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A Safe and Healthy New Year; Tips and Tricks from Dr. Bob

1/19/2021

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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:
  • When sugar is not metabolized by your body, it gets stored as fat in your tissues and organs.  This is obviously not a good thing.  Eating refined sugars at night is worse since your body does not have time to metabolize them.
  • Most importantly, sugar creates inflammation in your body. Inflammation can lead to a lot of problems with your organs, glands, blood vessels and joints. Inflammation in your joints can lead to arthritis and pain.

#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: 
  • Pain reduction/elimination including headache resolution
  • Resolution of acid reflux
  • Reduction of sinus issues
  • Strengthening of your immune system
  • Sleeping better
  • Having better respiratory healthy
  • Having better digestive health
  • Eliminating or controlling diabetes and high blood pressure without lots of medication
  • Restoring energy levels
  • Reduction of insomnia
  • And much more! 
Remember these issues can be helped without the use of dangerous medications that alway have side effects. There is so much that goes hand in hand with chiropractic care because the nerves that come out of your spine do everything and control every function of your body. This is how you get connected! If you need to get connected, you know who to call or email - it's me! Dr. Bob Salamon! 

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!  


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A Healthy Chiropractic Holiday with Dr. Bob!

12/24/2020

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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!
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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!

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The Importance Of Brain Function

6/29/2020

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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!
  • Fish oil - This increases blood flow to the brain and nourishes the membranes surrounding the brain cells. 
  • Coconut oil (virgin organic cold pressed) - It is a huge anti-inflammatory and does similar things like fish oil. 
  • Dark Chocolate- Believe it or not! It is an antioxidant and can reduce oxidative stress on the brain. 
  • Berries - They are filled with antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents. 
  • Nuts and Seeds. 
  • Coffee - Believe it or not, again! Coffee can, according to studies, increase the brain's capacity to process information. 
  • Avocados - They have good fat and are a superfood! They can also reduce blood pressure. Increases in blood pressure are known to affect the brain negatively. 
  • Peanuts - One of my favorite foods! They have a lot of good unsaturated fat and protein. They're also great antioxidants. 
  • Eggs - They can prevent brain shrinkage. 
  • Broccoli & Kale - Both help reduce and repair oxidative stress on your body and in your brain. 
  • Think about eating and drinking these items if you aren't already! 

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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The Importance of a Proper Mattress and Pillow

3/30/2020

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You might have been suffering from back and body pain for years, but maybe it's not your back or your body that's causing the issues. Maybe it's an old mattress and old pillows that need to be replaced that are causing your pain and suffering.

Hey everybody, it's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. Today we are going to talk about pillows and mattresses. I often see patients in my office who are not paying attention to their mattresses as they get old, and it creates a lot of back issues for them. Why is a mattress so important to your health? A quarter to a third of our life is spent laying on a mattress and sleeping. Think about it. If you're sleeping on a mattress 6 to 8 hours a day, that adds up to a quarter to a third of your life, so you want to make sure that you have a great mattress that takes care of your spine and allows you to get a good night's rest. Sleep is the only time our body repairs itself from all the work it's done during the day, so if you're not getting a good night's sleep, your body begins to break down and wear out quicker than it normally would. There are so many reasons why you should put emphasis on a good mattress. I hear it all the time from my patients who go to bed and they feel fine, but when they wake up their back is killing them. That is a very telling sign that your mattress needs to go. 

Where do you start when picking out the best mattress? Over the last twenty years, there have been a lot of changes in the industry. There are so many more products and competitors than there used to be. This is a great thing because when you get more competition, the cost of the product comes down. So you can get a high-quality product at a lower price. You can buy a nice mattress today for not a ton of money. There are three basic types of mattresses that you need to know about to understand what you should be considering when buying your next mattress. 

  • Option One, The Traditional Coil Mattress
This is your old school mattress, made out of metal coil and spring. I am not a huge fan of these mattresses because you need to flip them to get even wear on them, and their life span is only about 7 or 8 years. You might spend a pretty penny on this type of mattress and not get the bang for your buck out of it. 
  • Option Two, The Sleepnumber Bed/Select Comfort Bed
These mattresses are made up of pockets of air that you can inflate or deflate with a programmable device. The advantage of these mattresses is that you can set it up exactly to your preferred comfort level - either very hard or very soft or anywhere in between. You can set it on either side of the bed so you and your partner will be very comfortable together. It's a very versatile bed, and I know a lot of people who own and love them, The downside to this mattress is that they have a lot of moving parts. There are more chances of it breaking or something going wrong with it. The whole mattress is also split into two mattresses, with space in between. Some people don't like this because it's not one uniform bed, which makes sharing it somewhat awkward. 
  • Option Three, The Memory Foam Mattress
This is what I sleep on. What you want to get when buying this type of mattress is something that has a cooling gel that has been infused into the mattress so it stays cool while you're sleeping at night. The original Tempur-Pedic mattresses were very different from what they are making now. They tended to get hot at night when you were sleeping. Also, they tended to contour to your body, so when you laid in bed your whole body would sink in, which I'm not a huge fan of. In my opinion, you want a fairly firm mattress, so when you lay in it you have an even distribution of your body weight on the mattress. This way you're not putting any extra stress or pressure on any parts of your body, like your hips. When you lay in bed the heaviest part of your body is your hips, so if your mattress sinks in, your hips are going to bear the largest brunt of the stress and weight of your body and that's not good. 

