Healthy Foods – Page 7

Getting to Know Your Vitamin A

March 1, 2016 oblanderchiropractic

carrots-200-300 Can eating lots of carrots really improve your eyesight? Not exactly, but carrots do contain something called provitamin A carotenoids. These are pigments found in some plants that can be converted by the body into vitamin A. And vitamin A actually is important to your vision.

Vitamin A helps the eye convert light into a signal that can be transmitted to the brain, allowing people to see in low-light environments. In addition, the cornea (the clear front of the eye) can literally disappear if the body does not get enough vitamin A. However, binging on carrots is unlikely to improve most people’s vision. In part, this is because your body will stop converting provitamin A carotenoids (particularly beta carotene) into vitamin A as soon as there is enough in your system. But all this doesn’t mean that vitamin A doesn’t have lots of other uses. Vitamin A is also helpful to bone growth and to your immune system.

As with other vitamins, there are different forms of vitamin A. One of the forms that is most usable to the body is called retinol, which is found in liver, eggs, and milk. One of the most common provitamin A carotenoids that the body converts easily to retinol is beta carotene. Beta carotene is found in yellow and orange fruits and vegetables including carrots, sweet potatoes, spinach, and cantaloupe. Vitamin A is also one of the vitamins often used to fortify breakfast cereals.

Vitamin A is fat soluble, which means that the body stores it, mostly in the liver. That also means that it is possible to build up toxic levels of Vitamin A. This rarely happens from food sources because (as noted above) the body will slow down the conversion of beta carotene as it builds up supplies of vitamin A. When people do get vitamin A toxicity, it is usually from taking too much in supplement form. Toxic levels of vitamin A can cause liver problems, central nervous system problems, reduced bone density and birth defects.

True vitamin A deficiency is rare in the US, but common in countries where malnourishment is widespread. When it occurs, the consequences can be quite severe. This is because the body uses vitamin A to make various internal tissues, such as those lining the eye, lungs, and intestinal tract. When these linings are weakened by vitamin A deficiency, it is easier for harmful bacteria to penetrate them and thus, people with vitamin A deficiency are more prone to infections, illness, blindness, and respiratory problems.

Aside from those who are malnourished, other people who may be prone to vitamin A deficiency include those who consume large amounts of alcohol and those with certain metabolic disorders that affect how fat and other nutrients are absorbed by the body.

As of this writing, the Recommended Daily Intake for Vitamin A is 2,310 IU for females and 3,000 IU for males.

It goes without saying that good nutrition is critical to your overall health and well-being. At the same time, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest research and guidance. If you have questions or concerns about your diet or about supplements, please call or visit our office today. We’re here to help!

Ever Wonder Who’s Really Responsible for Your Healthcare? You Are!

February 9, 2016 oblanderchiropractic

It’s hardly surprising that people take different approaches to healthcare depending on their situation. After all, being in an auto accident creates a different set of priorities than expecting a first child. And discovering that you have a chronic medical condition is different from recovering from a fall down the stairs. However, the themes of prevention and early intervention are becoming more and more important as society addresses the healthcare costs associated with longer lifespans and so-called “lifestyle diseases”.

Need evidence? At the level of national healthcare policy, the Affordable Care Act places a new emphasis on preventive care by requiring that certain services be covered. Many private insurers and healthcare systems are taking an even more active role in advising their subscribers about what types of tests they should get at various ages and how to manage medications for the best results. Even employers are introducing or expanding workplace wellness programs aimed at preventing common health problems.

With all of these public- and private-sector organizations involved in healthcare with a capital “H”, it’s tempting to view health and wellness as an institutional challenge—a problem for someone else to solve. But this misses a very, very important point. No one has a greater stake in your own health and wellness than YOU do! This means that no one has a stronger interest in prevention and early detection.

Reasons Your Musculoskeletal Health May Need More Attention than You Think

A variety of injuries and health conditions can compromise your musculoskeletal system, resulting in pain and reduced function of bones, muscles and joints. And the regular wear and tear we associate with aging can also reduce our strength, stamina, balance, flexibility and coordination over time. For this reason, many people simply accept the onset of back, neck and joint pain as an inevitable result of getting older. But the truth is that we do have some control over how well our musculoskeletal system ages. By adopting healthy lifestyle habits related to nutrition, exercise, sleep and regular chiropractic care, we can avoid or delay certain types of common health problems.

