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Warning: Hilarious but Not in the slightest bit tasteful
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1760639
Doesn't it just feel great to laugh?
Well keep laughing it up, because science has consistently shown that laughter, hope, and a positive mental attitude are all linked to improved healing, longer lives, and prevention of diseases.
And this isn't just some feel good mumbo jumbo that you get from an after school special. You are a PHYSIOLOGICALLY different person depending on your mental attitude.
Negativity, worrying, and sadness all evoke a STRESS response from your body. This puts tons of adrenaline, insulin, cortisol, and other chemicals that are there to break your body down. And if you check out my previous notes, we all know about how dangerous stress can be in your life.
The exact mechanisms for how laughing and positive emotions affect your life aren't known yet, but some believe that they release endorphins to shut off your stress response, release chemicals that open your blood vessels and lower blood pressure, etc.
You don't need to be a scientist to figure out how positive emotions, just look at some of the anecdotal evidence in life.
- Sense of humor is consistently an attractive factor to the opposite sex.
- Positive people make more money and are more effective leaders (Who wants a Debbie Downer running their company?)
- The man that overcame cancer with laughter
- Sad and stressed out people are always sick
- The placebo effect is based on giving a patient hope that the treatment works, when it's really their body that heals itself (This will be a different note). The placebo is NOT a bad thing.
Now some will say that people don't have control over what happens in their lives, and you know what, that's true. However, you do have control over how you react to those things in your life.
A study done on groups that either won the lottery or suffered a paralyzing injury found something incredible. The levels of happiness before the incident and 1 year after the incident were the SAME. Happiness is relative! Adjust your mindset!
It is so important to be right mentally and emotionally if you want physical health. There is a double-edge sword when it comes to diagnosis. It's good in that it gives your doctors knowledge on what they need to do. However, some people get sucked into their disease and continually perpetuate it and block their own healing! Don't be one of these people, embrace you body's ability to heal itself!
Tips on living happily and healthy:
- Surround yourself with people that make you happy. You become your surroundings, if you aren't smiling and laughing with the people around you, change your surroundings. Your life will change completely when you're around the right people.
- Put negative incidences in the proper context. Accept that it's happened, and take charge with steps to make your life better.
- Laughter, laughter, laughter. Read funny websites, watch funny movies, go see a comedy. The chemicals released during laughter are as powerful as any drug on the market without the dangerous side effects!
- If you're stressed out, you MUST make time for yourself to do activities you enjoy. Preferably, these things should be active as sedentary activities tend reduce mood. Exercise time, dance time, movie time with friends, go out to dinner, get a massage
- Live with a purpose.
This is SOOOOOO important guys. Your brain controls everything in your body, so does it make sense that if your brain is not working properly, that your body will stop working properly?
Take control of your health by regaining control of your mental attitude, your life will change.
Be Well and stay adjusted,
Jon
PS - To show how much I believe in the power of laughter and happiness, from now on, I'll be posting a humor clip with every wellness note.
Stumbled across a couple articles that needed to be presented early.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=482678
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=us-healthcare-expensive-i&chanId=sa003&modsrc=reuters
The Commonwealth Fund is an organization that measures and ranks healthcare of nations around the world, and last year they found that Americans paid the most for their healthcare and fared worst in overall health.
In other words: We're paying for the cost of a Ferrari but we're getting a tricycle in return! I take that back, we're getting a broken tricycle in return.
So what's the story this year? More of the same. The only bright spot were those advocating prevention.
The structure of our healthcare system is failing us all as patients and taxpayers. The use of drugs and surgeries to aggressively treat diseases as a first option is killing us all and will bankrupt this country in the near future. Don't wait for symptoms and disease to occur! Symptoms are the last sign of a body that has been breaking down!
Take Control of Your Health
And that starts with an innate diet, regular exercise, and most importantly proper structure and function of your nervous system with Chiropractic care.
Eat well, move well, and think well
Be Well and Stay Adjusted
On a side note before we start, if you want some cool videos to see how restoring your body's proper function can affect your life:
http://cbs11tv.com/topstories/local_story_044175719.html%0A%0A
http://wbztv.com/video/?id=30936@wbz.dayport.com
Just remember that Chiropractic doesn't treat either of these things. Chiropractic restores the integrity of your nervous system so your brain can tell your body to heal like only it knows how. We restore function, and health is the result.
So anyway, back to the diet.
But I retract that. Diet is such a bad word. It implies something temporary and dreadful. We'll say healthy and delicious eating. Expand your tastes and eat foods that you enjoy, otherwise it becomes a chore.
