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Is Stress Causing Havoc on Your Body? Avoid it with These Tips….
Tip 1: Exercise.
When researching for the effects of exercises on mental conditions, it is clear that exercise is one of the most beneficial activities to burn off stress and give your brain an increase in feel-good hormones such as serotonin. Exercise doesn’t have to be strenuous. Walk, stretch, perform light jogging—just move, feed your brain.
Tip 2: Meditate.
Go somewhere quiet, close your eyes, be still for 10 to 20 minutes, and let your brain slow down. I have to meditate daily—I like to do it for about 10 minutes in the morning and five minutes at lunch. Purchase a book or DVD with meditation or yoga techniques.
While meditating, put slight pressure on your closed eyelids and a physiological reflex will occur that lowers blood pressure and heart rate.
Tip 3: Condition your mind with positive influences.
Read positive books, watch uplifting television, go see comedy movies. Avoid the fear, doom, and gloom that is in newspapers, film, and downtrodden conversations with people always complaining (some might be our own family members). For your own health, limit your time with people who see everything as negative—or steer the conversation away from depressing talk. Such relationships can be toxic and drain mental energy. Turn toward positivity by choosing to turn off the nightly news and instead read the cartoon section of the newspaper. Watch the movie Dumb and Dumber—dare you not to laugh! Get the old films of The Three Stooges, laugh, smile, surround yourself with positive people, positive images, or pictures of happy times. I hang in my clinic pictures of my kids laughing and playing, as well as pictures of patients who have had great success in our office and become our extended family. They evoke happy thoughts in me and block out negative influences. You must protect your mind.
Tip 4: Track your moods throughout the day.
Keep a journal to write down when your moods are at their best—notice patterns, and try to engage in more of those activities that are joyful. When you notice you’re mood is more blue, fill that time also with positive activities, a funny book, or an upbeat song—not a heartbreak country song. Surround yourself with people who are positive and encouraging. Create a space in your living environment or workplace that is comfortable and peaceful. Turn off the phone and relax, even for 10 to 20 minutes.
Tip 5: Get rid of clutter.
Environmental clutter can clutter your mind. Get rid of clutter by donating it to charity if you haven’t used it in over a year. You won’t miss it—trust me. Give it away. You will feel better.
Tip 6: Do something fun.
Go to the park, go fishing, go shopping, walk in the park, work on your hobby. Give yourself a “me” day or even am hour of fun to give yourself a mental break.
For serious emotional or physical traumas that might have happened in the past but have not been resolved, it is best to seek the assistance of a licensed therapist. Emotional traumas can linger in your mind and could very well be the source of chronic pain and continue to be chronic for years to come if not addressed.
Call and schedule your appointment today! Still not sure chiropractic care is for you? We have free consultations! Call and schedule your free consultation! If you are ready to start your journey to better health call today and mention our blog and tell the receptionist you would like to utilize our New Patient Special to receive your discount of over $200!
Abilene,TX 79606
Psychological Stress and Pain
Psychological Stress and Pain
Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy, and rewarding life.
—Marilu Henner
Have you ever noticed that pain increases during times of stress? Why is that? Emotions are a powerful force. We feel emotions every day. Women tend to be very in touch with their emotions, and those emotions can manifest in a variety of ways. Some can create havoc and a vicious cycle for musculoskeletal dysfunction.
Emotional stress can be contributed to nearly every health ailment known to mankind. Stress can reduce blood supply, create tight muscles, reduce oxygen, and release hormones that trigger inflammation, limit your ability to repair joints, and cause nerves to be overactive. Stress must be kept in check in order to manage chronic back and neck pain. Your body’s response to a short-term stress is known as the “fight-or-flight” mechanism. When you are being chased by a bear, you want your body to move all its blood away from areas of your body, such as your intestines and stomach, to the skeletal muscles so you can run away as fast as you can. That is necessary as long as it is short-lived. When your body perceives stress for long periods of time—weeks, months, years—you create a neurological reflex of tight muscles that can actually change the shape of your spine over time, irritate joints, and pull vertebrae out of alignment. Chronic stress slowly but surely starts to degenerate you nerves and your brain. The physiology of chronic stress is a topic for another book, but underlying stress is the source of many if not most ailments. Not all stresses are easily identified.
