Tag Archives: whole person health care

How Your Gait Expresses Your Overall Health

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By Georgianna Donadio, MSc, DC, PhD-

We don’t often reflect on how important the foundation of our body – our feet – really are to our overall health.

In the decades I have been practicing structural body care, one of the most common complaints that our patients report is the pain they suffer after walking and standing for any length of time. This is most commonly associated with wearing flat shoes.

Unfortunately, foot pain is becoming extremely common, with  now about one in every two individuals experiencing some foot pain with prolonged standing or with activity. In order to take the steps to eliminate foot pain we need to understand why feet can become sore and tender from standing and walking.

Feet are the weight bearing “shock absorbers” of our bodies. They do an extraordinary job keeping our body weight balanced and well distributed. This is one of the functions of our feet that allow us to walk, run and function at high levels of agility and coordination.

 The bio-mechanics of our feet include muscles running along the outside and inside of our legs. These muscles and tendons also insert into our feet and have an impact on the integrity of our individual foot function. These same muscles are also, through the spinal cord, connected to various organs in our body.

The expression “feeling weak in the knees” comes from how stress is communicated through the body via nerves, organs and muscle function. The way stress regulation works in the body is through the adrenal glands. These are glands embedded in the kidneys. The same muscles which impact foot function are also connected to the adrenal glands through the spinal cord.

To see an example of this, the gait or foot health of a highly stressed person will most likely demonstrate that their shoes are either turning up, turning down or are considerably worn out.

At much earlier ages individuals are experiencing high levels of stress these days. This can impact the function of the legs muscles and consequently the foot function. This can lead to foot pronation, pain, corns, bunions and other foot malfunctions. Walking in shoes that do not support our foot function is in the long run harmful to our foot and overall health.

By using custom made foot orthotics that are worn in supportive shoes is the easiest and least expensive approach to solving foot issues before they become a complicated and painful concern. You can see your chiropractor or podiatrist who can prescribe if necessary customized orthotics.

For an overview of more Whole Health topics, Watch Two Hours of FREE Course Excerpts from the National Institute of Whole Health.

Is Social Media Damaging Your Work Environment?

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When most of us think of an unhealthy work environment, we visualize “sick building syndrome,” difficult staff members, or the classic “boss from hell.”

After attending a conference populated by a number of staffing agency directors, I recently received an insight into the latest unhealthy work issue that is getting the attention of a lot of organizations: obsessive social media use while on the clock.

Resulting Social Issues

It is becoming such a concern that more and more companies are having their computer networks re-tooled to block Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites on office computers.

How much of a problem is it that a significant number of younger-generation workers, who were raised on personal electronics, cannot stop checking their Facebook and text messages while they are on the job and being paid to spend their time attending to the tasks at hand?

That employees are noticing and becoming concerned that this trend is affecting their productivity and even their bottom line. This says something important about the current immediate communication impulse and what is being called “the narcissistic tendency” we are developing as a culture.

Staying Focused On The Job

The focus and integrity to attend to the job we are expected to be doing and the ability or willingness to not pay attention to ourselves when we are getting paid to be working seems to be lacking today more than ever before.

Cellphones, emails, text messages, social networking and other electronic forms of communication have begun to hold our attention prisoner–even when we are on the job. Not only is this unfair to the individual or organization paying our salary, but it also sends up a red flag. We are growing more and more self-absorbed.

Can someone be healthy when overly concerned about the moment-to-moment activities of life? There are (most commonly in humor columns) reported Facebook posts by individuals who record practically every minor act and event of their day, posting them publicly for all their friends and fans to read.

Infalated Narcissism

Is it true that we are becoming a narcissistic society, so unable to pull ourselves away from the details of our lives that we no longer put in an honest day’s work?

Health is made up of many things. Being productive, making a contribution, working hard and enjoying what you do are all part of a healthy lifestyle. If social networking and electronic communication are pulling you further away from a balanced and healthy work life, it may be time to unplug and unlink.

Finding fulfillment and feeling commited to what we do in our work as well as how we do the work are important parts of being a productive, contributory, healthy, happy individual. Not only is excessive electronic communication often overly self-centered, but it can also distract from other essential aspects of a balanced life. That’s something to consider.

