This Diet Is So Easy, Even You Can Do It

Have you ever heard of an overweight caveman?

Exactly.

I first wanted to put together a post about healthy snacking after looking at a Good Housekeeping The Best 100 Calorie Snacks article. Within this very popular magazine article you will find many apparent good ideas for eating healthy. But a closer inspection left me feeling disgusted at the recommendations. So I changed my focus to something that I am doing.

The Paleolithic, or Cavemen, diet.

Besides Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, most portrayals of the people who lived 12,000 years ago depict slender folks baring rock-hard abs. What's their secret? Surely it's great exercise to be out chasing woolly mammoths and foraging for berries all day. And it helped that there were no Fruity Pebbles or venti white chocolate mocha's hundreds of generations ago. The Washington Post.

There is a scientific premise to all of this; our dietary needs were formed 500 generations ago and are nearly identical to those of Stone Agers. This was first proposed in the 1980s, but popularized with 2002's "The Paleo Diet," by Loren Cordain, a professor at Colorado State University.

Calories are important when eating, but what is more important is what makes up those calories. You can read more about the importance of the source of the calorie on this informative blog, The Fit Dad Says.

But, seriously, what if we ate like our Paleolithic ancestors? That would be lots of lean meats, nuts, fresh fruits and vegetables; no grains, salt, sugar, legumes or dairy products. Some people do, and it's called the Paleo diet -- short for Paleolithic, which refers to the era before agriculture took hold, a movement away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle that resulted in settled societies, and, eventually, Twinkies and couch potatoes.

If you'd like to learn more about what the Paleolithic diet is all about follow these links below

The Paleo Diet
The Healing Crow

The combination of Chiropractic and these eating principles will reward your body, and your body will reward you!

That Something

The post this week is to direct you towards one of the most famous chiropractic stories, "That Something".

The story of "That Something," it would seem, is thought to be intended to be an autobiographical sketch from the developer of chiropractic, BJ Palmer, and how he achieved success in his life .

How much of it is true and how much is part of the author's fertile imagination is unknown, probably to everyone except BJ himself.

It seems to me that it is not really important whether it is true, wholly, partly or not at all.

It is the message that is important. It is the message that everyone from Napoleon Hill and Clement Stone to Jim Rhone and Zig Ziglar have conveyed, which is, the key to success.

I believe the key lies in the two little words "I will."

"I" means taking responsibility for your life success or failure.

BJ realized very early in life that he was not a prisoner of his childhood or his cruel stepmother. He was responsible for his own life, to make it a success or failure. He knew he could not blame his faults or his problems on anyone else. I certainly would agree that one is success or failure in a matter of choice.

The second word, "will." demonstrates why one is responsible.

"Will" implies volition. Volition implies free choice. We are free to choose success or failure, right or wrong, good or evil. That seems to be the message of the story and how BJ chose to be successful in his life.

Of course, I would claim that those choices come from an educated brain, for that is why we have one! Innate intelligence does not make choices in the sense of good and bad decisions. It acts as a law or principle. Therefore it is up to our educated intelligence to make those choices which make for life what it is to be, for better or worse.

I would like to thank Joe Strauss' and his Green Book Club commentaries for much of the insight and commentary above.

You can read the entire story of "That Something" by clicking here.

Elimating Diabetes With Diet and Exercise

October of last a year the Los Angeles Times ran an article highlighting the cases of five people who have successfully cut out the use of insulin and other diabetes drugs through improvements in their diet and exercise habits.

The article includes 5 brief descriptions of the featured patients including: name, age, occupation, brief history of the symptoms, what they did to heal and their words of advice.

Below I will include there words of wisdom and links to introductory resources to help anyone you know get started on the road to a better life.

Here's some of the advice from people who have healed from both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes:

"Make moving more [of] a habit. I park on the top floor of my office's parking structure . . . and I pick the farthest parking space at the shopping center."

"I wish people understood that what you eat now influences what you want to eat next. A low-carb diet is the best way to curb your appetite and maintain your weight."

