Natural Sports Medicine Blog

1-Mile Swim Test of KT Tape Pro

2012-02-01T18:52:00.001-05:00

So, we've all seen the Olympic beach volleyball players wearing that funky looking colorful tape on their shoulders and knees. You've probably seen it at local triathlons, marathons and other sporting events as well.

There are several companies out there but one in particular is making a special synthetic tape with a waterproof adhesive. KT Tape's KT Tape Pro has the same elasticity as the original tape but puts it on a more tough synthetic material and keeps it in place with a heat sensitive waterproof adhesive.

Many athletes use this tape to help in the correction of postural dysfunction, to aid the healing of an injury or to give a particular motion some extra assistance (physically and proprioceptively). The problem has always been, when the athlete starts sweating, the tape begins to lose its stickiness and peel off. So, I put this to the test.

I had the KT Tape applied to my shoulder on Saturday. The any hair was shaved and the skin was cleaned with rubbing alcohol. The tape was applied to help stabilize my right scapula (which is winged) and help assist the deltoids in abduction because they've really been working overtime in dealing with the winged scapula.

Anyway, since I had the tape put on, I had taken several showers, ran a 5k, went on a rowing machine (aka: Erg) and rowed 10,000 meters, took a long hot bath after rowing and then, on the 4th day, did a 1-mile swim test. As you can see from the video below, the tape held up very well. So if you are in the market for some good kinesiology tape, you can't beat the KT Tape Pro. It comes in rolls of pre-cut 10" strips and in a variety of really cool colors & black. For clinicians, it comes in a large uncut clinic roll that allows you to cut the lengths you need. KT Tape also has a cool desktop display dispensor for your office.

Check out the video of my 1-mile swim test. As I write this, I've also done another 10k run and showered twice more. It's still sticking and still has retained its resiliency and function.

So if you're looking for some extra support for your posture or need to correct some performance dysfunction or simply want to give your muscle and tendons some assistance through a particular movement - then KT Tape Pro is for you. It's a great quality product, reasonably priced and best of all, it looks really cool too!

On their web site you'll even find instructional videos for applying the tape for basic problems. Anything more complex and you'll want to consult with someone like me.

Read more about it at www.KTTape.com

'Nuff Said.

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Fried Food NOT Bad For You???

2012-01-29T10:11:00.000-05:00

A recent study in the British Medical Journal online (www.bmj.com) finds that eating foods that were fried in either olive or sunflower oil is not linked to heart disease or premature death.

In a Mediterranean country where olive and sunflower oils are the most commonly used fats for frying, and where large amounts of fried foods are consumed both at and away from home, no association was observed between fried food consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease or death.

The study was authored by Professor Pilar Guallar-Castillion from Autonomous University of Madrid, surveyed the cooking methods of over 40,000 adulsts from age 29-59 over the course of 11 years. this flies in the face of common wisdom and I highly suggest you spend a few minutes reading the article yourself.

Maybe it isn't so much the cooking methods, but what you use for cooking. But that's for you to decide. Read the article before you make any changes to your diet. Click here to read more

'nuff said...

Dr T

ZEROWATER Review

2012-01-27T16:06:00.003-05:00

So about 10 days ago I get a Groupon in the email box. The deal of the day was a 10 cup Zerowater pitcher for only $15 bucks!! I had been looking into them and decided to go out and buy one but when I looked, no one seemed to have them. I purchased a britta filters, an 8-cup filter pitcher for the home and one of those 'Pur' 'thing-a-majiggies' you attach to the faucet for the office.

Life went on and we drank our Britta & Pur filtered water until I get this groupon email offering the Zerowater 10-cup filter pitcher for a special promo price of $15. I almost didn't go for it because it was just days before that I bought those Britta filters, but from everything I've read, this was the filter I really wanted so I did the groupon deal and purchased one for the house and another for the office.

Today, yes just a little while ago my trusted UPS guy brings the 2 packages. I un-box one of them and follow the instructions, washed it out with warm soapy water and filled it up. Before it had a chance to filter the first batch of Zerowater through, I had taken the water testing device that comes with it and tested the tap water vs the Pur filtered water and then finally the Zerowater once it had filtered through.

The tap water (Miami Beach's Finest) tested 181 parts per million (ppm), the Pur filter tested 167 ppm and then Zerowater earned its name and tested 000. As soon as I get home and test the Britta pitcher tonight, I'll edit the post to reflect those number as well.

But that's numbers. That was for my brain, now it was time to do the taste test. I've been drinking purified water since I was a young kid. My dad use to sell and install those under the sink units and as I got older (college degree, wife, kids, yada yada yada) I got into distilled water. I loved the purity and the taste of it. In my opinion, distilled water is the best water to drink. And to those that sell Alkaline water, water should be pH-Neutral. I'll be happy to argue that point with you 'til the end of time. Water=Neutral pH. Your diet however should be slightly alkaline.

Let me say, from a tongue with filtered water experience, zerowater tastes amazing. Personally, it taste similar if not the same as distilled water. To say I'm pleased with it is an understatement. I can't wait to take the other unit home for my family tonight.

I highly recommend the Zerowater products. This pitcher is well thought out and not only can you pull it out of the refrigerator and pour it like any other pitcher, but it has a spigot so you can simply open the 'fridge', push the button and drink some really nice fresh tasting clean water.

For those of you doing the Standard Process 21-Day Purification Program, this would be a great product for you so you can drink nice clean pure water throughout your program. Don't worry about missing the groupon though, just go out and get one. It's worth the money.

For my fellow athletes out there. You want to make sure you give yourself the purest water you can. Sediment, toxins and other yucky stuff can reduce performance. This is a quick and easy way to get it.

So, great job to the folks at Zerowater. I'm a believer! Just make me a water bottle that does the same thing so I can take it on my longer bike trips. This way I can re-fill anywhere.

'nuff said

DR. T

6:15pm UPDATE

Just for kicks and giggles I took my water tester and checked the drinking fountain outside my office. It tested at 114ppm. So the dirty yucky water fountain in the hallway had cleaner water than the PUR water faucet attached water filter. Interesting.

The taste of the Zerowater's filtered water is really amazing. On the way home to set up my second 10-cup zerowater filter pitcher and test the water against the Britta.

9:25pm UPDATE
OK, I set up the Zerowater 10-cup pitcher at home. I tested the faucet water and it was 187, about what I expected. I took the Britta 8-cup filter pitcher out of the refrigerator and poured about 2 inches of water into a freshly washed cup (I swirled the cup a few times with the Britta filtered water). In went the water ppm detector and the Britta water rang up a 123. The same probe went into the new 10-cup Zerowater pitcher and yet again, it earned its name - 000. So, the Britta water was cleaner than the tap water by about 50%. But for the total costs, plus the cleanliness of the water you get, I'd take your Britta and Pur filters and just throw them in the garbage. The Britta was 123 compared to 181 tap water and the Pur was 167 compared to the 181 straight from the faucet water. So neither really performed it's basic fundamental tasks as far as I'm concerned. This Zerowater tastes amazing, tests clean and it's simple and easy to deal with. I think I'm now gonna splurge for the large Zerowater 23 cup dispenser.

I'm still hoping they will make a smaller version that can be taken biking or hiking...Until then, I'm extremely pleased with the ZeroWater product and think it's a great tool for anyone wanting to improve their health. 80% of your body is water, make sure you refill with the best H2O you can get.

'Nuff Said.

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. Dr. Narson was a member of the COPAG International Chiropractic Sports Medicine Team for the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara Mexico. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Run-Walk-Run Your Way To A Faster Marathon or Triathlon Time

2012-01-21T16:19:00.001-05:00

So, as the story goes, the run was the part of the triathlon that I hated the most and for years it's what kept me from even considering doing a triathlon. But now that I've been training to do triathlons for my 3rd season, I still can't get to that "runner's high" zen state of mind I keep hearing so much about. Running for me is work, not enjoyment. I do it because it's part of the triathlon and I love the entire experience.

As I start training longer runs and push my personal best distances I notice that my legs start to get "crampy" and I know fatigue is just around the corner. Although I keep trying, I really have to put some real effort into keeping my pace up and fighting the onset of fatigue. If you're like me, you understand exactly what I'm talking about.

Well a patient of mine who is running the ING-Marathon suggested I look into the Galloway method. It combines running-walking-running to help fight running fatigue, improve race times and help you recovery faster. For those of you that don't know Jeffrey Galloway, Jeff was a former Olympic long distance runner and member of the 1972 US Olympic Team, running the 10,000 meter race. He continues to teach and coach in Orlando, FL and is a monthly contributor for Runner's World Magazine. He authored Galloway's Book on Running and continues to help people achieve their dream of completing marathons to this day.

The method involves running, then walking and then running again and has been shown to reduce fatigue, increase race times and improve recovery. This looks like a very promising technique I'm going to incorporate into my triathlon training as my distances increase. Click here to read more about the Galloway method from the former Olympian himself..

And with that, I say Happy Running... Really.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Believe Me, Or Them, But New Evidence Shows Diet Can Help With ADD ADHD

2012-01-21T09:03:00.000-05:00

So years ago doctors didn't think diet really had any influence on your health. I remember dermatologists saying that eating pizza, chocolate cake and cookies has no influence on your skin, that foods didn't have any influence on your brain because they couldn't pass the blood-brain barrier. But now we're finding out more and more that diet influences everything. Something I've known in my heart for years is starting to have mounds of evidence behind them.

In a recently published article authored by J. Gordon Millichap, MD and Michelle M. Yee, CPNP, titled The Diet Factor in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. The authors reveals improvements in ADD / ADHD simply by avoiding the typical Western diet and adopting what is essentially an Anti-Inflammatory diet.

It's time to seriously think about what you are feeding your kids. Because Attention Deficit Disorder / Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and learning in school don't mesh well. If your kids can't learn, how will they function? The next question is do you have ADD / ADHD and are you willing to make a change. There's proof now....What are you waiting for.

You can start by reading Loren Cordain, PhD's book The Paleo Diet (2010 Edition). If you really want to start learning and have the time to see how (& why )we're supposed to eat, what went wrong and how it effects us and where our healthy diet came from..watch this video of Dr. Cordain. It's an eye opener.

Headaches | Is Chiropractic Care Effective?

2012-01-18T13:11:00.000-05:00

By Miami Beach Chiropractor | Chiropractic Sports Medicine Specialist - Todd M. Narson, DC, DACBSP, ICSSD

Most people don't know the story, but yours truly became a chiropractic physician BECAUSE of migraine headaches. I remember my first headache as an 11 year old boy. The trigger was an intense puff of cigarette smoke that was blown in my face. I remember it like it was yesterday. After the smoke came coughing. Within a few minutes I had an intense flashing green spot in my vision that grew and grew until all I had was peripheral vision about 30 minutes later. It was followed by an intense sensitivity to light and then of course, this gnawing dull aching throbbing pounding headache that lasted for 2 days. After the episode was over my mother took me to the family physician. He examined me, looked in my eyes and found nothing but wrote a prescription for percocet.

I began getting headaches every 2 weeks. The headaches would all develop the same way. I'd get a little "hot spot" in my vision (like if you momentarily looked into the sun on a bright day). The size of the hot spot would grow, encompass my central vision. Then the visual symptoms would subside and the severe dull aching throbbing pounding headache would start. Back then it would last for as little as 12 hours to as much as 48 hours. Then there was the "migraine aftershock". Photo-phobia(sensitivity to light), nausea, the feeling of your brain rattling around inside your head when you took a hard step or tried to run. I was one of the luckier ones, I only got nauseous. Many people who get migraines actually vomit.

My parents took my to various doctors and specialists and no one could figure out what was going on. I was prescribe a variety of medications from Percocet to Valium. None of which really helped any more than dulling the pain a little. When I was 17, I called my dad from high school and told him I was getting a migraine and could he bring me the Valium. Instead he checked me out of school and took me to the chiropractor he was going to for his back pain. The chiropractor examined me and then adjusted my neck. He told my father to take me home, put me to bed and see how I was the next day. When I woke up, there was no pain, no migraine and no "aftershock". I was amazed. Having lived with these migraine headaches since I was 11, there never any treatment or medication that helped take it all away. Through some coaxing from my parents, the chiropractic talked to me about becoming a chiropractor. The rest as I'm sure you've figured out, is history.

But now that I am a professional that helps people with headaches and other conditions, you (or I in this case) have to ask are chiropractic spinal adjustments really effective for migraine and other types of headaches. As it turns out, not am I not the only chiropractor that has successfully treated patients with headaches, there is a growing body of evidence being published that also shows its effectiveness.

So what comes around-goes around. If you're a consumer, there's more than drugs, ice packs, hot packs and massage to treat your headaches. If I'm able to help you find your way to a competent local chiropractor, then I'm happy I was able to help you as Dr. B.J. Harmon helped me when I was 11.

