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Archive for the ‘Healthy Lifestyle’ Category
Monday, September 6th, 2010
Well the dog days of summer are over. With our routines back on a more regular schedule what a perfect time of the year to recommit to our health habits. So over the next few weeks we’ll focus on the health habits that we emphasize in the office. Specifically we’ll discuss how to eat well, how to move well and how to think well. Dr. Dane bought me a great book called Switch, How to Change things when Change is Hard. One of the points in the book is when we are given too many choices, often we’ll default to our ‘hard wiring.’ This is also known as the paralysis of analysis. For example, when you walk to the yogurt aisle and see 22,347 brands of yogurt, perhaps, just perhaps, you are confused as to which one is healthiest and therefore you won’t pick any. So we will try to keep things black and white. In other words, choose this, not this or do this, not that. So here’s my top ten ‘do this’ rules about eating right.
- Eat breakfast within one hour of rising and ensure that you get at least 20 grams of protein with this meal. Examples would be eggs, Greek yogurt, turkey bacon, cottage cheese, an Ultrameal shake or a Boca burger. Never, ever, ever skip breakfast.
- Eat every 3 to 4 hours while awake. This would be a small meal, snack or shake.
- NO eating within 2 hours of bedtime. If you go to sleep at 10pm, your last mouthful would be at 8pm.
- Remember the rule of 2/2. (Yes I just made this up and I like it). Never drink more than two alcoholic drinks in one day. Never drink more than 2 days per week. If you want this to be Friday and Saturday, good for you. If you want this to be Wednesday and Sunday, good for you. But it can’t be Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Capeesh (or for the Italians, capiche)?
- You are allowed to eat out 2 times per week. That’s it. If you want to eat out at lunch on Wednesday and Saturday night for dinner, then that’s your two days. We consume a ridiculous amount of calories, make poor choices, and often eat very unhealthy when we eat out. So as I always say rediscover your kitchen. A list of excellent cookbooks is available on the wall by the checkout counter or on our website www.wscenters.com.
- NO starches after 3pm. This includes pasta, rice, bread and highly refined carbohydrates. As Pamela Peeke MD, a well known medical doctor and bestselling author says, “If you tell me what you eat from 3 pm on, I’ll tell you what your body shape is.” We simply do not burn these carbs off and they settle in as nice fat deposits throughout the night.
- Drink a minimum of 64 ounces of pure water each day.
- ABSOLUSTELY POSITIVELY NO SODA, diet or regular.
- ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NO PARTIALLY HYDROGENTATED OILS AKA TRANS FAT. Read your labels, which is where you’ll find this killer fat (and we ain’t kiddin, it kills).
- When consuming a carbohydrate, get a MINIMUM of 3 grams of fiber per serving. The Thomas English Muffin Lite, Arnold Thins and Pepperidge Farm Deli Flats, as well as many small whole wheat wraps, are excellent bread choices. Quinoa is an excellent choice over rice because of its fiber content. And good luck with pasta, my friends, as it’s very, very difficult to get enough fiber with pasta.
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Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
Principle #7 from The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest by Dan Buettner:
Principle #7: Have Faith
Centenarians have faith. Okinawan’s have a blended worship that focuses on ancestral worship. Costa Rica Nicoyans and Sardinia Italians are Catholic and Loma Linda centenarians are 7th Day Adventists. Faith is a funny thing. I was raised Episcopalian. By the time I went to college, going to church wasn’t a priority. The first few years being married and have small babies, although we went to church, I wouldn’t profess to having a strong faith. But a funny thing happened to me about 8 years ago. I literally felt drawn to have a closer relationship with God and to develop my faith.
I won’t go into the details of where I went from there because I believe each of us will be drawn to God when the time is right and you will develop your own sense of how to become ‘faithful.’ I believe it is personal and I am thankful to live in a country where I get to choose! What I can say is that my life has become profoundly better since I have ‘uncovered’ my faith. I have a morning routine each day where I wake up naturally at 5 am and spend the next hour with me and God. That routine usually involves reading a few pages of some inspirational book (I’m always reading one), reading a few scriptures, praying, affirming my goals and meditating. I know for certain that the days that I get this time in (I average 5 out of 7), are the days I most enjoy.
