Not many people like doing housework. For most, it’s a real pain in the aaah … what’s the word? Sacroiliac. But it’s not just the disruption it causes to your longed-for life of leisure; it really can be a pain. Literally.

The activities you carry out around the house may not seem too physically demanding, but if you don’t pay attention to how you are doing them, even something like washing the dishes can put a strain on your back and cause debilitating pain.

One of the chief culprits in housework, and generally, is lifting. It doesn’t matter what you are picking up, if you do it incorrectly you can injure yourself. The correct approach is to bend at the knees, not from the waist. The item you’re picking up should be held close in to the body, and there should be no twisting, which can hurt the spine; if you want to turn in another direction, take a step that way once you have straightened up.

Tips to Save Your Back

Here are some tips that will help you take the strain out of your household duties:

• Washing the dishes, try opening the cabinet under the sink, bending a knee and placing a foot on the raised shelf inside. Also try leaning forward against the counter to transfer some of your weight forward for a little support.
• Similarly, with ironing, use a small stool and raise one foot onto it to take some of the strain from your back.
• When using a vacuum cleaner, adopt the same stance you would see combatants take in a fencing match, one foot stepped back behind the other. Move your weight from one foot to the other as you push the machine back and forward, and pivot on the back foot when you wish to turn.
• Even talking on the telephone can be a problem if you are prone to cradling the handset between your ear and your raised shoulder. Quasimodo was the first one to notice this. The spinal joints in the neck and upper back can lock when you do this. Fortunately, as humans, we have opposing thumbs and can very easily hold objects in our hands. Either that, or use a speaker phone.
• Watching TV with your head resting on the arm of the sofa is not good, because the angle is too acute for your neck joints.
• When your back does start to hurt, use a cold pack. To avoid leaping through the ceiling, first moisten a towel with warm water before encasing the cold pack in it. That way, there will be a gradual transition from warm to cold. A bag of frozen peas is a good alternative, and is easily moldable to your contours.
• If you suffer with pain for a couple of days without relief, or you feel weakness, numbness or tingling in your hands or feet, a visit to your doctor of chiropractic is in order.

Patients often find that Chiropractic is more successful than medical care, for treating a wide range of conditions and diseases.

According to nationwide surveys, results show the popularity of Chiropractic care is at an all-time high.

• Nearly 30% of the U.S. population, aged 18 and older, have used Chiropractic.
• 90% of Chiropractic patients felt their treatment was effective.
• 58% considered Chiropractic an essential part of their health insurance package.
• Chiropractic patients were three times more satisfied with their care than patients of family practice physicians.
• Chiropractors are now accepted as a legitimate healing profession by the public and by an increasing number of physicians.
• Chiropractic is a growing component of the health care sector, and it is widely used by the population.

There are 10 million new cases every year of otitis media, aka your common-or-garden ear infection. It is so common, in fact, that ear infections account for 35% of all pediatric visits, making them the number one reason for visiting the pediatrician and the most recorded illness in babies and young children. If you’ve ever seen a child with an ear infection, you’ll know how excruciating the pain is.

Nearly 50% of all children will suffer at least one middle ear infection in their first 12 months. By age 3, that figure soars to around two-thirds. The causes of otitis media are bacterial or viral, and are often a by-product of another illness, such as a cold. Many children end up suffering on a chronic basis, and are in and out of the doctor’s office for years. Ultimately, such repeated insults can lead to permanent hearing damage, with all the related speech and developmental problems that accompany it.

The usual course of action is to prescribe antibiotics, in case the cause is bacterial rather than viral. Of course, a viral infection will not be touched by this medication. Moreover, research shows that even in the case of a bacterial infection, pills are not much better at dealing with the problem than the body’s immune system. And much has been made in recent years of the problem of over-prescribing antibiotics, which has led to a drug-resistant bacteria that medicine as yet has no answer to.

Ear infections are the second most common reason for surgery in children under 2 years of age. Actually, they are the primary cause of surgery for medical reasons in this age group, because the most common surgery is circumcision. When the problem is serious enough to create a hearing deficit, specialists sometimes implant “ear tubes” in procedures known as myringotomy and tympanostomy. This involves piercing the eardrum and inserting a tube to help reduce the pressure inside and allow fluid to drain. Usually, the tube is naturally discarded after a few months and the hole closes up, but the procedure still needs to be repeated in 20 to 30% of cases. That’s more general anesthetic, which is no small event for a young child. If problems still persist, an adenoidectomy may be performed to remove the adenoids.

