Win an iPad 2 or a $200 Visa Gift Card!

Enter to win either an iPad 2 or a $200 Visa gift card! We are continuing to collect donations for our sponsored team of women (Team "Steppin' Up for a Cure") walking in this year's 'Susan G. Koman 3 Day for a Cure' walk. Donations of $25 will get 1 entry, $50 will get you 2 entries and for $100 donations you will get 5 entries! But HURRY! This contest is only going until July 31st. Ther are tthree ways to donate, go to the team link at: http://www.the3day.org/site/TR​/2011/TwinCitiesEvent2011?team​_id=176083&pg=team&fr_id=1626, send a check payable to Susan G. Koman 3-Day for the Cure to: Life Wellness Center Attention: Angela Collignon or leave a cash or check at our Front Desk. The drawing will be held in August prior to the walk.

Quote of the Week:

“Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.”- Mark Twain

Exercise of the Week: Plank Position with One Foot on Ball

Difficulty: Moderate

Start: Lie on ball, face down. Walk hands out to assume plank position with lower legs or feet on ball. The closer ball is to feet, the more difficult the exercise. Keep stomach tucked in and spine straight.

Exercise: Keeping abdominals contracted, and upper body still, lift one foot/leg straight up. Hold this finish position for 10-15 seconds. Switch legs. Hold for another 10-15 seconds. Place foot back on ball and walk hands back to rest position.

Topic of the Week: A Wry Neck Is Nothing to Laugh About

Have you ever experienced a kink in your neck that leaves your head tilted and painfully restricted when trying to turn it to one side? You probably had torticollis, or wry neck. This condition can be very painful.

Torticollis is a problem caused by a shortening of the sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscle on one side of your neck. If you experience it, your head tilts toward the side of the tight muscle, with your chin pointing away from that side.

There are three main categories of torticollis:
1. Congenital
2. Spasmodic
3. Acquired

A child with torticollis at birth is considered to have the congenital version. This type is usually the result of a traumatic (and often assisted) birthing process. Although a limited number of cases of congenital torticollis are caused by serious spinal deformations or neurological disorders, sending every patient for x-rays would be excessive, according to some experts. Instead, careful examination of the infant with torticollis, together with a thorough review of the birthing experience, will usually determine the cause.

Most often when an infant with congenital torticollis is brought to a chiropractic clinic, the chiropractor finds a palpable knot in the SCM muscle (called an SCM pseudotumor) on the same side as the head tilt. Chiropractic examination of the cervical spine and a range-of-motion assessment also typically reveal rotary subluxations of the upper two vertebrae. If one or both of these conditions exist, the infant is a good candidate for chiropractic care.

Conservative treatment of congenital torticollis is usually quite successful. Chiropractic adjustments of the neck as well as muscle manipulation and specific stretching exercises typically result in complete resolution of the symptoms within a few weeks. It is important to address these symptoms as soon as possible, otherwise long-term improper position of the head and neck can lead to cranial and facial distortions (plagiocephaly).

If congenital torticollis persists after a trial of conservative therapy lasting 2-4 weeks, the child should be further tested to rule out more serious problems. Other forms of treatment may include head and neck bracing, or surgery, to correct for an abnormally shortened and asymmetrical SCM muscle.

Adults Can Get Joint Torticollis too!
Adult-onset torticollis is usually classified as either spasmodic or acquired. If you have this condition, sometimes your head and neck are not stuck in the same position, but instead the muscles tend to spasm, leading to the occurrence of tremors or shakiness with head movements. In this case, chiropractic care has also been shown to be helpful in reducing symptoms.

The most common form of torticollis is the acquired type, which affects a large number of older children and adults. Although the symptoms are the same as the congenital version, acquired torticollis typically follows acute trauma or strain in the neck region. Whiplash from a motor vehicle accident is one example of neck trauma leading to torticollis.

Treatment for acquired torticollis is similar to that prescribed for the other types.

Your chiropractor will adjust the areas of cervical subluxations, followed by soft tissue therapy for the tight and painful SCM or trapezius muscles. Although treatments often provide relief within a few days, it is important to consider ongoing chiropractic care after experiencing any form of neck trauma. It is common for chronic neck pain to develop following acute injury, and chiropractic can help prevent many of these problems from occurring.

