Revolution

A very good book. And it will soon be #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List and already is #1 on the Amazon list. I hope enough people are listening…

For many generations in my family there is a tradition of Constitutional fundamentalism, which just means that we think the government should follow the Constitution - and we are keenly aware when it does not. For most of my family that ends up meaning they become cynical and resigned, most don’t even vote, and some even join the Jehovah Witnesses where they can get moral support for enjoying the benefits of living in a society they don’t actively support.

Ironically, we also have a tradition of volunteering for military service, which I did, and doing whatever is asked during that period of service.

It’s rare though that there is an opportunity to get behind the possibility of a government that remembers it’s past and knows its place; one that protects our Rights under the Constitution.

So while the media, and the establishment has tried very hard to blanket Ron Paul in silence and make him irrelevant the way they did Ralph Nader, this guy has managed to leverage that to his advantage: so he is hella smart apparently. If you read his book you will see that he is not only smart strategically, but he knows a thing or two about a thing or two regarding Government and governing, as well as economics.

Good reading,

DrD

Wellness Chiropractic Care includes…. Fitness

On that note, first a word from our sponsors: There will be NO TAI CHI CLASS THIS SATURDAY (MAY 10TH)!!!

The subject of this month’s Wellness Presentation is going to be Focus on Fitness!

And that will be Monday evening May 19th at 6:30 p.m. in our office at 8625 Evergreen Way, #210, Everett, WA 98208. Remember, these events are FREE! RSVP by email to me at DDilday239@aol.com or call the office at (425) 348-5207 because we only have room for about ten people.

There is an excellent discussion of Fitness on the CrossFit site in an article entitled, What is Fitness? It does a good job of describing Fitness in its relation to health (often not the same thing at all) in a way that it totally consistent with Chiropractic Wellness care and my views on health, wellness, fitness and sickness.

I like a lot of what I’ve seen on this site in fact, but I offer this strong warning. When he saying “We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs.” He means it. His target audience is elite athletes. We mere mortals at the lower end of the spectrum will be well served to learn the principles of the CrossFit approach and apply them to where we are on a range between sick and fit.

What that means is that the ART of applying the most appropriate activity (it’s level of intensity, speed, duration, intervals, etc.) at any given time and then making progressive adjustments toward a more demanding level of activity, is the key to avoiding injury and set back.

How that looks is different for each of us and is different from one moment in time to another, but it can be understood and worked with to produce results toward fitness…. so once again: it’s the path not the destination that is important (Where have we heard that before?).

Join us on May 10th and we’ll explore what the CrossFit folks refer to as the foundation in the development of the athlete.

Wellness Chiropractic Care Includes…

Well in our case in includes tai chi, but…

There will be NO CLASS IN EVERETT THIS SATURDAY (April 26th)!!!

Now, for those of you who know that this Saturday is World Tai Chi & Qigong Day there is one consolation. I will be doing a Tai Chi demonstration at the Stanley Civic Center in downtown Wenatchee at 10 a.m. You are all welcome to join me.

Now about this picture. I took it because it is one of the very few trees that I see around town which illustrates long term care and maintenance. This tree is elderly yet is clearly healthy and has been pruned well for decades. It is strong and beautiful.

What’s the point? It’s the same with health. Start early, maintain what you’ve got and “prune” it as you go and you will remain strong and healthy. A tree or a person who has been neglected and abused for decades is a difficult place to start from when it comes to “care” that comes so late. In fact that usually looks like First Aid.

There will be a whole foods supplementation presentation at our office on Monday night at 6:30 p.m. in which the theme is “Prescription for Health.” Forever we’ve heard that the key to health and longevity is “diet and exercise.” This presentation will help you check diet off the list. RSVP with me via email at DDilday239@aol.com

The Dalai Lama & Sand Mandalas

The Dalai Lama gets to Seattle today and tomorrow two Tibetan Buddhist Monks will finish their Sand Mandala The Buddha of Compassion Mandala. It seemed like a good time to stop by and see how the Mandala was coming. When I got there they were in the middle of their ritual prayer session in front of a temporary alter. They finished after about 10 minutes, then got up and went straight to work.

I took in what I could then was surprised by my stream of thoughts, took a few pictures and headed to the office.

Here is part of what the promotional flyer said about the Mandala:

“The Mandala, a Tibetan sand painting, is an ancient art form of Tibetan Buddhism. “Mandala” is a sanskrit word meaning cosmogram or “world in harmony.” The sand Mandala is carefully constructed from dyed sand particles as [a] vehicle to generate compassion, to realize the impermanance of reality, and to create a social/cosmic healing of the environment.”

