Healthy Family Living: Routines and Habits

Routines and Habits What is the first thing you do after you wake up in the morning? Do you turn on the news or pick up the news paper and start reading? Maybe you dive into your favorite scripture for some uplifting words.

How you start your day is going to play a major role in how the rest of your day goes. You choose if you want to wake up and start reacting to the world and filling yourself with stress by reading or watching the news, which is typically full of bad news and chaos, creating stress in yourself before your day begins.

Try a new morning ritual that involves a positive and uplifting start to your day with less stress so you can attack the day with a positive attitude and outlook.

Start your new morning ritual 30 to 60 minutes before you normally get up. This will allow for some alone time before anyone else is up distracting you. Start by reading some words of affirmation. This can be a simple two or three word phrase or maybe an entire sentence. If you don’t know where to look search the internet. Say it out loud to yourself and listen to what you are saying.

Next, think about what your purpose is. This can be your purpose in your family and or career. Write it down and say it out loud. Remind yourself why you exist or your purpose on earth.

Third, have a list of goals written out and go through them each morning reading them out loud to yourself.

Fourth, what are you thankful for? Say out loud all the things you are thankful for. Family, kids, wife, job, finances, health, etc...

Finally pull up a calendar or schedule book and see what you have planned for your day. Have an idea of what you want to get done today and set ways to get these things done. This is also when you can go and check emails and voicemails. This short routine will only take 10-15 minutes leaving you enough time to go and exercise and get the blood flowing before your day begins.

Remember this isn’t going to work if you only do it once in a while. For example, if you were to go into the gym and workout one time for 45-60 minutes you wouldn’t walk out after that first time looking like Mr. Olympia!

Or, if you decided you wanted to be healthy and you ate healthy food one time, you wouldn’t be healthy. Chiropractic is the same way. You can’t get one adjustment and expect long term benefits right away.

Anything you do that is going to benefit you has to be done consistently over a long period of time. What you do as a habit works, not what you do once in a while. This saying or idea can be applied to your health, job, family, relationships, religion, and any other area of your life that you want to improve.

All successful people have specific daily routines or habits they perform on a regular basis to improve their quality of life. Sit down and decide as a family what is important and start a routine together. The sooner a child develops these good habits the more likely they are to use them when they get older.

What are some of your daily habits? How do these shape your thinking, your mood, and the way your day goes? What are some ways you can improve your habits and so improve your whole life? If you have any questions, or if you want some accountability for changing your habits, stop in and see us! We'd love to help you improve your life by creating healthy routines and habits.

Up, Up and Away: A Teleseminar for Kids

Check out the "Up, Up and Away" teleseminar and listen to it with your kids!

What do you think makes these Superheroes so SUPER?

Is it because of their superhero masks?

Or their superhero capes?

Or the fact that they can fly?!

Nope – although flying does sound pretty super.

They’re super because they followed the tips in our “Up, Up, and Away” teleseminar for kids.

This teleseminar is for parents and their kids to listen to together!

Click the "play" button below to listen.

[audio mp3="http://hackbartchiropractic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/upupandaway.mp3"][/audio]

Summertime Chiropractic Care

summertime chiro care

Summer: a time for family vacations, visits to the pool, lemonade stands, suntans, and-- chiropractic visits?

Yes! Chiropractic care is needed during the summer as well as during the rest of the year, if not more! Special summer activities can get your spine out of misalignment. If you're in the car or plane for a family vacation (and if you're lucky enough to be able to sleep on long trips), just think about the strange positions your neck and back is in! An adjustment is always a good idea post-vacation.

image via morguefile.com

Summer work can also be hard on your back, whether you're digging in the garden, mowing the lawn, or working on the farm.

As for your children, they'll be participating in summer sports, playing outside, and probably at least as active as they are during the school year. Bring your kids with you to get adjusted so they can stay healthy while they play and relax during the summer months!

file0001506844893

Keep your back healthy this summer with these tips:

• Focus on keeping your posture straight, whether standing, sitting, or lying down.
• Be careful when lifting heavy objects. Use your legs, not your back.
• Stretch before and after exercising (and make sure your kids do the same).
• For long car trips, get a neck pillow so you can sleep comfortably without hurting your neck. On a car trip, stop to stretch and walk around every couple hours. On plane trips, get out of your seat every hour or two (if it's safe to do so) to stretch and move around.
• Don't let the dog days of summer keep you from exercise! Swimming and walking are easy, pleasant, and not damaging to your back.
• Continue to get adequate sleep (7-9 hours for adults) and eat healthfully (always essential!) to keep your whole body in optimum health.
• See your chiropractor for regular adjustments!

