It's always so easy to start the New Year off on the right foot and make an amazing list of resolutions, but how long do you usually stick with them? Dr. Bob is here to give you some of the best resolutions that you can keep not only for the New Year but for the rest of your life! 

Hey everybody! Dr. Bob Salamon here at Lowcountry Chiropractic. This blog is going to be all about health resolutions that you can make for the New Year. Quite honestly, these are things that you can do any time of the year. If you do these things, I guarantee you will get healthier and stay that way! Most of these tips and choices have to do with you and having the discipline to achieve this new level of health and wellness. Then there are one or two things that are my responsibility as your chiropractor. Let's get started! 

Number One! 
Go green! What do I mean by that? We all need to eat healthier. Delicious, green, leafy vegetables are a great place to start. To be honest, if you use the guide of "eating the colors of the rainbow", that's a wonderful place to start. Eat colorful things like oranges, apples, purple eggplants, and things like that. These are great foods for you! They are great phytonutrients, antioxidants, and they are very alkaline. This is very important because cancer cells hate alkaline environments. If you eat more alkaline foods you are going to defend yourself a lot better against cancer. Green, leafy vegetables and fruits are the way to go, and that's the trend to follow. Most people don't eat this way. Most people eat processed foods, red meats, fried foods, and pasta. I would encourage you to shift your focus into going green. 

Number Two! 
Refine your life. This is a big one: Refined sugar is in a ton of products found on supermarket shelves. These products are bad for you! Why? These products create inflammation in your body. Inflammation is a haven for opportunistic diseases. Inflammation is also the cause of most pain in the body, especially for arthritic conditions. Along the lines of eating and going green, you need to eliminate refined sugars. Refined sugars can be found in desserts, chips, pasta, bread, and other foods like that. If you shift over to eating green and avoid refined sugars, you'll refine your life!

Number Three! 
Don't be a couch potato! We need to exercise and a lot of people don't. They just go about their daily lives without giving time to exercise and activity. Why is exercise so important? There are a couple of key reasons.

• If you have toned muscles, they burn more calories! At rest, a person who works out is going to burn more calories compared to someone who doesn't. 
• It's great for your cardiovascular health. 
• It's great for sleeping. The more you exercise, the better you'll sleep. 
• It is great for focus and getting efficient at what you do. 

What kinds of exercises do you need to do? I like a variety of activities. I do things that offer a multitude of variety like Crossfit, running, biking, and things like that. The goal is to confuse your body so that it doesn't get lazy. If you do the same type of workout all the time, your body gets lazy and you're not going to get much out of the workout. If you vary your workout and mix it up with cross-training, you will get the best results. Try this and make sure you're doing at least 20 to 30 minutes of sustained activity at least three times a week, if not more! 

Number Four! 
Don't worry, be happy! This has to do with our mental attitude. Having a positive mental attitude will go a long way towards you staying healthy because it reduces stress. 99% of the things we worry about in life we don't need to worry about because a) these things won't actually happen or b) if they do happen,  they turn out to be not as bad as we thought they were going to be! Find ways to have joy in your life, laugh a lot, smile a lot, help a lot of people, do good work for people, and be happy. You will find that you will be a much healthier person!

Number Five! 
Rest and relax. Most of us don't get enough sleep at night. Sleep is so crucial to our health because when we sleep, we go through a rapid eye period of sleep. This is the only time that our body has time to repair and regenerate our protein bridges, muscles, organs, and the covering of our organs, and everything in our body. Our bodies need this break so it can heal. If we're not getting our 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night, slowly bit by bit our bodies get broken down. What happens then? We get sick more often, we get more tired, we lose focus, we lose energy, and lose our health very quickly. I challenge you to try to get that extra half hour to hour of sleep at night. I challenge you to do this for a week and you will see how much better you'll feel at the end of that week. That alone will be a great incentive to keep going. 

Number Six! 
Get connected. What does this mean? Go see your chiropractor. The chiropractor is the only person who is specifically trained to relieve nerve interference in your body. We are the only ones who are trained to adjust vertebrae that have misaligned and are irritating nerves and causing your health to suffer. All the systems of your body are controlled by the nervous system. This includes the immune, endocrine, respiratory, reproductive, and digestive systems, among others. All of these systems are dependent upon a good nerve supply. This is because the brain sends all the messages down your spine, through the nerves, to all of your body parts. Those nerves then take all those messages back to the brain. If those messages aren't getting communicated to your body, your functions are going to suffer and you will break down. Chiropractic care will ensure that the flow of information is happening over those lines of communication, thus allowing your body to get and stay optimally healthy.

Those are my six top New Years' resolutions and all year round resolutions to help you optimize your health. Go green, refine your life, don't be a couch potato, don't worry, be happy, rest and relax, and get connected. I hope this helps. If you do these things well, I guarantee you're going to be healthier in the future and more healthy than you are right now. 

Again this is Dr. Bob and I hope to see you next time and in the new year. From my family and everyone at Lowcountry Chiropractic, happy holidays!

It is known that Chiropractic helps the nervous system as well as the entire body, but how does it affect the brain? Many people suffer from mental illnesses like depression, stress, and anxiety. At Lowcountry Chiropractic, we strive toward a body that achieves overall wellness including the brain. Here are a few ways Chiropractic can help assist a life with mental illness.

Mental illnesses are a wide range of characteristics and symptoms caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.

Depression
Within the field of Chiropractic, there are many different ways to go about aligning the spine. It has been studied that if an Orthospinology technique is used to focus on the upper cervical vertebrae of the spine, the patient may have relief of their depression as well as side effects of said depression.

ADHD in children
While it is not an attempt to change a child’s personality, a study has shown that Chiropractic can be beneficial in assisting children with ADHD symptoms. This includes attention span, impulse control, and hyperactivity. Adjusting the spine and aligning it properly relieves pressure on nerves and can serve as a relaxing treatment.

Stress
Every person has experienced stress at some point in their life. Stress can cause the body a multitude of problems ranging from misalignment to muscle tension. Chiropractic can assist in the relaxation of muscles and nervous system by centering the body. This ultimately results in a body rid of stress for the time being. Many factors cause stress, but having a care plan for your body can relieve it.

Anxiety
Falling under a category similar to stress, anxiety can cause the body to become unregulated. While most anxiety is felt in the stomach or chest, it can also cause the entire body discomfort. With Chiropractic, keeping the body on a regular schedule of alignment can assist the body in healing after anxiety attacks or episodes. 

Keeping your body well overall can be difficult and time consuming. However, with Lowcountry Chiropractic’s help, we can get you on a wellness care plan that can assist you and your body in becoming a healthy version of yourself. Your body and your brain will thank you!