60 Day Turnaround

Dr. Eric

I love the opportunity to pick up more information about the human spirit… it is an awesome opportunity to grow in knowledge about each and everyone of you, myself, and my family.  Especially when you see people at the brink.  The Garage Games was a two day, six event competition where 305 individual competitors, and 200 team competitors fought it out for top honors!

To give you a sense of what these people did… imagine sprinting up a hill, ducking under ropes hung just right to clothesline you, then racing to do clean and jerks, sandbag squats, and pull-ups; then racing against 11 other competitors throwing a 135# barbell across a horse arena; followed by a 5k trail run with a 12 foot wall to climb; and carrying a 116# stone back and forth then jumping on a row machine to fight out 1000M!

This stuff is grueling and awesome!  So what I love, is the underdog… and not the underdog who has a chance of winning, but the underdog who is hopeless to win.  The person who has no hope of placing, but their entire goal is to push themselves to a new place.  That is my pride for my gym and my practice, the one who is looking for a miracle, and really just wants to say “I can do more”.

What is really cool about this mentality, is that it breeds optimism and hope, it conquers barriers that are physical, mental and emotional.  And it also breaks through spiritual boundaries.  I love this most of all, because it let’s someone trust in something bigger than themselves, and I live for that!  So I saw and spoke with several people over the weekend who said to me (paraphrase) “I looked at this, and knew I could not do it, so then I knew I had to do it”.  One was a photographer who came last year to our event, and she was back this year, as a brand new fitness enthusiast, to compete!

I have a high school friend who lives in Sarasota, FL.  He is a fitness enthusiast who has done everything that he can.  Marathons, intense training, heavy weight lifting… the whole nine.  So when he saw The Garage Games, he said that he had to do it.  So he came up and competed in his first CrossFit competition, when he had never done CrossFit to prepare.  He did good, not as good as he would have liked, but good.  So now he is re-vamping his entire training program!  He also sat in my Leptin workshop, so you can be sure that he is changing his diet too!

But across the board, with competitors new and old, experienced and green, those strong and those weak… the thing that is the common bond, is “I will do this better than I am expected to.”

I hope that this weekend, you can be filled with the hope that whatever comes across your path is something you can do better than you expect that you can!

Dr. Amy Haas

Virtually all pregnant women in the U.S. carry multiple chemicals in their bodies. This chemical load includes some banned since the 1970’s, as well as others used in common products such as non-stick cookware, processed foods and personal care products.

A new study marks the first time that the number of chemicals to which pregnant women are exposed has been counted. Researchers analyzed data for more than 160 chemicals and detected polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides, perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), phenols, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), phthalates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and perchlorate in 99 to 100 percent of pregnant women.

Science Daily reports:

“Among the chemicals found in the study group were PBDEs, compounds used as flame retardants now banned in many states including California, and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), an organochlorine pesticide banned in the United States in 1972.”

Sources:

  Science Daily January 16, 2011

  Environmental Health Perspectives January 14, 2011

 YEOWCH!!!!!!!  This is really disturbing.  The time at which humans are most susceptible to chemical damage to DNA is in utero.  If 99% of pregnant women carry multiple carcinogenic and mutagenic chemicals within their bodies, what ailments do the babies end up with? 

If you are even considering having a child within the next two to three years, the time is now to eliminate your exposure to these toxins.  And, getting rid of coffee and alcohol is good, but it’s not enough.  Since you can’t reduce exposure to chemicals if you don’t know you’re being exposed, here’s a list of some simple ways to reduce your toxin load:

• Store your food in glass containers whenever possible, as it is the most inert container you can use.
• Use only natural cleaning products in your home. Most health food stores will have these available.
• Buy and eat organic produce and free-range, organic foods to reduce your exposure to pesticides.
• Avoid conventional or farm-raised fish, which are often heavily contaminated with PCBs and mercury. Instead, supplement with a high-quality fish oil to get your beneficial omega-3 fats.
• Avoid processed foods, and artificial food additives including artificial sweeteners and MSG.
• Throw out your Teflon pots and pans and instead use safer materials like ceramic and glass.
• Have your tap water tested and, if contaminants are found, install an appropriate water filter on all your faucets (including those in your shower or bath).
• Avoid using artificial air fresheners, dryer sheets, fabric softeners or other synthetic fragrances.
• Look for “green,” toxin-free alternatives in lieu of regular paint and vinyl floor coverings.
• Replace your vinyl shower curtain with one made of fabric or install glass shower doors.
• Limit your use of drugs (prescription and over-the-counter) as much as possible. Drugs are chemicals too, and they will leave residues and accumulate in your body over time.
• Avoid spraying pesticides around your home or insect repellants that contain DEET on your body.