"Find someone who will help you truly understand your illness. I have two college degrees and didn't understand how damaging my diet was."

"Lose weight. Eat right."

"Don't underestimate the body's potential to heal on its own."

What Keeps these individuals motivated:

"I will do anything to avoid that terrible foot pain I had. I had uncles lose limbs to diabetes. I never want that to happen to me.

"His great grandmother had a stroke and lost a leg to diabetes, and his grandfather went blind and died of kidney disease, also due to diabetes. Besides, he adds, "I like how I look now, and more important, how I feel.

"I didn't survive cancer to die of diabetes."

"I can't believe the freedom from not taking shots all the time. I don't know what to do with all my time.""This isn't hard. Being on insulin is hard."

Here are some of the resources for someone to read up a little more regarding Diabetes

NaturalNews.com

All4Naturalhealth.com

Mercola.com

Jacklalanne.com

Improve Your Quality of Life by 60%

Improving your quality of life is a very admirable goal!

In fact it's very simple.

A study from the American Journal of Medicine revealed that simply walking 3 times a week decreased the prevalence of dieing from heart disease by 60 percent.

As little as 30 minutes of aerobic exercise three times per week can reduce the risk of early heart-disease-related death by 60 percent, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Department of Cardiology in New Orleans and published in the American Journal of Medicine. NaturalNews.com

To clarify, the study was performed on individuals that already had heart disease, in fact it was performed with people who were under going cardiac rehabilitation.

This is a very good sign, even for those who don't have heart disease.

Simply put, walking moderately 3-5 times a week has tremendous health benefits.

These benefits go far beyond heart health, also included are significant improvements of mood, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, osteoporosis, weight control, cancer, and the ability to live an independent and fulfilling life. Sciencedaily.com

To read the original article that started this blog post stop by Natural News and read it for your self.

Take charge of your life and add a simple routine like walking 3 times a week, you will thank yourself!

Worried About Your Cholesterol?

Have you ever felt under attack from messages from commercials, companies, and doctors.

In fact, the title of this post sounds like a TV commercial... You are informed that high levels of bad cholesterol are the ticket to an early grave and must be brought down.

Some researchers have even suggested—half-jokingly—that the medications should be put in the water supply, like fluoride for teeth.

Used by more than 13 million Americans and an additional 12 million patients around the world, producing $27.8 billion in sales in 2006 and spent well over 10 billion in marketing.

The drugs are thought to be so essential that, according to the official government guidelines from the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), 40 million Americans should be taking them.

Let's get to the point, there is wide spread promotion and use of cholesterol lowering drugs, and research now conclusively reveals that these medications only have a benefit for people that have already had a heart attack, and it's not guaranteed to help them either.

Businessweek.com posted a article asking tremendous questions and revealing many facts about the business of statin drugs.

These questions surround most drugs, not just statins. One dirty little secret of modern medicine is that many drugs work only in a minority of people.

"There's a tendency to assume drugs work really well, but people would be
surprised by the actual magnitude of the benefits," says Dr. Steven Woloshin,
associate professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Businessweek.com

The fact is that these medications have overt symptoms in 10-15% people that take them.

Does that mean that they are harming the other 85-90% of people on an sub clinical level?

I highly recommend reading the Businessweek.com article, and if you want to know more check out these other resources:

Dangers of Cholesterol Medications - B2HC
Does Cholesterol Matter? - Natural News
Why Cholesterol May Not Be the Cause of Heart Disease - The Huffington Post

Bone Health and Osteoporosis Alert

Did you see ABC World News this past Monday night?

There was a special about Fosamax after some alarming problems detected by medical doctors after seeing trends of broken legs in women taking this drug.

Many people believe that osteoporosis is a normal effect of getting older. In fact, many people think that adding a simple medication, as a security measure, is the best way to prevent brittle bones and osteoporosis related problems after menopause.

But the truth may be far worse than the ABC report describes. Below, click and watch the ABC News video, then continue reading the rest of the blog post.