A patient named Misty is a 35-year-old mother of four, working 30 hours a week as a telemarketer. She and I were talking about the chronic muscle pain in her shoulders and hips. When I asked about stress in her life, she replied, “Dr. Morgan, I don’t really have stress. Everything is going well. I have a job I like, my family is healthy—I don’t really have any stress in my life.” Well you might not perceive things as stresses, but your body sure does. I asked her to walk me through her day. She begins by getting up two times a night with an infant, starts her morning with three cups of coffee while trying to get the kids up and dressed, often running late she decides to not cook breakfast and picks up doughnuts at the bakery, still late she eats in the car on the way to drop the older kids at school, goes to work, has one more cup of coffee, works for several hours, skips lunch and instead replaces it with a Red Bull or Monster Energy drink, and snack on a bag of chips while working. Hang on—there’s more…. She leaves work, picks up a few kids, hurries home to cook and clean for the kids, eats a TV dinner and drinks a cola, helps with homework, bathes kids, and does some laundry. She doesn’t even have time to sit down and unwind before bed. By about 9:00 p.m., she hits a brick wall, knowing she should go to bed, but decides to have one more cup of coffee or iced tea for a pick-me-up so she can finish some work around the house. In bed by 10:30 p.m., she has difficulty going to sleep because she says she can’t turn her mind off. After lying in bed for about an hour, she decides to take a sleeping pill. Her infant wakes up twice, usually around 1:00 a.m. and again at 4:00 a.m. Her alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m., when she gets up to start all over again.
I explained to Misty that even though she might not believe she has any stress—such as a loss of a loved one, difficulty at work, or a child who is disobedient or having issues at school—the amount of caffeine she consumes and poor dietary habits are just as bad. Caffeine is a stimulant and, if not kept in moderation, the body’s chemistry and nervous system perceive the stimulation as a constant fight-or-flight response. She doesn’t sit and eat at a slow or normal rate, she is rushed everywhere she goes, and it’s difficult for her to find the time to be in a rest-and-digest state. She eventually burns out the adrenal glands, responsible for stress hormones, and the body now feels it constantly needs stimulants to function.
High levels of stress hormones make it easy to put on weight around your waist, decrease your lifespan, and accelerate the progression of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and dementia.
So, how should you deal with and ease emotions and stresses that might not be in your control? Check out my next blog on how to deal and tips you can use! Call and schedule your next appointment.
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Dr. Morgan & Dr. Chowning
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Top 12 Heath and Dietary Habits that Contribute to Headaches! Continued
We are going to round out the last few health and dietary habits that may be contributing to your headaches!
Food Allergies
Food allergies will trigger a headache quickly! If you’re allergic to a food, whether it’s yeast, milk, peanuts, wheat, or sugar, its possible that you will have a headache after eating that food. In children suffering from migraines and epilepsy, eliminating offending foods will result in reduction of seizures.
What makes food allergies more complicated is that a food essentially stays in the body for four days so you could be reacting to a food eaten four days ago!
Faulty Elimination causes Headaches
For a minute, think back to a time you were constipated. How did you feel? Miserable! I must tell you how important it is to have a bowel movement at least twice daily. If you don’t, you are constipated.
What happens inside of the body when you are constipated is not pretty. all that waste matter inside your intestines is rotting!Forgive me for being so graphic, but i want you to understand this. There is a process in the body called diffusion that happens inside the cells that works like this: whenever you have a higher concentration of wastes in the intestines, they start “polluting” the rest of the organs in your abdomen. This is part of the reason why so many men have prostrate problems!
Those wastes in your colon are in such a high concentration that they start “flowing” to other places of the body. Countless patients have told me over the years that part of the reason why they got headaches was because they were constipated.
Stop carrying around those old meals as a suitcase in your colon and start feeling better. You will clearly have fewer headaches as a result.
Dehydration
Your body uses water to dissolve EVERYTHING except fats and fat-soluble vitamins. When you don’t have enough water, you can’t dissolve toxins and get them out of the body. Your blood has a high percentage of water. when your water levels are only 5% lower, your efficiency suffers by 30%. Aim for 1 oz water for every 2 lbs you weigh. For example, if you weigh 150 lbs, you need a minimum of 75 oz water per day. That’s equivalent to a little over nine 8-oz glasses of water. If you drink three in the morning when you wake up, you only have six more to go for the rest of the day. That’s easy!
Malnutrition causes headaches
Vitamin and mineral deficiencies cause headaches. I’m not going to go through every one of the vitamins and mineral deficiencies that do this because you’ll rush out and try to buy them. The problem with that thinking is that it doesn’t work. You must have balanced nutrition, a balanced amount of vitamins and minerals to make nutrients work. A good vitamin/mineral plan is important.
Stress
I understand that you may be experiencing a very difficult time in your life; during difficult times, there’s a lot of stress. For every problem, there’s a solution. Some of the top ways to beat stress are:
Exercise
Taking a walk somewhere peaceful
Listen to music or play an instrument
Pray
Add an extra vitamin B
Processed Foods
Processed foods cause headaches by causing inflammation; the more inflammation, the more frequent you’ll have headaches. The way that processed foods cause inflammation is by the chemicals in them called advanced glycation endproducts, or AGE’s. These AGEs are worse than free radicals, causing mini explosive reactions inside the body’s organs that lead to aging, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and inflammation.
Call our office today and schedule your next appointment with Dr. Morgan or Dr. Chowning!
Abilene, Tx 79606
Top 12 Heath and Dietary Habits that Contribute to Headaches! Continued
The Top 12 Heath and Dietary Habits that Contribute to Headaches! Continued
3. A diet that contains too much Monosodium Glutimate (MSG), Nutrasweet, Aspartame, diet sodas causes headaches.
Researchers discovered that certain chemicals, especially MSG added to Chinese food is a strong headache trigger in many people.
