 Acid reflux affects more of us than you might think! This week, I'm here to talk a little bit more about acid reflux and some natural treatment options you can try!
Hey everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic! I hope everyone is staying safe and doing great out there! Today on the blog we are going to be talking about acid reflux. Acid reflux is a condition that affects a lot of Americans, especially in this day and age. The medical term for acid reflux is called "GERD” or Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease. While I generally don't use this word to describe acid reflux because it’s such a mouthful to say every time, I also don't like to use it because acid reflux isn't a disease. Today, we are going to dive a little deeper into what acid reflux is, some common medical treatments, and some of the natural things you can do to get rid of acid reflux or help to manage it. Acid reflux is a condition, not a disease, and a malfunction in your body. What happens with acid reflux is that the acid that gets produced in your stomach and normally stays in your stomach refluxes up into your esophagus. This reflux creates a lot of pain and discomfort. This will usually happen after you eat a meal.Sometimes it can occur when an individual lays down to go to bed at night, and can be so bad that it will wake you up in the middle of the night! The acid in your stomach can reflux to the esophagus and then be aspirated into the lungs, which can be extremely dangerous. This danger is one of the main reasons why we need to talk about acid reflux today! Acid reflux can be painful and annoying, but it can also turn into a very dangerous condition if it gets severe. Acid reflux can cause a condition called Barrett's esophagus, and that is a precancerous condition that can lead to cancer of the esophagus. This is because the walls of the esophagus get burned by that acid that has refluxed up into it, so please remember that acid reflux is no joke and is something that needs to be taken seriously. Some very common medical treatments come in the form of medicines like Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid, and others like it. These medications lower the amount of acid that is being produced in the stomach. This might sound like a good idea because if you have less acid in your stomach, possibly less of it will reflux up into your esophagus. This medication does work, but please remember that your body doesn't do something without a reason! Acid is being produced in your stomach for a good reason, based on the amount and type of food you ingest. A certain amount of acid is needed to break down the food in your stomach so it can be properly absorbed into your bloodstream. This absorption will help you get all the nutrients out of your food that you need. My personal view on this type of medication is that by reducing the production of the acid within your body, your body will not digest food properly, and you won't be getting the nutrients and vitamins out of your food as you should be. Also, in this situation, we are just treating the symptoms of your acid reflux and not fixing the cause of the problem. This is why, in chiropractic, we like to look at what causes the symptoms and fix that cause. In a lot of cases with acid reflux, unless you have a hiatal hernia that is putting direct pressure on the stomach causing the acid to reflux up into the stomach, an important muscle in your digestive system isn't working as it should. Generally speaking, we don't see a lot of hiatal hernias causing acid reflux in the office. What happens when you eat your food is that it goes down into your esophagus and passes through the lower esophageal sphincter. This is a muscular valve inside of your esophagus and is the entrance into the stomach. Once the food goes through the sphincter and into the stomach, that sphincter is supposed to close completely. This closing allows the acid to do its thing and digest your food without getting out. The walls of your stomach are designed to be very strong to withstand this acid. Unfortunately, the walls of your esophagus are not that strong, and they cannot withstand this acid. This is why acid getting into your esophagus is a really bad situation. In a lot of cases that we see with acid reflux, the problem is that the sphincter muscle is not closing properly, or sometimes it is not closing at all when your food reaches your stomach. When this happens, the acid in your stomach is going to reflux into your esophagus. What we want to ensure is that the sphincter always closes when it is supposed to close and opens when it's supposed to open. Guess what controls the opening and closing of this very special valve? It's a nerve! These nerves happen to come out of your spine right around the middle of your back (T5, T6, T7 area). Once there is food in your stomach, your brain will send a signal down to that nerve to say, "Close that sphincter!” In most cases, this nerve will work properly. It will listen to the brain and follow these directions perfectly. However, sometimes the communication between the brain and that valve via that nerve is not working correctly. This is one of the main causes of acid reflux! The valve is not closing properly because the nerve it is connected to is not working properly! What could be causing this nerve to not work properly? If the bones of your spine are lined up properly, the spaces or foramen in between them are open and will allow the nerves to come out as they should and to act as they should with no interruption in communication between the brain and the body. The nerves in your back control every system in your body, so if one does get blocked or interfered with, you will notice a difference. When your bones get slightly out of alignment, the foramen that allows the nerve to come out closes down and that nerve gets pinched and irritated. This is called a subluxation! A subluxation is a chiropractic term, which is what all chiropractors work on. My job is to find those nasty subluxations in your spine and correct them and keep them corrected. Fixing these subluxations will allow your body to function properly. When it comes to the acid reflux cases that I have seen, I will palpate for the subluxation (usually found in the middle of the back). Sometimes there is actual pain associated with the subluxated area. This tells me that the nerve in that area is inflamed and not working properly. Once I find this, I adjust or treat that subluxated vertebrae. Low and behold, after this treatment, we get pressure off of that nerve and things start flowing again. That nerve starts to become healthy again, that sphincter starts working properly again, and almost like a miracle that acid reflux and its symptoms begin to go away. This whole process is pretty amazing, and while I've seen it successfully work many times in my office. I am still shocked by it. The body is designed to work optimally, and a subluxation of the spine is one of the things that will interfere with the body's ability to stay optimally healthy. If the cause of your acid reflux is spine and nerve-related, then chiropractic care can help with your condition. On the other hand, if it's being caused by a hiatal hernia, that is a completely different story and is more of a medical issue. If it is being caused by a chiropractic subluxation, we can help you. This holds true for all conditions in the body. Every organ and function of your body is controlled by nerves. If there is a subluxation in other parts of your spine, you could be experiencing other conditions and symptoms for which medicine will only reduce your symptoms. Chiropractic is different; we look at the cause of the problem and correct the cause and not the symptom. This way we end up fixing the problem and you won't need to take medications anymore! If you are suffering or know someone suffering from acid reflux and want to be checked out to see if a subluxation of the spine is causing the reflux, please contact us and we will be happy to do a thorough exam. We will take some x-rays and figure out if we can help your issue with chiropractic care. All of this also holds true for other issues, pain included, that you've just had enough of and want to get corrected naturally. I hope this week's blog has helped shine some light on acid reflux and puts things into perspective for you! I hope you all have a wonderful day and I will see you next time! Remember, I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back AND your acid reflux covered!