How Doctors of Chiropractic Help Reduce Back Pain and Restore Mobility

The spine is a complex structure that is made up of bones, joints and the surrounding musculature. Doctors of chiropractic use specialized manipulation and mobilization techniques (often referred to as “adjustments”) to restore proper spinal alignment, thereby reducing pain and restoring mobility.

Taking a Holistic View of Health and Embracing Prevention

Although your immediate motivation in visiting a chiropractor may be to get pain relief without the risks of drugs or surgery, chiropractic treatment can also improve your overall health and longer-term quality of life. Chiropractic physicians are trained to take a holistic view of health and place a very high value on prevention. In part, this is because we recognize that our patients’ day-to-day decisions and behaviors have a cumulative effect on their musculoskeletal health as well as their general well-being. Prevention is something you can do for yourself!

Eat a healthy diet.
Keep moving and live an active lifestyle.
Lose weight if needed.
Maintain proper posture while sitting and standing.
Avoid high-heeled shoes, heavy backpacks and purses.
Lift correctly, using your legs instead of your back. Never lift anything that is heavier than 25% of your body weight and do not twist while lifting.
Get enough sleep.
Don’t use tobacco.
Moderate your use of alcohol.
Be proactive in obtaining chiropractic care for your back and overall health

Taking responsibility for your own health—and healthcare—means learning everything you can about your options and taking action. Call or visit our office today. We can help!

Understanding Inflammation

February 4, 2016 oblanderchiropractic

Your body employs a number of powerful biological responses to keep you alive and healthy. Some of these responses can be triggered without much notice, but others are difficult to ignore. One of these more obvious responses is inflammation. Inflammation has an important role to play in the body’s ability to heal, but in some situations it can become problematic. Read on to understand more about this important function.

What is Inflammation?

When your body undergoes an injury or encounters an infection or irritant, it uses inflammation to aid in the healing process. The body releases chemical substances into the tissue around the injury or infection, which allows blood more access to the problematic area. The skin around the inflamed area often grows red and might feel warm to the touch. Inflammation can also cause pain as the released chemicals stimulate nerve endings and make the area more sensitive. This sensitivity prompts you to give the injured area plenty of rest, helping to improve the body’s ability to heal.

Inflammation Gone Awry

In the short term, inflammation provides a valuable service. However, inflammation can become chronic, meaning that it can last for months or even years. Chronic inflammation can occur if the body’s natural systems fail to address the root cause of the inflammatory response, or if the immune response mistakenly starts to attack healthy tissue. This type of inflammation plays a role in a variety of chronic conditions, such as asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and ulcerative colitis. Inflammation can also interfere with your life by causing congestion, fatigue, high blood pressure, allergies, and weight gain.

While everyone experiences inflammation from time to time in response to injury or irritation, some lifestyle factors can make you more prone to unnecessary inflammation. A study conducted by the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia found that sleep deprivation raises the body’s levels of inflammatory markers, substances in the blood that show that inflammation is present. People who are overweight and obese also tend to show higher levels of these markers. However, a study from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, found that postmenopausal women who were overweight or obese showed a measurable decrease in inflammation markers when they lost 5% of their body weight.

Keeping Inflammation Under Control

If you believe you are suffering from uncontrolled inflammation, check in with your primary care provider to rule out any life-threatening conditions. Then, schedule a time to talk with your chiropractor. A 2010 study by the University of Quebec at Montreal found evidence that chiropractic manipulation can cause inflammation markers to normalize. A chiropractor can also make lifestyle suggestions to help make sure your diet, exercise and sleep levels support a healthy inflammation response.

Inflammation is a very good thing in the right circumstances, but it can cause many problems in the wrong ones. There are solutions, however, so there is no need to keep living with painful chronic inflammation.

