Why Testing Trumps Guessing

By Dr. Jon Thomas DC BCIM

Image courtesy of flickr.com

We’ve all been there, at the doctor’s office for the fourth or fifth time, wondering why we keep getting another prescription for the same problem we came in to cure in the first place.  This scenario is pretty typical for Western medicine.  You start off by going to the doctor in order to explain what is ailing you.  The physician or nurse practitioner listens to you.  Maybe you are asked a few questions, after which you are issued a prescription for some type of antibiotic, painkiller, muscle relaxant or an anti-inflammatory, depending on what the issue is.  Then you are sent on your way, with the hope that the pills you were prescribed are going to provide you with some relief.

Hopefully, the doctor guessed right, and you feel better.  But what happens when the pills you were prescribed don’t eliminate the symptoms?  That means that you will wind up right back in the same office a week or two later with the same complaint.  After asking you yet more questions, you wind up leaving the office with yet another prescription which may or may not cure whatever is ailing you.  Sound familiar? 

Can You Beat Pain with a Pill?

By Dr. Jon Thomas DC, BCIM

Image courtesy of wikimedia

When it comes to living life to its fullest, pain is the regulator on all our activities.  No matter how much you want to achieve a personal fitness goal or take your workout routine to the next level, no amount of motivation is going to be able to overcome pain when it rears its ugly head.  That’s as it should be since pain has evolved right along with homo sapiens to let us know when to back off.  It’s what told our caveman ancestors to pull their hands out of the fire, among other things. 

Why Kids & Chiropractic are a Perfect Match for the Summer

Dr. Jon Thomas DC, BCIM

Image courtesy of Wikimedia

It won’t be long before school is out for the summer.  For parents, that means having to devise activities that let kids burn off all that restless energy they’ve been saving up all year long. For children, it’s just a couple short months to swim, ride their bikes and skateboards, not to mention rough housing with other kids in the neighborhood. As a result, it should come as no surprise that the number of visits to the ER made by children of all ages peaks during the summer. 

Aside from treating scrapes, sprains and the occasional broken bone, there isn’t a lot that ER doctors can do to help moms and dads manage an injury that their child has sustained.  Sure, they’ll schedule a return visit to remove a cast or check for infection, but other than providing a prescription to help relieve pain and/or inflammation, there isn’t a lot of follow up advice they can provide.  This is where chiropractic care can be a godsend.

10 Ways to Beat the Heat While Staying Fit

By Dr. Jon Thomas DC, BCIM

Image courtesy of flickr.com

In most parts of the country, the summer is one of the best times of the year to kick your exercise regimen up a notch.  When it comes to staying fit in Florida, you need to take another tack since June, July and August can produce afternoon temperatures in the mid to upper 90’s on a daily basis.  While many people want to continue such activities as jogging, bicycling, golf, tennis, kayaking, and other healthy pastimes you will need a strategy unless you want to wind up making a pit stop in the nearest ER. You need to use your head if you want to do your body good and avoid the effects of heat.

Looking for a Nutritional Plan That’s Juice Right?

By Tracy Thomas

As you know from my husband’s Feb. 22 blog,  we believe that dietary supplements are a great way to address deficiencies in the body.  Let’s face it, the modern American diet leaves a lot to be desired.  High in fat and low in fiber, what most Americans eat on a daily basis is at the root of many health issues.  The problem is that while most people recognize the fact that their current diet is lacking nutritionally, many are reluctant to alter their eating habits. But what if there was a way you could help balance the books nutritionally by taking a capsule or two every day?

Image by commons.wilimedia.org

Eat Your Veggies

Most of us can remember our mom telling us to “Eat your veggies” when we were little.  Now that we are all grown up, we have nobody to remind us and as a result most of us eat far too little fruits and vegetables.   If you cringe at the thought of bellying up to the salad bar, I might have the solution you seek. 

Essential Oils – Something Old is New Again

By Tracy Thomas

Image courtesy of en.wikipedia.org

Mention essential oils to most people, and they’ll immediately assume that it’s associated with other new age therapies, like using magnets and healing crystals.  What you may not realize is that essential oils are not new.  In fact, they have been used for thousands of years among various cultures who realized their medicinal properties.  Just like modern medicines, essential oils exhibit a number of proven therapeutic properties, including antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits. 

