Mr. N came into my office with symptoms of one sided headaches and eye pain rated at "10" on a 1-10 scale. He had them for months. His MD told him he had cluster headaches, yet a headache specialist told him he had migraines. The medications did not work and actually made him feel worse. When I examined him for this common malady, I pressed on the one or two spots that I had a strong sense were the culprit, and to Mr. N's relief, the pain was exactly reproduced. He was relieved because he knew that if I could touch his pain, I could relieve it.
    That is exactly what happened. He had a painfully stiff cervical facet joint, a joint in the neck spine that commonly refers pain onto the head and face, including the eye and forehead. He also had painful muscle knots, called trigger points, that when pressed upon, did the same thing. After releasing tension in both the joint and muscle trigger points, Mr. N commented that his headache was down to a "2" on the same 1-10 scale. I am confident that after a bit more treatment and exercise/posture instruction, his headaches will be a thing of the past.
    Although headaches are no laughing matter and should be properly assessed, the more commonly and innocent causes should be looked for and treated using safe and effective techniques. "Cervicogenic" headaches, or headaches having their origin in neck (cervical) structures, are incredibly common and often overlooked by the medical profession. They are often over-medicated and cause much unneeded suffering and disability, yet respond wonderfully to chiropractic care. Have a headache? Get your neck checked.

The Four Agreements, a great little book written by Miguel Ruiz, is a gem containing bits of practical wisdom. I highly recommend people read it and contemplate the power in its simple messages. Make these four agreements with yourself and see how it effects your life:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word Speak with Integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. 

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. 

3. Don’t Make Assumptions Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform you life. 

4. Always Do Your Best Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret. 

On of THE best ways to exercise is with high intensity interval training. One simple and fun way that I train is to mix up different exercises as intervals. Remember, the idea is to do short bursts of intense movement, followed by rest. Using a stopwatch, the intervals I often use are 30 seconds of exercise, followed by 90 seconds of rest. I do 6-8 intervals depending on how intense I work out or how I feel that day.

For instance, I commonly go to the local high school track to exercise. I will lightly stretch for just a few minutes and my first interval will be a 30 second run on the track. I stop and walk for 90 seconds. The next interval I do consists of fast push-ups on the grass for 30 seconds. I then walk for 90 seconds as rest. I then do another run for 30 seconds after which I rest for 90 seconds. Next, I will do pull-ups on the soccer goal posts for 30 seconds and rest with a 90 second walk. Get the idea? I run again for 30 seconds, then rest for 90 seconds. I will do another interval of push-ups for 30 seconds, then rest. Finally, I will run one more interval for 30 seconds, then rest. Done! If I feel I still have energy in the tank, I will run another 2 intervals and call it a day. Try it. It's a great work-out and it's fun to mix and match exercises. You can try other exercises to your liking (bridges, lunges, jumping jacks

1. run for 30 s, rest 90s
2. push-ups for 30s, rest 90s
3. run for 30 s, rest 90s
4. pull-ups for 30 s, rest 90s
5. run for 30 s, rest 90s
6. push-ups for 30 s, rest 90s (stop here if tired)
7. run for 30 s, rest 90s
8. run for 30 s, rest 90s

You can predict your chances of experiencing lower back pain by performing a test. It is called the lateral side support test. If you can not hold this position for 45 seconds, your risk for lower back pain is high. The good news is that the test can also be the training. Check out the video in our video section on this site. Just scroll down to the "side support" video. Simply get into this position and hold it as long as you can without too much shaking, or you losing the angle of hold. Repeat three times on each side every day. You do not have to do it this much forever! Once you get to be able to hold this position for one minute, then you can do it 2-3 times per week. It won't take long for you to attain this level of training, maybe 2 weeks.

What is the single most important thing you can do to reduce your risk for serious disease such as heart attack, stroke, and cancer? It is to optimize your vitamin D levels. Studies show that optimized vitamin D intake can reduce your risk by over 70%! This can be accomplished by either proper sunning technique, when the sun is strong enough, or by proper supplementation. A vitamin D blood test needs to be done to assess your levels. It is the most important blood test you can get, even more so than cholesterol! Vitamin D3 should not be taken alone but needs to be taken with magnesium and vitamin K2. There are supplement preparations on the market that have all 3 in one capsule. Optimizing your blood levels to 60-70 ng/L year round is the goal. If you have sun, use it safely and do not get burned. 10-20 minutes per day when the shadow you cast is shorter than you are tall. That is when the sun is strong enough to generate vitamin D from cholesterol that is in your skin!

Everywhere you go today, you see the signs: "Free vaccines today!" Ask yourself, "For what?" Is it safety? Protection? Increased health? I think it is neither. I have home-delivered three beautiful daughters into this world and we chose not to immunize them. Careless you say? Irresponsible as a parent? Not really, just informed and more trusting of the of the healing power of the human body and our own God given immune system. What should you do for the flu season?

Poor posture has its consequences. It has been shown that for every inch your head is forward of your shoulder, the neck muscles have to contract with a counter force of 10 lbs!! That's a lot of work for the neck muscles. Many of my patients have a 2-3 inch forward head posture. This translates into a 20-30 lbs contraction force acting on their necks! This can cause headache, neck pain, upper back pain, shoulder and arm pains, even lower back pain. To measure your forward head posture, first get into your typical sitting posture. Then have someone measure the distance from the center of your shoulder joint to your ear hole. Check out my video on neck exercises to help correct this problem.

If you can't, it may be an early sign of Alzheimer's disease! (1) The sense of smell is one of the earliest things to slide when you have Alzheimer's, especially if the left side nostril is effected more than the right!

Yup! Did it again. I opened the can. As a natural health care provider, I work in a health care industry with a drastically different point of view. What, sugar is bad for youi? Grains too? What about vaccines? Flouride in the water is bad? But the commercial on TV says it's good for me....
Yeah right.

   A study found that women taking this supplement had a 77% reduced risk of breast cancer over 4 years! I hate to sound like a broken record but it was vitamin D that was found (again) to reduce cancer risk. The sad thing is that a lot of people have not heard about about this. This study was done in 2007!! You would think this would be big news. Why hasn't this been reported? Why does the American Cancer Society reject this and other studies like it?