Why Better Nutrition Alone Won’t Stop the Obesity Epidemic

January 21, 2016 oblanderchiropractic

It’s no secret that many Americans’ eating habits have taken a turn for the worse over the past 20 years in terms of the quantity, quality and combination of foods we eat. A number of diet-related trends have converged to help create a perfect storm of expanding waistlines:

Beginning in the mid-1970s, government nutritional guidance (backed by the limited scientific data that was available at the time) triggered a nationwide shift away from foods with saturated fat (such as milk, eggs and meat). However, it also inadvertently ushered in the age of “fat-free” marketing that gradually drove Americans toward a diet high in complex carbohydrates.
The rise of convenience-oriented packaged foods made home cooking seem unnecessary. As a result, a generation (or maybe two) grew up without planning meals, shopping for ingredients or preparing food. While it’s easy to focus on the loss of these basic skills, something else was lost, too—control over the contents of the food itself. In adopting diets built on ready-made meals, American ouseholds left decisions about fat, sugar and salt as well as chemical additives to the chefs in corporate kitchens.
A new culture of snacking evolved that made eating a sort of parallel pastime—something that was done almost without thinking alongside other day-to-day activities. Plus, grab-and-go packaged food meant that the dining room was now anywhere you happened to be.
Supersize portions, value meals and double desserts slowly changed Americans’ ideas about how much food should be eaten at a single sitting. For much of the population, the new normal included many more calories than would have been common in the 1970s or 1980s.

But for all the evidence that the American diet has played a prominent role in the current obesity epidemic, there is also evidence that another factor may be even more important.

On average, Americans are LESS PHYSICALLY ACTIVE THAN AT ANY OTHER TIME in our history. Sweeping changes in the kinds of work we do and the way we do it, along with changes in how we get from place to place and how we spend our leisure time have meant that much of the population just doesn’t move around very much. We increasingly lead very sedentary lives.

A recent study published in the American Journal of Medicine drives home this point. According to researchers at Stanford University who analyzed 20 years of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a very sharp drop in leisure-time physical activity may be responsible for the general upward trend in obesity rates.

Dr. Uri Ladabaum, Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and lead investigator, noted that total daily calorie, fat, carbohydrate and protein consumption hasn’t actually changed much over the past 20 years but that the general level of physical activity has. “At the population level, we found a significant association between the level of leisure-time physical activity, but not daily caloric intake, and the increases in both BMI and waist circumference.”

The fall-off in physical activity over the past two decades is truly striking:

During the 1988-1994 period, the number of female American adults reporting no physical activity was 19.1%. During the 2009-2010 period, it was 51.7%.
The percentage of American men reporting no physical activity grew from 11.4% in the 1988-1994 period to 43.5% in the 2009-2010 period.

Over the same time frame, the incidence of obesity across the country has grown. While the average BMI has increased across the board, the most dramatic change has been among woman between the ages of 18 and 39.

An earlier study reported in the December 2013 Mayo Clinic Proceedings painted a similarly grim picture. Based on two years’ worth of data collected from sensors attached to 2,600 people, investigators concluded:

Men and women of normal weight exercised vigorously (think jogging or a brisk uphill hike) for less than two minutes a day. They engaged in moderate exercise (yoga or golf, for instance) about 2.5 to 4 hours per week.
By contrast, the average obese American man gets only 3.6 hours of vigorous exercise per YEAR, and the average obese American woman gets only ONE hour of vigorous exercise in the same period of time.

What’s happening here?

According to Edward C. Archer, a researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, “We’ve engineered physical activity out of our daily lives and that’s causing the health disparities that we have in this country.”

There is a very clear relationship between physical activity and your health—including your musculoskeletal health. But it’s also true that there’s a link between your musculoskeletal health and your ability to lead an active lifestyle. If you’re suffering from back, neck or joint pain, it can be very difficult to exercise. This in turn raises your risk of weight gain as well as your risk of other health problems.

We can help relieve musculoskeletal pain and restore your mobility. Just call or visit our office today!