One word of caution while watching this. You will continue to see and hear the interviewed doctors and reporters positioning the continued use of this drug as safe for some women and not for others. (Keep in mind pharmaceutical companies sponsor news programs like ABC News) Currently, I am not aware of any test to determine which women may be eligible to benefit from which medication, so it sounds like a case of Russian Roulette.

Here's the ABC News Report


This is not the first story to break regarding osteoporosis drugs and increased health problems.

Osteoporosis medications have been linked to a host of side effects including debilitating muscle pain and a serious bone problem, osteonecrosis of the jaw, which literally causes the jaw bone to die. Now comes a study from Wake Forest University School of Medicine scientists that evaluated a possible association between bisphosphonates and the development of irregular, sometimes fatal, heart arrhythmia's. NaturalNews.com

In my opinion the effects of any medications block the body's normal ability to communicate with itself, therefore leading to confusion, and over time, more problems - aka disease.

For more articles associated with osteoporosis medications review the links below:

Washington Post: Study Links Osteoporosis Drugs to Jaw Trouble
Food and Drug Administration, FDA: Severe Pain with Osteoporosis Drugs (3rd article down)

If you would like more information regarding osteoporosis, increasing your quality of life, or understanding many other health concerns visit our website or attend one of our free workshops.

Scrubbing Your Veggies

Like many people out there I try to buy organic foods, but it's hard to do all the time. Unfortunately, if your not 100% sure where your food was grown there's a chance it's been covered in pesticides and herbicides.

I'm definately trying to avoid as much of those toxic chemicals as possible!

According to this great article from suite101.com , there are a number of ways to clean your fruits and vegetables, and it turns out that a water and vinegar mixture is the most effective method to do the job.

Here's the paragraph describing a few of the details.

The editors of Cooks Illustrated magazine tested this theory by using four different methods to clean pears and apples: a vinegar and water solution (3:1, water:vinegar), antibacterial liquid soap, scrubbing with a stiff brush, and just using plain water. Not only did the vinegar mixture work the best, it was far, far better when measured for bacteria -- it removed 98% of bacteria, compared to just under 85% for scrubbing.

Be sure to read the Suite101 article to get all the details of how to make the inexpensive home version so you can make the best of everything you cook.

Improve You Brain Health in 3 Minutes a Day

I cam across an interesting video showing a simple exercise on how to improve your brain's ability to heal and function.

It comes from a book titled Superbrain Yoga, it's a simple and effective technique to energize and recharge the brain. It is based on the principles of subtle energy and ear acupuncture. This powerful technique is explained in Master Choa Kok Sui's latest book Superbrain Yoga. You can check out his website here.

This unusual exercise is used to improve mental health and acuity and has been going viral on the Internet lately. It was featured in a Los Angeles CBS News report that has an MD, a Yale neurobiologist, an occupational therapist, educators, and parents endorsing it. It is a simple routine, and it has created positive results for learning disabled and autistic children as well as older Alzheimer`s victims.

And it`s useful for any kind of brain fog or dullness, even emotional instability. It can improve memory and focus, and it`s even made some a little smarter. It seems to work for everyone regardless of mental condition.

Below is the video from the CBS news story


If you would like a brief description on how it works, check out this article found on Natural News.

Eating After Your Workouts

Have you ever rewarded yourself after going to the gym by enjoying a special treat?

Chocolate? Star Bucks? Pizza?

Well as is turns out, what you put in your body after you workout is extremely vital to determine the benefits, if any, you will receive.

In a recent study released from the Journal of Applied Physiology shows that what you eat after your workout can actually influence its positive effects on your body.

What the researchers found was that all exercise sessions increased insulin sensitivity.

This was to be expected, reports Dr. Mercola, as exercise is one of the most powerful tools you have available to normalize your insulin levels. This is important because elevated insulin levels are one of the primary drivers for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and weight gain. But the foods you eat are equally important to maintain healthy insulin and leptin levels.

What this means is that you don’t need to starve yourself after a workout, and in all actuality doing so may slow down your metabolism because your body goes into starvation mode.

Take a few minutes and read through Dr. Mercola's review of the study, post- exercise meals and his 5 Principles of Exercise.

