12 Delicious, Easy Ways to Enjoy Vegetables

From a health standpoint, vegetables are a five-star food group: naturally nutrient rich;

better tasting than a vitamin pill; low in calories and fat; cholesterol-free and

packed with disease-fighting phytonutrients. To maximize your health with

vegetables, nutrition experts suggest at least 3 to 5 servings per day – in a rainbow

of colors. All types of vegetables can be nourishing and delicious – fresh, frozen,

canned and juiced. Here are a dozen daily ways to treat yourself to good health!

1. Broccoli and cauliflower: Versatile and very healthful – eat them raw (with dip if

you like) or cooked, in a salad or even a slaw.

2. Carrots: Sweet, crunchy, good for your teeth, eyes and

heart! Perfect raw (as a snack or salad) or cooked in a

stew.

3. Peppers: Green, red, yellow, orange or even purple!

Enjoy peppers in a salad, stir-fry, or casserole or as a

snack.

4. Spinach: A salad of baby spinach leaves with pears or

apples can turn anyone into a real spinach lover.

5. Onions: The zesty onion family (scallions, leeks and garlic, too!) offer some

powerful antioxidant nutrients.

6. Peas: Fresh, frozen or even canned, peas are a treat to eat and they are very

popular with small children.

7. Beets: If you’ve never liked beets, try them in a new way – like roasted, grilled or

lightly steamed in the microwave.

8. Sweet potatoes and yams: Switch the color of your usual baked potato and you’ll

get a lot more nutrients, along with great taste.

9. Mushrooms: Just a mushroom or two adds rich flavor to a casserole, soup, stew,

stir-fry or even a tossed green salad.

10. Leaf and romaine lettuce: Rule of thumb for a healthy salad – the darker green or

red the lettuce leaves, the more nutrients you get.

11. Green, yellow or purple beans: Like their pea ‘cousins,’ beans offer some fiber and

a little bit of protein, along with vitamins and minerals.

12. Tomatoes: Cooking increases the availability of some tomato nutrients – so enjoy

12 Delicious, Easy Ways to Enjoy Fruit

Fruit is a double-sweet treat. It’s a delicious treat for your taste buds and a

nutrition treat for your whole body. Fruits are naturally nutrient-rich. That means

they are packed with vitamins, minerals and disease-fighting phytonutrients and

are still low in calories. To maximize the health benefits from fruit, nutrition

experts suggest 2 to 3 servings per day – in a rainbow of colors. All types of fruit are

nutritious – fresh, frozen, canned and dried – so here are a dozen easy ways to treat

yourself to good health!

1. Berries, berries, berries: Canned blueberries in muffins, dried cranberries in a

salad, or fresh, juicy strawberries for dessert.

2. Citrus fruit: Oranges, pink and white grapefruit,

tangerines, tangelos, Clementines, lemons and limes.

3. Melons and more melons: Slices of watermelon,

cantaloupe, honeydew or Crenshaw – in a fruit cup or for

a sweet snack.

4. Bananas: Bananas, nature’s fast food, come in their own

wrapper – convenient to take in the car or eat at your

desk.

5. Kiwi fruit: Slice kiwi fruit into a mixed fruit or fresh spinach salad or just scoop

them out of their thin, brown peel.

6. Pineapple: One of the most versatile fruits, pineapple is perfect fresh, canned,

dried, as juice or on a pizza!

7. Tropical fruit: Fresh produce departments and canned food aisles now serve up

mangoes, papaya and star fruit.

8. Apples and pears: A fresh, crisp snack, a juicy addition to green salad, and in a

tasty pie, tart or cobbler for dessert.

9. Summer tree fruit: Nectarines, peaches and apricots are fabulous when fresh and

still quite tasty when canned in their own juice.

10. Plums and prunes: Fresh plums are another juicy taste of summer. Dried or made

into juice, prunes are very nice for regularity!

11. Cherries and grapes: Fresh or dried, cherries and grapes make a great snack or

addition to salads (mixed fruit or tossed green).

12. Trendy tomatoes: Tomatoes are a fruit and now they come in sweet, fruit-shaped

cherry, grape and strawberry varieties.

How is your Atlas and Axis Alignment?

At the top of your spine, there are two very special bones. These bones, the Atlas and Axis, are found in every human being and all vertebrate animals. They were created to support your head and protect the most vital part of your nervous system, the brain stem, while at the same time allow for maximum movement in the neck. 

The story begins like this, and it could happen to anyone. 