Let's take a moment to recap memory foam mattresses and all of these options in general. Remember, you want a mattress that is fairly firm and one that comes with a good warranty. Most mattresses come with a 20-year warranty now, and that's just fantastic! You don't have to turn or flip a memory foam mattress to get the full use out of it, which is another great advantage. Bedbugs, mites, and other bugs don't like memory foam mattresses, whereas they love those traditional coil mattresses. You can buy the perfect mattress for you online from companies like Casper or Purple. You can find them at Costco and Sams Club too. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars to get a good quality mattress. Go to your local Mattress Firm and see what they have. One of my patients just bought a mattress online that came highly recommended and she loves it. It was a full-size mattress for only a couple hundred dollars. You don't have to break the bank for a great mattress. 

In terms of pillows, I sleep on a contoured pillow. One end is smaller than the other, and you need to sleep on the smaller end of the pillow with it placed right under your neck. You can use the larger end to do stretches before you go to bed. For our patients who have very straight necks, we give them exercises to do using the thick end of a contoured pillow. I like the memory foam contoured pillows because they give a little bit and are more forgiving. Many different companies make these wonderful pillows; you just need to find the company that's perfect for you! 

Now that you know about the best mattresses and pillows out there, what is the best posture for sleeping? The worst way to sleep is to sleep on your stomach because you have to turn your head to breathe, and when you do that all the vertebrae in your neck shift, causing irritated nerves and tightened neck muscles. Stomach sleeping also puts a lot of pressure on your abdominal contents like intestines and other vital organs, which is just not good. The best ways to sleep are either on your side or your back, depending on what you're most comfortable doing. 
  • Side Posture Sleeping 
    • Your pillow needs to be high enough so your head remains in a neutral position (i.e not rotated or flexed to one side). If your head is not neutral it causes stress on the vertebrae, nerves and muscles in your neck, which can lead to you waking up with torticollis or a stiff, painful neck.
    • Have your hands in front of you and don’t put your arms at or above your head.  (because that puts a lot of stress on your trap muscles and your neck). 
    • Bend your knees about halfway to your chest. Put a big pillow in between your knees so you don't cross your legs over one another at night. Crossing your legs can misalign your pelvis.
  • Sleeping On Your Back
    • Ensure your pillow height is proper that will allow for a neutral head posture (i.e not flexed or extended).
    • If you do have back issues or serious pain I would recommend putting a pillow under your knees. This cradles them which takes a lot of pressure off of your lower back. 
    • You can bring your knees up as well, which will give you similar results.
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I hope all of this helps! If you're having problems sleeping or are waking up in pain it may be your mattress. It might also be that your spine needs to get checked. Generally, if I'm working with someone and they are still waking up in pain, it's usually not their spine that is causing the pain. It is usually their mattress, and it's time to get a new one. Come see us! We will be happy to talk you through all of this, give you proper advice, and keep your spine in good health! I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered! 

 



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Reading Between The Lines

2/13/2020

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Nutrition is one of the five elements of health, and one of the most important ones that can guarantee a healthy and happy life. One of the best places to start is paying attention to what's inside your food before you eat it! Where can you start to find this information? The nutrition labels! 

Hi everybody, it's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. You know, we talk about the five factors of health quite often. Those five factors are nutrition, exercise, rest and relaxation, positive mental attitude, and chiropractic care. This blog is going to be dedicated to factor number one, nutrition! I am going to be working my way through a nutrition label found on the side of a cereal box to guide us through this blog and to talk about what you should be looking for in your foods and what you should be avoiding. The FDA requires companies to put these labels on their food products to let the consumer know what's inside the food they're buying. It's the best way to determine if what you're eating is healthy or not. 

