Peaches are in Season!
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Here’s a Healthy Muffin Recipe for Back to School!
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Taking Responsibility for Your Health
We had to share a great blog post today from elsewhere on the web! We hope you will read and enjoy!
No one else is responsible for your health and your body, except for you. No-one knows your body like you do.
You simply cannot delegate your health to anyone else and still expect to stay vibrantly well and healthy.
If you don’t take personal responsibility for creating your health, here is a very frightening, but real possibility… the results you get in your health are going to make someone else happy, but not you!
Food companies want you to become addicted to their highly refined, highly processed fake foods. Diet companies want you to eat their diet foods. Big pharma wants you to be on prescription drugs.
These profit-driven companies are very happy to take your money but they will not take responsibility for the quality of health that you experience. If you hand over your health to them, in the hope that their illusory advertising promises are real, you may be faced with the possibility of living out a life filled with disease, food addiction, frustration, stress, anxiety, and unhappiness…
Taking responsibility for your health gives you food freedom.
You can create an incredible sense of ‘freedom around your food’, when you begin to look at your diet and your health. When I awoke to the concept of taking responsibility for the food I ate and the thoughts I had, I started making vastly different choices for myself. I started reading food labels and studying them. I started getting proactive; asking different questions, shopping differently and eating differently.
Here are three things you can do today to begin taking responsibility for your creating your health.
1. Create an enjoyable and sustainable relationship with food.
When I began to heal my body, I knew I was going to make some changes to the way I ate, along with the way that I treated myself. I spent time dedicated to finding a way of eating that would be sustainable for me, based on my goals, food preferences, and lifestyle.
I asked myself the question, “Can I see myself eating like this tomorrow, next week and even next year?” When I found a style of eating that worked for me, I kept it and continued to refine it as my health journey progressed. With a few minor adjustments along the way, it is still the way I eat today – almost 12 years later!
Take care to eat foods that are as close to their natural state as you can, (with minimum intervention by man or machines and no ikky added chemicals). Primarily I ate a plant-based diet, high in whole grains, vegetables and fruits diet that were local, seasonal and organic where possible.
Along with eating sustainably, another thing that worked for me was moving away from the idea of deprivation. Since I loved food, I knew that I needed to change my focus from the rhetoric of dieting dogma and the idea of total elimination to something far bigger and more exciting.
2. Integrate my little-known but powerful ’80-20 Rule’.
While I was searching for a way to eat that allowed me to enjoy my food and still be healthy I stumbled upon the concept of ‘the 80:20 Rule’ and I decided to apply it to what I was learning about food.
Simply put, I began to eat about 80% real, natural foods and 20% lightly processed foods. This allowed me the flexibility to enjoy healthier versions of all of my favorite foods. I loved eating nutritious food that was good for me, tasted delicious and fulfilled and satiated me.
Today I wouldn’t want to eat or live any other way!
3. Take responsibility for detoxifying your body gently.
Another key distinction was that I started paying attention to the quality of food. I started to notice that some food was more processed and higher in toxicity than others. I began to favor food that was less processed and therefore had fewer toxins in it. As I reduced the toxic load I was ingesting, it allowed my body to begin its’ own natural process of detoxification and self-healing. As I began the process of gentle detoxification, my energy levels surged and to my delight, my waistline began to reduce…
Over time, I stopped eating all fake foods. This included processed and manufactured foods such as fast-foods, artificial flavorings, colorings, preservatives, additives, processed and refined white flour, white sugar, high corn fructose syrup (HFCS) or glucose-fructose syrup and all dangerous trans-fats.
You don’t have to make radical changes overnight (in fact I recommend that you don’t!). Instead, take your time to explore and find healthier substitutes for your favorite “fake foods.” Make your changes slowly but surely. Take baby steps to begin cleaning up your diet.
How to get started.
You do not have to be a medical doctor or a dietician to know how to get healthy or to take positive steps in the direction of taking responsibility for your wellbeing.
There are so many easy things, that anyone can do, that can radically transform your life, just like it did mine. Remember that claiming back your health is journey. Just take one more step, and then another. Make the choice to take responsibility to find what foods work for your body and enjoy the process of carving out your personal path to vibrant health and wellbeing.
I did it, and I know that you can too.
Today’s post was written by Katrina Love Senn and has been shared from the following website: http://www.katrinalovesenn.com/index.php/articles/natural-health/82-who-is-responsible-for-your-health
A Healthy Summer Salad!
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Desserts Can Be “Berry” Healthy!
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15-Minute Asian Rice Salad
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Kale & Brussels Sprout Salad with Walnuts, Parmesan and Lemon-Mustard Dressing
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Good Workplace Ergonomics Matter! Lessons from Medical Lab Technicians
Are the bad ergonomics of your workplace causing you chronic back or neck pain? If so, you’re not alone. Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMSDs) are one of the leading causes of occupational injuries and disability throughout the world. In the United States, WRMSDs cause over 647,000 days of lost work every year and result in workman’s compensation claims costing anywhere from $45 billion to $60 billion. They also account for 34% of all work-related injuries and illnesses. Examples of WRMSDs include chronic back and neck pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, sprains, and hernias. While you might assume that these types of injuries are the result of unrelated incidents or isolated situations playing out in many different environments across the country on any given day, there is actually a pattern. Many of them are caused by badly designed workplaces.
