Health - Advanced Chiropractic of South Carolina

Dec 15 2019

Lifestyle Habits That Make Us Feel Depressed

There are plenty of people who believe that there is something wrong with them. They may have been given the diagnosis of depression, or they are worried that they are depressed. With the great number of misdiagnosed cases of depression, health care providers are looking for other causes for a patient’s stress and anxiety.

Here are some problems that could contribute to feeling down. You might not be depressed. You might be suffering from something else instead.

Loneliness. Being connected on a social level is one of the most important things to keep an individual, regardless of age, feeling as if they are leading a full and satisfying life. Having friends has been shown to decrease feelings of depression and sadness. Call an old friend. Join a book study or club. Take a class and meet new people.

Grief. Dealing with grief is more than simply losing a loved one to death. We go through the feelings and emotions of grief every time we suffer through a relationship breakup, lose a job, or even lose a pet. Grief is not depression, but it does masquerade as depression. The feelings of being unmotivated, feeling irritable, down, not able to focus, having trouble eating, suffering from insomnia can all be related to that problem with the job or the breakup you just went through with your partner. Give yourself time to process what you went through. The interesting thing about grief is that it is patient and will wait for you.

Insomnia and sleep-deprivation. Losing just one night’s sleep can bring about powerful feelings of exhaustion that affect our mood, our ability handle conflict or disappointments. This is where having a heart-to-heart conversation with a health care professional might be helpful to determine if your insomnia is due to depression. Or, do you worry you may be depressed because you can’t sleep? As with grief, being sleep deprived can mimic the symptoms of depression. Work to manage your insomnia. Create healthy sleep habits and a good sleep environment.

Lack of exercise. When we don’t exercise, we deprive ourselves from the most natural “feel good” chemical of all, the endorphins our bodies create when we exercise at a certain level. Most people do not have to exercise very hard at all to enjoy the uplifting benefits of exercise. Just taking a walk outside is often enough to raise our spirits.

Poor Diet. Face it, the quality of food we use to fuel our bodies will determine how we feel not only right after eating, but for hours afterward. A diet full of chemicals, preservatives, and dyes have an adverse effect on how we feel. Eating a “high octane” diet of fresh fruits, vegetables, and healthy proteins and fats ultimately improves our overall feelings of wellbeing.

If you just suspect you might be depressed, try changing a few things in your life and see if you can improve things by changing a few lifestyle choices.

Walking On The Beach by Vera Kratochvil

Dec 15 2019

Tips for Reducing the Risk of Stroke

According to the CDC, nearly 800,000 Americans suffer from a stroke every year, and of these cases, almost 130,000 of them result in death. There are many lifestyle habits that contribute to the likelihood of a stroke, and the odds of having one only increase with age. With a few changes, however, minimizing the risk of a stroke is easily within reach.

Stop Smoking
A regular smoker is much more likely to have a stroke than someone who abstains. Refraining from smoking cigarettes and cigars comes with a number of health benefits, including lowered chance of heart disease, but it’s also one of the most important aspects of lowering the chance of having a stroke.

Exercise Regularly
It doesn’t take the lifestyle of a professional athlete to reduce the likelihood of having a stroke. Even moderate aerobic activity 30 minutes a day, five times a week plays a huge role in staving off strokes. Activities like brisk walking, jogging or bike riding are all that’s needed to lower the risk of a stroke.

Limit Alcohol Consumption
Like smoking, alcohol is an extremely dangerous activity for those at risk for a stroke. Heavy alcohol intake ultimately leads to increase blood pressure, which is one of the main causes of a stroke. If drinking does occur, limit the amount to no more than 2 drinks a day for men and 1 drink a day for women.

Get Proper Rest
Don’t underestimate the importance of a full night’s sleep when it comes to reducing the risk of a stroke. No one who regularly gets an insufficient amount of sleep is in optimal health, and any health risk only adds to the likelihood of a stroke occurring. Aim for 7-8 hours of sleep each night to achieve a proper restfulness.

Monitor Cholesterol Levels
Like high blood pressure, a high cholesterol level greatly increases the chance of a stroke. Watch the cholesterol level closely and make necessary adjustments as needed. Resort to medication if necessary, but living an active lifestyle and eating healthy foods is a great way to ensure the cholesterol levels don’t get too high.

Take Aspirin
Although not everyone is safe taking aspirin daily, it does help to prevent blood clots by thinning the blood. Check with a doctor first, but if given clearance, regularly taking aspirin can be an excellent method of lowering the chance of a stroke.

Cigarette smoking by Paolo Neo

Dec 15 2019

Benefits of Yoga for Seniors

Can yoga actually benefit seniors?

Isn’t yoga all about an intensive physical practice where you writhe around on the floor and put your body into a series of contorted positions?

From the perspective of an outsider, perhaps yoga may look that way. However, the yoga instructors at the studio I attend often provide classes for seniors at senior centers as well as community centers. They do it because they have seen first-hand the great benefits of yoga on our elderly population.

Yoga can help seniors stay active, improve their flexibility and the suppleness of their muscles. It also helps them with their proprioception, their ability to know where their body is in terms of the space around them. Loss of proprioception is the leading cause of falls in seniors today. Perhaps a yoga class for grandma would be a superb idea.

It might even be better if you joined her!

Yoga can help promote healthy bones, improve flexibility, and provide a certain amount of stress relief which translates into a more positive attitude and better sleeping habits.

Yoga is safe for all ages. But especially seniors. It helps them to keep their minds and bodies in good health.

As a senior, you want to make sure the yoga instructor for your class knows you are a senior. They will then take the time to come and chat briefly with you to see if you have any issues they need to know about. Then, during the class, they will observe carefully, and the best ones know how to come over to you, gently reposition an arm, a knee, provide a prop or suggest a modification that makes that particular pose available to you.