Here are some of references and excerpts from some of the published research out there:

Nowadays, with regular care, I get 1, maybe two headaches per year. With an adjustment during the "aura" phase, they last only a few hours now, if that.

A Special Thank you to Dr. B.J. Harmon for helping me when I was a young boy and directing me into this great profession.

'Nuff Said

Dr. T

What Is Health....Really?

2012-01-01T10:20:00.001-05:00

I know I normally write about some aspect of sports medicine, rehab or related nutrition, but I wanted to start 2012 with a basic foundation. I simply want you to be on the same page with me when it comes to health.

Having done consultations on over 10,000 individual patients in my office since starting my practice, I've come across something I think is a bit hypocritical but are completely unaware of. Simply, it's what people define as "Health". Starting on the right foot for 2012 I wanted get a basic understanding of what health is and what health isn't. What better to do on the 1st day of the new year.

In doing a medical history on a patient, it is routine after the "history of present illness or injury" to ask about their personal past medical history, surgical history, allergies and social aspects of their life. Along with those it's critical to ask about their family's past medical history. As it may give you unique insight to why the patient consulted you in the first place. In doing a family medical history, when asking about the health of their mom and dad, I routinely get the answer that "everyone is healthy". But being the curious person that I am, coupled with a sense that I wasn't getting the whole picture from a particular patient, I asked "are your parents taking any medications"??? The answer was yes.

Both parents were on blood pressure medications and the father was on Lipitor. His father's older brother was also on blood pressure meds, Lipitor and was on medication for non-insulin dependent diabetes.

So I quickly remarked - I thought you said your parents were healthy?

The patient said "the medications make them healthy"

To which I replied: No, the medications don't make them healthy, they just keep their disease under control. They have disease that is controlled by medication, if they were healthy, they wouldn't need the medication. The patient looked at me and (yes, you guessed it) agreed with me.

So now let me give you what I feel is one of the best definitions of health. I had to dig all the way back to 1946 to get it:

1946: The World Health Organization (WHO) "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

(Notice the word - COMPLETE)

Dorland's Medical Dictionary defines health as "An optimal state

of physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."

To further emphasize my point, I would add: A state in which all the tissues, cells and physiologic functions are working at 100% Why? Because as pointed out in the 2 definitions above, health isn't merely the absence of disease, health is when you have an optimal state where your body (systems) are working completely.

In order to be healthy, you have to know what health is. If your doctor has put you on medications, it means you have some type of condition or disease. We are lucky we live in an age where we have the luxury of have a group of professionals that can prolong your life and improve the quality of your life with medications. However, don't confuse being medicated to control a condition with being healthy. They are not on in the same. You may feel good, you may look good, you may not be in acute distress, but your medication is controlling your condition, not making you health. I refer you back to the 2 definitions above to emphasize my point.

In some cases, people just got a bad roll of the genetic dice and don't have much of a choice. But others, well, just remember the old and real definition of health: a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Something that you have a lot more control over than you are led to believe.

Having said that, for those that did get a poorer roll of the genetic dice, you can certainly take control over the rest of your health and be as healthy as you are capable of. I have a good friend who is a type II diabetic and he could go to any doctors office (other than his own) today and if he didn't say anything, the doctor wouldn't even know.

Hear's to your health and a great 2012 and the power you have over your own health!

'nuff said

Dr. T

References:
Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International
Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the
representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization,
no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948.The Definition has not been
amended since 1948.

Studies Suggest Adding Protein To Your Endurance Drink May Improve Performance

2011-12-31T09:36:00.001-05:00

For as long as I can remember (myself included) athletes have been drinking some type of "sports drink". In not-so-medical terms, a colored sugar water solution with electrolytes; to help enhance performance. Depending on your level of activity and the conditions you're exercising in, these solutions can add to your performance by delaying dehydration, maintaining blood glucose levels and potentially attenuate muscle glycogen depletion and fatigue. If you're an ultra athlete, competing in longer triathlons, marathons and other endurance races, employing this as part of your race strategy is a necessity. You simply need more fuel than your body has the capacity to carry. If you tried doing an Ironman or even an Olympic triathlon without it, not only couldn't you compete with the top athletes, you'd simply never finish. You'd likely be carried away by the paramedics at some point with an IV in your arm en route to the local E.R.

Since my times and distances are starting to get longer as I train, I just incorporated a fuel belt into my run training and am re-fueling during my runs.

Interestingly enough, there is a 2007 report published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition And Exercise Metabolism that suggests adding protein to your carbohydrate-electrolyte (CHO+) drink may improve your overall performance.

In an article titled: Coingestion of carbohydrate-protein during endurance exercise: influence on performance and recovery. Saunders MJ.

In this article, endurance athletes commonly consume carbohydrate-electrolyte sports beverages during prolonged events. Benefts of this strategy include delaying dehydration, maintain blood sugar levels, and potentially reducing the rate of muscle glycogen depletion and time to fatigue. As such, there is wide spread agreement that CHO+ beverages can improve endurance performance.

However there has been some controversy about the role of protein for endurance athletes and there have been some studies that report carbohydrate-protein ingestion improves endurance performance to a greater extent than carbohydrate alone.

The studies suggest that consuming CHO+Protein may reduce muscle damage and improve post exercise recovery. While most of the studies looked at post exercise nutrition intake, they seem to infer that these benefits may be elicited with CHO+Protein during exercise; suggesting the importance of protein along with CHOs to benefit endurance.

The author also points out that there are a couple of studies that compare CHO and CHO+Protein report no major differences, but further notes there are a number of methodological difference with those studies which may have influenced the outcome including amounts and times ingested. Further, he points out that "although there are plausible mechanisms that could explain the ergogenic effects of carbohydrate-protein beverages, they remain relatively untested"

Relatively untested. But what is out there suggests this may be a favorable strategy. I believe the tendency is going in the right direction and since CHO+Protein is what you re-fuel with post exercise anyway, employing the same strategy during your endurance exercise or event will replenish what your body is expending and therefore improve your ability to continue. I'm typically not the type of person to wait until scientists give me the okay. If something makes sense, I'd rather the scientists be there to tell me later on that I was right - again.

But that's just me.

Reference: Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2007 Aug;17 Suppl:S87-103. Dept of Kinesiology, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA.

'Nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness &; Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

When It Comes To Peak Performance, Go With An Endurance Drink WITH Protein

2011-10-13T21:07:00.000-05:00

So you're out there exercising your buns off, sweating like crazy and training really hard. You reach for your water bottle but what exactly do you put in your water bottle and why?; Most people drink just water. Some drink a carbohydrate electrolyte replacement drink but according to some studies, if you really want to get the best hydration, performance and recovery, you need to have some protein in there as well. The following is a synopsis of a study comparing water to a carbohydrate sports drink to a carbohydrate-protein sports endurance drink.

Protein Added to a Sports Drink Improves Fluid Retention,
Seifert JG, Harmon J, DeClercq P. International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism 16: 420-429, 2006.

This study concluded that "contrary to popular misconception, adding protein to a carbohydrate-based sports drink ... led to improved water retention by 15 % over [a carbohydrate-only sports drink] and 40 % over plain water." Cyclists exercised until they lost 2 % of their body weight (through sweating) and then drank either a carbohydrate-protein sports drink (Accelerade®), a carbohydrate-only sports drink (Gatorade®), or water. Over the next three hours, measurements were taken to determine how much of each beverage was retained in the body (versus the amount lost through urination). The carbohydrate-protein sports drink was found to rehydrate the athletes 15% better than the carbohydrate-only sports drink and 40 % better than water. All three drinks emptied from the stomach and were absorbed through the intestine at the same rate. In addition, there was no difference between the carbohydrate-protein drink and the carbohydrate-only drink in terms of effects on blood plasma volume. This suggests that the carbohydrate-protein drink resulted in increased water retention within and between cells. Therefore a carbohydrate-protein sports drink may be a preferable choice, over plain water and a carbohydrate-electrolyte sports drink, when rehydration and fluid retention are a concern.

What If You Were Being Lied To About Nutrition? The Vegetarian Myth

2011-09-09T18:56:00.000-05:00

In the August 26, 2011 edition of the journal Nutrition a surprising conclusion was made in a recent study by Ingenbleek & McCully from the Laboratory of Nutrition, University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France.

This study of 24 rural male subjects 18 to 30 y old and 15 urban male controls was conducted. Overall health status was assessed by:

1. body weight
2. body mass index
3. serum albumin
4. plasma transthyretin
5. urinary nitrogen
6. creatinine.

Plasma lipids, vitamins B6, B9 and B12, homocysteine, and related sulfur amino acids were measured as selected cardiovascular disease risk factors

The conclusions of the study would surprise most physicians, most dieticians and of course those at PETA.

CONCLUSIONS: The low dietary intake of protein and sulfur amino acids by a plant-eating population leads to subclinical protein malnutrition, explaining the origin of hyperhomocysteinemia and the increased vulnerability of these vegetarian subjects to cardiovascular diseases

In more simplistic terms, a vegetarian diet may put you at risk of cardiovascular disease. I think former President Clinton may want to re-evaluate his new diet.

Homocysteine is normally changed into other amino acids for use by the body. If your homocysteine level is too high, you may not be getting enough B vitamins to help your body use the homocysteine.

Most people who have a high homocysteine level don't get enough folate (also called folic acid), vitamin B6 or vitamin B12 in their diet. Replacing these vitamins often helps return the homocysteine level to normal. Other possible causes of a high homocysteine level include low levels of thyroid hormone, kidney disease, psoriasis, some medicines or when the condition runs in your family.

It goes to show that the natural Hunter-Gatherer evolutionary diet of humans as noted in so many studies and books gains more credibility the more it's studied. More proof that we aren't vegetarians, vegans or carnivores, but Omnivores.

If you think it's difficult to show an old dog new tricks, try showing an old genome new biochemistry.

Combining this with the research of people like Walter L. Voegtlin, S. Boyd Eaton, Melvin Konner and Loren Cordain along with the most recent findings of this study on vegetarianism, it seems clear how we supposed to be feeding our bodies.

A balanced diet takes on an entirely new meaning now. The balance should be between healthy forms of animal protein such as wild game, grass fed beef/buffalo or bison, free range/pastured poultry and wild fish along with vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and water.

It is specifically because of our omnivore diet that we were able to "stick and move" through evolution and survive different environments. What was good for us then is good for us now.

Click here to read the abstract of the research on Pub Med

'nuff said

Dr. T

____________________________________________
Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

The Whole Grain Scam Re-Visited

2011-08-21T10:10:00.004-05:00

By Miami Beach Chiropractor Todd M. Narson, DC, DACBSP

On September 2007 I wrote a blog article entitled “The Whole Grain Scam”. In the very first paragraph I wrote:

“Don't get me wrong, eating whole grains is E-X-T-R-E-M-E-L-Y healthy for you. This isn't the scam. What is a scam is all of the packaging out there tricking you into believing you're actually eating whole grains. Therein "lies" the true scam”. http://naturalsportsmedicine.blogspot.com/2007/09/whole-grain-scam.htmlhttp://naturalsportsmedicine.blogspot.com/2007/09/whole-grain-scam.html

Now 4 years, a lot of nutrition books, webinars and seminars later I realized that this was a mis-statement of monumental proportions. As I learn more and more about nutrition, I write and post what I learn in order to help others. As one learns you often find yourself tossing out old ideas and theories due to new advances in science and discovery. You make your changes and adjustments the forge ahead. Education is ever evolving. As it turns out, the more I read about grains, the more I realize it really doesn’t matter how the grains are served up, whole, refined or wrapped up with a pretty pink bow, grains are treated by your body like sugar and that’s a bad thing.

And we weren’t meant to eat sugar as we do today.

The real whole grain scam is that grains are good for you in the first place. They’re not. Do they have some healthy nutrients in them? Yes they do, but they are bound so tightly to the grain, that they pass right through your body. Grains contain an anti-nutrient called Phytates that block our absorption of B vitamins and chemically bind iron, copper, zinc and calcium to prevent their absorption and digestion. So while grains contain calcium, zinc, copper, iron and B vitamins, you don’t get their benefit. You can’t, phytates prevent it. So grains are doing exactly what they were designed to do – survive the digestive tract, get dropped out the other end and still have enough “stuff” in it to re-plant and perpetuate the species. Survival of the fittest applies to plants too.

Grains are really the seeds from tall grasses. Now think to yourself…if you were living 100,000 years ago, or 2 million years ago how would you have picked enough of these grains to make them any kind of important part of your diet? The technology simply didn’t exist. You would have had to pick enough grains, then mash them or boil them in order to eat them. The technology didn’t exist and in order to eat enough of the grains, you’d expend too much energy picking and preparing them, they contained chemical components that prevented their valuable nutrients from being absorbed – what’s the point? To early humans, it wasn’t worth the effort except. According to Loren Cordain, PhD, they only ate grains in times of extreme starvation.

