May 30, 2017 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Backyard Bug Benefits: Adding Crunch to the Paleo Lifestyle.

Are you feeling hungry? Or worse, are you bored of eating the same old mundane food? Well, adventurous ones, simply go to your backyard, catch a juicy grasshopper and eat it all up. At this point, I can imagine the kind of thoughts that may be running through your mind. Is this writer crazy? Or better yet, how can a person eat a gross bug?

I can understand where the shock is coming from but eating insects is not a new phenomenon. Insects have been eaten as a part of cultures since times ago, and in some countries, it is even considered to be national cuisine, prepared in delectable, epicurean recipes. While you may find it a bit off-putting, eating insects actually does come with a host of health benefits. This practice of eating insects is known as entomophagy.

Insect Eating Facts!

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December 29, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Pregnancy Gainz | Why You Shouldn’t Avoid Exercise During Pregnancy

During the first trimester visit, many medical practitioners will tell pregnant women not to lift more than 15 lbs until 6 weeks after the birth of their baby (maybe). I truly believe these practitioners are doing what they think is best, but unfortunately, they are missing the mark for the vast majority of women under their care.

The positive intention here is that there are a handful of women who should not be lifting more than 15 lbs due to an impeding medical condition. I also believe there are a handful of women who do not have sound movement patterns and lifting more than 15 lbs resulted in a preventable injury (prevention being the right coaching not necessarily the lifting itself). So, to reach the widest audience with medical advice, practitioners speak to the lowest common denominator and continue to recommend not lifting more than 15 lbs during pregnancy.

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May 23, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

20 Reasons to Break Up With Sugar

I’ve reached out for some help with the content on the site. I’m lucky to have an article written by Nutritionist Sara Vance, author of the book The Perfect Metabolism Plan. A regular guest on Fox 5 San Diego, you can see many of Sara’s segments on her media page. She also offers corporate nutrition, school programs, consultations, and affordable online eCourses. Download her free 40+ page Metabolism Jumpstart eBook here. If she looks and sounds familiar to you, she was the amazing host of The Metabolism Summit. Need a refresher? Click here.

DO YOU BELIEVE THE MYTH THAT “SUGAR IS JUST HARMLESS EMPTY CALORIES?”

Millions of people believe that myth…and I used to be one of them.

Sugar is definitely empty calories.

But the part that is the lie is that sugar is “harmless.”

FRIENDS. IT IS A BIG. FAT. LIE.

Not only is excess sugar the #1 reason for a sluggish metabolism and stubborn weight gain, the false idea that it is just harmless empty calories is making billions of people sick….including our children.

Woefully, the real truth is that sugar has a dark side, a very serious dark side. Chronically elevated blood sugar leads to stubborn weight gain, and raises the risk of almost every major disease. Excess sugar is quite possibly is the worst possible thing for our health overall. Let’s take a closer look….

20 REASONS TO BREAK UP WITH SUGAR:

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May 3, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Soft Tissue Adhesions: A Common Problem With an Uncommon Solution

Guest Post – Dr. Scott A. Mills DC

One thing I have not done much of on this website is to discuss pain, muscle issues, and other structural problems that could indeed be a stressor to your health expression as much as Twinkies and self-esteem deficiencies. I have asked a friend and colleague, Dr. Scott A. Mills, to add some insight into the soft tissue arena.

Dr. Scott A. Mills DC, San Francisco Chiropractor, creator of The Full Body Fix.

Dr. Scott A. Mills is a chiropractor with a passion for empowering others with the knowledge and tools needed to eliminate pain and improve the way they move. He is currently located in San Francisco with his wife, Diane Sanfilippo (Balanced Bites and Practical Paleo). In addition to his Doctor of Chiropractic degree, he holds a Master’s degree in Exercise Science and worked as a collegiate Certified Athletic Trainer for 6 years prior to his chiropractic career.

His latest project The Full Body Fix is a series of corrective exercise video protocols designed to address the most common aches & pains he’s seen in over 15 years of helping athletes and everyday people back to health.

From Dr. Scott.

As a chiropractor, one of the most overlooked and under-diagnosed problems I see on a daily basis is the presence of soft tissue adhesions. These scar tissue like formations can occur as the result of repetitive stress injury, acute soft tissue damage or chronic poor posture. Once they embed in and adhere to normal soft tissue, they can be very difficult to resolve, causing a host of aches, pain and even unseen problems.

Let’s take a deeper look to find out more about this pervasive problem.

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April 6, 2015 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Sitting is Suicide

The Unexpected Physical Consequences of Modern Technology aka ‘sitting is suicide.’

