A study conducted by the Adelaide Centre for Sleep Research concluded that a person who has been awake for 17 hours faces the equivalent risk of having an accident as a person who has a Blood Alcohol Count reading of 0.05 g/100ml, and is therefore twice as likely to have an accident as a person with a zero blood alcohol content who is not fatigued. Drivers who have been awake for 24 hours have an equivalent driving performance to a person who has a BAC of 0.1 g/100ml, and is seven times more likely to have an accident.

Most of the time, fatigue can be traced to your lifestyle, such as your regular habits or routines.  Fatigue can be a normal and an important response to physical over exertion, poor eating habits, emotional stress, boredom, or lack of sleep.  Maybe you have over indulged in your consumption of caffeine, alcohol, or you may be dehydrated from not drinking enough water.  Other causes of fatigue may be stress, anxiety or depression related.  It may just be how your body tries to alert you to pay attention.  In some cases, however, fatigue is a symptom of an underlying health concern that requires a health care intervention.  When fatigue is not relieved by enough sleep and relaxation, sufficient stimulation, good nutrition, or a low-stress environment, it may be time to seek professional advice from your health care practitioner.

While it is important to consider lifestyle factors, before you begin any invasive testing or any risky drugs with side-effects, there is one too often overlooked factor worthy of any reasonable management of fatigue.  Have you ever considered that there may be an issue with how your body processes what you put in, and do with it, which may have an overriding effect?

Did you know you your nerve system is your master control system, made of a network of fibers, similar to an electrical wiring system?  Interference or stress in the spine may alter the transmission of messages between your brain and any of your body’s muscles, organs, and tissues, affecting control and coordination of systems and function throughout your body. This nerve system stress or interference may be creating inefficient function of your body systems, resulting in loss or efficient energy production or use, leading to fatigue.

In particular, this may be the result of inappropriate nerve activity impeding the effects and function of an optimal digestive system.  Since the digestive system is the largest energy consumer of your body, and it should convert food to fuel; this scenario may result in either a poor quality or at least lower production of energy in and for your body.

Since the primary focus of Chiropractic is the optimum function of your spine and nerve system, Doctors of Chiropractic are the natural and logical choice of health professionals to seek out in these circumstances.  Look for a Healthy Life Doctor of Chiropractic in your area who can professionally assess your needs, and guide you to living a more energized life, naturally.

Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of accomplishing results rather than “doing” stuff.   It is more important which direction you are moving, rather than how fast you are travelling to be productive.  In a game of chess, it’s not how many moves you make, but how few strategic ones to win.  Productivity is a ratio of what effort of resources are needed to produce the intended outcome.  It’s all about strategic efficiencies and resourcefulness, putting in the least resources to gain the most product quantity and quality output.

Why would you want to increase your productivity?  There are many substantive reasons for this.  How about the personal satisfaction of getting more done, not to mention the financial rewards of greater output?  When you can be more productive, you create more time for other pursuits, be they work or personal.

To increase your productivity, there are the obvious considerations, including better time management, more efficient design of your work flow, putting in more time and working faster.  Besides these well known strategies, what about working out how to make yourself, (your body and your mind), more efficient?

Does your food nourish and energize you, or slow and drain your energy and focus?  Do you exercise?  It is important to do the right exercise for you, the right way at the right time.  Is your work and living environment healthy?  Do you breathe fresh clean air, and do you access natural sunlight regularly?  Do you have sufficient quiet time?  Do you have enough rest and sleep time?  How else do you support your body to be more efficient?  What about your mind?

Did you know your nerve system is your master control system, made of a network of fibers, similar to an electrical wiring system?  Interference in the spine may alter the transmission of messages between your brain and your body’s muscles, organs, and tissues, affecting control and coordination of systems and function throughout your body. This nerve system stress or interference may be creating an inefficient environment in your body, resulting in reduced energy production and loss of focus.  If your body and mind are not efficiently coordinating their functions, how do you think that could impact on your productivity?

Chiropractic involves specialized care focusing on your spine and nerve system, which effects how you perceive the world, helping you to adapt to life and it’s challenging physical, chemical and emotional stresses.

