Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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Rethink Birth Control Pills

For the majority of women, they are on birth control pills to prevent birth.  Despite it being my wife’s body, one thing I was adamant when we got married was that she never be on birth control pills.  It has nothing to do with a religious belief but the reality that I wanted my wife around for the long haul in life.  I didn’t want her bombarded with extra estrogen for health reasons.

Don’t get me wrong, estrogen is essential to health but too much is detrimental to life.  Just think about it, adding more estrogen into the body is a treatment to prevent the formation of life.  If it has enough effect on the body to prevent a new life from forming, what effect does it have on a life that is daily attempting to build, repair, and heal?

Estrogen (as with testosterone) is a steroid hormone, synthesized from cholesterol.  Since cholesterol is the basis for all these steroid hormones, in a statin-crazed-cholesterol-is-evil society, are we creating our exponential increase in hormone imbalances in the name of heart health?

Cholesterol is also the basis of Cortisol, which is your prime life saving, stress-induced, survival hormone.  The body will favor survival over sex any day.  It’s not news that we are a stressed out society, physically, chemically, and emotionally.  Again, is the pursuit of bigger and better also a hit to our hormone imbalances?

Courtesy ZRT Labs

Courtesy ZRT Labs

Once estrogen is made, it’s released into the bloodstream, where it targets specific tissues and binds to a hormone receptor.  The marriage of the hormone and receptor then activates a host of genetic reactions to stimulate cell growth, healing and repair.  When you hear steroid hormones, think steroids.  These are hormones to build the body up.

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TSH Chase

I think I’ve fielded more thyroid questions and concerns this past week from patients than ever before.  The running theme among them is that they are fed up with their doctor playing what I call the ‘TSH Chase.’

I also think one of the laziest healthcare practices is diagnosing and trying to manage someone’s thyroid condition just with a TSH score.  If you don’t have a thyroid problem, or don’t think you have one, the rest of this probably doesn’t pertain to you and may be a bit boring.  If you feel like crap and have been told your thyroid is fine due to a ‘normal’ TSH score, then you may want to consider to keep reading.

TSHLong story short, your thyroid is involved in basically every system in the body.  And as a result of that involvement, is the canary in the coal mine.  It’s very sensitive to dysfunctions in other systems in the body.  You can’t affect one system without affecting every system.  The minute your doctor tries to compartmentalize your internal systems is the minute you need to find someone else that looks at the body as a whole.

Did you know that your lipids (cholesterol, Triglycerides, etc) creeping up could indicate that your thyroid is imbalanced?

Did you know that digestive difficulties could be a sign your thyroid is dysfunctional?

Did you know thyroid hormones probably have more input into the brain and nervous system development of a fetus than just getting enough folic acid?

Did you know that women with miscarriages often have a misdiagnosed thyroid condition?

The thyroid is not just for metabolism function.  Therefore I feel it needs a thorough analysis on lab work, opposed to the lazy way out of just testing a TSH score and calling it good.  This would be like assessing your entire car’s function by just checking tire pressure.

Here’s the thing, let’s say your TSH is abnormal.  Yes, it could be an abnormal thyroid.  It could also be an abnormal pituitary.  It could be an abnormal hypothalamus.  It could be an abnormal conversion problem.  It could be inflammation interfering with function.  It could be an insulin resistance problem not allowing for proper receptor binding.  It could be an auto-immune problem.  It could be a sedentary living problem.  It could be an autonomic imbalance problem.  It could be an adrenal imbalance.  It could be a DNA receptor problem.  It could be a globulin problem.  It could be a toxicity problem.  It could be a methylation problem.  It could be a nutrient deficiency problem.  It could be an estrogen problem.  It could be a Vagus nerve/upper cervical spine problem.  Anything else?

Do you see how ridiculous it is to just test for TSH and chase the TSH value with Synthroid?  Or just supplement with uber amounts of iodine and call it good?

What specific thyroid tests do I like to see on lab work?  These are just to get the baseline.

TSH

Free and Total T4

Free and Total T3

T3 Uptake

Reverse T3

TPO (Thyroid Peroxidase Antibodies)

TgAb (Thyroglobulin Antibodies)

Sex Hormone Binding Globulin

Diurnal Cortisol

Homocysteine

CRP

A1C

Remember you can’t separate one system from every other system.  These thyroid values are going to have to be put into context along with other factors that analyze the 5 pillars of illness:  Autonomic Imbalance, Adrenal Dysfunction, Immune Imbalance, Insulin Resistance, and Inflammation.

