Archive for Where:Sacramento-CA
Sacramento Chiropractor Suggests That Walking to School is Good for Kids’ Health!
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As a Sacramento chiropractor I am well-aware of the toll that lack of exercise and excess weight takes on the musculoskeletal system over time. I see adverse effects such as wear and tear on knee and hip joints and shifts in the skeletal frame, especially the back, and weak muscle structure in many of my patients. If you have been reading my blogs, then you already know that I am a tireless advocate for the extraordinary health benefits of good nutrition and exercise. I have noted in my years of practice that many good habits, such as healthy nutrition and daily exercise, start early in a person’s life. And, of course, the same is true for bad habits, such as eating processed food, junk food, and too much food in general, as well as not getting enough exercise. Many children today are developing bad habits quickly, and it seems to me that there is not enough adult encouragement to change them.
I don’t know about you, but as a kid I was not only encouraged to eat my vegetables, such eating was mandatory if I wanted to be excused from the table. And, as far as exercise went, I walked to school or road my bike whenever the weather permitted. And, I wasn’t the only one. Did you know that in 1969, nearly 50 percent of children walked or biked to school? And, that percentage increased greatly the closer the children lived to school. In fact, 87 percent of kids living within one mile walked or biked to school! But, not these days. According to Safe Routes to School (SRTS) (a network of nonprofits, government agencies, and schools supporting a movement to encourage kids to walk to school) fewer than 15 percent of children today walk or bike to school!
The ramifications of this shift are that kids today are less active, less independent, and less healthy. In addition, many children are overweight or obese. Could walking to school make such a difference? Yes, according to one recent study that found that children ages 10 to 13 who walked to school daily were 80 per cent less likely to be obese than those who rode to school.
Are children today lazier or just plain spoiled? Do they sleep in more than we did as kids and start out for school too late to walk? Not necessarily. The main reason cited for this lack of simple exercise was safety. Not all neighborhoods have designated bike routes or sidewalks. Walking to school can be dangerous where there are no sidewalks and, in addition, many parents encourage their children to ride their bikes on sidewalks because they feel they are safer than riding with traffic. Social environment was another factor cited as a major concern to parents. But, where these concerns do not exist, it is important for parents to encourage their children to walk to school or ride a bike. Healthy childhood habits more often than not turn into healthy adult habits that, in turn, are beneficial to the entire body, from healthy organ function to a strong musculoskeletal system! (But watch out for the size and weight of those backpacks!)
To read more about safe routes to school, go to: saferoutespartnership.org
1707 Professional Dr Sacramento, CA, 95825 USA
dr.yongkim@gmail.com • 916-483-6722
Sacramento Chiropractor: Give Your Hands a Round of Applause!
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As a Sacramento Chiropractor I know plenty about the therapeutic effects of “touch” in healing. My hands are my “instruments” in helping people get out of pain. So, anytime “hands” are given credit where credit is due, I am the first to pass it along. And, in this case, the hands are yours! A new study shows that self-touch offers significant relief for acute pain under experimental conditions. That’s right…not just your chiropractor’s hands are therapeutic! So, how do your “untrained” hands help to relieve pain? The researcher suggests that the relief comes from a change in the brain’s representation of the rest of the body.
What specifically did the researchers discover? “We show that levels of acute pain depend not just on the signals sent to the brain, but also on how the brain integrates these signals into a coherent representation of the body as a whole,” said researcher, Patrick Haggard, of the University College London. He, and his colleague, Marjolein Kammers, also of University College London, made the discovery by studying the effects of self-touch in people who were made to feel pain using an experimental condition known as the thermal grill illusion (TGI). When TGI was induced in an individual’s two hands and then the three fingers of one hand were touched to the same fingers on the other hand immediately afterward, the painful heat experienced by the middle finger dropped by 64 percent compared to a condition without self-touch. Now, before you start thinking that you don’t need your chiropractor anymore because your hand is singularly healing, the study also found that relief didn’t come when only one hand was placed under TGI conditions. Partial self-touch, in which only one or two fingers were pressed against each other, didn’t work either. Nor did it work to press the affected hand against an experimenter’s hand (though none of those hands were a chiropractor’s!) that had also been warmed and cooled in the same way.