The cereal box I am looking at is a knock off brand of cereal called "Multigrain Tasteeos". This cereal isn't too bad when it comes to nutrition, but it's not as healthy as it could be. Let's dig in! 
  • Calories The first line on my cereal box is calories. Now, I'm not too concerned with that number. I believe there are more important components inside your food than worrying about those numbers. 
  • Fat Content The next line on my cereal box is the total fat content, which is very important. In my cereal, the total fat content is only 1 gram, and none of it is saturated fat. That's good! When looking at a product, in terms of the fat content, you want to make sure the majority of the fat is unsaturated. You don't want a lot of saturated fat or trans fats in your foods. In food processing, there is a term called hydrogenation. This process changes the chemical bond of a certain product into a trans fat configuration, which is a very unhealthy product. This process is banned in some countries because the product it creates is so unhealthy. Naturally occurring fats, like those in avocados, are good for your body and its functions. When picking out a product and looking at its fat content, you need to make sure that the saturated fat content is as low as possible and the unsaturated fat is as high as possible. If the label mentions that it has been hydrogenated, remember that means something inside the food has been chemically altered, making the product a trans fat. Trans fats are bad because our bodies cannot break them down or digest them properly. When that happens, you can form clogged arteries and all kinds of other issues. 
  • Cholesterol The next line down on the cereal box's nutrition label is cholesterol. There is no cholesterol in my cereal, but cholesterol is something you don't want too much of. Cholesterol is a building block for the cell membranes around your heart and organs. It is pretty important to have. But, your liver produces plenty of it and you don't need to add any more to your body. 
  • Sodium The next line down on the label is sodium. This product has 120 milligrams of sodium, which is not bad. Some of your more processed foods, if you look at frozen dinners and such, advertise that they are low in fat or no fat, which is great. But, a lot of the time these products have a lot of sodium and refined sugars in them. So you need to be very careful there. 
  • Carbohydrates The next line down on the nutrition label is carbohydrates. Proteins, fats, and carbohydrates are building blocks in our bodies and we need to be eating the right portions of each to keep our bodies happy and healthy. But, in my cereal, there are 23 grams of carbs. 3 of these grams are made up of fiber, and 6 of them are composed of sugars (most probably refined sugars), and the rest are other carbohydrates. So, what you want to do, especially if you're buying cereal, is to pay attention to the sugar content. Most cereals have a lot of sugars put in them, sometimes between 20-25 grams worth which is far too much. Cereals like Special K have a much safer and healthier lever of sugar. Why is sugar and refined sugar so bad for you? The primary reason is that it increases inflammation in your body. Inflammation on your brain, organs, and joints is never good! 
  • Protein At the bottom of the nutrition label, is protein. In this cereal, there are 2 grams of protein, which is not a lot but we do need to get our proteins any way we can. We can get them in animal products like meats or fish, and nuts or beans. 
  • The Fine Print Below the list of ingredients, it lists all the vitamins and such that are found inside this particular cereal. The last thing that I always look at on a label is the list of ingredients. Here is the rule of thumb when looking at this list. The shorter the list of ingredients, the healthier the product will be. In the longer lists are your additives and dyes, hydrogenated products, and a lot of other things you don't want in your diet. You want a purely natural product. The next time you're at the grocery store, look at the labels of regular bread versus an organic loaf of bread. The regular loaf will have a lot more ingredients. You might find enriched wheat, which you don't want to eat, along with other additives that are bad for you. A lot of the time the stuff you can't pronounce in the ingredient list are the bad things you don't want to be eating. If you can't pronounce it, try not to eat it or buy products with these things inside them! 

This is how I look at and read labels. You want to get into the habit of reading your labels and paying attention to what is inside the food you're eating. The front of your food products can say anything that makes you think it's a healthy product. But until you read those nutrition labels, you don't know for sure. So why does this all matter? Nutrition is one of the five factors of health, and so is chiropractic care. How does chiropractic care help with your nutrition? Your digestive organs are getting nerve supply from your spine. If this supply is being impeded in some way due to a subluxation or a bone out of alignment, then the nerve supply into that organ (your stomach, intestines, colon) won't be working as efficiently as possible. Your organs won't be extracting the maximum amount of nutrients from your food as it could be and it is just letting it pass through your system. Chiropractic care can help you get the most out of your nutrition, especially if you're eating healthy products. Chiropractic care will help your digestive system work as it's supposed to. 
​

I hope that helps and I hope these little nuggets of information help you on your nutritional journey. If you feel like your nutrition is not where you'd like it, I would love to talk to you about it. Reach out to us and we will get you in to discuss the next best steps for you and your nutrition. Until then, I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered. Take care!


