"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” ~Thomas Edison

Fundamental Human Movement: The Squat (Sit down and Stand up)

The number one thing outside of trauma (A fall and breaking bone, Heart attack, Stroke, and possibly dementia) that puts people into assisted living is the inability to take themselves to the bathroom.  i.e., getting themselves off the toilet.  

Now full disclosure I don't know how accurate that is today, but it provides an amazing framework for thought.  

First off let's think about what it takes to get on and off the toilet.  The total act of getting down to and off the toilet is just one repetition (full cycle of a movement) of a BODY WEIGHT or "Air" squat.  So, the inability to get off the toilet is just the inability to do 1/2 of a bodyweight squat!  

Not to be harsh (well maybe just a little) but that is ridiculous. Look we are as h...

There is a very famous quote that has been attributed to Thomas Edison it goes like:

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

I as Chiropractors especially those of us that utilize Applied Kinesiology LOVE this quote I feel we alone are the example of what Mr. Edison was describing. 

Since I have some mental space to blog I am going to do a series of post starting this week talking about the things in this quote, and I'll add one more the to this illustrious quote, and it is care of the mental condition. 

You see as enlightened as this quote is it leaves off an essential part of humanity, which is to be mentally balanced (as much as we can be anyway).  The mental habits that can cause our health to nose dive or us to never get our stuff together.

So, over the next few weeks and months, I will be covering the "Triad of Health" (above) as we call it in AK (App...

As most of you know, I fly by the seat of my pants with most things... Usually not in a good way... 

I have let way too many small fires burn to try to put out bigger fires or more "important" fires.  Which, usually aren't that important, but I have let them go long enough that they have become pressing and painful.  This could be things like you know you need to move or eat better, and you know how but the kids or the job or the commute or insert reason here______ has stopped you.

For whatever reason, this has been the story of my life.

I have known forever that daily mantra's and focus/intention work can do amazing things. but I haven't used them in a long time.  I got overwhelmed in the day to day of trying to live life.  Without these essential parts of being present and in the moment, it has been HARD!

I've been mailing in the meditations, praying sporadically (at best), and really just been off my "game" for a long time. I honestly can't remember the last time I had it all to...

I am literally at my happiest and my best when I am studying learning and teaching.  If you want me to be depressed, make me so tired, so busy (usually with non-sensical things) that I can't learn, grow, expand or teach someone something new.  

I found myself in that position a few weeks ago.  A change needed to happen! I was, well truth be told probably still am, exhausted, burnt out and restless, full of anxiety and angst.  As is my nature, I kind of turtled up and dug in for a few days trying to figure out what was going sideways in my life why I was feeling this way.  

For me to dig in I prayed, I meditated I sat quietly trying to figure out why I was ... just blech ... and nothing came.  The clinical side of my brain took over, is it my adrenals? Maybe my thyroid is off? Ya know my digestion has been a bit sucky. Lately, I wonder if that is it?  All the things were pouring through my clinical mind.  Problem is none of them was the answer.  

Then on one of my drives home just si...

I have seriously tried to shoot this video and write this post for about for about six months.  

The past few months... let's be honest the last few years, have been some of the most trying in my life as a parent, a husband, a teacher and a Doctor.  I have been spread much to thin with my family, with my practice and my patients.  

To shorten this story up a bit and get to the point, back in March I signed a long-term lease at my office in Addison, this means I will be in that office for the next few years, and I got one a reduction in my rent over the long hall.  But there was a significant increase in the rent over the past lease.  I guess that is a good sign for the economy, but it has substantially increased the cost of me doing business.  Which translates to me having to raise my rates from $110 / 30 minutes of treatment to $130 / 30-minute and $75 for a 15-minute treatment.  

I know this is a bit of an increase, but it is needed for my practice to continue to deliver the stand...

Generally, I can't stand the latest "vogue" diet but. Things like the Potato Diet, the Alkaline Diet, the Cookie Diet, The Master Cleanse Diet, or the myriad of other oddball diets that try to get you to eat anything but real, unprocessed foods.

