4 Reasons Athletes Get Adjusted

Keeping themselves in tip-top shape is all but required for athletes who take the time to nurture their body with exercise, rest and healthy foods. But these aren’t the only ways athletes stay in peak performance mode. Each year, a growing number are turning to chiropractic care.
Find out why below!

How Chiropractic Promotes Overall Health

Health is more than what you eat–it’s about handling life with ease.

Did you know that we live our life through our nervous system? When we have a better nervous system, we have a better life. It’s that simple. From our ability to digest our food, enjoy a sunset, or be delighted by a baby’s giggle, our nervous system allows us to experience life more abundantly. If, however, your nervous system is compromised, you’re not able to live life to the fullest.

What Does Health Mean to You?

If you were to ask someone on the street, “How do you know if you’re healthy?” you might be met with answers that mention high energy and alertness, or maybe simply, “I just feel good.” But many rarely equate health to function — when all of the body parts are working as designed. And yet, that’s exactly what true health is.
So instead of thinking of the word health, think about having a sense of ease. If you have ease, which is the opposite of dis-ease, then consider yourself to have health. If there’s a lack of ease, you’re experiencing dis-ease, and chances are, your nervous system is not functioning as it was meant to.

Benefits of Chiropractic Care

Ensuring that your nervous system is free of interference through chiropractic can help you feel great. Many patients of ours also report improvements like:

• Reduced back and neck pain
• Enhanced immune system
• Improved range of motion
• Increased function
• Heightened energy and mood

If you’d like to experience life to the fullest with a properly functioning nervous system, we invite you to contact our practice to get your spine checked.

Let’s Put the Word Sick to Bed

By Heidi Skye, MS, DC


Words guide us, choose them consciously.
Coughs and sneezes are heard in households all over the world. Late night fun times in the bathroom taking care of kids are had by all parents. It is amazing (and gross) the things that ooze and fly out of our kids. Symptoms happen.
It is common when our child has symptoms that we tell them they are sick. Most of us do this whenever our child has a cold or flu or barf bug. We often announce it when we ourselves aren’t feeling well.
Now I have a question for you, one you may have never considered:
Is your child sick because they have symptoms?
Sickness is the lack of the ability of the body to adapt. Aren’t the symptoms of a cold, flu or barf bug a sign the body is adapting?
Here’s the science.
When a child gets a viral or bacterial infection the body responds by doing things like increase the body temperature to kill the bug or produce mucous which eliminates the chemical by-products, dead bacteria or viruses and debris from the healing process. Your child may have less energy because the body is redirecting its resources to adapt and clear the bug. These are all signs of a body that is adapting to its environment and this is HEALTHY. 
“Sick” would be a body that is not able to sense and respond or heal. The childhood flues, colds, coughs and projectile vomiting sessions are actually proof that your child’s body is healthy. It is doing what it needs to do to restore balance.
Here’s the philosophy:
I believe that telling a child that they are sick when they have a routine childhood illness disempowers them. It tells them they are a victim of something outside themselves instead of highlighting their inner healing power. It discounts their body’s wisdom that runs the show healing their body.
Here’s the action step:
Try different language.
Instead of telling your child they are sick try saying:
“Your body is processing.”
“I see your body is cycling.”
“You are symptomatic” (my 14 year old said recently, “Mom I am symptomatic. Can I skip lacrosse today?”)
“Looks like your body is having a rainy day.”
“Your body is healing, that is why you are warm. Let’s snuggle”
These words infer that they are healthy, strong and are merely adapting. It does not ignore the symptoms but it frames them in an empowering way. It says this is normal and you are recovering… this too shall pass.
All of these examples infer process instead of predicament. This begins to help them form Holistic Headspace! And a child with holistic headspace feels their body is capable and healthy.
Let’s put the word sick to bed – instead learn and teach the Language of Wellness with your family!

