 Your brain controls your entire body. Did you know that taking care of your body can help give back to your brain and improve its function and health every day?
Hey everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic! Today, we are going to be talking about brain function, which is so important! We're going to be talking about some natural things, foods you can eat, and things you can do, all of which can improve your brain function and health. Why is this important? Your brain is the master controller of your body. Your brain controls and regulates every function and system in your body. This includes your immune system, which is so important right now! If your brain is not being nourished and it's not as healthy as it should be, it's not going to work properly. The rest of your body won't function as it should either, including that important immune system! What CAN we do? Let's talk about some very simple things that we can do to help keep our brain and brain function healthy! Resting! We need to get enough sleep at night. The time spent during our REM (rapid eye movement) cycle is when all of our protein bridges and synapses in the brain repair and heal themselves. If we are not getting enough rest, your brain and other parts of your body do not have that time to repair and heal. This will cause them to break down a lot quicker. Everyone is different; some people can get by with less than the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep, while others need more. But, I would recommend that you try and get as much sleep as possible, not just what you can get by on. Go to bed sooner, put down your phone, turn off Netflix, and force yourself to get that extra rest. Your brain and body will thank you for it! Nutrition! The second piece of the puzzle that you can do for yourself is having good nutrition. There are at least 10 food items that will increase brain function and brain health. The common theme with these products is that they are antioxidants; they take oxidative stress off your brain and allow it to stay healthier and to heal quicker. These foods are also anti-inflammatory agents. We know that inflammation on your joints is bad, and creates pain. Inflammation on your brain is much worse. Over time, this pressure dulls the senses and can lead to the development of dementia or Alzheimer's down the road. These ten items can help you prevent these issues down the line and keep your brain healthy now!
Chiropractic Care I'm a chiropractor, so of course, I want to talk about chiropractic care and how it affects brain function. Many studies have been done on the effects of chiropractic adjustments on brain function. There have been brain scans that have been performed pre and post chiropractic adjustments on the same day. The pre-adjustment brain is muted, the colors don't pop and it is just sort of existing. That post adjustment brain is lit up and thriving. We know definitively that chiropractic adjustments improve and increase brain function and communication. I do want to reference the Journal of Neural Plasticity from January 2016 here as well. This study and journal is a medical one, not a chiropractic one. This study shows that chiropractic spinal adjustments significantly increase activity in the brain's prefrontal cortex. This is the area where higher learning and cognition happens. The journal goes on to say that the prefrontal cortex is also responsible for behavior, goal-directed tasks, decision making, memory and attention, intelligence, processing of pain and the emotional response to it, autonomic function, motor control, eye movement, and spatial movements. All of these are pretty important! In my opinion, if you're not under chiropractic care because you don't think you need it (because you're not in pain) please remember this journal and this blog! Chiropractic care will improve your brain function now and later down the road. I hope this information is helpful. I hope you will use it and apply it to your life. If any of you out there needs some stimulus to the brain, which we all do, look us up! Give us a call, send us an email, we'd love to examine you and take a look. We'd love to take some X-rays to see what we can do to help you get healthier. Until next time, I'm Dr. Bob and I have your back covered. Take care! To read more about the study I mentioned in today's blog, please follow the link below: https://waldronchiropractic.com/study-chiropractic-adjustments-change-brain-function/
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 Staying on top of your health and wellness is so important! Working out, eating well, and brushing your teeth are things we hopefully do regularly. Did you know that your chiropractic care is just as necessary for your body's maintenance?
Hi everybody! Dr. Bob here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. Today's blog is going to be dedicated to the maintenance for your chiropractic care. Anyone that has a car knows that they have to go in and get it serviced regularly. Rotating your tires, getting an oil change, and things of that nature need to happen regularly. This helps your car run better and last longer. Everyone I know brushes their teeth, works out, and tries to get enough sleep regularly. Why do we do these things? Inherently we know, like keeping up with basic maintenance on our cars, these things are going to help prolong our health, lifespan, and quality of life. They will also help prevent serious issues down the road if we take care of ourselves. Taking care of your body and putting good things into it will promote good things coming out of it. You can prevent cavities, help create a better sleep schedule, and keep your body fit and working at its optimal health all by maintaining these normal services to your body. With chiropractic care, it is very similar. Most people who come into my office, depending on what the condition is, are going to need some level of intensive care in the beginning. This is very normal, especially if they've never been to a chiropractor before. It is also very normal if the problems and issues in their spines and bodies have been around for a long time. There are four different goals of chiropractic care:
Wellness and maintenance care is a very important step in this process. It is something that is done or should be done anywhere between once a week to once a month. Most people need some care on an on-going basis to ensure that the work we've done on their spine is being maintained. This way things don't fall out of place and the problems don't reoccur. If you want to stay healthy, you have to continue going to your chiropractor. Once we've done all the work to get you lined up you're going to be exposed to physical, emotional, and chemical stresses in your life. These stresses will eat away at the weak areas in your spine that we work on fixing. These stresses can lead to you getting out of alignment again if you don't keep up with maintenance. A good analogy would be to look at what braces do on teeth. When you put them on, it doesn't take long for those teeth to change their position and become aligned. What does take time, up until the braces come off, is the remodeling of the gums and soft tissue around the new position of the teeth. This allows the teeth to stay in their new correct positions when the braces come off. Maintenance care in chiropractic is very similar to that. We know that we are subject to a lot of stresses in our lives that tend to harm our spine. Wellness care is there to make sure that we are doing everything we can for you to deal with these stresses. This will prevent you from returning to the state of health you were in when you first came into my office. Now, some people do come into the office and they don't have a lot of issues or pain. They might not need intensive care at the beginning of their treatment. But, they are certainly going to wellness care going forward just like anyone would. I hope this helps to clarify a little bit about why wellness care is so important in chiropractic. If any of you out there thinks you need a chiropractor, you probably do. If any of you out there is hurting, come in and we'll take a look. We will sit you down and go through a very thorough workup and take some x-rays if we need to. Then, we will get started on getting you back to health and maintaining your health with regular care. I hope this helps. I hope everybody out there is staying safe and well, and I look forward to next time. Take care!  The pain and the hassle of acid reflux can interrupt your daily life and comfort. Here are some of the causes of acid reflux and things you can do to manage and reverse this terrible condition.