Chiropractic Care Can Help

Worried by all this drug and invasive treatment, which may anyway prove ineffective, more parents are looking at chiropractic as a source of relief for their children. Research has been published in childrearing magazines such as Parenting and Baby Talk showing that 80% of children treated by chiropractic for ear infections remained free of the complaint for at least the following six months (where maintenance visits every four to six weeks were administered).

It may be hard for some people to link chiropractic to the ears when most people just think of spinal adjustments, but it is these spinal adjustments that trigger improvement in those areas related to the spine, which covers … well, the entire body. Chiropractic mobilizes drainage of the ear, and this natural response causes the body to create the antibodies necessary to help beat the infections.

Specifically, it is the manipulation of the upper-cervical spine that helps children with otitis media, namely the occiput (back of the skull), and atlas (first neck vertebra). Adjusting the occiput allows the middle ear to drain, and between six and eight treatments would be typical to help resolve the problem and trigger the child’s system into developing the tools necessary to carry on the fight unaided.

If you have concerns about recurrent bouts of ear infection in your child, talk to your doctor of chiropractic. Chiropractors are licensed and trained to diagnose and treat patients of all ages, and will adjust treatments accordingly.

Nowadays, Derise Rawls visits chiropractor Dr. Chris Beckwith on a regular basis for knee pain. She started seeing him after a tear in the cartilage of her knee had kept her in pain for two years.
“I couldn’t walk my grandchildren outside. I couldn’t walk with my husband,” Derise said. She tried the usual avenue of treatment first: pain medication. “I was living off of those and it
wasn’t getting any better.”

Derise used Chiropractic care as a last result – but many other people choose it first. “More and more we’re getting people who don’t want to go through other forms of treatment.

They want to try things that perhaps are less invasive first and they’ve heard good things about this type of treatment,” said Dr. Beckwith. Since Chiropractic care involves neither drugs nor surgery, it has far fewer side effects and does not require recovery times after treatment like surgery does.

“Chiropractic is incredibly safe, even compared to something as simple as an OTC (over-the-counter medication). When we say things like this, we don’t mean there isn’t a place for either over-the-counter medication or prescriptions because of course there is,” said Dr. Beckwith.

Derise has found that she won’t have to have surgery for her knee because after treatment with Dr. Beckwith, she’s pain-free.

“I can walk with my grandchildren. I can walk with my husband. I don’t have to sleep with a pillow under my knees because of pain. I don’t have to take any more pain medicine. I have my life back,” said Derise.

Americans with developmental disabilities or autism will soon have a major new resource dedicated to providing a comprehensive array of services and support programs. On October 1, 2009, the Training, Education & Research Institute (TERI, Inc.) broke ground on the construction of the Charles R. Cono Center for Research & Life Planning. Located in North San Diego County, the $50 million campus will provide assistance to the increasing number of aging people with autism or other developmental disabilities.

Students at this facility will receive specialized schooling and vocational training. A two-story Fitness Center will include a gym, dance and yoga studios and indoor track. An equestrian center will offer riding facilities. An organic herb and vegetable garden and cafe will supply healthy and nutritious meals for students, staff, and visitors. And very importantly, a Chiropractic treatment center will be part of the Fitness Center. Given a 2006 study of chiropractic treatment for children with autism, this is very appropriate.

This study, listed on the website www.chiropracticresearch.org, reported on the results of Chiropractic treatment on fourteen children who had been diagnosed with autism. Half of them received treatment through the entire spine and half received Chiropractic treatment that focused on the upper cervical spine. Using standard criteria for testing autistic children’s communication, sociability, behavior and other factors, the children were monitored weekly for three months.

The results showed that improvement occurred in six of the seven children under upper cervical adjustment and in five of the seven children under full spine adjustment. In the upper cervical group, two of the children improved so much that they no longer met the criteria to be classified as autistic.

The most common improvements were seen in communication, verbal skills, eye contact, mood, and physical sport skills. By including Chiropractic in their array of services, the planners of the Charles R. Cono Center for Research & Life Planning are giving their future students their very best chance at an improved and healthy life.