Research by teams of researchers continuously show that Paleolithic man (caveman is you will) had a diet that consisted of wild game and fish, vegetables, fruits (mostly low glycemic fruits like berries) and nuts. We drank water.

Since the agricultural age began approximately 10,000 years ago, we started to see a shrinking in the height of humans, on average preagricultural man was 5’9” tall and by 3,000 BCE, the average male was 5’3” tall. Cerial grains were providing fuel however lacked many of the nutrients wild meats, vegetables and fruits did. The result was more that just our general shrinking, but an explosion in the rate of ill health, disease and a reduction in the average life span. Dental cavities and tooth decay as well as heart disease, strokes, type II diabetes and cancer started to rear their ugly heads.

Coincidence?

No, it’s called Adaptive Physiology.

Adaptive physiology can work for us or against us. Our gene pool spent millions of years being shaped and shifted from the environment which we evolved from. Food of course was one of the biggest sources of influence from that environment. Our physiology was created by the foods we ate. Since no where in our gene pool over the past 4.5 million years (sans the past 10,000) did our food include grains, needless to say, grains should not be part of our diets today.

Nowhere in our evolutionary history did we eat grains or sugar and both should be stricken from our diets. But be careful when you go to the grocery store and buy some meat. You see, our meats are now grain fed too. Beef use to eat the flowering tops of grasses (what we now call “grass fed”) and poultry use to eat bugs, worms, larvae, seeds and were basically “omnivores”. Cows, buffalo and bison were monolithic vegans eating only the flower tops of various varieties of grass. Fish, well, ate other fish. Bu go ahead and go shopping and see what you find….grain fed beef, grain fed poultry and farm raised-mostly grain fed fish.

When you feed any species a diet it wasn’t physiologically adapted for, it gets sick. Our food gets its nutrient content from their food, and so on. So when we eat grain fed beef rather than grass fed beef, it doesn’t contain the nutrients that we need and adapted to. The same for grain fed chicken and fish.

Oh, and I don’t care if they’re fed organic grains. Organic or not, if you’re not meant to eat grains it doesn’t matter. They’ll just be “organically sick”, just like you’ll be if you eat them. Would you eat cardboard? What about organic cardboard? Ridiculous right? Exactly my point. It's not good for you either way.

So, based on my current knowledge and studying, If it contains grains, don’t eat it. Grains being healthy is the scam. Now just throw in sugar, salt and un-natural fats and you have the health epidemic we have today.

However if you choose to eat them, make sure they’re spouted. Although sprouting grains does not reduce gluten (reference: The Gluten Doctors) it does reduces the phytates. But grains are neolithic nutrition, not meant for our paleolithic genes.

If you’re wondering about getting enough fiber, don’t worry. Fruit contains twice the amount of fiber as grains and vegetables contain 8 times the amount of fiber as grains. So eat the food we were made for:

1. animal protein from animals that ate their natural evolutionary diet
a. Wild game meats
b. Grass fed beef, buffalo, bison
c. Free range – pastured poultry
d. Wild caught fish
2. Vegetables (non-starchy; locally grown or organic)
3. Fruits (mostly berries; non-starchy)
4. Nuts
5. Drink water

Do this until you reach your health goals, then, do the 80-20 rule. Eat great 80% of the time, eat for taste bud enjoyment the other 20% and you should do just fine. This comes out to eating good 6 days per week and 1 day eat what you want. And, if you want, then eat great that day too.

The physiology of paleolithic man was more like that of our super athletes today. Eat the way they ate and you'll be on your way to a much better, stronger, healthier and longer future.

The whole grain scam is that grains, whole or refined are a health food. Simply put, They're Not.

‘nuff said.

Dr. T

More Teens Die of Heat Stroke – When Will We Demand Better Education OF Our Kids Coaches?

2011-08-03T14:32:00.000-05:00

Well, it’s extremely sad to day it happened again. This past week two more teenagers died of heat stroke during summer football practice. In Columbia County, FL a 16 year old boy was found dead at a high school football camp this past Tuesday. Hours later, another 16-year old. Georgia high school football player died in an Atlanta hospital, a week after being admitted suffering what doctors believe was heat exhaustion. Since the young athlete died, it’s pretty safe to say it was heat stroke, not heat exhaustion. In either case, this is a tragedy that is happening all too often and a clear trend is emerging and it seems our children do not appear to be safe in the hands of high school coaches.

After I decided that sports medicine was the direction I wanted my career to take, I started volunteering at local beach volleyball tournaments and triathlons. I had been putting in my time with more experienced sports medicine physicians for a couple of years when in the summer of 1994 I saw my first case of heat exhaustion. It was late in the day during the 1994 Bud Light Florida Beach Volleyball tournament on Ft. Lauderdale beach that we began to see them. This was an armature tournament and the players presented with very hot and red skin, not sweating after playing for hours and the muscles in their extremities (arms and legs) were fibrillating. We immediately administered fluids, cool towels and called 911 to transport to the local E.R. for I.V. fluids an evaluation. Luckily, no one died.

This brings up a good point, this was an amateur tournament and they didn’t have the knowledge or experience to know much about heat exhaustion or heat stroke. Luckily we were there in the medical tents and were able to handle it. But what about your teenage son or daughter and their high school coach? How well trained is the high school coach and assistant coaches in the prevention of heat exhaustion? Does the coach know what to do to help prevent heat exhaustion of heat stroke? Do they know what the signs and symptoms are and could they recognize it before it becomes too late? Just remember, they’re coaching your child.

Former coach David Jason Stinson, 37, was charged after 15-year-old Max Gilpin collapsed at an August 2008 practice as the team ran a series of sprints known as "gassers." He died three days later at a Louisville hospital of heat stroke, sepsis and multiple organ failure. His temperature reached at least 107 degrees. Players said Stinson ordered the gassers as punishment for the lack of effort they showed at practice on a day where th temperature and heat index were both 94 degrees. Prosecutors relied on a series of Gilpin's teammates who testified that several teens became ill during the gassers, vomiting or bowing out of the running with ailments.Several medical and athletic training experts also testified for the prosecution, saying Gilpin suffered from exertional heat stroke, which led to his death. One witness, University of Connecticut associate professor Douglas Casa, said Gilpin could have been saved if he'd been immersed in ice water almost immediately after collapsing on the field. Click here to read more on this story

All too often I’ve seen coaches use water as the bait to get their kids to push themselves to the max. They use water as a punishment and a reward and this is utterly stupid and puts your child at risk. Athletes should drink enough water to prevent thirst, not wait until their thirsty to start drinking.
Parents and coaches should also know that dehydration reduces athletic performance. So if a coach is trying to get more out of the athlete, then drinking water and keeping hydrated is critical to top athletic performance. Studies show that athletes who lose as little as 2% of their body weight through sweating have a drop in blood volume which causes the heart to work hard in order to circulate the blood. A drop in blood volume can also lead to muscle cramping, dizziness, fatigue as well as heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

If there isn’t a sports medicine professional such as an athletic trainer, certified sports chiropractor or medical physician at the practices or games, then you need to make sure that your children’s coach knows the signs or heat exhaustion and stroke and knows how to properly coach your kids to prevent dehydration. Water is essential for life and no longer should coaches use water as a reward or punishment to get their athletes to push themselves longer and harder.

If you are as concerned about this as I am, then take a few moments and read the 10 Ways To Prevent Heat Stroke In Student Athletes.

Exercising during the hot summer can be very dangerous. Make sure your child's coaches have the proper training and take the proper precautions. Make sure the coach and your child knows how important it is hydrate themselves. Make sure they know you get better performance when properly hydrated and make sure they know the consequences for not hydrating.

This isn't one of those issues to take lightly. This is life and death. It's easier to have a hard talk with the coach and threaten to pull your child from their program than to give a eulogy about your child.

Sorry to be so harsh, but this isn't a time to mince words.

'nuff said

Dr. T

My Birthday Present To You

2011-07-03T09:57:00.002-05:00

Posted By Miami Beach Chiropractor & Sports Medicine Physcian, Dr. Todd Narson

Dear Friends,

So, today is my birthday, but today, I want to give you a present. The present is the opportunity for you to learn some valuable information that could improve your health and the health of your family. As you know, I'm a big supporter of the Paleo Diet and "caveman" eating principles. I use these principles when helping my patients find relief from pain, lose weight, increase athletic performance and generally improve their state of health. I feel the most precious things we have in life are our health, our time and our loved ones...I ask you to take an hour and watch this video presentation by Loren Cordain, PhD, author of The Paleo Diet & The Paleo Diet for Athletes as he presents a body of evidence supporting the validity of our original human diet.

Here's to your health!

Enjoy

Dr. Narson

It's Time To Re-Think That Big Bowl of Pasta The Night Before Your Race...

2011-07-01T06:06:00.000-05:00

It's tradition for marathoners, triathletes and the like to have that big bowl of pasta the night before the big race. I've personally never been a big fan of this, but it seemed to be tradition, I love pasta but know it's not good for me (so any excuse to eat it worked fine for me) and hey.. I was gonna race it off the next day anyway. But it seems it might not be the best fuel for your optimal performance after all.

This is a repost, originally published on Bicycling Magazine at www.Bicycling.com

Cycling Nutrition: Big Fat Lies

Big Fat Lies
A surprising new approach to losing weight and keeping it off—and riding longer and stronger than ever.

One of the long-enduring traditions at bike events of all stripes is the pasta dinner the evening before the big ride. After all, who doesn't believe in the hearty, turbo-fueling quality of a whopping plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce?

As it turns out, the nonbelievers include a number of highly informed people, including Allen Lim, PhD, the brains behind much of Garmin-Slipstream's training and race preparation. "There's nothing nutritious about that," Lim says. In fact, he has eliminated all processed wheat from the team's diet, and at races has replaced traditional starchy foods with balanced, whole-food fuel such as rice cakes made with eggs, olive oil, prosciutto and liquid amino acids. If this creates the impression that Lim knows something you don't, well, that's probably true. His job is to make sure that, unlike the rest of us, his team doesn't blithely adhere to old, counterproductive eating habits—habits that can lead to unnecessary weight fluctuation and diminished performance.

Here's the good news. We've tapped into this new school of food science led by the likes of Lim to correct popular misconceptions about food, particularly about carbs and fat. Proponents of this new approach believe, for example, that a diet heavy in starch causes your body to burn sugar instead of fat, so you bonk more easily, often eat too much and end up overweight rather than properly fueled.

Even Joe Friel, who relentlessly advocated carbohydrates in his training bible series of books, has done a 180, turning his back on starches and relying instead on vegetables, fruits and lean meats as fuel. Consider this our effort to correct myths and misconceptions you've been exposed to over the years. Follow this advice, and you won't just live lean. You'll also be able to ride longer on less food and never bonk.

FALLACY #1 - A calorie is a calorie
This might be the biggest weight-loss misunderstanding in existence. For years we've been told that weight loss is a simple calories-in, calories-out equation, and 3,500 excess calories will put on a pound whether they come from soybeans or banana cream pie. That's simply not true.

"There are three key types of calories: carbohydrate, protein and fat," says sports nutritionist Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, CSSD, creator and coauthor of the Flat Belly Diet (published by Rodale, Bicycling's parent company). "They're as different as gasoline, motor oil and brake fluid in terms of the roles they play in keeping your body operating optimally." Sass says that many of her clients might eat the perfect number of calories, but they have cut their fat intake too much. So the jobs that fat does, such as repairing cell membranes and optimizing hormones, go undone, and the surplus carbs are stored as fat. By correcting her clients' balance of carbs, protein and fat without changing their calorie intake, she says, she has helped them lose weight, improve their immune systems, gain muscle and boost energy.

The Get-Lean Fix
Eat a representative of each macronutrient group at every meal. Sass recommends getting 50 to 55 percent of your calories from carbs (fill half your plate with vegetables, fruits and some whole grains), 25 to 30 percent from fats (olive oil, avocado and so on), and 15 to 20 percent from protein (lean meats, fish, eggs and poultry). "Just be sure to skew your preworkout meals or snacks to be heavier in carbs and lower in fat and protein to fuel up properly and avoid cramps," says Sass.

Fallacy #2 - Starches are sensible fuel
At some point, starch became synonymous with carbohydrate. While pasta and bagels are carbohydrates, and you do need carbs for fuel, they're often not the best sources, especially if you're trying to keep weight off. Starchy carbs are easy to overeat, and any surplus goes to your fat stores. "Your brain operates on sugar, and when you eat bagels or potatoes, your body turns them into sugar and delivers them to your cells quickly, which makes your brain happy and leaves you wanting more," says Friel. So in this case, you shouldn't listen to your body.

Fruits and vegetables, by contrast, are rich in carbs but often lower in calories and also digest more slowly. You're less likely to plow through so many berries and carrots that you end up with more fuel than you need. As a bonus, plant foods are loaded with vitamins, minerals and immunity-boosting phytonutrients that make you healthier and stronger, so you can ride better and burn more calories.

