As summer slips into fall, we transition the carefree living we enjoyed over the summer back into our regular routine. For many that means recommitting to regular exercise, healthy eating, and weight management. Fall is a season of transition and a natural time for committing to a healthy lifestyle. The first step is to acknowledge that a healthy lifestyle should be a priority. When you remind yourself of how healthy habits improve your life, you’ll be more likely to stick with them. Secondly, schedule your exercise. Treat your workouts as seriously as you would a doctor’s appointment because they are, indeed, just as important to your health. Thirdly, catch the energy of cooler temperatures to become even more active. Seek out fall’s fresh fruits and veggies. Fall is an invigorating season. Tap into that energy and use it to craft your perfect, healthy rest-of-the-year routine.
Anita Wilson, www.curves.com
Community News
You’ve Got to Move Your Body!
Your body uses movement patterns to perform movement skills (e.g., running, throwing, lifting, etc.). The better your movement patterns, the more efficient and effective your movement skills. Functional Movement Screening (FMS) is a manual assessment protocol used to identify limitations or imbalances in functional movement patterns. Joint range of motion and muscle strength is assessed to identify the cause of poor performance in your functional movement. A deficiency in strength or movement can lead to a sudden injury or a repetitive strain. FMS can be beneficial for you if you are: an athlete (competitive or recreational) looking to prevent non contact injuries, an athlete looking to increase performance by improving your movement quality, or an active person looking to decrease your chance of overuse injury at home or work (or help resolve an existing injury).
Joseph Dyck MPT, dougchristiephysiotherapy.com
5 Tips for a Happy Home
Life and school are easier for kids who live in homes where good communication, healthy habits, and regular routines exist. Here are some strategies for good communication: 1. Talk Often. 2. Get to the point. 3. Express feelings clearly with ‘I’ statements. 4. Speak for yourself and not for others. 5. Focus on behaviors rather than traits. Effective communication serves as preventive maintenance, reassures family members that they care about each other and appreciate each other’s efforts. Great everyday communication is more efficient when you need to bring up issues, make requests when needed, and resolve conflict when it arises. Communication problems can raise any family’s stress level, leading to conflicts that strain relationships and reduce the general quality of family life. Good communication can help address conflict in a productive way, let family members be heard, and help them stay connected to one another. Family therapy can help families work on essential communication skills.
Judith Nuesch, www.nuyutherapies.com
Time to Enhance Your Mental Health
With fall and its back to school activities, the risk of feeling scattered and overwhelmed is high. Sometimes we even feel a little “crazy” and our mental health starts to waver. It’s hard to find time to relax even though we know that’s what will help to truly put things in perspective so we can accomplish what needs to be done. This, most probably, is an indicator that your right brain is over active. You may be tempted to take something to slow things down some, opening you to substance abuse or medication dependence. You can relax your brain in another way. In this scenario, Brainwave Optimization, which reads surface measures of brain electrical activity, would probably show you high-frequency asymmetry at the temporals. BWO, with its auditory tones to facilitate the auto-calibration of brain activity, will have you functioning more harmoniously, so you can make more conscious, rewarding decisions.
Joanne Couture, [email protected]
Importance of Homecare
While retirement homes and long-term care facilities do a phenomenal job of taking care of those who need a little more help in their daily life, these facilities understandably aren’t for everyone. Every individual should have the right to choose the care they receive and where and when they receive it. A health care agency provides people the ability to choose their care and remain independent in their own home. A health care agency will set up each individual with a certified health care provider whom they are comfortable with and who meets all of their healthcare needs. You shouldn’t have to worry if your loved ones are receiving proper care or being given every opportunity to live life to its fullest, home care gives you peace of mind and allows your loved ones to enjoy life to its fullest.
Eamon O’Brien, www.goldenhr.ca
Discover Your Key to Health
Have you ever asked yourself, “WHY am I sick and in pain?” We often experience health problems and never know the reason WHY our bodies are struggling to be healthy. When we connect to our own natural intuitive abilities, we are able to access information from within ourselves to find the root and core causes of our health issues. We can communicate intuitively with our body parts, organs, and muscles – every part of us – to better understand what is going on within them. Once we uncover what is causing the problem, we can use our intuition to heal and clear out the issue that is at the core. When you remove the point of contention at its source within yourself, your body is then free from holding the emotion, past experience, or self-sabotaging belief that has been hidden within you.
