Healthy Life Newsletter, October 2024
Patient of the Month: Paula Mitchell
I had lower back pain and sciatica down my left leg for 6 or 7 years. The sciatica pain was an 8 out of 10. When I went to doctors I was always given pain meds but never solutions. I took Tylenol, ibuprofen and others. I am not one for taking pain medications but I needed the temporary relief.
I had a regular chiropractor in the early 2000s and enjoyed the experience. Back then, it was just for regular maintenance. I finally decided to return to trying chiropractic for my problem. I found Khalsa Chiropractic on a provider list from my health insurance.
My first impression here was very good vibes and a peaceful atmosphere. Everyone was so nice. Dr. Mha Atma recommended consistent stretching exercises along with frequent chiropractic treatments, and he gave me handouts with examples of the exercises. Within two weeks the sciatica disappeared. It took a few more weeks but I now feel 100% better. I am not in pain and am back to my regular exercise routine.
I absolutely recommend chiropractic adjustments along with the right exercises—much better than pills! I have told about 10 friends and co-workers about my experience. I believe chiropractic is very beneficial and even life-changing.
I have been in pain for about six years and kept masking the problem with medication. I feel brand new and am happy I met Dr. Mha Atma.
Lower Your Biological Age
Determining your chronological age is easy – it’s today minus the day you were born (for example, 2024 minus 1969 = 55, give or take a certain number of days depending on your specific birthdate and the day you read this article). We can’t do a thing about how old we are – but we can do a whole lot about how we feel at any age; and how our health reflects it. That’s where your biological age comes in…
Biological age is a reflection of your overall health, and the younger you are, the better, regardless of when you were born. It works in both directions: plenty of 40-year-olds have biological ages well into their 60s, and vice versa. While genetics and good fortune play a certain role, modifiable lifestyle factors (including what you eat) are the biggest influencers of biological age – and recent research proves it.
A younger biological age at the cellular level can be achieved with a diet rich in vitamins and minerals, and low in added sugar. In fact, even when eating a healthy diet, even one gram of added sugar can have a negative impact on biological age. That’s the conclusion from a study published in JAMA Network Open and involving nearly 350 women tracked for nearly 10 years into midlife (ages 36-45).
How old do you think you are right now, biologically speaking? If you’re in your 30s and experiencing health issues usually reserved for seniors, that’s a clue. On the other hand, if you’re thriving in your 70s with few or no health issues at all, that’s a clue – that you want to keep doing what you’ve been doing, probably for years.
Live long, live healthy, and enjoy the ride.
Note from Dr. Mha Atma: Of course it’s not only diet that affects your biological age. Exercise, stress and many other factors, only some of which we can control, also play a part. We can improve our fitness with the right combination of stretching, stabilization, strengthening, and aerobic exercise. We can manage stress (at least somewhat) with exercise, meditation, prayer, psychotherapy, and/or whatever fits for us. A great book about this subject is titled Younger Next Year; it is available at our office and at your favorite online bookstore (mine is Powell’s Books).
Diabetes Hates Movement
The harsh reality is that far too many people are suffering from diabetes – and many of them don’t even know it. According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), nearly 40 million Americans are diabetic, of whom approximately 9 million are unaware of their condition.
Lack of exercise is one of the contributing factors to diabetes (type 2); but fortunately for diabetes sufferers, movement is also one of the best ways to combat the disease and its complications – the most severe being death. For example, recent research suggests sitting time is associated with mortality; the less diabetics sit, the lower their risk of dying.
In the study, which analyzed data from the 2007-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) for individuals 20 years of age or older with diabetes per ADA criteria, researchers categorized participants as inactive, insufficiently active or active based on their weekly physical activity. Inactive diabetics (fewer than 10 minutes per week of physical activity) were more likely to die from any cause during the study period compared to active diabetics (at least 150 minutes of activity per week). Findings appear in Diabetes Care, a research journal published by the American Diabetes Association.
Keep in mind that physical activity isn’t the only variable that can influence your risk of developing – or developing complications from – type 2 diabetes. Weight and diet are two other modifiable risk factors. Talk to your doctor for more information.
Note from Dr. Mha Atma: Most diabetics can also benefit greatly from taking vitamin D (usually 5,000 IU/day, sometimes more), Magnesium, and Omega-3 (fish oil) supplements.
