The table of good health

By DR. JOSEPH KAUFFMAN

A Table is made up of 4 legs. The table can still function with one leg missing. With two legs missing, it will still be upright but it will need support to keep it from falling. With three legs missing, it will just fall over. Support will help but it will be very tough. However, with the top missing that connects all four legs together, there is no hope of any of them being able to stand upright.

This is the table of Good Health.

Each leg is a different aspect of your life that you can do to achieve wellness and good health. The legs are as follows: Proper Diet, Adequate Sleep/ Rest, Positive Mental Attitude, and Proper Exercise.

The top of the table, that binds everything together, is our nervous system.

Proper Diet means putting the right things into your body and not putting the wrong things in your body. You want to focus on eating the foods, you know, that do your body good, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. Green, leafy vegetables have many of the necessary vitamins and nutrients that your body needs to help build cells, repair damaged cells and strengthen your body. You want to make sure that you stick to the food groups. Consume the right things and not consume too much of the bad things, such as fats and sweets that are often empty calories providing no nutritional value to your body. Proper nutrition means that you also need to drink enough water. Water is a huge part of what I teach my patients to consume. Your body is made up of 70% water. It is necessary for your organs and for your blood. Your body wants to maintain constant levels, such as your temperature is usually around 98.6∞F, your heart rate is usually 60-90 beats per minute, your breathing rate tends to be around 20 breaths per minute, your blood pressure should be close to 120/80, and your body wants to maintain constant levels of hydration. It’s when you drink things that are diuretics, such as coffee, tea (hot or iced), and beer that makes your body get rid of its water that dehydrates your body. When your body lacks water, what does it do? It takes the water out of your muscles. Then, as a result, when your muscles get dehydrated, you get tight muscles, charlie-horses, trigger points and muscle spasms. A good rule of thumb is to drink half of your body weight in ounces of water per day. If you start in the morning, you won’t be up all night urinating. Another part of nutrition is to add a multi-vitamin to your diet because you probably will not be able to get all the daily vitamins and minerals that you need from the foods that you eat. You need to find a good multi-vitamin that is not full of fillers, but is actually full of the necessary vitamins and minerals. A chewable or gummy vitamin works best because the digestion process starts in the mouth with chewing. Pills that get swallowed whole may pass through your digestive system without being digested.

The next leg is Proper Sleep and Rest. It is very important for your body to get 6-8 hours of good quality sleep each night. Getting proper rest and sleep enables your body to properly repair itself and build the cells that it needs from eating the foods. In the past, during World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War, the prisoners of war would be deprived of sleep as a way of torture to get them to confess secrets to the other side. By depriving

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Continued from Page 13 them of sleep, they could get a person to change his whole way of thinking. Your body needs the proper amount of sleep for you to be healthy. If you snore during your sleeping hours, there is a good chance that you stop breathing, also. If someone sleeps with you, ask that person to verify if you do this. A sleep study is a great way to determine if you have sleep apnea, which is the condition of stopping breathing while sleeping. The lack of oxygen in your bloodstream from the lungs during sleep apnea causes your heart to work harder to circulate the blood to all areas of the body that depend on that oxygen, which is everywhere, especially the brain. When I had this test, I stopped breathing 31 times per hour (every other minute) and that was mild to moderate sleep apnea. Making your heart work harder can lead to heart issues in the future. I highly recommend getting examined by your medical doctor if you snore or stop breathing during your sleep times.

The next leg is Positive Mental Attitude. This is a big one that not a lot of people think about. How many of you have heard of the saying that you are only as old as you feel? If you have a negative attitude about your life and about your health, not only will you get depressed and make yourself feel worse, but you will also be lonely because people who are negative aren’t exactly the best kind of people to be around. Nobody wants to be around someone who always views the glass as half empty. It is the people who are optimistic and happy-go-lucky that seem to be the happiest and the healthiest. If you feel that you have issues in this area or feel depressed, I encourage you to talk to someone

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Continued from Page 14 such as a counselor, a therapist, a pastor, or a professional. I have always favored this quote, “your attitude, more than your aptitude, determines your altitude in life.”

The final leg is for you to keep moving and make sure that you get the proper amount of exercise that your body needs. Exercising releases endorphins in your body. Endorphins are chemicals in your body that helps you feel better about yourself. One of the best ways to improve your mental attitude is to start exercising or at least get your body moving in some way. If you have ever seen Richard Simmons who did “Sweating to the Oldies”, the first thing he does is to get people moving in some way. If they cannot stand up, he has them doing aerobics with their arms. Getting the body moving releases these endorphins and helps break them out of that mental funk which causes depression and usually leads them to consuming more bad foods. Doing weight-bearing exercises helps your body from developing osteoporosis which is brittle bones. Have you ever heard of the saying, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”? What didn’t they have up in space? One of the best ways for you to keep from getting osteoporosis or to help prevent it from worsening is to increase your weight-bearing exercises and keep your body moving, which also helps to get the blood flowing in your body. Lack of movement leads to poor circulation. Moving also helps to prevent arthritis. By keeping the proper motion between the bones that make up a joint, arthritis can not settle in as easily. So, get moving!!!

All of these legs will not stand without the top of the table being in place. The top of the table is the nervous system of your body. Every single organ, muscle, bone, blood vessel, gland, and every part of your skin is controlled

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Continued from Page 14 by your brain. Anything you put into your mouth depends on your digestive system and your circulatory system. The blood carries that nutrients from the foods you consume to all areas of the body. If your aiding your immune system by consuming items to boost it such as Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Zinc, Elderberry, and Echinacea, those two systems are needed to boost the immune system. All systems are controlled by your brain and your nervous system, which includes the spinal cord and the nerves which all come off of the spinal cord. The most important part of the body is the brain due to its function of controlling everything in your body. In order to control everything, it has to be connected to everything via the spinal cord and the nerves. The skull’s job is to protect the brain. The spine’s job is to protect the spinal cord. Your spine has to not only protect the cord, but also enable your body to bend, twist, turn, and move. Your spine is made up of vertebrae that stack on top of one another being separated by a disc for cushion, shock absorption, and spacing. The muscle in the back (which from the skin to the spine are 5 layers deep like an onion and attach to the vertebrae via tendons) enable each vertebra to move. Sometimes, these movements we make are not in good directions and are usually due to stress. Every time we get stressed, we tend to tighten these back muscles, whose jobs are to contract and relax to move the bones. The stress tightens the muscles, the muscles pull tensions on the bones and the bones (vertebrae) get pulled out of place (misalign) and then put pressure on the nerves that exit from the spinal cord and travel between the bones of the spine (vertebrae). These misalignments are called subluxations and they cause interference between the brain and the body and the body and the brain by putting pressure on these spinal nerves. This is what we do as chiropractors: locate and correct these subluxations.

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Dr. Kauffman is a chiropractor with Kauffman-Hummel Chiropractic. Find out more at www.assistinginnate.com or call the office at 717-2482506.

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