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 Curious about what goes into the process of taking your x-rays when you come to visit me? Today, we'll be talking about the whole process and how I use x-rays to analyze your spine. Let's take a look at an x-ray together and discuss some helpful information from your favorite Spanish-speaking chiropractor! Hey, everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope you're all doing well and staying safe out there! Today, we are going to be doing something a little different with the blog! We will be discussing a set of x-rays that I recently took of a new patient - with picture examples! I want to use this blog and each image to talk about how I analyze the x-rays that I take when you visit my office and how we will begin working together on your wellness journey after I do so. These x-rays are imperative! They help me to help my patients. I feel like x-rays are extremely important in helping me find the spinal issues that need to be corrected.  The patient I will be talking about today is a painter from Honduras. Before she came and saw me a few weeks ago seeking help, she was carrying a very heavy bucket of paint and hurt her back. The symptoms she was experiencing after she hurt her back were right lower back pain, sciatica (meaning she had pain down the back of her right leg) and numbness and tingling in her toes. What I do normally, with any new patient such as this young woman, is take a detailed health history and do a chiropractic exam first, and follow these two steps by taking a set of x-rays. What's unique in our office is that we take full spine x-rays. They're 14X36 inches in size and they show the whole spine in two different views. These x-rays are very helpful for me, but very importantly they also help every patient see what's going on with the spine. I can walk them through what is causing their pain and how I am going to work on trying to alleviate these issues by pointing out exactly what's happening on their x-rays. What I am always looking for on these x-rays and what I am aiming to correct are subluxations. Subluxations are vertebrae that have misaligned and are irritating nerves and causing pain. Today, this blog is going to be a behind-the-scenes look at what I do when analyzing my patient's x-rays and how they help me! Take a moment by examining the first picture below which shows the two 14X36 x-rays that I take of my patients, and the specific one I will be discussing today!  The first x-ray that I look at is a side view of my patient, called the lateral. This x-ray helps me look at and see the curves of the body and the whole spine, and I look at the disc space between every vertebrae to see if there is any arthritis in the spine. Arthritis shows up as little spurs or hooks on the bones.As you can see, she does not have any arthritis and the disc spaces between the vertebrae look good! Look closely at this picture. I would personally like to see a little more of a curve in her lower back so it looks a little more like a C. Her back is pretty straight, as is her neck. I would also like to see more of a curve at the top of her neck, too. Even with these wants, her back looks pretty good overall!  Now, let's talk about the second x-ray called the A to P, which is the front-to-back x-ray. When I take this picture the patient is looking away from me, meaning the x-ray is looking at their back straight on. I do this because when I adjust my patients they are lying face down, and I want to mirror what I am going to see on my table when I adjust them. As you can see from the third picture here, there is a scoliosis or a curvature in the middle of her back, which is not normal. The bones in the middle of her back should be straight and lined up perfectly with the rest of the spine. When you look closer at the 4th picture, you can see that her pelvis on the left side is much higher than the right side! From the A to P view, I see that one of the main problems is that the curvature in her spine is a compensation for what's going on in her lumbo-pelvic area. Also, in addition to the scoliosis in the middle of her back, her vertebrae are rotated to the left. Why has this happened? It's being caused by a problem in the sacrum, which has rotated to the right and is causing the vertebrae to rotate to the left. The scoliosis in her back is irritating the nerves that are coming out between the vertebrae. Finally, please look at picture number 5. You will see the ilium (the largest part of the pelvis) is 205 mm in length on the left-hand side and only 200 mm on the right side. This means the right ilium has rotated forward and the left has rotated backward!
