FEBRUARY

The seasons are changing and getting colder, but, unfortunately, some of us women are getting warmer. I have recently started working in a new office, surrounded by many women. Our office is generally kept freezing cold. Perhaps our boss keeps it that way, in some insane attempt to increase productivity. Regardless of the room temperature, some women in my office occasionally are red faced and sweating. The culprit? Menopause. You would think that when that glorious time comes when we are free of our monthly visit, our body would be relieved, rejoicing even! Instead many of our bodies, without our knowledge, slip into a hormone withdraw.

Menopause is really just referring to the time in our lives when we stop menstruating. Our ovaries become dormant and our estrogen levels drop dramatically. The symptoms of menopause can last up to five years, with the most intense symptoms occurring in the first two. The symptoms of menopause include hot flashes, increased cholesterol, decreased bone density, decreased sex drive, irritability and a litany of other annoying problems that were all created when our hormone levels take a nose dive.

When to use a heat pack or an ice pack on an injury is often confusing. Here in WNY, it seems like heat is always the way to go. Who wants to use an ice pack when it is already freezing outside? Well, the truth is that ice is almost always a better option.

New injuries or newly aggravated old injuries are inflamed. Inflammation has a number of characteristics, redness, swelling and the area will seem warm. If the area is already warm, doesn’t it make sense that more heat would be a bad thing? Adding heat to an inflamed area simply adds to the inflammation. Conversely, this is an area where ice shines. Using an ice pack on inflammation causes blood vessels near the injury to constrict and reduce the swelling. Reducing swelling often greatly reduces pain. Ice should be used frequently on these types of injuries, but only for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. Using ice for longer periods of time can actually reverse its effect. If ice is applied to an area for about 20 minutes, the body starts to think it is freezing and the blood vessels stop constricting and start dilating.

Heat is a great tool for treating older injuries. The kind of old achy pains that have been nagging at you for some time, but are not inflamed.  There are two things to be careful of when using heat: time and temperature. Believe it or not, but many people put a heating pad on high and then fall asleep with it on them. It is not uncommon for a doctor to see a patient that has an outline of a rectangle on their low back from a heating pad. Just as with ice, do not use heat for more than 20 minutes.

Using heat and ice for injuries is regularly over looked as an effective treatment. However, when used correctly, they can be a powerful method for reducing pain.

We have all done it. Maybe it was for a big event, maybe it was for a guy or maybe it’s just before your yearly vacation and you wanted to make sure you looked good on the beach. We lose a bunch of weight quickly, we look great for awhile, then we go back to our “normal eating habits”. While we may look good for a little while, think about what that is doing to your insides.

One of the biggest problems with on and off diets is that we sabotage ourselves by confusing our metabolism. When you don’t eat, your metabolism learns to slow down and make every calorie count. It goes into survival mode and starts storing and saving up instead of utilizing the food you eat when you eat it. Your body doesn’t know where its next meal is coming from, so it savors every last bite. That’s the problem with skipping meals. Your body gets used to starving and then when you do eat, you pack on the pounds.

So you have tried the “grapefruit diet”? The “no carbs diet”? The “all liquids diet”? How about the “only raw fruits and veggies diet”? I bet you even lost a lot of weight while you did them.

Your body is a machine- and you need to take care of it all year round. When we starve ourselves, we end up losing more than just fat. When you do an extreme diet your body will start to metabolize its fat stores. At the same rate that fat is being used, muscle is being broken down and used as fuel too. While this may make you look a lot thinner, this is terrible for your body and will hurt your dieting efforts in the long run. Having a higher muscle mass is always a good thing. Muscles burn calories, even when you are not working out. That’s a big deal! Muscles help you stay thin even when you are not in the gym. Another good thing to know about muscles is that they are more dense than fat. This means that if you have a lot of muscle you will weigh more then someone who is the same size but has a higher body fat percentage. Don’t let this scare you. Being toned is the best look you can have. No one cares what your scale says when you have a lean athletic looking body.

