All forms of stress release cortisol in the body.  Cortisol is released by the adrenal glands in response to stress for energy regulation and mobilization.  The problem comes when we are exposed to too many stressors too often.  Too much of any kind of stress is not good.  If it’s physical stress, we become overtrained and good stress becomes bad.  So when stress overwhelms us, cortisol release increases.  The natural effects the hormone has on the body now become detrimental in excess.  Glucagon, DHEA, and human growth hormone decrease with excess release of cortisol.  These are hormones that have fat burning, anti-aging and repair and maintenance effects.  Increased cortisol levels also increase the release of insulin which lowers blood sugar and stores fat in the gut.  Another hormone called insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) is also increased.  Recent research has shown that IGF-1 may be pro-cancer.

So what does all that science jargon mean?  It means that too much stress is bad, plain and simple.  Too much stress, especially emotional and mental stress, can lead to weight gain, elevated blood pressure, increased triglycerides, decreased HDL levels (the “good” cholesterol), and can cause insulin resistance (i.e. type 2 diabetes).   It is very important that we limit our stress every day, eat a healthy diet, and exercise regularly.  When you find yourself at work or home and stress is bearing down on you try this:

1. Sit and close your eyes. 
2. Think of a calming place or activity.  It could be a tropical island or lying on the couch watching your favorite movie.  
3. As you imagine yourself in your calming place, slowly breathe in through your nose letting your abdomen protrude while counting slowly to 5.  Then slowly breathe out through your mouth, counting to 5. 

Do that as many times as you need to feel calm.  When you’re ready, go back to the daily grind and come back to your calming place whenever you need it.

All of us have cancer cells that pop up in our bodies on a regular basis.  When our immune system is functioning well, our body detects these abnormal cells and disposes of them.  If our body doesn’t recognize that there is an abnormal cell, it will multiply and turn into cancer. 

These abnormal cells become damaged by being exposed to free radicals (radiation, bad chemicals in our diet or environment or from stress on our cells from poor lifestyle choices).  When you exercise, your cells become stronger and more resilient to these free radicals and therefore do not mutate as much.  Exercise increases our own natural anti-oxidants. 

People who exercise also tend to eat more vegetables and fruits, drink less alcohol and smoke less.  All of these factors also decrease our exposure to free radicals and reduces our cancer risk.  Another side benefit of exercise is that you tend to maintain a healthier weight when you are working out.  This helps decrease breast cancer risk specifically because your hormones will be in better balance with a healthy weight!

For most of my patients, I suggest participating in moderate cardiovascular exercise 3 times a week for at least 30 minutes per session (walking, jogging, runnning, biking, swimming, dance).  In addition, doing strength training 2 times a week for at least 30 minutes per session helps decrease your osteoporosis risk and also helps you manage your weight better.  Strength training could be yoga, pilates, free weights, circuit training or traditional weight lifting.

It is also important to remember that the healing process does create some unwanted effects.  Think of when you or someone you know has sprained an ankle.  What happened?  There was swelling, inflammation and pain.  That’s the healing process at work.  Inflammation and swelling occur to bring blood to the affected area so that nutrients can feed the injury.  Pain is there to say, “Stop using this until it’s fixed.”  The process extends into clinical settings as well.  When muscles become short and inflexible, the best way to change that is to stretch them.  Depending on how short and tight they are stretching is going to be arduous.  It is important to remember that sticking to a plan and continuing to exercise and stretch with correct technique will become easier the more you do it.  Hurt goes away.  Don’t let it stop you from getting to your goals

For instance, let’s say you normally drink 2 cups of coffee, a diet coke and 2 cups of water each day.  Since coffee and diet coke are both diuretics (make you urinate!), we really can’t count them as a hydration source.  That means your body is operating on 2 cups of water and whatever water content there is in your food.  This may just barely get you by in the winter, but as soon as you start to sweat, your body can’t handle it any more.

Most experts suggest drinking about 8 servings of 8 oz of water per day.  That 64 oz or approximately 2 quarts.  If you drink caffinated or alcoholic beverages, they do not count towards this total.  Also if you are exercising or working in the heat, you should drink even more water than this – about 4 oz every 15 minutes.

When you first start drinking more water, you will go to the bathroom more often.  That’s normal.  After a few days, your body will begin to adapt and you’ll be able to go back to your urination levels.  So don’t let tha keep you from giving your body the water it needs!

Age is not a number, its the amount of degeneration (wear and tear) on your body at a cellular level.  The more times a skin cell is exposed to UV light from the sun, the more damage it receives.  If that happens long enough, the skin cell might start forming a freckle, a mole, start wrinkling or even change into a cancerous cell.  A 40 year old who is a sun goddess will have more “aged” skin than a 40 year old computer nerd who never sees day light.

The same is true for your muscles and joints.  Arthritis, scar tissue and stiffness are by-products of wear and tear on these structures over time.  Children and teens have less of this degeneration than adults.  You can control the amount of degeneration in your muscles and joints by staying flexible, keeping your spine moving and your muscles in proper balance.  That’s why we see 35 year old patients who are in the same state of degeneration as a 70 year old patient.  The 35 year old is building up degeneration faster than their peers and the 70 year old did a great job maintaining their body.

So the next time you “feel old” and your joints need some oil, give us a call and we’ll make sure that you are doing everything that you can do to avoid the dreaded “aging.”