 The secondary question, of course, is if you have these chemicals stored in your body, how do you get rid of them?  Many different sources recommend treatments such as dietary “cleanses” or colonics, that are purported to remove toxins from the blood and from within fat, where toxins tend to accumulate.  I reserve the right to change my mind if additional/convincing evidence becomes available, but for now, frankly, I’m not the biggest fan of these methods for removal of the toxins mentioned above.  (For removal of heavy metal toxins, I do support chelation therapy with well-researched methods like NeuroCleanse – but that’s a subject for another Signpost.)

The nut that I am, I’m much more a fan of helping the body do what it knows how to do, naturally.  Little did many of you know, you have a magnificent detoxification apparatus within your own body – it’s called your liver.  What does your liver need, to work at 100%?  Just the basics:  Water, food, and connection with the brain (again with that nervous system function, I know, I keep bringing that up!)  What else could help your liver to work at maximum efficiency for clearing toxins?  EXERCISE.  Why?  Because exercise moves blood, and mobilizes fat stores.  Both of these actions are necessary to bring “sludge” to the liver to be processed!

This is one of the reasons that I make sure to drink adequate water (adequate = your pee is clear) and to get regular exercise.  Our bodies are furnaces, and we need to allow them to do a good metabolic burn (often) not unlike a car that has seen too much in-town traffic of late needs good trip on the highway.  Which car runs better and lasts longer?  Hm: the one that gets regular maintenance, good quality fuel, and is used for what it was designed.

It is increasingly difficult to avoid daily exposure to toxins.  This is the “modern era” we live in, and we pay the price for the conveniences we enjoy.  But, given the proper awareness and the proper discipline, avoidance of toxic overload can be accomplished.  It’s your choice:  clean running engine, or toxic sludge.  You only have one body.  How will you treat it?

$25, this Friday Feb 4th at the Cherokee Outdoor YMCA, come check it out!

If you really want to go deep, this is where you need to be.

http://garagegames.crossfitgarage.com/workshops/

Register online.

It was just Monday that I wrote a Daily Sprout about cancer, and commented on the battle that my aunt was in.  Here we are, two days later, and I am telling you that she lost.  It was Tuesday morning when she had her last breath on this Earth, and moved on to be with my savior.

I think it is wise for me to take the opportunity that is present here, to talk about cancer.  Straight talk.  You know, it is a time like this, that makes me want to run from what I have learned.  Research is pressing more and more towards cancer being caused by the environment (95%) and less and less from genetic reasons (5%).  Though Nancy had a sister who died years prior from cancer as well.  My Grandfather (Nancy’s father) died of cardiovascular disease ten years earlier, and her mother is still alive.  She was rubbing Nancy’s legs trying to comfort her when she passed.

It would be easier to me if cancer were 100% genetic.  It would be easier for all of us, we could just say “oh well, nothing to do about that” and go about our merry way.  But the truth is that the environment that we create has more to do with this, than any gene ever will.  I have lost many people to cancer, mostly patients, but people whom I was close with.  I hate it.  I absolutely hate the disease.  But I will never hide from it, nor take my eyes off of it, it is a disease to be treated like a brooding predator, waiting in the shadows for its opportunity.  The only problem is, when it sees the opportunity, you won’t be aware.

Cancer is the most silent of silent diseases.  You can go for ten years with diagnosable cancer, and yet have no idea.  And usually it takes another ten years of pretty rampant growth before that before it ever became diagnosable.  As we continue to learn of the immune system, we understand that cancer cells are completely normal, because the immunoglobulins and white blood cells that kill them, are equally as normal in the body.  But when we couple that with a toxic lifestyle, then we end up in the wrong place.

If a patient asks me what to do, I have a great deal of information I can share about the best way to combat cancer through immune development and cellular function.  I would change your diet, I would likely adjust your atlas multiple times a day until we had proof that your immune system was top notch (I have had several patients over the years who I have given more than 10 adjustments a week to, routinely), I would detoxify you in multiple ways.  And I would tell you that I would never do chemo.  Now, if you do it, it is your choice, but I don’t only SAY I don’t like chemo, I don’t like it so much, I would avoid it until there all other possibilities were exhausted.