Omega 3: Preventing Mental Decline

An important new study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry reveals that fish oil supplements beat mental illness. An article in the Wall Street Journal reported on the recent study for a natural supplementation treatment option for children and young adults with severe mental disease.

Researchers in the new study identified 81 people, ages 13 to 25, with warning signs of psychosis, ... Forty-one were randomly assigned to take four fish oil pills a day for three months. The other patients took dummy pills.

After a year of monitoring, 2 of the 41 patients in the fish oil group, or about 5%, had become psychotic, or completely out of touch with reality. In the placebo group, 11 of 40 became psychotic, about 28%.

With larger studies already planned, this one reveals another component to the wide-ranging benefits that omega 3 oils have. Although this information is already accepted in the natural health community, many studies continue to shed light that natural supplements provide many benefits with little danger of negative side effects.

The truth is we already know that omega-3 fatty acids (polyunsaturated fatty acids -PUFAs) help protect people against cardiovascular disease. We also know
they can play a role in preventing diabetes and cancer. It's little surprise that they also protect against mental illness, given the importance of healthy fatty acids for the functioning of the nervous system. NaturalNews

Read more about benefits of fish oil at fishoilbenefit.net

I feel the biggest point to be taken from these articles is this... providing a natural source is a safer more effective choice.

You're probably saying, " I know that already!"

Good, now you know what the final destination is, it's up to you to ask more questions and discover more information about how to know what's pure and sufficient so you can give yourself what you deserve, good health.

A great way to get started is to sign up for our fish oil workshop on February 15th at 6:45 in the Glen Mills office. Contact our office for more details.

The Metabolism Buster

What if you were to learn that every day, 25 percent of your calories came from a poison, disguised as a food?

What would you think if this poison actually is encouraged and allowed by the agencies set up to protect you and I? (American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, the USDA and the FDA)

And what if you discovered that this chemical impostor was responsible for your insulin resistance and weight gain?

And elevated blood pressure ... And elevated triglycerides and LDL ... And depletion of vitamins and minerals ... And even gout, heart disease and liver damage?

Would you be angry?

We now know without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all its myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll on the health of this nation.

(Thank you to Dr. Mercola for stating these ideas! I have to admit, I took them directly from his blog post... It was too good to change.)

The fact is, a vast majority of Americans and many up and coming nations in the world are eating huge amounts of processed sugar. It is currently estimated that 90% of money spent on food is spent on processed unnatural foods and 25% of all the calories you consume are from fake sugar.

Below I am including some of the amazing stats from the article. If you would like to really know what is happening regarding this topic so you can make better choices, have more personal power, and add quality to your life and life to your years read the entire article here.

Okay, here are some of the stats from the article:

On average, men are consuming 187 more calories per day, and women 335 more calories. People who were never heavy before are becoming overweight, and the obese are becoming more so. We are now a “supersized” population.

Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calorie in America is soda, in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). In fact, the average American drinks 60 gallons of soda every year.

Corn syrup is now found in every type of processed, pre-packaged food you can think of. In fact, the use of HFCS in the U.S. diet increased by a whopping 10,673 percent between 1970 and 2005, according to a report by the USDA.

The current annual consumption of sugar is 141 pounds per person, and 63 pounds of that is HFCS.

There is much more information but it would make this a very long post, so reserve some time, read this entire article, and empower yourself by adding knowledge!

Do You Need More Celery?

You may be thinking.. Celery?.. I don't wanna eat more of that! ... Unless you have some onion ranch dip to go along.

When it comes to this vegetable, sometimes taste is left to be desired. But there is more than meets the taste buds.

An article on Natural News by Brett Brown, researched some of the proposed benefits of this healing food, in fact it has been used for centuries to treat colds, flu, water retention, poor digestion, arthritis, liver, and spleen ailments.

Here's some of the opening lines from the article:

Celery has a long history of use and is truly an ancient healing food. At first glance celery may seem rather unimpressive, but the more you look into its background and medicinal uses the more you realize that we must have been misinformed on the usefulness of this plant...