Since the primary focus of Chiropractic is the optimum function of your spine and nerve system, Doctors of Chiropractic are the natural and logical choice of health professionals to seek out in these circumstances.  Look for a Healthy Life Doctor of Chiropractic in your area who can professionally assess your needs, and guide you to living a more energized life, naturally.

It seems logical that health is present in degrees, rather than you have it in total or not at all.  Unfortunately, the top causes of death in the western world, being heart disease, cancer and diabetes, are often present without obvious outward indicators.  Wouldn’t this then demonstrate that the absence of signs and symptoms does not qualify a person as healthy?  By the same logic, what about when you do have symptoms such as pain?  Does this mean you are certainly sick?

Let’s have a look at pain.  The presence of pain may often be your body calling out for attention.  “Hey there is a pebble in my shoe.”  “I am overindulging in coffee, sugar or alcohol, so I feel sick, have a headache, or just run down.”  What about a symptom like a cough or sneeze?  Are you sick, or is your body trying to remove some foreign bodies that are irritating you?

With this understanding, maybe it’s a matter of context.  When you sense messages from your body, determine why they are there, what your body is trying to tell you, and then how you should respond accordingly.

A simple yet powerful way to understand how healthy you are, could be to view health by three components, being wholeness, function and adaptability.  Wholeness means having your parts.  Once you have parts removed like tonsils, appendix, gall bladder, etc., you can still function, but not as fully as your birthright should have allowed you to.  Function means that the parts you do have are all working optimally.  It’s not whether you can breathe and walk, its that you can breathe fully and walk briskly without limitations or impediments.  The third component, adaptability, is the essence of health.  How do you adapt physically chemically and emotionally?

When you strain or stress a body part through bad movement or poor posture, do you recover quickly?  When you eat rotten food, do you feel unwell and malaise over a long period of time, or quickly bring it up, and return to normal rapidly?  When you are surprised or shocked, do you get over it there and then, or do you take a long while to recover?  How you cope and adapt to these circumstances determines your adaptability, the third component of health.

Did you know you your nerve system is your master control system, made of a network of fibers, similar to an electrical wiring system?  Interference or stress in the spine may alter the transmission of messages between your brain and any of your body’s muscles, organs, and tissues, affecting control and coordination of systems and function throughout your body. This nerve system stress or interference may be creating inefficient function of your body systems, resulting in loss of efficient functioning organs and systems, resulting in a lowering of your health potential.

Since the primary focus of Chiropractic is the optimum function of your spine and nerve system, Doctors of Chiropractic are the natural and logical choice of health professionals to seek out in these circumstances.  Look for a Healthy Life Doctor of Chiropractic in your area who can professionally assess your needs, and guide you to living a more fulfilling healthy life, naturally.

 

The intention is not to “cover-up or stop” symptoms (your body’s warning signals), rather to better understand why they are there, facilitating greater awareness to more efficiently listen to your body’s needs, so you can respond with appropriate action. This process, while not a “pain relief” system, is remarkably effective at helping many feel better amazingly fast.

This opportunity gives you an awareness of which of your stress patterns harm you or help you.  Most people present with health concerns with a combination of pain and stress.  By considering the context of why the pain and stress are present, a strategic course of action can be designed to help people cope better with stress and experience relief of their pain.

Even though most people’s initial goal may be to get rid of the pain or stress, the most exciting and rewarding outcomes lead beyond the focus on just pain.  Some of these more life fulfilling outcomes include more energy, sharper focus, greater efficiency, increased productivity, better connection, ease, health, more fun and happiness.

To help you decide if this approach is suitable for you, Diskin Life offers a special guest event called the BIG event three times per year.  This is a FREE two hour presentation with demonstrations of what actually happens when you receive Network Care.  Check our calendar of events at www.DiskinLife.com.

Contact Diskin Life 9417 7222 or Reception@DiskinLife.com to reserve your seats.