The bottom line? The researchers’ believe that their findings might be put to practical use: “Our work suggests that therapies aimed at strengthening the multisensory representation of the body may be effective in reducing pain,” Haggard said. And, that’s just what chiropractic treatment is all about!
Source:
Cell Press
Well, here I go again, touting the benefits of exercise. But, I have to tell you that, as a Sacramento Chiropractor, over the years I’ve adjusted the spines of people who exercise regularly and people who don’t. The differences in the strength, function, and overall health, not only of their musculoskeletal systems, but in the healthy function of all the systems of the body, is dramatic. For this reason, I’m passing along the results of yet another study on the benefits of exercise.
New research at Mid Sweden University and the Karolinska Institue found that the maximum capacity for oxygen uptake is twice as great among active senior men compared with men who do not exercise. (Twice as much oxygen intake!) “The high values for maximum oxygen-uptake capacity that we have measured have never been reported before in a population of men of advanced age,” says Per Tesch, professor of sports science who led the study of seniors who are still active skiers. (Some of Sweden’s skiing icons, some now more than 90 years old, took part!)
The conclusion of this study is that “humans have a great potential to maintain a high level of physical work capacity and, thereby, a better quality of life even at advanced ages.” The study is part of a larger collaborative project whose ultimate purpose is to study how musculature, the circulatory apparatus, and performance are affected by lifelong exercising well into senior years.
So, there you have it… One more good reason to get your body moving and to keep going no matter what your age!
Sources: Expertanswer, AlphaGalileo Foundation.
“Getting old takes courage,” right? If you are a senior, you probably agree! The older we get, the more health risks, and even death risks, we incur. As a Sacramento chiropractor I know from treating hundreds of patients through the years, that the aging process stresses the musculoskeletal system. Joints degenerate often due to poor posture, improper gait, and repetitive movement. In addition, the nervous system often becomes impaired causing balance problems. Falls are a major cause of injury and death among seniors. The good news is that there are screening tests available that can assess the physicl abilities of those who are middle-aged and above to help identify individuals who are at increased risk of accident, injury, and death, so that interventions such as strength training and balance issues can be made.
The tests involve simple physical activities that people perform on a regular basis. Grip strength, walking speed, rising from a chair, and balancing on one leg can reveal a person’s capacity to perform everyday tasks safely. To bring the point home, so to speak, in order to help people understand the importance of strength and balance, researchers at the University College London analyzed 33 studies that examined physical capabilities in people of any age and recorded subsequent deaths among the participants. Overall, those who had poorer results on physical function tests had a consistently higher risk of death.
What did the tests reveal specifically? Here are some of the test results:
- In 14 studies that included a total of 53,476 people, the death rate was 1.67 times higher for people with the weakest grip strength than for those with the strongest grip.
- Five studies that included a total of 14,692 people found that the death rate was 2.87 times higher for the slowest walkers than for the fastest walkers.
- Five studies that included a total of 28,036 people found that the death rate was nearly twice as high for people who were slowest to rise from a chair than for those who were quickest at this task.
It is important to not that while most of the studies included older people, the association between grip strength and death risk was also found in younger adults. The study was published online Sept. 10 in the BMJ.
So, the good news is that such screenings are available. But, even better news is that your chiropractor can not only also assess your abilities in these areas, but can recommend individualized strength exercises and reassess your abilities. And, in addition, chiropractic care has been shown to be relieve balance problems such as vertigo and those relating to improper alignment and nervous system interference. So, if you’d like an evaluation of your risk potential, as well as help with lowering that risk, see your chiropractor in Sacramento today!