Once I had taken these x-rays and analyzed them, the trouble areas are where I started with my patient's treatment, which I corrected with what I was feeling in her spine as I adjusted her. Low and behold, after this specific treatment based on my findings, she is doing so much better! After about three treatments she came in and shared with me that she is feeling great, her pain is gone, and she is back to working normally! I might not have straightened out her back and her scoliosis but I removed enough pressure on her nerves to make a difference. Now that she has come in to see me to correct her issues, her new goal needs to be maintaining her adjustment. The best way to do this is to continue coming back to me for consistent maintenance and wellness care. If she doesn't, there is a potential that the problem she experienced could come back. Think about it this way; it only takes the weight of a dime on your nerves to affect them. You, or in this case my new patient, don't need to be perfectly straightened out to get the excellent results you need and deserve! I hope today's blog has helped and has been informative! I hope you enjoyed an inside look at how I, as a chiropractor, use x-rays to help me treat my patients. X-rays are just another tool in a chiropractor's toolbox along with understanding their patient's health history and performing a consultation and exam to understand what our patients are going through. For me, it is imperative that I get a good set of x-rays so that I can give the best care to my patients. If your spine looks like the one we've been discussing today, or if you want to know what your spine looks like, please look us up! Send us an email or give us a call, and we'll get you in here and get started on your wellness journey! Until next time, I'm Dr. Bob Salamon and I've got your back covered! Take care!  Curious about how chiropractic care can benefit you or anyone you know that might be expecting? Dr. Bob is here in this week's blog to talk about how chiropractic care can safely help bring ease and relief to pregnancy!
Hey everybody! Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic and another exciting and informative blog! I hope you're doing great out there! Today, we are going to be talking about pregnancy and why it's a good idea for pregnant women to be under chiropractic care. Let's jump in and get started. In case you have any questions or hesitations, I am personally trained to work with women who are pregnant, and I do have extensive experience. Why is it so important to receive chiropractic care during pregnancy? As the baby grows, we see that this brings on a lot of physical, chemical, and hormonal changes in the mother's body. Let's talk about those physical changes! As the baby continues to grow bigger, this can cause your hips to become displaced, your pelvis can tighten up, and it can cause you to walk with a different posture than you normally do. All of these changes can put a lot of stress on the joints in your body. The baby can also sit on a plexus of nerves that are in the sacrum or lumbar area of the body. In this case, it is very common for a woman to experience low back pain. My job is to help prevent or alleviate any of these issues to help you feel better and to help the baby remain healthy and safe throughout your pregnancy. There are three main reasons why women seek me out during their pregnancy:
The space between the pelvic and the lumbar section is where mom’s belly fits, and the table can be adjusted to accommodate the height of the mother and the size of their baby. This allows plenty of room for mom and baby to be comfortable. Thanks to the type of table that I have in my office, I can give relief to my pregnant patients. If it weren't for this specific table, I wouldn't be able to adjust someone who is far along in their pregnancy face down. Being face down to receive your chiropractic care is one of my preferred ways to adjust my patents! Please don't hesitate to come in and get adjusted. You and your baby will be safe and comfortable throughout the entire process. If you have any questions, or if you're pregnant and you would like to chat and ask me some questions about what you should be doing during your pregnancy, please feel free to get in touch with us. As always, we would be very happy to help anyone in any way we can! I hope this blog has been helpful and informative, and for any of my readers who are pregnant, I hope everything is going well for you and that you come to see me soon! I promise that we will take good care of you! Until next time, remember that I am Dr. Bob and I have your back covered!  Chiropractic care is an excellent form of care for everyone at every age! Today we're going to be talking about chiropractic care for children!
Welcome back to the blog, readers! I'm Dr. Bob Salamon with Lowcountry Chiropractic! I hope you are all doing well out there, and that you're staying healthy and safe! Today we are going to be expanding on the idea that chiropractic care is beneficial for everyone at every stage in their lives. We've recently talked about the many benefits that chiropractic care offers to the elderly, and today we are going to turn the tables and talk about the benefits of chiropractic care for our children and younger generations. While their bodies are growing and developing, who better to have their brain function and their immune systems strengthened with chiropractic care than our children? When it comes to the goal of any chiropractor, it comes down to going beyond fixing the many ailments that can be connected to poor alignment and a subluxation. We care for your back, which is connected to the nervous system and your brain. The brain controls every operation in our bodies. While we are thrilled that chiropractic care can help so many different things, our goal is to ensure that the body's nervous system has every chance to work as efficiently and effectively as it can! CHILDREN AND CHIROPRACTIC CARE Many might think children don't need chiropractic care. Their bodies are brand new, healthy, and they haven't had to carry the weight and stress that adulthood and time can bring. While this is true, even before they're born, children can experience stress on their nervous system. These nerve irritations or subluxations are a part of everyday life. You've watched a child learning how to roll themselves over, hold up their heads for the first time, learn how to walk, and take their first stumbles and falls. Imagine the stress that puts on their developing nervous system. Subluxations can occur from bad posture, sleeping on their tummies, remaining in one position for a prolonged period, knocks and falls, and much more. Stress can be put on the nervous system before a child is even born. This can happen due to