For a free download of the bestselling, award-winning book Changing Behavior, visit changingbehavior.org.

Join the conversation. If you enjoyed this article, be sure to follow NIWH on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates filled with useful health coach certification information for holistic nurses and health advocates.

Women and Depression

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It comes as no surprise to women that there is a relationship between their hormone fluctuation and the potential for experiencing depression. Studies of this kind have not been pursued until fairly recently.

The prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently looked at this subject and explored the potential relationship to hormonal dysfunction and depression in women.

The recently published report was a review on how the female reproductive system interacts with the Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis. This is a major regulatory mechanism of the body’s stress response.

With the important data that women are twice as likely as men to experience depression, it is this mechanism which sets up a biochemical environment for depression, that the NIWH investigators looked closely at.

Stress in women impacts the reproductive hormones which can upset patterns of ovulation, hormone secretion and implantation. Mediated through the HP-axis, tThis upset can contribute to the lost of menses and to infertility.

If the stress becomes chronic and exert an ongoing imbalance on the female reproductive hormones, behavior and mood disorders and depression can significantly increase.

When the powerful reproductive – love hormone, oxytocin is suppressed due to excessive stress hormones, fertilized eggs cannot implant into the uterus. This significant result of chronic stress is believed to be a primary cause of infertility in American women.

A key to preventing or correcting the problem is to create a more balanced, less stressful lifestyle. When our body’s stress adaptation system becomes overwhelmed, many disorders and conditions can develop, depression being just one of them.

The NIH investigators reported that regarding postpartum depression, ongoing hyper-secretion of the stress hormone cortisol during  pregnancy creates a temporary drop in adrenal function following delivery. This hormonal change coupled with the plummeting levels of estrogen after giving birth may be an important factor in post-partum depression and possibly in immune dysfunctions, such as postpartum thyroid conditions.

With all good wishes,
G
© by NIWH 2011 All rights reserved

Should Doctors Take Back Control of Health Care?

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For those us of old enough to remember Marcus Welby, MD and Dr. Kildare, the beloved TV docs we grew up with, we also remember a time when the physicians ran health care. They set policy, budgets, insurance coverage guidelines and pretty much, back then, “everything health care”.

The insurance carriers, growing tired of paying for questionable procedures and surgery, warned physician groups running the show that if they did not clean up the medical abuses taking place, the insurance industry would take away their decision making by enforced second opinions and limited pay outs for procedures that were being unnecessarily performed. Back in the 1970’s, there were millions of hysterectomies, 66% of all those performed were after the fact deemed “unnecessary” by what has become today’s Medical Review Boards.

Now in the U.K., to quote an article in latest English.news.cn “The new British coalition government revealed on Friday that it planned to put doctors in charge of funding for front line services in England’s National Health Service (NHS), in a change hailed as the biggest in 60 years.”

This is big! If this were to be enacted in the U.S., we could see a return of physician driven health care that is provided, determined and distributed by the same type of physician groups that were unable to police themselves just 30 years after the establishment of the American Medical Association and the mainstreaming of the pharmaceutical industry.

Granted, we currently have in place excellent peer review boards and medical review requirements, but this works because of the lack of conflict of interest with the way these structures function.

The health care reform bill has yet to flex its muscles and most of us feel pretty much in the dark about what we can expect. No surprise since an overwhelming majority of politicos who voted on the bill had little to no idea what the bill contained!

The issues we see with today’s health care delivery simply reinforce the Whole Health vision of taking control of our bodies, preventing disease with common sense health hygiene and limiting the use of acute care medicine that we as Americans are blessed to have available to us when a health crisis occurs.

Every day the news contains articles identifying the long term use of even over the counter medications and cautions us to realize we cannot repeatedly put these chemicals into our bodies (and there are many other chemicals in our environment, food and air) and not experience consequences.

Chronic disease, which is the bulk of what is treated in health care today, is preventable and cost effective. Let’s create our own health care reform with self-directed health-care. This means taking care of our whole health, living well and living long.

With all good wishes,
G

© by NIWH 2010 all rights reserved

The Science of How What We Believe Becomes Our Reality – Part One

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Ten years ago, Newsweek ran an article by Howard Brody, MD, PhD, author of
“The Placebo Response: How You can Release Your Body’s Inner Pharmacy for Better Health.”