 

Help For Neck Pain – Melbourne Chiropractor

When you are in bed for several hours, how are you positioned?  Do you sleep in your back, side or on your front?  Any one of these could lead to your neck pain.  On your back is generally accepted as the best position for your spine, provided you have a decent mattress and the “appropriate” pillow, which is the right firmness and not too high or too low.  On you side can be complicated.  Unless your bed is molded to the shape of the side of your legs, body, neck and head, you are likely going to stress you spine.  Face down is the worse of all options.  Unless you have a hole in the mattress to breathe, you are forced to turn you head sideways, so you can breathe.  Ouch!  Right now, turn your head as far as you can, and see how much it hurts after just a few minutes.  Imagine what you are doing to your neck after lying on it twisted for hours?!

Another common scenario is how you sit at your computer.  I am assuming your keyboard and monitor are at the appropriate heights.  Even then, how is your head and neck positioned?  It is likely you are letting your head slip forward, making the muscles of your neck work hard to keep your head on top.  Do you see how this can give you neck pain.

What else do you do regularly to give your self neck pain?  If you could only watch all your movements and neck positions through your day, you would see clearly why your neck is shouting for attention.  Count yourself “lucky” to feel you neck pain, so you can respond by changing your habits.

Become aware of your habits and changing them is critical.  This alone, is often not enough to settle your pain.  Chiropractors are expertly trained to ensure your neck is functioning at its best, with a focus on optimising your nerve system function.  After a careful and thorough assessment, appropriate advice and specific Chiropractic care can be recommended to take care of you for now and your future health.

The Chemical cause of headaches can occur with an imbalance of body chemistry.  What can upset the balance is too much or too little of what your body needs.  Too much caffeine or sugar may cause your headaches.   Too little oxygen may have than effect too.  Remedying these chemical causes is logical and practical, once you have determined what the culprits are.

The emotional causes of headaches are obvious to anyone who has been upset or stressed, and then felt the onset of a headache.  Your nerve system may respond to these episodes by giving you a headache.  This is a cal for action.  Change your circumstances, or better change your response t your circumstances.  We use a system that not only reduces the nerve system tension, it also helps your to reprogram your response to stress.  This means, even in the same environment that usually causes headaches, you may develop new more healthy responses, eliminating or at least minimizing the “need” for the onset of headaches.

Regardless of the cause of your headaches, a fundamental is to be certain you have a baseline of a fully functional and adaptable nerve system.  Whether you have a chemical, emotional or structurally caused headache, ensuring a healthy nerve supply will benefit you in the short and long term.

Chemical stresses develop from exposure to toxic chemicals, drugs and bad food.  When your brain registers a foreign toxic chemical in your body, it may cause you to adapt, to this stress response, in a way that creates back pain.

The third cause of back pain is emotional stress.  Remember how you felt the last time you got upset?  We have observed a relationship between peoples’ moods and state of mind, with the onset of back pain.  Men seem to develop back pain with concerns over stability, most commonly financial issues.  Women seem to develop back pain when concerned about relationships.

By recognizing and identifying the cause of your back pain, you can then consider possible solutions. What are the possibilities?  This depends on whether you are just concerned with treating the end result of your health issues being the back pain, or more concerned to address it wholistically, closer to its cause.  Amongst your many options, there are two categories.  Do you want to have you pain “treated” as an unrelated entity to the rest of your body?  This can be done with a drug or procedure to go to the site of pain and try to fix it there and then.  Your other option is a more wholistic natural, measurable and sustainable approach?

You can have the back pain “treated” by needles, drugs, hot or cold packs, rubbing it, stretching it, as well as many forms of hands on therapies.  These are primarily aimed at the area of pain, considering this to be where the problems starts and ends.  What if the back pain is only the end result of a series of other issues?  It could be coming from your organs, like kidneys, or referred pain from another body area.  It could be referred from other body parts.  It could be your back pain is the result of your lifestyle the needs to be modified.

Do you know what is scarier than back pain?  What if you have a back problem and DON’T feel it?  Without being able to feel it, the condition can worsen, so by the time you do feel it, you are in the more advanced stages of the condition.  What if your back pain was a way your body used to communicate that you need to make some changes in you r life?.