For more information on seniors and exercise, go to: The U.S. National Institute on Aging
I see a lot of children as patients in my Sacramento chiropractic office. And, as a chiropractor in Sacramento, I’m concerned with many things that affect their growing musculoskeletal system, from sports injuries to carrying a backpack, either improperly or packed too heavily. Now that it’s back-to-school time again, I’d like to add a health warning that you don’t always hear from a chiropractor, but one that is important, indeed. I know that parents are super-busy not only buying their kids back-to-school clothes, but also equipping them with all the sports gear they need for safe play, such as helmets, pads, braces and mouth guards. I applaud all parents who take that extra step to prevent broken bones, bruises and chipped teeth. But, there is one more danger zone that needs parental attention. Your child’s eyes. Eye injuries such as a scratched cornea, fractured eye socket, or permanent vision loss, can be avoided with taking these steps, encouraged by The Pennsylvania Association for the Blind what are they doing to prevent possible permanent vision loss, a scratched cornea, or fractured eye sockets?Ways to help your child to enjoy their favorite sports this season safely:
- Wear proper eye guards (lensed polycarbonate protectors) for racket sports, basket ball, tennis or volleyball;
- Use batting helmets with polycarbonate face shields for baseball and softball;
- Use helmets and face shields approved by the U.S. Amateur Hockey Association when playing hockey.
It is important for parents to know that regular reading glasses, sunglasses, or even safety glasses do not provide the adequate eye protection for many sports. Eye guards can be purchased at sports stores or local optical store. But, be sure to ask someone familiar with your child’s eyesight to fit them properly, making certain that the eye guard contains cushioning along the eyebrow and the edge of the nose to help prevent your young athlete from cutting or damaging his or her face.
Source: Pennsylvania Association for the Blind
Chiropractor in Sacramento Tells of New Research: How You Can Move It AND Lose It!
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Okay, if you read my blogs, even on an irregular basis, you know by now that I am a Sacramento chiropractor who is a bit of an exercise fanatic (nut?). There are so many healthy reasons to exercise that not exercising by some individuals seems unduly resistant to their good health! Well, in a effort to coax those few exercise holdouts, and to say, “here’s an extra bonus,” to those of you who exercise regularly, I offer the results of a new study: According to research led by Brazilian researchers at the University of Campinas, the results of which will be published next week online in the open access journal PLoS Biology, there is yet another good reason to exercise. In addition to keeping the organs of the body functioning properly, helping the musculoskeletal system to stay strong and mobile, and burning calories for weight loss, exercise has also been found to restore the sensitivity of neurons involved in the control of satiety (which is to say, “feeling full”). This, in turn, contributes to reduced food intake and, ergo, more weight loss.
Obesity is an enormous problem of epidemic proportions in this country. Factors such as changing eating habits (from healthy to “fast, fatty, and excessive”) and a sedentary lifestyle (for children as well as adults) have contributed to the obesity problem. It is also postulated that excessive consumption of fat creates failures in the signal transmitted by neurons controlling satiety in a region of the brain called the hypothalamus, and that these failures can lead to uncontrollable food intake and, consequently, obesity.
The researchers demonstrated that exercising (in this case exercising obese rodents) showed signals of restored satiety in hypothalamic neurons and decreased food intake. These findings confirmed that physical activity contributes to the prevention and treatment of obesity, not only by increasing energy expenditure, but also by modulating the signals of satiety and reducing food intake.
So, there you go, another good reason to exercise brought to you by your friendly chiropractor in Sacramento!
Source:
PLoS Biology
Sacramento Chiropractor Warns: Curling Up With Your Laptop May Give You a Headache!
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health problems due to bad posture occurs for many reasons and is nothing new to the spines of humankind. For thousands of years, men and women have hunched over their work, whether pounding rocks to make tools or pounding a keyboard on their computer. Fortunately, chiropractic was discovered in 1885 to remedy many of the problems occurring from bad posture! Since that time chiropractors like me, your Sacramento Chiropractor, have been helping people to correct the musculoskeletal damage resulting from bad posture, as well as providing exercises, gait training, and lifestyle changes to improve posture and avoid problems in the future. Most of us already know that excessive computer use is unhealthy for the human body, so it may not come as a surprise that researchers are cautioning that the very design of laptop computers encourages bad posture among college students (and other heavy users) and can lead to headaches, muscle strain and debilitating neck, shoulder and hand injuries.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill School of Medicine explained in a university news release that the “unified body construction” of a laptop, with its inseparable keyboard and monitor, makes it difficult for users to configure their equipment in a way that minimizes risk to their bodies. For instance, awkward positioning of the fingers and body can cause nerve injury to the wrist and prompt the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome, while poor neck position and shoulder posture can cause muscle strain and soreness in those areas.
