Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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Find Rest Before Rest Finds You – Breaking Busy

I’m a couple weeks late to the ‘New Year, New You’ talk and hype.  I have done this purposely.  You have gotten it and are getting it from every media source.  The majority of the messages these past few weeks and every time this year is that ‘YOU SHOULD DO SOMETHING to better your life.’  This year, I want you to focus on NOT DOING.

In my 5 pillars, I discuss that most people are running from bears on a daily basis.  The ‘bears’ are stressors physically, chemically, and emotionally.  These stressors are things categorized as Deficient and/or Toxic to sustain health.

One of the biggest Toxicities we have in life is being busy.  If you ask my staff, I hate the word busy.  I cringe when people say, ‘I know you’re busy….”  Busy means to be ‘foolishly active.’  My 1 and 3 year old are busy and that’s ok.  Their role right now is to experience life and the world around them for the first time.  They have no responsibilities to provide for themselves or our family.

breaking busy

Busyness has become a weird standard of measure of our attempt to keep up with the Joneses.  It’s a currency gaining more prestige than the latest iPhone, car, or NFL games attended.   The more I meet with people, hear their story, examine them, analyze lab work, and schedule them, busyness might be the #1 bear attack that causes the 5 pillars, which led them to their condition they are seeking help.  We try to cram more things into the same amount of time each day, often looking back at the day wondering what we actually got accomplished.

The solution?  We feel we didn’t accomplish that much so it means we have to do MORE.  Since we can’t add time to our day, we have to add speed.  The top reason for speed is to obtain things you don’t really need to impress people you don’t really like.

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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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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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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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Enterovirus 68 – Don’t freak out

I was in a seminar all weekend and honestly, don’t pay much attention to news but a few people have alerted me to the ‘mystery Enterovirus 68’ that’s going around.  Before you freak out, take a deep breath.  

The term outbreak and epidemic is being thrown around which are scary terms.  For something to be considered an epidemic, only 4 people have to be infected.   Current estimates are that 1,000 kids are sick with this virus.  If there’s an estimated 72,000,000 kids in the US, 1,000 is pretty small and your child has a 0.0013% chance of getting the virus.

Media outlets will also show you pictures of kids hooked up to ventilators, bed-ridden, and feeble looking.  Here in Colorado, Children’s Hospital of Denver has admitted 86 kids out of more than 900 that have symptoms.

Enterovirus 68

Who are the most susceptible?  It’s the kids that are already sick.  The kids that are having the hardest time with this virus are the ones that have asthma.  Dr. Kurt, how can you call a kid with asthma already sick?  Imagine a person that you think is the pinnacle of health, do they have asthma?  No.

Asthma is an underlying immune dysfunction that is more than just a lung illness.  The affected breathing is most likely gut dysfunction, over production of antibodies, chronic inflammation, and autonomic imbalance, which stem from deficiencies and toxicities that could have started in the womb, prior to the child even being born.  Most of these kids are on steroids to control exacerbations of asthma.  What’s one of the biggest effects of steroids?  A decreased immune system.  Asthma is listed under the morbidity stats of the CDC.  If you’re on the morbidity list, you’re not healthy.

According to the CDC, 6.8 million kids have asthma, which is roughly 9.3% of our kids.  What’s the bigger issue, that close to 10% of our kids have a chronic condition in asthma or that the news is littered with hysteria that your kid has a 0.0013% of contracting Enterovirus 68?  The problem and reason that asthma continues to get worse is that we now associate being sick as being ‘normal.’  If you want real news, what about the 1,800,000 visits to the ER with the primary diagnosis of asthma?  1.8 million ER trips for ‘normal’ sickness vs. 900 ER trips for news hysteria.

If you’re worried about the Enterovirus 68, then do as the CDC recommends and wash your hands, cover your cough or sneeze, and don’t hang out with other sick people.  If you want to a create amazing health for your child, dig deeper, and team up with a professional that understands the mission behind creating More Health, Less Healthcare.

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Snack Bar Review.

Rule #1 while grocery shopping is to never shop while hungry.  This should not be an epiphany to anyone on a health journey.  But I broke this golden rule recently.  

I was at my favorite local natural health store to pick up some water for the office.  I was hungry so I ventured down the aisle that contains all the protein, meal replacement, and supplement bars to see if they had anything new and eye catching that may entice my appetite.

They did.  I actually picked up 3 of them.  This is my snack bar review.

Tour de Bars

1. Epic Bar.  I’ve been seeing this bar more and more lately through the publications that I read from running and CrossFit magazines to paleo publications.  The concept of it really entices me.  It’s basically meat in a bag made of bison and bacon.  I love bison and bacon so why not?

2. Clif Kit’s Organic Fruit and Seed Bar.  This is basically Clif Bar’s version of the Lara Bar.  If I need something quick, Lara Bar is usually a quick eat to pick me up or even give to our son as a snack.  Kit’s looked very similar to Lara Bar just with some added chia seeds.

3. 22 days daily Mocha Mantra Bar. This is a vegan protein bar that was gluten free and dairy free.  And who doesn’t love the flavor of mocha?  I was hungry, give me a break.

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Best Seth Godin Advice Ever.

I just read a great blog post from one of my most favorite authors on the planet,  Seth Godin.  It was only 2 sentences long.  It goes something like this:

“Don’t measure anything unless the data helps you make a better decision or change your actions.  If you’re not prepared to change your diet or workouts, don’t get on the scale.” – Seth Godin.

Mr. Godin is in the marscaleketing world but he just nailed one of the biggest reasons why our healthcare system fails to create health. We have become a nation that is focused on our numbers.  Most people know their total cholesterol, blood pressure, their weight, and maybe even their blood sugar levels.

The problem is that with all the emphasis on the numbers, only 1 solution has been offered…a drug to control that number.  We have been led to believe that the only reasonable and successful manner to manage those numbers is through chemistry not innate to the body.

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