The Get-Lean Fix
Choose carbs wisely. Eat starchy, quick-digesting carbs only during and right before and after training rides or races, when it's important to get food that can be quickly digested and converted to fuel. Otherwise, get your carbs from fruits and vegetables.

How much is enough? If you're eating considerably more than Sass's recommended 50 to 55 percent, especially from starchy sources, then you risk changing your metabolism, says Friel. "When I see someone who has started eating lots of starch," he says, "they not only have gained fat, they've also changed their metabolism from fat-burning to sugar-burning." It doesn't happen over one plate of pasta, but the body is adaptable. "Over the course of a few of months," Friel says, "it will switch over to burn whatever you're feeding it most."

When possible, pair your carbs with some protein. Lean meats, nut butters, fish and eggs slow digestion, so you feel full sooner, get more even energy from your meals and stay full longer. The amino acids in protein also help repair, build and maintain muscle tissue.

It's no coincidence that Americans got heavier as fat consumption went down. For years, the government preached low-fat, carb-heavy diets. "This wasn't only misguided; it was flat-out wrong," Friel says.

Fallacy #3 - All fat makes you fat
As your body becomes more conditioned, you become a better fat burner. You need ample amounts of healthy fat, which, contrary to widely held belief, won't make you fat. In fact, starchy foods turn to stored fat far more quickly. What's more, evidence is stacking up that healthy unsaturated fats are essential for firing up your fat-burning metabolism. In a study of 101 men and women, Harvard researchers put half the group on a low-fat diet and half on a diet that included about 20 percent of calories from monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs). After 18 months, the MUFA-eating group had dropped 11 pounds; its low-fat-eating peers had shed only six. Fat is also slower to digest than carbs, so it helps you stay hunger-free longer.

Fat will help you ride longer so you can burn more calories, says Friel. Research shows that athletes who get about 50-plus percent of their diet from fat produce better average times to exhaustion in exercise tests than those eating typical low-fat, high-carb diets.

The Get-Lean Fix
Add healthy fats to every meal. Sass recommends getting about 20 percent of your calories from MUFAs, or about 55 grams per day at 2,500 calories, which is what most cyclists eat as training ramps up. "Because most athletes don't have time to count fat grams, the simpler message is: Include small portions of good fats, like almonds, avocado and olive oil, with all meals and snacks," she says. Try nuts and seeds, olive-based tapenades and even the occasional chunk of dark chocolate. Some healthy portions to shoot for:

Nuts and seeds Everything from pecans to pine nuts, almond butter to tahini. A serving size is 2 tablespoons.
Olives Black, green, mixed or blended in a spreadable tapenade. A serving is 10 large olives or 2 tablespoons of spread.
Oils Canola, flaxseed, peanut, safflower, walnut, sunflower, sesame or olive. Cook with them; drizzle them; eat them in pesto. One serving is 1 tablespoon.
Avocado As guacamole or just slice and serve. One-quarter cup equals one serving.
Dark chocolate Go for one-quarter cup of dark or semisweet, or about 2 ounces.

Fallacy #4 - Food comes from a box
Many cyclists who think they're eating healthfully often consume far more sugar and sodium than they realize because they eat so much pasta, cereals, energy bars and other processed foods. "The vast majority of grocery-store foods are packaged junk," says sports nutritionist and exercise physiologist Tavis Piattoly, RD, LD, of Elmwood Fitness Center, in New Orleans. Some items also contain trans fats—the kinds of fats you want to avoid. The sugar is also troublesome for weight loss because it causes the body to step up its production of insulin, which in turn blocks hormones that control appetite. As a result, the food you eat is quickly stored as fat—and still, you're always hungry.

The Get-Lean Fix
Eat mostly whole foods that are part of an animal or plant, Piattoly says. Fill most of your cart with foods from the grocery store's perimeter first; that's where the fresh produce, meats, fish and other whole foods are found. Then go down the center aisles to fill in the rest. That should reflect the proportion of processed foods you include in your diet.

Fallacy #5 - Skipping breakfast is fine if you need to drop a few pounds
Eat breakfast. That bit of essential advice is food gospel. Still, according to a survey by the International Food Information Council Foundation, fewer than half of us eat a morning meal. Breakfast is the key that starts your fat-burning metabolism. Without it, you go into an energy deficit that not only leaves you ravenous (and more likely to overeat) later, but also suppresses your calorie-burning furnace, so what you do eat is more likely to go into storage. Research shows that people who skip breakfast are 4 1/2 times more likely to be overweight than those who don't. "It's one of the biggest fueling mistakes almost everyone makes," says Piattoly.

The Get-Lean Fix
Because you have a whole day of activity—usually including a ride—ahead of you, try to eat about 25 percent of your daily calories at your morning meal. That meal should include protein, healthy fat and fiber-rich carbs like fruit. A British study found that exercisers who ate a breakfast high in fiber burned twice as much fat during workouts later in the day than those who ate less fibrous foods.

For a power breakfast that'll sustain you well into the day, try two eggs any style; cup whole oats, cooked; 1 cup yogurt; a cup of mixed berries; coffee; and orange juice.

Fallacy #6 - You can eat the same at age 40 as age 20
Muscle is the engine that powers your pedals, but it also drives your calorie-burning metabolism. The more lean tissue you have, the more calories you burn and the leaner you stay. As we age, we naturally lose muscle and thus gain fat. Cycling and strength training help stem that loss, but the right foods are more important for muscle maintenance than most people realize. Because of age-related kidney changes, our blood becomes more acidic and we excrete nitrogen, an essential component of muscle protein, faster than we take it in, Friel says. "Essentially we end up peeing away our muscles," he says. And with a net loss of nitrogen, you can't form new muscle.

The Get-Lean Fix
Turn the tide on nitrogen loss and preserve muscle mass by increasing the alkalinity of your blood to neutralize the acidity, says Friel. One way is with supplements like Acid Zapper, but you can also eat foods that enhance alkaline. Fruits and veggies are the only foods that offer a net increase, says Friel. Fats and oils are neutral. All other foods, including grains, legumes and meats, have an acid-producing effect. If you don't get most of your carbs from fruits and vegetables, Friel says, you're losing muscle mass as well as calcium from your bones, which also gets leached away in an acidic environment as you age.

Fallacy #7 - You're never hungry... or you're always hungry
Most diets treat hunger as the enemy. But it's actually your closest ally, says Piattoly. "Once you start the fat-reduction process, you'll be a little hungry, but not starving," he says. "The trick is balancing the two, so you're losing weight, but not setting yourself up for a binge."

The Get-Lean Fix
Try to eat every three to four hours, says Piattoly. "Eat breakfast, then wait until you feel hungry and eat just until you're no longer hungry," he says. "That's where people usually go wrong. They eat past the point of satisfaction until they're 'full.' Eat only until you're no longer hungry. If you don't feel hungry again in three to four hours, you ate too much earlier." Once you get the hang of it, weight loss and maintenance is much easier.

Where the Carbs Are
Fruits and vegetables are a more substantial source of carbohydrate than most people realize.

RAISINS, seedless (1/4 cup) 32g
BRUSSELS SPROUTS, cooked (1/2 cup) 7g
PEAS, cooked (1 cup) 25g
STRAWBERRIES (1 cup) 11g
SPINACH, cooked (1 cup) 7g
SUCCOTASH, cooked (1 cup) 47g
CARROTS, cooked (1/2 cup) 8g
ORANGE (1 medium) 14g
COLLARD GREENS, cooked (1 cup) 12g
CORN, sweet, cooked (1 ounce) 7g
CANTALOUPE (1 cup) 15g
SQUASH, winter, acorn, cooked (1 cup) 30g
SWEET POTATO, baked w/ skin (large) 44g
ARTICHOKE, cooked (1 medium) 13g
WATERMELON (1 cup) 11g
GREEN PEPPER (1 cup) 10g
BROCCOLI, raw (1 cup) 4g PEACH (1 large) 17g BANANA (medium) 30 g

Pasta & Grains
SPAGHETTI (1 cup) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40g
SPAGHETTI, whole wheat (1 cup) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37g
TAGLIATELLE (1 cup) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44g
WHEAT BREAD (1 slice) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12g
RYE BREAD (1 slice) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15g
MIXED-GRAIN BREAD (1 large slice) . . . . . . . . . .5g
FRENCH BREAD (5 inches) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18g
PITA BREAD, WHITE (6-inch diameter) .. . . . . . . .33g
LONG-GRAIN WHITE RICE (1 cup) . . . . . . . . . . . 45g
SHORT-GRAIN WHITE RICE (1 cup) . . . . . . . . . . 37g

Source URL: http://www.bicycling.com/training-nutrition/nutrition-weight-loss/big-fat-lies

Is it a Misconception To Think The Pros Get The Best In Sports Medicine???

2011-06-27T11:10:00.002-05:00

by Miami Beach Chiropractic Sports Physician, Dr. Todd M. Narson

2008 AVP - "South Beach" Miami Beach, FL

I came across an article this morning about The Minnesota Vikings and their athletic training staff. It's a nice article - building up their athletic training staff with all their accolades and experience. But something both bothered me and pleased me at the same time; It was this paragraph:

"The entire athletic training staff are Performance Enhancement Specialists through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. During the 2010 off-season, the Vikings staff was trained in Graston technique, a patented form of instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization that works to effectively break down scar tissue and fascial restrictions"

Realistically, there's nothing wrong with that paragraph. It's absolutely 100% accurate. They took the courses, did the training and yes, Graston Technique(r) does all those things (and more)... It makes me happy to hear about people advancing their education and skill-set, especially when it comes to improving the health of other people.

So what's my problem???

Well, what bothered me is here we have a group of medical professionals that have been behind the curve for quite a while, especially for being at the ultimate level in sports competition - The Pro's.

Working on a chronic post surgical knee using FAKTR technique (2006)

I've been certified in Graston Technique since 2002...both M1 & M2 certification levels and as of 3 years ago, FAKTR trained as well. Most of the public sits back, watches the games and when their player suddenly gets hurt they rest assured that their getting the best of the latest and greatest technology out there when it comes to sports medicine. Now it seems that may or may not be true.

Why am I being so harsh on them?

Graston Technique Represented a quantum leap in the technology of treating pain related soft tissue injuries - a paradigm shift in the way we treat soft tissue injuries. But this paradigm shift started back in 1994, not 2010. I first found out about Graston Technique(r) when at a continuing education convention in 2001 and was walking around some of the vendor booths during a break with my friend and sports medicine mentor Dr. Tom Hyde. This was the first time we encountered it. Within a year I was sitting in a Graston Technique(r) course. Tom had taken the first course he could find and was already certified and preparing to teach it. But if you know Tom, well, that's Tom. He's a walking talking functional sports medicine encyclopedia. If there anything effective and worth while, he dives in head first..learns everything there is to know and ends up teaching the rest of us.

Same thing, just a close up (still 2006)

It took some time to become proficient in the technique and after mastering it, it eventually it became one of my main tools when treating various pain syndromes - especially long term chronic ones. Conditions like chronic hamstrings strains in runners and triathletes, rotator cuff injuries, bicipital tenosynovitis (what most people call bicipital tendonitis), Post surgical adhesion pain as well as other pesky aches and pains that don't seem to respond to typical physiotherapy, stretching, exercise, pain/anti-inflammatory meds or chiropractic care. With Graston Technique and (eventually) FAKTR (which I became certified in 3 years ago) I was helping conditions that were extremely difficult to treat that took months and months of treatment, now in as little as a few treatment sessions or only a few weeks.

So why am I explaining this to you? Why does this "press release" erk me so much? Because I use to think just because they work with the Pro's they were automatically the best, but as it turns out, you can often find (at least) the same quality physicians, trainers and therapists as the professionals use, right in your neighborhood. And... you don't have to be a pro athlete to be treated like one. It's taken over a decade for the Vikings to adopt this wildly successful technique, but I bet there's an advanced soft tissue technique provider (Graston Technique certified and/or FAKTR trained provider) right in your neighborhood who is more experienced and more proficient.

Team Jamaica's Orthopedic Surgeon Assisting Me With Graston

Want to find a great chiropractic sports medicine physician right in your neighborhood? Click here to begin your search

'nuff said

Dr. T

Below are some great resources to find physicians and therapist with advanced degrees and certifications in sports medicine and/or advanced soft tissue treatment techniques like Graston Technique and FAKTR:

1. American Chiropractic Board of Sports Physicians(r)

2. ACA Sports Council

2. Graston Technique(r)

3. FAKTR (Functional And Kinetic Treatment with Rehab)

Nutella For The Health Minded | Primal Nutella

2011-06-25T09:12:00.004-05:00

I know some of you follow my rants for healthy eating and today I want to give you a treat. I was searching on you tube and found this recipe. I made it this morning and it's really good!

