For those of you who do not know, the past 2 months I have been on a stricter than usual diet. It is an autoimmune protocol diet that is specifically geared towards reducing autoimmune response that is attacking one’s own body. There are certain foods that will trigger this response more than others. Overall it has not been as difficult as I thought it would be to cut the foods out that I cannot eat, there have only been 1 or 2 areas I have had a weakness at. There have been 2 weekends now where I “cheated” and had some beer and other gluten foods. Let me tell you, I definitely knew I cheated. It is amazing how you don’t really know how bad you feel until you make changes that improve your health drastically. I really didn’t realize I was feeling better until I reverted to my old ways. This doesn’t mean I won’t be able to enjoy certain foods or desserts ever again, but during the healing process it is crucial to be strict until you reach your body’s stable and healthy state. It takes time to heal, but once you’re there, you can let the reigns down a little and experiment with what really throws your body out of whack and continue to avoid those certain areas. This bridges over into other areas besides food, such as exercise. There may be an exercise your body does not do well with just like a certain food, that’s alright, just modify it so you can still target that specific goal.

Since starting the new diet, I have only done lower intensity exercise. Last week after church I joined in a basketball game, which for me right now was a high intensity level. It felt good to push myself more and I held up pretty well, so I will now be adding more of this type of exercise to my routine. No matter where you are at in your level of health you can always add 1 more step to keep you improving. It does not have to be a big impossible goal. In fact, I would recommend coming up with many small goals, each building on the other. Most people start with a diet or exercise goal, but you could also try to get more sleep, take some extra relaxing time away from all the stress, but no matter what you do stick with it because healing takes time. You have to give your body the time to adapt to the change and utilize it. We have a monthly health event at our office where we go over topics such as diet and exercise. Our topic last month was the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting. Just adding intermittent fasting will do you a world of good. If you are unsure of what to do, I would love to help you figure that out.

The Coordinator

Have you ever bought something that came in pieces and you had to assemble it at home? It usually comes with an assembly direction paper, but sometimes that paper is missing. We can usually figure it out without the directions after laying all the pieces out and taking extra time putting some parts together and then removing them a couple times until it is right. When cooking we often use recipes because it tells us exactly how much of each ingredient and how long to cook it for. Without a recipe it becomes an experiment where you guess the amounts and may have to try many times before getting it right. Well your body is constantly reassembling itself, taking nutrients you eat and adding them back in the right exact amounts to grow and heal you. How does it know to do all of this perfectly? We were designed with a master control system, the nervous system. It sends trillions of messages every minute that you don’t even have to think about that control all of your body’s processes. We cover many health topics at our office, but our number 1 goal is to help you have the best functioning nervous system as you can. You can’t out eat, out exercise, out sleep, or out think a poorly functioning nervous system. If you haven’t included chiropractic into your health plan in Abingdon and North Tazewell, give us a call or stop in, we would be happy to discuss how we can help.

- Dr. Brown