In There’s a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem by Wayne Dyer, he has a chapter on faith. The chapter begins with a quote by a famous Indian Poet, “Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.” He then goes on to describe faith this way. Imagine a junk yard filled with million of pieces of junk (bits of metal, toilet seats, glass, old appliances, rags, etc). Suddenly a gigantic wind blows through. You see a tornado of junk flying in the air. The wind calms and as the dust settles you look out. There in front of you is a jumbo Boeing 747. By luck or a weird coincidence, all the parts of the junkyard were thrown together to make a perfect jet. This analogy is similar to how the universe works. Better yet, just think about one human cell. A cell’s metabolism, structure, chemical makeup and so on are truly miraculous. One must assume that there’s an intelligence that created it. Or we can just say it’s all a coincidence.
To sum it all up, I would rather have faith all my life and be wrong and then to have no faith at all. Martin Luther King said it this way, “faith is taking the first step even though you don’t see the whole staircase.”
Posted in Healthy Lifestyle, Meditation, Recommended Reading | No Comments »
Monday, August 9th, 2010
Principle #5 from The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest by Dan Buettner: SLOW DOWN
Ok here’s the scenario… you are driving to work for several miles when all of sudden you realize that your mind was totally somewhere else and you have no idea how you safely made it to this red light. We have all been there. Unfortunately, it’s a regular occurrence that our minds are frequently on to the next event.
Deepak Chopra reminds us that we are human beings, not human thinkings, and yet we don’t seem to grasp this concept. If we aren’t doing 22 things per day, we don’t feel productive. Americans work more hours per week and take fewer hours of vacation than most countries. Our children must be involved in baseball, cheerleading, church choir, and ice hockey or they’ll miss out on something for certain. If we don’t check our email, blackberry, cell phone and landline phone messages, we might certainly miss something important. Night time involves getting two or three children to two or three different events three nights or more per week. We work 12 hour days, sleep 5 hours per night. Sit down, family meals happen less and less.
We are so busy that we’ve forgotten how to be happy. Why is this? Well the centenarians in the book would tell us that we are too busy and we don’t know how to “down shift.” They point to an example of a 100 year old Okinawan woman pausing to watch a brilliant thunderstorm as she washed her breakfast dishes and a Sardinian shepherd stopping to take a long look over the emerald green plateaus that he had seen daily for 80 years.
I believe with all the “junk” going on with our economy which is quite devastating for many families, there will be one positive thing that will come out of it. We will learn what’s important and what’s not. We will learn why family time is so much more important than work time. We will value that family meal, which is less expensive and more valuable in so many ways, compared to the quick take out meal. We will learn the importance of a strong social network of friends that we can play cards with rather than having only expensive dinners with. We will learn how to “think less” and be in the present more. The author reminds us,” Life is short. Don’t run so fast that you miss it.”
The book offers us 3 ways to help us slow down:
Reduce the noise: shut off the TV, radio, and internet to reduce the amount of aural clutter. Limit TVs to one area in your home.
Be early: plan to arrive 15 minutes early to every appointment. This one practice minimizes the stress that arises from traffic, getting lost or underestimating travel time.
Meditate: PLEASE don’t underestimate this one. Start with 5 minutes per day in a quiet place in your home and simply sit still and breathe deeply. Try increasing to 15 minutes per day. And remember there’s no wrong way to meditate. Just sit and breath.
Posted in Healthy Lifestyle, Meditation | No Comments »
Monday, July 26th, 2010
In our office this summer at the Newtown, PA 8WW center, we are reviewing the 9 longevity principles from The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest by Dan Buettner. We are on week 3, Have A Purpose.
Principle #3: HAVE A PURPOSE
This is probably my most favorite principle in the book. Those that live long healthy lives all have a purpose. It’s that little feeling you have inside of you that says “now this is what I am meant to do, what I’m good at, and what I love.” It’s that knowing that this is what God created me for.
Okinawans call it ikigai and Sardinians call it plan de vida… translation: why do you wake up each morning? Is your purpose to be the best parent you can possibly be? Is your purpose defined by your charitable work? Is your purpose to be the best ‘widget’ maker your company has ever seen? My French grandmother always would say to me, “Denise you must maintain that certain “joie de vivre” (joy of living) throughout your life.” And I know what she meant now.
Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Wayne Dyer states “Don’t die with your music still in you.” Those that lead lives of quiet desperation or die with their music still in them are people that don’t have a purpose for living.
Some of you know exactly what your purpose is, while others really aren’t so sure. So here are some steps you can take to more clearly define your purpose:
- Write your own mission statement. Put in on an index card and recite it each day. Many of you have heard our center’s mission statement that we recite together before the start of each shift. It gets our minds focused on the task at hand which is serving YOU, our customers, with the best possible care and love that we can give. What are you passionate about? What gets up pumped up? What gets you excited to start your day? By answering these questions, you’ll more clearly define your personal mission statement.
- Find someone to talk with about your life’s purpose. This could be a spouse, sibling, friend, co-worker, but essentially it’s someone that really knows you. They know your likes and dislikes. That know what makes you happy. They know what you are good at (and what you aren’t so good at!)
- Keep your mind working – read, do crosswords, engage in lively discussions.
I know that I know that I know what my purpose is. In the simplest terms it is to be an encourager of people. I get excited each day when I wake up knowing that whoever I come in contact with that day, I have the opportunity to make their day better, whether this is through an amazing adjustment, with encouraging words, something I might enlighten them about their health, or simply through a hug.
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Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
It is a great time to reflect on the many freedoms that thousands of men and woman have died to give us. The freedom of where to live; the freedom of where or what to worship; the freedom to go to the school of our choice; the freedom to change jobs/careers; the freedom of speech. And while I realize that economic times are tough right now, a visit to another country proves that America is still a great nation and enjoys much freedom where “choices” abound.
The doctors and staff of 8 Weeks to Wellness centers across the country know that health is a choice. Health is not merely a roll of the lucky genetic die. Rather health is our responsibility (ability to respond) to the many choices we have day in and day out. Choices such as:
- Did you choose to skip breakfast or did you choose to eat a healthy balanced breakfast such as an egg-white, vegetable omelet and slice of high-fiber toast?
- Did you choose to watch two hours of TV last nite or did you choose to take a 45 minute walk?
- Did you choose to drink at least 64 ounces of water today or did you choose to drink 4 cups of coffee, 3 diet cokes and two beers?
- Did you choose to jump out of bed this morning and begin your stressful day (just like yesterday) or did you choose to wake up 15 minutes before anyone else in your household to take time to meditate, pray, say affirmations or visualize “making it a great day?”
- Did you choose to cut off the person in front of you that just cut you off while driving, or did you choose to say a silent pray for the other driver that they get to their destination safely because obviously they were in a hurry?
- Did you choose to be miserable today or did you, even though you woke up slightly grumpy, choose to be happy and smile just because you could?
- Did you choose go to the grocery store on the way home so that you could make several healthy meals for the week or did you choose to get take out… again?
Get the picture. Health is indeed a choice. Choose wisely!
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Monday, June 28th, 2010
This summer at our Newtown, PA 8WW office, we are encouraging patients to do a one day per week liquid fast. (this is not part of the 8 Weeks to Wellness program, but a seperate program will are running).
We recommend that you pick the same day each week for your fast. Preferably this will be a day when you aren’t working out. You can use the Ultrameal shakes we carry out in the lobby, chicken or vegetable broth, a juicer, teas and water. Be careful not to get too much sugar in your juices to throw your glucose levels off which will make you really feel hungry. Coffee is ok.
So why a fast? There are many reasons to fast one day per week. Of course many fasts go on much longer than this but since we are also trying to build muscle on your body, we’ll stick to one day fasts. Below are just a few reasons behind a fast:
- Fasting is standard in almost all religions. Stated simply, fasting as a religious practice is refraining from food for a spiritual purpose. Ideally the time you would spend cooking, preparing and eating your meal is dedicated to more spiritual time and self-reflection.
- Fasting gives your gastrointestinal track a MUCH needed break. We eat so very, very much in this country. A restaurant meal can easily be over 2000 calories. The amount of artificial flavors, preservatives, trans fats, sugar etc that we consume each year is overwhelming to our systems. Giving your body a break from food, can be a great thing.