It's a take on the children's favorite chocolaty-peanut butter like spread Nutella. It's extremely simple with only 4 ingredients. Except for roasting the hazelnuts for 10 minutes, letting them cool overnight and peeling off the hazelnut skins (aka: The Prep Work) it only takes a few minutes to make this. You'll be licking the spoon in no time and without any reason for guilt.

Why no guilt? The Hazelnuts provide some protein and healthy fats, Coconut oil provides healthy fats, organic cocoa powder provides antioxidants and stevia extract powder is a natural plant extract that is naturally sweet but doesn't have any of the harmful effects of sugar. This recipe seems to be a great sweet treat without any of the downsides. Just remember: your body needs healthy fats to thrive, but fats have twice the calories of carbs and protein. So don't eat the bowl. But as long as you're active - enjoy as a sweet chocolaty treat whenever.

So, get your sweet tooth and taste buds ready, here's comes chocolaty awesomeness:

Primal Nutella

1 pound of Roasted and peeled hazelnuts
2 teaspoons of Organic cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of Stevia extract powder
2 teaspoons of Coconut oil (best is cold pressed extra virgin)

Directions:

1. Lay 1 pound of hazelnuts on a baking sheet (with small sides so they don’t roll off) and bake on 350 for 5-7 minutes. Place on counter and let cool for a few hours or overnight.

2. In the morning, peel skins off roasted hazelnuts and put clean hazelnuts in a bowl, use the skins for compost or just discard.

3. Pour hazelnuts into vitamix or cuisinart and grind them until they start to have the consistency of a cookie dough or like clumpy peanut butter. (in the vitamix you can just grind it into a peanut butter consistency

4. Add 2 teaspoons of coconut oil a little at a time.

5. Add 3 teaspoons of organic cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon of stevia powder

6. Continue to blend it until it’s smooth and creamy. (If you’ve used a vita mix the Nutella will be hot and thin. Just let it cool to room temperature. But in the mean time, feel free to lick the spoon, the bowl, the vita mix container, etc…)

7. Pour into a container, let cool and ENJOY!!!

Here's a link to the original YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqc9FjjI4p0

Health Alert - Top National "Nutrition Experts" Get It Wrong

2011-06-24T09:11:00.003-05:00

By Miami Beach Chiropractor & Sports Physician, Dr. Todd Narson

This is such an important topic that I'm gonna make a couple comments, then paste the entire article in from the source. Recently, US News and World Report published an article reporting on the top 20 diets. Unfortunately for their magazine and its readers, they got "it" DEAD WRONG!.

Why dead wrong? Because their so called "top nutrition experts" apparently don't consider actual research when making their determinations for what is healthful and what isn't. The big problem is that many doctors who, like I are out in the trenches, seeing and advising patients in real life; are advising them on bogus information. Then, they advise you with their bogus information (think about the original USDA food pyramid) and you end up with the exact conditions and diseases you're trying to prevent. Dead Wrong.

So below is the unedited RAW response from one Loren Cordain PhD's colleagues at Colorado State University alerting him to the US News and World Report article, followed by links to the article and then.....(wait for it)..... Dr. Cordain's incredible response to their inane article.

You'll notice Dr. Cordain responds WITH very credible nutrition research that's been vetted and published in scientific journals. He backs up EVERYTHING he says and is right on the money.

After reading this as well as the original article, I call into question the very credibility of anything reported in US News and World report. But then again, I'm just one of those people that like to "question" everything.

The following is the response/rebuttal directly from Dr. Cordain's web site: www.ThePaleoDiet.com

Please read, comment, enjoy and learn....

Dr. Cordain’s Rebuttal to U.S. News and World Report Top 20 Diets

Hi Doc,

I’m not sure if you’ve seen this or not, but US News ranked Paleo last of 20 diets claiming a lack of scientific evidence and no-long term weight maintenance guidelines. I’m not sure if you’d be interested in defending it or not, but if you’d be willing to provide specific refutations of their claims, I’d like to write a response piece for the Colorado State University Collegian to run next Wednesday, my deadline is Saturday.

Thanks.

http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/paleo-diet

http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best-overall-diets

Seth Stern

June 8, 2011

Hi Seth,

Good to hear from you and many thanks for your continued support of the Paleo Diet. I hadn’t seen this piece, but I appreciate that you have brought it to my attention. It is obvious that whoever wrote this piece did not do their homework and has not read the peer review scientific papers which have examined contemporary diets based upon the Paleolithic food groups which shaped the genomes of our ancestors. Accordingly the writer’s conclusions are erroneous and misleading. I feel strongly that it is necessary to point out these errors and make this information known to a much wider audience than those reached by the readers of the U.S. News and World Report. You have my permission to syndicate my response and or your write up for the CSU Collegian to any of the major news services including AP and UPI. Additionally, I will copy a number of colleagues and scientists worldwide with this message to ensure that it will be widely circulated on the web, blogs and chat groups.

The writer of this article suggests that the Paleo Diet has only been scientifically tested in “one tiny study”. This quote is incorrect as five studies (1-7); four since 2007, have experimentally tested contemporary versions of ancestral human diets and have found them to be superior to Mediterranean diets, diabetic diets and typical western diets in regards to weight loss, cardiovascular disease risk factors and risk factors for type 2 diabetes.

The first study to experimentally test diets devoid of grains, dairy and processed foods was performed by Dr. Kerin O’Dea at the University of Melbourne and published in the Journal, Diabetes in 1984 (6). In this study Dr. O’Dea gathered together 10 middle aged Australian Aborigines who had been born in the “Outback”. They had lived their early days primarily as hunter gatherers until they had no choice but to finally settle into a rural community with access to western goods. Predictably, all ten subjects eventually became overweight and developed type 2 diabetes as they adopted western sedentary lifestyles in the community of Mowwanjum in the northern Kimberley region of Western Australia. However, inherent in their upbringing was the knowledge to live and survive in this seemingly desolate land without any of the trappings of the modern world.

Dr. O’Dea requested these 10 middle aged subjects to revert to their former lives as hunter gatherers for a seven week period. All agreed and traveled back into the isolated land from which they originated. Their daily sustenance came only from native foods that could be foraged, hunted or gathered. Instead of white bread, corn, sugar, powdered milk and canned foods, they began to eat the traditional fresh foods of their ancestral past: kangaroos, birds, crocodiles, turtles, shellfish, yams, figs, yabbies (freshwater crayfish), freshwater bream and bush honey. At the experiment’s conclusion, the results were spectacular, but not altogether unexpected given what known about Paleo diets, even then. The average weight loss in the group was 16.5 lbs; blood cholesterol dropped by 12 % and triglycerides were reduced by a whopping 72 %. Insulin and glucose metabolism became normal, and their diabetes effectively disappeared.

The first recent study to experimentally test contemporary Paleo diets was published in 2007 (5). Dr. Lindeberg and associates placed 29 patients with type 2 diabetes and heart disease on either a Paleo diet or a Mediterranean diet based upon whole grains, low-fat dairy products, vegetables, fruits, fish, oils, and margarines. Note that the Paleo diet excludes grains, dairy products and margarines while encouraging greater consumption of meat and fish. After 12 weeks on either diet blood glucose tolerance (a risk factor for heart disease) improved in both groups, but was better in the Paleo dieters. In a 2010 follow-up publication, of this same experiment the Paleo diet was shown to be more satiating on a calorie by calorie basis than the Mediterranean diet because it caused greater changes in leptin, a hormone which regulates appetite and body weight.

In the second modern study (2008) of Paleo Diets, Dr. Osterdahl and co-workers (7) put 14 healthy subjects on a Paleo diet. After only three weeks the subjects lost weight, reduced their waist size and experienced significant reductions in blood pressure, and plasminogen activator inhibitor (a substance in blood which promotes clotting and accelerates artery clogging). Because no control group was employed in this study, some scientists would argue that the beneficial changes might not necessarily be due to the Paleo diet. However, a better controlled more recent experiments showed similar results.

In 2009, Dr. Frasetto and co-workers (1) put nine inactive subjects on a Paleo diet for just 10 days. In this experiment, the Paleo diet was exactly matched in calories with the subjects’ usual diet. Anytime people eat diets that are calorically reduced, no matter what foods are involved, they exhibit beneficial health effects. So the beauty of this experiment was that any therapeutic changes in the subjects’ health could not be credited to reductions in calories, but rather to changes in the types of food eaten. While on the Paleo diet either eight or all nine participants experienced improvements in blood pressure, arterial function, insulin, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. What is striking about this experiment is how rapidly so many markers of health improved, and that they occurred in every single patient.

In an even more convincing recent (2009) experiment, Dr. Lindeberg and colleagues (2) compared the effects of a Paleo diet to a diabetes diet generally recommended for patients with type 2 diabetes. The diabetes diet was intended to reduce total fat by increasing whole grain bread and cereals, low fat dairy products, fruits and vegetables while restricting animal foods. In contrast, the Paleo diet was lower in cereals, dairy products, potatoes, beans, and bakery foods but higher in fruits, vegetables, meat, and eggs compared to the diabetes diet. The strength of this experiment was its cross over design in which all 13 diabetes patients first ate one diet for three months and then crossed over and ate the other diet for three months. Compared to the diabetes diet, the Paleo diet resulted in improved weight loss, waist size, blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c (a marker for long term blood glucose control). This experiment represents the most powerful example to date of the Paleo diet’s effectiveness in treating people with serious health problems.

So, now that I have summarized the experimental evidence supporting the health and weight loss benefits of Paleo Diets, I would like to directly respond to the errors in the U.S. News and World Report article.

1. “Will you lose weight? No way to tell.”

Obviously, the author of this article did not read either the study by O’Dea (6) or the more powerful three month crossover experiment by Jonsson and colleagues (9) which demonstrated the superior weight loss potential of high protein, low glycemic load Paleo diets. Similar results of high protein, low glycemic load diets have recently been reported in the largest randomized controlled trials ever undertaken in both adults and children.

A 2010 randomized trial involving 773 subjects and published in the New England Journal of Medicine (8) confirmed that high protein, low glycemic index diets were the most effective strategy to keep weight off. The same beneficial effects of high protein, low glycemic index diets were dramatically demonstrated in largest nutritional trial, The DiOGenes Study (9), ever conducted in a sample of 827 children. Children assigned to low protein, high glycemic diets became significantly fatter over the 6 month experiment, whereas those overweight and obese children assigned to the high protein, low glycemic nutritional plan lost significant weight.

2. “Does it have cardiovascular benefits? Unknown.”

This comment shows just how uninformed this writer really is. Clearly, this person hasn’t read the following papers (1 – 6) which unequivocally show the therapeutic effects of Paleo Diets upon cardiovascular risk factors.

“And all that fat would worry most experts.”

This statement represents a “scare tactic” unsubstantiated by the data. As I, and almost the entire nutritional community, have previously pointed out, it is not the quantity of fat which increases the risk for cardiovascular disease or cancer, or any other health problem, but rather the quality. Contemporary Paleo Diets contain high concentrations of healthful omega 3 fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids and long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids that actually reduce the risk for chronic disease (10-18).

3. “Can it prevent or control diabetes? Unknown.”

Here is another example of irresponsible and biased journalism which doesn’t let the facts speak for themselves. Obviously, the author did not read the study by O’dea (6) or Jonsson et al. (2) which showed dramatic improvements in type 2 diabetics consuming Paleo diets.

“but most diabetes experts recommend a diet that includes whole grains and dairy products.”

If the truth be known, in a randomized controlled trial, 24 8-y-old boys were asked to take 53 g of protein as milk or meat daily (19). After only 7 days on the high milk diet, the boys became insulin resistant. This is a condition that precedes the development of type 2 diabetes. In contrast, In the meat-group, there was no increase in insulin and insulin resistance. Further, in the Jonsson et al. study (2) milk and grain free diets were shown to have superior results in improving disease symptoms in type 2 diabetics.

4. “Are there health risks? Possibly. By shunning dairy and grains, you’re at risk of missing out on a lot of nutrients.”

Once again, this statement shows the writer’s ignorance and blatant disregard for the facts. Because contemporary ancestral diets exclude processed foods, dairy and grains, they are actually more nutrient (vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals) dense than government recommended diets such as the food pyramid. I have pointed out these facts in a paper I published in the American Journal of Nutrition in 2005 (13) along with another paper in which I analyzed the nutrient content of modern day Paleo diets (12 ). Most nutritionists are aware that processed foods made with refined grains, sugars and vegetable oils have low concentrations of vitamins and minerals, but few realized that dairy products and whole grains contain significantly lower concentrations of the 13 vitamins and minerals most lacking in the U.S. diet compared to lean meats, fish and fresh fruit and vegetables (12, 13).

“Also, if you’re not careful about making lean meat choices, you’ll quickly ratchet up your risk for heart problems” .