He begins the article by telling a story of a patient who experiences “a medical miracle”. She was
undergoing experimental brain surgery for her Parkinson’s disease. She was so stiff before she had
the surgery that she could barely take a step. When several months later a TV new magazine filmed
the woman, she was striding easily across the room.

Now here is the exciting part of the story – the surgery she had was a fake. She was part of a
fetal-cell transplant research study. The procedure consisted of drilling holes into the skull and
placing
fetal cells into specific targeted areas of the brain.

The woman was placed under anesthesia and holes were drilled into her head. But,she did not
have any fetal cells implanted into her brain. This meant that her miraculous recovery was
entirely what is called the “nuisance factor” by researchers, or better known as
– the placebo effect.

In the conclusion of the study, it was stated that the patients who received the sham operation
realized almost the same effects as the ones who received the fetal cell implants. This is a
powerfully important piece of information with regard to understanding that we can “tell ourselves”
or implant messages into our conscious and unconscious mind about what we want to realize about
our health or our lives and can manifest those very messages into reality.

Beliefs are powerful things and what we tell ourselves and others tell us can make us better or worse.
We all have “our story” and we tell it over and over again both to ourselves and to others. We believe
it, we expect it and we project it. When we change our beliefs and our story, we change the outcomes.

One of the better known studies which demonstrates how changing our stories can change our
outcomes (and our lives) is the 1980’s breast cancer support group study that was written up in
the journal Advances. All of the women had breast cancer that had metastasize before the study
began. Their prognosis was poor but they became a group who listened to each others stories,
supported each other, cared about one another and helped each other manage their symptoms
and disease. They also helped each other change their story.

It is not surprising that the women in this support group lived on average 18 months longer
than breast cancer patients with the same degree of metastasis.

Tomorrow: Part Two – Understanding HOW THIS WORKS

With all good wishes,
G
© by NIWH 2010 all rights reserved

Taking Control of Your Health

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It’s no secret that we Americans have reached an all time level of being “unhealthy”, thanks to an ever increasing stress-filled lifestyle. Despite widespread campaigns aimed at helping people stop smoking, eat better and exercise, the vast majority of Americans does not get regular exercise and are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. This has resulted in an explosion in obesity that has been sited as high as 63%, along with climbing rates of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other diseases associated with lifestyle and behavior choices.

As far back as 1996, Harvard Medical School published a 7- year study which confirms up to 70% of all cancer, heart disease, stroke and mature onset diabetes are preventable with lifestyle and behavior changes. And yet, the health of the wealthiest nation in the world continues to decline. Today the fastest growing population for obesity is found in children ages 4 to 8 years old.

Core factors for this epidemic amongst Americans can be found in a recent government study. In 2005, the Institute of Medicine published a major study identifying that ninety millionAmericans are “health illiterate”. This does not mean, in this Internet dominant society, that people do not have access to or are not receiving enough health information. It means that the majority of us do not know how to interpret or use the health information we receive to control or improve our health or prevent chronic disease.

Think of the last time you read the results of a new study in a magazine, and realized you did not know how to use that information to support or improve your health. In fact, data, presented to the American College of Health Care Executives identifies, “lack of information as the number one root cause of disease and death”. Yet, experts like Susan Edgman-Levatin, Executive Director, John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital, acknowledges “It’s no secret that traditional methods of patient education are hopelessly ineffective.” To compound this, information on the Internet may or may not be reliable and is not crafted to explain the how and why our bodies become sick. We need to know the specifics of how to prevent illness not just what modalities, supplements or therapies can treat the condition.

The focus for this blog is to offer mini-tutorials in the science of  whole person health and wellness education, sharing with readers information that can provide tools, skills and knowledge to

(1) understand why and how chronic illness or dis-ease manifests in our bodies

(2) what can you do to control and/or heal your chronic conditions

(3) what do these conditions represent with regard to your whole self – what are the physical, emotional, nutritional, environmental and spiritual aspects of your life communicating

This information, while evidence-based and scientific in nature, will be demystified and include a self-care perspective to allow any and all who read this blog to take away some nugget of insight, knowledge or a new perspective they can apply to their personal health and wellness choices.

With all good wishes ~
G
© by NIWH 2010 all rights reserved