Additional Resources

Lack of exercise, not diet, linked to rise in obesity, Stanford research shows. http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2014/07/lack-of-exercise–not-diet–linked-to-rise-in-obesity–stanford-.html

U.S. mothers, 1965 to 2010: More TV, less housework leading to a more obese population. http://www.sph.sc.edu/news/mothers_inactive.html

‘Get Up!’ or lose hours of your life every day, scientist says. http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-get-up-20140731-story.html

“The Mood Food Connection” Part 1: Emotional Eating

October 23, 2015 oblanderchiropractic

What do you call it when your feelings affect what, when and how you eat? In healthcare circles, we refer to this very common phenomenon as “emotional eating.” Over time, it can become a very destructive pattern that leads to poor nutrition and unhealthy weight gain. If you suspect that you may be prone to emotional eating, the key is to recognize the kinds of circumstances that trigger it and then to use a handful of mindfulness strategies to change your behavior in ways that protect your health.

What Causes Emotional Eating?

Studies have shown that many different feelings can trigger emotional eating—anxiety, loneliness, sadness, boredom and anger, to name a few. While these types of negative emotions can sometimes be triggered by traumatic life events such as the loss of a job, a divorce or a death in the family, they can also be a response to exhaustion or the pressures of daily life. It is also true that many people will over-indulge when they’re celebrating, especially in social settings. This is hardly surprising—after all, we learn early in life to associate food with special occasions like birthdays and holidays.

When we eat for reasons like these (that is, for reasons other than being hungry), we usually do so without thinking very much about it. At its best, emotional eating can be a “food fling”—an occasional indulgence. But at its worst, emotional eating can become a mindless, automatic activity that we use regularly for coping, distraction and avoidance. Food can become both a reward when things are going well and a consolation when they’re not. This is the kind of pattern to look out for.

The Warning Signs

Awareness is the first step. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help determine whether you’re an emotional eater:

Do you often eat when you’re not actually hungry?
Do you think specifically about what you’re going to eat and whether it’s good for you before you eat it?
Do you find yourself especially attracted to sugary, fatty or salty snacks?
Do you often eat without actually tasting the food or forget that you’ve eaten?
Do you often feel guilt or regret after eating between meals?

Now What?

If you suspect that you’re an emotional eater, there are several do-it-yourself behavioral interventions that you can use to break the pattern. In general, these are designed to promote mindfulness, reduce the damage caused by emotional eating or help build new habits.

Record your emotions and read to yourself what you’ve written before you visit the refrigerator or open the pantry door.
Make a list of the things in your life that are stressing you out and write down what you can do to address them productively or to think about them differently instead of using food to distract yourself or avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings.
Wait 15 minutes whenever you feel the urge to eat between meals so that there is time for the impulse to pass and for you to understand what’s triggering it.
Create a healthy snack dish containing cut up vegetables and fruit and keep it where you can get to it during the day. At the same time, make sure that your go-to unhealthy snacks are either stored in inconvenient, hard-to-reach places or aren’t in the house at all.
Substitute a walk around the block, 10 push-ups, 25 sit-ups or 50 jumping jacks for a trip to the refrigerator.
Schedule occasional “snacking date nights ” to give yourself permission to enjoy the foods you love—deliberately and in moderation.
Find new hobbies to help fight boredom in your downtime.

The Comfort Food Trap

When we eat emotionally, we also tend to reach for so-called “comfort foods” that usually contain large amounts of sugar, fat or salt. So it’s a nutritional double-whammy: we’re eating when we’re not really hungry AND we’re also eating calorie-dense foods that aren’t very good for us.

It turns out there are a number of physiological reasons why many of us crave things like chocolate and macaroni and cheese when we’re down. Over the past few years, scientists have found that particular types of food can indeed have a very real influence on our state of mind through mechanisms such as brain chemistry and blood sugar levels. In part two of the Mood Food Connection, we’ll explain in more detail how the foods we eat can affect the way we feel.

If you’re interested in learning more about healthy weight management techniques that help you feel and perform at your best, call or visit our office today! We’re here to help!

Is It Really Possible to “Re-train” Your Taste Buds to Prefer Healthier Foods?

May 14, 2015 oblanderchiropractic

The modern American diet is laden with over-salted, over-sugared and over-processed foods. Sodas, fast food and pre-packaged feasts are all contributing to an epidemic of weight gain and poor health, including chronic cardiovascular and metabolic conditions (such as high blood pressure and diabetes) as well as chronic musculoskeletal problems (such as knee and low back pain).

