Health Update Jan 21 2021

Hello everyone, it's Dr. Dave. Hopefully you're all doing well, having a wonderful week, enjoying your Thursday. Coming at you on behalf of the Toronto Neck and Back Pain Clinic with your daily health update. It's Thursday, January 21st, 2021. I'm gonna share with you 6 areas of health and wellness today, as we always do Monday through Thursday on a little video. I'm gonna cover those areas relating to a health alert, diet, exercise, chiropractic, mental attitude, and wellness or prevention, as we typically do. Not gonna treat diagnose, prevent, or cure any illness or disease with our time together today. However, we will share with you the latest and the greatest in those 6 different areas based on current research and literature that may just support some decisions, actions, things you're thinking about with your own health on a daily basis, thereby supporting that process and helping you have those great experiences you're looking to do and have in your life every day. Somewhere around this video, you can definitely read through all 6 areas, but if you'd like to receive a hard copy, send us an email, call us at the clinic, or DM us here on social, and we'll be able to get that to you for sure. So osteoarthritis, wear and tear arthritis in our joints, is linked to increased fracture risk according to the Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Report, December 2020. The slow breakdown of cartilage in the joints, most often in the hands, knees, hips, and spine, um, is quite often the case with wear and tear arthritis. And among a sample of nearly 260,000 adults, half of them with osteoarthritis, researchers observed that osteoarthritic individuals had had a 55% increased risk for sustaining at least one fracture during a 7-year period of time. The research team concludes that more research is warranted in order to gain more of an insight into the mediators involved in the relationship between osteoarthritis and fracture. Now, interestingly, chiropractors have always known and somewhat promoted that maintaining good joint function will decrease the likelihood of having fractures, and that's for a number of reasons. Uh, it's for the functional gain. The biomechanics are good, your stability is better, your coordination is better. But now also, based on this research, simply maintaining and preserving that joint function, which is natural and you want to keep for your whole life, will also deter fractures from occurring. So that's your motivation to have motion in your life, because life is indeed motion. The Mediterranean diet can preserve verbal ability, according to the British Journal of Nutrition, December 2020. I could certainly probably use some verbal preservation Using data from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, the study of aging, researchers observed an association between adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet and better verbal ability in old age. So a healthy diet is obviously healthy for our heart, healthy for our circulatory system, our digestive tract, but has other positive effects because it does allow your body to continue operating at its best, and apparently verbal ability is included. So that's great. I feel good about that. I need all the help I can get in that department. Many teenagers don't get enough exercise, according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, December 2020. And of course, we know this even here in Canada based on the statistics. Lifestyle survey data collected from teens from 20 countries revealed that most adolescents fail to meet exercise guidelines. From 47.5% of them in Bangladesh to 90% in the Philippines are not reaching that daily exercise requirement. And girls are typically at greater risk than boys. So any programs, any way to affect families, and of course in the educational system, we want to maintain that physical activity as part of the program because we also know that that healthy fitness supports development. And of course, those teens are our future. So we wanna keep them healthy and well, don't we? The Frontiers in Psychology journal, December 2020, talked about the 3 pillars for mental health. They did a survey of more than 1,100 young adults and revealed link between good mental health and the combination of good quality sleep, 4 to 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, and regular exercise. The lead author in the study adds that sleep, physical activity, and healthy diet can be thought of as the three pillars to health, which could contribute to promoting optimal wellbeing among young adults, a population where the prevalence of mental disorders is high and wellbeing is suboptimal. And as we just heard, most of those teens are not getting their daily requirement of that physical activity or fitness in. Based on North American, the more North American standard, they're probably not getting the fruits and vegetables either. And then thanks, especially lately due to our social media lifestyle and other reasons, they're probably not getting the sleep. So the likelihood of having health challenges, including mental health challenges, is going to be higher because those three factors allow us to better interact with our environment and the challenges that we face each day. And not having those three pillars in our life can have some serious side effects. So That's a motivation for all of us to dig into those 3 key areas of our health and wellness. Mount Sinai Hospital, December 2020, and it talks about preventing falls in the home. To reduce an older adult's risk for serious falls at home, experts from Mount Sinai recommend the following: clear away any clutter, debris, and other potential tripping hazards, use a stepladder for hard-to-reach objects instead of chairs or other unstable household items like boxes or something like that, and use non-slip mats in the bathtub and shower That's a big one. Every year in North America, there are many incidents with slip and falls in the bathroom, and it's a bad place to fall because the likelihood of landing flat is low because there are so many different objects in that small space. You're bound to hit something with some part of your body or another, and heaven forbid it be the head because a concussion, uh, is possible. All right, so prevent those falls as best you can. And finally, from the European Journal of Pain, December 2020, inflammatory conditions when young can predict low back pain later in life using data In the RAIN study, Generation 2, researchers found that individuals with a chronic inflammatory condition in childhood were more likely to develop low back pain in adolescence and young adulthood, similar to the title of that particular health update. So there you have it, uh, a nice little way to end the video health updates this week for a Thursday. Some strong motivating factors there to keep taking care of yourself and making those good decisions. And tomorrow we'll send you a print format on social media and you can read through that, head you into the weekend where you can focus on continuing to take good care of yourself and those around you. And then enjoy yourself, have a fun weekend, and we'll catch up with you on Monday with your next daily health update. I'll look forward to seeing you then. Take care.