Cancer is a constantly raging battle.  Right now you are either winning, or losing that battle.  And you don’t even know.  You cannot know.  It is too micro for you to even have a clue as to what is going on there, so in the end, you must accept the truth, and decide based on that knowledge.  If you choose poorly, you will likely end up like 1/3 of the population, dead from cancer.

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge… Hosea 4:6

This passage goes on to talk about forgetting God’s law.  So waht does that mean?  I find that God’s law doesn’t just mean don’t kill, and don’t be an adulterer.  But rather, it provides direction around how to eat, how to handle stress, how to live in such a way that it translates to your activity levels, and it even goes so far as to reference hygiene and ultimately clean living.  We have gone so far overboard to pursue clean living today, that we have actually unearthed unclean living!

Every personal product in mainstream culture, is a toxic mess.  A disaster waiting to happen.  I wish it weren’t so, because it makes life so hard.  But as I mourn the Earthly loss of loved ones, I cannot help but see the truth, and see my usefulness in that truth.  I have been called to do this for a reason.  My only regret, is that I still wait for a patient to ask me.  My Aunt Nancy never asked me what to do, over the last few years, I have given ideas to my mother, but I felt uncomfortable approaching my aunt without her asking; and so I am left with the regret of wondering what if.

I pray that you will take the knowledge that we fight for, and use it to your best ability.  I appreciate your concern for myself and my family, God Bless!

We see patients with cancer, we have seen many over the years.  Some in a serious battle, some in a minor battle, all in a battle.  I think it is wise for us to first realize that we are all in that same battle, everyday, we are fighting against cancer cells, in a SILENT war raging inside our bodies.

It is the understanding of that silent war that leads us to clarity in the importance of our daily decisions.  Have you ever given any thought to how you would respond if you were diagnosed with cancer?  Would you be scared?  Would you run to the first oncologist you could find, and simply “do” whatever it is they asked of you?  Would you consider where it came from, and why you have it?

Current and leading research suggest that 95% of cancer is based on environmental factors.  Lifestyle.  Choices and your relative proximity to high risk activities, foods, air, water, stress… all the things that we get to make choices about every single day.  You know, that only leaves 5% for genetic causes!

So here is my belief.  You develop cancer because of toxic load primarily.  As toxins build up in the body, you increase the rate of mutation that occurs in those cells.  Now this is where it gets interesting, in addition to increasing cancerous growth because of mutation, you also increase cancer growth because of a weakening in the function of the immune system.

Studies have shown increase risk of cancer based on the total day sof antibiotic use in your lifetime.  Basically, you are getting increased cancer risk from any source of weakening of the immune system… which is why you have people who are so quick to comment, “Well everything causes cancer these days… you can’t avoid everything, so why change?”  And in the end, that is most people’s response.  Though you might not say that, for most of you, you are continuing to act that way.

You don’t know the ingredients of the food you eat.  You don’t know the ingredients of the personal products that you use in the shower everyday.  You know, I am guilty of having awful air fresheners in my office, and I hate them!  I don’t really know why I have such garbage being used in my office, but I plan on changing that! 

You know, it is such an important endeavor, to clean up your life, and to treat your immune system like the gift that it is.  Otherwise, the chance of you getting cancer in your life is awfully close to 100%.  My Aunt Nancy was told a week ago, that she had between 2 weeks and 6 months to live.  I personally do not believe it needs to be true.  But I believe that life needs to change.

Healing is a miracle that we are privy to, but we need to change.  Right now cancer cells are growing and multiplying in your body.  They are doing it in mine too.  The only real question, is will my body have enough fight in it today, to overcome the growth, and win the battle.  Every single day that job starts fresh, and there is never a day that the cancer cells sleep.  They are in us, and they are working to win every single day.

Are you working to win?

Dr. Levi

Occasionally a patient might think, “If chiropractic was so important, how come it wasn’t around hundreds of years ago? What did people do back then?” Well, it has been. It may not have been as scientific (neither was medicine) but forms of manipulation have been around since the beginning of recorded time.

• Chinese Kong Fou Document written about 2700 B.C. is the earliest indications
• A Greek papyrus dating back to at least 1500 B.C. gave instructions on how to maneuver the extremities to relieve low back pain.
• Ancient American Indian hieroglyphics demonstrated “backwalking”
• Some Indian tribes used manipulative therapy
• Tissue manipulation was practiced by the ancient Japanese, Indians of Asia, as well as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians, Hindus, and Tibetans

The famous surgeon, Sir James Paget, wrote in the British Medical Journal January 5, 1865, an article entitled, “Cases that Bonesetters Cure.” He reflected on the economic threat these bonesetters were to medical doctors when he wrote, “Few of you are likely to practice without a bonesetter for a rival; and if he can cure a case which you have failed to cure, his fortune may be made and yours marred. Learn then to imitate what is good and avoid what is bad in the practice of bonesetters.”