Get Enough Magnesium
You probably don’t think about magnesium that much, but you should, because getting enough of this important mineral is a key component of your health and wellness. Among other body functions it benefits, magnesium is involved in bone strength, blood pressure and blood sugar regulation, and protein synthesis.
The problem is, not only do most people not think about magnesium that much – they also don’t get enough of it in their daily diet or through supplementation. One major consequence, according to research, is an increased risk of disease including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, gastrointestinal issues, cancer, and diabetes. The culprit: an amino acid called homocysteine.
Researchers discovered a connection between magnesium deficiency and homocysteine levels among middle-aged adults, with lower levels of magnesium associated with higher levels of homocysteine, which can lead to toxicity issues. Too much homocysteine, particularly in combination with low magnesium, may damage DNA, according to the researchers, raising disease risk. Findings appear in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Nutrition.
As magnesium is the fourth most common mineral in the human body, essential for a variety of enzymatic and DNA functions, it’s time to put this crucial mineral on your radar when it comes to ensuring adequate dietary intake. For magnesium-containing foods, look to green, leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds, beans, and whole-grain foods. Talk to your doctor for additional information.
Antibiotics and Immunity
We’ve reportedly repeatedly on how early-age antibiotic use appears to impact childhood development of allergies and asthma. Now researchers appear to have discovered why it’s happening: compromised immunity. It’s all based on the fact that antibiotics deplete gastrointestinal (GI) bacteria – killing the “good” bacteria along with the bad, and negatively affecting the GI microbiome in the process.
Allergic reactions are based on a simple premise: Your body overreacts to harmless substances, recognizing them as threats instead and triggering an immune response that causes symptoms such as sneezing, itching, swelling, etc. According to new research, when gut bacteria are depleted, immune cells known as ILC2 cause white blood cells to produce excess antibodies. The result: an immune system poised to attack, even in the presence of a harmless invader.
Many people, parents included, don’t realize that antibiotics are only effective against bacterial infections. That means if your child is suffering from a viral infection (cold, flu, etc.), antibiotics won’t help. Unfortunately, too many parents want “something” to help their child during a doctor’s visit, and too many medical doctors seem perfectly willing to prescribe antibiotics, even in the absence of a bacterial rationale.
It’s also important to keep in mind that overuse of antibiotics can eventually make them less effective (known as antibiotic resistance), which means if your child actually does need an antibiotic for a bacterial infection, they might not work as well as they need to. The takeaway: Always ask your doctor the why and what questions before accepting a prescription – why is this absolutely necessary and what can I do instead of medication to help my child?
Intense Exercise Matters
Particularly for seniors – in the form of long-term positive effects on brain health. High-intensity interval exercise appears to improve brain function in older adults – and the results are maintained for up to five years, according to research findings.
Aging is a natural risk factor for cognitive decline, which can manifest with symptoms such as memory issues, problems with decision-making, difficulty navigating once-familiar environments, and more. Per this study, six months of intense exercise – 72 total exercise sessions, with each session consisting of four cycles of running on a treadmill at near-maximum exertion – improved cognition in 65-85-year-olds. Even more encouraging, the results persisted for up to five years later, even in participants who stopped doing the exercises once the six-month intervention ended.
If you’re wondering whether lower-intensity exercise accomplished the same, in this study, it did not: seniors who participated in low-intensity and medium-intensity exercise did not show cognitive improvements; only the high-intensity exercise group did.
However, this isn’t the first study to show that exercise is beneficial for seniors, and keep in mind that exercise doesn’t have to be physical. Numerous studies support brain exercise (playing board games, doing crossword puzzles, etc.) as a way to reduce cognitive decline.
Best for the Brain
Cerebral blood flow is an important variable dictating cognitive function: intellectual functions such as thinking, understanding, memory, language, computation, and judgment. That’s because the area of the brain known as the cerebrum performs these functions. Arming your child with optimal cognitive function could be as simple as increasing cerebral blood flow with exercise.
Research findings, published in Scientific Reports, suggest children who perform short-duration, light-intensity exercises that increase cerebral blood flow (for example, stretching) are a fantastic way to increase cognitive function. The study involved students from fifth-grade elementary to third-year junior high school, each of whom was taught seven different low-intensity exercises: upward stretch, shoulder stretch, elbow circles, trunk twist, “washing hands,” “thumb and pinky,” and single-leg balance.