Actually, the most recent comprehensive meta analyses do not show fresh meat consumption whether fat or lean to be a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease (20-25), only processed meats such as salami, bologna, bacon and sausages (20).

References

1. Frassetto LA, Schloetter M, Mietus-Synder M, Morris RC, Jr., Sebastian A: Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet. Eur J Clin Nutr 2009.

2. Jönsson T, Granfeldt Y, Ahrén B, Branell UC, Pålsson G, Hansson A, Söderström M, Lindeberg S. Beneficial effects of a Paleolithic diet on cardiovascular risk factors in type 2 diabetes: a randomized cross-over pilot study. Cardiovasc Diabetol. 2009;8:35

3. Jonsson T, Granfeldt Y, Erlanson-Albertsson C, Ahren B, Lindeberg S. A Paleolithic diet is more satiating per calorie than a Mediterranean-like diet in individuals with ischemic heart disease. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2010 Nov 30;7(1):85

4. Jonsson T, Ahren B, Pacini G, Sundler F, Wierup N, Steen S, Sjoberg T, Ugander M, Frostegard J, Goransson Lindeberg S: A Paleolithic diet confers higher insulin sensitivity, lower C-reactive protein and lower blood pressure than a cereal-based diet in domestic pigs. Nutr Metab (Lond) 2006, 3:39.

5. Lindeberg S, Jonsson T, Granfeldt Y, Borgstrand E, Soffman J, Sjostrom K, Ahren B: A Palaeolithic diet improves glucose tolerance more than a Mediterranean-like diet in individuals with ischaemic heart disease. Diabetologia 2007, 50(9):1795-1807.

6. O’Dea K: Marked improvement in carbohydrate and lipid metabolism in diabetic Australian aborigines after temporary reversion to traditional lifestyle. Diabetes 1984, 33(6):596-603.

7. Osterdahl M, Kocturk T, Koochek A, Wandell PE: Effects of a short-term intervention with a paleolithic diet in healthy volunteers. Eur J Clin Nutr 2008, 62(5):682-685.

8. Larsen TM, Dalskov SM, van Baak M, Jebb SA, Papadaki A, Pfeiffer AF, Martinez JA, Handjieva-Darlenska T, Kunešová M, Pihlsgård M, Stender S, Holst C, Saris WH, Astrup A; Diet, Obesity, and Genes (Diogenes) Project. Diets with high or low protein content and glycemic index for weight-loss maintenance. N Engl J Med. 2010 Nov 25;363(22):2102-13

9. Papadaki A, Linardakis M, Larsen TM, van Baak MA, Lindroos AK, Pfeiffer AF, Martinez JA, Handjieva-Darlenska T, Kunesová M, Holst C, Astrup A, Saris WH, Kafatos A; DiOGenes Study Group. The effect of protein and glycemic index on children’s body composition: the DiOGenes randomized study. Pediatrics. 2010 Nov;126(5):e1143-52

10. Cordain L. Saturated fat consumption in ancestral human diets: implications for contemporary intakes. In: Phytochemicals, Nutrient-Gene Interactions, Meskin MS, Bidlack WR, Randolph RK (Eds.), CRC Press (Taylor & Francis Group), 2006, pp. 115-126.

11. Cordain L, Miller JB, Eaton SB, Mann N, Holt SH, Speth JD. Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets.Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 Mar;71(3):682-92.

12. Cordain L. The nutritional characteristics of a contemporary diet based upon Paleolithic food groups. J Am Nutraceut Assoc 2002; 5:15-24.

13. Cordain L, Eaton SB, Sebastian A, Mann N, Lindeberg S, Watkins BA, O’Keefe JH, Brand-Miller J. Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Feb;81(2):341-54.

14. Kuipers RS, Luxwolda MF, Dijck-Brouwer DA, Eaton SB, Crawford MA, Cordain L, Muskiet FA. Estimated macronutrient and fatty acid intakes from an East African Paleolithic diet. Br J Nutr. 2010 Dec;104(11):1666-87.

15. Ramsden CE, Faurot KR, Carrera-Bastos P, Cordain L, De Lorgeril M, Sperling LS.Dietary fat quality and coronary heart disease prevention: a unified theory based on evolutionary, historical, global, and modern perspectives. Curr Treat Options Cardiovasc Med. 2009 Aug;11(4):289-301.

16. Cordain L, Eaton SB, Miller JB, Mann N, Hill K. The paradoxical nature of hunter-gatherer diets: meat-based, yet non-atherogenic. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2002 Mar;56 Suppl 1:S42-52

17. Cordain L, Watkins BA, Florant GL, Kelher M, Rogers L, Li Y. Fatty acid analysis of wild ruminant tissues: evolutionary implications for reducing diet-related chronic disease. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2002 Mar;56(3):181-91

18. Carrera-Bastos P, Fontes Villalba M, O’Keefe JH, Lindeberg S, Cordain L. The western diet and lifestyle and diseases of civilization. Res Rep Clin Cardiol 2011; 2: 215-235.

19. Hoppe C, Mølgaard C, Vaag A, Barkholt V, Michaelsen KF. High intakes of milk, but not meat, increase s-insulin and insulin resistance in 8-year-old boys. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2005 Mar;59(3):393-8.

20. Micha R, Wallace SK, Mozaffarian D. Red and processed meat consumption and risk of incident coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes mellitus: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Circulation. 2010 Jun 1;121(21):2271-83

21. Micha R, Mozaffarian D. Saturated fat and cardiometabolic risk factors, coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes: a fresh look at the evidence. Lipids. 2010 Oct;45(10):893-905. Epub 2010 Mar 31.

22. Mozaffarian D, Micha R, Wallace S. Effects on coronary heart disease of increasing polyunsaturated fat in place of saturated fat: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. PLoS Med. 2010 Mar 23;7(3):e1000252.

23. Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, Hu FB, Krauss RM. Saturated fatty acids and risk of coronary heart disease: modulation by replacement nutrients. Curr Atheroscler Rep. 2010 Nov;12(6):384-90.

24. Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, Hu FB, Krauss RM. Saturated fat, carbohydrate, and cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Mar;91(3):502-9

25. Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, Hu FB, Krauss RM. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Mar;91(3):535-46

with 25 scientific references, I'd say US News and World Report owes The Paleo Diet a complete written and published apology with his rebuttal IN their next issue.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Foods Promoted As "Healthy" But Are Not...Do You Still Think Whole Wheat Bread Is Good???

2011-04-29T13:29:00.004-05:00

Well, I found another fellow food renegade like myself. Here's a great video on how we're all being scammed into thinking certain foods are good for us when they're contributing to our sickness and disease. Do you feel better eating whole wheat bread rather than the white bread...thinking you're doing your body good? Watch this video and you'll be surprised.

For those about to embark on the May 15th 21-Day Purification Program, this video is basic training for you as you get set to take the journey. Watch, learn, understand and enjoy.

for more info on the purification program, go to: www.21daypurificationprogram.com

'nuff said.

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Dr. Narson's Natural Sports Medicine Blog - Awarded Top Sports Medicine Blog 2011

2011-04-21T17:34:00.004-05:00

I'm quite proud to announce my rantings and ravings over the past year(s) about sports medicine, nutrition, rehab and health in general have rung a bell with the folks at HealthcareColleges.net. We were picked as one of the top 35 Sports Medicine Blogs on the internet.

Nice to know someone else reads them besides mom & dad.

If you ever have a sports injury, nutrition or other musculoskeletal injury question and would like the issue addressed on my blog in the future, feel free to email me at: miamibeachdoc@yahoo.com

Happy & Proud

'Nuff Said

Dr. T

PS: Follow me on twitter: @SprotsDocNarson

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

It's Alive - IT'S ALIVE: Fascia, More Than Just A Cover Surrounding Your Muscles

2011-04-11T15:13:00.004-05:00

By Miami Beach Chiropractic Sports Physician, Dr. Todd Narson

Most of us grew up in our sports injury profession, albeit sports chiropractic, physical therapy, orthopedics, athletic training or the like thinking that fascia was simply a covering that surrounded various structures in the body. Kind of an envelope that surrounded the stuff inside and kept is separate from it's neighbors and allowing for the sliding and gliding of the individual parts.

However original research by Stecco et.al., Histological Characteristics Of The Deep Fascia Of The Upper Limb show that what we once thought of as a kind of a sock or wallpaper type tissue covering on the inside is more like that of a proprioceptive information superhighway interwoven into the fascial weave. This proprioceptive information superhighway relays information throughout the musculo-skeletal system allowing the coordination of movement throughout a kinetic chain.

Imagine having an injury such as a contusion, muscle or tendon strain or having surgery that interrupts or cuts through the fascial planes and no real consideration is given to the condition of it's state of healing. No longer can we think it's just incidental connective tissue keeping things compartmentalized. We must now think about fascia as an integral part of our neuro-musculo-skeletal system as it gives afferent information into the system that that helps to provide for our movement, balance and coordination.

This information now places more importance on treatment modalities like Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (Graston Technique(r), AYSTM, SASTM, FAKTR) as well as manual hands on mobilization systems like ART(r), Fascial Manipulation (Stecco & Hammer) & NIMMO.

For surgeons, you need to think more about the post surgical rehabilitative process to account not only the proper healing of the target structures of your surgery, but the supportive systems of muscle, tendon, joint capsules AND fascial planes.

Fascia my friends is alive and well...AND loaded with proprioceptive organs: Ruffini and Pacini corpuscles and woven around the muscle fibers, muscle spindles reside in the fascia surrounding them.

If you want to learn more, go to www.pubmed.gov and in the search screen type only two words: stecco facia. They (brother and sister) have written over 40 articles on this very subject.

Quite interesting and enlightening information indeed. A big thank you to Warren Hammer, DC, DABCO for his lecture on the subject at the ACBSP Sports Science Symposium, Boston MA, April 2011.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

21-Day Nutrition Purification Boot Camp

2011-04-06T06:29:00.007-05:00

Double Click On The Image To Enlarge

For more details about the program, see my Video Introduction by clicking here

Or simply paste this into your browser: http://www.youtube.com/narsonpurification#p/u/3/G4GYthdgdBA

Dr. T

_____________________________________________________________

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Rotator Cuff (Shoulder) Injuries & An Interesting Email: Food For Thought(s)...

2011-04-01T05:03:00.003-05:00

By Miami Beach Chiropractic Sports Physician - Todd M. Narson, DC, DACBSP

I received this email below that I'm not going to comment on...I just want you to read it, sit back and think about it. I'll add a little color & some bold for emphasis, but as FoxNews says, we report-you decide.....................

From the OrthoSuperSite:

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Board of Directors recently released a clinical practice guideline for the treatment of rotator cuff tears and related problems, according to a press release from the organization.

A work group chaired by Robert A. Pedowitz, MD, of Los Angeles, and co-chaired by Ken Yamaguchi, MD, of St. Louis, developed the guideline after a review of 74 studies on rotator cuff treatment published through 2008.

“Although there is a tremendous amount of research on the rotator cuff, much of it does not reach the quality levels necessary to be considered definitive,”“Thus, we cannot say there were recommendations that could be unequivocally supported.” Yamaguchi stated in the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) press release.

.....................................

You know.. I just can't resist; I will make this comment..

If you're going to a physician that is going to give you some type of treatment to your rotator cuff/shoulder (or any other part for that matter), ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS AS TO (1) What's specifically wrong with you(2) How does that contribute to my symptoms (3) exactly how is your recommended treatment going to help(4) What outcome can I expect (5) what you can do at home to help yourself.

Oh, those question should be posed to the physician AFTER an examination which should include:

A full history of how the problem came about
Reflexes
Range of motion
Orthopedic tests of the injured areas and related areas
Palpation of the area and adjacent areas
Motion palpation of association joint structures
Imaging studies if necessary AFTER the physical exam

If you can't get a good and thorough explanation.....walk out.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Does Knuckle Cracking Cause Arthritis?

2011-03-30T13:29:00.005-05:00

By Miami Beach Chiropractic Sports Physician - Dr. Todd Narson

So ever since I've become a chiropractic physician one of the most popular questions has always been does cracking my knuckles cause arthritis?

You would think that popping and popping your knuckles would eventually cause so much repetitive trauma that it would lead to arthritis. Arthritis being an inflammation of the joints caused by overuse (actually caused by abuse or mis-use). There's also a genetic version of arthritis known as Rheumatoid arthritis, but that's not a concern here.

In a recent edition of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, Kevin deWeber, MD, FAAFP, Mariusz Olszewski, MD and Rebecca Ortolano, MD put this old wives tale to the test. In an article based on original research-entitled Knuckle Cracking and Hand Osteoarthritis, their conclusions were somewhat surprising to some, but not to me.

It's not too technical and very interesting to find out that there is actually no correlation between cracking your knuckles and getting arthritis.

For those that also ask about why your joints make that cracking sound, you'll also find your answer in this report of their original research.