However, this natural skepticism of "fad" like diets got thrown out the window when The Whole30 started to catch on as one of the latest "trends." Granted, I find it rather sad to call eating whole, unprocessed foods in their natural state a "fad" makes our current food culture rather sad. Admittedly, a lot of people feel Paleo is a fad diet, but it is a fad that is as old as humanity.

I have to say I stand wholeheartedly behind The Whole30 Which is a 30-day dietary rest. As most of you know, I am a proponent of a Modern Paleo (Ancestral type) approach to diet, which is pretty close to what the whole30 purports.

When a patient comes into the office, I am pretty adamant that they change their diet and that the first month is the key  So, The ...

Why You Should Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) dominates the American food supply. It's in soda, bread, condiments, yogurt, salad dressings, and nearly every packaged food on grocery store shelves.

The food industry loves it because it's cheap, shelf-stable, and sweeter than sugar. Your body hates it because it metabolizes differently than any sugar humans evolved eating.

Here's what HFCS actually is, how it differs from natural sugars, and why it's wrecking metabolic health at a population level.

What Is High-Fructose Corn Syrup?

HFCS is sugar extracted and concentrated from corn. In the early 1970s, food scientists developed industrial processes to break down cornstarch into glucose, then convert some of that glucose into fructose.

The result: a syrup that's 55% fructose and 45% glucose (HFCS-55, used in soft drinks) or 42% fructose and 58% glucose (HFCS-42, used in baked goods and processed foods).

The problem: Fructose and glucose exist a...

 How to Get More of the Most Important Nutrient On the Planet!

There is a nutrient that is the most important nutrient that you need to get into your body every single day. This nutrient is related to things as far ranging as Dementia and Alzheimer's down to chronic fatigue and an inability to run. It does SO much in your body; you literally cannot live without it.

So, what is the most important nutrient for life?

It is OXYGEN. The basic logic follows that you can live months without food, days without water but only a few minutes without oxygen.  That makes good ole oxygen the absolute most important nutrient you can ever get! Most people that I say this to say, “Well, wait a minute, I breathe every second of the day. I get plenty of oxygen. I am not anemic. I KNOW I get plenty of oxygen!!.” Well, the problem is that most of us are not breathing correctly. There are a few simple things we can do to learn to breathe properly and develop the habit pattern to learn always to breathe...

Today I wanted to talk to you about one the questions I get asked almost daily in practice, and it’s always talking about vitamin D levels.

So, what is Vitamin D? Well, simply put Vitamin D is obviously, a vitamin but it is honestly much more like a hormone.  It acts on the cells and does all kinds of things. It’s tied into almost every single bio- chemical process that we have as humans. It is one the major things that I find is deficient in people who have auto-immune issues, heart disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative conditions. Anything and everything that is affecting us today in society is linked to a vitamin D deficiency. This is probably making an overstatement, but probably every disease has a vitamin and mineral deficiency that just haven’t found the one the right one that’s en vogue.

The past five years it has become en vogue that vitamin D is one of those things that they are testing for significantly. Most of the time, in previous generations over the past thousa...

Addicted to Worry?

Today we are going to do something a little different, I am going to share an article that I thought was amazing! One of my former students, Dr. Madison, at fulloflifeholistics.com wrote an amazingly personal and heartfelt post about struggles with anxiety and how she overcame them.

There isn't much I can add to her story except that there is always hope, and you don't have to live life shackled by your fears of the unknown.  Now, I like Dr. Madison, aren't licensed psychologist, psychotherapists, or counselors, but we have spent a lot of time in direct patient care.

It is scary sometimes as a practitioner when you hear the torment that people deal with on a daily basis. How they often think they can't imagine dealing with this problem that got them into your office for the next few days much less the next 40 years.

Then you get the added pressure of when that same patient tells you they have been to 10 other medical or health professionals before you and that yo...