June 07

Welcome to our office's Chiropractic newsletter. We'd like to entertain you, inform you and even inspire you a little.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

·TMJ and Chiropractic

·High Intensity Exercise Far More Effective for Children

·Ear infections usually clear up on their own

·Males: Get your Testosterone checked

·Why butter is better

·Chiropractic helps kids with ADHD (TV news report)

·How to help avoid Pancreatic Cancer

·Sunlight is healing

·Interesting article in USA Today

·Babies fed breast milk are smarter…

·Do You really need Vitamins

·Humor

TMJ and Chiropractic

If you place your fingers in front of each ear and open your jaw, you’ll feel lots of wiggling. This is where your skull’s temporal bone attaches to your mandible (jaw): the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). Lots of ligaments, cartilage, fascia, discs, muscles, nerves and blood vessels run in, around and through it.

That is why, when the TMJ joint is misaligned, you can have all kinds of problems: trouble opening the mouth wide; clicking or popping sounds; a locked jaw; headache; hearing loss; tinnitus (ringing in the ears); throat fullness; facial swelling; shoulder, cheek or jaw pain; neck ache; facial nerve pain; ear or eye pain; dental pain; nausea; blurred vision and dizziness. (1)

Spine and TMJ problems appear related and for that reason more TMJ sufferers are benefiting from chiropractic care. (2) By relieving pressure on the spine and cranial bones, chiropractic may relieve or correct TMJ problems. (3)

Conversely, an unhealthy skull/jaw alignment can put great stress upon the spinal column. There are documented cases of dental problems that, once corrected, have helped chiropractic patients to better hold their spinal adjustments. (4-5)

All TMJ sufferers need a chiropractic checkup. Anyone who has been to the dentist should follow up with a quick stop at their chiropractor.

High Intensity Exercise Far More Effective for Children

The childhood obesity problem is reaching unbelievable points in today’s world and in my opinion there are many different reasons for this (parenting choices, TV, Bad Information, etc…). I really believe that it is our job to teach our children the correct way of living or we are setting them up for a future with Heart Disease, Cancer, Diabetes and the list goes on.

Well finally people are looking into how to slow this mess we have gotten ourselves into. The study out of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 84, No. 2, 299-303, August 2006) found that children that worked out with Higher Intensity had lower body fat levels. They also found out (No big surprise) that the longer you did the high intensity training the more body fat was lost and that there overall Cardiovascular fitness levels were better also.

Again, this is more of the same. We ran an article in the March 07 eNewsletter on high intensity exercise. Long story short: We need to use things such as lifting weights and interval training along with other good choices (food, chiropractic, etc…)

Ear infections usually clear up on their own

In a study of 283 children given prescriptions for antibiotics, two-thirds of the children’s parents delayed getting the prescription filled for 48 hours. And then they never filled the prescription – the kids were all right.

Researchers studying the data discovered that the children who did not receive antiibiotics recovered at the same rate as children who started taking them immediately. (6) According to USA Today, many parents and doctors these days are taking a “watchful waiting” approach with children older than 2 who have ear infections, the most common childhood illness. Many are forgoing antibiotics because of worries about drug resistance and evidence that most ear infections will heal on their own. (7) And finally, according to research from the New England Journal of Medicine, “Inserting tubes in children with persistent fluid in the ear does not lead to better developmental outcomes as the children age.” (8)

Note: When children receive antibiotics for ear infections they get more infections. When they recover on their own (without drugs) their resistance improves.

Males: Get your Testosterone Checked

Testosterone get’s a lot of hype these days. From things like steroids and Barry Bonds to things like anti-aging everybody has heard of testosterone. But now it’s been linked to Death! A study in the one of my favorite journals The Archives of Internal Medicine (Vol. 166 No. 15, Aug 14/28, 2006) looked at males over the age of 40 years old with no history of prostate cancer. They found that males with lower testosterone had almost a 15% higher chance of dying than males with normal testosterone.

This is just another reason to get your lab values tested, especially if you are over the age of 40. You can have a saliva test or you can have blood drawn. Either way it is important and I check mine every year or two.

Why butter is better – from the Weston A. Price Foundation

Many people around the globe have valued butter for its life-sustaining properties for millennia. When Dr. Weston Price studied native diets in the 1930's he found that butter was a staple in the diets of many supremely healthy peoples.American folk wisdom recognized that children raised on butter were robust and sturdy but that children given skim milk during their growing years were pale and thin, with "pinched" faces.

Does butter cause disease? On the contrary, butter protects us against many diseases. Heart disease was rare in America at the turn of the century. Between 1920 and 1960, the incidence of heart disease rose precipitously to become America's #1 killer while during the same period butter consumption plummeted from eighteen lbs. per person per year to four. It doesn't take a Ph.D. in statistics to conclude that butter is not a cause. Actually butter contains many nutrients that protect us from heart disease. First among these is vitamin A which is needed for the health of the thyroid and adrenal glands, both of which play a role in maintaining the proper functioning of the heart and cardiovascular system. Abnormalities of the heart and larger blood vessels occur in babies born to vitamin A deficient mothers. Butter is America's best and most easily absorbed source of vitamin A.

