July 7, 2016
Jeff Spencer was not your typical child. Who else would get up at 4:30 in the morning to practice baseball, or spend a childhood dreaming of marching into an Olympic Stadium in the parade of nations [1]? That was Jeff though. Fast forward into adulthood and he is an ex-Olympic cyclist, coach to the elite, advisor to fortune-500 companies and author of the success handbook “Champion’s Blueprint.” This all came from being what he calls “a professional student of human achievement” for some 40 years. Spencer’s observations started young, when he began to look at top level athletes and realise […]
July 6, 2016
Anger is a part of life, just like stress, disappointment, failure, and the plethora of positive emotions that exist at the other end of the scale. However, anger is often an emotion we don’t know how to handle well. What’s the best course of action? Fight anger with anger? Vent? Suppress? Reappraise? Neuroscience has a little something to say on the matter. According to Time Magazine, some typical responses to anger or negative emotion are actually both unhelpful and unhealthy. “Suppressing anger is rarely a good idea,” says Barker [1]. “You can bottle up your feelings and not look angry. […]
July 5, 2016
The weight loss formula is about as simple as it gets. If we consume more calories than we burn, we gain weight. If we burn more calories than we consume, we lose it. Yet for many of us, shifting unwanted kilograms just isn’t that easy. There could be many reasons for this – hormone imbalances, inflammation, or thyroid problems in some cases – the list goes on. Before you go questioning your willpower, or giving up on your dietary resolve yet again, there’s something else you might want to pay attention to: something called leptin. Leptin is a hormone produced […]
June 30, 2016
The hormone that wrecks the most damage on your brain and like a domino effect, on your body, is cortisol. Cortisol is a steroid hormone. It’s made by your two adrenal glands, one each found on top of your kidneys. But cortisol isn’t a bad hormone. In fact, when cortisol is under control, it’s a life sustaining adrenal hormone, essential for your body’s homeostasis. It’s in charge of your body’s anti-inflammatory process, it manages your immune system, it regulates your blood pressure and it works with the hormone insulin to regulate your blood glucose levels. Frankly, it is essential for life. But […]
June 30, 2016
Part 3: Influence literature series As thoroughly evolved humans with fully functioning prefrontal cortexes, we like to think we are in control of our decisions. We like to believe that, even when it comes to the minutiae of life, we’re thinking things through and coming to our own conclusions. Behavioral economist and researcher Dan Ariely has something to say about that though. Many factors, several of them subconscious, play into our financial, medical and purchasing decisions. In fact, he calls the human race ‘predictably irrational [1].’ Upon first reading that term, you might think ‘gee thanks.’ In truth, Ariely’s research […]
June 24, 2016
Dr Rob is a guy with a vision to bring together two things he loves – chiropractic and endurance sports – to “show his support for the important work the Foundation does”. We’re so excited to follow his journey and watch him participate in an amazing 4 day ultramarathon event in the Northern Territory. The Run Larapinta Stage Race is a race through some of the most beautiful scenery that Australia has to offer. Rob began training for triathlons at the age of 13 in his home town of Corner Brook, Newfoundland in Canada, and it quickly became his passion. […]
June 23, 2016
Every now and then a study comes along that makes you smile and think “Ah, I knew it!” This one landed quietly in JAMA Internal Medicine while we were all looking the other way. The New York Times did a tiny little blog piece on it, but for the most part, the world didn’t know the results of studies looking at nearly 8,000 participants that found opioids are often ineffective for back pain [1]. This is a little piece of evidence that points to something we have strongly suspected for quite a while: you can’t just mask back pain. You’ve got to address what’s causing it. The study was a meta-analysis collating […]
June 21, 2016
What does a new customer do when there is no standard measurement of quality for the service they are looking into? When there is no 18 carat or 24 carat chiropractic, no rating for the quality of a personal trainer, or no five star scale on a restaurants door? When it comes to such conundrums, most of us are like the rest of us. We look for the socials cues that tell us whether or not this place or practitioner is trustworthy. These social cues can either make or break a first impression and lead a person to conclusions as […]
June 21, 2016
We hear about stress all the time. It seems to be omnipresent in our lives. We regularly hear how it is bad for us, how we need to mitigate stress, how we need to implement stress-reducing activities like meditation or exercise. But do we really know what stress is? Or more pointedly, what stress is doing to us that makes it so bad? Whilst most us now are aware enough of what’s causing our daily stress, be it work pressures, the day to day family grind or relationship problems, stress seems to be something we actually understand very little about. […]