Every form of health care can contain some risk and the media often sensationalize those risks and create fear. But what are the real numbers? The following shows a comparison between spinal manipulation, spinal surgery, and anti-inflammatory drugs (non-steroidal).

Your patients need to know these statistics.

Cervical Spine Manipulation:

Complication 2.09 per million

Death .268 per million

Cervical Spine Surgery:

Complication 15,600 per million

Death 6,900 per million

Anti-inflammatory drugs:

Serious gastrointestinal event (all ages) 1,000 per million

Serious gastrointestinal event (65 and over) 3,200 per million

However you choose to ride around on two wheels: on-road, off-road, for fun or competitively – the bike you choose to do it has to be fit not just to those needs, but also to your body. You wouldn’t enter a Tour de France on a Big Wheel, and neither should you ignore the finer points when matching your bike to your body.

Your bike must fit your body. When it does, you will know the difference because you will ride more comfortably, more powerfully, covering more ground faster, with less effort, and with less risk of injury.

There are five primary considerations when choosing your bike:

1. Frame size
2. Seat height
3. Seat position
4. Seat tilt
5. Handlebar position

Frame Size

Get this wrong and you’ll look like you just stole the bike from someone else. This is the most important measurement to properly size up because the frame is the one thing that cannot be adjusted – unless you’re handy with a hacksaw and welding torch. Frame size is not always down to a person’s overall height; it is the leg length that matters. You should be able to straddle the bike frame (not the seat) and be able to plant both feet flat on the floor without having to squeak from contact made with your inseam. For a guys bike with the horizontal bar design, this is important if you are ever stop unexpectedly. If your feet don’t hit the floor before you hit the horizontal bar … squeak.

• For a road or hybrid bike, the horizontal bar gap should be an inch or two.
• For a mountain bike, it should be about four inches given the higher likelihood of an unplanned dismount on rough terrain.

Seat Height

Setting the seat too high or too low can lead to pain and injury to the back and knees, and an inefficient revolution of each pedal stroke. When the pedal is at its lowest point with the ball of your foot on the pedal, your knee should be slightly bent. Make this seat adjustment wearing the shoes you will normally wear when riding.

Seat Position

You need to be sitting on your bike to check the seat position, with the aid of something or someone to hold on to so both feet can be on the pedals. Rotate the pedals until they are at the 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock positions. With the ball of your foot on the pedal, your forward knee should be directly over the axle of that pedal. If this is not the case, make the necessary adjustment by sliding the seat forward or backward.

Seat Tilt

Your seat should ideally be level, which can be checked with a spirit level if you’re really bored. Make sure you’re not on a hill when you do this – obviously. If your seat tips too much one way or the other, there will be pressure on your arms, shoulders, and lower back. Choose the seat design accordingly, bearing in mind the padding and the length of your average bike ride.

Handlebar Position

How you position the handlebars will be determined largely by the type of bike you have. Bullhorn handlebars on a racer won’t really work aerodynamically. Your shoulder, neck, and back are all affected by your handlebar position and design.

Always Wear a Helmet!

It’s no use having very relaxed muscles if your head breaks open. As your muscles go into rigor after death, even the ME who deals with your body will have no idea how relaxed you were just before the impact. The National Highway Safety Traffic Administration reports that a properly fitted bicycle helmet reduces the risk of head injury by 85%, and brain injury by 88%. You can ensure your helmet fits correctly by taking note of the following:

• Your helmet should be level on the head, while protecting the forehead.
• Your ears should just fit inside the Y shape of the side straps.
• The chin strap should be snug enough that if you open your mouth wide, it pulls the helmet down slightly.
• If you can move your helmet back on your head more than an inch by pushing on the front, it is not correctly fitted.
• If the helmet dislodges when you give your head a shake, you can be sure worse will happen in an accident.
• Sounds obvious, but don’t wear another hat under the helmet – you’re not Eminem.
• Helmets should conform to the relevant national/international standards applicable to the country where you live, and have the appropriate stickers to prove it. World War II helmets aren’t a good substitute and you will quickly become known locally as “that loon on the bike”.

Patients under Chiropractic care experience strokes at a significantly lower rate than people who are not under Chiropractic care.