Most of us recognize that eating a well-balanced, nutritious diet is necessary for maintaining optimal health and managing your weight. But the unfortunate truth is that most of us still crave a juicy cheeseburger or candy bar over a salad. In fact, unhealthy foods can actually be habit-forming for some people, making it difficult for them to make necessary changes.

The good news is that you really can learn to crave more healthful foods while curbing your desire to gobble up junk.

Try, try again.

Although the body does naturally seek out salty and sweet flavors, you didn’t exit the womb needing potato chips for survival. This was a food you tasted and decided you enjoyed. Some foods are an acquired taste—think coffee, tripe or caviar. Chances are you didn’t immediately love any of these foods the first time you tried them (and maybe you still don’t).

Most people need as many as 10 tastes of a single food item to get used to the flavor. This means you don’t have to eat 10 whole plates of Brussels sprouts, just taste a tiny forkful of someone else’s from time to time. With each bite, your taste buds will know what to expect and you will be less likely to react with pursed lips. And, yes, eventually you may even learn to enjoy it.

It takes time.

You can’t learn to play the piano in one evening, and you probably won’t learn to love a tofu stir-fry that fast either. Take comfort in the fact that you will eventually come to enjoy healthy foods such as fresh fruits and legumes.

In a 2014 study by Tufts University in Massachusetts, researchers scanned the brains of adults who were eating a diet high in protein and fiber, which is found largely in fruits and vegetables. The study found that after 6 months of healthful eating, the area of the brain often cited as the “reward center” became activated when participants viewed images of healthy foods. And that’s not all—their brains became less “turned on” by unhealthy foods such as chips or candy.

Get creative with your cooking.

No food is exciting to eat when it’s boiled plain or zapped in a microwave. Instead, try roasting, sautéing or grilling your vegetables and proteins (chicken, fish or even buffalo, for example). Longer, slower forms of cooking work to caramelize the foods. This draws out the food’s naturally occurring sugars and enhances the flavor.

Choosing the right seasonings can also dress up an otherwise bland course. Try a pinch of ancho chili powder or sriracha sauce if you’re looking for spice, or sprinkle on a little cinnamon or turmeric for some exotic flair.

Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Digestion

April 29, 2015 oblanderchiropractic

A well-functioning digestive system is crucial to maintaining your body’s overall health. Without it, you are likely to have bowel problems and suffer from digestive upsets, not to mention a host of other conditions that can result from not getting enough nutrients from the food you eat. The digestive system affects all the other systems of the body, so it’s important to do what you can to be sure it’s working the way it should. Following are the top 5 things you can do to help improve your digestion.

Eat more fiber – Soluble and insoluble fiber are both essential for moving food through the digestive tract. Soluble fiber, such as that found in oatmeal, beans, nuts and apples, turns to a gel in your intestines and slows digestion, helping to maintain stable blood sugar levels. It absorbs water, softening the stool, and promotes the health of the good bacteria in your gut. Insoluble fiber, such as that found in the skins of fruit and vegetables, speeds digestion, adds bulk and passes primarily intact through the digestive tract. Both are important in preventing constipation and can improve conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Drink more fluids – Insufficient water intake can harden the stool, increasing constipation. You should be sure to drink at least 1.2 liters of fluid per day, which is about 6 glasses. Some people need more, based on their activity level and the ambient temperature. However, do not drink more than about 6 ounces of liquid during a meal (taking the occasional sip), as it can dilute your stomach acid, making digestion more difficult. Aim to get most of your fluid intake 15-30 minutes before a meal or at least an hour afterward.

Take probiotics – Probiotics such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria are the good bacteria that populate our digestive tract. Eating yogurt with a variety of helpful live cultures as well as fermented foods like sauerkraut, kombucha and kefir can help promote the production and health of these beneficial bacteria.

Eat more fat – Although increasing your fiber intake can improve your digestion that fiber does not move through the digestive tract so easily if you are not getting enough fat in your diet. Good fats will not raise your cholesterol and in fact are a healthy part of your diet when eaten in moderation. Some healthy sources of fat are olive oil, coconut oil, butter and avocados.