June 10, 2016
Heading into the thick of winter means one thing for those of us who aren’t fortunate enough to live in the tropics: people have more colds and flues. And, there are some ways that you can boost your immune system in this season. There are a number of reasons that this season can knock the old immune system around: from lower temperatures, to more time spent indoors in groups and at the mercy of artificial heating that cycles viruses around office blocks [1]. We also take in less Vitamin D in winter, as sunshine is a little more difficult to […]
June 9, 2016
Story at a glance: Adjusting pregnant women appears to relax the pelvic floor muscles at rest. This may mean that chiropractic care could be of benefit to pregnant women, as it may help them have a natural vaginal delivery. The pelvic floor muscles have active roles in pregnancy and childbirth, as well as in spinal stabilisation. When the pelvic floor muscles are damaged or stressed over time, health issues like incontinence and vaginal prolapses can crop up, which are problems with massive emotional, physical, social and financial costs across the world and a significant cause of stress for these women. The primary findings […]
June 8, 2016
Mothers of newborns notice how impaired their memory is. Old people report that their co-ordination and spatial awareness isn’t as good as it used to be. And people under high levels of stress complain of similar symptoms, their memory isn’t as sharp, they struggle to recall simple events or conversations and their mental agility isn’t as quick anymore… But why is that? Our brain is a highly complex organ. In the centre of it you will find the hippocampus. This is one of the powerhouses of the brain as it regulates our memory, learning ability and emotions. But it’s only recently that we […]
June 8, 2016
Part 1: The Influence Literature Series “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place,” said George Bernard Shaw. He wasn’t wrong either. The art of effective communication is something that takes time, practice and research. For the chiropractic profession, it’s a pursuit that seems to be becoming increasingly important in the information age. Chiropractor Martin Harvey has spent a lot of time looking into the art of influence, and believes much wisdom can be gleaned from what he calls the influence literature: the combined wisdom of behavioral economists, psychologists, and marketing specialists applied to […]
June 3, 2016
One of life’s great ironies is that the advancement of research often proves that, old wives tales notwithstanding, the sensible wisdom of old can be right on the money. The latest to be proven is the reason why we should be eating our spinach – a phrase many of us wouldn’t have heard since childhood when a parent weilded Popeye comics as an often ill-fated attempt to make us finish our greens. A recent study emerging from Japan has revealed that spinach may actually help protect our eyes from macular degeneration [1]. This study is significant as macular degeneration is […]
June 2, 2016
It happens to boxers and football players. It even happens to most children over the course of childhood. It is the simple concussion. For many years, this hasn’t been a hot topic, but a new movie is shining a little light on what can happen when this occurs repetitively. “Concussion – the movie,” stars Hollywood heavy-weight Will Smith and is a dramatised account of Dr. Bennett Omalu who first shone the light on what was happening to American Football players as a result of repetitive concussions. The movie has already attracted a number of awards and nominations, with some calling […]
May 31, 2016
Iodine is a powerful element needed for the production of thyroid hormone, that it helps synthesize the hormones that regulate metabolism. Without it, the thyroid can’t function properly. Many of us are also aware that there’s an iodine deficiency problem in certain regions. There are actually estimates that up to 40% of the world’s population is iodine deficient. According to Dr David Brownstein, an author, physician and practitioner of holistic medicine, the problem could be far greater than the thyroid function of 40% of the population. “I’ve been interested in the use of iodine for approximately the last 20 years,” […]
May 26, 2016
Story at a glance: As sleep continues, CSF floods the brain bathing each and every cell in the brain. The brain cells themselves shrink, in order to increase the space between the cells. This gave the CSF more surface area to cover. The clearance of amyloid-beta (a protein produced by brain cells) is much more rapid in the sleeping brain. A build up of amyloid-beta is what is thought to be one of the key elements in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. We all know we need it and we know we don’t function well without it but neuroscientists have […]