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Heidi Skye M.S., D.C is a mom and a family chiropractor who blogs at drheidiskye.com. Her passion is to speak and write about the conscious conversations parents can have with their children to create a “Culture of Wellness” in their families. She has been in private practice in the San Francisco Bay area for 20 years and holds a master’s degree in Neuroendocrinology.

Keep Sleep on Your To-do List

Chiropractic care can help you get better sleep so you’ll have more energy to get through your day.

With a lengthy to-do list, including shopping, entertaining, and a whirlwind of festivities, sleep sometimes gets shortchanged during this busy season. Here are a few ideas that might help ensure you get the sleep you need to stay refreshed and energized all season long!
Eat and Drink to Induce Sleep
If sleep is elusive during this busy season, a warm cup of chamomile tea before bed may help induce slumber. Likewise, eating tryptophan-rich turkey before bed might also help. Other natural sleep enhancers include warm milk, nuts, seeds, and bananas. These contain tryptophan and magnesium, which may also induce sleep.
Take a Natural Approach
While there are numerous over-the-counter sleep aids on the market, taking the natural approach is encouraged as supplements typically don’t have unwanted side effects. Magnesium, GABA and valerian root are often used to promote sleep.
Check Your Bedtime Rituals
Just as children are likely to have a bedtime routine; adults can also benefit from having a pre-bed routine. A warm bath about an hour to an hour and a half before bed is relaxing and may enhance sleep. Reading may also calm a busy brain and allow you to ease into a blissful state of sleepiness.
Avoiding all electronics, (TV watching, cell phone, computer or tablet use) is advisable as the stimulation from the artificial light can make it difficult to shut down.
Seek Chiropractic Care
We encourage you to visit us regularly during this festive season. Because chiropractic aims to reduce nerve interference, your body may function better, and your sleep may improve as a result.
When you experience regular, restorative sleep, you’ll have more energy to tackle the many to-dos of the season and enjoy the festivities in the process!

Is Meditation a good idea for Stress Reduction? Teaching our Patients...

Postive Posture

This is a good blog about posture from the UK.  Follow along and learn the importance of posture!


Find Your Own Good Standing Posture

Posted on 13 March 2015 by Jane Morgan

by No matter what we’re doing, we’re in some kind of posture – stooping, leaning, sitting and, of course, standing. Have you ever wondered what your own Good Standing Posture is? If so, here’s the blog and video that will teach you how to find it. A lesson for life.

What is Standing Posture?

• It’s when you’re standing!
• It’s always comfortable.
• Your standing posture is probably not textbook perfect and so can be improved.

There is a way to stand that is balanced and your centre of gravity falls through certain parts of your body. In this way, we stand efficiently and the deep postural muscles are working. These muscles support our joints and can work for long periods without fatigue. However, if we don’t stand in good posture, our centre of gravity falls through different parts of our body and different muscles must work to keep us there.
This is not so good because the muscles now working are not postural muscles and can fatigue.
This causes pain.

For example: Standing with your chin poking forwards

Now, this is something many of us do because we’re sat at a desk for hours, and that encourages the “Tortoise Posture”. When you stand like this, the muscles that must come into play to stop us from dropping our heads are the middle fibres of trapezius, and they run from the top of our shoulders to the base of our neck. This muscle can’t work for long periods and is a big source of pain for many people. So improving your posture will help reduce the activity of this muscle and thus you will get less pain.
To help improve your head and neck posture, you must be able to hold your head back a little so that your ear is in line with the middle of your shoulder when observed from the side. If you’ve stood with your head forwards for many years this will not happen quickly. You need to practice the Retraction Exercise which is on my previous blog. This will allow you to stretch the tight structures that are stopping you from holding a good head posture. You must do this about three times a day to have a gentle, effective stretch.
So, to find our good, pain-free standing posture this is what you do…

• Stand with your back against a wall with heels 2cms away from the wall.
• Your bottom, upper back, and if possible the back of your head should be resting on the wall. If your head won’t reach the wall don’t strain.
  In this position there should be just enough space to slide your hand in between the lower back inward curve and the wall.
• If there is too much space, flatten this inward curve until your hand is touching the wall on one side and your back on the other side.
• This will be your good standing posture for the lower back.
• Whilst finding this position, keep your knees straight and don’t drop your chest down.

