THE SPINAL COLUMN                 

             

                                        

EXPLORE CHIROPRACTIC

223 Third Street NW                                                                                                        

Bemidji, MN  56601 

218-333-8811                                                                                             

www.explorechiropractic.com

Welcome to our office's Chiropractic newsletter. We'd like to entertain you, inform you and even inspire you a little.  We’d love to hear from you; feel free to write to us with any questions or comments.

      Happy Thanksgiving

May you enjoy abundance, prosperity, gratitude, health, healing, happiness, long life, love, security, joy and peace.

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - Thomas Pain

What Exactly Do Chiropractors Do?

We chiropractors are specially trained to locate and correct a severe form of stress called a vertebral subluxation. Subluxations can damage your health weeks, month or years before you notice symptoms. What does a subluxation do to your body?

A vertebral subluxation causes:

1. Joint problems - Your spinal vertebrae are jammed, or “noisy”. You can’t turn, bend or twist your neck, hips or back equally in every direction.

2. Nerve damage - The impulses traveling through the nerves are altered and important chemicals that flow over your nerves may be blocked. Pain may or may not be felt.

3. Muscle damage - Your muscles may be tight, weak, overly sensitive and/or sore.

4. Tissue damage - You may have swelling, tenderness, “trigger points,” and painful spots.

5. Dis-ease - Your muscles, joints, ligaments and organs show signs of wear and tear and premature aging. There is fatigue, lowered resistance to disease, and symptoms of disease or organ malfunction.

A healthy spine is as important for your overall healing as proper nutrition. No matter what disease or condition you have, you can benefit from a healthy spine. Are you and your family carrying the vertebral subluxation complex in your spines? Only a chiropractic spinal checkup can tell.

Childhood Diseases Are Good For You?

"Contracting and overcoming [childhood] diseases are part of a developmental process that actually helps develop a healthy, robust, adult immune system able to meet the challenges that inevitable encounters with viruses and bacteria will present later on."

(Coulter H. Vaccination, social violence and criminality. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books; 1990.)  Many parents notice that after a fever children experience a physical and/or emotional growth spurt. Fevers and various symptoms have long been considered a part of normal development and how the body cleanses, purifies and heals itself in young and old alike. Make sure you and your children are “healthy” sick so they can quickly recover and benefit from their symptoms in a constructive manner by keeping their spines healthy through chiropractic care. There is no need to fear fevers as they are almost always benign. According to Robert Mendelsohn, M.D., “Unless there are additional symptoms [accompanying a fever] such as extreme listlessness, abnormal behavior, respiratory difficulty, and others that could indicate the presence of serious diseases such as diphtheria and meningitis, your doctor should tell you there is nothing to worry about and send you and your child home.”

Words of Wisdom

The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunization. – Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein

All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. - John Gunther

Ultrasound Can Cause Brain Damage?

Routine ultrasound during pregnancy is becoming more controversial. New research reveals that ultrasound may cause nerve and DNA damage. Information can be found at http://www.aimsusa.org/ultrasnd.htm or http://www.alternamoms.com/ultrasound.html.   Do an internet search on "ultrasound+cavitation" or "ultrasound+Ellisman" and look for yourself.

Laughter Is Good For You

Not into exercise? Well then at least have a good laugh. Half of a group of 48 heart attack survivors watched a comedy of their choice for 30 minutes a day for one year. The other half did not watch anything funny.

Only two of the comedy watchers had repeat heart attacks within 12 months, compared with 10 who did not watch comedy.

Possible reason: Laughter lowers levels of stress hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine and may help restore the brain chemicals that help with stress.

(Stanley Tan, MD, Ph.D, director of clinical research, Center for Neuroimmunology, Loma Linda University, School of Medicine, California. In Bottom Line Personal Nov. 15, 2000).

Humor

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is. - Erma Bombeck

Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children. - Sam Levinson

Children are the most desirable opponents in Scrabble as they are both easy to beat and fun to cheat. - Fran Lebowitz

What is more enchanting than the voices of young people when you can’t hear what they say? - Logan Pearsall Smith

By the time the youngest children have learned to keep the house tidy, the oldest grandchildren are on hand to tear it to pieces. - Christopher Morley

Why Should I Return If I’m Feeling Fine?

Delays have dangerous ends. - William Shakespeare

You entered our office feeling terrible and now you are experiencing the wonders of what happens when your spine and nervous system are subluxation free. You'd be happy to return if your health deteriorates to the point where you feel terrible again but we suggest you return even if you feel fine. "Why should I return if I’m feeling fine?" you may ask.

Of course you can wait until you’re miserable again, but should you? You may be making a big mistake if you wait until you have symptoms to do something about your health. Lack of pain is a poor way of determining how healthy you are.

We've all seen people looking like death warmed over who "feel fine." They are walking targets, waiting for disease to strike before they decide to do anything about their health. They "feel fine" but have no energy; they "feel fine" but sleep poorly; they "feel fine" but are tired, have aches and pains, headaches or backaches. Too many people who "feel fine" one day have a sudden heart attack, stroke, debilitating pain or are diagnosed with a serious disease such as cancer the next day. Surely "feeling fine" is no indicator of your health status.