Reduce stress – When you are under stress, your digestive system slows down and circulation to the digestive tract is reduced, lowering your body’s ability to efficiently break down and utilize the food you eat. Do not rush through meals, and be sure to sufficiently chew and savor your food when you eat. If you must eat while under stress, be sure you eat foods that are simple to digest, such as broth or yogurt.

Dieting in the U.S.—A Statistical Snapshot of What Works and What Doesn’t

April 24, 2015 oblanderchiropractic

If there is one thing that Americans are obsessed with, it’s dieting. Just turn on any television and you are bombarded with ads for weight loss drinks, programs and foods that are guaranteed to have you looking slim and trim in a matter of weeks. But given the enormous amount of money spent on the quest for a smaller waistline (upwards of $69 billion each year), the growing obesity epidemic suggests that diets generally do not generally work.

Following are a few facts about dieting in the US:

At any given time, 50% of women and 25% of men are on a diet.
Dieters lose between 5% and 10% of their starting weight within the first six months, but 66% of them gain it back within a year, and 95% of them have regained all the weight they lost, and more, within 5 years.
The average diet costs 50% more than what the average American spends on food each week.
Between 40% and 60% of American high school girls are on a diet at any given time.
Both men and women who participate in a formal weight loss program gain significantly more weight over a two-year period than those who do not participate in a formal program.

Dieting is actually unhealthy. Studies have shown that repeatedly gaining and losing weight causes damage to the immune system and increases rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and stroke. This is not to say that there is nothing you can do to lose weight, but it’s important to find a way of eating that does not involve dieting.

What does seem to work, according to the most recent research, is changing what we eat. In contrast to what we have heard for years, a calorie is not just a calorie. One calorie of sugar is not metabolized by the body in the same way as one calorie of broccoli. The first raises insulin levels, causing that calorie to be stored as fat, and the second does not, so it gets used as immediate energy, along with providing important vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.

A 2012 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association compared the effects of three different types of diet consisting of the same number of calories: a standard low-fat diet (60% carbs, 20% protein, 20% fat), an ultra-low-carb (Atkins) diet (10% carbs, 30% protein, 60% fat) and a low-glycemic diet (40% carbs, 20% protein, 40% fat). The low-fat dieters fared worst. The Atkins dieters burned 350 more calories per day than the low-fat dieters, and those following the low-glycemic diet burned 150 more calories per day than their low-fat diet counterparts. However, the Atkins type diet causes inflammation and raises cortisol, which can damage the heart, so your best bet is to follow a diet consisting mostly of low-glycemic foods.

Although the percentage of carbs in the low-glycemic diet were just slightly less than those in the low-fat diet, those carbs consisted of vegetables, fruit, legumes and minimally processed grains, whereas the low-fat diet included processed foods. Processed foods have had many of the compounds removed (such as fiber) that slow the release of sugar into the blood. A diet consisting of whole foods, minimally processed grains and moderate amounts of fat is still delicious, and you won’t have to feel that you are starving yourself. Over time you will find that you are slowly losing weight, and in a way that is healthy and more likely to become permanent.

Can Food Choices Really Affect the Composition of the Microbes in Your Gut?

March 9, 2015 oblanderchiropractic

They say you are what you eat, but can your diet really have an impact on the microbes that live in your digestive tract? While thinking about the millions of microscopic life forms (collectively called the human microbiota) living in your gut might make you feel a bit squeamish, this topic has fueled a considerable body of research. The results strongly suggest that a person’s food choices do have a significant impact on their microbiota. And that this microbiota in turn has a real impact on their overall health and wellness.

Diet and Microbiota Content

One of the more recent studies that show the relationship between diet and microbiota was conducted in 2014 by researchers at Duke and Yale. In this study, researchers compared the microbiota of a group of volunteers. For five days, the volunteers limited their diet to rice and vegetables. After eating their regular diet for a week, the volunteers then spent another five days eating only animal and fatty products. The results showed that only three days after each dietary change there was a significant variation in the type of microbiota present.