- Fasting will make you feel hunger. The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed and one-third is starving. Since reading this at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year. Fasting will give us an extremely small sense of what 2/3 of our world feels each night as they lay down their head to sleep.
- Fasting will shrink your stomach size. The smaller your stomach, the less you will eat (that is, of course, if you eat slowly enough for the brain to register that it’s full).
- Fasting reminds us to not allow our stomach to rule our lives. Eating is a form of entertainment in our country and that type of entertainment has gotten us obese, sick, and dying prematurely. When you feel a hungry pang during your fasting day, so “hello stomach, I hear you, but I’m not giving in” just as you would to a 3 year old throwing a temper tantrum.
- Fasting will allow ‘mind over matter’ to prevail and will really make you feel like a winner.
Posted in Diet, Healthy Lifestyle, Meditation | No Comments »
Sunday, June 6th, 2010
Well myself and some of our team just returned from Phoenix for one of our industry seminars. I thought I’d share some of the highlights & quotes from the seminar speakers:
- We are all better to wear out than to rust out.
- Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
- Comfort comes as a guest, lingers as a host, and stays to enslave us.
- Mastery is nothing more than the desire to do better & better at something that matters to YOU.
- We are limitless. We can muster up more of anything.
- God’s waiting room is the drug store!!
- Sometimes if God’s out of town, you’ve got to fill in for him, so live a powerful, purposeful life.
- A subluxation of the spine is interference to your nerve system and therefore interference to your potential.
- The Universe will not bring you things if you aren’t ready.
- Continue to ask yourself, what is my potential?
- Gratitude increases your vibrational state. Remember to give thanks each day.
- You have 60,000 thoughts each day. 95% of these are the same as yesterday. 80% are negative and non-supportive thoughts.
- If you are in fear, you cannot be in faith. Just like as if you are in the dark, you aren’t in the light.
- A negative emotion is simply re-living the past because you had to bring that emotion back from somewhere.
And lastly Dr. Richard Barwell gave us a terrific neuroscience update of chiropractic, subluxation and the adjustment. This is what he emphasized.
One of the biggest challenges to chiropractic is to overcome the concept that you get adjusted because you have a ‘bone out of place.’ In fact it’s extremely rare that a bone, ie vertebra, is putting direct pressure on a nerve. This fallacy is further substantiated when you hear things like, “I’m getting my back cracked” because obviously we associate the cracking sound with the bones.
A better definition of a subluxation is compromised neural integrity that is created by emotional, chemical, structural or other stressors. This compromised neural integrity causes us to adapt to our environment inappropriately. True health equals proper adaption from the environment. And if there is improper input in the form of a chemical, environmental, physical, or psychosocial stress, then this can lead to a subluxation causing improper nerve system output to the environment. In other words, we aren’t adapting well.
When we perform your examinations, you’ll notice that we measuring nerve system function through the surface EMG scans, the thermography scans and the heart rate variability test. All these measure nerve system function.
I realize for some of you this just sounds like we are making a mountain out a mole hill. But all the doctors and staff here want you to not only enjoy the benefits of your chiropractic adjustment, but also to understand why you get those benefits. When your communication system, ie your nerve system, receives and responds to stimuli from the environment in a healthy way through your central nervous system (your brain and spinal cord) then you will be healthier. The chiropractic adjustment as defined by Dr. Barwell is ‘a procedure whereby the consequence of an action serves to continually modify further action within the nervous system with the intent of creating harmony within the body’s systems.”
Finally, Dr. Barwell, concluded with giving us a definition of wellness from Mosby’s Medical, Nursing & Allied Health Dictionary which we think bears repeating:
Wellness is a dynamic state of health in which an individual progresses toward higher level of functioning, achieving an optimum balance between internal and external environments.
MAKE IT A GREAT WEEK AS ONLY YOU CAN.
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Monday, May 10th, 2010
Well I did it. I finally got the courage to watch Food, Inc, the movie. Boy was it eye-opening. This is a MUST WATCH for all food eating Americans.
Watch it with your family. The website for the movie is www.foodincmovie.com with a plethora of information/organizations/campaigns that we can support to make sure that our food supply is going to sustain us.
