 Hello, everyone! This is Dr. Bob Salamon with Lowcountry Chiropractic. As always, I hope you’re doing well and staying healthy! Welcome back to my blog, where I discuss anything and everything related to chiropractic care and healthy living! I aim to provide you with the information you need to make informed decisions about your health. In my last post, we discussed how to take care of your spine. Today, we’ll be talking about the importance of staying active and I’ll be sharing some workout tips. As you probably know, staying active is good for your overall health. In fact, staying active can help improve brain health, manage weight, reduce the risk of disease, strengthen bones and muscles, lower your blood pressure, and much more. When you are receiving routine chiropractic care, it is important to keep your body in the best shape possible to achieve optimal results. Oftentimes, chiropractic care works best when used in conjunction with other healthy habits and lifestyle changes. Staying active is one of the best ways to keep your body in good shape! If you are interested in learning more about the importance of staying active, as well as some workout tips, you’re in the right place! Let’s get started.
As we age, it becomes even more important to protect our bones, joints, and muscles. Keeping our bones, joints, and muscles in good shape ensures that we are able to perform our daily activities and remain physically active. Additionally, back pain is a common problem in our world– Up to 23% of adults suffer from chronic low back pain. Staying active has been proven to prevent or reduce back pain. This is partly because aerobic exercises increase the blood flow to the soft tissues in the back, reducing stiffness that can cause back pain and improving the healing process. How much should I exercise every day? The amount of exercise one needs can vary from person to person. However, a general rule of thumb is to aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day. The Department of Health and Human Services recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity per week. Aerobics refers to cardiovascular exercise, commonly known as cardio. This includes running or jogging, biking, walking, swimming, hiking, and more. If you cannot meet the daily recommended goal, remember that small amounts of exercise can still be beneficial. Workout Tips Let’s face it– Working out isn’t always as easy as it may seem. However, there are simple things that you can do to make your workouts easier and more beneficial! Let’s take a look. 1. Warm up properly Before you begin exercising, it is important that you warm up properly. A warm up is essentially “waking up” your body before a workout. Just as the name suggests, a warm up literally raises your temperature slightly in order to make your muscles, tendons, and joints more flexible to improve your performance and prevent injury. Warming up also increases blood flow, which helps facilitate the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to your working muscles. Although it may be tempting to skip a warm up, doing so can put more strain on your muscles and can lead to injury. So, it’s important to get your muscles ready for exercise mode. Here are some easy warm ups:
You should spend at least 5 to 10 minutes warming up. If your workout is going to be more intense, your warm up should last longer. 2. Stay hydrated We’ve all heard about the importance of staying hydrated, but do you know the reasoning behind it? Drinking enough water daily helps your body regulate temperature, lubricate joints, keep organs functioning properly, and more. Additionally, when you are exercising, your body will begin sweating in order to return to its optimal temperature. When sweat evaporates from the skin, heat is removed from the body– But this also removes body fluid. Therefore, it is important to drink plenty of water to replace that fluid lost through sweating. Adequate hydration prevents your body from overheating and can also help keep your muscles loose to prevent injury. A general rule of thumb is to drink 7 to 10 oz of water for every 10 to 20 minutes of exercise. 3. Invest in a good pair of shoes I mentioned the importance of a good, sturdy and comfortable pair of shoes in my last blog. The shoes that you wear play an important role in supporting your lower back. Choosing the right shoe with adequate support can help keep your spine aligned properly, therefore preventing injury. Whether you are walking, running, or performing exercises with gym equipment, having a proper pair of shoes is a must. Good shoes lessen the impact of your step and cushion your foot from heavy landings. There are a variety of shoes to choose from, such as running shoes, lightweight walking shoes, aerobic shoes, and more. You should choose a type of shoe that best corresponds with the type of exercise you perform most often. 4. Set goals When you are just getting started exercising, it may feel difficult to find motivation. That’s where goal-setting comes in. Setting fitness goals helps hold yourself accountable and give yourself incentive to keep going. In order for these goals to work as well as they possibly can, they must be well-structured. This can refer to SMART goals– Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound goals. Following this criteria will help make your goals more reachable. You must clearly define your goal. Rather than saying that your goal is to be healthier, think about what “healthy” means to you. Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to minimize back pain? Think about what you are trying to accomplish, and why. You should also specify a number within your goal, whether it is a number of repetitions, or a length of time you want to spend exercising, etc. This will allow you to slowly work towards that number each time you work out. 5. Listen to music For some people, the key to a successful workout is good music! Studies have shown that listening to music during a workout, especially motivational or energizing music, helps people push through fatigue and perform better. Music has also been proven to elevate mood, so you may feel more motivated or excited to workout. Try creating a playlist of upbeat songs to listen to while you work out. Keep in mind that everyone is different, however– Some people prefer to exercise in silence. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable! 6. Cool down Just as warming up is important, it is just as important to cool down after a workout. This allows for the gradual recovery of your pre-exercise heart rate and blood pressure. When exercise comes to a sudden stop, it can cause side effects such as lightheadedness. Cooling down properly helps prevent this. At the end of your workout, continue what you were doing but at a much slower pace and reduce the intensity. For example, if you went for a brisk walk, continue walking slowly for 5 to 10 minutes. As you can see, these are just a few ways that you can stay active and make the most out of your workout! If you have any further questions or concerns, I encourage you to reach out to us. As a chiropractor, I can also provide you with nutritional advice and other recommendations for lifestyle changes that can help you keep your spine functioning at its best. I hope you found this article informative. If you have any concerns about your bone health, consider reaching out to Lowcountry Chiropractic! We specialize in different chiropractic techniques, as well as both therapeutic and Swedish massage. Send us an email or give us a call and we’ll assess the situation and develop a treatment plan to address your needs. We want to help you live a healthy and pain-free life– it’s what you deserve. As always, this is Dr. Bob and I have your back covered!
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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:
#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! |
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