Wishing everyone a fantastic Easter. If you are lucky enough to be travelling, we wish you a safe and enjoyable journey.
Important dates for this Month:
➢ Carrier St Chiropractic is closed from Friday April 2nd Good Friday to Monday April 5th.
➢ ANZAC Day April 25th is on a Saturday and Carrier St Chiropractic is Open April 26th
➢ Dr. Michelle is away on holidays from April 12th to April 23rd. Dr. Olivia and Dr. Dan will be providing care while Dr. Michelle is away.
List of Inflammatory Foods
Did you know that one of the reasons you may suffer from joint pain and achy joints maybe the food you eat?
Certain foods are prone to causing inflammation in the body, so avoiding certain foods and adding others to your diet can go a long way to helping you move easier and experiencing less joint pain.
➢ Sugar – in all its forms. This includes fruit, fruit drinks, so consume in small amounts
➢ Wheat and grains – breads, biscuits, pastries, sauces, pasta, and cereals
➢ Legumes
➢ All nuts – except walnuts, almonds, pistachios and macadamias
➢ Night shade vegetables – tomatoes, egg plant, capsicum (unless you can remove the skin and seeds.)
➢ Deli – processed meats
➢ Oils except – extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil and macadamia oil. (avoid seed and vegetable oils.)
“Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the errors that counts.”
Nikki Giovanni
Why Doesn’t My Back Stay In After It’s Adjusted?
I recently had a patient ask why the spinal joint I was adjusting “didn’t stay in place and kept going out again”?
Great question and it actually has a lot to do with a process called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is how we learn to do things. To learn to swim, play the piano or score basketball points accurately, requires us to repeat the action enough times in order to create a nerve pathway and memory in the brain. If we repeat the action, the brain takes on this as the new habit.
How does this relate to your spine? Well firstly, your spinal bones are never out of place. Instead, each spinal joint has a specific movement pattern like any other joint in our body. Things like injuries, poor posture, repetition of a particular action (think sport or job) performed incorrectly or poorly, changes the neuroplasticity or in other words, how the brain sends information to the tissues surrounding the joint, to move and support it. Over time, the joint ‘looses’ its normal joint movement pattern.
Getting a chiropractic adjustment helps to remind the brain of how that joint is meant to move relative to the other spinal joints around it. But one or two adjustments now and then aren’t enough to retrain the brain to move the joint correctly. That’s why when you start chiropractic care, you have visits close together, to break a bad habit and teach the body a better one. Regular care is part of this process. It allows the chiropractor to detect abnormal joint movement patterns and correct them before they become a bad habit. And in the process, it helps the brain and nervous system to function better, meaning you move the way your designed to.
Probiotics and Prebiotics
Probiotics and Prebiotics play an important role in our health. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria and prebiotics are the food for the bacteria.
Probiotics- are live bacteria, found in certain foods and supplements. The good bacteria found in our gut perform many tasks such as
➢ Protect you from harmful bacteria and fungi
➢ Aid digestion and immune system function
➢ Improve symptoms of depression
➢ Form vitamin K and short-chain fatty acids. (these are the main nutrient source of the cells lining the colon. They work to create a strong barrier to keep out harmful bacteria and viruses, which aids in reducing inflammation.
Prebiotics- are the food for probiotics. This ‘food’ usually comes from carbohydrates, usually in the form of indigestible fibre.
Our lifestyle choices can influence the health of our gut bacteria. Alcohol, antibiotics, a diet high in sugar and processes foods, can cause a decrease in good bacteria and an increase in ‘bad’ bacteria. This can detrimentally affect our health by increasing inflammation in the body, decreasing our immune system function, increase insulin resistance (think type 2 diabetes) and increased weight gain and obesity. If you feed the wrong bacteria, they are able to grow faster and colonize the gut more easily without the good bacteria there to stop them.
While you can get prebiotics (the food to feed your good bacteria) in supplement form, they are available in the fibre of many vegetables, fruits and legumes including, peas, beans, oats, bananas, berries, Jerusalem artichokes, asparagus, garlic, leeks and onions.
Probiotics come in the form of pills powders and liquids and can be also found in foods such as yoghurt (think plain no sugar or flavouring) fermented food such as sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, kefir and pickled vegetables. Unpasteurised fermented foods are best, as the pasteurization process can destroy the bacteria in the foods.
Probiotics and prebiotics both have a huge role to play in keeping you and your gut biome healthy. Make sure to add these to your diet and aim to eliminate all the bad additive that encourage bad gut bacteria to form and thrive.
Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.
Will Rogers
Paitent Reminder
When getting ready for your adjustment
- Please:
- Empty your Pockets
- Turn your phone to silent or off mode
- Remove your belt and shoes
- Remove scarf and hoodie if wearing one
2. Time Management- To help us run to time, please notify us before your appointment if you have sustained any significant injury since your last visit (think, fall, motor vehicle accident, concussion) so we can allow time for Dr. Michelle to perform an appropriate examination without going into another appointment time. There is no extra cost for this longer appointment time.
3. If you can’t make your appointment time, please give us 24 hours’ notice so we have time to contact patients on our waiting list to offer them the appointment space.
Functional Movement Exercise
Functional movement exercises are designed to train your muscles to work together to perform actions which mimic many of the common movements of daily living. They often involve using both upper and lower body muscle groups at the same time, while also emphasizing core stability. There are seven basic movements that the body performs – pull, push, squat, lung, hinge, rotation and gait. Functional movement exercises are based on these seven movements. These types of exercises are important as they put the body through movement patterns of everyday living. Having strength, flexibility, coordination and range of motion in these movements increases the likelihood of sustaining independent living as we age.
Many exercise programs concentrate on programs which are
➢ Machine based often involving seated resistance exercises
➢ Aerobic exercise at the expense of strength and functional movement
➢ An abundance of mobility aids that actually decrease the physical requirements of the individual.
While some of these exercise programmes are important for rehabilitation, functional movement exercises prepare you for daily living tasks that the above often can’t.
Exercises include:
- Squat– can begin with modified air squat and progress through to increased resistance through adding weight and changing the range of motion and level of support. The squat prepares us for sitting down and standing up.
- Lunge– This movement pattern is transferrable to walking, climbing stairs and picking things up off the ground. Again, this exercise can be modified by the level of support, the range of motion or resistance (weight) added.
- Hinge– Think of bending to pick an object up off the ground. This is a hinge movement and fantastic for engaging your posterior chain muscles (hamstring, gluteals, erector spinae.) Thinks deadlift, a suitcase or farmers carry as an exercise. Again, this is suitable to any age, mobility or strength level by adjusting the range of motion and resistance.
- Push– Think pushing yourself up off the couch, bed or floor. Push exercises, can be done standing, sitting or even lying face down, (think push up. therefore, modifiable for any age, mobility and strength level.
- Pull– Great for engaging the posterior chain muscles. Exercises can be performed sitting or standing.
- Rotate– Can use bands or weights and exercise with performed standing or sitting.
- Walk– Walking is a fundamental movement in our everyday life that it should be part of any exercise program. Again, this can be progressed or regressed by adding/subtracting speed, gradient, weight/support, to fit the individual’s needs.
If you want to learn how to add functional exercises into your exercise program please speak to Dr. Michelle.
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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