As one of my patients put it, “let’s make sure we’re scratching where there’s an itch.”  This system has been responsible for some amazing health transformations in our offices.

For Nutrition Response Testing© to work, however, dietary changes must be made at the same time.  We walk our patients through a one-step-at-a-time approach to proper eating that makes it much easier for people to figure out what they should be eating and to easily follow a proper program of eating.  Going one step at a time is what makes it easy.  In every case, we start with the reduction and elimination of one food first.  It is the #1 enemy of health on planet earth.

SUGAR!!

We can demonstrate via testing, that we cannot win with our program of detoxification and nutrition if the patient continues to eat sugar.  It must be reduced to move the needle in the positive direction.

Viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungus are simple little organisms.  If we want to grow these microorganisms in the lab, all we have to do is put some glucose (sugar) in a petri dish and voila.

These pathogens and destroyers of health cannot live without sugar.  Many times, sugar cravings are due to an overgrowth of fungus in your digestive tract, and it is a call from these unwanted bugs to feed them more sugar.

In your health journey, you must address sugar and I want you to think of the consumption of sugar as one thing:  Feeding the bugs.  This concept works very well with children.  Ask them if they want to feed tiny bugs inside their bodies.

There is also something else that cannot live without sugar.  Cancer.  Have you ever heard of a PET scan for cancer.  Hopefully you haven’t.  A PET scan is a test that introduces radioactively tagged sugar into your body.  When the sugar is taken up in areas where it is not supposed to be, that tells the doctors the location of the tumors.  It’s sugar that feeds the cancer.

Cancer and bugs cannot live without sugar, but you can.  You may have heard the term essential fatty acids before.  These are healthy fats that are essential for proper function of your body but that your body cannot make on its own.  That means that you must consume these fats in your diet or supplement with them to be healthy.

There are also essential amino acids.  These are very similar in that your body cannot produce them and you must consume them except essential amino acids are proteins.  So, there are proteins and fats that you must have because your body can’t make them, and you must eat them.

Have you ever heard of an essential carbohydrate?  You have not, because there aren’t any.  You could go your entire life without carbohydrates.  Sugar is a carbohydrate.  It is not essential to the body, and it does not feed your body.

That is why people can just keep eating and eating carbohydrate foods to no end.  The reason is that it is not food for the body and your body never has an off switch to let you know that you’ve gotten enough food.

Try sitting down with a one-pound block of cheese and eat the whole thing.  Although you might like to give that a try, you would soon find that you felt full and no longer had an interest in eating that much.  That is because you have fed your body and your brain tells you that you’ve had enough.  That does not happen with sweets and carbohydrate dominated foods.  Only a very rich desert would have that effect because it would likely contain a high amount of fats that your body actually needs.

If you are reading this because you are interested in improving your health, the best advice I can give you is to begin your health journey by understanding the role sugar plays in health and sickness and to work to avoid it.  Those who have will tell you that this simple change has more impact than they could have imagined.

The post Health’s #1 Enemy – Sugar appeared first on True Health Partners.

Every once in a while someone will say “My brother/husband/friend/neighbor wants to come and see you but doesn’t want to have x-rays.”  This person will either choose not to see a chiropractor period, or see someone who chooses to see patients without x-rays.

The concern with being exposed to the radiation that goes along with x-ray imaging is understandable.  Radiation increases your risk of cancer, right?

It can, but only in the right dose.  In fact, did you know that radiation is a naturally occurring phenomenon?  It’s true.  Radiation is all around us.  Smoking cigarettes emits radiation.  Humans emit radiation!  Yet I haven’t found “huggers” to be more prone to cancer.

The largest source of radiation we are exposed to comes from nature.  The average human is exposed to 3,000 microsieverts (a unit that measures radiation) from gases in the soil, cosmic radiation, and sunlight.  The exposure increases at higher elevation, as well.

