It’s true. Chiropractors are full of shit. And they could kill you.

It’s a phony profession, and anyone who’s had even one term of college level anatomy could tell you that. But, because of its popularity, and government backing, it’s public image is totally legit.

Here are 2 different websites where you can read about the REAL world of Chiropractic, before you make a life changing mistake.

Chirobase and Neck911

Dr. Dean Lewis, surgeon-in chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital, said, “In my judgment, it is not possible to reduce subluxations or misalignments of the vertebrae and thus relieve pressure of the nerve branches by manipulation of the hand.” On the final question, Dr. Harvey Cushing, then one of the world’s leading brain surgeons, wrote, “There is no logical basis whatever for the theory of chiropractic, and it is silly to allude to it as a science.”

From a recent article on BBC News:

Dr Dr Susan Jebb from the Human Nutrition Research unit at the MRC … said 80% of parents recognised that an unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity contributed to obesity.

“But people don’t necessarily realise that it applies to their child,” she said

And

“More than 40% of children over the age of six choose their evening meal on half of all occasions but they lack the skills to choose wisely.

“It’s not surprising that parents try to avoid conflict to make a pleasant atmosphere at home but it leads to a lack of exposure and familiarity with different foods.”

Parents are conditioned to think that THEIR kid is never the one with the problem.  But, when it comes to their child’s well being, there is no excuse.
There are a plethora of health problems associated with childhood obesity, including Premature Puberty, and excessive tiredness.

In the BBC article, they site the Government for not bringing the awareness to the public fast enough or with enough force.  But I think that is ridiculous.  Obesity has been a growing epidemic for quite some time, and the information on it’s ill effects are everywhere, being pushed in nearly every magazine and news paper, all over TV, and the radio.

This is not new information.  It’s like smoking.  People know full well that it is bad for them.  But they do it anyway.

Fine for them.  Adults are allowed to do whatever they want to themselves.  But, not to their kids.

It has been suggested that your heart health is related to your dental hygein.  If that’s the case,  then it’s just gotten easier to keep not only your teeth on the up an up, but so too your overall health.

In their experiments, Dr. Valdir Gouveia Garcia from Sao Paulo State University and colleagues divided 120 rats with induced periodontal disease into four groups of 30, and tested the effects of a compound called methylene blue on the disease. Methylene blue is a photosensitizer that can get inside germs and kill them, too some extent without light but more powerfully when activated by light.

A large Government study pitted the Atkins diet, Zone, and the Ornish diet head to head and found that those on the Atkins diet lost more weight over the a 10 month period than those following the other diets.
How much?  10 pounds.

The study involved 311 women about 40 years old on average and was designed to measure the effectiveness of using a diet book to lose weight. Women were randomly assigned to read one of four diet books. They attended weekly classes for eight weeks where diet questions were addressed, but then were mostly on their own for the next 10 months. –LINDSEY TANNER
AP Medical Writer

That’s right.  A whole whopping 10 pounds over a 10 month period!  Ridiculous.  If I only got my clients those kinds of results, I’d lose my job!

The problem of course is that there was no solid exercise program.   And that most of the people didn’t follow the diets as written.  It was too hard to do on their own.

But the study isn’t a fair comparison because by the end, few women were following any of the diets very strictly, critics argue, although those in the Atkins group came the closest.

Fad diets are often seen by most people as the easier quick fix to exercise.  But, if this study shows anything, it’s that they are certainly not that.  There are no quick fixes that are easy.  If you want to lose a lot of fat, you have to work hard and be solid with your diet.  Period.

If you have an overweight 3 year old girl, odds are she’ll be going through puberty at 9, says new research published in the journal of Pediatrics.

higher levels of fat, mean higher levels of estrogen, the female sex hormone. (this goes for men, too). And higher levels of estrogen trigger puberty.

I worked for a time as a childrens fitness instructor, and the numbers of overweight kids I saw was frightening. An Adult has the right to do that to themselves. But to do that to a child is abuse, pure and simple.

US scientists discovered a brain structure involved with memory and emotion had shrunk in children with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A withered hippocampus may make a child less able to deal with stress and raise anxiety, Pediatrics journal reports.

More often than not, if a kid is stressed out, it’s the parents fault.  Children pick up on their parents stress levels.  And everything a parent does can have a lasting, permenant effect on the child.

Exercise is one of the greatest anti-stress tools we have at our disposal.   If you have kids, then you have no excuse.  Your health is your childs health.  They’ll follow your lead.

Here’s a Chart detailing the probabilities that you’ll die in one way or another:

Notice that the probability of death by any cause=1.  Not surprising.  But, the next one down is where you should focus.

Death by heart disease is 1/5.  That is, you have a 1/5 chance of dying from something you probably could have prevented.  Next is cancer, 1/7.  Since many forms of cancer are caused or increased by things like smoking, heavy drinking, lack of exercise, and poor diet, we again are causing our own demise.

The point is, if you want to live a long and vigorous life, take a look at the LEADING causes of death, and do everything you can to prevent those.  Then work your way down.  Avoiding death by “fireworks discharge”(1/340,733) is important, for sure, but I’d worry about your heart first.

Sucking in the gut has become ubiquitous with looking more fit.  But it’s not just the image conscious who engage in such activies.  Coaches, Personal Trainers (including myself), and Physical Therapists have been telling people for years that sucking in your gut durring exercise will activate the transverse abdominals, and thereby decrease spinal loading.

Apparently, we may have been wrong. (Reuters)

“If you hollow in, you bring the muscles closer to the spine, and you reduce the stability of the spine,” said Stuart McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics in the department of kinesiology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Try rising from a chair with a hollowed out stomach; not only are you “weak,” he said, but “it’s very difficult.”

Dr. McGill, who has treated patients with back disorders for 25 years, has measured spinal loading forces and their effects on spinal stability with computer models and in test subjects wired to computers.

His findings dispute not only the validity of drawing in, but also the very notion that the transverse abdominus plays a pivotal role in stability. All abdominal and back muscles are important, not just this one, Dr. McGill said.

And

Dr. McGill said there is a better way than drawing in to protect the spine and build the core. For those about to lift something heavy or, say, leap for a rebound, he recommends bracing all the abdominal muscles — something he said the body does more naturally during exertion.

“Bracing is stiffening the abdominal wall,” he said, explaining the difference. It’s a neutral position. “It’s not sucking in and it’s not pushing your belly out,” he said.

Alright.  Lets all BRACE those abs!

A study that appeared in the July issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, said:

Overweight or obese adolescents may lower their risk of developing type 2 diabetes by doing strength training exercises at least twice a week, a recent study showed. The study was conducted by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC). 

And

The results showed that 91 percent of the study participants considerably improved their insulin sensitivity. Although there was no change in the boys’ total body fat mass, their percentages of body fat significantly decreased and lean muscle mass increased.

“This shows that lifting weights is a good form of exercise that overweight teens can excel at and benefit from. Whether they lose weight or not is not important—they still benefit by increasing muscle mass,” Dr. Michael Goran, the study’s leader and USC professor of preventive medicine, said in a press release.

A Meta-Analysis has shown that:

High levels of vitamin D can significantly reduce the relative risks of breast and colorectal cancer