Chiropractic care should be your number one choice for any musculoskeletal condition involving neck pain or alignment – especially torticollis!

Disclaimer: Information contained in this Wellness Express™ newsletter is for educational and general purposes only and is designed to assist you in making informed decisions about your health. Any information contained herein is not intended to substitute advice from your physician or other healthcare professional. Copyright © Wellness Express™

Could your lifestyle be making you sick?

What is your lifestyle? Not whether you are married or where you live, but rather, how are you choosing to live your life? What choices are you making to keep yourself and your family healthy and well?

It is startling to learn that some of the most prevalent causes of illness, disease, and death – including cancer, heart disease, and diabetes – are all heavily influenced by lifestyle. For example, we don’t usually think of cancer as a lifestyle disease. We think a person is unlucky if they have cancer, and often we have a fatalistic outlook toward news that someone has developed cancer. “It’s in their genes,” we say. Or “stuff happens – the luck of the draw.”

But only approximately 10% of cancers are based on genetics. The vast majority of cancer cases are very much related to how we live our lives – our environment, the food we eat, whether we exercise regularly, and the quality of our relationships. Within the last ten years medical researchers have been learning of the strong correlation between overweight/obesity and a person’s likelihood of developing cancer. It seems that fat cells are not merely passive storehouses of excess energy in the form of fat. Fat cells are metabolic furnaces that spew out a wide range of chemicals, including hormones and inflammatory agents that may often cause normal cells and tissues to become cancerous.

Most people and even some physicians are unaware of these facts. The connection between lifestyle and heart disease, and between lifestyle and type 2 diabetes, seems obvious. But cancer, too, is a lifestyle disease. The very good news is that by creating the willingness to make healthy lifestyle choices, you’re making positive long-term changes in your health and well-being.

Additional good news is that these choices are in your hands. Every day you get to choose a healthy lifestyle or not. Of course, some days or even some weeks just seem to go by without a real opportunity to do things that are healthy. You might be on a business trip in a country where it’s difficult to find good, nutritious healthy food. It might also be difficult to find the time to exercise when you’re on a travel schedule. That’s OK, though, because lifestyle is a lifetime project. If you’re eating healthful nutritious food most of the time and doing daily exercise most of the time, you can take a week off or even two weeks off here and there. The main goal is to be on a healthy lifestyle path the vast majority of the time.
Chiropractic care is an important component of healthy living. Chiropractic care helps ensure that your body is functioning at its maximum. Chiropractic care helps ensure you’re getting the most out of the healthy food you’re eating and the healthy exercise you’re doing. Your chiropractor will be glad to provide guidance on creating nutritional plans and exercise programs that will work for you.

Climbing that Mountain

You may have been considering making positive lifestyle changes for a long time. You’d love to lose a few pounds, maybe more than a few, and you’d love to be one of those people who somehow find the time to exercise every day. It’s certainly true that for people who make their own schedules it’s easier to plan time for exercise and food preparation. It is somewhat tougher for those who work on a more formal schedule and for those who are raising children. But regardless of your specific situation and your specific circumstances, each of us gets to choose how we’re going to find the time to do things that are in our long-term interest.

A truism is that if things don’t get scheduled, they don’t get done. For people very busy with commuting to work and raising a family, finding time to exercise might require getting up an hour earlier each day or going to bed an hour later each night. That’s just one of the many possibilities for “expanding” one’s day. The good news is that once you’re doing this, you become highly motivated to continue doing it because you begin to feel better and reap the benefits of your new health-focused schedule.

Congratulations to Miss Life Wellness Center!

Miss Life Wellness Center is a winner! Alexis Friesen is awarded the Miss Congeniality award at the Miss Lakeville pageant and first runner up at the 45th annual Royalty Pagent.