Children performed each exercise for 10-20 seconds. Researchers compared changes in cerebral blood flow at rest and during exercise, noting significant increases in blood flow during all exercises compared to when resting. The researchers emphasize the importance of their findings, stating: “This groundbreaking study represents a significant step forward in combating sedentary lifestyles and activating brain functions in children, thereby supporting their physical and mental growth.”
If you have children, there’s no better time than now to get them on the road to better mental and physical health
Note from Dr. Mha Atma: The following article is about a comprehensive review that showed that when people with spinal pain went to a chiropractor FIRST it saved a ton of money. Although not specifically stated, the reason it saved a ton of money is that people very often got better and so didn’t wind up needing MRIs, emergency room visits, expensive medical evaluations, drugs, and surgeries. Often, folks come to the chiropractor after some or all of those interventions didn’t work, and then frequently chiropractic care helps. So it makes sense that if folks try chiropractic sooner, a lot of suffering, hassle and expense may be avoided!
All the Ways DCs Top MDs for Spinal Pain
New Review Compares Downstream Utilization and Cost Differences
A new systematic review compares the cost of caring for patients with spine-related pain, examining the difference in downstream costs between chiropractic care and medical management.1
The authors conducted a Medline search, initially finding 2,256 citations from which they identified 44 applicable studies of high or acceptable quality. The 44 studies include 26 cohort studies, 17 cost studies and one randomized, controlled trial.
This is the first such study conducted since a similar paper was published in 2015.2 This is important, as most of the papers published since then identified not only initial costs of care, but downstream costs as well, which can be even more expensive than the initial care.
Here are all the ways chiropractic management resulted in lower downstream utilization and cost compared to medical management:
Diagnostic Imaging – 15 studies found chiropractic care resulted in less diagnostic imaging, particularly advanced imaging like MRI.
Opioids – 11 studies found chiropractic care resulted in fewer opioid prescriptions.
Surgery – Eight studies found patients underwent fewer surgeries with chiropractic management.
Hospitalization – Seven studies found chiropractic care resulted in fewer hospitalizations.
First Provider – Six studies associated lower downstream cost with a DC as the first provider.
Injections – Five studies found decreased use of injections with chiropractic care.
Specialist Visits – Five studies associated chiropractic care with fewer referrals to specialists.
ER Visits – Two studies found chiropractic care resulted in fewer emergency department visits.
The authors concluded: “Patients with spine-related musculoskeletal pain who consulted a chiropractor as their initial provider incurred substantially decreased downstream healthcare services and associated costs, resulting in lower overall healthcare costs compared with medical management.”
References
Farabaugh R, Hawk C, Taylor D, et al. Cost of chiropractic versus medical management of adults with spine-related musculoskeletal pain: a systematic review. Chiropr Man Therap, 2024;32:Article 8.
Dagenais S, Brady O, Haldeman S, Manga P. A systematic review comparing the costs of chiropractic care to other interventions for spine pain in the United States. BMC Health Serv Res, 2015;15:474.
The 411 on Statins
By Michael Greger M.D. FACLM •
The cholesterol-lowering statin drug Lipitor has become the best-selling drug of all time, generating more than $140 billion in global sales. This class of drugs garnered so much enthusiasm in the medical community that some U.S. health authorities facetiously proposed they be added to the public water supply like fluoride is. One cardiology journal even offered the tongue-in-cheek suggestion for fast-food restaurants to offer “MacStatin” [sic] condiments along with ketchup packets to help neutralize the effects of unhealthy dietary choices.
What Are Statins and How Do They Work?
Statins are drugs that can lower cholesterol. They work by blocking a substance that our body requires to make cholesterol.
Are Statins Bad for You?
Although statins may be effective at lowering cholesterol and potentially helping to reduce the risk of heart disease and even stroke, they come with a host of possible side effects that may do much more harm than good.
What Possible Side Effects?
As I discuss in the video Who Should Take Statins?, muscle-related side effects from cholesterol-lowering statin drugs “are often severe enough [to make] patients stop taking [them]. Of course, these side effects could be coincidental or psychosomatic and nothing to do with the drug,” given that many clinical trials show such side effects are rare. Of course, it is also possible that studies funded by the drug companies themselves may under-report side effects. The bottom line is that there’s an urgent need to establish the true incidence of statin side effects.