This summer, keep yourself and your whole family healthy and happy with chiropractic!

Why Chiropractic Makes Sense

It's hard to understand the benefits of chiropractic care if you don't understand how the human body works. The whole body is connected. It was designed to be able to heal itself from injury and infection. But the body can't heal itself if the connections between the brain and the organs and muscles--nerves--aren't functioning properly. That's where chiropractic comes in: it helps keep those connections working the way they were designed to.

From Brain to Organ and Back

The nerves in your body send messages between the brain and your organs and muscles. Nerves need a clear path to send a correct signal: to tell a muscle to move, to tell organs to do their job, basically to keep your body running properly.

All nerves go back to the spinal cord and travel up to the brain from there. The spinal cord is protected by the spine: vertebrae (the bones of the spine) and inter-vertebral disks. If the vertebrae and disks are not lined up correctly (out of alignment), the nerves can become pinched, thus sending a faulty signal to the brain and/or the organ or muscle to which the nerve leads.

Below is an image illustrating this. This is a side view of the spine. You can see the herniated disk (red and "inflamed"), above the vertebra that is out of alignment. Between the two is the pinched nerve. Compare this to the normal disks and properly aligned vertebrae above and below, and the nerves which are free and not pinched.

Why Chiropractic Makes Sense

Many people visit a medical doctor for health problems such as headaches, digestive issues, allergies, and other ailments. These health issues can be caused not by something wrong with the organs of the body, but by incorrect signals between those organs and the brain resulting from pinched nerves in the spine.

This is how chiropractic care helps keep the whole body healthy. It keeps the nerves functioning the way they were designed to, so the rest of the body works the way it's supposed to.

A medical doctor doesn't always consider a pinched nerve to be a possible cause for health issues. Instead, they prescribe drugs to fix the problem, when those drugs may only mask the problem.

Consider as an example the problem of chronic constipation: a relatively minor problem, but frustrating and painful nonetheless. A doctor might prescribe a laxative to be taken daily, which can have other less-than-desirable side effects. A chiropractor will look for misaligned vertebrae in the area of the spine where the nerves are which lead to the intestine. (This is why x-rays are necessary in chiropractic care, so the doctor and patient can see where the problem areas are in the spine.) The chiropractor will also discuss nutrition with the patient in the example given, since a less-than-healthy diet might also be an underlying cause of constipation. Good nutrition and chiropractic care go hand-in-hand: but that's a topic for another article!

The Importance of Continued Care

A few adjustments may be enough to heal the spine to the point where the nerves and organs are functioning normally once again. But most people have habits and lifestyles that cause their spine to get misaligned on a regular basis. Injury, poor posture or already worn-down inter-vertebral disks make regular adjustments a necessity to keep the body functioning optimally.

Poor posture is something that can be remedied, simply by changing one's habits. (This will be discussed in greater detail in a future article!) But many people have disks that have been worn down over time, and those disks will never "grow back" to their original healthy state.

When a spine is affected by scoliosis, a condition many people have to some degree or another, the spine is bent or twisted. The disks of the spine with scoliosis are worn down where the spine is unnaturally curved. Several adjustments will help the spine get back in place where it should be. But because those disks are already worn, the vertebrae will slip back into the twisted or curved position. Thus to keep the nerves free and not pinched, regular adjustments are absolutely necessary.

No drugs will keep the spine aligned properly. No drugs can solve the problem of a pinched nerve. Drugs can help with many things, this is true, but if the cause of a problem is a pinched nerve, drugs will only cover the symptoms, not heal the actual problem.

This is why chiropractic makes sense!

Why Choose Hackbart Chiropractic?

Our top priority at Hackbart Chiropractic is the health of you and your family. Our goal is for you to experience lifelong health and freedom from pain, not just to mask your symptoms. Learn more about how our doctors can help you achieve that in this welcome video from Dr. Hackbart.

 

.