It’s also more than just having them tested but interpreted from a functional perspective.  The ‘normal’ lab values seen on lab work labels you, along with 95% of the population, as healthy.  You’re telling me that 9 out of every 10 friends you have is healthy?  Just look at your friend’s Facebook statuses.  You probably can’t find 3 out of 10.

Stop settling for the standard healthcare model of throwing you on Synthroid for the rest of your life to satisfy the TSH chase.  You want a different outcome?  Let’s do it.  You know how to find me.

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Maximize Recovery…Reassess These

The point of exercise and training is to break the body down.  Your workout is actually doing damage.  This damage is essential and intelligent to you getting stronger, faster, quicker, and more efficient.  The only way the body gets better is through challenges. 

The problem is that many think it’s the workout that creates the magic.  The actuality is that it’s the recovery that is key.  Most people might workout 30 minutes.  That leaves 23 1/2 hours to recover.

Reassess these 3 common practices that put a damper on your recovery and ultimately your performance.

caffeineCaffeine

Many consume coffee pre-workout to boost their performance.  It’s essentially a performance enhancing drug.  There’s no denying that coffee boosts energy.  Just ask the 54% of Americans over the age of 18 who consume coffee daily.   It’s also no mystery that kids consume caffeinated beverages like energy drinks and such, which would drastically raise that 54%, if you included the entire population.

The problem is that this habit may boost short term performance at the expense of longevity, injury prevention, and recovery.  If you ever have lab work, usually there is a panel that lists out the type of white blood cells.  You will see these as neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils.

Monocytes are cells that clean up inflammatory damage as well as debris from destroyed microorganisms.  They differentiate into macrophages and play a huge role in tissue repair whether you are injured, you are sick, or you have been training hard.  Without monocytes, muscles would not be able to heal after training or injury.

Cortisol and adrenaline (hormones released during times of stress, which can be physical, chemical, or emotional) lower macrophage activity and count.  In essence stress lowers your immune system.  Your immune system stimulates inflammation.  Caffeine is a direct hit to the adrenals, causing release of cortisol and adrenaline, lowering your healing inflammatory response triggered by your immune system.

Think about this way.  If you’re running from a bear, it would not be efficient if you had to stop to cough, sneeze, or dig a hole and pop a squat because you’re fighting the flu.  It also wouldn’t be conducive to your survival if you rolled your ankle and it ballooned up and caused you to be immobile.  Ever get injured during the heat of competition but not realize it until it was all over?  That’s the cortisol and adrenaline kicking in to keep you surviving.  Caffeine is a stress on the body.

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Flu Shot Bullying

I had a promise to myself that I would stay away from vaccine posts for a while.  I’ve had my fair share of heat on the internet about my choice not to vaccinate our kids and the reasons behind it.  There’s even blog posts about my blog posts and how I am choosing to ignore the science about vaccines and their effectiveness.  

Attacks on me don’t make me that fired up anymore but when my own clients and friends are victims of flu shot bullying, I have to step in.  I had a couple women on the verge of tears because they were given the, “If you don’t get the flu shot, you could die” speech from her doctor.

I also take care of gentleman that vehemently opposed getting the flu shot but because he has been labeled ‘immuno-compromised.’  The bully won.  He got the flu shot and as a result had a massive seizure that almost took his life.  I’m not saying the flu shot will cause a massive seizure.  The doctor called the gentleman to apologize and admit that the flu shot was the most likely trigger in the seizure. “Oops, my bad.”

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Chiropractic Kids

So far my wife and I have 3 boys.  In the picture below, the oldest is 4, the next is 2, and the youngest 8 months.  Being the kids of a chiropractor, they are going to be raised a little different that most American kids.  Face it, chiropractors are weird.  I understand they are going to be outliers and that I’ll face the “so and so is doing this, why can’t I” battles later in life over the health type decisions my wife and I will make.  