Researcher, Dr. Kevin Carneiro, a physician in the UNC School of Medicine’s department of physical medicine and rehabilitation, and his colleagues point out that laptop users can take specific steps to minimize their risk. So, listen up and heed the tips below:
- If you are working at a computer, your body should form 90-degree angles at the elbows, knees and hips.
- Use a docking station and cables to hook up to an external monitor and/or separate keyboard that are movable to encourage better posture.
- With the help of a docking station, position the computer so you can read the screen without bending your neck.
- Pay attention to the chair you sit in — look for one that is adjustable and comes with back support.
- Tilt the screen so you don’t need to bend your neck, and place the mouse so that your wrists are in a neutral position (one in which they are aligned with your arm and not raised above it).
- Take frequent short breaks every 20 minutes or so — this can help rest muscles and encourage position shifting. Do some shoulder shrugs, gentle forward head rolls, and shoulder scrunches to stretch your muscles.
- Stay hydrated — drinking plenty of water can help keep discs in your back lubricated.
In addition, be sure to watch out for warning signs, such as pain and tingling. These may mean you need to use better posture, take more breaks, or see your chiropractor in Sacramento!
Here’s another blog on exercise, my favorite topic as a Sacramento Chiropractor other than talking about the benefits of chiropractic treatment. And, if you’ve read my other blogs on exercise, you know I’m a big believe in “move it or lose it.” But, if you’ve read the entire content of most of my blogs, you also know that I believe that exercise is just part of a healthy lifestyle. An essential part, to be sure, but eating nutritious meals, drinking plenty of water, and visiting your chiropractor (that last one may be slightly biased), along with giving up unhealthy habits like smoking, are crucial not only for maintaining good health, but in keeping body weight in check. That’s why I wasn’t surprised by the latest government data that indicated that more Americans are exercising, but rates of obesity and smoking have not changed.
Health experts, such as chiropractors, and the U.S. government all recommend getting daily exercise — about an hour a day of moderate exercise for most adults — to keep weight off and prevent heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Plus, we chiropractors are well aware that keeping weight off not only helps to prevent the diseases just mentioned, but it also helps to slow down, and often prevent, arthritis and stress injuries of the musculoskeletal system caused by excess weight.
But, excess weight is not only caused by, and sustained through, lack of exercise. Here are some more “fun facts” from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics:
- The prevalence of obesity among adults aged 20 and over has increased from 19.4 percent in 1997 to 28 percent in 2009.
- In 2009, 9 percent of adults 18 and over had diabetes, up from 8.2 percent in 2008 and 5 percent in 1997.
- 20.6 percent of adults smoked, about the same as in 2008.
- Nearly 23 percent of adults had at least one day of binge drinking in 2009, defined as having five or more drinks in a day.
- Most Americans believe they are healthy. More than 66 percent said they had excellent or very good health, down from 68.5 percent in 2008. 2.4 percent said they had poor health.
- Just over 4 percent of all Americans said they had an asthma attack in the past year
There are no shortcuts and no way to get around it: Good health and vibrant wellness is created and maintained through an overall healthy lifestyle.