Here is one of my favorite Dalai Lama quotes:

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”

The Sand Mandala gets finished tomorrow with a closing ceremony at 4 p.m. That’s at the Monte Cristo, 1507 Wall Street in downtown Everett.

On Friday, Helen and I stopped by to see how it turned out. What do you think?

Religion and Politics

There’s a saying in health care, “Never talk to patients about religion or politics.”

So I won’t.

DrD

Fish Oil

I’ve read and listened to the fish oil story for years, but managed to put off actually eating the stuff. But guys like Dr. Murphy and others keep beating that drum. Finally, I came across this from Dr. Murphy and decided I couldn’t put it off any longer. He has also written recent articles detailing the quality, ratio of omega 3s to 6s, and daily quantity of the fish oil needed to get the anti-inflammatory benefits, so this “shake” in my mind meets all of those criteria. I have been unable to find an off-the-shelf product that does (He recommends Nutri-West.)

If you are interested in eating fish oil here are his recommendations. (BTW, I think he is the authority.)

BIG BRAIN SHAKE FOR ONE PERSON

From Dr. Dan Murphy

Put into a blender:

1) 6 oz. Trader Joe’s organic, low fat, lemon twist yogurt.

2) 6 oz. Trader Joe’s organic 2% milk (use the yogurt container). (“The Key to the Big Brain Shake is the milk globules found in the 21% milk. These are preformed emulsions into which the added EPA and DHA will immediately incorporate. These fat emulsions are an ideal delivery system to maximize the fish oil absorption with virtually no taste.” Sears, 2005, p. 84)

3) 6 oz. Frozen mixed berries (again, use the yogurt container). (Frozen berries are extremely high in anti-oxidants.)

4) One tablespoon of fish oil (EPH/DHA/ALA, some GLA, and vitamin E). (I use the COMPLETE HI-POTENCY OMEGA-3 LIQUID from Nutri-West: 800-443-333.)

5) Drop in 5 anti-oxidant co-factors. (I use COMPLETE OMEGA-3 CO-FACTORS from Nutri-West, this way there is no taste and they go down easily.

Blend thoroughly then complete Step 6 below:

6) After it is blended, add one serving of COMPLETE WHEY-G from Nutri-West. Turn the lender on very briefly, just enough to get the COMPLETE WHEY-G to disappear from the top, 1-3 seconds. DO NOT OVER BLEND OR THE WHEY DENATURES (This is from the heat – so a hand shaker is not a problem-Dr.D.)

Complete Whey-G is an un-denatured whey protein, and un-denatured whey protein has bee found to significantly elevate glutathione levels (Cutman, 2002). Children do not need Complete Whey-G.

Glutathione is our body’s most important antioxidant. Glutathione also attaches (chelates) to toxic metal ions and eliminates (detoxifies) them (Blaylock, 2002; Gutman, 2002; Rodgers, 2002).

Gutman, Jimmy, (M.D.) GSH, Your Body’s Most Powerful Protector, Glutathione, Kudo, CA, 2002

Rodgers, Sherry, (M.D.) Detoxify or Die, Sand Key Company, 2002

Ila Barlean and Barlean Balance

     

 

I took this picture in my backyard the second week in January!

If you are within striking distance of Bellevue and want to get in shape, Ila Barlean is your go-to person. She is the very best in fitness training and offers superb coaching. Here is the link to her site where she lists her offerings. 

You will love her and you will love the results you get working out with her. 

DrD   

Montel Gets A Chiropractic Adjustment

Another great photo from home by cousin Bonnie!!

 

When I started this blog I had all kinds of ideas about what would go in it. So much for that: I haven’t really been able to keep up with all the things that I “should” get around to doing.

Meanwhile worthy stuff comes at me faster than I can get it integrated. Here is a link to a YouTube video about the result Montel got from getting his neck adjusted. 

I know the story partly highlights the “specially designed” adjusting instrument and the Atlas Orthogonal Chiropractic Adjusting Technique, but in the end he got a C1 (Atlas) correction, and the chiropractic doctor was wise enough to leave other stuff alone.

Atlas Orthogonal is one of several Upper Cervical Techniques which evolved out of the earlier Upper Cervical Technique which was the mainstay of Palmer Chiropractic College training through several decades from the 1930s through the 1950s.

For the first 6 years of my career I also practiced a strickly Upper Cervical style of practice: it’s very powerful. Now, I often say to patient that their head is on crooked, or that I’m going to put their head on straight. Watch the video to get an idea what I’m talking about.