For example, people living in the mountains or spending a lot of time on a plane are exposed to more radiation.  One estimate shows that 30 hours of flying is the equivalent of having a chest x-ray.  That’s not even a full work week for a typical pilot or flight attendant.  That means your average pilot has the equivalent of 6 or more x-rays per month because of naturally occurring radiation.  They aren’t dropping like flies from cancer, are they?

Besides, when it comes back to diagnostic x-ray, the type of imaging is very important.  The imaging we use in the chiropractic profession is called plain film imagining, which uses a much lower dose of radiation versus computed topography (CT or CAT scans).  One CT scan of the abdomen has the same dose of radiation as having over 100 standard x-rays!   So you could have two x-rays per week in our office for an entire year and that wouldn’t even equal one CAT scan.

The benefits of having x-rays in most cases outweigh the risks, especially when you consider what can happen when your chiropractor (or osteopath or physical therapist) tries moving around your spinal bones while flying blind.

Case in point

The post Why Chiropractic X-Rays are Important appeared first on True Health Partners.

Superman was unstoppable, except he did have that one weakness: Kryptonite.  Even he was limited by something.

Christopher Reeve played Superman perfectly.  His looks, his stature, his acting abilities all helped him pull off both Clark Kent and Superman on the silver screen.  He was as close as anyone to being a real-life superman here on earth.

Do you remember what happened to Christopher Reeve?

He had a very unfortunate horseback riding accident just seven years after he last appeared on screen as Superman.  This Ivy League and Juilliard educated, handsome, athletic man who was in fantastic shape found himself bound to a wheelchair and even a portable ventilator for the rest of his life.

What happened?  How does falling off a horse affect a strong healthy body in such a profound way?

His accident is a very tragic, yet scientifically interesting example of how the body works.  Mr. Reeve fell off the horse and onto his head, badly injuring his cervical spine (neck) and unfortunately severing his spinal cord in that area.

From that point on, his brain was very limited in its capacity to communicate with the rest of the body.  Every function within the human body is ultimately controlled by the brain.

Constant communication is necessary between the brain and every square centimeter of your body.  The wires used to connect the brain and body are found in the spinal cord and nerves.  Messages travel to and from the brain, into the spinal cord, and then nerves leave the spinal cord to go out to organs and limbs so that the brain can coordinate each and every function.

Starting in the neck, nerves begin to branch out from the spinal cord at every vertebra to go connect to the body.  Some messages leave from the neck to go to the head, arms, sinuses, eyes, and ears.

Eventually, in the lumbar spine (low back), the only nerves left are the ones that control the legs, bowel, bladder, etc.

In the neck, most of the nerves haven’t left the spinal cord yet so they are all contained in that portion of the spinal cord.  The force from the fall that Christopher Reeve had, was enough to totally disrupt all the messages being carried by the spinal cord that were intended for the rest of his body.  All parts of his body from the neck down were affected.

You might have wondered, “How did he hurt his neck, and now his legs don’t work?”  Now you know.

The first thing that I look at and the first thing that I fix with my chiropractic patients is in the upper neck.  The very first vertebra is the spot where the spinal cord contains all messages for the rest of the body.

If my patient is having a problem with any part of his/her body, the cause of that problem could very well be the one place where all the nerves are:  the upper neck.

I like to call it the fuse box for the rest of your body.

I have stopped predicting what is possible when a person has an evaluation of the upper neck and a proper correction.  I have a very specific instrument at my office that uses a tiny tap (you won’t feel much of anything) to expertly return the first cervical vertebra (the atlas) to its proper position.

Doing so has resulted in some unbelievably amazing things in our office.  It’s hard to understand sometimes how a 20-year-old leg pain can be instantly corrected this way, but not if you remember the tragic circumstances of Christopher Reeve.

Even in tragedy, we can learn and hope to help others with our knowledge.  Superman had to be concerned about Kryptonite.  We humans do ourselves right by understanding and properly caring for our nervous systems.

The post Everyone’s Kryptonite appeared first on True Health Partners.