If you followed those initial steps for a while, you should see some significant changes within a month. By simply replacing every soda with water and your sugars with anything else, fat will start coming off and energy will start increasing.
But you don't want to plateau there, so let's start adding some more natural innate and health to your life.
- Reduce your grain consumption even further
Facts: Want to know what farmers feed cows to get them fat? grains
Want to know why animals get sick and 'need' antibiotics on farms? Get sick from eatin grains.
- Start eating your sandwiches open faced or Replace sandwiches with wraps and your carb grain consumption is cut in half.
- Step further? Get sprouted bread, buns, or wraps (Ezikiel brand)
- Turn hummus and chips or chips in salsa to: Sliced peppers, carrots, or broccoli and hummus.
- Sweet tooth? Slice some apples and dip them into fresh ground peanut butter. (Make sure your peanut butter doesn't say "hydrogenated" anywhere on it.
- Reduce your dairy consumption
- if you love cheese, try getting real cheese instead of the Krafts cheese foods
- Replace milk and cereal with eggs and fruit
- Try Whole Goat's milk or almond milk. The proteins aren't as allergenic
- Get as many leafy green vegetables in as you can. Ideally you should eat them raw. But any vegetable is better than none at all. Ice Berg lettuce doesn't count. Green Leaf and Romaine are great alternatives. Spinach, red/green/yellow peppers, and broccoli too! These should be included in every meal you can.
- Get lean, cut, unprocessed meats. Cage free, free range, grass fed are all great indicators. If not for humanitarian reasons, but for reasons that processed meat is where people get the negative 'fatty' effects of meat.
Slow cook them, and avoid frying.
When frying, it's time to start moving to something like coconut oil or butter. Get rid of those vegetable oils!
Stage 2 Breakdown:
Breakfast:
2 eggs, use salsa for some flavor instead of ketchup
1/2 grapefruit
Lunch/Dinner
Salad - Leafy green veggies, with broccoli, mushrooms, tomatoes, and peppers. Feta optional for flavor. Eat with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Add some turkey, roast beef, grilled chicken or wild alaskan sockey salmon for protein
Bison burger with 1/2 or no bun. Baked sweet potato on the side
ground bison with tortillas for tacos
Roasted chicken breast in mojo sauce. with wild rice and black beans
Homemade soups. No MSG, and avoid noodles.
Snack Options:
Nuts, pistachios, almonds, pecans, etc.
Trail mix
peanut butter and apples
vegetables and hummus
Any whole fruit just about.
This is the stage that I'm on. Since switching to this eating style, I've lost fat, gained energy, and actually saved money since I stopped eating out. I've also stopped having stomach aches and sickness and depression will cease or be much less in severity.
The biggest key. Eat till you're not hungry.
Fullness is a symptom that you ate too much. Just eat till you're not hungry anymore, and have several meals throughout the day.
That's it for this week. Questions and comments are always appreciated!
Have a topic you want me to research? Feel free to message me and I'll have all the info I can find by the next week.
Be well and stay adjusted!
Jon
Welcome back! Today we're gonna be talking about Diet and Nutrition.
And no, I'm not endorsing some fad weight loss diet that's doomed to fail. We're talking about taking the outdated and unscientific food pyramid, and learning how to make healthy choices in regards to the foods that you eat. It's not about losing weight. It's about eating in a way so that you thrive in your day to day life.
Side Effects may include: decreased cravings increased energy, decreased moodiness, losing weight, prevention of chronic disease, improvement in neuro/psychological disorders (ADHD, depression, etc), and much much more.
any of those things sound like you? If so, let's start the path to change
The information I'm referencing is called The Innate Diet and Natural Hygiene by Dr. James Chestnut. The premise of the book is that humans have a blue print (it's in the genes!) for what should go into their bodies, and if they eat the foods that they were made to handle then optimum function is the result. And the best part? If you eat right and exercise, counting carbs, calories, points, etc is pointless!
So what're we going to do? Well first, it's important to get some key ideas.
- Grains are bad. Grains mean more insulin,more insulin means fat and stress.
- Water, water, water
- You can get every vitamin and nutrient you need from healthy meat sources, fruits, and vegetables.
- Eating healthy does not have to be painful (it's actually quite delicious). I'll never say to stop eating "product x". But think of it this way, if you eat healthy 80% of the time, it makes that other 20% less detrimental.