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How Chiropractic Care Can Help Arthritis

1/2/2020

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One of the most common forms of pain, arthritis, haunts millions of Americans every year. Could chiropractic care be one of the best routes to avoid this pain and help alleviate the pain for those already suffering? 
Hey everybody! Dr. Bob Salamon here at Lowcountry Chiropractic. For this blog, we are going to be discussing arthritis. Arthritis affects about 54 million Americans every year. We are going to be focusing on osteoarthritis, which is the most common type.  There are many other types of arthritis like rheumatoid, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic, and infectious arthritis, but not as many people suffer from these types of arthritis compared to the number of people who suffer from osteoarthritis. 
Another common term for osteoarthritis is ‘degenerative joint disease’. This condition will get worse if you don't take care of it. It will slowly break down your joints. Which joints does this exactly affect? Almost any of them. It can affect your spinal bones, your knees, your ankles, your wrists, and your shoulder joints. Any of your body's articulation points can suffer from arthritis. 
What is arthritis?  Medical experts don't have a cause for it, but we will get to that shortly.  At its base, arthritis is an inflammatory condition of the joints that can cause swelling, lack of range of motion, pain, and discomfort.   Medications are one way to treat arthritis, but anti-inflammatory drugs just cover up the pain you're experiencing. Medications aren't addressing the issue or cause of your pain. Therefore you might not feel the pain as much when you use anti-inflammatories, but they can make the problem worse.
There are three steps you can take that can naturally help you treat and deal with the pain of arthritis without medications. They are simple, and ones that are worth taking the time to do. Let's talk about each of them.
  • Your Diet
    • Nutrition impacts arthritis in a big way. You need to be eating foods with little or no refined sugars. We discussed this in our last blog when I mentioned "going green" and "refining your life". Sugars are inflammatory agents. They cause inflammation in your body. If you can eliminate processed foods like desserts, pasta, bread, and other foods that have refined sugars in them, you're going to start feeling so much better. 
    • You need to consider consuming less saturated fats, fried foods, and anything that has hydrogenated oils in them. These foods will affect arthritic conditions too. They are also inflammatory agents. 
    • Eating better means adding more fruits, vegetables, and nuts to your diet.
    • You need to be drinking plenty of water. Water will help flush out some of the inflammation found in your joints. 
  • Staying Active
    • The next step in helping your arthritis is to exercise. Your joints need to be moving. If you have a doctor that tells you "Oh, your back is bothering you, go lay in bed for a week", that's NOT the answer. That is going to make things worse. Your body and the receptors in your body need movement. They need to stay moving to remain healthy. 
  • Chiropractic Care
    • The third step is to get chiropractic care. Why is chiropractic care helpful for arthritis? I'll give you a little analogy. If you're driving your car and your front end is out of alignment, what's going to happen when you're driving on the highway? If you take your hands off of the wheel, you're going to find that the car is going to pull to either the right or the left. If it pulls to the right, the tires, breaks, and everything on that side are going to wear down a lot more quickly than they are on the left side. The same is true in your body. If your joints are not moving symmetrically, the weak side will wear out more quickly, and your body will lay down extra calcium on the weak side, this creating spurring and inflammation. You need to keep both your car and body in alignment. If you don't, that tire or arthritic spot is going to continue to get worse. 
    • The same situation is found in chiropractic.  Maybe you've had a fall, you had some trauma, and something got out of alignment. Your body will be fighting to restore homeostasis and symmetry, but it won't be able to. What it does then is put down that extra calcium to protect that weak area, thus causing more problems.
    • What I do as a chiropractor is determine what areas of your body are out of alignment. I adjust or correct those areas and get the body working symmetrically again. Effective chiropractic care can stop arthritic degeneration. In some cases, it can even reverse it. It depends on the severity and age of the arthritic condition.
So, that's how nutrition, exercise, and chiropractic can help with arthritis. It is very important to do all of these steps. I tell all of my patients that you have to keep your spine aligned and keep your body symmetrical to keep that arthritis out of your body. If any of you are suffering from arthritis or think you might have it, it's not a death sentence. It can be managed and helped. You can see results with less pain and inflammation. Please, if you're suffering, contact us. We would love to have you come in and do a thorough exam and x-rays. Having an x-ray taken is the most cost effective way to know if you have any arthritis. If you have arthritic conditions, we will be able to help you!
That's it for today. I look forward to seeing you soon!
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New Years Resolutions You Can Stick To!

12/15/2019

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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!

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Dr. Bob Salamon
8988 University Blvd., Suite 104
North Charleston, SC 29406 
843-553-9383

bob.salamon@lcchiropractic.com
Office Hours:
​M, W, F: 10:00AM - 1:00PM & 3:00PM - 6:00PM
Saturday: By Appointment Only
Closed T, Th, Sunday


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