Author name: rieschirofortbragg

Health Benefits From Daily Gratitude

Can living a life of gratitude improve your health? Several studies found gratitude’s health benefits include:

* improved quality of sleep, 

* better blood pressure control, 

* enhanced immune function, 

* decreased levels of depression and  anxiety, 

* increases in life satisfaction, and so much more!

A recent study revealed cardiac patients at high risk for heart failure who kept a gratitude journal had reduced inflammation and improved biomarkers. Making daily gratitude a part of your healthy lifestyle choices can have a positive impact on your overall health and wellbeing.

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Benefits of Exercise For Cancer Patients

Is exercise beneficial for cancer patients?


Researchers looked at the effects of 30 minutes of high-intensity exercise on 9 men with advanced prostate cancer.  

The study revealed blood levels of anticancer proteins were significantly elevated for up to 30 minutes after exercise, which was associated with a 17% decrease in tumor cell growth.

Although more research is needed, this study supports the benefits of exercise for cancer patients.

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5 Healthy Habits to Reduce Risk for Dementia

How can you prevent the risk for dementia? Since heart health and dementia are closely linked, you can reduce the risk of suffering from dementia by up to 70% when you follow the same healthful habits that help to prevent heart attacks.

5 lifestyle habits to help prevent dementia and heart attacks include:

1-Eating a healthy diet 

2-Daily exercise

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3-Weight loss if overweight

4-No smoking and alcohol

5-Control blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar

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Diet Choices and Hip Fractures

Did you know dietary choices decrease the chances of a woman suffering a hip fracture?

According to researchers, small dietary changes could potentially have a positive impact on bone health.

A recent study found women who consumed higher amounts of protein (25 grams more per day than average) saw their risk of hip fracture decrease by 14 % compared to their peers in the study. 

And for every daily cup of tea or coffee they drank, their risk dropped by 4%.

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Pediatric Drug Testing Awareness

Harry Shirkey, a medical practitioner, coined the term “therapeutic orphans” over 40 years ago to describe how children are overlooked in medical research and his observations remain true today. Despite the best efforts of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), nothing has really changed.

Guesstimating Medicine
The fact is that the majority of drugs given to children have never been tested specifically for them. Physicians are prescribing drugs based on a “best guess” as to the dosage, efficacy and even safety. It’s becoming clearer to federal regulators and physicians alike that children are not just “small adults”. With their bodies in different stages of development, they process medication differently: sometimes faster, sometimes slower and sometimes turning it into poison. Their body chemistry has not fully matured and yet adult drugs are being prescribed to children on a regular basis despite these facts. Dr. Joseph M. Wiley, Chief of Pediatrics at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore says, “If you extrapolate from an adult dose to a pediatric dose, you may be right… you may be wrong.”

The Path to Pediatric Testing
The road to pediatric drug testing has been a rocky one. Nobody wants to use children as guinea pigs, but the problem remains that drugs are being given to children in potentially unsafe doses. The FDA understands that giving medications to children for which there is only adult data available could harm children, considering the fact that they have dosing concerns and side-effect risks that differ from adults. Their latest legislation has made some headway in the battle against the lack of proper labeling; yet it still fails to completely overcome the absence of research, particularly in the older medications.

This year, the Government Accountability Office said that only one-third of the drugs prescribed for children have been studied and labeled for pediatric use. The pediatric research that has been done includes some frightening results: of the older drugs just recently being studied in children, 87% were being improperly prescribed. Children were getting medicine that didn’t work at all. were being under-dosed, were being overdosed, or were being exposed to some possibly deadly side-effects. Dr. Dianne Murphy of the FDA’s Office of Pediatric Therapeutics had this to say, “We found out that you can’t predict how kids are going to handle things.” The problem is that once a medication has been approved for use in adults, it can legally be prescribed to anyone for any reason; despite the lack of pediatric testing or proper labeling.

Off-Label Prescribing
The most recent research lists the following top ten drugs being prescribed to children without proper
labeling: Albuterol, Phenergan, Ampicillin, Auralgan , Lotison, Prozac, Intal, Zoloft, Ritalin and Alupent.
This common practice of prescribing medicine to children that has only been tested and labeled for adult use is called “off-label prescribing” and it is done by physicians everyday. A recent study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent medicine showed that off-label drugs were used in nearly 80% of major children’s hospitals in 2004.

