Do you have low back pain? Who doesn’t, right? Does the pain not respond to treatments to your low back? Big surprise … the pain might not be coming from your back. Research shows that health care practitioners should be looking to your hips.
For your low back to function properly, the hip joints need to have adequate mobility. Internal rotation (moving the thigh inward) and external rotation (moving the thigh outward) should be equal on each leg and from side to side. The musculature around the hips also needs to be balanced and strong.
Unfortunately, most of us sit at a desk for 8 hours a day and then go home to sit on the couch. Whatever happened to running around and enjoying the great outdoors? In case you need some help, I’ve put together some dynamic (movement) stretches to help increase mobility in your hips. So go outside, enjoy the sun (get your 15 minutes worth) and stretch out your hips twice a day. The best time to stretch is after cardiovascular exercise, when your muscles are pumped full of blood. However, if you stretch dynamically, there is less chance of injury if done before exercise. Plus, dynamic stretching is more fun! Please remember, if you feel pain at any time (or were instructed not to perform any of these moves), stop what you are doing and see your health care practitioner.
Leg swings - swing your leg from front to back, toes pointed forward. Keep your back straight, shoulder blades down and back, and pelvis still. If you lack mobility, keep your swings small.
Side-side Leg swings - swing your leg from side to side, toes pointed forward. Keep your back straight, shoulder blades back and down, and pelvis still. Do not rotate your torso.
Split squats - assume a wide split stance with toes pointed forward. Keep your back straight, shoulder blades back and down, and don’t let the knees buckle in. Keep your hands behind your head and squat one knee toward the floor.
Lateral squats - assume a wide stance with toes pointed forward. Keep your back straight, shoulder blades back and down, knees out, and squat to the side with hands behind your head.
Rotational squats - assume a wide stance, with one leg toes pointed forward and the other leg toes pointed out 90 degrees. Keep your back straight, shoulder blades back and down, knees out, and squat to the side with toes pointed forward.
Reverse lunge with twist - step back with one leg as far as you can and rotate to the opposite side. Keep your back straight, shoulder blades back and down, and knees out. Squeeze your glute (butt) muscle on the back leg while you rotate and stand up.
Healing Tip of the Week
Go outside, enjoy the sun (get your 15 minutes worth), and stretch out your hips twice a day. Your hips and low back will thank you for it!
With a busy California lifestyle, it can be tough to eat healthy every day. Luckily, in Long Beach, we have several easy options for getting fresh, organic foods. One such place is Olives Gourmet Grocer with one store on 2nd St. and another on Broadway. In Dr. Michael Day’s article, “All Five Servings at Olives Gourmet Grocer,” which appeared in the Long Beach Post on July 6, he describes the ingredients and benefits of a healthy raw meal.
Learn more about Dr. Mark deDubovay and his road to founding the Advanced Wellness Center. Layla Ali, PharmD, founder of The Butterfly Guide - an online holistic directory - sits down with Dr. Mark as he discusses natural approaches to treating the root cause of maladies. In this in-depth radio interview, you will learn about:
What your blood pressure indicates within your body
The impact of your genes on your health
How changing your circumstances can improve your health
Seeing past “one size fits all” symptom relief and moving toward personalized care
Yes, it does! A single night of poor sleep leads to insulin resistance, according to a study accepted for publication by the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. The study measured the insulin sensitivity of healthy people after a night of eight hours of sleep against the same people only getting four hours of sleep. Insulin resistance, which is common among overweight people and is one of the precursors of Type 2 Diabetes, was increased after the night of only four hours of sleep. Most of us already know that chronic lack of sleep can alter metabolism and contribute to obesity, but now we know that only one night of poor sleep can negatively affect your weight.
Healing Tip of the Week
For many, getting enough sleep only requires a simple goal of getting to sleep earlier. Going to bed around 10 p.m. would give an average sleeper 8 hours of sleep. For these folks, it’s also a good idea to turn off the TV, radio, and end stimulating readings or conversations about 30 minutes prior to bed. I like to call it “down-shifting”. For more serious sleep problems, one effective remedy is acupuncture. Regulating your energy with this time-tested therapy often helps regulate sleep cycles.