Pediatric Chiropractor

One of those parental decisions that make our children outliers is that they get checked and adjusted regularly.  So far, both were checked and adjusted minutes after birth.  Once mom had some initial bonding, she handed the child to me to check him out.  If you think labor and delivery is hard on mom, imagine leaving paradise forcefully (the womb) and havings your head shoved through a much smaller space, to be welcomed into a cold world naked, where everyone makes funny sounds and goofy faces.  This might be where the fear of clowns start for many.

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Failure…The Story Behind More Health, Less Healthcare

Every company, every success, and every movement has a story.  This is the story of More Health, Less Healthcare.  It may be long and boring to you so here is the take home message.  Instead of asking, ‘what could I accomplish if I knew I couldn’t fail?’  Ask the question  ‘what is WORTH doing even if I do fail?‘  Failure is an option.  

Sometimes you need a reminder of the journey so this post is more for my benefit of getting it down on paper to see and recount the obstacles that have happened.   You may not care about it but maybe you’ll glean some hope out of it to keep fighting for that thing you want badly but hesitate because you fear failure.

Childhood

I remember being sick.  I remember almost every February in grade school, a friend delivering all my Valentine’s day cards because I was absent from school.  It wasn’t just that day, it was multiple days and sometimes a week at a time…or so I remember.

I remember ear infections, bronchitis, strep throat, laying on a rubber heating pad that looked like a whoopee cushion, and I remember lots of antibiotics.  I also remember when they finally figured out I was allergic to Penicillin.  I remember not being sick for so long after they realized that.

I remember writing a report for school on what I do after school and the report listed all the TV shows I watched from the moment I got home until dinner time.  I remember also listing the bowls of potato chips and cookies I ate.  Then I remember my parents getting called in for a parent-teacher conference.

I remember moving and going to a new school.  I was not only the new kid, I was the ‘husky’ new kid.  I remember my mom and I school shopping for husky jeans.  I remember thinking husky was a brand name, like Bugle Boy, instead of a code for ‘fat kid’ jeans.  I also remember bragging to my friends that I wore husky jeans like they were the latest pair of Jordan’s.  I also remember sucking in my gut for school pictures because I was embarrassed of my weight.  I remember I was only in 5th grade at the time.

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Immunity Boosters

Let’s face it, the things you’re supposed to do during the upcoming holiday season to keep your immunity boosters high, you’re probably not going to do.  You’re not going to rest enough.  You’re not going to avoid sugar and fancy coffee drinks.  You’re not going to get sunshine.  And you’re probably not going to exercise like you normally do.

What you’re most likely going to do is run for drugs or supplements because it’s easier to take a pill.  I’m not mad at ya, it’s human nature.  Since you’re most likely going to take something, here’s a list of supplements that I would recommend.  Take some, take them all, take none, it’s up to you.

Just keep in mind that in life, you pay for convenience.  Supplements are a convenience to life and building your health.  Living in the 2000 teens, we rely on conveniences and gladly pay for them.

Vitamin D

This is the sunshine vitamin and really not a vitamin at all but more like a hormone.  To truly be sufficient in Vitamin D, you need maximum skin exposure for accumulative 30 minutes per day.  This rarely happens unless you’re on vacation.  The next best thing is to supplement.  The human genome has over 2700 binding sites for Vit D and being deficient in this nutrient, means you are deficient in life.

You should also get Vit D tested.  The problem is that it gets interpreted poorly.  On labs, you will see a normal value of 30-100 ng/ml.  In reality, if your value is 31, you would be ‘normal.’  The 30 ng/ml cut off range is the lowest value for you to prevent rickets.  Do more than prevent rickets.  For healthy application, you should be north of 50 ng/ml.

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The Not-So-Obvious Toxic Top 10

Health comes down to 2 primary categories, sufficiency and purity.  It’s easier to create sufficiency because you can keep adding good and necessary steps.  It’s tougher to create purity because you have to remove or avoid things that you most likely love.  Toxins are one of those things that are all around us and we have to be diligent to avoid.

Toxin: A substance (physical or energetic) that places a stress or challenge to the physiological systems of the body and whose net effect at a given time is inflammatory, poisonous, depleting, and/or disrupting to the harmonious functioning of a whole being. 