being in an award position in the uterus, restriction of movement, or birth complications like fast or very slow labor or cesarean delivery. We all know the importance of a healthy back and nervous system that chiropractic care can deliver, and we know that children deserve this care just as much as adults! Introducing chiropractic care to children at a young age can put them on a course of having a very healthy lifestyle. While many still might believe that chiropractic care is only for adults, it can be even more important for a chiropractor to care for and check on your children due to spurts of rapid growth, changes in their bodies, and development. Also know that chiropractic care for children, while it might be a new idea for some parents, it is not a new idea overall and has been around for some time. According to the American Chiropractic Association (ACA), many parents have feared how their children would respond to treatments and if they were safe. Over the years, many health professionals have sided with these parents. At the same time, doctors of chiropractic have been spending years trying to teach and assure parents that treatments are safe. Any injury or pain resulting from a chiropractic treatment was connected to underlying pathologies. Thanks to these studies and years of hard work, more parents and health professionals have gotten on board with chiropractic care. It is recommended that chiropractors do a very thorough examination and speak with parents about their medical history and their child's before treatment begins. Also, just like I mentioned in my previous blog about elderly chiropractic care, an infant would never receive the same kind of care that an adult would. Their treatment would be adjusted to their needs and age to promote the utmost safety and care! Also, don't forget that chiropractic care is non-invasive and its foundations are based on effective and gentle adjustment techniques that are safe and have been well tested. Remember my blog late last year where I discussed the many myths chiropractors have to constantly disprove? The biggest one is that chiropractors are not real doctors. We busted that myth! Your child's care and health are very important and will be in very confident hands any time they are in a chiropractor's office. THE BASICS What do you remember about your childhood? Before every smart device took over, we were outside running, jumping, climbing, swinging, and playing every game and sport we could think of. This also meant a lot of stumbles, falls, and accidents. They're still learning, still understanding their balance and coordination, and they haven't fallen enough yet to understand the full consequences of their actions. Their bodies respond to these incidents and can carry and hold tension and subluxations just like an adult's body. Chiropractic care can help realign their spine and joints, which is incredibly important as a child grows. These subluxations, remember, can get in the way of the brain functioning and communicating to the body as it should. In a body that is growing and changing every day, they need these connections and communications to make sure the best decisions are made for their health and development. Also, remember that chiropractic care is an excellent way to avoid the use of over-the-counter or prescription medications. According to the ACA, one of the most common reasons why parents take their children to a chiropractor is to help with the care and management of chronic ear infections, instead of them taking a plethora of antibiotics. GROWING BODIES Children and adults have the same joints, but they aren't fully formed in a child's body right away. Due to this, as I mentioned above, treatment will be specifically tailored to their little bodies. The adjustments will be done faster and with much less force, due to their increased flexibility in the developing joints and that they are much smaller. Instead of manipulating joints as chiropractic care can do for adult bodies, chiropractic care helps mobilize the joints in a child's body. When it comes to infants and in utero, it's even more tailored. For babies, many common issues include sleep problems, issues with nursing, colic, torticollis, and plagiocephaly. Chiropractic care has shown drastic improvement with each of these issues, along with helping or preventing any long-term effects. In utero, treatments can help prevent any sort of constraint. If the baby moves in a certain way, they can remain in that one position for several months. Wouldn't that be uncomfortable for you too? According to the ACA, "the goal of treatments is to restore motion to the joints and balance the tissues to keep everything as biomechanically even as possible. Taking the tension off from day one can help allow for optimal growth and development." TOP REASONS AND BENEFITS OF TAKING YOUR CHILD TO A CHIROPRACTOR
Your child's health is in your hands while they are growing and learning! I hope this blog helped explain why chiropractic care is so beneficial for children and to assure you that it is safe. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out. If you would like to talk about your child's chiropractic care, please reach out as well! Until next time I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered!  Cholesterol is something we should all take very seriously, but there is still a lot of misinformation out there about it that we need to understand. Today Dr. Bob will be debunking some of the most common myths about cholesterol with the help of Dr. Joseph Mercola. Hey everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope everyone out there is doing well and staying healthy. Today, we are going to be talking about cholesterol. I first want to say that this information that I am sharing with you comes from Dr. Joseph Mercola, and he is awesome. He has some great information about all kinds of health issues. I encourage you to visit his website, www.mercola.com. He is an osteopathic doctor and has a very natural and holistic medical approach to his work. This information comes from an article he wrote in April of 2016, and I want to give total credit and props to him for this information and inspiration of this blog. I have taken some notes and wanted to share them with you. The topic of the article is cholesterol myths that you shouldn't believe. Myth #1 Cholesterol Is Bad! We always hear about how high cholesterol will cause heart disease. That is not exactly the case. Get this fact! The liver makes three-quarters of the cholesterol that exists in your body. Now if your liver is making cholesterol, would your liver make something that is bad for you? I wouldn't think so! That's really the case. The body actually needs cholesterol, and it is very important for several reasons.