Hippocrates, who lived between  460B.C. – 357B.C., wrote over 70 books on healing including, Manipulation and Importance to Good Health and On Setting joints by Leverage. He said “Get knowledge of the spine, for this is the requisite for many diseases.” He stressed the importance of rest, fresh air, sun light, proper diet, exercise in moderation, cleanliness, tissue manipulation, and minimum usage of drugs.

Claudius Galen 130 to 200 A.D. was given the title “Prince of Physicians” after he corrected the paralysis of the right hand of Eudemus by treating his neck, apparently by adjusting the neck vertebrae. Galen, like Hippocrates, said  “Look to the nervous system as the key to maximum health.”

The Bible- The importance of massage procedures for maximum beauty and health are emphasized in the  Book of Esther.

The importance of cleanliness in both physical and moral well-being is mentioned over 200 times in the Bible. Cleanliness of water, food, clothing, bathing, and proper latrine methods are stressed. The Book of Leviticus stresses these measures with leprosy and veneral disease, and cautions against omens and magic.

Current medical literature will tell you that medical science has increased the longevity of people in recent years. The credibility of that statement is challenged by the fact that the life expectancy during Biblical times is given in the Bible as “three score and ten”- which is 70 years of age. Thus people are not living much longer today than they did in the Holy land 2,000 years ago.  However, the people of Biblical times observed proper hygienic  and sanitary measures.

With the fall of the Roman Empire and through the dark ages that followed, proper hygiene and sanitation became nonexistent. Ignorance, pestilence, and filth prevailed while logic and science took a back seat. Great masses of people died and, of course, longevity took a severe drop, too.

The physicians of the middle ages did not perform surgery, considered it beneath their dignity, and felt it belonged to the barber or executioner.

Ironically, the principles of proper hygiene and sanitation as taught in the Bible, were ignored until the turn of this century. These basic principles were rejected and violated by the physicians, many of whom would condemn anyone who tried to tell them otherwise.

Thus it was not any miracle pill which restored our longevity back to the Biblical days, but proper public health and sanitation measures.

The article, entitled “She ate 162 School Lunches — and blogged it”, is all about the disaster of our government feeding system.  It is set in a Mid-west town, with nothing but garbage lunches.  The article is enlightening, but not inspiring.

(CNN) — After a year of eating school lunches, Mrs. Q survived to blog about it.

She works at an urban school in the Midwest, where she ate bagel dogs (yes, that’s an entree), yellowish meatloaf and chicken tenders, which she likened to “squirts of chicken foam.”

With spork in hand, her mission was to chronicle the $3 school lunches on her blog, Fed Up With Lunch. Every afternoon, Mrs. Q — who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for her job — photographed the lumps on her orange school lunch tray, and shared her observations about the food and how it affected students.

In light of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and our favorite show at the office movie, Food Inc; it is time that this lunch situation changed.  Allowing soda in schools seems awfully bad, but equally as bad, are the toxic meals, that might even look healthy, to the untrained eye.  Most school lunches are absolute garbage… and then you have school’s that have lunch-room managers like my patient Tonya.  She has been featured for her Farmer Fran, which has been succesful in reaching kids where they are, and appealing to them to eat vegetables.

It is a sad situation that we are in.  Most people whom we consult, will tell us that they have a good diet (when they come in), then when we push a little further, we realize they don’t know a good diet.  The assumption is that lots of bread is very healthy, that blueberry cereal bars are made of blueberries, and that fats should be avoided at all costs.

We offer our Body By God 40-Day Challenge for a reason.  That reason is that everyone needs help, everyone needs support.  I hope that those who missed Food Inc, will make arrangements to see that movie… and if you have not signed up for Body By God, you will do the same for that.

It is painful to know what is right, and see people doing all wrong.  We want to alleviate our pain, as we do the same for you!

By Dr. Amy Haas

We do too much. We multi-task, we schedule, we juggle, and we email, text and twitter constantly to stay up-to-date. We stress ourselves to the last strand of sanity by trying to cram all we can into our busy days – and then we rob ourselves of sleep (both in quality and quantity) in order to finish what we just “had” to get done that day. Where does this leave us? Spent.