This pattern became evident in a study recently published in the Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation. The researchers wanted to analyze the postures of workers in a high-tech medical laboratory to determine the prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders and to investigate the relationship of these musculoskeletal disorders to workers’ individual factors, their work characteristics, and their working postures.
They gathered data from the medical lab technicians, using the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ, a standardized scale for measuring musculoskeletal disorders and occupational health), the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS, a type of self-reporting measurement), and RULA (Rapid Upper Limb Assessment, a self-reported scale by which workers assess the postures that most accurately reflect their working positions). They then assessed the positions that the technicians’ lab workstations and equipment forced them to adopt for long periods of time each day and compared them with the technicians’ medical problems.
What they found was that poor lab workstation design was causing musculoskeletal problems in 73.3% of the workers. The poorer their posture was on the VAS and RULA scales, the more musculoskeletal problems they had. In addition, there was a significant difference between pre-work and post-shift reports of neck, lower back, and knee pain. In summation, the workplace design was definitely causing the WRMSDs.
There is a very real possibility that your own workplace is just as likely to put you at an increased risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders. Symptoms of WRMSDs are not limited to back and neck pain—they also include joint discomfort, muscle tightening and swelling, stiffness, and feelings of numbness or “pins and needles.”
If you or your fellow workers have noticed such symptoms, you should report them to your employer and expect that they will take steps to correct any problem-causing ergonomics. In the interim, you can take some steps on your own to protect yourself from WRMSDs. You don’t have to sit at a desk that is too high or low or in a chair that puts you in an uncomfortable and unhealthy position. Modern desks and their accompanying desk chairs have controls that can be used to lower or raise them. The same applies to computers or other equipment you use every day—you can put your monitor on top of some books so that it’s more in your line of sight or make other changes to help make your workspace more ergonomic. A good place to start looking for tips on how to improve the ergonomics of your office workspace is the Occupational Safety & Health Administration Computer Workstations guide. OSHA also has similar guides for other types of work environments.
3-Ingredient Frozen Pops
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Chiropractic Patients Less Likely to Suffer Drug Reactions
Most people experience back pain, and many of these patients use drugs for pain relief. A 2014 study1 found that of older adults with chronic back pain, 72% of them were using some kind of analgesic to help cope with the pain. Another study2 found that 32% of back pain patients in their analysis were using prescribed opiates for relief.
It’s unfortunate that so many patients depend on drugs for musculoskeletal aches and pains, especially when chiropractic is an effective and safe way to not only relieve pain, but also prevent future pain episodes.
Now a new study3 shows that chiropractic also is linked to a lower risk of adverse drug reactions in patients with back pain. In this study, the authors looked at the medical records of over 19,000 adults in New Hampshire who had at least two doctor visits for back pain. 9.810 of these patients used chiropractic care; 9,343 patients used regular medical care. The researchers analyzed the number of adverse drug effects (ADEs) experienced by the two groups.
The authors found:
- Younger patients were more likely to use chiropractic care.
- Non-chiropractic patients tended to have more health problems, in general, when compared to those who used chiropractic.
- Chiropractic patients experienced 51% fewer adverse drug reactions (.4% vs .9%) compared to medical patients.
- 15 non-chiropractic patients were diagnosed with drug withdrawal, while zero chiropractic patients had drug withdrawal.
This study had some limitations, as the study data didn’t included details about the types of drugs the patients were using or how frequently they were using medications. But the authors conclude that the “utilization of chiropractic care may be associated with reduced risk of ADEs; however, no causal relationship has been established.”
Another study by the same group of researchers found that chiropractic patients were 55% less likely to be prescribed opiates for their pain and had lower health care bills.
With the opiate epidemic in the US, it’s critical that we find non-opiate approaches to back pain treatment. Chiropractic is about restoring health without the use of drugs. By helping the body heal naturally, chiropractic can help you stay well and help you avoid unnecessary adverse drug reactions, too!
- Enthoven WT, Scheele J, Bierma-Zeinstra SM, Bueving HJ, Bohnen AM, Peul WC, van Tulder MW, Berger MY, Koes BW, Luijsterburg PA. Analgesic use in older adults with back pain: the BACE study. Pain Medicine 2014 Oct;15(10):1704-14. Doi: 10.1111/pme.12515.
- Ashworth J, Green DJ, Dunn KM, Jordan KP. Opioid use among low back pain patients in primary care: Is opioid prescription associated with disability at 6-month follow-up? Pain. 2013 Jul;154(7):1038-44. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2013.03.011.
- Whedon JM, Toler AWJ, Goehl JM, Kazal LA. Association Between Utilization of Chiropractic Services for Treatment of Low Back Pain and Risk of Adverse Drug Events. Journal of Manipulative & Physiological Therapeutics 2018 May 26. pii: S0161-4754(17)30136-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jmpt.2018.01.004.