Myth #2 High cholesterol is caused by a bad diet. The reality of it is that only about 20% of your cholesterol is related to the food that you eat, making 80% of the cholesterol found in your body genetic. It has to do more with the liver's inability to get rid of excess cholesterol in people who are genetically inclined to produce more cholesterol. So, it's not really what we eat; a lot of it is genetic! We need to look at someone's genetics, study them, and pay attention to their family's medical history before placing blame on anything else. What is a healthy cholesterol level? The bottom line is that a healthy level varies by person. Your medical doctor will usually say that you have to have cholesterol under 200 and your LDL levels (the bad cholesterol) need to be under 100. In all honestly, these levels vary by person. There are some ratios and measurements that are much more accurate than total cholesterol. Total cholesterol is really not a good indicator of heart health. What is a good measure is the ratio of HDL (the good cholesterol) in your body divided by the total cholesterol. That number should be greater than 24% and is a great measure of whether you're in the right range of heart health. The second measurement is to look at your triglyceride levels, or the levels of fat circulating in your bloodstream. The triglycerides divided by the total cholesterol should be under 2 for a healthy heart. Another good way to measure heart health is to look at the fasting insulin levels in your body. If you're eating a lot of refined sugars, your body produces more insulin, which is there to take the sugar out of your bloodstream. Elevated insulin levels are bad because they promote fat accumulation in your body. An indicator of heart disease is the accumulation of fat in your body, especially belly fat. More Things To Consider For Measuring Heart Health
Myth #3 Margarine is better for you than butter. This is a myth because it has been proven that vegetable-based oils are bad for you; they increase the bad levels of LDLs in your body, and can cause heart problems. What you want to be doing instead is to eat more animal-based fats (eggs and butter) rather than plant-based fats. Omega 3 fats are also a great example of fats to eat and are found in fish. Considering Medications The last thing we are going to talk about is statin drugs. These are the drugs that are used to control cholesterol levels in your body. In general, they're not very effective. In fact, studies have shown that they only benefit about 1% of the population that takes them. They also deplete your coenzyme Q10 levels in your body. This material is responsible for energy production throughout your body, helping it work and function properly. If you don't have enough coenzyme Q10, you won't have enough energy production for your body to work as it needs to. Your heart needs an extreme amount of energy to function, so lower levels of coenzyme q10 can lead to heart disease. What are the healthy non-prescription ways to treat your cholesterol and heart disease?
I hope all of this information helps! Again, special thanks to Dr. Mercola for this incredible information. I hope you've learned something new today that you didn't know beforehand, and I hope you can apply it to your everyday health. If you're having trouble with any aspect of your health, please contact us! We would love to give you some advice and possibly get you started with chiropractic care! Until next time, I am Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered. To read the full article I based this whole blog off of, please follow the link below! https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/04/20/cholesterol-myths.aspx  Chiropractic care is safe and effective for everyone at every stage in their lives. Today, we will be discussing chiropractic care for the elderly; benefits, safety, and common myths!
Hello everyone, it's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic! Welcome back to the blog. I hope you are continuing to stay healthy and well out there, and I hope you've started to take the advice I discussed in my last blog to heart. Making those healthy additions in your life can make all the difference, keep you healthy, make you feel good, and so much more! Always know that I'm here to answer your questions or to schedule you for a consultation; just give us a call or shoot us an email! Today, I wanted to turn the tables and talk about chiropractic care for a certain age group. I've mentioned before that the myths and misinformation about chiropractic care can get in the way of individuals receiving life-changing treatment that can improve their overall quality of life. I hear these excuses and reasonings why individuals shouldn't get care all the time; I'm too young it's not safe, I'm too old it's not safe, I'm pregnant so it's not safe, I'm not in pain so I don't need chiropractic care. All of these reasons are incorrect. Today, I want to discuss and talk about chiropractic care for the elderly.
I hope all of this helps! Please know we are here for you at any stage of your life and can help you at any stage of your life. If you have any questions or concerns or would like to come in for a consultation give us a call! Stay healthy and safe, readers! Until next time, I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered!  A brand new year is here! I want to share some of the best tips you can do for your body to keep healthy and happy in 2021!
Hello everyone! It's Dr. Bob Salamon with Lowcountry Chiropractic. Welcome back to the blog and a very Happy New Year to you! I hope you're staying safe and well out there, and I hope you're taking care of yourselves! Welcome to 2021! I think we are all very happy to see it here, and we are all happy to get out of last year and all of its craziness. With a new year comes resolutions to work out, eat better, and be healthier overall, right? Sadly, these resolutions usually only last for a short time. In honor of that and in honor of 2021, I want to help you achieve your goals. So, I wanted to share a list of things with you that you'll be able to stick with and make part of your everyday life, to make sure this year and beyond are the healthiest they can be. If you do everything on this list that you're about to read, you will get healthier without question. It's a simple list, but I won't lie to you; it won't be easy. Each of the listed items takes effort on your part to incorporate them into your lifestyle. I personally have nothing to do with this list, outside of providing it for you, except for the last point we will talk about today. Let's kick off this new year and jump into this list to start on a healthier and happier you! #1 Go Green! I'm not talking about saving the earth, I'm not talking about saving trees from getting cut down, and I'm not talking about global warming. I am talking about eating healthy and eating green things. Some of the best ways to eat green are by eating things like salads, fruits, and vegetables. It's not only about eating green things but also about eating multicolored things. They call this kind of diet "eating the rainbow" because those are the things that have a lot of phytonutrients and antioxidants in them like berries, nuts, peppers, romaine lettuce, and much more. I eat a lot of my green food raw. I eat salads a lot, but at night