Health - Advanced Chiropractic of South Carolina

Feb 15 2019

Water Facts You Need To Know

As women we are up on the latest trends in food. We consume chia seeds because they were used by long-distance runners in ancient civilizations. Coconut flour helps us when we’re looking for gluten-free recipes for our friend who is coming over for lunch. Baked kale chips with sesame seeds, been there, done that.

But we’re making a mistake.

We’re missing the most important step in taking the best care of our bodies we can. We’re not drinking enough water.

You may deny it, and some of you know the signs of dehydration well enough to know to keep yourself well hydrated. But in a nation of chronically dehydrated people, chances are good that there are a few of you out there who will benefit from consuming more water.

Busy women tend to forget to drink water unless they have set up some type of system to remind them to drink water. Some people put a jug of water in the refrigerator and drink from it throughout the day. That way, by the end of the day, they know exactly how much water they have consumed.

But if you’re at work, you can’t put your big jug of water in the office refrigerator because there isn’t room. You might need a different system.

What you might want to take a moment to acquaint yourself with the signs of dehydration:

Muscle cramps

Dizziness

Headaches

Inability to concentrate or focus

Feeling muzzy

Fatigue

Hunger

Constipation

While dehydration is most common during the summer months, it can occur during the winter when we heat our homes and places of business.

How much water should we be drinking on a daily basis? It probably changes depending on your environment, but a little over two liters is a good place to start. If you constantly feel hot, you may need more water. If you are overweight, you, too, need to increase how much water you drink on a daily basis.

The very best way to determine if you are drinking enough water is to check the color of your urine. It should be approximately the color of lemonade. That is a relative light color of yellow. Anything that is darker than that indicates that you are dehydrated.

You may be surprised to know that you can count your daily coffee or tea consumption in your water count. Sure, the current belief is that anything with caffeine is dehydrating, and that is true. But if you drink a cup or two of coffee every day, then your body is used to it and the diuretic effect no longer occurs.

Focus on drinking enough water on a daily basis. The human body is not designed to hold onto water from one day to the next. Anything you don’t use will simply be eliminated the next time you go to the bathroom. So, drink water every day. Check the color of your urine. Stay hydrated for maximal health and performance.

Glass of Water by Maliz Ong

Feb 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

Feb 15 2019

An Apple A Day . . .

There are so many wonderful things to say about an apple that it is difficult to begin. Let’s start with the phytonutrients of an apple, they can help to regulate blood sugar.

With an American population struggling with obesity, the ability to regulate blood sugar with apples is huge! The polyphenols in apples help to prevent spikes in blood sugar, which is a fabulous mechanism in apples that allows us to eat a sweet-tasting treat that is actually good for us.

Not only are the enzymes in the apple inhibited in the breakdown into simple sugars, the polyphenols in the apples also decrese how much glucose is absorbed by the digestive tract. The activity of the pancreas and the way glucose is absorbed are altered making it easier to eat and apple and regulate blood sugar levels.

While apples don’t have as much fiber as once thought, the way their pectin works with other phytonutrients in the apple work together to give us the blood fat lowering effects associated with higher fiber amounts. Pectin alone does not demonstrate the same stellar results.

Apples are a full product fix. You can’t take any single element of an apple and expect it to recreate the wonders we experience when eating the entire apple. That would be why drinking apple juice isn’t the same as eating an apple, or even eating applesauce. The whole apple, consumed as nature intended is what gives us all the amazing benefits.

An additional benefit to eating whole apples is the satiety we experience. Researchers have compared people who ate whole apples to those who either ate applesauce, or drank apple juice only to find that those who ate whole apples experienced greater satiety.

To get a similar benefit, you may consider eating a whole apple about fifteen minutes before eating a meal. You may find that you consume between 9% and 16% fewer calories at that meal. This means a reduction of between 150 and 200 calories a meal. Subtract the 60 calories from the apple you ate and you still have a better net reduction in calories than if you had done nothing.

The next time someone offers you an apple, take it! Not only are you enjoying a healthy snack, you are providing health benefits for your body in the future.

Apple by George Hodan

Feb 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

Feb 15 2019

Leftovers

We have a standing joke in our family that helps us to laugh off what would otherwise be a very dangerous situation.

My mother is a saver. She saves rubber bands, paper, string, paper clips, plastic bags, etc. You get the picture. And any chance she gets, she makes sure to reuse these items in some way.

She is clearly on board the reduce, recycle, reuse bandwagon. And I, for one, am very proud of her.

Until she appeared at my house one day with a big garbage sack filled with styrofoam containers she has been saving from her hamburger and chicken purchases.

“Look what I brought you!” she exclaimed as she separated the styrofoam platters by color, yellow, pink, and blue.

I knew exactly what they were, but I didn’t know she’d been saving them.

“I brought them so that after our big family gathering today, everyone can take home leftovers.”

My face tried to smile, but my stomach lurched and I’m sure I turned a little green. You see, I studied microbiology in college. I know what goes on just beyond our ability to see with the naked eye. And while styrofoam is an excellent primary choice for packaging our raw meat to get it home from the supermarket, it cannot be sterilized.

I repeat, it cannot be sterilized.

That means that those piles of styrofoam containers now gracing my kitchen counter were teeming with invisible but potentially deadly pathogens that my mother wanted to send home with my brothers and sisters, their spouses, and their sweet children.

Just to be sure, I quickly got on my computer and fortunately the University of Illinois had recommended against the re-use of styrofoam meat packaging trays because they are filled with tiny bubbles that harbor those ugly little microbes.

I thanked my mother and put all the trays back in her garbage bag and then sterilized my counter in order to get our big family pot-luck going. I also quietly passed the word from one sibling to the next.

Soon I saw one of my nephews get up and quietly go out the front door. When he returned he had big bags of to-go containers he had just purchased at the store. His timing was perfect. We managed to put all leftovers that my family wanted to take home with them into the new containers that could be washed and sterilized.

After everyone was gone, I explained to my mother the problem with saving meat trays and using them for food storage later. I’m glad I didn’t embarrass her in front of all my siblings because she was very upset at the thought of poisoning her grandchildren. I’m sure she figured my siblings and I had lived this long, she doesn’t have to worry about us.

But please, if you know anyone who tries to be similarly environmentally conscientious pass the word on about styrofoam.

Image: The Weather Up Here: Thanksgiving Leftovers (all neat and tidied up!!!)

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