Don’t get me wrong, technology is great! We live in an era where pretty much whatever we want to know/learn about is right at our finger tips. We have modern modes of travel that allow us to travel great distances in a short amount of time. We have machines that allow us access to vast amounts of information and entertainment like never before in human history.

Humans are designed to move.

We, as human beings, are designed to move. We are designed to move at a low intensity, throughout our day. As hunter gatherers, we survived on our feet. We were nomadic people, traveling long distances, over long periods of time, gathering food and chasing the occasional wild game.

We continued to survive on our feet during the Agricultural revolution, tending crops and raising domesticated animals for food. Even into the Industrial Revolution, we continued to survive on our feet, as we stood in factory assembly lines and used our bodies to help forge this country into prosperity.

It wasn’t until the advent of modern conveniences like TV and automobiles, and later on the personal computer, that the idea of sitting for long periods of time became the norm, instead of the exception.

We now sit, on average, 9.3 hours a day. The average person, in this country, spends only 7.7 hours sleeping! We sit more than we sleep!

Bottom line, is that we weren’t designed to sit for long periods of time. We were designed to move. Movement is life. Sitting is suicide.

The problem is that we have turned sitting into our mode of survival today. Most of us have jobs that require long periods of sitting. We sit in our vehicles, we sit at our desks at work, we sit for long periods of time while watching TV. We sit…a lot.

But at what cost?

-Sitting 6 or more hrs a day makes you 40% more likely to die within 15 yrs than someone who sits < 3 hours a day.

-People with jobs that require them to sit have twice the rate of cardiovascular disease.

Another recent analysis of 18 studies found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least. According to lead researcher Thomas Yates, MD:

“Even for people who are otherwise active, sitting for long stretches seems to be an independent risk factor for conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease.”

-80% of people in this country will experience chronic back pain in their lives.

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March 26, 2015 By Dr. Kurt, DC

7 Steps to Make Your Hospital Birth Calm and Gentle

Create a Safe Space.

Hospital birth, in the media is portrayed as something dangerous and scary, something to be afraid of and something where anything and everything could go wrong at a moment’s notice. Honestly, it is sometimes portrayed that way in the more “natural, crunchy” birth world as well.

Here’s the thing about birth in general. It’s been going on for thousands, if not millions of years, depending on what you believe. All species of animals have been giving birth since the dawn of time. The medical industry, however currently advanced, is MUCH newer in time than birth.

Animals have been giving birth in general for 4,000 to 600 million years. Women have been giving birth in hospitals for less than 115 years. Let that sink in. Birthing babies is just something that is done. It’s something every species on earth does in some way, without help, millions of times per day.

That’s not to say that there isn’t some risk in childbirth. Of course there is. There is risk in every single physical act we do every day. There is also much more pure joy and ecstasy in the majority of the physical acts we do every day. If there wasn’t, statistically, we wouldn’t exist. The human race could not be overpopulating the earth the way that it is now if birth was as inherently dangerous as it is made out to be.

So let’s just throw that out the window right now. There are exceptions to every rule, of course and modern medicine is here to help when needed.

Fearing birth, no matter where it happens, is what makes it dangerous and scary. Fear tenses the muscles and interferes with the natural productions of hormones in birth that make everything work automatically and correctly. Eliminating fear is the key to making your Hospital Birth Calm and Gentle.

1. Preparation.

Being prepared is key. Get your personal birth team together as soon as the stick turns pink. A Doula, a Childbirth Educator, Chiropractor, Massage Therapist and anyone else you feel will give you the tools to make you fearless during birth.

2. Plan.

Once you have your birth team in place, decide what exactly you want and don’t want for your birth. Create a Birth Blueprint. Build your beautiful birth that makes you feel safe, warm and protected. Use the knowledge of your birth team to move around some outlets or plumbing as needed and know what happens if you decide to change your mind and knock down a wall. The key is to be educated enough to make changes without fear.

3. Find your safety net.

AFTER you’ve done all of the above, THEN find the provider to watch over you and make sure that medically your plans will be supported. Whether you choose a midwife or an OB for your care during pregnancy, remember that often times they may not be the ones actually attending your birth. Your preparation and planning are important for continuity of care. Deciding who your care providers will be is not JUST about whether they support your plans. You need to also make sure that any other provider from that practice supports you and that the hospital you are attending supports you. The typical protocols for your provider and the protocols at your place of birth may not be the same. Make sure that no matter whom you choose, you will feel safe and supported, even if things need to change.

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