I'll have a piece of fish with green beans and the green beans will be raw, because when you cook food it tends to remove the nutrients from it. When I say "go green" I really mean that you need to get away from eating food that's white or brown, and you need to eat colorful things that come out of the ground or grow on trees. Eating this way will help you become much healthier! Another reason to eat green is that they are alkaline in nature and not acidic. You'll find acidic elements in starches, bread, pasta, candy, and sweets. Fruits and veggies will make your body more alkaline. This is so important because diseases like cancer thrive in an acidic environment, and you don't want that! #2 Refine Your Life! What do I mean by this? I'm talking about refined sugars. You want to try to eliminate eating foods that have unnaturally occurring sugars in them and replace them with foods that only have natural sugars. Unfortunately, almost all the products you see on the shelves of a grocery store have a ton of refined sugars in them. Why do we want to avoid refined sugars? There are a lot of reasons, but the two most important are as follows:
#3 Get a Supplemental Plan! I'm not talking about a medicare supplement for insurance. I'm talking about health supplements to the foods that you eat. We are not going to get 100% of everything we need from the food that we eat every day. To help with this, you want to try and supplement your intake with various items. I take Juice Plus+, which is whole foods in capsules. If I'm not getting 100% of all my fruits, vegetables, and berries every day this supplement helps to bridge the gap between what I am eating and what I should be eating for a healthy body. In terms of supplementation, I take fish oil and coconut oil which are huge anti-inflammatories. You might want to consider adding one or more into your diet. Another supplement you should look into adding that I always talk about is vitamin D3. It is an extremely great and inexpensive supplement to boost your immune system. Boosting your immune system is so important when we are already dealing with COVID, the flu season, and more. You want your immune system to be working at 100% so it can defend itself against some of these dangerous things that are out there. I recommend most people take between 3000 to 5000 IUs of D3. I'm taking 10,000 right now during the pandemic. I will say that I haven't felt anything in terms of a sniffle or a sore throat since this pandemic has started, so I know it's doing something good for me! #4 Don't Be a Couch Potato! We've had a lot of couch potatoes in 2020 and so far into 2021 because a lot more people are working from home and they're not as active as they should be! You need to incorporate exercise into your routine. You need to add not only cardiovascular exercises like running, walking, swimming, or biking, but you also need to add in cross-training with weights, high-intensity interval training, and more to trick your body (in a good way!) to keep improving. If you do the same workout every time, your body gets lazy. You have to mix it up, which is why I do Crossfit. Every class is different, incorporating different body parts every session. Don't be a couch potato! You have to get up and start a habit. It takes three weeks to make or break a habit, so let's do this! #5 Rest and Relax! This means getting enough sleep every night, and that means at least 7-8 hours, which is recommended by the experts. The primary reason to get enough sleep is that during your REM stage of sleeping, your body is taking the time to repair itself from all the work you've done throughout the day. The neurons, synapses, the coverings and linings of your organs, your blood vessels, and your whole body heals and repairs itself when you're sleeping. #6 Don't Worry - Be Happy! What does this mean? Experts say about 95% of what we worry about is either really not important or is never going to happen, so we really shouldn't be worrying about them. We spend too much time worrying about things that aren't going to occur or even impact us. What I would challenge you to do this year is to take a more positive approach to life if you're not already. Try to look at the glass as being half full instead of half empty, and look at the blessings you have in your life instead of the negative things. Put a list together if you have to, but we all have many things we can be grateful for in life. This can give you a little joy and optimism as you go through this year. #7 Get Connected This is the one thing on the list that you need me for! I'm not talking about getting connected on social media (shoutout to Creative Consulting for doing an amazing job!). No, this is getting your brain and body to talk to one another. This is the only way your body is going to stay optimally healthy. There is a little thing called the spinal cord that connects the brain to all of your body parts, along with the nerves that go out from your spinal cord. If you don't take care of your spinal cord and the spinal nerves, your brain (which makes all of your body's decisions and sends out all the messages out to your body) will be sending those messages out, but they will reach their destinations improperly. So, the body is not going to be effectively doing the work that the brain wants it to. Also, if those nerves aren't working properly, the body can't communicate back to the brain. The brain will then not know what decisions it should really be making. How do you keep this connection working properly between your brain and your body? Go to a chiropractor! I am trained to remove subluxations of the spine, which are conditions where the vertebrae are irritating a spinal nerve and interfering up the conduction of mental, electrical and chemical impulses from the brain to the body. I and my fellow chiropractors are trained to remove those subluxations from your body and allow your brain and body to communicate as they should! It's amazing what benefits you'll see when your body is free from subluxations. By removing subluxations, your body can experience:
I don't want you to stress out and think that you have to do this list perfectly. You just need to follow it fairly well, because if you're not doing any of them and you implement even some of them into your life, you'll see a huge improvement in your health this year. You'll lose the weight that you want to lose, you'll build muscle mass, you'll sleep better, you'll have more energy, you'll have better focus, and you won't get sick as often. The real important thing on this list, outside of the essential chiropractic care, is nutrition. Nutrition is the most important thing you can do for yourself in 2021, but of course, I want you to do this whole list! I hope this helps and gives you a little encouragement for the new year. This is going to be a better year for you but you have to want to make it better! ! If you need any help with the items on this list, we do offer consultation on each of these topics. Come see me, call me, or email me to get started. Remember, I am Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered. See you next time, readers. Stay safe out there and Happy New Year!  As we are all preparing for a happy holiday, I wanted to share with you a few tips and ideas on how to stay healthy and safe through all of your holiday events and plans!