Read the article and let me know your thoughts.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Icy-Hot Patches Do Not Replace Ice Packs or Hot Packs

2011-03-27T10:53:00.002-05:00

By Miami Beach Florida Chiropractic Sports Physician - Dr. Todd Narson

I'm really getting tired of people listening to TV commercials and "interpreting" my advice. I'm sure I'm not the only doctor this happens to either.

So someone comes into my office here in Miami Beach with a particular complaint. Shoulder (rotator cuff) pain, back pain, neck pain, knee pain, I.T. band pain, plantar fascitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow, golfer's elbow...you get the idea. I do an exam and then make my recommendations for treatment in the office and what they need to do at home to help.

I will recommend applying an ice pack for 15 to 20 minutes for 3, 4, 5, or more times per day. Or, if the condition requires heat, the recommendation is a moist heating pad for 20 minutes several times throughout the day as well. Then, on their next visit when I ask how they're doing? - they say they aren't getting any better. I question them about following my home recommendations and invariably find out they are using some type of "pain patch" or topical pain relief cream that "feels" cold or "feels" hot.

The problem with these pain patches that people Like Shaq and others are paid to sell on TV is that their one and only purpose is to mask your pain. They are very simply skin irritants that will distract you from feeling pain by a chemical perception of heating or cooling. some of them may have some interesting ingredients to help it "get down deep" but they don't get into the muscles, they don't go into the joints. They sit on the surface, smell horribly and don't do anything to reduce inflammation or spasm.

When I make a recommendation for using ice or moist heat, I mean apply an actual ice pack or an actual moist heating pad. Both of these have specific physiological effects that will help inflammation, spasm and pain. They have specific effects that will help your condition heal.

So, when I or your physician, therapist or trainer tells you to apple ice or apply heat, we're talking about the real thing. Save the topical stuff for when you leave your home. Yes, they will make you "feel" better but they don't help you actually get better.

I your bicycle is broken you can certainly paint it to make it look better, but unless you fix it, you still have a broken bicycle. Stop listening to Shaq and his TV commercial with his pain patches and take the advice from a real doctor. Afterall, when Shaquille O'Neal gets hurt, he goes to his team physicians and trainers, not the box of pain patches.

'nuff said

Dr. T

PS, if you're a physician, PT or ATC, please chime in here. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Graston Technique(r), FAKTR & Narson Body Mechanic

2011-03-27T07:15:00.013-05:00

I've been certified in Graston Technique(r) since 2002/2003. It's a phenomenal method at treating chronic sports injuries and some acute injuries as well. The technique uses 6 stainless steel instruments (pictured to the right) that are used to treat scar tissue and adhesions that prevent the function of normal tissue dynamics typically seen after an improperly healed injury.

Since becoming certified and practicing this technique on thousands of patients over the years I began to notice that I would get the best results when I treated patients in a position of provocation. In other words, when a patient said, "it hurts when I do this" I would treat the condition with my Graston Technique(r) instruments while they were in the position where they complained provoked their pain. My rate of success increased even more.

I began having people hold dumbbell weights, pull on resistance bands or exercise tubing or simply go through the motions of their sport while I administered the treatment. I would follow this more active/function version of Graston Technique(r) with stretching, ice and electric stimulation and pulsed ultrasound. The results were outstanding. You should also know that Graston Technique(r) isn't just treating patients with their instruments. It also involved evaluation of the patient and the administration of treatment afterward (stretching, therapies and home instructions for patient self care).

In 2006 I was picked to travel with a team of sports chiropractors to treat athletes at the 20th Central American & All Caribbean Sport Games. It's basically a mini-Olympics where the winners of these events go on to the Pan American Games and then onto the Olympics.

In most circumstances, all I had was my reflex hammer, some athletic tape & and ACE bandage, my adjusting table and my set of Graston instruments. If I was lucky, there was some ice and plastic bags. I used both the standard Graston Technique(r) and also the more functional version I was slowly discovering. Being in an environment where you often didn't have electricity and certainly didn't have all the comforts of a modern chiropractic sports injury office, you had to so the best with what you had. I found that I was able to use these more functional treating techniques were extremely effective, more so than when treating statically. I helped quite a few athletes get back into their event pain free. I continued to use my modified methods when I finally returned home.

It wasn't too long after that I learned one of my sports medicine mentors, Dr. Tom Hyde along with one of my original Graston Technique (r) instructors, Dr. Greg Doerr had been developing a lot of this "functional" Instrument Soft Tissue Mobilization stuff. I believe they had been doing it for about 4 years at the point when I first caught onto it but had already taken it a lot further. Both being instructors & friends, they they continued to collaborate and add more and more to it. Dr. Hyde and Dr. Doerr continue to develop and add to this functional instrument based soft tissue technique and began teaching and adding to it. I took their class which was called FAKTR-PM (Functional And Kinetic Treatment with Rehab Provocation and Motion (...now shortened to just FAKTR). It was outstanding. The physicians, trainers and therapist that were in the classes were certainly the cream of the crop. I think people knew that they were on to something big.

The technique really developed and advanced, now getting the input of the many of the leading physicians, trainers and therapists from around the world. This FAKTR thing had developed into a very advanced Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization method. It continues to evolve to this day and I'm sure will be better tomorrow than it was yesterday.

I think the Graston Technique(r) is an excellent base of knowledge and represents the foundation for this work. If you want to get into this kind of treatment, Graston Technique(r) is definitely the place to start. It represents the foundation of instrument based soft tissue treatment. In my opinion, you can't get very far without a good foundation. However, as you get more experienced with your technique, FAKTR is where you go from there. FAKTR is an ever evolving technique that incorporates current trends and research. I've seen where one seminar to the next will be different based on information that was published in a recent research journal. It's ever evolving for the right reasons.

What has made performing FAKTR so much easier was the N6 Narson Body Mechanic that I developed. I found that when treating a patient, I changed instruments at least twice, sometimes more. Now, I currently use only 1 stainless steel instrument that has the functionality of my 5 main GT instruments as well as other Gua Sha instruments on the market. It's like a Swiss Army Knife of Soft Tissue instruments. I've added a gripping surface to reduce finger and hand fatigue and now I only need to carry 1 instrument from patient to patient. I only clean 1 instrument and it's much easier to transport when traveling. That's probably considered a shameless plug, but it kind of like talking about baseball without mentioning the glove, ball or bat.

So combine your FAKTR Functional and Kinetic Treatment with Rehab Provocation and Motion with your Narson Body Mechanic N6 and you have a winning combination to treat athletes, difficult chronic sports injuries and more.

For more information on the techniques and instruments discussed above, please click on the following links:

FAKTR www.faktr.com
Narson Body Mechanic N6: www.NarsonBodyMechanic.com
Graston Technique: www.GrastonTechnique.com

Graston Technique(r), FAKTR and Narson Body Mechanic are separate and distinct companies. None of these companies endorses the other. The Narson Body Mechanic instrument should not be confused with Graston Technique(r) instruments. The Narson Body Mechanic is for use with Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization while only Graston Technique(r) tools are for use with Graston Technique(r). Graston Technique(r) is owned by Therapy Care Resources, Inc.

Healthfully yours

DocT

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

How To Be A Good Sports Parent...

2011-03-15T11:27:00.003-05:00

By Miami Beach Sports Chiropractor - Dr. Todd Narson

I remember one of my first experiences in taking care of younger athletes was at a high school soccer game back in my home town of Coral Springs, FL. A young athlete wearing an $800 orthopedic knee brace to protect a partially town ACL hurt their knee. I instructed the coach to pull the athlete from the game and the parent told me to go to hell. The parent said their child was going for a college soccer scholarship and they needed to get back in and play.

I asked the parent one question. If they wanted their child to walk into college or to limp into college unable to play soccer again. Just so happens the knee gave out during the game and that was it. The dad ate some humble pie followed by his left foot and I was upset to see a kids dreams go down in flames.

Sometimes it's difficult to be a good sports parent. You want only the very best for your child and have hopes of their future as an athlete. Sometimes we try to relive our old glory years through our children and it really doesn't work so well for the child.

Here's a great article and guide I ran across today that can help us all (yes...me included) be a better sports parent so our kids get everything out of their athletic experiences they can.

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/children/a/SportParentTips.htm?nl=1

'nuff said

Dr. T
____________

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Triathlon Aero Apparel Wind Tunnel Tests

2011-03-01T06:04:00.005-05:00

Triathletes are constantly on the lookout for new training techniques, nutritional advice, injury recovery techniques and gear to help improve their times and their experience when doing triathlons. A new aero wheelset, frame, bars or helmet promises to reduce wind drag and shave a few seconds of time off their score. Companies routinely test these hi-val items to their ability to slice through the wind whereas clothes aren't really put through the wind tunnel tests as regularly.

Here's a link to wind tunnel test results on some popular tri-suits and compression sleeves. Interesting results and if you're considering some new triathlon apparel, here's another factor to weigh in when making your decision. Triathlon apparel wind tunnel test results

'nuff said

Dr. T

Yes, we've moved!!! Here's a link to info on our new office

Address & Map of the new office

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Dr. Narson Announces The Opening Of The New Office

2010-12-20T11:10:00.006-05:00

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Dr. Narson's New Year Resolution Purification-Detox-Cleanse Program

2010-12-16T23:15:00.008-05:00

Here's the info on the upcoming January 4th Group Program. It's your chance to start the New Year off right and tackle your resolutions to get healthy, lose weight and get yourself on the right track. Read more about my 1st time doing the program by clicking here

Click the picture to enlarge ( you should be able to click and enlarge it twice and get it full screen).

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Aspirin, Ibuprofen & Acetaminophen Inhibit Muscle Growth

2010-10-13T08:36:00.004-05:00

Do you ever have some aches and pains when you work out? Maybe you have some generalized aches and pain and you want to go to the gym so you pop a couple ibuprofen or aspirin or acetaminophen then head off to your work out.

The problem is, if you want your muscles to grow, these seemingly simple over the counter drugs (they're called NSAID or Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) will inhibit a natural cascade of reactions that will halt the growth of your muscles following a workout.

There is research that conclusively shows that taking NSAIDs after exercise-induced muscle damage significantly reduces levels of the prostaglandin PGF2-α, which is intimately involved in the protein synthesis that occurs post-exercise; we work out, tear down our muscles, and the anabolic process of tissue repair and hypertrophy is dependent on levels of this prostaglandin. The NSAIDS interfere with this and thus you've pretty much wasted your time in the gym if your goal was to get bigger, better, stronger, faster muscles.

For more on this specific action of these simple NSAID that you can pick up at the local convenience store, read this for all the gory details and the references for the above statements. For my fellow sports medicine physicians and therapists, it's a well referenced article that you can easily incorporate into your presentations.

The other side of this is that national statistics show that Between 3,200 - 16,500 people die every year from bleeding ulcers as a result of NSAIDS. Here's another real scary fact: With NSAIDs taken in the previous week you DOUBLE your chance of Congestive Heart Failure. Here's a quote from the article:

Use of NSAIDs (other than low-dose aspirin) in the previous week was associated with a doubling of the odds of a hospital admission with CHF (adjusted odds ratio, 2.1; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-3.3). Use of NSAIDs by patients with a history of heart disease was associated with an odds ratio of 10.5 (95% confidence interval, 2.5-44.9) for first admission with heart failure, compared with 1.6 (95% confidence interval, 0.7-3.7) in those without such a history. The odds of a first admission to a hospital with CHF was positively related to the dose of NSAID consumed in the previous week, and was increased to a greater extent with long half-life than with short half-life drugs. Assuming these relationships are causal, NSAIDs were responsible for approximately 19% of hospital admissions with CHF

Here's another interesting fact: Eating veggies, fruit and clean lean natural meats (staying away from Cow dairy) promotes your body's natural processes to reduce inflammation. Taking Fish oils also promotes your body's natural anti-inflammatory pathways. Chiropractic adjustments restore proper joint function reducing nociception (pain or other aberrant nervous system input from abnormal function) and restoring mechanoreception (normal sensation from normal function).

So, the choice is yours, eat a healthy diet, take Omega-3 fish oils and go to your chiropractor to help relieve your aches and pains, or take the chances I pointed out above.

'nuff said

Dr. T

References:

http://www.pinnaclefitness-online.com/Fitness-research/research_current.htm
http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2668:more-hospitalized-from-nsaid-bleeding-than-all-american-war-casualties&catid=5:original&Itemid=24
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10737277

Kettlebell Workouts With The Master - Adam Cronin

2010-10-11T18:41:00.003-05:00

One of my very good friends and personal trainer Adam Cronin doing a crazy kettlebell "Kettle-beach" workout. Now, don't try this at home, he's the master, he's been doing this for 10+ years and has literally written the book on kettlebell training. Yes, you always start out with the basics, but this shows a level of mastery that I don't know if you've ever seen before with kettlebell workouts.