According to a report in the Journal of Vertebral and Subluxation Research, people who are not Chiropractic patients are 27,500 times more likely to suffer strokes than Chiropractic patients.

Results of this study are significant as many researchers have tried to link Chiropractic with the occurrence of stroke.

Chiropractic has also proven to be a significantly safer method of treatment than drugs and surgery. Aspirin and other NSAIDs have been linked to 80% of all ulcer-related deaths; people taking NSAIDS are three times more likely to die than those not taking the drugs.

More than 50% of all medications have serious and sometimes fatal side effects. In 1994, adverse drug reactions were responsible for 106,000 deaths.

Appendectomy procedures have a death rate of one in 74; Spinal fusion surgery has a death rate of one in 50; simple procedures such as drawing blood cause death in one of every 25,000 procedures.

An article published in In Touch Magazine noted that, “More Americans are killed in hospitals every six months than died in the entire Vietnam war; the medical death rate is equivalent to three jumbo jet crashes every day and that the disease care system may be a public health threat of epidemic proportions.”

You wouldn’t go to a gas station and fill your tank with the wrong type of fuel, would you? Of course not, because you know what the consequences would be. You’d break down a half mile along the road.

It’s pretty much the same with the human body, except for one thing: we are such amazing creatures that our bodies can travel for many years on the wrong fuel. Depending on the individual, the consequences of eating unhealthily may be a series of running repairs throughout the years to keep you on the road, or one catastrophic and terminal break down that sends you to that big scrap heap in the sky.

Changing your diet , even slightly, can bring improvements to your overall health. A radical overall can transform it for the rest of your (extended) life.

We all know which are the correct foods to eat, and which cause problems. You’d have to be a life-long hermit in a cave (without cable TV) not to have heard the horror stories that accompany the excess consumption of certain foods. It is not ignorance of the facts that’s the problem, i.e. not knowing; rather, it’s ignoring the facts that you certainly do know. Too often we make choices based on taste and convenience, it’s that simple. And if that’s the case, no amount of tips and advice is going to change your mind.

Let’s face it, a coffee and doughnut for breakfast is more appetizing than a piece of fruit or a bowl of muesli. Nutritionists who try and convince you otherwise are doing themselves no favors by starting off with an obvious lie. The deciding factor is whether you see the fuel you eat as a means of taking you the full distance without mishap, or whether you don’t care how far you go so long as you are allowed to stop in at every fast food joint along the way.

If you are one of those people who has decided to “drive green” the rest of the journey, but are too bombarded by well-meaning information to know how to start, these simple tips may be of help:

Lifestyle Changes

• Exercise for at least 30 minutes three or four days a week to power up your metabolic rate and keep it revving even through periods of inactivity.
• Dine out less often. Restaurants are purveyors of taste over nutrition, and are prone to loading their recipes with salt and sugar.
• Prepare your own lunch in the morning so you control exactly what goes into it. Include more fruits, vegetables, and grains.
• Limit alcohol intake and give up smoking. Both habits impair your body’s ability to absorb nutrients from your food.

Dietary Changes

• Raw foods are bursting with nutrients so eat more of them. Cooking and canning kills off most of the goodness in food (although it should be noted that canned tomatoes can help prevent prostate cancer). Choose instead fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables, containing more vitamins and minerals.
• Choose organic produce if you can to avoid the chemicals and toxins that are present in pesticides.
• Eat 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day in the form of whole-grain breads and cereals, beans and nuts. Some fruits and vegetables are also good sources of fiber. Remember, though, that processed white flour products are the chief cause of Type-2 diabetes, messing up as they do your blood-glucose levels and destroying your body’s ability to control insulin.
• Drink eight to ten 8-ounce glasses of water a day to hydrate your organs and lubricate all your bodily functions. Remember that coffee, tea, soft drinks, and alcohol are diuretics, and steal water from the body.

Vegetarian Diets

Research proves that a good vegetarian diet has the power to help prevent heart disease, cancer, and many other diseases. Just bear in mind that French fries are also vegetarian, as are potato chips and beer. In other words, make sure you do not ruin any vegetarian health plans by deluding yourself into thinking all vegetarian products are good for you. Be sensible and selective.