A Gut-Friendly Diet

Even though the microbes in your gut are tiny, they can have a big influence on your health, particularly when it comes to digestion. Diets that are high in sugar, animal fats, and processed foods provide nourishment for the unhealthy microbes that cause digestive issues. Unfortunately, these foods are also a large part of the standard American diet. It comes as no surprise, then, that doctors see millions of patients every year for issues such as heartburn, bloating, constipation, irritable bowels, and diarrhea. Changing your diet to include foods that encourage a healthy balance of microbes can help keep you at your best.

Keep the following in mind when building a gut-friendly diet:

Limit foods that are processed and high in sugar. Cutting off this food source helps to keep unhelpful bacteria in check.
Increase your intake of beans, seeds, nuts, vegetables, and fruits. These foods help to increase the amount of “good” bacteria.
Consider probiotic foods. Foods that are considered probiotic (such as kefir or Greek yogurt) contain live bacteria. These microorganisms help to supplement the good bacteria already in your digestive system and can help to tip the balance in your favor. Probiotics can be particularly helpful after a round of antibiotics, which can negatively impact your microbiota balance.

Your chiropractor can be a helpful resource when working to build a diet that is friendly to your digestive system. Because chiropractic care puts a special focus on lifestyle choices, your chiropractor can provide you with targeted feedback on how your food choices are impacting your overall health. Your chiropractor will work with you to build a food plan that improves your well-being in all areas, including your microbe balance.

Making food choices that positively impact the life inside of you can significantly improve your well-being. Keep your microbiota in mind when choosing your next meal: your digestive system will thank you!

Superfoods: Science or Marketing?

August 22, 2014 oblanderchiropractic

There is no medical definition for a “superfood”. Food manufacturers are eager to use the word to promote sales of their products that contain traces of supposed superfoods such as blueberries, pomegranates and chocolate. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a superfood as “a nutrient-rich food considered to be especially beneficial for health and well-being.” However, there are no set criteria about what makes a food nutrient-rich. Most superfoods are high in antioxidants and phytonutrients relative to other foods. However, if you were to eat only one of these superfoods to the exclusion of all else, you would be seriously deficient in many of the nutrients your body needs in order to stay healthy. So what exactly is the science behind the idea of superfoods?

While we would like to believe that if we eat certain foods we can stave off illness and keep aging at bay, the truth is that it’s not so easy. Although there is no doubt that a diet consisting primarily of fruits and vegetables is one of the keys to healthy longevity, it is also what you don’t eat and do that is important. For instance, if you eat a breakfast of blueberries and pomegranates in a bowl of oatmeal, along with a cup of green tea, that does not mean that your health will improve overall if for lunch you have a bucket of fried chicken, French fries and a 64-ounce Coke, followed by a cigarette.

The majority of scientific studies indicating that there may be some positive health effects associated with the nutrients contained in certain foods were conducted in a laboratory. In general, high levels of nutrients are used in these studies—usually far more than what can be consumed in a normal diet. For instance, the compound resveratrol that studies have shown to be heart-healthy and to guard against prostate cancer is found in grape skins only in very small amounts. So although “the French paradox” (why the French have low rates of heart disease despite a rich diet) is often partially attributed to the regular consumption of red wine, in fact, you would have to drink 40 liters of wine a day to get the same amount that was shown to benefit the health of mice in these studies.

The positive results of studies performed in test tubes on a few human cells and studies performed on mice do not necessarily translate into health benefits for the wider population. The effect of a single nutrient on human health is difficult to pinpoint, as we all eat a combination of foods. Some nutritional benefits may only occur in the presence of other nutrients in the same food, or even in a different food eaten at the same time. Iron absorption, for example, is boosted when a food rich in vitamin C is eaten at the same time.

The best nutritional advice someone can follow if they’re interested in maintaining good health is to eat a wide range of whole foods, and (even more importantly) to avoid foods that are bad for you such as processed foods and hydrogenated oils. As the European Food Information Council advises, “A diet based on a variety of nutritious foods, including plenty of fruits and vegetables, remains the best way to ensure a balanced nutrient intake for optimal health.”

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