Since the time of the pyramid builders some 5,000 years ago, when the Egyptians used to create essential oils by soaking a variety of plants in oil before filtering the liquid through linen bags, these healing oils have been utilized as medicines, beauty aids, and cleaning products.  While the technology used to manufacture, essential oils has evolved over the past five millennia, their benefits remain the same.

Chiropractic for Moms

By Tracy Thomas

With Mother’s Day being right around the corner, I thought I would take a few minutes to talk about how chiropractic care can help moms deal with every aspect of their lives. Being a mother has its rewards, but it can also come with a healthy dose of mental and physical stress.  Everything from conception and pregnancy, to childbirth and raising a child brings with it a host of life-changing physical transformations that need to be dealt with in turn. This article is designed to cover those changes, as well as how chiropractic care can help mothers better deal with them.

It all Starts at Conception

Imagy by simple.wikipedia.org

From the moment of conception, a mother-to-be begins a physical and emotional journey that will transform her body in many ways.  Being a mom can be hard on the body.  As the fetus grows, a woman gains weight.  This tends to throw everything from the spine and pelvis to the joints, muscles, and tendons out of whack. Once the spine becomes misaligned, it can also cause chronic pain, particularly in the third trimester.   Since a developing fetus shares its mother’s blood supply, this makes taking prescription painkillers problematic. 

A New Tool in the Fight Against Breast Cancer

By Tracy Thomas

Image courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org

Breast Cancer – Just saying the term out loud makes women cringe with good reason.  More than 250,000 women are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer this year.  More than 40,000 deaths were caused by breast cancer in 2015 alone.   With those sobering statistics in mind, it’s obvious that early detection is the best defense against this scourge. 

Breast cancer is caused by unregulated cell growth that most commonly presents as a small lump.  The good news is that not all lumps are cancerous.  Lumps that are painful, moveable and soft are usually benign, while those that are painless, hard and fixed are more likely to be cancerous.  Detection of a lump isn’t a reason to panic.  Most lumps are not caused by cancer.  Fluid filled cysts and non-cancerous tumors can form in the breasts. 

The Life N Balance Membership Program

By Dr, Jon ThomasDC, BCIM

Image courtesy of Vibrant Life Health Center

A lot of people come to our office and ask us about health and wellness plans.  They’ve exhausted all their options trying to figure out what kind of supplements they should be taking.  They’ve had countless blood tests analyzed and then tried to figure out what the results were telling them.  They attempted to determine what they need to do to get all the systems in their body working at their best.  That’s why we developed the Life N Balance Membership Program.

Everyday Sustainability

By Dr. Jon Thomas D.C., B.C.I.M.

In the past, my blog has concerned itself with telling you how to correct health issues or improve a condition.  Whether you wanted to lose weight, eliminate pain, correct a structural or nutritional imbalance, and/or become more active, I have shown you the steps needed to accomplish that goal. This week, I want to cover the other side of chiropractic care, which is concerned with helping patients sustain their health day in and day out.  This philosophy is at the heart of my practice.  

At Vibrant Life Health Center, this tenet is so important that it’s stated right on our homepage:

We at Vibrant Life Health Center are here to help you obtain optimum performance so that you feel healthy and have a positive outlook on life.  However, this is only going to happen if you are able to SHIFT your mindset and lifestyle in these five areas:  Skeletal Structure, Headspace, Intake of Nutrients, Functional Fitness, and Toxic Burden.

Going Green to Lose Weight

By Dr. Jon Thomas

Everyone is into going green these days.  And why not, since going green is good for the environment.  Everyone knows that.  However, what many people don’t realize is that you can also lose weight by going green.  Whether raw or cooked, greens of all kinds are low in calories and high in nutrition.  Let’s take a look at lettuce:

 Lettuce Alone

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

Green and Red Leaf – A whole head is only around ten calories and loaded with potassium and calcium. 

Romain – Only a calorie per leaf, you can’t go wrong.

Iceberg – Less than one calorie per leaf, but lower in calcium and potassium than Romain. 

That being said, where the rubber meets the road in terms of dieting depends on the ways in which you consume your lettuce.  While a tablespoon of oil and vinegar only add seven calories to a salad, Ranch, French or Caesar’s dressing can add 75 calories per tablespoon. 

Do Supplements Help or Hinder Your Health?

By Dr. Jon Thomas D.C.