What needs to be understood is that “off-label” doesn’t just mean it hasn’t been properly tested on children, but additionally that it may be prescribed for a purpose in which it was never intended. Dr. Murphy says that there are about 200 older drugs that have been studied in children, but new products come on the market all the time and their studies, while underway, will take time to complete. That means a lot of untested medications are made available to doctors for off-label prescribing to children.

The Consequences of Off-Label Prescribing
In hospitals and medical offices, pediatricians write off- label prescriptions everyday with the best of intentions. They make an educated guess about which drug to prescribe and what would be an appropriate dosage for a child of this particular weight and age, hoping they’re right. The problem with this practice is that the children pay the price with the following:

• Unexpected side-effects
• Worsening of the original complaint
• Allergies to the chemicals • Even coma and/or death

Unfortunately, the actual facts in this matter have been difficult to determine. The British Pediatric Surveillance Unit believes this could be due to many factors, including a reluctance to report, even in an anonymous way, the number of deaths due to off-label prescribing of drugs to children. However, the European Medicines Agency believes that there is sufficient evidence that harm actually occurs and is under-reported. What it comes down to is whether a pediatrician’s “best guess” as to dosage and efficacy of a drug is going to be good enough for parents; and whether they should be accepting, in blind faith, every prescription written.

The Chiropractic Factor
Many parents report an improvement in their child’s quality of life after beginning routine, chiropractic care. A healthy central nervous system results in a healthier and stronger immune system, which could mean less prescription drugs or other forms of drug therapy. So, take a moment today to call your chiropractor and schedule a chiropractic screening for you and your children.

Questions to Ask Your Pediatrician
Before accepting a prescription from your pediatrician, be sure to ask the following important questions and then thoughtfully consider whether or not to give your child that chemical.

• Would a wait-and-watch approach be advisable in this instance?
• Is this the only treatment available or do I have options that don’t include drug therapy?
• What are the side-effects of this drug?
• Has the drug been tested for pediatric use?
• Is this the use for which it was intended or are you prescribing this off-label?
• Can we begin with a smaller dosage and then increase it, if necessary?

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How to Treat Chronic Constipation

Do you suffer from chronic constipation?

Debilitating constipation affects about 20% of North Americans and 33 % of people 60 years old and older.

Constipation is largely due to diet, especially a diet high in ultra-processed foods that contain very little or no fiber.

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3 lifestyle changes that can help treat constipation include:

A diet rich  in  whole fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds.

Daily exercise.

Drinking plenty of fluids and water is best.

Remember your best source for everything health is your chiropractor.  

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Our Modern Mental Health

What is wrong with our mental health today? I find it distressing to see how many people are on psychotropic drugs, and how easily they are placed on them. Why? “Why” is my favorite word. If the person is not coping, why? If they have anxiety, why? If they are obsessive/compulsive or bi-polar, why? If they are depressed, why? The brain doesn’t normally operate in a contra-survival way, so if it is, why?

What is depression anyway?
Depression in itself is not a true emotion. It is an amalgamation of many different emotions. When we label something “depression” it takes away the individual’s power. It leaves that person at the effect of rather than having power to change it. If a person instead of saying

“I’m depressed” says “I’m sad” or “I’m lonely or angry or overwhelmed or discouraged; they now have the power to do something about it. Saying you’re depressed takes away the ability to find what’s underlying it. It becomes a statement of fact, rather than something you can do something about.

As you deconstruct the word depression, you may find you’re sad. What are you sad about? Can you do anything about it? Many times, we run into a true emotion and feel there is nothing that can be done about it. But spending time evaluating the possibilities or seeing a counselor or even talking to a friend about it can enable you to come up with solutions. But if you don’t take the time to evaluate how you actually feel, you don’t have the power to do anything about it!

Why are we no longer allowed to feel?
Why, when we feel an emotion, are we so quick to take a medication to soften or “eliminate” it? Taking responsibility for it is one reason. It’s much easier to bury the emotion than have to deal with it. It takes guts to deal with your emotions; to take an honest look at yourself. It takes even more guts to take action to change something you may not like. Burying your emotions, or masking them with drugs only complicates and compounds things. As you become more and more distressed, here come the pharmaceutical companies to the rescue! They have newer, better, more “designer drugs” to help you cope with the ever worsening mental state. Where does it end?