Hey everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope you all are staying healthy and safe out there. In this blog, we are going to be talking about a condition called acid reflux. It is also called GERD, which stands for Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease. Most people just refer to it as acid reflux. What is acid reflux? What are some of its symptoms? Most of the time acid reflux causes burning into your esophagus and throat. Acid lives in your stomach to digest and break down food. When you have acid reflux, the acid moves up into your esophagus and burns its walls. This is not a good thing. It is very painful, and it can cause problems for you if it happens at night. You can breathe that junk into your lungs which is really bad. Long term damage to the lining for the esophagus can create a syndrome known as Barret's Esophagus, which can turn into cancer of the esophagus. It is very serious, and you will want to deal with it right away. Let's talk about the mechanics and the physiology of it all. When you chew your food and swallow it, it goes into your esophagus. Your esophagus is connected to your stomach. There is a muscular valve that opens and closes in between the two that allows the food into your stomach. This valve should close perfectly and tightly so that the acid in your stomach can start breaking down the food. What's interesting is that the walls of the stomach are very strong and can withstand the acid. The walls of your esophagus are not and they cannot handle acid. In a perfect world, that muscular valve would close after you swallow, the acid would do its thing, and then the digested food would move into your intestines. With acid reflux, however, the muscular valve doesn't close all the way so there is an opening between your esophagus and your stomach. When that acid is produced it is then regurgitated (or refluxed) back up into the esophagus because that valve isn't closing all the way. That is when that burning sensation happens and problems begin to arise if left untreated. What controls this muscular valve between your stomach and your esophagus? Why in some cases does it not do what it's supposed to do? It all goes back to your spine. There is a nerve that comes out of the middle of your back and it controls this particular muscle. Remember, all of the 62 nerves that come out of your spine control something. They control a muscle, an organ, a gland, a blood vessel and so on. In this case, this middle back nerve happens to control this particular muscular valve. In the case of acid reflux, that nerve is not sending the right information to that valve. This is causing it to not close completely or not close at all. So, to correct this condition, you need to fix the subluxation or misaligned vertebra in the middle of your back. The subluxation is not allowing the proper message from the brain to be delivered to the muscular valve to work properly. Chiropractic is a wonderful solution to this problem. The adjustment realigns that spinal bone and takes the pressure off that nerve. This allows the brain to communicate with the muscular valve, causing it to close properly and preventing acid from refluxing. If there is a hiatal hernia present, which can put pressure on the stomach and force that muscular valve to open up, that is a more tricky situation when it comes to fixing acid reflux. Chiropractic isn't necessarily as effective in those situations. Thankfully, hernias are the less common cause of acid reflux. The medical treatment is Prilosec, Nexium and other medications that limit the production of acid in your stomach. Therefore, theoretically, these meds reduce the acid that is in your esophagus. That's not really fixing the problem. Your stomach needs to create a certain amount of acid to digest your food. So, if this medication is lowering that amount of acid, two things could happen. One, the stomach is just going to produce more acid. This will put you in the situation that you have already been in. Or two, the lack of acid in your stomach is going to affect how well your food is digested. It will also affect how well the nutrients are being taken from this food and put into your body. Either way, it's not a good situation. We recommend that you try to get help naturally, via chiropractic care, rather than going the medication route. Also, if you're eating a lot of spicy foods later in the evening, that could be a leading cause of your acid reflux. You need to look at what you're eating, and that maybe what is causing your acid reflux naturally. It is a common condition, and not really a disease. It's more of a malfunction of your body in most cases. If you are suffering from acid reflux and you want to get rid of it or get it checked out, come see us. We would be happy to examine you and take some X-rays to see if a subluxation is causing your acid reflux. If it is your problem, we will certainly be able to help you out! Stay well and take care! |
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