We have been led to believe that celery does not have much to it when in fact celery truly contains a wealth of health improving nutrients that we can obtain from it. Celery has a profile that is much more than water and fiber!

Read the entire article here, it's very brief and informative.

If your wondering how to incorporate more celery into your diet here's a piece from the New York Times provides five healthy recipes that seem very simple to put together. I'll be sure to give some of these a try!

Keeping making positive strides in adding good things to your daily routine and your body will thank you!

Chiropractic: The Law of Cause and Effect

For every action there must be a reaction. For every cause there is an effect.

These universal laws apply everywhere to everyone, all of the time. Here's a great article describing these Laws

In chiropractic terms the cause is subluxation and the effect is sickness and disease. Simple put, when a subluxation occurs in your spine, it interrupts the normal flow of signals from the brain to the body, which in turn, leads to a symptom.

Shown below, I stumbled across this Youtube video with a great way to explain how a subluxation of the spine can interfere with the function of the human body.

In this video a series of news clips are provided showing the positive benefits in human function including: eyesight, infantile colic, ADHD, brain function, pain, arthritis, and headaches through the use of chiropractic.

In its purest application, chiropractic is not concerned with treating single medical conditions, when the nervous system is functioning at 100% it is inevitable that symptoms disappear.

How's Your Brain Fitness

Have you heard the phrase "Use it or lose it"? This statement holds true for many facets of life, but most importantly applies to your brain! We all share concerns of mental decline, especially among an aging population.

The common assumption is after our early 20's the human brain stops developing. This may be true for brain size, but for learning, developing, and creating, this assumption doesn't hold true.

Not long ago, most scientists believed the brain became “hard-wired” during childhood, and that there was little you could do to improve its function once you entered adulthood. Not anymore.

Brain plasticity

It's a funny sounding concept, but refers to the brain’s ability to change—for better or worse—throughout life. It’s an incredibly important and personal process: by defining our brain development, it shapes each of our distinct personalities. You can read more about brain plasticity here.

This information comes from the Brain Fitness Channel, it is a dedicated website to informing you about the most important part of yourself.

I first found about this website through this great article from the New York Times. Here's a couple paragraphs that I found made the point:

Brains in middle age, which, with increased life spans, now stretches from the 40s to late 60s, also get more easily distracted. Start boiling water for pasta,go answer the doorbell and — whoosh — all thoughts of boiling water disappear. Indeed, aging brains, even in the middle years, fall into what’s called the default mode, during which the mind wanders off and begin daydreaming.

Given all this, the question arises, can an old brain learn, and then remember what it learns? Put another way, is this a brain that should be in school?

As it happens, yes. While it’s tempting to focus on the flaws in older brains, that inducement overlooks how capable they've become. Over the past several years, scientists have looked deeper into how brains age and confirmed that they continue to develop through and beyond middle age.

The Brain Fitness Channel is a great website, I spent some time reading and doing the interactive tests. It includes games, puzzles, recipes, and a ton of great information. Give your brain something that it will enjoy!

Foods to Watch For

It's about that time for the New Years celebration and I know I've been asking about resolutions. There has been a lot of mixed answers to this question, but the most popular one is.... " I don't do New Year Resolutions."

After thinking why this may be, I came to the conclusion that, like many people, the will power may be there in the beginning but old habits come back around. So who would want to fail at something else?

There's a lot to consider about successfully improving your quality of life, so I would like to make a simple suggestion that I feel can be very impactful and easy to maintain.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, CSPInet.org, put together a great 10 best and 10 worst foods list. I challenge you to go the web page and choose one food item to avoid from the worst food list and one food item from the best food list.

The key, from this point forward, is to consistently eat the added good food and avoid eating the bad food. (By the way, if you chose one of the bad foods to avoid, and you regularly don't eat that food in the first place, you are only cheating yourself)

Additionally, I came another great article titled "The 7 Food Experts Won't Eat" by Shine from Yahoo. This is one of the best main stream media articles regarding this topic that I have come across, so I recommend taking 5 minutes and learn something new today!

Happy New Year!