Wonderful as Montel’s results have been it would be a mistake for the chiropractic doctor or anyone else to make the same mistake that D. D. Palmer - the guy who discovered chiropractic - made. His first adjustment given to a deaf janitor named Harvey Lillard  allowed Harvey to regain his hearing. Dr. Palmer, understandably for the times, thought that he had  found the cure for hearing loss.

Not so.When word got out and deaf people started showing up for the cure, they found that it wasn’t deafness that Dr. Palmer had corrected: it was a complex vertebral dysfunction, characterized most notably by joint motion restriction, that resulted (in Harvey’s particular case) in hearing loss. It took Dr. Palmer a little while to figure that out.

DrD 

“The Medicated Child” on PBS

 

 (cousin Lilly - day 2,  and cousin Mort)

I just received an email letting me know about this Frontline Television coverage.

If you have children, you might want to check out this link and watch the program. 

Dr.D  

I was busy looking for something else and I found this…

I found this article on Mindfulness in The New York Times today…..

 

… it was too good to pass up.

 

DrD 

HOW DO TAI CHI & QIGONG REALLY WORK; A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL?

    

A recent Tuft’s newletter talks about a recently published study (a “randomized controlled trial” which means really good quality or is suppose to) on one of the benefits of tai chi: it enhances immune function. I looked up the study so I could read the full text.

There I learned that Tai Chi is a “mind-body intervention” and not just that but an “alternative medicine, mind-body intervention” which offers “special promise” in that it might “inhance immunce and health outcomes in older adults, because it incorporates elements of meditation and physical activity, both of which have been found to have salutory effects on immune responses.”

It’s actually very interesting. We know that immune function declines with age. We know that that makes us less able to resist infection. We know that Shingles is a condition where the virus takes advantage of this after lying domant for decades - having been held in check by our immune system. Since they can measure Shingles immunity in the blood, they can measure impacts on that immunity.

So in this study, doing tai chi (actually tai chi chih but I’ll got to that in a minute) 3 times a week for 15 weeks made a “significant” difference. They measured this by measuring the blood factor that controls the virus: it increased as much after doing tai chi as it does after a vaccination (way cool!) 

It turns out the subjects weren’t really doing tai chi at all but a modern day knock-off. I found the website that talks about Tai Chi Chih where it is described as a series of 20 movements most likely barrowed from tai chi chuan hand forms or from chi kung (qi gong). That’s ok, for the purpose of these results, the effect’s the same.

And the authors, while couching their comments in the most conservative terms, didn’t miss the point. If doing tai chi can impact the blood factor responsible for our abilility to deal with the Shingles virus, it can do the same “across the full specturm of antigenic challenge.”

In other words it may help against multiple other infectious diseases for which there is no vaccine.

Anyway, too much focus on the negative for me (What something can do against disease rather than what something can do to create HEALTH - I can’t help it, disease doesn’t interest me).

I’m going to type out another interesting excerpt and ask you to think about whether all of these scientifically substantiated statements can be said for any other form of exercise. (And keep in mind the very narrow scope of these claims - the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what tai chi chuan offers.)

“Increasing interest has focused on the use of tai chi for promoting health in persons with chronic disease, and a recent review suggested the promise of tai chi as a means of improving a number of health outcomes. However, the majority of studies didn’t use randomized control trial methodologies, and the efficacy of tai chi on physiology and health outcomes remains poorly characterized. Nevertheless, some trials suggest that tai chi can improve health functioning, have effects on both physical and emotional health, reduce the risks of falls and possibly enhance cardiovascular functioning in sedentary and older adults.”   

HOW DO TAI CHI & QIGONG (CHI KUNG) WORK? by Bill Douglas, Founder of World Tai Chi & Qigong Day

“Western medical science is only beginning to understand what T’ai Chi and Qigong offers us. However, just the tiny amount of research that has been done so far indicates that T’ai Chi and Qigong are very powerful health tools that can save each of us and our society a great deal of money and personal suffering . . .”   

(Bill Douglas is the Tai Chi Expert at DrWeil.com. Founder of World T’ai Chi & Qigong Day (held in 60 nations each year), and has authored a #1 best selling Tai Chi Book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to T’ai Chi & Qigong”. You can learn more about Tai Chi & Qigong, and search a worldwide teachers directory at http:/www.worldtaichiday.org/) 

The Methow Valley

People always ask me where I stay when I go to the Methow. It’s one in a series of predictable questions people always ask in trying to figure out how “native” a person really is to an area. Here are some pictures from cousin Bonnie who still likes to visit some of the families favorite spots.

Below are a couple of the places I like to stay…

And here is what there is to see from there…

And other stuff. It’s always like being there for the first time.

I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving.

DrD