Health Archives - Advanced Chiropractic of South Carolina

Dec 03 2020

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

Dec 03 2020

Yoga Nidra – The Science Behind It

Most people know yoga for the excellent physical exercise that it is, and for those who regularly practice yoga, they understand the mind-body connection.

Yoga Nidra is different.

Nidra is a term for “yogic sleep” and while you don’t exactly fall asleep, you do go into a combined alert awareness and deep relaxation state. Practitioners of nidra experience both alpha brain waves and eventually theta brain waves.

It is in this state that your brain is able to tap into your own intuition, creativity, and health.

Yoga Nidra is practiced in a prone position, sometimes with a bolster under the knees to alleviate any lower back stress you may experience as you can expect to be in this position anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour depending on the class you’re taking.

The first time I left my Yin/Nidra class I wondered if I had just paid $15 to take a nap at the yoga studio. Because that is almost what it felt like. And yet I felt lighter, more energetic, and much more inspired than I had felt in a very long time.

My instructor took us through a series of breathing exercises to get us to focus on our breathing in a meditative way. Then she took us through a couple of simple instructions before going into a visual guided imagery of my body. This helped me to stay focused on my body and kept me from wondering what my kids were doing, whether my client was going to be happy with my last draft, and what we were going to have for dinner.

That kind of mind-chatter is what keeps us in our usual beta brain wave state. Beta brain waves are where we live during the majority of our waking hours. Beta waves indicate a strongly engaged mind. When we’re awake and talking and interacting with others, we’re experiencing beta brain waves.

As we begin to relax into our yoga nidra, we move from beta brain waves to alpha. These represent non-arousal. These brainwaves are slower, higher in amplitude. We experience this after a job well done. After we have completed a difficult task, taking time to pause and reflect on that task often takes us into the alpha state. That person walking in the garden after their presentation is often in an alpha state. This state is linked to reduced stress hormone production, lower blood pressure and decreased heart rates.

If you only get into the alpha brain wave state during yoga nidra, you are working to counteract the daily effects of stress in your life. This is an excellent reason to practice nidra.

Yoga nidra will then progress to a state of deeper relaxation, to the theta brain wave state. In this state, your brain waves have an even greater amplitude, but a slower frequency. When we daydream, we are frequently in the theta state. Even experiencing driving hypnosis where you don’t remember how you drove from one place to the next is often done in the theta state.

In yoga nidra, the theta state is closest to sleeping without sleeping you can get. It produces deep relaxation and is the surest way to connect with the subconscious. In this state, it is possible to have the logical left brain connect to the intuitive right brain.

One of the purposes of yoga nidra is to balance the left and right brain activity. The very least you can expect to achieve from reaching the theta state in nidra is a sense of very deep relaxation.

By repeating the practice, you can connect to your inner self for healing, for transformation, for inspiration. It is in this state that you can often find your hidden inner potential.

For anyone who has never tried yoga nidra, give it a chance. Don’t concentrate on anyone else in the room. All yoga practice is individual even while done in a studio with other people in the class. You will get out of it what you put into it.

For me, I have found my creativity has increased many times over since I have begun a regular nidra practice.

Garden Buddha by Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc

Dec 03 2020

Skipping Meals – What Really Happens

I’m not a big fan of eating breakfast.

I know. A lot of you out there are already saying, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

And I know you’re right. But I can’t get seriously excited about food until about 10 in the morning.

Breakfast is “breaking” a “fast” from our last meal the night before. And I don’t skip an early breakfast because I’m trying to lose weight. I just listen to my body and try to do what works for it.

But what happens when you skip meals for an extended period of time? There are any number of fasts out there that are suppose to “cleanse” our bodies of toxins. What happens to our bodies when we go without solid food and nothing but water or lemon water for several days?

A research study in Denmark tested eight healthy men for body changes that occurred to them during a 72 hour fast. That means they went three full days without eating. They found that a key regulator of muscle cell growth mTOR was decreased by 50%. When this happens, muscle wasting begins to occur.

This sounds bad, but there are rodent studies that suggest that blocking mTOR triggers “cell survival responses” that might even prolong our life.

Young healthy people who go without eating may experience a weakness that we see in a much older population. But, conversely, there is some evidence that temporary periods of fasting might actually help people live longer.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Without muscles, we wouldn’t be able to move. And muscle wasting is a serious problem in seniors who have lost their appetites and experience profound muscle wasting. The research study demonstrates why the muscle wasting occurs. And periodic fasting might offer some benefits to younger people. But there are still a lot of questions about the physiologic effects of periodic fasting.

A problem with muscle loss for most people is that muscle burns more fuel. That means the more muscle we lose, the less fuel we burn. That translates into far fewer calories we can eat to satisfy the needs of our bodies.

As we age, beginning as early as our late 20s to early 30s we can lose as much as a half a pound of muscle per year. It would appear that maintaining our muscle mass seems to be an important factor in maintaining a healthy weight. Yet the study seemed to indicate that losing a certain amount of muscle could contribute to longevity as well.

The truth is, there are no hard and fast rules just yet. Research is still being done on the benefits and disadvantages of fasting. It still sounds as if doing things in moderation is still a good approach to life.

Croissant Newspaper And Tea by Petr Kratochvil

Dec 03 2020

Are Any French Women Fat?

One would think, given the legend of French women, that there is no such things as a fat French woman. The average Parisian, for example, manages to keep her weight within a few ounces of her optimal size for several reasons. One, they don’t have a lot of closet space, so she can’t manage an expanding wardrobe that many American women enjoy. If she can’t fit into her clothes, she takes whatever steps necessary to return to that size.

This sets the bar for Parisian Woman. They are slender, chic, well-dressed, and successful. According to an art gallery director in Paris, “C’est simple. Chic plus mince eqale succes.”

Meaning: It’s simple. Chic and slim equals success.

It would appear that if you are fat in Paris, you don’t get the jobs. This might explain why the only women seen in most public venues are slender, they fit the mold. It would appear that only the women who are self-employed can overcome the intrinsic bias against a heavy woman.

The heavy woman in Paris cannot find clothing to fit her. She cannot find a job unless she makes one herself. And the dieting industry in France is easily as profitable as it is in America. There appears to be a greater pressure on French women to maintain a certain body habitus than in America.

In fact, in France, “fat” is considered a dirty word.

They manage their weight the way we are told to manage ours. A sensible, balanced diet. Fresh product. Regular meals. Daily walking. Everything in moderation.

But it would appear that while most women in France do follow those recommendations, it would appear that to stay as svelte and as thin as Twiggy, most French women need to starve themselves.

It would appear that for them a meal consists of steamed vegetables and a cup of tea. So unless they adopt this as a lifestyle, they do grow fat.

But in France, to be fat is considered to be a failure. To be stupid. Bovine. Ugly. A loser.

It would appear that while France seems to have come very far in terms of progression of women in politics and work equality, their apparent confidence is overshadowed by their increasing obsession with weight.

To be slender in France is to be considered a success. But at what cost?

The obesity epidemic found in other parts of the Western world can’t be considered successful. Yet, heavy women outside of France do remark about a greater feeling of overall satisfaction with their life.

What, then, is the answer?

Fashion Woman Shopping in Paris by Karen Arnold

Dec 03 2020

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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