Family Update June 2012

Hi everyone!

The biggest news around my family is of course my little guy, Ari.  Many of you have seen him around the practice, and know he's just getting bigger and bigger all the time.  He's talking a lot now, and it's getting to be really fun to have conversations with him.  We're back into swimming at our local YMCA on Pearl St, and then we do the family gym afterwards.

Today he sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" completely from memory and in tune.  I was so impressed!

In this picture he's hiding in our "jungle" in the front yard.  We have got to do some weeding!

In my world, I ran a sprint triathlon at the YMCA downtown a couple of weeks ago.  It was a different kind of workout for me.  I have been doing CrossFit for some time, and really enjoying the functional movements and intensity of it, but a triathlon is a whole different thing.  This was a 750 m swim, a 20 k ride, and a 5 k run, and I completed it in one hour and 35 minutes.  I swam in the pool, used an expresso bike for the ride, and the treadmill for the run.  I was sore for a while afterwards, but I thought I held up pretty well, especially since endurance type events are generally harder to complete on a Paleo type diet that limits carbohydrates so much.  I did load up a bit two days before by adding some potatoes and fruit, but other than that, kept my diet the same, and I did great!

Laelle has been exploring more about fitness, trying to incorporate the Primal Blueprint fitness program into her life.  It involves body weight exercises that are scaled to different difficulty levels so you always have somewhere to progress to!  It's a great program, especially for people who aren't into the intensity of the CrossFit program that I love so much.

I read some interesting books recently, including Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food".  In it, he talks about the history of nutritionism, as it relates to picking foods to eat based solely on nutritional micro factors, like Vitamin C, or beta carotene, rather than eating whole foods, a variety of them, and trusting that.  It was a great read, and his basic recommendation is one that I can whole heartedly get behind, except for a few caveats.  His message is "Eat food, not a lot, mostly plants."  Awesome stuff.

Another book I read was "The Vegetarian Myth" by Lierre Keith.  She is a former vegan who suffered severe health problems due to her vegetarian and vegan diet lifestyle.  Her insistence to not take an animal life led to a series of discoveries about food, and how even if you only eat plants, the death of animals is actually required in order to pass certain nutrients back into the soil to create healthy plants.  She writes starkly and viciously at times, and for some reason includes a fair number of feminism rants that I didn't feel quite fit in with the overall tone of the book, but it was an interesting read anyway.  For the record, I don't believe a vegetarian, or especially vegan, diet is healthy for most people as it can create some nutritional deficiencies, though I do think some people are better suited for it than others.  I am definitely not one of those.

Love and light!

What is Health?

If we are going to discuss health, we first have to decide what we mean by the word health.  In our society, people seem to think that health is simply not expressing any symptoms.  Is this really healthy?  If we aren't in any pain at all, does that mean we've gone as far as we can into the realm of health?

I would say no.

First of all, the dead express no symptoms.  They do not have a vital life force in their bodies.  They have no capacity to create a symptom because they are not alive.  Is that healthy?  Of course not.

So, the absence of symptoms is no guarantee of health.  What if we are still alive?  Can we be symptom free and unhealthy?  How about if someone develops an infection?  Traditionally (though this is changing) the course of action is to combat the fever with a drug.  Take the drug, no fever, so that means no problem, right?  Not so.  Fever serves a very important function in the body, slowing viruses and allowing white blood cells to take them out, killing cancer cells before they get to prevalent, and also destroying enemy bacteria.  Fever is a symptom that means we ARE healthy.  We are vigorously defending our system from an imbalance of cells, whether bacterial or carcinogenic.  In this case, the presence of a symptom means you are healthy.

What creates these symptoms and pain is a functioning connection to the innate intelligence of the body.  They are messages designed to restore balance and flow, to allow us to return to optimal health, which would generally mean that you have symptoms less and less as that balance is restored.  With a strong connection through the body, ease and freedom are the norm.  Pain and tightness are rare.  No one pays attention to the check engine light in a car that's been on for years.  But if it doesn't show as a rule, but suddenly does, we know there is a problem, and we can react swiftly.

The innate intelligence of the body requires clear communication throughout the body to coordinate all of the tissues and cells of the body for maximum adaptability and optimal expression of health.  Crises will still happen from time to time.  They are inevitable.  Having a clear connection with your innate intelligence ensures that the response from the body will be appropriate, timely, and measured to the stress experienced.

What provides that connection for the innate intelligence?  The nerve system is a major component, and it is one that chiropractic has focused on for over a hundred years, since its inception.  With a fully functioning nerve system, the connection is clearer, and the innate intelligence of the body can coordinate the body perfectly, allowing for an optimal expression of health.  There are others, such as the neuroendocrine system, and the electromagnetic field, and all are affected by subluxation.