Speaking of your body being a machine- your body needs oils. The gall bladder is one of the biggest victims of yo yo diets. The gall bladder plays a special role in helping digest fats. It’s also an organ that doesn’t like change. If you spend half your year eating fast food and fried treats, your gall bladder is happy to help out. It creates a lot of enzymes to move your delectable diet of french fries along. But then you decide to clean up your act and stop eating all fats. Well, your gall bladder has a history of producing all these enzymes, and now it’s not needed. The enzymes then just have to hang out in the gall bladder until your body calls them to action again. If this is a habit, the enzymes that are just hanging out in the gall bladder begin to form sludge or even stones. This isn’t a problem while you are on the diet, but one greasy piece of pizza later and your gall bladder is trying to push out those enzymes that contain stones. Gall bladder attacks are an epidemic among women that are over-weight, just about 40 and have some kids. The pain usually hits at night and feels like stabbing in you right shoulder blade. Gall bladder problems are jump started by a pattern many of us started in our 20s. Of course, the gall bladder can be easily removed to stop the problem, but isn’t prevention a better option?

What’s the solution? Setting realistic goals. Don’t do anything that is too extreme. Exercise.

Start off with baby steps. On week one, just add drinking half your weight in ounces of water everyday. Week two, add vegetables to every meal. Simple small sustainable changes can mean big results at the scale.

How can you protect your muscles and back while being a mom? Besides just doing our regular jobs and running a household, we often need to lug around toddlers, kindergartners and car seat carriers. It’s a recipe for disaster and has a sore back and pulled muscles written all over it.

Did you know that 80% of the general population will have a back problem at some point in their lives? Or that back aches and pains are the second most common reason to visit the doctor’s office? As moms we are constantly overlooking our health and fulfilling the needs of our family. Let’s look at some easy ways that we can help protect ourselves from having a problem in the first place.

What we need to address is something called ergonomics. If you work in an office or if you ever worked for a company doing manual labor you may have heard of this rather fancy sounding term. Ergonomics is simply adjusting what you are doing to fit your body best. It is meant to protect you from straining yourself. You may have even seen some elaborate keyboards for your computer that can help reduce carpal tunnel, or desk chairs that offer special back support. These are all great things that have really expanded into the workplace. But what about your workplace at home with the kids?

Dr. Heather Mahley

www.gasportchiropractic.com

Heather Lea Mahley was born August 14th. She currently lives with her

husband and two beautiful daughters in Lockport, NY. Dr. Mahley has

lived in Western New York her entire life and attended Lockport High

School. She is a graduate of D’Youville College of Chiropractic in

Buffalo and Niagara County Community College. She was involved in

many extracurricular activities including helping to found and edit

the monthly D’Youville Chiropractic Newsletter the “Monthly

Adjustment.” She was rewarded with the Emerging Leader Award by the

head of the chiropractic program because of the important roles she

played in student groups on campus. She completed her internships at

Good Neighbors Health Clinic and Erie County Medical Center.

Dr. Mahley was first inspired to become involved in healthcare from

her mother who has worked in the field for many years. After deciding

on chiropractic as a career, Dr. Mahley discovered that her

great-grandfather, Leonard J. Slawatycki was a pioneer of chiropractic

in Buffalo in the early 1900’s. Like her great-grandfather, Dr. Mahley

is committed to practicing holistic medicine, expanding the

discipline’s future, and promoting natural healing.

Dr. Mahley’s occupational history includes working as a certified

pharmacy technician for a commercial pharmacy as well as for Blue

Cross Blue Shield of WNY. Because Doctor Mahley believes that

educating individuals is the first step to health, she currently

teaches Anatomy and Physiology at the Niagara County Community

College. There she helps to train the next generation of healthcare

professionals.

You may have read a lot in the medical news about all the new and wonderful research that has been done with Vitamin D. But what is vitamin D? How can it help you? Should you be taking a vitamin D supplement?

Vitamin D is actually not a vitamin at all. It’s a hormone that your body makes when the skin is exposed to sunlight.  After about 20 minutes of full sun exposure, your body converts the sunlight to about 2000 IUs (international units) of vitamin D.  With Fall approaching fast, our busy schedules, and the dangers of too much sun exposure, taking a vitamin D supplement might be a good way to make sure you are getting enough.

But why take vitamin D? You have probably heard that you need vitamin D to regulate the calcium levels in your blood and bones. But did you know that there are studies linking low vitamin D levels to multiple sclerosis and many different cancers?

Osteoporosis can be a scary diagnosis. It refers to having decreased bone density with can lead to weak bones and the possibility of fracture. This condition usually affects women. The national osteoporosis Foundation suggests that adults under 50 take 400 to 800 IU daily and if you are over 50, take 800 to 1000 IU of vitamin D to help prevent this condition.