Daily Health Update for June 2 2021 by Toronto Chiropractor Dr. David Koivuranta in Davisville.

Hello everyone, it's Dr. Dave. Hopefully you're all doing well, enjoying your Wednesday. It's the middle of the week, good times as always. Get through today and the rest is easy. Coming at you on behalf of the Toronto Neck and Back Pain Clinic with your daily health update for Wednesday, June 2nd, 2021. Gonna share with you 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 any questions, you can DM us on social, give us a call at the clinic, send us an email, and we'll be happy to help. Help you out. Not going to treat, diagnose, prevent, or cure any illness or disease with our time together today. However, by listening and potentially absorbing a little bit of the information we share with you today, you just never know what your mind, your thoughts, your decisions and actions might do with it to support your ongoing health and wellness, and maybe even improve some things that need some improving or that you thought couldn't improve, but I bet they can. It's all about creating that good environment for your body. So let's see what we can share with you today in that respect. The American College of Cardiology, May 2021, looks at prediabetes and how it increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. So prediabetes is a term used to describe elevated blood sugar levels that have not yet reached the threshold for a diabetes diagnosis. An analysis of data concerning nearly 25,000 adults showed that those with prediabetes were nearly 50% more likely to experience a serious cardiac event than men and women with normal blood sugar levels. The lead author notes that in general we tend to treat prediabetes as no big deal, but we found that prediabetes itself can significantly boost someone's chance of having a major cardiovascular event even if they never progress to having diabetes. Instead of preventing diabetes, we need to shift focus and prevent prediabetes. And prediabetes, because other than being diagnosed or having an assessment where you might uncover it, may not have any symptoms. Like many of our chronic illnesses in North America, there developing for years prior to the symptoms showing up. So by the time the symptoms do show up, those conditions have a lot of momentum. They have taken root. They have changed your body's physiology. Now, in order to recover and improve by not just treating the symptoms but getting your body healthy again, it takes some effort. People always wonder why that when the symptom shows up and it's only recently been there, why it's not easy to get rid of or change. And that's because the actual problem or condition that's created that change in, say, a symptom like high blood sugar with the prediabetes is that it's been there developing for a while, and it's usually based on two factors, uh, in general. One is either, uh, genetics and/or familial predisposition, but the bigger one and the more important one, the controllable one, is lifestyle. And in order to get prediabetes to not turn into diabetes, certainly there's usually some lifestyle recommendations that could be followed. So along with your medical assessment, diagnosis, and recommendations, it's very valuable to also access care through the paramedical system, your allied healthcare providers, uh, such as a naturopath, a holistic nutritionist, and other people who are trained or skilled or qualified to give you some direction with regards to that state. So good to seek out that help is the moral of the story. Prediabetes, not good, uh, increased likelihood. And it just goes to show you, it's not necessarily blood pressure or the fats, but it's It's also our carbohydrate, highly processed and refined carbohydrate diet in North America that gets us into trouble. We want to try and control the blood sugar regulation through eating what might be a low glycemic index or low glycemic diet. Something like the Mediterranean diet, for example, would be helped to curb the effects of prediabetes and keep someone on a better path. All right, big spiel. Control that blood sugar. Physical activity helps to do that as well, and so does proper amount of sleep. 3 fundamentals to our health and wellness, also valuable to try and do your best with. All right, we shall move on. The British Journal of Cancer, May 2021, looked at eating more veggies and how it can lower breast cancer risk. So you want to look into that. But in general, of course, we want to get that vegetable intake up. Some natural complex carbohydrates are good for us versus those ones that are simple or refined and processed, which leads to that prediabetes, but also suggesting some improvements with cancer as well. Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, April 2021, looked at different exercises that burn the most calories. So if you're going to be fit— or be active, sorry— and you want to do some fitness and maybe be fit, you want to engage in something that might give you a better return on the time that you spend. So jogging or sprinting, competitive sports like football, basketball, and soccer, jumping rope, inline skating or rollerblading at a decent speed, but be careful. Cross-country skiing and swimming laps are all good activities in that respect. PLOS One reports in May 2021 that low iron levels may reflect poorer grades. A comparison of test scores and blood samples collected from 389 grade school students revealed an association between lower iron levels and worse academic performance. The findings suggest that addressing iron deficiency could improve cognitive function in children. And again, one of the best sources of iron other than meats is some healthy protein sources, but also good, good come from our vegetables. So we want to have our young people getting that vegetable intake up every day. And with the recommendation of a healthcare provider, perhaps supplementing. There are some plant-based supplements that are good for iron if you take vitamin C with them. Otherwise, there are some other medical options as well to get that iron up potentially. If it's low for other reasons, uh, sometimes it's not just ingesting but also uptake and assimilation in the body. It's got to get into the cells and tissues. Then that may require the investigation with appropriate healthcare provider as well, medical doctor, and or perhaps again a naturopathic doctor. Canadian Medical Education Journal, April 2021, looks at mindfulness training and well-being. Mindfulness is described as the ability to be fully present, aware of where you are, and calm about what's going on around you. A systemic review found that mindfulness training is an effective intervention for improving psychological well-being in medical school students, a population at high risk for high risk of depression, distress, and burnout. It's just a lot of information in a short period of time that they cram into some of these programs, probably not just medicine but other programs as well. And, uh, being mindful and having a good strategy, some awareness of what you're doing and how you're doing it, can help get you through some of those challenging periods in our life like that, uh, higher education. Effort that we sometimes pursue. And finally, Clinical Biomechanics, May 2021, looks at myofascial release and how it provides some immediate beneficial effects for low back pain. Using tensiomyography, investigators measure the tightness of the lumbar fascia before and after a 6-minute myofascial release treatment performed on 15 patients with low back pain. The results showed that myofascial release significantly increased the speed of contraction of the lumbar erector spinal muscles, the muscles in the— on the sides of the spine, which has been observed to be slower in low back patients, or they weren't functioning well. So that myofascial release improved that muscle response time. And I would bet that percussive massage, with some of the trending or fad that's been happening with percussive massage on the market, which people can buy and use on their own, would probably also help with some of that fascial release and increasing the speed of contraction in those low back muscles. However, it may not completely fix all the function, so it would be good to still get an assessment, check all the parts in that low back and spine, as well as making sure that other firing patterns are working properly. Quite often those back muscles, even though they need to fire at a good rate, they also have to fire in sequence. And quite often they fire in movements like bending forward and coming back to vertical, uh, in the wrong order with your glutes. The glutes should fire first in that movement coming back up, but in a lot of people it's the back muscles that fire first, and that can lead to some back pain problems as well. So for that reason, it's good to get an assessment and know which areas you should be targeting and how. Customized, personalized, and individualized for you. That's your daily health update for Wednesday. Hope you found some good information in there. Keep going. We'll be here tomorrow with another daily health update, throwing some good information at you. And then Friday we'll post a written format heading you into the weekend. It's summertime. I hope you enjoy it. Stay healthy and well. We'll catch up with you tomorrow. Take care.