On the website, www.foodincmovie.com, you are able to search by your zip code all the local farmer’s markets. The more we demand locally grown, organic produce and meats, the more we will be supplied with these foods. It’s how demand and supply work in this country. So demand more and the supply will increase (as well as the price will decrease).
Below is a description of the movie that I obtained from the website.
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.
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Sunday, April 4th, 2010
With all the reality TV programs focused on childhood obesity, most recently, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, it is at forefront of our minds. The ‘it’ of course is childhood obesity. As if it isn’t bad enough that we Americans are unhealthy, we so kindly pass these habits right on down to our children. Healthcare reform has now passed and the bottom line is – WE CAN’T AFFORD IT. We simply, as a nation, cannot afford to pay for healthcare for all Americans if we don’t put the steps in place to get healthy. And no matter what side of the political fence you are on, unless YOU take responsibility for YOUR health and that of your family, we are all just kidding ourselves. This week at the Acme (pronounced A-ce-me for anyone older than 65 like my mom-n-law), the grown man behind me in line had (and I’m not kidding), Coco Puffs®, Nutrigrain® bars (a funny attempt at something healthy), Pop tarts® (oh please don’t get me started), steak and green beans (Thank God) in his cart. Do we have a problem or do we have a problem!!!
At our wellness center, we focus on the do and not the should. In another words. when a patient says to me, ‘well, I’m trying…. or I should” they might as well say, “I’m not doing it.” There’s ‘doing’ and ‘not doing.’ Exactly can we being doing today to get our children (and frankly ourselves) healthier?
- Remove all hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup from your home. It’s very simply. It you see those two terms in any ingredient label in your pantry, get rid of the food. And never, ever, ever buy it again.
- Involve your children in cooking. When they are young they can gather the ingredients for you. As they get older they can help pick the recipes, prep the ingredients, measure the amounts, etc. My 11 year old can now completely make dinner, especially our crock pot recipes.
- Children do as you do, not as you say. I know you know this, but you don’t apply it.
- Repeat after me, No More Soda…. and again…. No More Soda. Simply a horrible addition to our SAD (Standard American Diet). Water is a perfectly acceptable beverage for the entire family.
- French fries are not a vegetable. They are a high glycemic index, trans fat laden, waist building, red corn syrup covering (i.e. ketchup) attempt of being a vegetable.
- Eat in at least 5 of your 7 evening meals.
- Make a fiber and protein rich breakfast for your kids. My favorite is the McChranowski as I like to call them. A Thomas English Muffin Light®, one egg, one Boca Burger®, one slice low fat cheese, and some salsa). Little fruit on the side, and voila, an amazing high fiber, high protein, healthy carb breakfast for our boys. (and of course their vitamins, one multi, one Omega-3 fish oil, vitamin C, vitamin D, one probiotic).
- Since we cannot yet rely on our children being served a healthy lunch at school, pack your child’s lunch. Thomas English Muffin Light® and Arnolds Sandwich Thins® are a nice alternative to 2 slices of white bread.
- Consume foods that rot. If it doesn’t go bad then it is bad. A Twinkie® lives a very very long life. And apple does not.
- Shut off the electronics. Of course this will hopefully lead to a more active lifestyle, but it also limits marketing exposure. Between the drug ads with the 52,000 side affects, the corn farmer’s lobby telling me that corn syrup is healthy, and Nickelodeon and Disney channels with commercials that are warping our kids’ minds and bodies, I’m not sure weather to laugh or cry
If we can begin to put the above steps in place, we are making a giant step forward for mankind and childkind.
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Friday, March 26th, 2010
I’m reading Caroline Myss’ book Invisible Acts of Power. She quotes Marian Wright Edelman, ” Service is the rent we pay to be living. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time.” I have always said to our 8 Weeks to Wellness patients that by getting healthy physically, emotionally, spiritually and nutritionally, you are able to serve more. Life is so so so so much more enjoyable when you learn to become less selfish and more self’less’. And believe it or not when you are unhealthy by YOUR OWN choices, you are selfish. Being selfless rather than selfish means that you aren’t thinking less of yourself but rather your are thinking about yourself less often. Have a wonderful Friday and weekend.
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