Mini Squat Exercise

To help you to learn and adapt this position, find your good posture position as explained above or on the video then…

1. Whilst maintaining this good posture, slowly bend the knees to do a mini squat…
2. …and then straighten your knees keeping the good postural position.

This will help you to learn the new, correct standing posture.
Now, the Retraction Exercise in my previous post will help you cope with a particularly common fault that causes poor standing posture. But of course, there are many other bad habits we can slip into, and we’ll look at some of them in future posts. But remember, once you know what good posture is you can work towards it.
So try out the advice we’ve covered today, and let me know how you get on!

Benefits of Gratitude

Want to be happy, healthy and have great relationships? Sure, we all do! And we’ve hear a million times about the obvious ways to take care of ourselves: exercise, diet etc.
But there’s one simple exercise that boosts all of these things simultaneously and that most of us simply don’t know. What’s that? Being thankful. Sound too simplistic to you? Not so fast! Check out 13 of its stellar science-backed benefits:

Benefits of Gratitude:

HAPPINESS

1 – Increases your Happiness. Counting your blessings leads to heightened well-being, especially positive mood (and who couldn’t use more of that?) (ref1. ref2 ref3).
2 – Brings you Happiness that Lasts. In fact, an attitude of gratitude can not only help you increase positive emotion, but also sustain it. Heck, ice cream can make us happy in the moment but gratitude leads to long-term happiness (ref)
3 – Protects you from Stress & Negativity. Gratitude is associated with decreased anxiety and depression and increased social support (ref)
4 – Reduces Your Materialism. One reason gratitude boosts our well-being is that it reduces materialism (ref) which is a good thing because materialism is linked to less happiness (ref)

RELATIONSHIPS

5 – Makes you more socially intelligent (ref)
6 - Leads to better relationships. Gratitude strengthens your relationships and helps you create and maintain good relationships and feel more connected (ref1 and ref2 and ref3 and ref4)
7 – Makes you Sexier. Gratitude improves romantic relationships by making people feel more satisfied in their relationships and connected to their partner (ref)

HEALTH

8 – It Even Improves Sleep Quality & Duration- in part because you have more grateful/happy thoughts before you go to sleep (ref). Count blessings, not sheep?
9 – Strengthens Your Willpower to Make Better Decisions Gratitude make you stronger and helps you achieve your goals (ref) and make smarter long term decisions (ref)
10 – Benefits you at all ages from adolescence to adulthood (ref)

IMPACT

11 – Makes you a better person. It makes us better, more altruistic, moral and ethical people (ref1 and ref2). We become more helpful and kind to others (ref)
12 – Makes others better people too: those we thank are more likely to become more ethical people too (ref1 and ref2)
13 – Makes the World a Better Place. When you express your gratitude to someone, that person will go on to be kinder to others (ref)
Don’t feel grateful? No worries! It’s accessible to anyone. Whether we’re sick or well, old or young, employed or unemployed, if our heart is beating, air is flowing in our lungs, and we have had a meal today, we have something to be grateful for. “Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a Rather Large Amount of Gratitude” (A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh).

Practicing Gratitude

Here are some simple ways to strengthen your thanking muscle:

1) A powerful way scientists have found can increase your well-being is simply making daily gratitude lists. Write down 5 things you feel grateful for every day. This simple (and short!) act can significantly increase your happiness.
2) Another way you can boost your gratitude is by spending a few minutes out of your day devoted to gratitude. Below is a gratitude meditation I put together that you can download and try for yourself today.
3) And finally, here’s a video by Brother David Steindl-Ross I love that never fails to elicit gratitude.
Let me know how it works out for you and share your experience in the comment section below!

Gratitude Meditation

Another way you can boost your gratitude is by spending a few minutes out of your day devoted to gratitude. Here’s a gratitude meditation I put together that you can download and try for yourself today.