We use a contemporary uniquely natural, measurable and sustainable approach to back pain.  Our system does not “treat” the back pain.  Here the person is looked at as a whole, considering many lifestyle factors.  After using our comprehensive assessment procedures, our approach is not to treat anything, rather to help the body to better become aware of itself, and adapt in a more healthy manner.  Here the pain is considered in context of your whole life.  Using a wholistic approach like this, can lead to more sustainable changes.

 

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How does poor posture develop, and more importantly what are some practical and sustainable solutions?

Your posture is a result of how you have adapted to all the physical, mental and emotional stresses in your life.  It is where your body has found the least resistance to hold you.  Remember how you have performed certain activities repeatedly, like carrying a bag (unevenly) on one side, sitting (slumped) a certain way, or even how you lie (twisted) in bed.  These repetitive activities and positions force your body to twist, bend and contort, in order to try to adapt and cope with those repeated physical forces on your body.  Emotional and mental stress, including your moods, can also trigger a defence (stress) posture response, which brings your head forward, and creates tension build-up along your spine and nerve system.  Over time these patterns can become more lasting.

Your posture is more than just how you LOOK!

Your posture is the window to your spine, and is a reflection of your health and life.

What is YOUR posture?

First you need to be aware that it is even an issue.  You can try to look at your self in the mirror, or have your profile photo taken, to see how you look, particularly from the side.  Many people have a forward head posture, which means their head is in front of where it should be?  There are some very clever and scientific ways to measure this, like finding out what your posture number is.  This is the identifying measurement of your posture.  It is an indicator, like a blood pressure result or cholesterol result, that further testing may be necessary.  There is approximately one extra kilo of load/stress on your spine, for every 2mm of forward head posture.

The shape, tension, tone and patterns in your spine represents the shape, tension, tone and patterns of your life.

What can you do about poor posture?

There are many approaches.  You can force your posture to be more straight and even, with belts, braces, awkward exercises, and nagging and ongoing vigilance.  Does that ever last?  You can change your posture more sustainably, without any force or discomfort, by increasing your awareness and considering what you do that causes your poor posture to develop in the first place.

At Diskin Life Melbourne, our Uniquely Natural, Measurable and Sustainable™ approach includes a comprehensive state-of-the-art physical assessment, followed by a clear description of your condition, and how we plan to assist you to achieve your health and well-being goals and objectives.  This approach, is designed to help your body to reprogram its awareness, so you INSTINCTIVELY, AUTOMATICALLY and SUSTAINABLY assume more appropriate and upright posture WITHOUT EVEN TRYING.

If you are reasonably healthy, these functions should be happening automatically, under the control and coordination of your nerve system, with little conscious awareness on your behalf.  Just as well, since we are so forgetful, we would likely not be able to keep up with these activities taking place simultaneously if we tried.

Since there are some four billion of activities like these every second, you can count yourself lucky that your body has the ability to communicate at least some warning signs- if it’s able.  These warning signs can show up anywhere.  When you have a headache, it could be from many varied causes, such as too much caffeine or sugar, not enough rest, maybe you hit your head or twisted your neck, and that’s only a few of the many.  The same type of possibilities are there for other pains like back pain, which could be from accumulated bad sitting, sleeping and working postural habits repeated over the years.  Many pains are the last signs that something is actually wrong.

Think about the leading causes of death, like cancer, diabetes and heart disease.  Unfortunately they do not offer early warning signs either.  If you are “lucky” to catch one of these conditions earlier in the piece, you certainly have a better change for recovery.  How can you become aware earlier?  If you are better able to feel and recognise your body warning signals, you may notice that your body isn’t working right, and make the all important and necessary CHANGES to how you live.  These are all mostly lifestyle conditions, so changing how you live is an intelligent way to be one of the fortunate ones to make the changes before its too late.

Maybe now you may consider pain or other body signals as “opportunities” to listen, and heed the warnings.

Discover how our Uniquely Natural, Measurable and Sustainable™ system, an evolutionary gentle and effective wellness approach to healthier living, can help you learn how to better hear and understand your body’s warning signs in perspective, and also learn how to respond with the appropriate changes of behaviour.

Dr Ari Diskin

The Healthy Life Doctor of Chiropractic