Image courtesy of Vibrant Life Health Center

Nutritional supplements are a big business.  In 2015, Americans spent more than $21 billion on supplements.  Whether we’re talking vitamins, minerals, or other over-the-counter compounds, supplements are important when it comes to addressing deficiencies in the body. This can include glandular and organ deficiencies at the cellular level.  Supplements are a critical component in helping your body perform at its best.  Physiology relies on the proper balance of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and metabolites to function.  By identifying specific deficiencies in an individual, it’s critical that the proper supplements are taken at the proper doses to achieve balance.

The Best Valentine of All

By Dr. Jon Thomas D.C.

Image courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org

With Valentine’s Day being right around the corner, I thought I’d give all of my readers an early present by sharing the experience that a couple I am treating has experienced with our fat loss program at Vibrant Life Health Center. 

Keith and Becky Manderson decided to team up to lose weight about a year ago.  At the time, Keith had a 52-inch waistline.  He was also on high blood pressure medication. 

Keith’s Story

“A year ago, I wore the biggest pair of pants you could buy at Walmart.  Now I wear a 42.  What’s even better is the way there fat loss system treats your body.  You’re not hungry all the time.  You get to eat real food.  The main thing is you get to talk to the doctor every day.  If something isn’t looking right, he’ll tell you which way to go, and it will straighten you out. 

Why Most Diets Are Doomed

By Dr. Jon Thomas

Image courtesy of freestockphotos.biz

Almost everyone at some point in their lives decides they want to lose a few pounds.  That’s a given. Through either the action of time or circumstance, most of us wake up one morning and look in the mirror only to decide that we don’t like what we see staring back at us.  The problem is when that fateful day occurs, when you decide it’s time to trim down, there is no simple solution.  That’s because while there are nearly as many diet plans as there are stars in the sky, trying to find one that actually works is nearly as complicated as putting a man on the Moon.

All Diets Are NOT Created Equal

Get Up and Get Moving!

How Movement and Stretching Can Transform Your Health.

By Dr. Jon Thomas

Image courtesy of pexels.com

Improving your health can sometimes be a lot like Mark Twain’s quote regarding the weather.  Everyone talks about it. But nobody seems to do anything about it.  That’s literally what it takes to improve your health: Action, not words.  While Big Pharma wants you to believe that they have a pill that can cure most anything that ails you, if you really want to lead a healthier, happier life, you can’t get there by being a couch potato.

That being said, when it comes to choosing the right kind of exercise, there is no magic pill for that either.  What I mean by that, is the kind of physical activities that work well in your twenties, can put you on the disabled list if you are in your fifties and sixties.  In fact, trying to keep up with the younger generation is one of the quickest ways to wind up seeing a chiropractor.

Finding the Right Balance for the New Year

By Dr. Jon Thomas D.C.

Even though we are only in the second week of 2017, January is the perfect time to strike the right balance for the rest of the year.  The old adage, “There’s no time like the present,” is doubly important when it comes to creating a health regimen that works.  While achieving optimal health might be your ultimate goal, to succeed you need to take into consideration a number of different aspects of your lifestyle. 

The Classic Car Syndrome

Image courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org

Just as a car has many different systems, so does the human body.  I have been a classic car buff for most of my life.  Simply because a car is 20, 30 or 40 years old, doesn’t mean it can’t be in as good a condition as the day it rolled off the assembly line.  The difference between a honey and a heap pretty much comes down to maintenance.  The more tender loving care an owner lavishes on a vehicle, the longer it will last.

January is a great time to start improving your health.

By Tracy Thomas, Vice President of Vibrant Life Health Center

Doctor Thomas with Tracy Thomas
Courtesy of Vibrant Life Health Center

Happy New Year! The beginning of a new year is a great time to start something new. In 2017, I’ll be writing posts for Vibrant Life Health Center’s blog about once per month. These posts will be from the perspective of the doctor’s wife. The focus will sometimes be on issues affecting women, but it will also delve into general purpose topics as well. Like my husband, I hope to impart information that will be useful to readers.

How to stick with New Year’s Resolution to lose weight and get fit.

By Dr. Jon Thomas, DC, Board Certified Chiropractic Physician

Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

Happy New Year! If you made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight and to become more fit, you are not alone. Making a resolution is the easy part. The big question in January is whether you will stick with it. Waking up on New Year’s Day and realizing that there’s a price to pay for whatever unfortunate excesses may have happened the night before, or throughout the holiday season, is the hard part.

Fortunately, help is available. Joining a fitness club or signing up for a weight loss program are relatively easy. Lots of people do it in January and it works for some of them. However, to achieve your goals, it’s important to find the right fit.