Daily Health Update for April 21 2021 by Toronto Chiropractor Dr. David Koivuranta in Davisville.

Hello everyone, it's Dr. Dave. Hopefully you're all doing well, having a good week. You made it to Wednesday. Coming at you on behalf of the Toronto Neck and Back Pain Clinic with your daily health update. It's Wednesday, April 21st, 2021. Gonna share with you 6 areas of health and wellness today, as we always do Monday through Thursday in a little video. So hopefully you enjoy the listen. Somewhere around this video though, you can read through those 6 little pieces of information we talk about. If you'd like a copy, you can DM us on social, send us an email, give us a call at the clinic, clinic. We'll be sure to get that to you. Not going to treat, diagnose, prevent, or cure any illness or disease with our time together today, as the disclaimer goes. However, when you start to make some decisions that support your health and wellness and what your body is capable of, you just never know what might get better and how long you can stay well when things are headed in the right direction. All right, so, um, the American Stroke Association has a pretty good chunk of information here on how important prompt care is to stroke recovery if someone has a stroke. So I'll let you read through that. Very important information to know in case something like that were to happen. And then as a consumer in the healthcare model, understanding the strategy going forward for these different conditions, especially the leading problems in North America, which are cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. Of course, there are other health conditions like chronic pain, which are also challenging when they occur, but we just wanna be able to know there are some options to negotiate those issues when they arise. And the American Stroke Association has some ideas for you regarding prompt care when stroke recovery becomes something you may need to look at in your life. Hopefully never, but if you do, just know that there is some good information out there for you. Diabetes, type 2 diabetes, another important strategy that if we need to live with, good to know what to do. The Endocrine Society, March 2021, talks about eating earlier can reduce the risk for type 2 diabetes. So using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, researchers estimate that eating breakfast before 8:30 AM is associated with lower blood sugar levels and less insulin resistance, which are known risk factors for type 2 diabetes. So along with those risk factors, there may be a familial component or maybe a genetic component as well, although lifestyle can certainly play a component and there may be some epigenetics involved where those genes might get turned on or off by different stressors, and that could involve those blood sugar fluctuations. So, I know there is a big push right now, a big trend on fasting, and there's other research though that shows that may not be the best. So you do wanna customize that approach, personalize it to you, and find out what works best for you, and then monitor your health status while you make those changes and choices to ensure that it's actually doing what you think it's doing for your overall health and wellness. Now, if you get a good amount of sleep, let's say 7 or 8 hours a night, and you go to bed at least a couple hours, hopefully before midnight, that may satisfy the fasting requirement for your body when you do it in a healthy way. When you sleep, you can fast. It's not so important, I've heard it say, that when you break the fast as what you break the fast with. And of course, following some good rules in terms of what your body needs with respect to nutrients and energy source, and what it doesn't need, are doesn't want in terms of empty calories and toxins, then the strategy becomes pretty clear. You could get by with something that's fairly reasonable in moderation without being too difficult to do, and eating earlier in that strategy may be better for you, all right, based on the research and literature. So interesting to know. Reducing physical inactivity can save lives, according to the British Journal of Sports Medicine, March 2021. They estimate that 7.2% of annual deaths could be prevented if everyone engaged in at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity each week. That's great. I would like to see 30 minutes of more intense activity added to that a week, and I'd also like to see one session of at least 60 minutes. So we're probably up to 240, 250 minutes in my book, but at a minimum, 150 minutes a week if people engage and replaced sedentary activity with movement-based activity, 7.2% of annual deaths could be prevented. That's a significant portion of deaths that occur on an annual basis. So that just speaks to how important getting moving and being active is. Contrasting that to screen time, uh, the British Medical Journal Open, March 2021, says it could lead to behavior issues. New research suggests that the more time a child spends in front of a screen in the second year of life the greater the risk for hyperactivity, attention and concentration difficulties, and emotional problems at age 5. That would be an interesting one to look up and look through the parameters, so you could probably Google that one. Science Progress, April 2021, says that many teens are not getting enough nutrients. A review of blood tests collected from over 2,500, 2,500 adolescents revealed that 25.7% had deficient vitamin D levels 69% had deficient folate levels, and 13% had deficient iron levels. So, uh, some of these things you can test for. Uh, sometimes you don't need to have a symptom to have, uh, deficient levels. Some medical doctors will gladly order these tests on teens, and, uh, otherwise, uh, some naturopaths and more holistic, uh, practitioner allied healthcare providers can also, uh, have those tests done to see how well, uh, people are doing. With those levels, adults or teens. But getting on top of those things earlier, setting some habits to establish normal levels early on in life, could help prevent some health problems in the future. And finally, the Journal of Medicine, January 2021, looked at stabilization exercises that are beneficial for lumbar or low back instability. Patients with chronic low back pain often exhibit lumbar instability and weaker core muscles. A study involving 45 chronic back pain patients with lumbar instability found that engaging in progressive neuromuscular stabilization exercise on an unstable surface resulted improvements in pain, motor function, balance, and transverse abdominis muscle thickness— thickening in one of the deep core muscles around the pelvis and low back— and stomach and low back. Doctors of chiropractic often recommend specific exercises as part of a treatment plan to reduce pain and improve functions with pain in patients with low back pain, as well as to reduce the risk for recurrence, as do many other allied or paramedical providers, massage therapists will, osteopaths will, acupuncturists, massage therapists, many of them out there, physiotherapists. Did I say massage therapist twice? Because that's just how good they are. Who doesn't like a good massage, right? So for chronic low back pain, the challenge is to not give up. Sometimes finding the specific area of instability and/or finding the pattern of instability It's not as easy as doing the generic exercises sometimes. A good assessment as well as persistence with the different exercises that may help will bring about some improvement. So stick with it and don't give up when it comes to chronic low back pain. There is some help out there. So that's your daily health update for Wednesday. It's a good one, lots of good information in there. You might need to listen to it a second time. You may even need to share it with someone who needs or wants to hear it. That would be amazing. Otherwise, I hope you're having and have had a good day, and we'll look forward to catching up with you tomorrow Thursday with the next daily health update. Chat then. Stay well.