June Newsletter
Here’s wishing you all a wonderful and happy summer.
Watch out, though. Did you know that sitting could kill you?
From the Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis Laboratory at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, comes this: Americans spend more than half their waking hours sitting , mostly from watching TV, driving and working at a desk. A recent study from Australia tracking 8,800 people found that for every hour of daily TV viewing, the risk for death due to cardiovascular disease increased 18%. For those who watched 4 hours of TV each day had a 80% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who watched less than 2 hours a day.
A Canadian study found similar results with increased health risks, suggesting that long periods of sitting might cancel out the health benefits of regular exercise. The problem with too much sitting is that our muscles were meant to move. Sitting can cause the central nervous system to slow down, leading to fatigue. It will weaken your muscles and stiffen your joints, leading to poor posture and an increased risk for back, shoulder and neck pain.
Sitting too long can affect your losing weight. In the walls of your capillaries is lipoprotein lipase, an enzyme that breaks down specific fats in your bloodstream. If you don’t move for a few hours, the enzymes start turning off, and if you sit all day, you can lose 50% of their activity. Additionally, sitting too long can have negative effects on your blood sugar and blood fat levels, leading to diabetes and heart disease.
So what can you do to combat this insidious killer?
- Add small amounts of non-exercise-related activity into your daily life, like doing the laundry, weeding the yard, and shopping.
- Stand up while talking on the phone, during commercials or other small chores
- Meet a friend for a walk and talk, instead of sitting over a cup of coffee
- Get an exercise ball and sit on it while working at your computer or watching TV
- Put your exercise equipment in front of the TV, and use while watching your shows. This could be a treadmill, exercycle, stair-stepper, elliptical trainer or a mini-trampoline
- Place action-oriented video games like Wii
- Use stairs instead of the elevator, park your car at the end of the parking lot, take a midday walk during lunch, and get up every half hour from your desk and stretch for at least a minute.
The bottom line is, get off your bottom as often as you can.
WHY USE CHIROPRACTIC?
“We address the cause, not the symptom.”
Most chiropractors believe that subluxations (vertebrae out of alignment) are the cause of a host of health issues. They often are. However, upon closer inspection it appears that subluxations are actually symptoms themselves!
At its most fundamental, subluxations involve bones and nerves. Bones, being static structures, move only when your muscles contract. Muscles contract based on conscious and unconscious commands from the nervous system. Thus, notwithstanding the effects of physical trauma, the vertebral displacement often used to determine the presence of subluxation is actually a neurological event!
What prompts the nervous system to command muscles to contract? Most of you will agree that it is an attempt to accommodate physical, chemical or emotional stress. So we chiropractors address the cause of the cause. This chiropractor’s mission is to help you, my patients, become aware of, and reduce, the emotional, physical and chemical stress you face daily. When this happens, then true healing and lasting spinal changes can be found.
RESEARCH:
Omega-3 May Protect Against Hearing Loss
Increased intakes of omega-3 fatty acids from supplements and dietary sources may reduce the risk of age-related hearing loss, according to a new study from the University of Sydney.
At least two servings of fish per week was associated with a 42 per cent reduction in the risk of hearing loss for people over 50 year-olds compared with people who average less than one serving per week, according to findings published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Previous studies on omega-3 supplements have shown similar reductions in age related hearing loss. “Dietary intervention with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids could prevent or delay the development of age-related hearing loss,” wrote the researchers, led by Paul Mitchell.
Mitchell and his co-workers analyzed data from 2,956 participants of the Blue Mountains Hearing Study. Dietary intakes of fish, and the omega-3s they contain, using food-frequency questionnaires. Results showed an inverse association between total and long-chain omega-3 intakes and hearing loss, while increasing fish intakes also indicated a reduction in the risk of presbycusis, said the researchers. Correlation is not causation, however, and significant further research is needed, including human intervention trials.
Other micronutrients have been linked to a reduced risk of age-related hearing loss. In 2007 scientists from Wageningen University reported that folic acid delayed age-related hearing loss in the low frequency region in a study of 728 men and women between the ages of 50 and 70 (Annals of Internal Medicine, Vol. 146, pp. 1-9).
Another study, published earlier this year indicated a role for beta carotene and vitamins C and E, and the mineral magnesium in preventing prevent both temporary and permanent hearing loss in guinea pigs and mice. The animal study was presented at the Association for Research in Otolaryngology’s annual conference in Baltimore in February 2009.
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Published online ahead of print, doi: 10.3945/ajcn.2010.29370
“Consumption of omega-3 fatty acids and fish and risk of age-related hearing loss”
Authors: B. Gopinath, V.M. Flood, E. Rochtchina, C.M. McMahon, P. Mitchell
Slim Down with This Multitasking Side Dish
By RealAge
For slimmer hips, skip the baked potato and make yourself a bowl of this for your next side dish: barley salad.
Barley is rich in beta glucan, a soluble fiber shown to reduce cholesterol. And now, new research shows that this special fiber may help with waist management, too!
Beyond Cholesterol Control
Barley actually has up to twice as much beta glucan as oats have. And a study found that getting 3 to 5 grams of beta glucan every day from barley can lower harmful LDL cholesterol between 9 and 15 percent in people with high cholesterol. Not too shabby. But the unexpected bonus in this study? The beta glucan helped decrease hunger, so people ate fewer calories overall. How does barley banish blubber? Researchers suspect that beta glucan and other barley fibers expand in your stomach, so you feel full faster and end up eating less. And working this grain into your day is a snap. Start your day with barley cereal. For lunch, toss barley into soup, stew, or even salad. And use barley in place of rice at dinner.
References
Published on 06/07/2010
Physiological effects of concentrated barley beta-glucan in mildly hypercholesterolemic adults. Smith, K. N. et al., Journal of the American College of Nutrition 2008 Jun;27(3):434-440.
HUMOR
I thought about the 30 year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a Blackberry that played music, took videos, pictures and communicated with Facebook and Twitter. I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grandkids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.
That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world.
My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.
The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth [it's red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife as everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. Seems I have to take my hearing aid out to use it and I got a little loud.
I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, “Re-calc-ul-ating” You would think that she could be nicer. It was like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then when I would make a right turn instead, it was not good.
When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.
To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for 4 years, but I still haven’t figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have to run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.
The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on something themselves but this sudden “Paper or Plastic?” every time I check out just knocks me for a loop. I bought some of those cloth reusable bags to avoid looking confused but I never remember to take them in with me.
Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, “Paper or Plastic?” I just say, “Doesn’t matter to me. I am bi-sacksual.” Then it’s their turn to stare at me with a blank look.
I was recently asked if I tweet. I answered, No, but I do toot a lot.”
MORE HUMOR – How BP handles a coffee spill
1 Comment to June Newsletter
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the bp video is so funny