No yoga instructor wants you to feel that you are out of your league. Most well-trained yoga instructors know that they will be working with a variety of limited abilities. When you find a good instructor, hang onto them! A good yoga instructor will make the difference between loving or hating yoga.

I once participated in a chair yoga class, designed to assist those recovering from cardiac events like heart attack or open heart surgery. Most of the participants were not able to get up and down from the floor. The yoga instructor then prepared a series of yoga movements to be done from a seated position in a chair. The benefits at the end of the class were remarkable. A couple of people left as soon as the class was over, but the rest stayed to ask more questions about how they could continue a regular yoga practice on their own.

Seniors come in all shapes, sizes, and physical abilities. Whether you are a senior, or you love a senior, look into an appropriate yoga class/practice that will help them achieve a greater quality of life.

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Dec 15 2019

False Memories and All Nighters

Do you remember the last time you stayed awake all night? Most of my memories of this activity were during college, and not surprisingly, during my freshman year when I was not a very good keeper of my time. I excelled in procrastination and failed at planning.

My grades were good, and fortunately during that final physics lecture after I had successfully completed two all-nighters in a row I managed to take notes that regularly trailed off on the paper into a single line ending when my hand fell into my lap, waking me up.

Since that time I’ve learned that staying up all night hurts the body is oh so many ways. And there is not enough coffee in the world to bring the relief to the body that a good night’s sleep does.

Since those stellar days as a freshman in college, I’ve discovered that I am an insomniac. My father was one. My brothers and sisters share the trait. I don’t know about blessings or curses, but I do know that when I am able to sleep for six straight hours I consider myself to be very blessed.

I guess I wasn’t terribly surprised, then, to discover that there is a study that demonstrates that not only is staying up all night detrimental to our physical body, our mental health suffers too. We can damage our memory by this activity.

Sleep-deprived people can say they saw something happen that never happened. According to the article published in Psychological Science, sleep deprivation can cause us to think things happened when they actually didn’t. This gives rise to all kinds of ideas for horror movies and books. But the sad fact is that it is true.

In the study they divided a group of people into three. Group one slept four hours a night. Group 2 slept six hours a night. And Group 3 slept eight hours a night.

Obviously, the group who got a full eight hours of sleep suffered no cognitive problems. The group that slept six hours a night performed their tests as if they had a blood alcohol of 0.1 percent (drunk!) and the group that got only four hours of sleep a night fell asleep during the testing.

According to Steven Frenda from the University of California in Irvine, he was surprised to learn that few studies looked at the connection of sleep deprivation and memory distortion. He said, “Most studies only look at a sleep deprived person’s ability to remember lists of words, not real people, places and events.”

During Frenda’s test, they kept college students awake for 24 hours. Then they tested them to see if they were likely to mix up events. The test included a series of photos showing a crime taking place, that of a man stealing a wallet. One group of students went to bed after viewing the photos. The other group remained awake.

Phase two of the experiment had the groups review a written narrative of the event containing statements that did not support the photographs that were initially shown. As an example, a photo might show the man putting the wallet in his jacket pocket, while the narrative said the man put it in his pants pocket.

Students who were most sleep deprived reported more false details.

This is hardly a surprise. Sleep deprivation is responsible for automobile accidents, medical malpractice, industrial mishaps, as well as physical ailments. If you are even remotely sleep deprived, you might not want to be a key witness to a crime. You may misremember something vital.

Asleep by Vera Kratochvil

Dec 15 2019

Energy Sinks

No doubt about it, we need energy to power through our day.

Our lives!

Without energy, we are drained, helpless, ineffectual, and lost.

Where do we get our energy?

Obviously we get energy from sleeping, eating, and drinking water. That begs the question, are you getting enough energy from your daily habits?

Do you get enough sleep? The vast majority of Americans are chronically sleep deprived, believing that they only need five or six hours of sleep to get by. The real truth is that we need between seven and nine hours of sleep every night.

In order to determine if you need more sleep, determine the hour you need to awaken every day. Yes, this is seven days a week. After you practice this exercise, you can set aside a day or two to sleep in, but until you know your sleep requirements, sleeping in will NOT help you.

Say you have to get up at 6 am every day. Do you usually go to bed at midnight? That means you get six hours of sleep every night. Try going to bed at 11 every night. Do you naturally wake up at 6 am?

No?

Then start going to bed at 10 pm. Are you able to wake up at 6 am without a problem?

Not yet? Then go to bed at 9 pm. And keep going to bed earlier until you regularly wake up at 6 am without any trouble. See, you may need eight or nine hours of sleep every night.

Next is to determine whether or not you are dehydrated. Even a little bit of dehydration will result in a drop in your energy levels. The next time you feel that old mid-afternoon slump, try drinking a full 12 ounces of water and see how you feel.

When we are dehydrated, we tend to be very low in energy. Our blood is thicker, making our heart work harder to pump oxygen and nutrients to our brain and our muscles. The more dehydrated we are, the slower we move.

How about food? Not everyone eats breakfast as they should, and many people skip meals because they are in a hurry or not hungry. Even if you skip breakfast, having a mid-morning snack is a good idea because our bodies need to be fueled on a regular basis.

When we go without eating for a period of time, we begin to lose muscle mass. Rather quickly in fact. In order to keep our energy up, we may want to keep our muscles fueled.

Drinking alcohol, an unnecessary pleasure. We might want to have a drink to unwind. But that then interferes with our ability to sleep well. While initially it may make us sleep, at some point during the night, we begin to experience the surge of energy we got from that nightcap and find ourselves lying awake during the night.

Asleep by Vera Kratochvil

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