It’s hard to say why someone will not exercise or take care of any task on time.  Many of us are extremely busy and we put our work before ourselves.  We all have to earn money and provide for our families, but how can we provide when we are not taking care of ourselves first?  Your health is the most valuable asset you have and, unfortunately, in today’s world, especially in this country, our health is constantly at risk.  We sit for hours at a time, we eat unhealthy foods, and we are so go-go-go that our stress levels sky rocket.  We have to make time to do some activity, to eat healthier, and to relax our minds.

There is enough time.  It all comes down to time management.  I will be the first to say that while I may be neat and organized, I don’t have the best time management skills.  It’s difficult and it can be overwhelming at times.  But there are ways to ensure that you get things done.  To do lists and calendars keep you honest.  Writing everything down helps you prioritize.  Highlight important things on your calendar with your favorite color so that you constantly look at it.  Map out your day, week, even your month or year if you have to.  Set up the appropriate amount of time to get some activity in (even walking for 30 minutes counts); block it in your schedule.  Write down when you are at work and when you are free.  Be deliberate with it.  Most importantly, block out some time to do nothing at all.  It’s important to get yourself into a relaxing environment and just shut your mind off.  There is enough time for everything.

Pain is a commonly misunderstood phenomenon that traditional diagnosis presumes is due to tissue injury that signals the central nervous system.  However, according to Dr. Chan Gunn MD, there is actually three distinct categories of pain: nociception, inflammation, and neuropathy.  

Nociception is the immediate response sent to the brain indicating tissue injury.  Inflammation is a local response to cellular injury that causes swelling, redness, heat and pain as the body’s mechanism for facilitating the healing process.  Neuropathy or radiculopathic pain is ongoing pain that has no obvious signs caused by a dysfunction in the peripheral nervous system.  This can lead to hypersensitivity in the sensory system.

The last type of pain is commonly seen in our office.  These are the aches and pains that have been brought on by poor posture, improper lifting techniques, or increased sedentary lifestyles.  This is why you may have pain, but cannot remember “hurting” yourself.  Myofascial pain is a common form of neuropathy or radiculopathic pain.  Myofascial pain can be that nagging ache in your low back or tight hamstrings or it can be that knot you have in your upper back.  These are commonly brought on by years of negative adaptation to our lifestyles.  Sitting or standing for long periods of time, lack of activity, lack of stretching can cause muscles to shorten and lead to myofascial pain.

Obtaining the CCSP designation requires the doctor to attend a 120 hour post-graduate program.  These classes are specific to physical fitness, emergency medicine and the evaluation/treatment of injuries encountered in sports such as sprains/strains, rotator cuff injuries, knee problems and foot/ankle injuries.  Following the completion of these hours, the doctor must take and successfully pass a comprehensive written examination.  This training will aid the doctor in the prevention and treatment of athletic injuries and provide a uniform standard of education that assures teams and athletes that the doctor has met a minimum level of competency in chiropractic sports medicine.

As my patients know, I have always taken a “functional approach” to helping patients achieve their goals by pinpointing areas that are tight, tender, weak and deconditioned and customizing a treatment plan to get the back to 100%.  Having this additional education helps me diagnose and treat a variety of patients from someone in their 80’s with foot tendonitis to a high school athlete with shoulder pain after pitching in baseball. 

As I expand this part of my practice, I look forward to being the non-surgical sports specialist in NE DuPage County assisting weekend warriors as well as local school districts and travel teams.  If you know a coach, athletic trainer or athletic director who might be interested in complementary injury prevention programs for their team, please have them call me at 224-653-8094 or email drerin@ducatchiropractic.com

For more information on our sports medicine services, please check out “The Sports Clinic” page.

What many people don’t know is that your body does, in fact, burn calories when you are not doing anything.  It’s called the Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR.  It’s based on a person’s height, weight, gender and age.  Everyone’s BMR is different, but it is best defined as the number of calories your body burns while performing zero activity.  So with BMR, you burn calories watching TV and sleeping.  However, most of us do not burn enough calories with BMR to cause any weight loss.  There is also a way to calculate the amount of calories you burn with your daily activity.  The Harris Benedict equation calculates total caloric needs based upon your BMR and your activity level.  Activity being work or exercise.  “Total caloric needs” means how many calories you would need to maintain your current weight.  Right there is the BIG SECRET.  If you know your total caloric needs for the day and you want to lose weight you simply need to consume less calories that what you need to maintain your current weight. 

It’s a simple arithmetic problem.  Determine how many calories you need per day to stay at your current weight and then take some away.    How many should you take away?  That’s something you would need to determine yourself.  How much weight do you want to lose?  One pound = 3500 calories and most experts say that healthy weight loss is 1-2 pounds per week.  I recommend seeking out a health care profession like a registered dietician/nutritionist or a chiropractic physician that provides nutritional counseling such as myself or Dr. Ducat for help with establishing these types of goals.   There are also websites that provide the calculations I spoke of above.  You can visit the site and input your information into the equations and determine your BMR.

The majority of chronic illnesses in the United States are preventable.  Diabetes, heart disease, cancer and obesity are all preventable.  They are caused too much refined junk food and not enough physical activity.  Yes, you might have bad genes from your family, but all of the research shows that if you make wise lifestyle choices, you can still prevent these costly illnesses.

I’m not a fan of taxing pop and fast food.  It’s not the junk food that is at fault for our problems.  It’s how we choose to consume junk food that is the problem.  The same goes for video games, computers and the couch.  It isn’t the couches fault that we sit there for hours at a time. 

Making small changes to improve our diet and activity levels make a big difference as get older.  Taking that walk tonight or skipping the drive thru might save you thousands of dollars later on.  Do your part for true health care reform — take personal responsibility for the body you have been given.