(Pictures courtesy of Jackson Forderer of thr Lakeville Patch)

Topic of the Week: New Research Reveals Numerous Benefits of Tai Chi

Tai chi is an activity that is growing by leaps and bounds, especially among older adults. As more of them retire, baby boomers continue to look for exercise methods that can improve health but have a low risk of injury. Tai chi perfectly fits the bill. The slow, flowing movements of this supple martial art - along with the emphasis on deep breathing - help gently stretch the body, improve balance and slash stress.
New research released in the last two years boosts support for tai chi improving health. Long known for its musculoskeletal benefits, tai chi shows it can help heart patients, stroke victims and depression sufferers.

The Origins of Tai Chi
Tai chi was first developed as a martial art in China over 1,000 years ago. It is closely associated with qigong – an ancient Chinese system of meditative breathing and movement. Practitioners of tai chi seek to cultivate the universal healing energy known as qi (pronounced chee), which flows throughout the body.
There are many different styles of tai chi, but almost all involve learning a sequential set of movements called forms. Each movement within a form usually has both a self-defense application and qi development strategy at its core. As you practice the form, you use meditative breathing to assist in circulating qi energy in your body and focusing your mind.

Martial Art Meets Modern Medicine
And what has Western medicine discovered about tai chi in the last few years? Let’s take a look.

Heart Failure & Stroke
According to research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, tai chi offers several advantages for people suffering from chronic systolic heart failure, which causes the heart to weaken and unable to pump sufficient quantities of blood. At one time, exercise was not even recommended for patients with this heart condition.
The study showed heart failure participants who attended tai chi classes twice a week for 12 weeks reported improvement in their quality of life, elevated mood and stronger confidence to perform exercise-related tasks. The control group, which received health education instead of tai chi classes, had no improvement in these same areas.
Medical researchers at the University of Illinois and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University conducted a study on tai chi and stroke patients. The study authors found six weeks of tai chi practice helped patients dramatically improve their balance control.

Mental Disorders
Our high-paced, frantic world has no doubt increased the rates of depression and anxiety. About 10 percent of the American population suffers from depression.
A group of medical researchers analyzed 40 studies on tai chi and its mental health benefits. They concluded, “Tai chi appears to be associated with improvements in self-esteem and psychological well-being, including reduced stress, anxiety, depression and mood disturbance.”

Musculoskeletal Health
Arthritis is one of the most disabling diseases in society. The George Institute for International Health published a comprehensive analysis on tai chi’s impact on arthritis. After examining numerous studies researchers remarked tai chi helps boost pain relief and improve mobility among arthritis sufferers.
A large study focusing on the Arthritis Foundation’s tai chi program revealed that participants lowered pain levels, fatigue and stiffness.

Arthritis of the knee is a common problem among seniors. In the US, knee osteoarthritis will affect half of all Americans who reach the age of 85.

At Tufts University of Medicine, researchers studying knee osteoarthritis noted patients with this health condition, that participated in a 12-week tai chi program, were able “to reduce pain and improve physical function, self-efficacy, depression, and health status for knee OA.”

According to research by Texas Tech University Health Sciences, a group of post-menopausal women who practiced tai chi and consumed 4 to 6 cups daily of green tea for six months saw improvement in their bone health. The research also revealed this group of women slashed levels of oxidative stress. The antioxidants found in green tea and the stress reduction from regular tai chi may be responsible for slashing inflammation caused by stress.

Disclaimer: Information contained in this Wellness Express™ newsletter is for educational and general purposes only and is designed to assist you in making informed decisions about your health. Any information contained herein is not intended to substitute advice from your physician or other healthcare professional. Copyright © Wellness Express™

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Thank you!

Thank you for everyone (runners, spectators and LWC staff) who made it out to this year's 2011 Pan-O-Prog races at Casperson Park on Saturday morning. Although a little wet at first, it was a great time. Additional thank yous go out to the staff of Puravida Fitness, the Lakeville racing crew and Mat at Stellar Sounds for the awesome DJ work! See you all next year!

Exercise of the Week: Plank Position with Feet on Ball

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

Start: Lie on ball, face down. Place hands on floor and lift both legs to position body in a push-up (plank) position. Keep abdominals contracted (tummy tucked in) and spine straight.

