Madison AL Chiropractors Tell You How to Take Care of Your Body

By: Dr. Justin Walbom, DC and Dr. Greg Millar, DC CCEP
Millar Chiropractic - Madison Al

Chiropractic Care and Total Health

You may have noticed that chiropractic care is extremely efficient. By addressing your spinal health and the health of your nerve system with chiropractic care, many of your body's other systems are also positively affected, indirectly. Your central nerve system - your brain and spinal cord - is your body's master system controlling every part of your body. Every other organ, tissue, and cell receives instructions on when and how to do its job from the nerve system, via spinal nerves and smaller nerve branches. Simply put, when your nerve system is not functioning properly your body as a whole will not function properly. You may have pain. You may have symptoms of specific diseases. It is important to address these symptoms. But to really correct the problem, it is also critically important to address possible causes which lie within the nerve system. Using gentle correction of spinal misalignments, chiropractic care helps optimize the functioning of your nerve system. A healthy nerve system helps ensure good health in your cardiopulmonary, gastrointestinal, and endocrine systems, as well as other body systems.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you were born with an owner's manual for your body? Ideally you would find out the best ways to care for this most precious possession. By finding out how to use your body optimally, you could ensure a lifetime of maximum health and vitality and top performance. You could keep your originally perfect physical vehicle from systematically breaking down.

By developing the most effective practices and techniques now and making them a habit, you could be spared the common experience of many years of avoidable physical discomfort, which often also includes significant emotional/mental suffering.

The good news is that it's never too late to make an effort to improve and optimize your health. The sooner you begin, the quicker you will begin experiencing the rewards.

Imagine the table of contents of your body's owner's manual. What subjects would it cover? Ideally, the manual would cover the usual suspects - good posture, exercise, nutrition, and proper rest - four important requirements for health, that almost everyone knows about but hardly anyone actually puts into practice. One of the best things about having your body's own personal owner's manual would be that you'd automatically know what works best for your body without having to go through a long drawn out process of figuring out what works and what doesn't work. Even more importantly, you would have the knowledge and ability to take proper care of your body - keeping yourself healthy from the start rather than trying to regain your health.

What can a person do to reclaim and maintain their optimal health? Since people aren't born with an owner's manual, and most also never had coaches or teachers who are very knowledgeable, they usually just struggle along. Their posture gets progressively worse, their muscles get progressively tighter as they begin to experience joint problems, and eventually they start to notice various aches and pains that quickly become long-term and unrelenting.

Fortunately our bodies have amazing resilience and recuperative powers. Once we find someone who can guide us to improve our posture and participate in exercise that is appropriate for us, we begin to find that it really is possible to feel better.

A doctor of chiropractic is an excellent choice because these physicians are very familiar with the musculoskeletal system and natural health strategies, and are therefore a good choice to help you figure out the secrets to your own body. Dr. Greg Millar or Dr. Justin Walbom of Millar Chiropractic Clinics in Madison, Alabama can help you get all the benefits of having an owner's manual without having to suffer through the trial and error yourself.

Take posture for example.Dr. Greg and Dr. Justin can share with you the same secrets that most high level competitive athletes, dancers and gymnasts learn from coaches and other mentors. You can be taught about your center of gravity, and how to balance the majority of your weight over the front part of your feet rather than your heels. You can be taught to stand tall and straight without tensing your muscles. You can learn how to breathe deeply and freely - opening your chest while relaxing your chest muscles - so that your lungs can take in all the oxygen you need to function optimally. You can be taught to keep your shoulder muscles relaxed, as you sit with your spine lengthened and your and back and neck muscles relaxed. You can be taught to properly strengthen and engage your core abdominal muscles, to provide a strong foundation for your lower back and throughout all of your daily activities.

Our chiropractors at Millar Chiropractic Clinics are experts of the nerve and musculoskeletal systems, and has extensive knowledge of how your posture and the health and integrity of your spine affects how you feel, as well as what you need to do to take care of your precious body.

If you want to take the best care of your body, as if you had your own personal owner's manual, contact your Millar chiropractor and get started on the path to optimal health and wellness today!

