Focus on springtime!

Yes folks, here it is, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: today is the Vernal Equinox, aka the first day of spring. And even if the signs of upcoming weather don’t necessarily indicate a full-on heatwave, we’re still pretty excited. After all, this winter has been notoriously rough, with numerous snowstorms, plunging temperatures and excessive time spent cooped up inside. That’s about to change--a fact which, from a health standpoint, has huge ramifications! Let’s run down some of the changes spring has in store.

First and foremost, let’s return to a topic we’ve gone over before: the great fruits and vegetables coming our way! The spring harvest is when a huge percentage of our most popular produce is at its best taste and value--everything from apricots to lettuce to turnips (and everything in between) will be accessible at farmers markets, foragers’ stalls, and even your better supermarkets. Remember, focus on organic and locally-sourced produce and you should be in great shape--literally! From a taste, texture and nutritional standpoint, you can’t go wrong with the upcoming spring bounty.

Another major health boost headed our way courtesy of spring? The increased daylight hours, and the vitamin D in all that sunshine! Vitamin D is a necessary component of our body’s bone health levels--in addition to numerous other functions, it helps to protect against osteoporosis, arthritis and other bone and joint conditions that may rear their ugly heads, especially as we age. Vitamin D may even be linked to antidepressive properties--which is not much of a surprise, as anyone who gets to spend some time in the sun after six months indoors can attest. Indeed, there are few ways in which a little bit of extra sunshine doesn’t make us feel better, and with sunsets coming later and sunrises coming earlier, there’s a lot more to go around. Get out there and take advantage!

Lastly, there is that cliché that comes with the vernal equinox: spring cleaning! Sure, it may seem silly (as hopefully you haven’t let your house get completely filthy this whole winter season!) but cleaning, de-germing and refreshing your home has verifiable health effects. Getting rid of germs--bacteria, mold and other triggers for allergies and colds--can offset the spring allergies that sometimes come with the season. Know your triggers and be aware of factors (like a high pollen count or a sensitivity to dust) that might affect your health, but more generally, go ahead and follow through on the cleaning that you might have been putting off--dusting out-of-the-way surfaces, washing sheets and bedspreads, and staying aware of dust and humidity levels in your home.

With these and other health boosts offered up by springtime, you can understand our enthusiasm for today’s equinox! If you’ve been waiting on fresh & local nutritious foods, the bodily healing that comes from the right amount of sunlight exposure and the freshness of a well-kempt household, you’ve hit the jackpot! Spring is the time to get into all this and more. Your health upgrade starts today!

Focus on chiropractic care!

While we’ve examined various health, nutrition and exercise-based topics in the last few months (even taking on the basics of back pain back in October), we haven’t spent as much time as we could simply focusing on what chiropractic care is at its core--what it comprises, why it works, and how exactly it helps to relieve pain that other therapies may not be able to. Like massage, chiropractic care is beneficial largely because it is so non-invasive--unlike surgeries and many other techniques of intervention, chiropractic care can be undertaken with high benefits and few side effects. Let’s take a look at some key points that make up why this is the case!

The core practice of chiropractic care is manual therapy (or “adjustment”), which uses manipulation of joints and muscles (and, most often, the spine) to relieve ailments in the back as well as the extremities. There are several specific means by which manual therapy is used in chiropractic, including spinal traction, decompression and mobilization, but most often, a chiropractor will use some combination of techniques to meet a patient’s specific needs and to cater to his or her ailment.

Adjustments target those vertebrae in the spine which may be out of alignment, behaving abnormally or putting pressure on nerves--all causes of pain, stiffness and discomfort. Such conditions can develop into more difficult ailments like herniated discs or sciatica, but by manually manipulating these vertebrae, chiropractors hope to reduce the “subluxation” (the vertebral abnormality) and increase factors like range of motion and normal function while decreasing pain and irritability. Because adjustments are so-called “high velocity, low amplitude” manipulations, they often cause an audible release of the gas that’s built up in the joints. This is the “cracking” sound you often hear during chiropractic sessions, and can result in minor temporary discomfort (but in reality it isn’t too far off from the sounds some of us make when cracking our knuckles).

In addition to adjustments, chiropractors make use of many techniques to relieve or relax the muscles including electrical stimulation and massage (a technique so valuable we dedicated a whole other blog post to it a few weeks back)! These enable the patient to cool off and be well enough for adjustments or other manipulation techniques to be administered. Typically (although as stated above, much depends on the specifics of the case), chiropractors will apply these therapies as part of a program developed with the patient, often over a period of weeks. This will result in consistent and steady relief of spinal ailments that arise both from specific injuries (like the aftermath of an auto accident) and from generalized conditions. All in all, there’s no denying that chiropractic care is capable of having a tremendous effect on people that are hurting, and at a time when so many people turn to costly and riskier treatments such as surgery, that’s definitely a good thing!

Focus on healthy breakfast!

Last week as part of National Nutrition Month, we looked at the new effort by the Food and Drug Administration to update the “Nutrition Facts” labels placed on our foods. We’re excited about the changes, which should make it quite a bit easier to understand what it is we’re eating; but in the meantime, we ought to be making simple changes to make our diets healthier no matter what! Since this week (3/33 - 3/7) is also National School Breakfast Week, we thought we’d look at nutritional options for the first meal of the day.

Breakfast is more than just a meal, however--in fact, we’ve all heard that it’s “the most important meal of the day” (a belief shared by 93% of Americans according to a recent poll). So why do we risk sabotaging a day’s nutrition with the wrong kind of breakfast? Too many of the foods we eat when we wake up are high-fat and high-calorie, when they should really be high in nutrients we need to run efficiently (and protein to keep us full until lunchtime). And lest you think that skipping breakfast is a good way to avoid gaining weight, think again: 22% of people who skip breakfast are actually obese, and countless studies have shown that eating breakfast is an important part of a weight-loss strategy! So with that in mind, let’s take a look at some options for maintaining a breakfast routine that also encourages a healthy weight!

At its most basic, a healthy breakfast should contain a few simple things: whole grains, low-fat protein, low-fat dairy (if your diet allows it), and--very importantly--some fruits and vegetables. If you can manage to get a serving of each of these without exploding your calorie count, you should be in pretty good shape. Still, there is a bit of a balancing act at work here--try to focus on proteins like lean meat or fish, poultry or eggs, and put the whole grains and dairy to work providing protein too by selecting options like cottage cheese or skim milk and whole grain cereals, oatmeal or granola. This way, you’ll get the protein you need to hold you over while still hitting the rest of your goals. And if we haven’t convinced you with the multiple posts on it in the past, let’s reiterate: fruits and vegetables are essential components of a daily nutritional plan!

Beyond these basic guidelines, why not switch it up! Variety is the spice of life, and there are so many meals that fit these guidelines that it can fill up a lifetime of great eating! Check out some of the following links for help with coming up with ideas:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/food-and-nutrition/art-20048294?footprints=mine

http://www.schoolnutrition.org/Level2_NSBW2014.aspx?id=18806

http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20676415,00.html

And why not take the time to share some of your own best recipes! Let us know in the comments or post them to our Facebook page here!