Exercise: Walk hands forward, maintaining a steady plank position. Most difficult position: only feet are left on ball. Hold at finish position for 15-30 seconds. Walk hands back to start position. Repeat 3-5 times.

Quote of the Week:

"Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still." - Chinese Proverb

Topic of the Week: The Many Facets of Pain

For most of us, pain is one of those things in life that we do our best to avoid, get rid of, or try to ignore. Why wouldn’t we? It hurts!

But did you know that pain can be considered a great blessing?

Without pain, you could never learn from experience how detrimental certain things in the environment can be to your health. Without pain, you may otherwise continue down a path that puts you directly in harm’s way. Without pain, and its contrast to joy, how could we ever really know what makes us feel good?

Pain is popular subject these days. A recent issue of a national news magazine was entirely devoted to the subject. Topics discussed included chronic pain, referred pain, intractable pain, and traditional and alternative methods used to treat it. The bottom line: there are a lot of different types of pain, and many different ways to alleviate it.

Pain classifications include:

• Acute pain – immediate onset of pain caused by physical trauma and resulting inflammation. The pain is usually sharp and intense. Intermittent ice and rest are recommended for at least 72 hours.

• Chronic pain – pain that lasts longer than the naturally expected healing time for an acute injury. The character of the pain can be sharp, dull, burning or aching. Consulting a health care professional is always the best idea in this case.

• Referred pain – pain that is felt in an area of the body that is not injured. Chiropractors can help identify this type of pain in patients.

• Psychosomatic pain – pain that is felt in the physical body, with origins in mentally or emotionally charged events. Therapists trained in mind-body specialties are recommended here.

But what really causes pain?

Scientists and medical experts once defined pain as a nociceptive response – which is your body’s reaction to a stimulus based on the activation of nerve endings called nociceptors, and the transmission of this information to your brain, where pain is then felt. However, based on a number of more recent advances in pain research and observation, the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) has created a more updated definition.
“An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.”

This definition is particularly interesting because it includes the phrases sensory and emotional experience and actual or potential tissue damage. This updated meaning reflects the emotional component of pain. The main point is: If you expect to feel pain in any given situation, most often you will feel the pain – even when actual tissue damage does not occur. Personal experiences, cultural differences, and degrees of fear and anxiety all influence the sensation of pain.

What will you do when YOU have pain? You may try a number of different things until you find the right choice for you.

More of us are seeking natural methods to deal with pain and disease. According to a survey conducted by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), as early as 1997, more people were making visits to their alternative therapists than to their traditional medical doctors.

Based on information obtained from yet another survey conducted by the NCCAM, the use of alternative therapies is shifting its focus to the use of mind-body techniques like relaxation breathing and meditation.4

Chiropractors have been helping their patients deal with pain for over 100 years. The number one reason patients seek chiropractic help is to reduce the level of their pain. And according to a summary article written for the Journal of the American Medical Association (based on the NCCAM data), more people seek a chiropractor to help with their back pain, neck pain, arthritis and sprains than most other alternative healing therapies. Chiropractors know how to identify the cause of your pain. By treating the spinal subluxation, chiropractors also enhance the body’s natural ability to heal on its own. They restore proper alignment and nervous system function, which optimizes mind-body communication. Your chiropractor knows pain. Let your chiropractor help you feel better.

Disclaimer: Information contained in this Wellness Express™ newsletter is for educational and general purposes only and is designed to assist you in making informed decisions about your health. Any information contained herein is not intended to substitute advice from your physician or other healthcare professional. Copyright © Wellness Express™

Exercise of the Week: Alternating Arms/Legs Extension

Difficulty: Moderate to Advanced

Start: Lie on back with arms relaxed overhead. Position exercise ball between ankles so it can be lifted off floor. Keep legs bent to approximately 90 degrees.

Exercise: Holding ball between ankles, bring knees toward chest. Reach for ball and take into hands. Return arms and legs back to starting position. Perform same movement, this time returning ball between legs. Return to starting position. Repeat 10-15 times.

Quote of the Week:

“Pain is deeper than all thought; laughter is higher than all pain.” - Elbert Hubbard