Daily Health Update for July 14 2021 by Toronto Chiropractor Dr. David Koivuranta in Davisville.

Hello everyone, it's Dr. Dave. Hopefully you're all doing well, taking care of each other, having a good week, looking forward to your day, and if it's already taking place, hopefully you're making it a good one. Coming at you on behalf of the Toronto Neck and Back Pain Clinic with your daily health update for Wednesday, July 14th, 2021. Gonna look at 6 areas of health and wellness today. As usual, somewhere around this video you can read through all 6 areas if you would like a copy, you have questions or you'd just like to say hi, you can DM us on social, send us an email, or give us a call here at the clinic. We are always happy to help you out. Not going to treat, diagnose, prevent, or cure any illness or disease— any cure any illness or disease with our time together today. However, we will share with you something that's going on out there in the research and/or literature that may think stimulate your thinking about your own health and wellness and give you a boost in the right direction, or just support your happiness when it comes to your health and creating those great experiences every day. So let's see if we can do that. The Journal of Sleep Research, June 2021, talks about poor sleep plus diabetes increasing your risk for early death. An analysis of long-term data concerning over 500,000 middle-aged and older adults revealed that diabetics may have up to a 12% increased risk for early death. However, diabetics with frequent sleep interruptions had nearly a 90% elevated risk for premature mortality. So it's that comorbidity, two or more conditions. It's just challenging for your body to do what it was designed and programmed to do. So trying your best to improve all aspects of your health and wellness, that, that lifestyle of yours, uh, will help mitigate the effects. And hopefully, if you are experiencing health challenges, will not, uh, will— by controlling and improving your lifestyles, won't lead to other challenges developing. And then when you add those challenges together, it's just hard to get on top of it. So focus on those lifestyle challenges, take very good care of yourself, get the care and treatment that you need, and just work on that upward spiral. You can do it. And one of the things you want to do is just make sure you're getting enough sleep and good quality sleep. Okay. Sometimes it's hard because you're faced with a health challenge and you're focused so much energy into improving that challenge that sometimes we don't realize that we may not be taking as good care of ourselves in some simple ways that can actually help with most challenges. And it's those fundamental lifestyle factors of nutrition, sleep, and activity. Okay, so that's the purpose of that research study in my mind, is to let us know that we want to keep continuing to take good care of ourselves regardless of those challenges, but especially because of those challenges. And if we don't, because we don't want to have the challenges. So there's always good reason to plug into those lifestyle factors. The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, June 2021, talks about fast food and sweets and how they might elevate asthma risk. Among a group of almost 1,000 adults, researchers observed that a high intake of fast food and sweets is associated with an up to 25% increased risk of asthma. The findings suggest that adopting a healthier diet may benefit respiratory health. Of course, some of those foods— fast foods, deep fried, preservatives, and the sweets, the sugars, and a lot of those with high carbs— leads me to wonder how much of it is an inflammatory and maybe even some component of autoimmune response or decreased immune function. All right, definitely dysfunctional function— dysfunction in the body to some respect. The Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, February 2021, looked at video games and how they can benefit stroke patients. For patients recovering from stroke, a new study found that incorporating movement-based video games in a rehabilitation program helped improve brain plasticity and physical function as well as or better than traditional rehabilitation programs. The research team notes that patients in the video game group found the approach to be motivating and fun, which improved their adherence to the intervention. A good use of technology, right? The journal Sleep— speaking of sleep— June 2021 looked at poor sleep after a traumatic brain injury and how that may indicate a future dementia risk. An analysis of data concerning over 700,000 individuals with a history of traumatic brain injury revealed that those who subsequently developed a sleep disorder were 25% more likely to develop dementia later in life. We had a concussion patient this week, and very appropriately, we encouraged her not only because of the care to her neck and some of the symptoms that came after the concussion, but to then seek care in other paramedical ways as well as attending to a concussion clinic, because, because they have unique strategies to ensure that as much of a recovery to any parts of the cognitive function that might occur from that concussion are addressed. And it speaks to not only concussion but any health condition or challenge that we face. We want to try and work towards full resolution and recovery, or the greatest that our body will allow, so that it decreases the likelihood of having future complications from that injury or accident. They're always unfortunate when they happen, but— and it takes a lot of work sometimes to recover from some of them, but it is worth it in the long run to try and get the best or the most recovery that you can, not only to feel as good as you can, but to ensure you're functioning as well as you can, especially into the future, so it doesn't lead to something else we don't want to deal with later on. Oral Health Foundation, June 2021, look at keeping your teeth and gums healthy, a very good wellness strategy. They recommend the following home routine to maintain healthy teeth and gums: brush your teeth once before bed and at least one other time daily, so that would be twice a day minimum. Clean between your teeth with floss or an interdental brush and use an alcohol-free mouthwash in between the times you brush to help protect your teeth and gums. A threefold approach to help decrease the likelihood of having any kinds of oral health challenges. Your dentist and your hygienist will be proud of you. Okay, finally, Pain Management Nursing, April 2021, looked at musculoskeletal discomfort affecting the quality of life in nurses. Questionnaires completed by 333 nurses revealed that 90.4% suffered from musculoskeletal pain, most commonly in the low back, and nearly 50% reported that pain interfered with their work to some degree. Additionally, the researchers observed an association between more intense pain and/or pain in multiple sites and an elevated risk for burnout and compassion fatigue. All a negative outcome, not a happy way to be living, right? So there are people out there who help to manage work-related musculoskeletal pain with a multimodal approach, which means addressing the different components that that might be causing some of that musculoskeletal, that bone, joint, tissue, tendon, ligament, nervous system aggravation. And it may include manual therapy, specific exercises, ergonomic modifications, as well as some nutritional advice. So for our nurses out there, it's a challenging occupation, a very rewarding one, and it's certainly one that's much needed in society. Such wonderful caregivers, but we know being a caregiver can be challenging, and if we don't take care of ourselves, it's very hard to to take care of others. So regardless of occupation, but especially because of nursing, but for anything that you're trying to do and enjoy doing and want to do because you like to help or otherwise during the day, do take good care of yourself. And sometimes that means seeking out a little bit of help because we live in challenging times. All right, it's not a weakness, uh, to go out and get some help and take good care of yourself. In fact, it could be one of the smartest and most effective things you do to try and create those great experiences every day, including your you patient. All right, so that's your daily health update for Wednesday, middle of the week. We roll into another summer weekend. We'll send a video your way on Thursday, tomorrow, in a written format on Friday. Keep plugging into some good health information, keep a smile on your face, spend some good time with those people around you. Enjoy the rest of your time today. We'll catch up with you tomorrow. Take care.