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the blog! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic! I hope you all are doing well out there, and hope that you're staying healthy and well. I know it doesn't really feel like winter yet here in Charleston, but during these last few weeks of 2020 make sure to prepare yourself for cold and flu season, for the seasons to drastically change at the drop of a hat, and make plans to keep yourself healthy! Remember that your health is in your hands; why not improve your health journey now as we embark on a new year? Make time for chiropractic care, make time for exercising, getting plenty of sleep, eat well, and drink plenty of water. The holidays can make it easy to forget all about these important things, but give yourself the gift of your best health yet. You deserve it after 2020 and all of its challenges, so go ahead and give yourself this gift! I am here to help you along the way, so please don't hesitate to reach out and give us a call. I am always excited to be a part of your health journey and to help you feel your best. I do want to take the time to thank everyone who was a part of this year's holiday promotion! From all of us at Lowcountry Chiropractic, thank you so much for participating and helping us give back to our community. Thank you for donating all of your nonperishable food items to the Lowcountry Food Bank, and ensuring that Christmas and the holidays for so many of our neighbors will be happy. You helped so many families have plenty of food this time of year, and you helped them stay healthy and safe. That is truly an incredible gift. It was also wonderful to see so many returning patients, meet new patients, and to experience the holiday season with our holiday promotion with you! Congratulations to all of the winners of our contest, I hope you enjoy your prizes! Thank you again for joining us in giving back this year. Every little bit always helps! As a little gift from me to all of you, I wanted to give you a little checklist of things to help keep you healthy, safe and feeling your best during the holiday season. You might not even realize it, but the holidays can do more damage to your body than you think possible. It can be the most wonderful time of the year to spend with your loved ones and celebrate, but it can leave your body tired, sore, and with new painful, difficult subluxations. Remember too that this holiday season will be different than the rest. Please make safe decisions when gathering, celebrating, and having holiday parties. Be safe, be happy, and be merry! Also, make sure to take this checklist to heart. You are giving so much to others this holiday season, so make sure to take these few extra steps to give back to your body. Your back will really appreciate not going into 2021 with new subluxations! ● Eat well during the holidays! Don't forget the rainbow this time of year! While all of our favorite salty and sugary treats will be constantly around us, (safe) gatherings with your loved ones will mean all kinds of fun dishes, and the draw of eating out or getting takeout will be plentiful. Try and remember to eat the rainbow and maintain your healthy diet as much as possible. Eat your green leafy veggies, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Remember to keep up with eating all the foods I've talked about in the past that help prevent and eliminate inflammation. ● Make sure to stay active this holiday season, and include the whole family in your activities. Chilly weather can cause muscles and tendons to get cold when you're working out, so please make sure to properly warm-up and cool down, stretch, and drink plenty of water. Make sure to keep up with getting plenty of rest. Take advantage of any time off and get caught up on your rest and relaxation. Remember, even though rest is important, moderation is still key. Make sure you keep up with your chiropractic visits too. If you haven't added chiropractic care into your healthy lifestyle, make sure to do so! Right now is the perfect time to get started with us to kick off a bright and healthy new year. ● Be very cautious when decorating! While we all want to be the Griswold's, heavy lifting and time spent in awkward angles on a ladder can do some serious damage to your back! Make sure to lift your Christmas trees, boxes of decorations, and lights properly. When lifting these items, make sure to lift with your legs and knees and not your back. If you feel a little bentout of shape after you decorate, come see me to make sure everything is properly aligned and that there are no new subluxations that have appeared! ● Even before the 2020 pandemic, I would stress to my patients to continue to wash their hands frequently. Now I encourage it more than ever. I know you've been asked to wash your hands a lot this year, but please keep it up! Don't forget to add vitamin D3 to your healthy regimen too. This important supplement can help strengthen your immune system and help fight off any sickness trying to get into your body! ● Remember to enjoy all of your favorite holiday drinks, dishes, snacks, and goodies in moderation. This includes long movie days, Netflix binges, long afternoons spent reading, and long days shopping out at the malls or on your couch online. Make sure to take a moment to rest, moments to get up and stretch and moments to stay active with each of these activities. ● Give yourself breaks from long drives if you are planning on traveling, and plan ways to avoid eating tons of fast food while out and about. ● Just like you prepare for guests, try and stay ahead with everything in your life during the holidays! Prepare healthy meals to enjoy ahead of time so you aren't tempted to eat out. ● Plan activities with your loved ones that don't center around food. Planning a walk with your guests is a great way to get started with this! ● If you are traveling this year and you have a long drive ahead of you, take a lower lumbar pillow with you to relieve some of the stress and pressure that can build up on your lower back. ● Don't drive straight through to your holiday destination. Make plans to stop and stretch and walk around a little bit every couple of hours. ● While it might be tempting to lounge during these long drives, make sure to maintain the best posture that you can while you're driving. ● If you're a passenger during these long holiday trips, make sure to give yourself a break from scrolling through your phone and reading. Looking down for long periods can put a lot of pressure on your neck, leading to headaches or shoulder aches. Make sure to give yourself some device-free time! I want your holidays to be as wonderful as you are planning them to be. What will help this become a reality is considering this list and taking control of your health. Let this holiday be the reason for the season, a time to give back to others, a time spent with your loved ones, and the time you take control of your health. Thank you, again for being a part of our holiday promotion everyone! I also want to take a moment and thank all of you for helping all of us at Lowcountry Chiropractic have a great year. Thank you for working with us when our schedules changed, as we navigated through the pandemic together, and for supporting what we love to do and love to offer our patients. This couldn't have been possible without you, and we are forever thankful for your support and love. From all of us at Lowcountry Chiropractic, we hope you and your loved ones have a wonderful holiday and a fantastic new year. Until next time and next year, I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered!  There are so many exciting things happening in our office, and I can't wait to share them with you!