I remember a couple of years ago after a friend of mine died, his wife went to see her medical doctor for a routine check. He asked how she was and when she informed him that her husband had just died and she was grieving, but otherwise okay, he offered her medication. She refused saying she was okay, that grieving was a natural part of a loss and she’d be okay. He again offered her medication saying she didn’t have to feel anything! She again restated her desire to go through the natural process of grieving, at which time he became more forceful, almost angrily, about the drugs. She finally had to get forceful about her desire not to take the drugs to the point of getting in a heated argument about it!

Human emotions are meant to be felt. That’s why we have them. They are a normal, and healthy way of dealing with an imperfect life. Life is not meant to be monotone. It is not meant to be perfect. We (cont. on back)

will always have a tangle of problems, with their associated emotions, to go through. It’s what strengthens us and defines us. So what is happening when emotions go longer than expected or become extreme?

Our lifestyles have set the stage for out-of-control emotions.
We eat foods that are devoid of the nutrients necessary for proper brain chemistry. We eat foods full of chemicals that interfere with is proper brain chemistry. Although we don’t know what good brain chemistry looks like, we know what’s missing when certain emotions go out of control. But since the brain normally makes these chemicals, and would prefer that these chemicals stay in balance, we should be asking why would it stop? What’s interfering? What’s missing?

Taking a drug to replace the missing chemicals has helped millions of people. But given the choice, most people if they knew there were things they could do to encourage the brain or body to produce their own would prefer the later. This is where you need the help of a natural health care provider that knows how to assist this process. By restoring health to the individual, we restore healthy brains chemistry. The same things needed to rid the body of disease, helps the brain too. Things like proper nutrition, exercise, quality sleep and much more.

A word of caution.
I know of many, many individuals who take psychotropic drugs but don’t want to. So at some point they decide they can just go off them. So they do. The result is, they end up right back on them again, with the opinion they’re on them for life. However, they failed to do something absolutely critical. They failed to handle the underlying cause of the problem in the first place. If you pull the rug out from under yourself without providing another means of support, you will crash. If you don’t take care of the reason – either brain chemistry or the deconstructed reason for your emotion, you will crash because nothing has changed. This is where professional guidance is essential! The people dispensing the drugs have only a small handful of tools at their disposal for this. Try someone with a different approach if you want a better way of handling your emotional distress. We are all out for your good. Those people truly interested in your well-being don’t care how you handle your emotions – they don’t care if you take drugs or take responsibility for handling the problem. As long as you take action and get well.

So, if you want to get well, it’s up to you to take the action.

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How To Break a Sugar Addiction

Are you trying to break your sugar addiction? 


Sugar is added to everything, not just candies and desserts. Studies continue to show not only is sugar addictive but also has a  negative impact on the brain. Daily sugar consumption impairs memory, learning, decision making, impulse control, and more.

Research now shows reducing added sugars from about 27% of daily calories to 10% can begin to improve your health in as little as 10 days. Some ways to break your sugar addiction include intermittent fasting, and replacing calories from sugar and refined carbs with vegetables and healthy fats

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Chiropractic Care Improves Chronic Lumbar Disc Herniation Patients

What is the best way to get rid of lower back and leg pain from chronic lumbar disc herniation?

The incidence of a herniated disc averages 5 to 20 cases per 1000 adults annually, most commonly in people ages 30 to 50, and affects men twice as often as women.

A study published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics of 148 patients suffering with acute and chronic lumbar disc herniation showed that after chiropractic care at 3 months, 90.5% of patients were improved and 88% improved at 1 year.

Remember your best source for everything health is your chiropractor.  

Visit your chiropractor regularly and make sure your nervous system is functioning 100%.

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Chiropractor Fort Bragg – Chronic Lumbar Disc Herniation Patient

Low back pain and leg pain is all too common and most treatments are ineffective and often times dangerous. One treatment option has been shown to be the most effective and the best part is it’s safe. Watch this video now to find out your chances of having this very painful condition and what can be done about it. Just click on the Red More Button in your email or the image below if you are on our website.

This information is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the practitioner that you received it from. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice of any kind. HealthNews assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information only. HealthNews encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional.

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