Sacramento Chiropractor: Now Your Insurance Coverage Can’t Exclude Chiropractic Care
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As a Sacramento Chiropractor I often hear the disappointment in my patients’ voices when they find that their insurance plan doesn’t cover the full spectrum of chiropractic care. And, of course, anyone who has experienced the benefits of not only crisis chiropractic treatment and therapies, but holistic preventative chiropractic care as well, knows that insurance companies that don’t cover chiropractic treatment as a wellness approach are not only ill-advised, but “shooting themselves in the foot” (a condition that chiropractic doesn’t treat!) because chiropractic care can actually reduce health care costs! Well, now it appears that things just might be changing so that no health insurance provider can discriminate against an insured’s desire to have chiropractic treatment, and have it covered, by their insurance! The National Association of Chiropractic Attorneys (NACA) just announced that it has issued a proclamation recognizing “the historic and profoundly positive legal ramifications for the chiropractic profession and the patient community it serves in Section 2706, ‘Non-Discrimination in Health Care,’ recently enacted as part of the federal ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.’”
How does that relate to your receiving insured chiropractic care? The provider non-discrimination provision says that “A group health plan and a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall not discriminate with respect to participation under the plan or coverage against any health care provider who is acting within the scope of that provider’s license or certification under applicable State law.”
What does that mean for you? Well, once in full effect, health insurance companies will no longer be able to deny chiropractic patients their right to receive coverage for their acupuncture treatment, their nutritional therapies or the many other alternative services many chiropractors provide, but which insurers routinely reject.
The provision has long been championed by the American chiropractic Association (ACA) and members of the Chiropractic Summit. It was achieved primarily due to collaboration with Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and help from other key players such as Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT). Although he did not support the final bill overall, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) did lend his support for the advancement of the non-discrimination provision. The ACA will continue to fight for proper implementation during the regulatory process.
NACA Vice President, Mike Schroeder, said: “It is important to recognize this provision as a historic first for the chiropractic profession. We now have a federal law applicable to ERISA plans that makes it against the law for insurance companies to discriminate against doctors of chiropractic and other providers relative to their participation and coverage of health plans. And, he added that “While there is still much work to be done in the regulatory process, we are encouraged by the fact that Congress has finally acted to end provider discrimination based on one’s license.”
This is great news for you, as my patient, and for me, as your chiropractor in Sacramento. And, it’s great news for chiropractors and their many patients everywhere!
Your Sacramento Chiropractor Makes a Confession…
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As your Sacramento Chiropractor, I have a confession to make: I’m a health nut, plain and simple. I believe that the human body is an amazing organic instrument that, just like a musical instrument, requires care and attention in order for it to “play” the way it was designed to. Some health practices are obvious: Eat nutritious meals, avoid processed foods and too much salt and sugar, stay hydrated, get plenty of exercise, and last but not least, see your chiropractor on a regular basis! However, other health practices may not be quite so apparent, such as keep your refrigerator clean. Yep, that’s right! A refrigerator that contains old food or food spills, is a health hazard with major health consequences. How unhealthy? There is a detailed, and sometimes amusing, account of just how unhealthy “bad refrigeration” can be in an article by in Bloomberg Businessweek, which I highly recommend your reading if you have a chance. But, in the meantime, I would like to pass along a few things that you should be aware of.
Though office refrigerators were the focus of the article and studies, it’s equally important, of course, for each of us to ask ourself how often we clean out our home refrigerator. According to a study conducted by the ADA and ConAgra Foods, 44 percent of office refrigerators are cleaned once a month and 22 percent are cleaned only once or twice a year. The article suggested that the next time someone was looking for a relatively bacteria-free place to store their lunch, they should consider that the bathrooms in most offices are probably cleaner than the fridge. (At least they are cleaned more often!) According to the Agriculture Dept., the foods most likely to turn unhealthiest the quickest are casseroles, cold cuts, poultry, yogurt, and sour cream. Though such food items are healthy “in the beginning,” can go from bad to lethal. Last year at an AT&T Center in San Jose, California, a co-worker who was trying to be helpful, cracked open the office fridge to clean it and noxious fumes sent seven of her co-workers to the hospital and forced authorities to evacuate the building while men in hazmat suits spread down the fridge!
So, add “clean the refrigerator” to your health “to do” list. Even food that’s good for you when it’s fresh, can be bad for your health given enough time!