Mary had a difficult birth. Her mother labored for many hours before the doctor finally pulled her from the birth canal with forceps. Anyone observing the birth could    easily see that this placed extreme stress to the baby’s upper neck, but the doctor assured her mother that this is common and the baby did appear to be doing fine. However, the next few months were difficult, because Mary was having a terrible time with colic, irritability, and constant crying. Once again, her mother was reassured, and everything was chalked up to Mary just being a “fussy baby.” 

A year went by and like most toddlers Mary fell on average 5000 times while learning to walk. The first two bones of Mary’s spine are the smallest (as they are for all of us) yet they hold the weight of her six pound head. Because these are the only bones in the spine that aren’t “locked” into place like the other bones in the spine, they take the brunt of the force. By age two, Mary was experiencing recurrent ear infections that antibiotics just couldn’t “fix”. 

At age seven, Mary fell off her bike. She got a few scrapes, bumps and bruises and complained of soreness for a couple days, but bounced back pretty easily, and Mom thought she’d be just fine. Oddly enough, Mary seemed to “catch” every cold and flu bug that winter. By spring, she developed a new allergy to grass and pollen. She must have been run down.

In high school, Mary played soccer on the varsity team subjecting her body to lots of tackles and using her head to strike the ball. She then went to college where her academic work was emotionally stressful and after graduation joined the “real world” where her stress continued.

At age 35 Mary had a fender bender that whip-lashed her upper neck that caused her pain and difficulty in turning her head. Her hips and legs felt a little “off” although she couldn’t really explain it. She thought maybe it was because she was getting older. These things happen, right? By this time, Mary was experiencing headaches more and more often. They could be debilitating even though she had been prescribed medication. Later she began to experience chronic fatigue and bouts of depression. Her doctor prescribed Imatrex for the headaches, Ambien to sleep and Prozac to help her “cope.” Nothing seemed to help.

By age 40 Mary had been diagnosed with migraines, arthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and depression. This true story is the story of millions of people. Substitute the traumas (physical, emotional, chemical) and the symptoms, and in the end, you have a very common story which is repeated daily throughout the world.  

It’s all about the proper alignment of the Atlas and the Axis, the top two bones in your neck which allow for the optimal function of the brain stem. 

 Have you been checked lately to see if your atlas and axis are in proper alignment?

The Rocks In Our Backpacks Stressor Analogy

         

The analogy I like to use to explain that chronic illness is the result of chronic stressors and chronic allostatic load is what I call my rocks in our backpack stressor analogy.

          Imagine that you are born into a swimming pool wearing water wings and a backpack. Water wings are those little inflatable bands you wear around your arms to keep you afloat.

         

          Imagine yourself in a swimming pool with water wings around your arms and a backpack on. Now it seems to be fairly well accepted that human species has a genetically determined lifespan of around 120 years. In this analogy what this means is that you can think of being born into a swimming pool with a backpack on, with the water wings on, and those water wings have a very slow leak. This very slow leak means that the air will run out of those water wings in about 120 years, that’s your species specific genetically determined life span potential. So if you are born into that pool, and there are no chronic stressors, you are just going to be happily afloat around in there, and you are going to get your 120 years out of life.

          Now, in this analogy, any form of stressor in your life, any toxicity or deficiency, any allostatic load, represents a rock in your backpack. Any form of stress in your life is a rock in that backpack. Now, what happens is when you get that rock in your backpack, a couple of things that are very important occur every single time. The first thing is that you sink a little bit lower in that water. What does that do the pressure on your water wings? It increases it. What does that do to the rate of air leakage? It increases it. So what does this do to your rate of aging? It increases it. It means you are going to have less time on this planet.

What are the rocks in your backpack?  Are they inactivity, over eating, negative thinking, dehydration, lack of good sleep, lack of spinal maintenance?  Start today by removing some of the rocks from your backpack so you can lead a long, productive, and quality life.

What Is Your Level Of Thinking?

Little Johnny

Little Johnny was born in the hospital.  His mother was given medications to “assist” her in the process.  The drugs slowed her contractions and as a result, it was recommended by the experts that a Caesarian be performed as to not risk the damage that a protracted delivery may cause.  The motions around Johnny’s mother became frantic and after cutting her open they grabbed Little Johnny’s neck and twisted and pulled.  There was great concern in getting him out.  There was little concern about the excess physical, chemical, and emotional stresses produced by the process.

When Little Johnny was an infant, he “caught” a cold.  The people who loved and cared about him the most put a medication formula in his bottle and smiled as he drank it, because they felt assured that he would now get  better.