Baby walkers delay development?

A recent paper in the British Medical Journal says that baby walkers delay normal developmental milestones. Children who used the devices took three to four weeks longer to crawl and walk on their own. The study involved 190 babies. Because of this and injuries associated with the walkers, researchers discourage their use. (BMJ, June 22, 2002.)

Chiropractic and Spinal Research

Did you know there are thousands of papers on the wonders of chiropractic? Is there any disease or condition you’d like to know about? Ask us.

Osteoarthritis (spinal degeneration). Just about everyone gets “wear and tear” of the joints, including the spine. Medically, osteoarthritis is regarded as an unavoidable and irreversible consequence of aging, like the graying of hair. However chiropractors have been able to do something considered impossible by medical standards: to slow, stop and even reverse osteoarthritis. OJ Ressel, DC of Canada has written a landmark paper showing that chiropractic care can halt and reverse spinal degeneraton. Disc regeneration: reversibility is possible in spinal osteoarthritis.  Ressel, OJ. ICA Review March/April 1989 pp. 39 -61.

Another research paper discussed chiropractic and nutritional care contributing to the amelioration and reversal of osteoarthritis (OA). The author writes that the chiropractic adjustment realigns and restores motion to joints causing healthy regrowth of tissue. Osteoarthritis, chiropractic, and nutrition: osteoarthritis considered as a natural part of a three stage subluxation complex: its reversibility: its relevance and treatability by chiropractic and nutritional correlates. Berkson DL Med Hypotheses 1991 Dec; 36(4):356-67

Asthma. 47 asthma sufferers, aged 7 to 42, improved dramatically under chiropractic care and maintained that improvement for a two year follow-up period. The patients were seen between 14 and 44 times with most beginning care at 3 visits per week for the first 4 to 8 weeks. Improvement was based on the patient's subjective and objective symptoms as well as their use of asthma medication. Improvements ranged from 87 to 100%. (Amalu WC. Chiropractic management of 47 asthma cases. Today’s Chiropractic, 29(6) Nov/Dec 2000.)

Things the Movies Teach You (Part 1)Large, loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people - whether they are employed or not.

At least one of every pair of identical twins is born evil.

Should you decide to defuse a bomb, don't worry which wire to cut. You will always choose the right one.

Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communications system of any invading alien society.

It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts; your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.

Honest and hardworking policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement.

Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gasses, lasers, and man eating sharks, which will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.

Digestion in the Stomach

Digestion begins in the mouth When you chew your food it is mixed with saliva, which not only supplies moisture but also the carbohydrate-digesting enzyme, amylase. When you eat raw food, its enzymes work with the salivary amylase to begin digestion.

Swallowing prevents food from remaining in the mouth long enough for any significant amount of digestion to occur. However, the food and salivary enzymes continue the digestion process until the secretion of stomach acid causes the pH to drop below 3.0, which is the activity range of plant enzymes. Before food arrives, the stomach normally has a pH between 5.0 and 6.0. In young and healthy adults it takes about 45 minutes before enough acid is generated to drop the pH to 3.0. This is because stomach acid is secreted into the stomach in response to the expansion of the stomach wall. During this time a considerable amount of digestive work can be accomplished if plant enzymes, either indigenous to the raw food ingested or from a supplemental source, are present. Unfortunately, the amount of time necessary to make stomach acid increases with age. Studies have proven that older adults often suffer from inadequate stomach acid levels.

There is a common misconception that enzymes are destroyed by stomach acid. Nothing could be further from the truth. Stomach acid does not digest protein. Rather, it activates an enzyme called pepsinogen which then becomes pepsin that is secreted by the stomach wall. This enzyme is only active within the pH range of 3.0 to 5.0 and requires the acid to maintain that pH. Pepsin is very specific in its action and is simply incapable of digesting food enzymes, which are very large molecules and are more than just protein.

More than seventy years ago, Olaf Bergeim conducted a series of experiments on salivary digestion at the Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry in the University of Illinois, College of Medicine in Chicago. He found that an average of 59-76% of ingested carbohydrates is digested within 15-30 minutes after a meal. He concluded that a very considerable degree of starch digestion may be brought about by saliva if food is chewed properly.

The pH within the stomach rarely, if ever, drops below 3.0. Pure stomach acid has a pH of 1.8 when it first enters the stomach, but is quickly diluted in the presence of food. Regardless, plant enzymes are not destroyed by the highly acidic environment of the stomach. They simply become dormant until reaching the higher pH levels in the small intestine, where they again become active and continue the digestive process. Once their digestive function in the gastrointestinal tract is completed, a large number of enzymes are absorbed through the gut wall into the bloodstream.

A lot of research remains to be done to determine the exact fate of these enzymes after they pass through the gut wall into blood. However, it is known that plant enzymes will pass from the body into the urine after they have completely lost their usefulness.