Hey everybody, it's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope you're all doing well out there. Today on the blog we are going to be talking about a wonderful new addition to my Social Media world! As many of you know who support me on Facebook, Instagram, and beyond, you've seen that I try to stay as connected and be as up to date in the social media world as possible. It's also another way that I can teach about chiropractic, and it is something that I get very excited about! I am passionate about connecting with my patients and supporters as frequently as possible and in as many ways as possible. This is why I have decided to add something very special to my normal rotation of postings! As many of you know and have seen through my social media posts, I am very passionate about what we do in the office and the many ways I try to help as many people as possible. Chiropractic is such an amazing thing, and it's just not being utilized as much as I believe it should be or could be. The amount of misinformation, not knowing about its benefits, and the anticipated cost for treatments has gotten in the way of so many people seeking out treatment. This is one of the many reasons why I use social media, so I can break down these myths and misinformation and share what the heart of chiropractic is, and the fact that it can help anyone and everyone at any point of their life journey. One of my favorite ways of doing this is coming right to you on your computer or smartphone screens in the form of exciting vlogs! Or, in other words, a video blog! I have this bi-weekly blog that goes out twice a month, and I also have a bi-weekly vlog that goes out on Facebook twice a month, along with other weekly posts. If you haven't been watching my vlogs, I encourage you to do so to continue learning more about the benefits of chiropractic care, what's happening in our offices, and to get to know me a little bit better too! As some of you might know, we are a bilingual office. Our front desk receptionist and I are fluent in Spanish and we are huge supporters of the very large and wonderful Hispanic community right here in Charleston. About two weeks ago I published my first, of what will hopefully be many, vlog that was in all Spanish! I discussed what chiropractic is and the benefits of it, and how it can help with pain reduction. When you do go and give it a watch I hope you enjoy it, and please remember there will be many more to come. It is an honor and a passion of mine to help and support the Latino community here in Charleston. I truly enjoy taking care of this vibrant community, they are great people and hard-working people. Since we speak Spanish here in the office, we do have the ability to really help those who might not be able to speak English very well or at all, and it is something we help with regularly. If you have a family member who has been avoiding getting the treatment they need because they've been concerned with a language barrier, that will no longer be an issue. Come and see us! I hope these news updates are just as exciting for you as they are for us! I am so excited to see all of you this holiday season, to see you participate in our holiday promotion, to see how many food items we can collect, and to meet all of your referrals. If you have any questions or would like to come in for an appointment, don't hesitate to reach out. We are looking forward to hearing from you! I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered!  Many people only search out their chiropractors when they're in pain. Today we are going to be talking about why you should give continued care a second thought.
Hi everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope that wherever you are that you are continuing to stay safe and healthy. Flu and cold season has arrived, and it's time to stay on top of your health as best you can. In many of my recent blogs, I have talked about that more often than not, your health is in your hands. Make sure that you're getting plenty of rest, drinking plenty of water, eating well, staying active, and adding vitamin D3 to your diet. Each of these steps can help you feel better, fight off sickness faster, and prevent you from getting sick. What would also be even more beneficial to staying healthy during this time of year and promote a strong immune system, is to come and see me or to visit your chiropractor consistently. While many people think the only time to go to the chiropractor is when they're in pain, I am here to implore you to think otherwise. I often hear from my patients that they have put off coming to see me because they just weren't in pain and they didn't see a reason to come until they were. Why wait to be in pain or when your body isn't working as it should to come see me? Instead of waiting for the pain, how about coming to see me to avoid any pain or discomfort at all? With this idea in mind, I wanted to talk about some of the top reasons why you should consistently be going to your chiropractor even when you're not in pain!
Many of my patients have spent the last 8 months hunched over their desks employing very bad posture. This also hasn't been great for their hips or lower backs either. This pandemic posture and lack of movement can lead to increased pressure in your neck, shoulders, upper back, hips, and more. It can also cause some pretty serious pain or even lead to a slipped or herniated disc. Coming to see me consistently or visiting your chiropractor on a regular basis can help strengthen your back and fight against your pandemic posture and pandemic lifestyle. I can keep you aligned and make sure that while you have to sit still much longer throughout the day, the messages in your brain are still firing without interruption and without causing you any pain.
If you're still unsure about the benefits of consistent chiropractic care, come and see me. Give us a call or shoot us an email, and we will be more than happy to get you in for an appointment. We will chat about your medical history, give you a thorough examination, and I will get right to work on helping you feel and function at your best at all times. Stay safe out there, everyone! Until next time, I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered! |
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