With a vegetarian diet, consider the following tips:

• Eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes to keep a varied mix of nutrients in your diet.
• Take the advice of a suitable healthcare professional before eliminating animal products from your diet, so it can be done sensibly and correctly. This is especially the case for children, pregnant and breast-feeding women, and people recovering from illness.
• Many old-school nutritionists and general practitioners still dispense advice we now know to be outmoded, and would advise against vegetarianism and in favor of meat and dairy. Seek out a professional who is up-to-date with the latest research, such as a doctor of chiropractic.
• Although B12 is not required in any great amounts by the body and it would take years to become deficient even after cutting out a suitable source, it is only available in animal-based produce so keep a check on your level of that and of iron. Tiredness, malaise, and anemia can be signs of a deficiency.
• Eat fortified foods or take supplements to make up for any essential nutrients a vegetarian diet cannot provide. The best B12 supplementation comes from a shot, or an under-the-tongue nanotechnology spray for better absorption. Beware B12 in standard vitamin pills or fortified cereal; this is known as a B12 analogue and actually ends up robbing you of your own natural B12, leaving a net deficit.
• Dietary supplements can never take the place of proper food, and should not be seen as suitable substitutes. In conjunction with proper food, though, a good quality supplement can help plug any gaps your diet may have.

Some general advice to conclude:

• Eat more dark green vegetables, oils, nuts, and seeds, which are good sources of magnesium, fatty acids, and other vitamins and minerals.
• If you don’t know about nutrition, don’t “self-prescribe”. Consult someone like a doctor of chiropractic who can help you formulate a supplements program that is geared to your own diet.
• Symptoms such as headaches, chronic fatigue, or cardiac problems should send you straight to a healthcare professional for further investigation. It may be that all you need is to improve your diet, but these things are best not assumed.

Three months ago, a former tennis professional was so hobbled by an apparent “bad hip” that invasive replacement surgery seemed imminent. Now, just 10 weeks after receiving a single Chiropractic adjustment, remarkably, he’s back on the path to pain-free living.

Jim Bartell’s troubles with his hip area began over 10 years before when he was in his mid-40s. He worked as a tennis director/teaching pro at world-class resorts teaching very high-end clientele. Sometimes, he’d work up to 10 hours a day on hard tennis courts. After a while, the wear and tear of the job took its toll and he began to develop a limp and hip-area pain.

The condition grew worse over the years despite many types of exercise and stretching therapies. At one point he had the area x-rayed by an MD whose only comment regarding it was, “Jim, your hip is older than you. Come and see us when you can’t take the pain any more and we’ll get it replaced.” Of course, pain relief medications were suggested.

Jim thought the time for surgery was near when about 3 months ago, after a nine-hole round of golf, “I was at a grocery store with my wife and I was in such pain that I had to use the shopping cart to hold myself up. I could only walk a few steps without having to rest.”

He had never really considered Chiropractic as an option, until a golf friend told Jim about his own success.  The very next day, Jim attended a Health Seminar conducted by Dr. Jeffery Fowler at the Pierce Chiropractic Clinic in St. Petersburg, Florida. The x-rays confirmed that Jim’s top neck vertebra area had been out of alignment for a long time – maybe from birth or from some early-in-life traumatic event. The exam found his left leg to be about 3/8” shorter than the right with muscles in the left lower back in a state of constant contraction. This appeared to be the cause of the pain, not a worn out hip.

“About 3 seconds after receiving the Atlas Adjustment, I felt my back muscles relax, and with it, my hip. There was immediate relief. Wow, what a great feeling.” Dr. Jeff confirmed that after the adjustment that both legs were now the same length.

Of course, the adjustment alone only put the area on the path to healing. “I knew that I’d be responsible for a lot of my own healing, but I did everything Dr. Fowler recommended. This included follow-up visits; heat therapy and electrical stimulation at the office; and home exercises to improve hip motion.”

All of this has lead to a much-improved life for Jim, over 10 weeks of daily gains. This includes better posture, ease of walking, better stair climbing ability and, most recently, 18 holes of golf with no hip pain. “I’m not ready to run a Boston Marathon yet,” he said. “But I have been able to play tennis with my friends and enjoy much better mobility than I’ve had in years.”
Along with everything else, Jim is most amazed that the entire procedure and therapy was done with very little “pain to the pocketbook.” “I wish I’d have met Dr. Fowler and learned about an Atlas adjustment 10 years ago.”