Referring to healthcare reform as a “hot topic” would be a gross understatement. The potential societal (and political) implications that accompany an undertaking of this magnitude have jumped to the forefront of headline news and daily conversation.
As a person interested in alternative approaches like chiropractic and acupuncture, you may be wondering how your future rehab and wellness benefits might be administered under the new law, and whether the reform is favorable to complementary medicine.
We were pleased to learn of these pro-patient provisions specified in the healthcare reform law:
The END of preexisting exclusions and unfair coverage terminations. Insurance as we now know it contains steep and frightening coverage restrictions against conditions you may have had treated while you were covered under another plan or when you were between jobs and insurance policies. Further, many of us know someone who was dropped from their insurance plan - or who reached their plan’s “lifetime max” - when they became seriously ill and needed coverage the most.
The new law eliminates these types of unfair/untimely termination and benefit caps, and provides a lifeline for the uninsurable: a special pool of high-risk insurance from which no one can be excluded. An added benefit, adult children can remain as dependents on their parents’ plan until age 26.
Provider nondiscrimination. Direct language included in the law prohibits discrimination by insurance companies based on a provider’s license or participation (in-net or out-of-net). Could this signal an end to arbitrary denials of covered benefits billed by a chiropractor or acupuncturist?
Interdisciplinary community health teams. The law specifically includes doctors of chiropractic as potential members of patient-centered, integrative holistic teams whose purpose is to emphasize comprehensive, coordinated care.
The summary provided herein is an interpretation of publicly available information and is not a promise or guarantee of any outcome.
Allergies differ from other forms of illness, as they are the result of over-activity of the immune system. They occur when the body initiates an immune response to a non-offending substance such as pollen or a type of food.
Here are a few natural solutions to fight allergies and their symptoms.
Limit allergen exposure: Using an air filter (preferably one that ties into a central heating or air conditioning system) can drastically remove the build-up of allergens in your home. Pet areas, carpets, rugs and upholstered furniture should be cleansed regularly and bedding should be washed at least once a week.
Avoid these foods: Chocolate, sugar and gluten have been closely linked to respiratory allergies.
Eat these foods: Intake of omega-3 fatty acids has been shown to encourage the production of anti-inflammatory mediators. Consider also onion, garlic, ginger, rosemary, cumin and turmeric.
Get your antioxidants: Vitamin C and E, selenium and flavonoids, which prevent the production of free radicals often elevated in allergies and asthma.
Have you had the functioning of your brain evaluated? Healthy brain function not only prevents memory, concentration, and focus challenges but also issues such as depression, anxiety, and insomnia, just to name a few. In fact, two of the most common and misdiagnosed signs of declining brain function, or neurodegeneration, are fatigue and a range of digestive troubles.
Did you know that brain cells (and heart cells) are the only cells in our bodies that don’t regenerate themselves? From the time we’re born, we are all losing brain cells by the thousands, every hour of every day, proportionate to lifestyle stresses. This means, for some of us, this loss is at a much faster pace than others. The factors that accelerate this loss and lead to dysfunction are many and common due to today’s plethora of lifestyle stresses. This accelerated loss of brain function not only affects the elderly but also children and adults of any age. In addition to neurodegeneration, compromised brain firing is what affects children’s learning and contributes to behavior disorders, such as autism, ADD, and ADHD. In fact, one of every eight children is affected by some behavioral disorder. Adults of any age can be affected as well.
The good news is that natural medicine offers lifestyle and nutritional therapies that can provide helpful, and sometimes dramatic, improvements of many neurodegenerative conditions. Further, in a healthy-firing brain, although you’re slowly losing brain cells, your brain can more than compensate by proper stimulation which builds plasticity. Plasticity is the building or reinforcing of connections between remaining brain cells, so you can continue to stay mentally sharp at any age.
So don’t let brain dysfunction unnecessarily depreciate your quality of life and aging. Speak with your wellness practitioner if you feel you are experiencing any signs of neurodegeneration. He or she may recommend you start with a Brain Health Questionnaire or other important testing. With your practitioner’s guidance, you can discover answers that can lead to better preserving your precious mind and memories and even restore the spark of happiness and motivation that makes life so rewarding.
