Daily Health Update for May 20 2021 by Toronto Chiropractor Dr. David Koivuranta in Davisville.

Hello everyone, it's Dr. Dave. Hopefully you're all doing well, you're having a wonderful week, looking forward to your Friday tomorrow. Hope it's a healthy and happy one. Coming at you on behalf of the Toronto Neck and Back Pain Clinic with your daily health update for Thursday, May 20th, 2021. Gonna look at 6 areas of health and wellness. Somewhere around this video you can read through all 6 of those areas. If you would like a copy or you have any questions, you can DM us on social, send us an email here at the clinic, or even give us a call. We'll be sure to answer those questions and/or get you a copy in your hands. Not going to treat, diagnose, prevent, or cure any illness or disease with our time together today. However, we're going to look at something that may help spurn your own thoughts, decisions, and actions today when it comes to your health and wellness, which is always a good focus to have when you're navigating your journey with whatever you have to do all day long, because the healthier you are, the easier or more fun your day should be. So let's help you do that. Um, Whenever I hear about tobacco and smoking, I think it's such an OG thing. I think it's like something from the past, but it still does exist and it's neither right nor wrong. It's a choice. It's a decision. But like any other choice and decision, it does perhaps come with some consequences. And Tobacco Control, April 2021, came out with some information regarding secondhand smoke and how it raises risk for oral cancers. So new research suggests that a 10 to 15-year history of exposure to secondhand smoke is associated with an up to 51% elevated risk for cancer of the lips, mouth, and throat. So not only, uh, for the smokers, but also for those exposed to the secondhand smoke, quite an elevated risk for those cancers. So if you or someone you know is still engaged in the habit, uh, that may be some motivation to try and stop. Not always easy to do, I've heard, but, uh, certainly can be done and, uh, maybe is a good idea to do. Public Health Nutrition, May 2021, came out with a great report on blue and purple fruits and veggies and how it can reduce gestational diabetes risk. Anthocyanins are the flavonoids that provide some fruits and vegetables, including blueberries, raisins, blackberries, plums, black grapes, eggplant, purple cauliflower, purple cabbage, and purple tomatoes— sorry, potatoes. Don't eat the purple tomatoes. With their blue and purple coloring, dietary assessments of over 1,400 expectant moms revealed revealed an association between a high intake of anthocyanin-rich produce and up to 35% reduced risk for gestational diabetes mellitus. So a very specific niche kind of bit of information for moms to control— help control their blood pressure, which sometimes gets challenged during pregnancy, ending up with that gestational diabetes risk. Usually goes away postpartum. However, just another good example, and we can extrapolate the value of getting that variety of different fruits and vegetables into our diet, because not only do they have the basic vitamins and minerals, but a lot of them contain compounds that are protective for our bodies in other ways, especially those antioxidants, which are good to have. And not every antioxidant is the same. They fight different free radicals in the body, so having a variety of them gives you the best protection. And the good way to get them is naturally because it supports your body's own production of, um, of antioxidants. Thank you. Um, like glutathione, uh, glutathione and, other precursors in the body. So the natural form is the best. Sometimes if you give your body too much of an external source, it starts doing less of what it does. But when you provide support naturally, like through food, like fruits and vegetables, uh, you support that process much better. We better move on to the next one. The Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine, April 2021, looked at home-based exercise programs and how they can help improve knee arthritis for patients with knee osteoarthritis. A recent study found that a web-based home exercise program with automated texts to encourage participants was effective for reducing knee pain and disability. We quite often encourage patients to do their own knee exercises because it should be done regularly when it comes to knee arthritis. You don't want to overdo it, but the knee does require some activity even when osteoarthritic to help it function better and be healthier and to slow and stop some of that arthritis, maybe even reverse it on the cellular level. Um, and one of the good— two good things to do are some resistance band exercises can easily be done for the knee, and also, um, uh, Pedal Sizer, a little set of pedals that you can buy. You don't need the whole exercise bike, although that's good too, but even just sitting and keeping some constant motion gently in that knee without a lot of resistance helps get waste out and nutrients into the tissues and can be good for the knee. So good home-based suggestions there if you or someone you know has knee arthritis or some knee dysfunction. You can look into customizing and personalizing that to get some good results at home. The Journal of Neurology, May 2021, looked at poor kidney health and dementia during a 5-year study that included over 32, uh, 320,000, sorry, older adults. Researchers observed an association between poor kidney function and an elevated risk for dementia diagnosis. So good to keep that kidney functioning well. Again, getting those nutrients that we need, getting our body moving and active. Forcing those fluids to flow, and of course getting enough hydration and water into the system throughout the day. The journal Sleep, April 2021, looked at later start times for school, meaning better rested teenagers. According to a recent study, pushing back high school start times by 40 to 60 minutes helps students sleep an extra 3.8 hours a week, with 10% reporting better sleep quality and 20% experiencing less daytime sleepiness. Might be a trend we see across society in general as as more and more people are engaged with their technology and their devices, keeping them up later at night, and hopefully getting enough sleep, but probably not, but maybe by extending the start of the day a little bit later in the mornings, people will be better rested, saving their health, and there may be a general shift. However, physiologically, it would be interesting to know whether or not the body shifts and accommodates those changes. Going to sleep at a proper hour and getting enough sleep at night versus too late in the morning can probably, provide better opportunity for your body to heal and get some rest than staying up later and sleeping in longer when the day has already started and your body is still resting. Maybe in conflict with your natural body physiology and the flow of the circadian rhythm and the different hormones that are produced based on those rhythms could be in conflict. So we'll see what happens. But if they're more well-rested, especially when they have to learn and be actively involved in, say, a school routine, then it may be a good solution at that stage of life. Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehab, April 2021, looked at mid-back adjustments improving neck range of motion among a group of 80 young adults with either chronic or recurrent neck or shoulder pain. Researchers found that a single spinal manipulation treatment to the mid-back improved neck range of motion. The findings suggest that evaluating the mid-back or the thoracic spine of the neck and shoulder pain patients with reduced cervical or neck range of motion is a good idea. Of course, it may not always seem that it makes sense to treat or to look at an area where someone isn't feeling a problem, but it is amazingly all connected. And neck and shoulder pain certainly go along with dysfunction in the upper back, uh, and upper back dysfunction should also be assessed by looking at the shoulder and the neck because that region is highly intertwined in terms of its biomechanics and its function throughout the day. All right, it's a long one Wednesday or Thursday. A lot of good information in there. Hope you enjoyed it. Head you into the weekend. We'll give you a written format tomorrow posted on all our sites on the Friday. And hope you enjoy the weekend, a long one here in Canada. So we won't be back until Tuesday with the video format. We'll probably post a written format though for you on Monday, the holiday Monday here in Canada. And then we'll catch up with you again after that with the video format. Thanks for tuning in. Stay well. Take care of each other. Go have some fun. We'll catch up with you later. Ciao.