Trust me, you don't have to tell me about how good desserts and pastas are, I love them both. But I can eat them on occasion now and still feel great about my overall health
Remember, true health is a path, not a goal. We'll go step by step towards reaching a truly healthy (and delicious!) way of eating.
Typical:
Protein: industrially farmed fatty meat and fish 15-20%
Carbs: (Processed grains, sugar, high fructose corn syrup) 45-55%
Fat (grain fed meat, dairy, trans fat) 35-40%
The Ideal:
Protein: lean meats and 15-20%
Carbs: Fruits and veggies 25-40%
Fat (grass fed meat, fish, veggies, nuts) 30-45%
Don't think you can do it? Well try some of these tips, and we'll eventually get you on the healthy side of things.
Week 1 Plan: Not the innate diet by any means, but let's get some whole foods in and some processed carbs out
- For every white bread or pasta product you buy, try using a whole grain product instead. (No enriched flours, only the whole stuff)
- If you're using whole grains, start looking for gluten free products
- Find a colorful vegetable and fruit that you love, and buy enough to have one for every meal. (grapes, watermelon, apple, orange, carrots, etc)
- Don't be afraid of beef. Grass fed meat is as healthy a food you can buy.
- Need a salty snack? Try tortilla chips and salsa or pita and hummus
- Make an effort to drink water whenever you get thirsty
- Need sweets besides fruits? Try some Nature's Valley Granola Bars
- If you're gonna fry, use olive oil or canola oil.
Breakfast Options:
- Granola cereal or Cheerios
- 2 eggs
- Fruit
Lunch options: (include your favorite vegetable here)
- turkey sandwich/roast beef sandwich, real cheese (no kraft singles), on 100% whole wheat bread
- grilled chicken salad (olive oil and balsamic dressing if possible)
- grass fed hamburger or bison/buffalo burgers on whole wheat buns
- Publix subs, even better on a wrap
Dinner Options:
- Teriyaki salmon
- Grass fed beef with 100% whole wheat pasta
- chicken with rice and black beans
- Grilled chicken salad
Alright, back to work after a couple weeks off.
Today I want to talk about another health issue that gets WAY too bad a rap from contemporary thought.
Bacteria.
The little 'bugs' and 'germs' that your mom and dad used scare you away from because they made you sick.
And it's true, there are some bacteria that can and will harm you, and fortunately almost all of these are preventable by proper hygiene and lifestyle choices (safe sex, no intravenous drug use, etc).
However, the great majority (95%+) are either good for you or do no harm. In fact the human body has 3 Trillion cells, and there are 10 times more bacteria in your gut than cells in your body!
Here are some of their functions:
- break down fiber for absorbtion
- make vitamins and nutrients
- PROTECT YOU FROM BAD BACTERIA
So why does this affect you? Because you NEED more bacteria in your life. And that means eating a healthier diet with more fruits and vegetables and weening yourself off common antibiotic products.
AND I'm NOT knocking antibiotics. The discovery and development of antibiotics could have been the greatest victory against infectios disease we may ever know. HOWEVER, their abuse is causing a tremendous amount of illness today. They will save your life when wounded, save your life during sepsis, and kill syphillis and gonorhea, but we SHOULD NOT be using them to treat colds and having them in our soaps.
Results of antibiotic abuse:
- Superbugs - the cause of most hospital deaths result from bacteria that have become resistant to most drugs because of overuse
- Killing the GOOD BACTERIA - the good bacteria protect us and give us essential nutriets. Antibiotics suppress this immune mechanism and lead to nutrient deficiency!
And this is not controversial in any way. Any PhD in microbiology will vouch for this information.
So what can you do?
Get rid of your antibacterial soaps. They contribute to the rise of superbugs
If you have a common cold, flu, or fever, try to avoid antibiotics.
The stats show that most antibiotic use (more than 80%) for these illnesses are treating viral infections which is useless.
Your body has so many weapons against these common ailments, and letting your body express the fever and cough without the drugs will strengthen your body against them in the future.
If you do feel sick enough to see your doctor and he offers you antibiotics, take control of your health.
Tell them you would like a high degree of certainty the infection is bacterial
Ask them if them for advice on reestablishing the good bacteria (normal flora)
Make sure you finish your prescription! If you start on antibiotics it is critical that antibiotics are taken in it's entirety. Stopping always leads to resistance!
Of course, most of these illnesses are not an issue when you live innately (diet, excercise, and CHIROPRACTIC care) and strive for wellness in all aspects of your life.
Be on the look out for some great nutrition advice next week. Til then...
Be well and stay adjusted.