Foods that contain MSG might not necessarily list “MSG” or “monosodium glutamate” on the label. Instead, you’ll see: hydrolyzed vegetable protein, natural flavorings, sodium caseinate, yeast extract, hydrolyzed yeast, hydrolized oat flour, calcium caseinate, hydrolyzed plant protein, hydrolyzed protein. Protein isolates of any type may contain MSG, even soy protein. If you eat processed foods, it will be rare for you to see a label without one of these! Every fast food chain uses it in their food ingredients.
4. Low blood Sugar from eating too many carbohydrate foods in a meal causes headaches.
Carbohydrate foods are foods such as breads, pasta, cakes, cookies, candy, muffins, rice, beans, whole grains, tacos and tortillas. Starchy vegetables such as peas, corn, potatoes, acorn squash, and other winter squashes also contain high levels of carbohydrates. Milk products are another good source.
It’s okay to have carbohydrate foods in your diet, but limit them to a maximum of 3 or 4 servings per meal.
5. Low Blood Sugar from not eating regular meals causes headaches.
When you don’t eat regular meals, you get energy from stored fats and carbohydrates. This happens automatically in response to low blood sugar from not eating. Keep a journal of your diet and look for a pattern of headaches that appear when you don’t eat breakfast, skip lunch or dinner, or go to bed hungry.
The best diet you can eat is one that supplies you with three meals a day and snacks between.
6. Low blood sugar from not eating enough protein in the meal or in the diet causes headaches.
Many people believe that it’s not a good idea to eat red meat, so they eliminate it from their diet. Grass-fed red meat is am excellent source of nutrients, including omega-3 fats that prevent headaches! The problem is that when many people eat less meat, they don’t substitute other protein foods for the red meat. Other protein foods include fish, chicken, turkey, wild meats, eggs, cheese and dairy products.
Look for our next blog that will contain more of the TOP 12!
Until then, give our office a call and we can get YOU started on the headache free path!
Dr. Jake Morgan & Dr. Kendra Chowning
Top 12 Heath and Dietary Habits that Contribute to Headaches!
Some of these habits may surprise you. My recommendation is that you first read through each one of these habits and then decide if each habit could be contributing to your headaches in any way. Now I understand that you wont know for sure if each one is contributing at the time that you read it the first time, but you’ll probably have an intuitive feeling about it immediately or even an internal revelation as times goes on. If the habit could possibly be contributing to your headaches because it is your habit, circle it. One by one, work on eliminating the habits that are circled, noticing your progress. The more habits you can eliminate, the more you are moving towards a headache-free life, life as usual with no headache pain!
I will list a few in this post, be on the lookout for our next post covering a few more!
1. Bad Sleep Habits Cause Headaches
Sleeping on your stomach or with your pillow bunched up is a sure way to a headache. What happens is that your neck becomes twisted for long periods of time as you sleep, putting pressure on the nerves, blood vessels and vertebrae in your cervical (upper) spine. That pressure sends messages to your head. Presto! You have a headache and your neck hurts as well.
The solution is sleeping on your back with a pillow that supports your neck fully. You may also sleep on your side, but check with us at the office about the proper sleeping position that won’t create headaches. If you bring in your pillow to our office, I’ll check to see if it’s part of the reason you have headaches. For example, a pillow that is too thin or too fluffy will contribute to headaches because it doesn’t support the cervical curve of 
In the past 20 years, chiropractic physicians have used a complete range of cervical pillows to fit the necks of those who are young and old.
2. Too Much Caffeine and/or Chocolate Causes Headaches
Scientists don’t know exactly what it is about caffeine that can cause a headache, but they do know that there is a clear connection. The big question is what is too much coffee? If you’re drinking six cups a day, that’s too much! Four cups a day is too much! Three cups a day may be too much as well. For some people, any coffee is too much; the caffeine triggers a headache and keeps them away from a headache-free life.
If you are drinking too much coffee, it is important that you decrease your coffee consumption slowly. DON NOT STOP COFFEE COLD TURKEY! If you stop drinking coffee cold turkey, you will get a headache and it wont be just an ordinary headache. It will be a monstrous headache!
The best way to cut your coffee consumption is to decrease slowly by 1/2 cup a day.
The same principle can be applied to chocolate. If you eat chocolate every single day three times, decrease it one time a day. Chocolate contains caffeine and you can develop that monstrous headache from its withdrawal.
Check Back with us soon to see the rest of the Top 12!
Here is a sneak peak at whats to come
MSG ,NutraSweet, Aspartame, Diet Sodas
Low Blood Sugar
Food Allergies…….
And many more!
Call Our office TODAY to schedule your FREE Consultation with Dr. Morgan or Dr. Kendra to help get you set on the Headache-Free PATH!
Ask our office staff about our NEW PATIENT SPECIAL!!!