Millar Chiropractic - Madison AL

1908 Slaughter Rd. 

Madison, Alabama 35758

(256) 430-2700

http://millarchiro.com/millarchiropractic-madisonal-chiropractor.html

1Vidal J, et al: Effects of Postural Education on Daily Habits in Children. Int J Sports Med March 4th, 2011 (Epub ahead of print)

2Eriksson MK, et al: Quality of life and cost-effectiveness of a 3-year trial of lifestyle intervention in primary health care. Arch Intern Med 170(16):1470, 1479, 2010

3Huffman DM: Exercise as a calorie restriction mimetic: implications for improving healthy aging and longevity. Interdiscip Top  Gerontol 37:157-174, 2010

Madison AL Chiropractors Tell You How to Take Care of Your Brain

By: Dr. Justin Walbom, DC and Dr. Greg Millar, DC CCEP
Millar Chiropractic - Madison Al

Complex Carbohydrates

Sugar is sugar, right? From a physiological viewpoint, blood glucose is blood glucose, right? Wrong. The source of the glucose is what counts and has everything to do with your ability to use food for energy. Complex carbohydrates - found in vegetables, fruits and whole-grains - are digested and broken-down into glucose - the body's usable form of sugar. This process of digestion takes time and the glucose produced is slowly released into the bloodstream, where it is transported to cells for use as an energy source. When you eat simple sugars - a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee, donuts, cookies etc. - you're ingesting ready-made glucose. No digestion is necessary - the glucose is already in its simplest form and goes directly into the bloodstream. Such rapidly available glucose is probably not immediately needed for energy and therefore is stored as fat. Also, the rapid surge of blood glucose stimulates the pancreas to release insulin, setting off a whole cascade of responses. The high-fructose corn syrup used to sweeten most sodas and other products is even worse in this regard and should be avoided at all costs.  Artificial sweeteners also have a host of negative side effects and are not a healthy substitute for sugar. Bottom line - consuming a lot of simple sugars causes your body to store fat and ultimately impairs the functioning of the pancreas, possibly leading to diabetes. Consuming complex carbohydrates provides glucose for energy and, when combined with healthy fats and protein, is part of the natural pathway to good health.

You are the lucky owner of a magnificent piece of biological machinery - the human brain. More powerful than the most advanced computer, your brain is always on, performs lightning-fast calculations, and is a whiz at making connections between seemingly unrelated factors and observations. The only downside is that, unlike your computer, your brain didn't come with an owner's manual.

Fortunately, your brain has no moving parts to wear out.  And, your brain is always available. It will do whatever you tell it to do. All you have to do is take care of it properly - provide it with energy, take it out for a walk, get proper rest and make sure it's connected.

The energy part could be easy, but most of us fall down on the job. Our bodies require high-quality nutrition, but mostly what they get is a poor substitute. Fresh organic fruits and vegetables, whole-grains; complete protein and healthy fats from organic whole milk and yogurt, cheese, pastured eggs and butter, fish (especially salmon), grassfed beef, chicken, turkey; and plenty of water cover daily requirements for optimum functioning.

If you're a vegetarian, make sure you get complete protein from dairy products - rice and beans do not provide complete protein!  Also consider your blood type.  If your blood is type O, you will not likely thrive as a long-term vegetarian.

A balanced food plan provides your brain with all the energy it needs - and it needs plenty of energy! Glucose is the primary source of energy for your brain - complex carbohydrates like vegetables and whole grains make it all happen.

Going for a walk - a metaphor for all kinds of vigorous physical activity - not only helps keep you in top shape but is also one of the best things you can do for your brain. So many recent scientific studies have shown that peak brain function and levels of exercise are strongly related.

Physical activity causes new areas of your brain to "light up" and builds connections between areas of your brain that weren't connected before. So, when you exercise, your brain is getting smarter at the same time that your body is getting healthier! That's a pretty good deal.

Finally, it's very important to make sure that all the parts of your body are talking to each other in the right way and at the right time. Your brain needs to receive the information it's supposed to receive to make good decisions, and your body needs to receive the information it needs from your brain to get all the jobs done that need to be done.

Dr. Greg Millar and Dr. Justin Walbom of Millar Chiropractic Clinics in Madison, Alabama say that regular chiropractic care helps make sure these things are happening. Regular chiropractic care helps balance the flow of information in your nervous system, taking care of you and your brain, and making sure all the important nerve signals get to where they are supposed to be going.

Millar Chiropractic - Madison AL

1908 Slaughter Rd. 

Madison, Alabama 35758

(256) 430-2700

http://millarchiro.com/millarchiropractic-madisonal-chiropractor.html

 1Rosales FJ, Zelsel Sh: Perspectives from the symposium: The Role of Nutrition in Infant and Toddler Brain and Behavioral Development. Nutr Neurosci 11(3):135-143, 2008

2Christie BR, et al: Exercising our brains: how physical activity impacts synaptic plasticity in the dentate gyrus. Neuromolecular Med 10(2):47-58, 2008
3Lange-Asschenfeldt C, Kojda G: Alzheimer's disease, cerebrovascular dysfunction and the benefits of exercise: From vessels to neurons. Exp Gerontol 43(6):499-504, 2008