down.

Helping with the wait

As most of you know we have been having trouble getting patient in on short notice. We have been looking at a number of options and we have final found one. As of 7-02-09 Dr. William Joe Grigg will start working at Chiropractic Unlimited. His bio will be posted on the web site soon. So if you can’t get in too see me, try Dr. Grigg or Dr. Murphy.   I hope that this will help with patients not being able to get in as soon as they want. Thanks to all of you for being so supportive in the last couple of months. We at Chiropractic Unlimited are truely blessed to have great patients like we do.  So thanks again for being so supportive and we will continue to serve you as best as we can.

Treating TOS

Now to the part that most of the patients with TOS want to know about, treatment. The most common way for people to deal with TOS is with PT and chiropractic.

PT will help by correcting the muscle problem and show the patient the proper way to stretch. The chiropractor will usually adjust the cervical spine, thoracic spine and the ribs.
Certain exercises that will be used are ones that will prevent drooping of the shoulders. One example of this type of exercise is to have the patient stand erect, doing shoulder shrugs with light weight, at the same time adducting the scapula to the center line. Two other exercise are lateral raises and corner stretch.
Adjusting the spine with multiple techniques has also been shown to decrease TOS symptoms. So I hope that something I wrote has answered some questions about TOS.

More Thoracic outlet syndrome

What causes TOS? One of the most common causes is trauma to the head and neck. Trauma to the cervical ribs,fracture to the first rib or a clavicular fracture, will also cause TOS. Some of the other causes are poor posture, illness, rounded shoulders. When the shoulders round the nerves and vascular structures get pinched to create the problems. When looking at TOS you need to look at muscle imbalances and biomechanical changes in the thoracic, lumbar, cervical and shoulders.
TOS is common in the later decades of life. Woman are twice as frequently affected as men. TOS is rarely associated with genetics. In one study, 30% of the patients that have TOS also had an anterior shoulder instability. So on Monday I will tell how we like to treat TOS. So have a great weekend.