The five tenets of Healthy Living are this: 1. Eat well. 2. Exercise. 3. Avoid toxins. 4. FEED YOUR SOUL. (And of course 5. Keep your nervous system working at 100%!) How many of you fulfill the fourth tenet? What was the last thing you did to feed your soul?

For me, playing outside in the fresh air is soul food. I ate a bunch of it this weekend, in Northern NH’s White Mountains. I snowshoed up Mt. Willard to enjoy an awesome view, and I cross-country ski’d in Bretton Woods around the famous Mount Washington Hotel (a little longer than I had planned, actually, about 20K… but all’s well that ends well!) Even as much as I love climbing in the summer and swimming in lakes and rivers, there is nothing like strenuous exercise in 15 degree temperatures in the mountains, where the air is so clean you it just tastes fresh, and the snow crunches under your feet and dances in the sparkling sunlight. As the Norwegians say, “There is no bad weather, only bad gear!” and I know how to stay warm!

Why is it so important to mentally “check out” and feed your soul? Well, constant stress raises your levels of the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is an important hormone to have around to help you through short-term challenges. However, when it hangs around in too-high quantities for too long, it starts to wreak havoc on the rest of your body – including your immune system, and your nervous system. The simple act of taking a “you” break can lower cortisol levels, and can increase both mental and physical wellness.

So take some time this weekend, and find something to feed your soul. It’s hungry and its stomach is growling =)

The Agouti mice that are shown here, are very different from one another.  Different because though they come from the same genetics, the don’t share the same genetic expression.  Different because one carries significant risk of prematuer death, while the other does not, and it is all because of the pursuit of health.

The excerpts that I am going to pull for this article, were publishd online for Discover magazine, November 22, 2006.  I remember we had the full article sitting in our office that December, and we were getting pulled deeper and deeper into the understanding of how genes work.  These are the underlying reasons why I feel someone stands a 90% better chance against cancer or heart disease with us leading the way.

I trust that God has given me this purpose, and that we are on purpose right now.  Take a look at the amazing changes that took place because of a diet change!  Imagine coupling that with all of the Five Essentials of health (wondering what those are… stay tuned more often and you will see all five covered), how amazing the changes could be!

“Back in 2000, Randy Jirtle, a professor of radiation oncology at Duke University, and his postdoctoral
student Robert Waterland designed a groundbreaking genetic experiment that was simplicity itself.
They started with pairs of fat yellow mice known to scientists as agouti mice, so called because they
carry a particular gene—the agouti gene—that in addition to making the rodents ravenous and yellow
renders them prone to cancer and diabetes. Jirtle and Waterland set about to see if they could change
the unfortunate genetic legacy of these little creatures.

Typically, when agouti mice breed, most of the offspring are identical to the parents: just as yellow, fat
as pincushions, and susceptible to life-shortening disease. The parent mice in Jirtle and Waterland’s
experiment, however, produced a majority of offspring that looked altogether different. These young
mice were slender and mousy brown. Moreover, they did not display their parents’ susceptibility to
cancer and diabetes and lived to a spry old age. The effects of the agouti gene had been virtually erased.”

 Such an amazing change, and look at how they helped to inspire that change.

“Remarkably, the researchers effected this transformation without altering a single letter of the mouse’s
DNA. Their approach instead was radically straightforward—they changed the moms’ diet. Starting just
before conception, Jirtle and Waterland fed a test group of mother mice a diet rich in methyl donors,
small chemical clusters that can attach to a gene and turn it off. These molecules are common in the
environment and are found in many foods, including onions, garlic, beets, and in the food supplements
often given to pregnant women. After being consumed by the mothers, the methyl donors worked their
way into the developing embryos’ chromosomes and onto the critical agouti gene. The mothers passed
along the agouti gene to their children intact, but thanks to their methyl-rich pregnancy diet, they hadadded to the gene a chemical switch that dimmed the gene’s deleterious effects.”

“…The even greater surprise is the recent discovery that epigenetic signals
from the environment can be passed on from one generation to the next,
sometimes for several generations, without changing a single gene
sequence. It’s well established, of course, that environmental effects like
radiation, which alter the genetic sequences in a sex cell’s DNA, can leave a
mark on subsequent generations”

The power of your genetic code is amazing, but it depends on health.  Do you know if you are eating right?  I mean do you know it so well you could defend it and stand by your choices?

The Body By God Challenge is perhaps the absolute best challenge we teach to get all components right, and it starts today!  Get on board, and be blessed!

 http://www.healthsprout.com/events/body-by-god-40-day-challenge/

We will be open from 8-11:30 and 3:30-6:30 on Monday!