Health Newsletter - Summer '01

Prepared By Burdi Chiropractic & Massage; Dr. G. Burdi, D.C.
Celebrating 30 Years Of "Light-Force" Adjusting, Massage & Wellness

Welcome to our health newsletter. It is meant to entertain, inform, and even inspire you to better health. Help others by sharing your thoughts and experience. They will thank you profusely.

What Is Your Spinal Column? 

Your spinal column is made up of 24 vertebrae (spinal bones) sitting on top of your hips). Keeping your spine connected are 137 joints covered with ligaments, muscles and cartilage. Your Doctor of Chiropractic spends years learning how to locate areas of nerve and joint pressure that can cause your entire body to malfunction, distort your posture, balance, lower your resistance to disease and set the stage for all kinds of health problems. Chiropractors call this spinal condition a vertebral subluxation. Doctors of chiropractic spend years studying how to free your spine from subluxations to keep you healthy, flexible, youthful and free of nerve pressure.

 Words of Wisdom

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. - Oscar Wilde

Seven Days Without An Adjustment Makes One Weak. (Give us a call to have your spine checked today!)

Will Rogers: "I never met a man I didn’t like."

Georgie Jessel: "I once had a wife who felt the same way, and she turned out to be no bargain."

Going on a Vacation?

Enjoy yourself. We’ve got good news, vacations are good for you. Over 12,000 men enrolled in a heart health study were followed for over nine years. Those men who took vacations in most years were 20% less likely to die from any cause than those who did not take regular vacations. Those who vacationed regularly were also 30% less likely to die from heart disease. The benefits of vacations affected people from all classes, irrespective of income, education, and health. So don’t feel guilty about taking time off for yourself. (1)

Chiropractic and Spinal Research

There are thousands of papers extolling the wonderful health and healing benefits of chiropractic and spinal care. Here are a few from our archives.

Neck, Back, Radiating Pain and Chiropractic

A 34-year-old man was suffering from severe neck, lower back and radicular pain. An MRI showed a disc herniation in his neck. For one year he saw multiple medical specialists with little or no results. His MDs were discussing neck surgery with him. He began chiropractic care and within one month nearly all his pain had disappeared and his disc herniation had almost completely resolved. The surgery that his MDs had discussed was no longer considered necessary.(2)

Fertility and Chiropractic

For over a century chiropractic has had great success with getting previously infertile couples pregnant and in helping women carry to term. In this case report a 40 year old woman who had a miscarriage at 16 weeks first visited her chiropractor because of mid back pain. However postural studies revealed her neck and low back had subluxations. She, and her husband began to receive chiropractic care. She became pregnant shortly thereafter, carried to term and delivered a healthy baby girl. (3)

Headaches and Chiropractic

More people go to doctors for headaches than any other condition. In this case study a 13 year old girl was suffering from severe headache and neck pain for five days. Her headache and neck pain completely resolved after chiropractic spinal care. (4)

HIV, AIDS and Chiropractic

This is the study of a group of patients dying of AIDS. All were under medical care but half of them were placed under chiropractic care while the others were not. After 6 months the medicine only group experienced a continued decrease in CD4 white blood cells (-7.96%) with two deaths, The people receiving chiropractic showed a 48% increase in CD4 cell counts and no deaths. This study was originally intended to go on for one year, but after two patients in the control group died of AIDS the study was ended and all the surviving controls were placed under chiropractic care. The effects of specific upper cervical adjustments on the CD4 counts of HIV positive patients. (5)

Your Amazing Body

Nerves - Nerves send messages at speeds up to 224 miles per hour! Nerves are the longest cells in your body, up to 4 feet long! They carry messages to keep your hormones, digestion, breathing and other body systems functioning at their best so you may have high resistance to disease. Spinal subluxations can stress or irritate your nerves, discs, muscles, joints and weaken your body. Chiropractors are specially trained to locate and remove subluxations.

Blood – Your body contains nine pints of blood that travel along 62,000 miles of blood vessels (they could go around the equator 2.5 times). The nerves from your spine control the size of many of the blood vessels that go to your internal organs.

Muscles – Your body has 650 muscles. Subluxations may cause muscle spasm, contraction and pain. Remember, it takes 17 muscles to smile and 42 to frown (and only three to extend your arm and smack the person on the head who was bothering you).

Water – Your body is mostly water. We often become dehydrated as we age because we drink coffee, tea, soda etc. instead of water. Dehydration makes us age faster, and weakens our joints and discs. Conditions such as high blood pressure, back and disc pain, constipation, asthma, depression, overweight and many other problems have cleared up by drinking more water. (Drinking half your body weight in ounces per day will re-hydrate you in about two weeks).

