Diet, Lifestyle, and Chiropractic Adjustments—What’s the Deal?

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While chiropractic adjustments themselves can be beneficial for you and your health, chiropractors are often trained to look at the whole picture of your health, and you should too. What’s the point of getting adjusted regularly when you aren’t able to reap the full benefits from those adjustments? Chiropractic adjustments can help so many aspects of our health, but our diet can too. How do diet, lifestyle, and chiropractic work together to heal the body?

 Anti-Inflammatory

Our body has this amazing ability to heal itself. Even problems such as tooth cavities are able to heal themselves, but we’re taught to believe that we need pharmaceutical medication or chemicals stuffed in our mouths to be well. This is not wellness, and while many modern medications have a place in the world, the benefits of relying on diet should not be underscored.

Chiropractic adjustments can help you perform better, breathe easier, and be more balanced and pain-free. If you’re seeing a chiropractor for your chronic pain, it would indeed help you to take a look at your diet if you and your chiropractor haven’t done so already. An anti-inflammatory diet can be very helpful for chronic pain. This diet includes less (or eliminated) refined sugars and flours, processed foods, and too much animal protein. Too much animal protein can be taxing on the body and its organs. For an anti-inflammatory diet, try to include these things:

  • Lots of organic fresh fruits and vegetables. Fresh is best, frozen is second best, and you should avoid canned foods whenever possible.
  • Limited animal protein. Local, free-range eggs, organic grass-fed beef and chicken as well as butter, or wild-caught fish.
  • Whole Grains. Make sure you’re not sensitive to gluten before you incorporate wheat flour, which can cause major inflammation if you’re sensitive. Other great sources include quinoa, oats, rice, and buckwheat.
  • Essential fatty acids. Nuts, seeds, avocados, and coconut oil are all fabulous sources.
  • Plenty of fiber. You can get these from beans such as lentils and garbanzo beans, fruits and veggies, nuts, and seeds.

You’ll have to bid goodbye the Standard American Diet (SAD) to help your body feel its best along with your chiropractic adjustments. The less toxins your body harbors, the better you’ll feel.

Toxins

What are toxins? Toxins are anything that harms the body, and you should try to eliminate their presence in your life. Some toxins are easy to eliminate, such as:

  • Lawn fertilizer and home pesticides. That can of wasp killer you bought this summer, or that guy you had come spray your lawn for pests and weeds? Yeah. Stop doing that. It’s ruining your health.
  • Non-organic produce. This is usually pretty easy depending on your location. Most grocery stores and local markets offer you the option of organic produce. Up to 90% of pesticides remain on foods like lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, blueberries, strawberries, and other fresh greens and fruits and veggies even after washing. This is an easy way to help remove toxins from your life—buy organic.
  • Home chemicals. Commercial cleaning products often contain unnecessary chemicals to clean our homes. Even air fresheners, candles, and beauty products we use contain harsh substances. We don’t need these and they are often very toxic. Vinegar is a natural disinfectant that you can use just about anywhere in your home. There are also a wide range of natural cleaning and beauty products available.
  • BPA and Teflon. Avoiding plastic as much as possible (especially at heated temperatures) and Teflon is important. Teflon is made of polytetrafluoroetheylene, a synthetic chemical that can be very dangerous if heated at high temps because the composition actually breaks down. Use cast iron, ceramic, or glass when cooking.

Dr. Jakob Taylor at True Wellness Chiropractic in Chattanooga Tennessee explains the disturbing effect that toxins have on our bodies: “Our environments are saturated by manmade chemicals that our bodies are not always able to process. When we look at the work done by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals we find very some alarming information. The scientists at the CDC recently conducted a study and found that every person they tested had flame-retardant chemicals and Bisphenol A (BPA) stored in fatty tissue and excreted in urine. Even more alarming they found that the average newborn has 287 chemicals in their umbilical cord blood, 217 of which are neurotoxins, meaning they are poisonous to nerve cells. These same chemicals are also endocrine disruptors. They alter how our bodies process sugar and can lead to insulin resistance—the root cause of diabetes.”

These toxins could be sabotaging the great thing you’re doing for your body by getting adjusted. Getting chiropractic adjustments helps release toxins from the body, and you’re not doing yourself any favors by plaguing your home environment or food with toxins. These toxins will eventually be processed by your liver and kidneys, which is the last place you want chemicals! These toxins are also known for lowering sperm count, just in case you were trying to increase that. Be more conscious about your exposure to toxins.

Lifestyle Changes

Making changes on your journey to wellness isn’t hard, but you do have to make them habits that will stick for life, so give yourself time to adjust to changes. Talk with your chiropractor about what you can do to enhance your care. You can do many things yourself such as eating the right foods, eliminating toxins, and exercising more. Exercising also helps to get toxins out of our bodies and helps keep us in shape. You don’t have to do rigorous exercise to get the benefits—even a walk on your lunch break every day will be great for you. You can also minimize your intake of alcohol, prescription drugs, and smoking—these are other very common toxins that are largely accepted by our society but aren’t helping out our bodies.

Chiropractic adjustments are amazing for many ailments and for regular maintenance of our body and wellness. To further help yourself benefit from chiropractic adjustments and help your body to wellness, take a look at your diet and lifestyle and what products you use. You can feel even better with chiropractic care by looking at the whole picture!

References:

http://www.chirohealthy.com/articles/anti-inflammatory-diet-good-health-for-your-joints.asp

https://www.acatoday.org/content_css.cfm?CID=81

http://www.bulletproofexec.com/remove-toxins/

Jenn Ryan
Jenn Ryan is a freelance writer and editor who's passionate about natural health, gluten-free, fitness, and animals. Jenn loves running, reading, and playing with her four rescued rabbits. www.thegreenwritingdesk.com