Healing Tip of the Week
Egg yolks are great brain food! Maligned and misunderstood, eggs are a rich source of choline, which is a vital building block of brain transmission. And, the lecithin found in egg yolks efficiently helps the liver to easily eliminate the cholesterol that comes with the egg.
The Advanced Wellness Center has become a staple of the Long Beach, Calif. community over the years. A center featuring all the most advanced and researched options in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), was the brain child of Mark deDubovay, DC, almost 20 years ago. In practice in Long Beach for more than 25 years, and before that through his work in Italy and France, Dr. deDubovay has helped thousands of individuals lead a more active and fulfilling life.
I sat down with him to get his views on health and wellness. He also provided me with his top three health tips that patients can start today and feel better tomorrow.
In our modern world, where American children spend an average of almost 8 hours per day in front of some form media, such as TV, video games, computers and cell phones, we often wonder what these “weapons of mass distraction” are doing to our health and wellness.
In his excellent book, The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner examines the four areas of the world that have the highest density of people living to be 100 years or older. In these very different cultures, he finds common traits that hold true for all four of them. One of these traits is the emphasis on maintaining a social circle all throughout life. Buettner concludes that if you want to live a long, fruitful life, you need a strong social support system.
The Journal of the American Medical Association recently validated this conclusion. In a recent study, several hundred volunteers were exposed to a cold virus. The volunteers with the most socially diverse networks were the most disease resistant.
One would think that with the advent of cell phones and social networking sites, like Facebook, those relationships would be even easier to strengthen and maintain. We can now reach virtually anyone we know instantly 24 hours per day. In many cases, however, this media has actually robbed us of our communities, leaving us more isolated than ever. My grandfather’s generation spent their evenings playing cards, roughhousing in the yard with their kids, telling jokes, or going dancing. We now spend our evenings surfing the internet, relentlessly updating Facebook, or zoning out on TV. We have “signed off” on reality in favor of reality TV.
Fortunately, technology does have an upside. We have infinite opportunities for forming and strengthening personal relationships. The internet is a great tool for finding activities to do with your family and friends. And if you lack a social circle, the internet has sites to find like-minded people.
The only thing missing in your life is what you’re not willing to give. If you feel lonely, reach out to someone who is lonely. If you feel disconnected to your family, turn off the TV and reconnect. The health of our society depends on each one of us working diligently to improve our interconnections and strengthen our social networks.
Healing Tip of the Week
There are several great websites for families to find activities to do and for individuals to make new friends. Meetup.com is a site that holds gatherings, such as hikes or get-togethers based on similar interest. Me and my sister have used this site very successfully when relocating to new areas. Yelp.com is good for finding hikes, restaurants, parks, playgrounds etc. Taking a class at a community college also works like a charm!
We talk a great deal on the blog about the importance of keeping proper posture while driving, sitting on the computer, or watching television. Most recently, one of my patients brought to my attention one activity that I had totally overlooked: texting.
This patient was having neck and mid-back pain typical of poor upper body posture and was trying to work out what activities were causing the symptoms to worsen. After some searching, he realized that the main contributor to his pain was not his computer work or car time; it was text messaging on his cell phone.
A recent chiropractic publication confirms what he intuitively deduced. “These days, people are constantly ‘connected’ to their hand-held devices, whether it is their cellular phones, portable video games like Nintendo DS, e-readers such as Amazon Kindle, or they are just using apps on an iPhone.” In fact, a recent survey found that 8-18 year olds spend in excess of seven-and-a-half-hours a day using some form of mobile media.
Be aware of your forward head posture or “text neck,” and use the strategies written in many articles throughout this blog to correct them. Small corrections over a long period of time add up to big changes in your body.
Healing Tip of the Week
Get that head back on top of your shoulders! Your head is like a bowling ball, for every inch that your head migrates forward, the force it takes for your neck muscles to keep it upright effectively doubles.
