Time for a Media Fast?
Have you noticed changes in your children's personalities -- increased irritability, impatience, even hostility? Or have you seen these issues even in yourself?
Consider the amount of time you and your family spend ingesting the output of our major media: television, radio and printed materials. And if you believe as many do that the media is the source of many psychological ills, try a radical concept that's gaining popularity: go media-free for thirty or forty days.
It's now an established fact that TV watching leads to poor dietary habits, inactivity (and all the resulting health effects, even an increased risk of juvenile diabetes!), and a host of behavior ills, including a greater likelihood of teenage viewers starting to smoke! Yet even the other forms of media can cause stress and anxiety.
Your kids will tell you they're bored at first, but boredom passes quickly and usually turns into creativity. Soon you'll find your family taking hikes, playing games and even engaging in conversation.
Heavy Academic Load
It used to be that carrying a heavy academic load meant a series of difficult classes. But if your child is like many, he or she is carrying a heavy load of books! Common sense tells us that a heavy load, unevenly distributed, day after day, can stress a still-growing spine.
Consider these safety suggestions:
1. Make sure the backpack is sturdy and appropriately sized.
2. Select backpacks with stabilizing waist straps.
3. The maximum weight of loaded backpacks should not exceed 15% of the child's body weight.
4. Use both shoulder straps. Carrying the backpack on one shoulder may look "cool" but can lead to spinal imbalance.
5. Consult our practice for regular chiropractic checkups. We're experts at detecting and reducing spinal problems in children.
Better Living Through Chemistry?
There are three causes of vertebral subluxations: physical, emotional and chemical. When we encounter any of these, we can experience neurological compromise along the spine.
Some common chemical stresses:
Cleaning products. Consider the chemicals used to make your bath sparkle, cleansers for stubborn dishes or the fluids to polish your woodwork.
Deodorants and anti-perspirants. These mixtures often include aluminum and countless substances not found in nature.
Hand soap, shampoo and conditioner. The ingredients of these and other personal grooming products contain dozens of chemicals.
Laundry detergent and fabric softeners. Since your clothing is in direct contact with your skin, rethink the chemicals that you apply to clothing.
Aspartame. Critics blame it and other artifical sweetners for a variety of autoimmune diseases.
Artificial colors, flavors and preservatives. Virtually every processed food found in your supermarket has these shelf-life extending chemicals.
These put additional burden on your immune and nervous systems. As you can, reduce chemical exposure and enjoy better health.
In This Issue
Selling Sickness
Your company's mandate is to produce a return on the investment made by millions of stockholders... if you happen to manufacture and market drugs, you want as many "sick" people as possible.
If you sell blood pressure medicine, a way to sell more is to constantly lower the threshold of when someone has high blood pressure and supposedly "needs" your medication.
If you sell cholesterol-lowering drugs, you can sell more if you can lower the standard used to ascertain that someone has high cholesterol and has a cholesterol-lowering drug "shortage."
If you sell medication to artificially alleviate the symptoms of poor digestion, you give it a name (how about acid reflux disease?) and hire a well-known celebrity (who doesn't use the drug) to tout its benefits. And you sell more drugs. Stockholders are happy.
Many fall victim to the marketing trap set by these huge corporations. Think about it. Their profits come from selling drugs, not curing disease.
The financial markets understand that there's a lot of money to be made by telling healthy people they're sick.
Symptoms are merely signs something in your body isn't working correctly. What controls how your body works? Your nervous system, of course, which is the true focus of chiropractic care. If you know someone who has been "sold" sickness, encourage them to find out about safe, natural and side-effect-free chiropractic care.
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