Researchers have found that those taking statins are significantly more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those randomized to placebo sugar pills. Why? We’re still not exactly sure, but statins may have the double-whammy effect of impairing insulin secretion from the pancreas, as well as diminishing insulin’s effectiveness by increasing insulin resistance.
Even short-term statin use may approximately “double the odds of developing diabetes and diabetic complications,” and increased risks may persist for years after stopping statins.
Who Should Take Statins?
How should you decide if a statin is right for you? “If you have a history of heart disease or stroke, taking a statin medication is recommended.” Period. Full stop. No discussion needed. However, if you don’t have any known cardiovascular disease, then the decision should be based on calculating your own personal risk, which you can easily do online if you know your cholesterol and blood pressure numbers, with the American College of Cardiology risk estimator or the Framingham risk profiler. (My favorite is the ACC estimator because it gives your current ten-year risk, as well as your lifetime risk.)
Go to nutritionfacts.org to read the rest of this article.
Time to Visit Your Chiropractor – Even When You’re Not in Pain
Why visit your doctor of chiropractic periodically – even when you’re not experiencing pain or other symptoms? Here’s why. The latest study on maintenance care for low back health suggests receiving chiropractic care periodically dramatically reduces the number of days you’ll experience “bothersome” low back pain over the course of a year.
Published in the multidisciplinary open-access journal PLOS One, the study included 328 patients ages 18-65 with nonspecific low back pain who experienced a favorable response to chiropractic care during their initial course of treatment. Patients were then randomly allocated to one of two groups for one year: a maintenance care group that received periodic chiropractic care or a control group that returned to their chiropractor only when LBP symptoms were present. Every week, researchers assessed subjects’ low back pain with a single question: “On how many days during the past week were you bothered by your lower back (i.e., it affected your daily activities or routines)?”
During the 12-month tracking period, members of the maintenance care (MC) group made an average of 6.7 visits to the chiropractor, compared with 4.8 visits by members of the control group. Those additional visits correlated with 12.8 fewer days of bothersome low back pain, on average, for the MC group compared to the control group.
How important is 12.8 fewer days of bothersome LBP a year? We’re sure you agree it’s worth a few additional visits to your chiropractor! And that’s the beauty of chiropractic care – it helps minimize the chances your pain will occur / recur, rather than treating it with medication once you’re already in pain. If you’re smart, you don’t wait until your car breaks down to take it to the mechanic, and you don’t wait until your teeth fall out to visit the dentist; so why wait until you’re in pain before going to your chiropractor?
As we mentioned at the beginning, this isn’t the first study – and likely won’t be the last – to suggest maintenance chiropractic care is more effective than symptom-guided care for low back pain. Click here to read our summary of a study published in 2017.
3 Great Veggies
If you don’t know by now that vegetables are a dietary cornerstone of optimal health, it’s high time for a lesson in what veggies can do to improve just about every aspect of your mental and physical health.
Vegetables are naturally low in fat and calories, and are packed with vital nutrients and other compounds that not only help the body function, but also play a significant role in disease prevention – including heart disease and some forms of cancer? Here are three (of many) to include in your daily diet:
Broccoli: Known as a cruciferous vegetable (other veggies in this family include cauliflower, kale, Brussel sprouts and cabbage), broccoli is rich in antioxidants and plant compounds essential for disease prevention; thus, its classification as a superfood. Broccoli is also high in fiber, vitamin C, vitamin K, iron, and potassium.
Sweet potatoes: Although sweet potatoes do contain sugar, unlike most veggies (approximately six grams of natural sugar per cup) and are considered starchy root vegetables, they have more fiber than white potatoes, along with a lower glycemic index (meaning they have a less-immediate impact on blood sugar). They are packed with vitamins and antioxidants that support eye, digestive and heart health. The beta-carotene in sweet potatoes also helps reduce inflammation.
Garlic: A member of the onion family, garlic has potent health benefits, including helping reduce cholesterol and blood pressure, treating respiratory infections, and optimizing immune function. Allicin, the principal bioactive compound in garlic, is produced when garlic is chopped or crushed; and diluted when cooked. Garlic has numerous sulfuric compounds that benefit heart and immune health.
We all want to age well, which means staying healthy and disease-free. Vegetables are a great place to start! After all, if you’ve heard of Blue Zone populations – demographics with high concentrations of people who live to age 100 or above, you’ll notice they all have one thing in common: lots of veggies in their daily diet.