Shannon Russell, BodyMind Freedom Solutions, www.thedashmethod.com
Stress Doesn’t Have to Kill You
There’s a great deal of information about the dangers of stress, but some interesting research has recently revealed that it’s actually our beliefs about stress that determine how it will affect us. If we believe stress will make us sick, we’re more likely to get ill and possibly die than if we believe we can cope with stress. That’s not all. When we experience stress, our bodies release the stress hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin is often nicknamed the cuddle hormone because it’s also released during social bonding. Our physiology is actually designed to release a chemical that makes us want to find other people for support when we’re under stress, and this support repairs the chromosome damage that stress has caused – the kind of damage that causes aging and disease. Isn’t that amazing? Believe in yourself and surround yourself with people who believe in you, too. It’s good for your health!
Dr. Lori Doan, Ph.D., www.drloridoan.com
Is Your Body Overloaded?
Did you know that one of the main causes for illness is toxic overload? Junk food, pollution, and toxic chemicals clog the system with harmful substances and interfere with cellular function. Accumulation of toxins in the body is one of the leading causes of various types of cancers, heart disease and strokes, asthma, acute bronchitis, and more. Detoxification has an important role in better health and promoting a stronger immune system. Periodic detoxification of the body helps in reducing the risk of these chronic diseases. The benefits of reflexology are innumerable and it also helps in flushing out toxins from the body by stimulating qi flow through the important organs involved in detoxification – liver, kidney, colon, lungs, and skin. This leads to a more efficient system of eliminating toxins and other foreign substances, thereby protecting your body from the various diseases and health conditions that can often arise from a compromised immune system.
Marita Dowsett, B.P.T.
The Right Fit–RAW Fit Protein
Garden Life’s RAW Fit is a USDA Certified Organic, RAW, plant-based vegan high-protein powder that makes it easy to increase your protein intake. It has a mild, slightly sweet flavor that mixes great with your favorite food or beverage and contains RAW, organic, and clinically studied ingredients. These natural ingredients help you burn fat, maintain healthy blood sugar, boost your energy, lose weight, and look great! RAW Fit supports healthy blood sugar levels and burns fat naturally with the power of Svetol Green Coffee Bean Extract, RAW Food Created Chromium, Organic Cinnamon, and Organic Sprouted Grains. RAW Fit is packed with 28g of RAW certified organic plant protein–a complete protein with 13 organic sprouts and a biological value of 98.2%! It promotes healthy and comfortable digestion and elimination with live probiotics and enzymes and is naturally filling and satisfies hunger with RAW organic soluble and insoluble fiber from certified organic grains, seeds, legumes and fruits.
What is Neural Therapy?
Neural therapy is a method of diagnosing and treating illness and pain caused by disturbances of the body’s electrophysiology. These electrical disturbances, called “interference fields,” are manifestations of cell membrane instability and typically trigger abnormal autonomic nervous system responses. Interference fields may be found in scars, autonomic ganglia, teeth, internal organs, or other locations where local tissue irritation exists (Dr. R. Kidd). Neural Therapy uses local and under the skin injections of Procaine or Lidocaine in specific areas of the body. It is called “German Acupuncture” because it was developed by two German physicians who were brothers, Drs. Ferdinand and Walter Huneke, around 1920. At Nature Doctors, the naturopaths and doctors are trained in this technique and they have excellent results in chronic pain, sport injuries, arthritis and other conditions.
Dr. Eduardo Barreto, www.thenaturedoctors.ca
Quit Stocking Your Medicine Cabinet!
Changing seasons bring many changes to our lives: comfy sweaters, warm comfort foods, and often the dreaded common cold. Symptoms can be mild to more severe. Dressing warmly, eating healthy, and being well rested will help. However, if you do get cold symptoms such as headache, chills, fever, congestion, sinus pain, and a cough, then seeing an acupuncturist can help! Acupuncture is beneficial in eliminating all of these symptoms. It can also lessen the chills and fever sensation. If you do not want to take decongestants or cold and sinus medication because they make your thinking fuzzy or they make you tired, acupuncture provides you with a drug free, natural option. It is virtually painless. In addition, there is non-needle acupuncture available. This season, try acupuncture for your cold and flu symptoms and save on the need to stock up your medicine cabinet.
Naomi Johnson, www.heklaacupuncture.com