At five years old, Little Johnny fell off his bike, scraped his arm and “twisted” his neck.  The people who loved and care about him the most, his parents, cleaned his wounds and gave him two St. Joseph’s aspirin.  They smiled warmly and explained to him that now he would be fine and that the pain in his neck would be made better by the aspirin.

At nine years of age, Little Johnny was playing little league football.  Going through the line, he took a hard hit to the helmet.  He came off the field complaining of neck pain.  The next morning, he woke up with a scratchy throat and congestion, his neck still sore.  The parents left reassured because now he was old enough for Junior Tylenol.  How wonderful, they thought, that their boy was getting old enough to have more medications available for use when necessary.  The people who loved and care about him the most gave him the drugs, feeling good because their fears were laid to rest as they helped their boy.

At 12 years of age, that same sore throat congestion came back, however this time the Junior Tylenol didn’t work.  Johnny’s symptoms persisted.  So now the people who loved and cared for Johnny the most took him to the person they respected the most in such matters, the guy or gal in the white coat, the pediatrician.  The pediatrician did a very thorough evaluation of Johnny, talked to his parents, and then gave Johnny drugs.

Johnny’s experience for his entire life has been when he felt bad, the people who loved and cared about him the most gave him drugs.  And the people who we respect the most as having the greatest amount of knowledge in these matters have him drugs.

Now Johnny is 16 years old and in high school.  He doesn’t make the basketball team and the girl he likes rejects him.  He feels bad.  What has been his training and programming his entire life?  And we can’t understand why the youth of your nation take drugs when we’ve programmed them to do it their entire lives.  The average 18 year old in the USA has seen 20,000 hours of drug commercials!  Image the contradictions we feed our children as they are taught to “just say no” to drugs while we feed drugs to them in record proportions.  We are not winning the drug war in this country, nor shall we as long as the culture persists in such a way.  To paraphrase Einstein, “You cannot resolve problems with the same level of thinking that existed when the problem was created.”  We have a problem.  What is your level of thinking?

Do You Desire to Be Well?

It seems as though the word ‘wellness’ is everywhere these days. There are tons of wellness products and wellness services available to cure virtually any kind of ailment, lifestyle disease, or to relieve stress, etc. But did you ever contemplate the word, ‘wellness’ and what it actually means to you, and even more importantly, how one actually achieves it?

The way that I personally define wellness, I know this is different for everyone, is:

Wellness is a higher quality of human experience resulting from specific choices and actions which create an increasingly organized process of health and vitality in any dimension of life.

So, with that being said, wellness is not a fad, or something that we achieve in our lives, but instead it is a way of life, or what I like to call, a lifestyle. There is unfortunately a misconception that being “well” requires hard work and sacrifice, but what I encourage you to realize is that the only reason you may consider this decision to be challenging is because it is NEW. Think back to when you first learned how to ride a bike or drive a car, the anxiety that may have surfaced was probably overwhelming, but this was only because the activity was NEW for you. I know that you no longer consider either of these undertakings as difficult in the least bit because you have learned how to adopt them into your life. The same will happen with the concept of “being well and staying well,” but the only difference is that the result is far more significant than any car or bicycle, because the outcome is directly correlated to LIVING a healthy and vibrant life.

The reason that our office utilizes a wellness model when it comes to empowering people to make the necessary lifestyle changes is because it is our mission to:

Foster, promote, and inspire health excellence to the people of Beltrami County.

It has become abundantly clear that the health care crisis extends far outside the scope of anything that can be resolved within the world of politics, which is why we need to play our part in the Bemidji area in order to become educated and more aware of how our lifestyle choices directly correlate to our overall level of well-being. Therefore, if you resonate with our mission from above, then I encourage you to call 218-333-8811 to set up a 10 minute consultation with Dr. Mike at no charge or come to one of our free Thursday evening workshops at

223 Third Street NW, Bemidji, MN  56601

.

Regardless of your decision, I would like to inspire you to spend a few moments today in order to assess your life from the perspective of reaching for your full potential. If for some reason you feel like you might be falling short when it comes to your physical activity levels, your diet, or from the stress that you experience on a daily basis; then I would be honored to help you find a solution. Please feel free to contact our office if you have any questions or concerns and if you know anyone who resonates with our mission, then I encourage you to share this message with them as well.

Thank you for all that you do!

Be Well…

Dr. Mike Headlee

(www.explorechiropractic.com)

15 Ways For You To Do Your Best Work

Do your best work by challenging the way you did things yesterday.