Again, Let Kids Get Sick

It appears that permitting children to run a fever, (rather than lowering the fever using Tylenol or aspirin) helps strengthen their immune system. Also make sure your child has a healthy, non-subluxated spine so they may regulate their own fevers. In a recent study in the British Medical Journal 1,314 children were followed until age 7. Those children who had recurrent viral infections early in life were less likely to be diagnosed with asthma than those with fewer viral episodes. (6)

Courts: "Vaccine Caused Multiple Sclerosis"

A French court has upheld a lower court ruling that found a link between the hepatitis B vaccine and multiple sclerosis (MS). The case involved two women who contracted MS after receiving the vaccine . The ruling is important, because it rejected arguments that a direct and irrefutable link between the vaccine and MS is needed. "Serious, precise, and similar evidence was enough proof," said the plaintiff’s attorney. Agence France Presse (www.afp.com) (05/03/01)
To learn more about childhood vaccinations please contact the NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER Vienna, Virginia http://www.909shot.com

Note: There are an increasing number of papers relating vaccinations to MS appearing in medical journals. MS, formerly rare, is increasingly common as the number of vaccines increase. (7)

HRT – is it safe?

Women who use hormone or estrogen replacement therapy (HRT) at just 0.625 mg/day have 1.35 the risk of stroke of non-users. Those taking 1.25 mg/day or more have more than one and a half times the risk of non-users; .3 mg/day did not appear to increase risk. While the study did not find any increased risk of heart disease, the researchers warn that it is still too early to recommend HRT to prevent heart disease and that larger trials are needed to confirm the effectiveness and safety of HRT in this area. (8)

Preemies Reap Benefits of Breast Milk

Babies born prematurely are at greater risk of heart disease in later life. But, feeding them breast milk - rather than formula - can substantially cut this risk. 926 preemies were evaluated when they were 13-16 years old. Those who were breast fed had lower mean blood pressure by more than 4 mmHg compared to those formula fed. (9)

Good News About Pollution?

Yes!! There’s less of it. In 1970 Life magazine had an article on pollution: "Scientists have solid evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…." In Ramparts magazine Paul Ehrlich claimed that 200,000 Americans would die in "smog disasters" in NY and LA.

The doomsayers were wrong. According to the Environmental Protection Agency: "Since 1970, total US population increased 29%, vehicle miles traveled increased 121% and gross domestic product (GDP) increased 104%. Since 1970 ambient levels of sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide have fallen by 75%…smoke, soot, and dust have been cut by 50% since the 1950s. Air pollution alerts have dropped 56% in Southern California." (Wait until electric cars!)

TOP 10 SIGNS YOU'VE JOINED A CHEAP HMO

    10. Annual exam conducted at Hooters.

    9. Directions to your doctor's office include, "take a left when you enter the trailer park."

    8. Tongue depressors taste faintly of Fudgesicle.

    7. Only proctologist in the plan is "Gus" from Roto-Rooter.

    6. Only item listed under Preventive Care feature of coverage is "an apple a day".

    5. Your "primary care physician" is wearing the pants you gave to Goodwill last month.

    4. "Patient responsible for 200% of out-of-network charges" is not a typo.

    3. The only expense covered 100% is embalming.

    2. With your last HMO, your medication didn't come in different colors with little "M"'s on them.

And the Number 1 Sign You've Joined a Cheap HMO...

1. You ask for Viagra. You get a popsicle stick and duct tape. 

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading. Feel free to pass this on to friends or relatives who are walking medicine cabinets. Remember to come in for a checkup, especially if we haven’t seen you in a while.

Please let us know what you think of this newsletter and if there are any particular topics you’d like us to cover.

Give ‘em health.

  REFERENCES:
1. Are vacations good for your health? Gump BB, Matthews KA: Psychosomatic Medicine 2000;62:608-612.
2. Management of cervical disc herniation with upper cervical chiropractic care: a case study. Eriksen K. JMPT 1998 21(1):51-56.
3. Chiropractic applications for infertility. Anderson, C. ICA Review. September/October 2000.
4. Chiropractic care of a 13-year-old with headache and neck pain: a case report. Hewitt, EG, Portland, Oregon. Proceedings of the National Conference on Chiropractic and Pediatrics. Oct, 1993 Palm Springs, CA. Pub. International Chiropractors Assoc., Arlington, VA.
5. Selano JL, Hightower BC, Pfleger B, et al. Chiropractic Research Journal. 1994; 3(1): 32-39.
6. BMJ, 2001; 322:390-5
7.Hepatitis B vaccination and the risk of multiple sclerosis. Ascherio A, Zhang SM, Herman MA. New England Journal of Medicine. 2001;344:327-332.
8. Annals of Internal Medicine, 2000;133:933041, 999-1001.
9. Lancet 2001;3s57:406-7, 41.

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