Daily Health Update for July 8 2021 by Toronto Chiropractor Dr. David Koivuranta in Davisville.

Hello everyone, it's Dr. Dave. Hopefully you're all doing well, you're enjoying your week, looking forward to your day today in a healthy, positive way. Coming at you on behalf of the Toronto Neck and Back Pain Clinic with your daily health update for Thursday, July 8th, 2021. Gonna look at 6 areas of health and wellness. Somewhere around this video, you can read through all 6 areas. If you'd like a copy or you have questions, you can DM us on social, send us an email here at the clinic, or give us a call. We're always happy to help you out. I'm not going to treat, diagnose, prevent, or cure any illness or disease with our time together today. However, step by step, little by little, inch by inch, we make it a cinch to hopefully have you focus on your health and wellness every day to kind of curb those decisions, thoughts, and actions you're taking to support yourself so that you stay healthy to create those great experiences you'd like to have every day. And I know you can do it. The Annals of Surgery, June 2021, looked at opioids and how they're often overprescribed after surgeries. An analysis of data on over 22,000 surgical procedures found that 86% of patients were prescribed opioids while the rest received non-opioid painkillers. However, in the first week after surgery, there was no difference between the groups with respect to seeking emergency care for pain, and those given opioids were more likely to still be in pain. The findings suggest that opioids may not provide any additional benefit over other pain relief drugs following surgery, and given the risk for abuse, this class of drug may be overprescribed. Opioids, of course, of course, have been in the news a lot lately. They definitely have their place. Uh, it's just a matter of ensuring that proper protocols and procedures are in place to know when and how to use that particular class of medication. And initially, they may have been used in a way that, um, was effective for their discovery, but things along the way have changed because of the side effects and the potential setbacks that can occur. So looking at other forms of pain relief initially may be a better strategy. And again, it's all about less invasive first, less consequences first, see how it works, and then move to more invasive if necessary and riskier procedures. But patients definitely should talk to their providers about the different options when faced with that choice of opioids after surgery. But, uh, outside the scope of chiropractic care, so we want to refer you of course to your family doctor, medical doctor, specialist when it comes to those concerns. But As an educational point, as an informational point, it's good to know that in order to take care of yourself, you're still in control, and you want to make some good decisions for yourself. That's the message today. All right, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, June 2021, looked at fruit and how it could potentially help prevent diabetes. New research suggests that eating 2 servings of fruit a day can reduce one's risk for developing type 2 diabetes by up 36%. Fruit has lots of different compounds in it that are healthy for your body and supports the regular, the normal function of our cells and tissues. However, the concern might be with the sugar, but fructose is not as blood sugar spiking as sucrose and what turns into glucose would be for your body. So those fruit sugars are definitely safer in some respects, especially when eaten in their natural form, not as a juice, but actually as the whole fruit with the fiber. Alright, so some health benefits definitely for fruit, even to prevent something that you would think might be a source or a cause or supportive of something like diabetes. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, July 2021, looks at learning to ride a bicycle and how it benefits children with autism. According to a study that included 62 children with autism spectrum disorder, those who learned to ride a bicycle experienced improved executive function skills that were not observed in participants who rode a stationary bicycle or did not cycle in any manner. Interesting how we can challenge our cognitive function, our brain function, and not just with thoughts and information, but also with activity, and how that may have some positive side effects on the cognitive function and how our, how our executive function, I guess, those higher-order thinking and learning and applying what we learn works. So activity is good for your brain. Is the bottom line. Sometimes we're at a loss for words, just how good science is, right? British Journal of Nutrition, June 2021, looked at fruit again, and this time maternal fruit consumption and how it affects the brain development of a child. Following an analysis of data concerning 23,000+ mother-child pairs from two large ongoing studies, researchers report that a high intake of fruit before and during pregnancy is associated with a lower risk for developmental delays in offspring. So not just our children eating well, but us eating well helps support our children, especially when bringing them into the world. So just shows you how far that healthy diet can go. ACS Sensors in June 2021 reported their progress on how testing sweat may help monitor blood sugar. Researchers have developed a sensor capable of measuring blood sugar levels in sweat with 95% accuracy And the researchers hope that no-prick glucose testing will be more and more likely in the future. And this data suggests that there's hope for such a process. So that's kind of cool. Good technology there. And finally, the journal Demography, April 2021, looked at chronic pain becoming more common, unfortunately. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey, researchers report that the number of adults with chronic pain in one or more areas of the body increased by by 10% between 2002 and 2018. Trying to find conservative approaches for this chronic pain is always a valuable management strategy so that we can avoid those invasive strategies we talked about earlier, which in the short term to get relief are very helpful and something that we should seek out, but not good long-term strategies when things don't improve. So try to look to your paramedical providers for some help in that regard to help support your lifestyle in order to work through any challenges that your body may be facing, especially chronic pain. All right, so there is hope. It's just a matter of putting together appropriate protocol, procedure, something customized, individualized, and personalized to you to try and get those results. And it can happen. You just have to be persistent and persevere. All right, so that's your daily health update for Thursday. Quite a mouthful, apparently challenging to get through, but hopefully you got some good tips in there to support your journey. We'll give you a written format tomorrow on all our platforms. You can look for it Friday. Enjoy your weekend, another summer weekend coming up. Make the most of it, and we'll catch up with you on Monday with your next daily health update. All the best, take care, enjoy.