Butter contains lecithin, a substance that assists in the proper assimilation and metabolism of cholesterol and other fat constituents. (Margarine on the other hand is one of the chief causes of cancer and heart disease.) See the entire article at www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/butter.html.

One key to remember here: Butter is high in Saturated fat and Saturated fat can raise your cholesterol levels. If you’re battling weight issues or if you have cholesterol levels that are way out of this world you are better off staying away from any of these and getting the benefits of raw milk through PaleoMeal.

TV news report – Chiropractic helping kids with ADHD

WBZ Boston had this great report entitled Chiropractic Adjustments Helping Kids with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). See it at

http://wbztv.com/specialreports/local_story_113193009.html

How to Help Avoid Pancreatic Cancer

Most of you know by now how much we should avoid processed foods and sugary foods. A recent study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 84, No. 5, 1171-1176, November 2006) looked at males and females between the ages of 45 and 83 with no history of pancreatic cancer. They then took the people and looked for either high sugar foods or sugar sweetened foods in their diet and assessed the risk for pancreatic cancer in these people.

They found that the more sugar sweetened or high sugar foods that were ingested by these people the higher chance they had of getting pancreatic cancer.

This goes right along with the article in last month’s eNewsletter entitled “The Stress and Cancer link.”

Sunlight is healing

Vitamin D has been studied for its ability to prevent cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, and colon cancer – and new research shows it might fight pancreatic cancer – the 4^th leading cause of cancer deaths in the US. Just a few minutes of natural sunlight helps your body synthesize vitamin D. Other sources of Vitamin D are eggs (buy organic from free range chickens, of course), liver, fatty fish such as salmon, sardines, herring and raw milk.We don’t recommend pasteurized, low fat or skim milk as good sources since artificially added Vitamin D is not in its natural balance and is not used as well by your body. The natural sources are the best.

Also, remember that sunlight is great for you but you should not get burnt!

Interesting Article in USA Today

I found this article online a few weeks back and thought that I would share it with you all. It is a list of Senator’s and how much pharmaceutical companies donated to them over the past few years. Next to the amount donated it has a yes or no by it to represent their vote for a bill that would allow cheaper drugs in the U.S. A “YES” vote means that they want the bill defeated and a “NO” vote means that they want the bill to pass. This is just one reason that I think that the pharmaceutical industry has too much power in this country.

Here is the link

It is interesting to note that IA senator Chuck Grassley is on the list as he is one of the biggest critics of the FDA in the Senate.

Babies fed breast milk are smarter, have less bed wetting and show brain development improvements

A study in Pediatrics finds that premature children fed breast milk in the hospital did better on tests of mental development later in life than did those fed only formula.

Of 1,035 premature babies, one-quarter were fed only formula. The researchers found that on the average, the babies given breast milk scored higher on tests of mental development when they were 18 months old than the babies fed formula only.

No big surprise here folks. As I am sure everybody know by now that you should at least try to breast feed. Breast feeding helps support the babies immunes system, give’s them beneficial bacteria (probiotics) helps their IQ, and helps them handle stress.

Do You Really Need Vitamins

I cannot tell you how many times I hear that Question. Truth is I wish none of us needed vitamins but the problem is our diet’s all stink. In a perfect world we would get 100% of our nutrients from our diet but that obviously isn’t happening.

A pretty cool article The Lancet (November 7, 1992, Vol. 340) took 96 elderly persons and gave half the group vitamin and trace minerals and the other half a placebo pill. What did they find? Well

1)Infection related illness was far less in the supplement group (23 vs. 48)

2)Even small amounts of supplementation resulted in an increased immune system

3)Older and younger adults all had similar cell mediated results

If you want to see the summary of supplements that I take I encourage you to look at my write up in the Nov. 06 eNewsletter entitled “The supplements I take and Why.”

Humor

 

References

1. Boniver R. Temporomandibular joint dysfunction in whiplash injuries: association with tinnitus and vertigo. Int Tinnitus J. 2002;8(2):129-131.

2. Raphael KG, Klausner JJ, Nayak S, Marbach JJ. Complementary and alternative therapy use by patients with myofascial temporomandibular disorders. J Orofac Pain. 2003;17(1):36-41.

3. Alcantara J, Plaugher G, Klemp DD, Salem C. Chiropractic care of a patient with temporomandibular disorder and atlas subluxation. JMPT. 2002;25(1):63-70.

4. Chinappi AS & Getzoff H. The dental-chiropractic cotreatment of structural disorders of the jaw and temporomandibular joint dysfunction. JMPT. 1995;18(7):476-481.
5. Curl D. Chiropractic, dentistry, and cervical adjustments. Dynamic Chiropractic. August 29, 1990;21.

6.Spiro DM et al. Wait-and-see prescription for the treatment of acute otitis media: a randomized controlled trial.JAMA. 2006;296(10):1235-1241.

7. USA Today.December 12, 2006.

8. New York Times.January 30, 2007.