Do your best work by allowing your passion to see the light of day.

Do your best work by becoming part of the solution versus growing the problem.

Do your best work by expecting nothing less than you playing at world-class.

Do your best work by giving away the credit (especially when you crave it)

Do your best work by practicing your skills so you become a virtuoso.

Do your best work by releasing excuses and doing important things.

Do your best work by getting up when you’ve been knocked down.

Do your best work by keeping your promises; to others and to yourself.

Do your best work by showing integrity.

Do your best work by delivering more value than anyone could ever expect from you.

Do your best work by making time to refill your well.

Do your best work by having a strong foundation at home.

Do your best work by becoming as fit as a pro athlete.

Do your best work by doing work that makes a difference and inspires others to do the same.

22 Ways to Become Spectacularly Inspirational

By Robin Sharma, author of the #1 bestseller “The Leader Who Had No Title”

1. Do important work vs. merely offering opinions.

2. Lift people up vs. tear others down.

3. Use the words of leadership vs. the language of victimhood.

4. Don’t worry about getting the credit for getting things done.

5. Become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

6. Take your health to a level called superfit.

7. Commit to mastery of your craft instead of accepting mediocrity in your work.

8. Associate with people whose lives you want to be living.

9. Study for an hour a day. Double your learning and you’ll triple your success.

10. Run your own race. “No one can possibly achieve real and lasting success by being a conformist,” wrote billionaire J. Paul Getty

11. Do something small yet scary every single day.

12. Lead Without a Title.

13. Focus on people’s strengths vs. obsessing around their weaknesses.

14. Remember that potential unused turns into pain. So dedicate yourself to expressing your best.

15. Smile more.

16. Listen more.

17. Read the autobiography of Nelson Mandela.

18. Reflect on the words of Eleanor Roosevelt who said: “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.”

19. Persist longer than the critics suggest you should.

20. Say “please” and “thank you”.

21. Love your loved ones.

22. Do work that matters.

What About Nutrition For Babies & Toddlers?

These are things I wish I’d known in the first year after my oldest child was born! Breast milk is best, no formula comes even close to it, and soy milk/formula is not a good option. The formula companies would have you think otherwise, but the toll on children’s health due to their marketing strategies is incalculable.

Until about the time the baby’s eyeteeth come in, your baby’s body does not produce digestive enzymes needed to break down cooked foods. So, nursing until 18 months is ideal. If you must supplement breastfeeding, consider raw goat’s milk (ask at health food stores and explore health-related co-ops in your area to find a raw goat milk provider), and mashed bananas. Raw goat milk is closest to human milk, and it contains enzymes (unlike pasteurized milk). I would still choose homogenized and pasteurized goat milk over cow milk.

Don’t feed your baby formula and powdered/processed cereals. As you introduce foods, consider making your own baby food by mashing regular food rather than purchasing the refined products sold in jars as “baby food.” I never fed my last three babies a single thing labeled as “baby food,” and they were much better off for it.

In the first two years, introduce mostly veggies (few fruits) to keep your baby from developing a taste for only sweet foods. Never feed your baby or toddler refined sugar; this will be highly detrimental to her health and will create an acidic climate in her body, making her prone to infections. This includes sugar-added yogurt, sodas and sugared drinks, fruit juices, and treats made with sugar.

And you will notice that if you eat right during pregnancy (especially drink my green smoothie and granola throughout the pregnancy), your baby will have a taste for good food because of the nutrition he received during gestation and breastfeeding!

“My kids won’t eat . . .” is something I hear a lot. I think a lot of the difference between me and this statement is a difference in parenting philosophy. Feel free to reject this, but “old school” is how I was raised, and it’s working with my own children, who eat a green smoothie every afternoon, and a heaping dinner plate full of salad every night, before having the rest of those meals. The philosophy is that I’m in charge of their nutrition, we all eat ONE meal (not several different ones, according to preferences), and they can have the REST of the meal when their salad or green smoothie is gone. If they don’t want the smoothie, fine, but they go hungry for that meal. My kids rarely, if ever, choose to go hungry. No drama, no begging, no paying them to eat a vegetable . . . eating the good stuff is simply required if they want other food.

You may say that your kids are just “picky” and I must be lucky to get four who will eat anything. Not so: I have ONE child who would always eat anything. My youngest two kids are “picky,” and the oldest one tried that personality trait out, earlier in life. But we set limits and boundaries, and eventually they figure out that eating the raw veggie part of the meal is required, not optional. They also figure out through repetition that they like how they feel eating so many raw vegetables.