To make it easier, I’ve created a Toxic Top Ten of things that I feel people often overlook in their health journey.  Many focus on just the chemical toxins around us and get overwhelmed.  Start with these not-so-obvious toxic top ten to jump start your detox.   These are in no order of hierarchy.poison skull

Worry

Worry is a powerful stimulator of the fight or flight response.  If someone is constantly in fight or flight, the body will move into a series of events that rips the body apart.  Digestion, fertility, thyroid function, and immune function get thrown to the way side.  How do you combat worry?  You put things into perspective.

If I find myself worrying, I play worse case scenario of that event actually happening.  I just opened up a new office and there is a bit of worry that goes with a risk like that.   What is the worse case scenario if it flops?  Is my or my family’s life going to be in danger?  Nope.  Will my or my family’s health be in jeopardy?  Not likely.  Could we lose our house?  Maybe, but not for a year.   People live in foreclosed houses for months after foreclosures and in that time, I can go delivery pizza or something to make ends meat.

I would have life, I would have shelter, and I would have health.  There’s not much to worry about then is there?  The worry comes from comparison of your previous situation or future anticipation.  When you actually sit and take a moment to be thankful for what you have and realize, life is pretty good, worry is hard to do.  You can’t worry and have gratitude at the same time.  Someone in prison has all they need.  It’s the comparison of what they had or could have outside that jail cell that sparks worry and discontent.

Gossip

Dave Ramsey defines gossip as ‘discussing a problem with someone that can’t affect the outcome.’  If people stopped talking every time they were about to discuss a problem with someone that can’t affect the outcome, we would live in a quieter, more peaceful, and productive world. An end result would be a lot more solutions in this world.

Instead of gabbing about problems with someone that has no power, that person will take action and create change.  Less gossip, more action.  You don’t like the action?  Instead of sitting around talking about the most recent change with someone that can’t do anything about it, go make your own change.  Be the change you want to see in the world.

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The World Will Never Need Chiropractic

I’m sure my colleagues are ready to jump down my throat with that title.  It’s true, the world will never need chiropractic…but the world cannot exist without health.  With that said, chiropractic is a vital component to helping people experience health.  I say that being a chiropractor so you can take that as me being biased or not.  I get adjusted regularly, I have checked my boys since birth, and my would tell you it’s a huge factor in her health success.

If you have been in the chiropractic world as a practitioner or as a patient, you will see the drastic approaches to our profession.  I personally subscribe to the notion that chiropractic is a piece of a healthy lifestyle.  I get adjusted regularly but I also follow my own Fit, Fuel, feel principles of a healthy lifestyle.

This is why I have coined what I do as ‘Functional Chiropractic.’  The body is a self-healing, self-regulating organism.  Those capabilities are organized and coordinated through your nervous system.  If there is an interference in the nervous system, then the self-healing, self-regulating capabilities diminish.  You can assess and affect the nervous system through many realms, movement patterns, eating patterns, and thought/attitude patterns.

These can be examined through lab work, through history and listening, and through a physical exam with my personal favorites, Heart Rate Variability (HRV), EMG, and thermography.  What can your heart, muscles, and skin tell you about the function of your nervous system?  Many, many things.   You cannot affect one system without affecting all of them.  Like I said, every system is affected by how the nervous system is being coordinated and organized, not just the spine, and not just the spine on x-rays.

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The Flu Season Hoax

The media bonanza regarding the flu is starting and you will notice 1 of 2 things.  First, they are using massive scare and fear tactics to persuade you into getting a flu shot.  B. The media reports on what it wants to report to persuade you to think how they want you to think. That’s their job.  Your job is to think.  Watching hours of media causes you to think less.

The media reports on what it wants to report to persuade you to think how they want you to think. Your job is to think. Click To Tweet

Their agenda is to please their advertisers.  In this case, a massive chunk of their budget comes from the pharmaceutical industry, who have a lot to gain by getting you to think there is a horrible bug out there and the only defense is to get a vial full of toxic chemicals and puss.

I look it this whole Flu hoopla as a giant hoax.  Let me give you an insight into why.

fatigued womanIf you look at “flu season,” I see a bigger common denominator than an elusive virus.  Look at the American lifestyle starting in September.  Most people go from a warm season where they are outdoors, eating fresh food, being active, and are generally a lot happier.  Kids move indoor all day in school and told to sit still for 8 hours at a time and rewarded with ice cream, pizza parties, and candy for getting correct answers.

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