Kettlebell workouts are great for all aspects of exercise and rehabilitation. This just shows where you can go with it once you've mastered it. And yes... he trains the trainers. So if there's a kettlebell class in your gym, it's likely he trained your trainer or trained the person that trained them. Enjoy

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Stretching Before Your Workout - Maybe It's Time To Re-Think This

2010-10-08T17:15:00.002-05:00

In 2007 I wrote a blog article that made the case for stretching not being the best thing for you prior to working out or sports. Stretching after your event was best. Here's another great blog that makes the same case but with more recent science behind it. Anyone that works out, trains or physically active should read.

Warm up, do a light set then get into your workout. Warm down after exercise then stretch.

'nuff said. Click on the link and enjoy the article.

Dr. T

PS: Check out my new SportsInjuryTV blog on you tube. I'm still working on the audio levels and getting better at being on camera, but it's a cool venue and I think you'll like it. Subscribe to it because it will make me feel good!

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

5 Spices That Can Help You Lose Weight

2010-10-06T14:41:00.005-05:00

In my workshop lectures on nutrition I have one power point slide that says "The Medicine of the Future Will Be The Foods of our Past" and next to this is a pictures of a caveman standing tall and looking proud.

The more I read about nutrition, the more that statement holds true. This nice little article I read this morning affirms the benefits of Cinnamon, Cayenne, Black Pepper, Mustard Seed & Ginger. Spices that are easy to add to anyone's daily routine.

The case has been made that wherever the Standard American Diet goes, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer follow soon after. Which means, our health is influenced greatly by the food we eat.

To read more about these powerful spices we take for granted, click here and be amazed at what a simple food can do for your health.

Do you want to be a healthier person? simply eat different today and tomorrow you will be.

Healthfully yours

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

The ICE File - From SportsInjuryTV.com - Weekend Warrior Show

2010-10-05T11:32:00.004-05:00

From: Sports Injury TV - The Weekend Warrior Show

So recently I started a "SportsInjuryTV.com" video blog on Your Tube but for some reason You Tube s taking way too long to put up the video. So I embedded it here on my trusty old Natural Sports Medicine Blog.... Enjoy - Todd

The I.C.E. file

Something each and everyone of us should have in our cell phones, and even more important for athletes, people who exercise regularly and people with potentially serious health conditions. About 3 weeks ago another cyclist died on the Rickenbacker causeway on Key Biscayne. Although this time is wasn’t from a car hitting the cyclist, this older gentleman had a heart attack and fell off his bike. Those riding with him administered CPR but couldn’t save his life. I was wondering about all of the triathletes, cyclists, runners and others training in the gym by themselves and what would happen to them in case of an emergency.

So, I know I sound pretty serious about this but it something I think is important. “ICE” is an acronym and stands for In Case of Emergency. If you should ever have a health problem and are unable to communicate, this is where the paramedics, police, fireman, emergency room doctor or good samaritan will find your vital information.

So I want you to take out your cell phone (yes…right now) and:

Open a new contact file named ICE
In your ‘ICE’ file I want you to put the following info:
Your full name & year of birth
Your home and work phone numbers
Your home and work address
Phone numbers of your spouse/significant other (who you want contacted in case of an emergency)
Parents & in-laws phone numbers
Name/phone # of your family doctor
Any allergies you may have
Any medications you take
Any conditions you have
Your blood type if you know it.
The name of your health insurance as well as your policy and group numbers
Press Save

The purpose of this is to give emergency personnel vital information about yourself in case you are unconscious or are unresponsive. Vital information like allergies, medications, health conditions, phone numbers of your relatives and health insurance information may make a critical difference in a life saving situation. So put as much or as little information as you feel necessary. I know some people are worried about identity theft. Personally, I’m more concerned with making sure I’m okay in a life threatening situation. So, put as much information you feel is necessary about yourself and those you want contacted in case of an emergency.

More and more paramedics and EMTs are looking for this info in emergency situations. As I always say, prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Make sure you are prepared ‘just in case’. Sometimes in these situations, the slightest piece of information or just saving a few extra minutes could make the difference between life and death.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Swim A Mile In 6 Weeks

2010-10-02T12:14:00.004-05:00

Dr. Todd Narson; NaturalSportsMedicine.com

While I was training for my first triathlon back in July (2010) one of the highlights of getting myself back into "shape" was when I was able to complete my first mile swimming in the pool. Since then, I have done it almost weekly when I train and now I'm going for more.

Most people tell me they always wanted to do a triathlon but cannot swim for a hill of beans. Well, today some guys in the pool turned me onto a great basic swim training program that will help you go from Zero to 1650 in just 6 weeks (1650 yards in the pool = 1-mile, why? Good question but that's what "they" say)

So to all those who are interested in getting into triathlons and are apprehensive about the swim, here's a great little plan to get you up to speed in just 6 weeks.

If the link doesn't work, just copy and paste this into your browser: http://www.ruthkazez.com/SwimWorkouts/ZeroTo1mile.html

Enjoy

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Getting A New Name

2010-10-01T10:08:00.005-05:00

drnarson.com

Now that consumers have taken the time to educate themselves that things like high fructose corn syrup (as well as all added sugars) are harmful to their health, the corn refiners association try a brilliant way to re-frame high fructose corn syrup, to be called "Corn Sugar".

The new name kinda resembles and has that same feel as Cane Sugar don't ya think?

I know I've written some harsh thing about high fructose corn syrup before, but what most people don't realize is that table sugar (sucrose) is also bad(some arguments have been made for it being just as bad). Most people who think they know about food and health think that a safe alternative is Agave Nectar, but they'd be wrong. It's all sugar and agave nectar is higher in fructose (the real eveil villian) that table sugar or HFCS. Bottom line, they're all delivering fructose in an un-natural form to your body and it's all very bad for you.

The only way humans should eat sugar is while it exists in the fruit they're biting into. Bar none!

But now we have to learn about another ingredient, corn sugar. So educate yourself now and know that corn sugar = high fructose corn syrup.

While we're on the re-naming thing, I want you also to look out for "Interesterified oil" in your foods. This is the new fat that the commercial food industry is going to and it is slated to replace hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils. But, this isn't an equal exchange, early studies show that it's a worse form of fat than the hydrogenated oils are. Click to see previous post on interesterified oils

Bottom line is, don't depend on the companies that make the food to have your health as their main interest. Don't depend on the FDA either. Take the time to educate yourself and become the food renegade I know you can be.

Personally, I'd find a few local farms or farm co-ops and support them by buying direct.

'nuff said

Dr. T

References:
1. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/corn-refiners-petition-fda-for-use-of-corn-sugar-as-alternate-name-to-high-fructose-corn-syrup-102845349.html

2. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/10/01/new-high-fructose-corn-syrup-scam.aspx

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine. For more info: www.NaturalSportsMedicine.com

Drink Alcohol & Prolong Your Life....Yes, You Heard Me Right

2010-09-14T07:46:00.006-05:00

So you've been to a party and there's always that one person who says "I don't drink alcohol" and totally bring down the mood of the conversation you're trying to have. Bummer.

There are people who believe drinking alcohol is a travesty, immoral, etc...but guess what??? Their morality may be dead against science and may also be shortening their life. For heavy drinkers this may also be true as excessive alcohol intake can lead to some severe conditions that will shorten your life. But it's very interesting what research shows for those that drink a moderate amount of alcohol.

According to the recent study published in the journa l Clinical and Experimental Research , epidemiological research suggests that moderate to high alcohol consumption is associated with a reduced overall mortality risk compared to non- and light drinkers.

Their study included over 1,800 people, aged 55 to 65 when the study began. Sixty-nine percent of the participants were men. The subjects were followed for 20 years.

Surprisingly, the group with the lowest mortality rate was moderate drinkers, who had one to three alcoholic drinks per day, followed by heavy drinkers, and then light drinkers, while non-drinkers had the highest mortality rate of them all.

The study states:

“Controlling only for age and gender, compared to moderate drinkers, abstainers had a more than 2 times increased mortality risk, heavy drinkers had 70% increased risk, and light drinkers had 23% increased risk.

A model controlling for former problem drinking status, existing health problems, and key sociodemographic and social-behavioral factors, as well as for age and gender, substantially reduced the mortality effect for abstainers compared to moderate drinkers.

However, even after adjusting for all covariates, abstainers and heavy drinkers continued to show increased mortality risks of 51 and 45%, respectively, compared to moderate drinkers.”

Dr. Mercola has a great analysis of the entire issue which you can read by clicking here or copying and pasting this link into your browser:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/14/why-do-heavy-drinkers-outlive-nondrinkers.aspx

With that said... Here's To Your Health

Cheers!

Dr. T

Follow Me on Twitter: http://api.twitter.com/ToddNarsonDC

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

A New Web Site, Great Laser Therapy Seminar & Additional Contact Info

2010-09-02T09:38:00.006-05:00

OK, so this blog isn’t so much about sports medicine stuff but more about things happening and a little update.

1. My New Soft Tissue Instrument - The Narson Body Mechanic N6

For those patients, friends & colleagues that know about or have experienced the Narson Body Mechanic soft tissue mobilization instrument, the newer web site is up. We’re still working on the order form, but it’s otherwise pretty functional. It’s viewed best with Mozilla Firefox Browser rather than Internet Explorer. The web site is: www.NarsonBodyMechanic.com.

As many of you know, I've been a certified Graston Technique® practitioner since 2002 (M1) and 2003(M2) and over the past several years have been trying out various soft tissue mobilization instruments from modern Gua Sha tools to many others. I finally took what I considered the most useful of all the tools out there and designed them into 1 instrument. Whatever form of instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization you use, the Narson Body Mechanic N6 does an outstanding job

2. LASER THERAPY CERTIFICATION: For my colleagues, Dr. Mike Mathesie & Nelson Marquina PhD are teaching an amazing Laser Therapy Certification course September 11-12, 2010 (Part I) and October 9-10, 2010 (Part II). This course leads to CLP (Certified Laser Practitioner) certificate. The difference between this LASER course is that is it NOT sponsored by a laser company, rather being taught UNBIASED by two LASER therapy experts. You will get real complete in-depth information by two of our nations laser therapy experts. The seminar is in Orlando, FL. To register or find out more info, simply email: Backman100@aol.com or call: 954.755.1434.

3. New Way To Get In Touch With Me I’m still moving up in the world of technology and now have a skype account. To get in touch with me on Skype, either type in my name in the add user screen or my skype call name is SportsDocNarson. For info regarding the Narson Body Mechanic, you can call us on skype as well at: NarsonBodyMechanic-N6

4. In about 1 month we’re gonna have some more exciting news so keep a look out for our big announcement on Facebook, Email, S-mail (aka: regular US Postal Service), Twitter and more…

‘nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Brain Trauma In Sports May Cause A New Disease That Mimics ALS

2010-08-20T10:44:00.003-05:00

So you may have heard about Lou Gehrig's disease. Lou Gehrig being one of the most famous of New York Yankees who in the prime of his baseball career retired from baseball after he started getting tremmors and losing motor control of his arms, hands and legs.

The disease called ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) is of unknown etiology. No familial or genetic links, it kind of just happens. But what scientists at Boston University School of Medicine have shown is the first pathological evidence that repetitive head trauma experienced in collision sports is associated with motor neuron disease, a neurological condition that affects voluntary muscle movements - just like ALS.

So parents, it may be a good time to re-think your kids choice of sports. This is hard evidence that those repetitive bumps on the head can have a devastating long term effect.

To read more, click here

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Chiropractic Care - Proving Itself Again & Again,

2010-08-17T07:55:00.005-05:00

Miami Beach Chiropractor - Sports Medicine Physician - Dr. Todd Narson

The past 12 months have been good - very good - for the chiropractic profession in terms of data supporting the efficacy of chiropractic care

Thank you to the folks at The ChiroCode Institute &Peter W. Crownfield, Executive Editor of Dynamic Chirorpactic for putting all this info together into one nice article. Reprinted from the ChiroCode newsletter

The Wellmark pilot study that suggests chiropractic reduces both costs and need for surgery;

The Milliman USA analysis that concludes, "[S]pinal patients who seek chiropractic coverage have materially lower health care costs than those who do not";

The Consumer Reports reader survey that found "hands-on" therapies, led by chiropractic care, were the top-rated treatments for back pain sufferers, with chiropractic receiving the highest satisfaction-with-care ratings (significantly higher than MDs);

The "Mercer Report" that suggests chiropractic compares favorably to most therapies covered by health benefit plans and is "likely to achieve equal or better health outcomes";

The final report on the Medicare demonstration project, which notes that 87 percent of patients surveyed gave their DC a satisfaction score of 8 or higher and 56 percent gave a perfect 10.5

A survey analysis published in the June 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine revealed that 60 percent of U.S. adults utilizing CAM therapies for back pain reported "a great deal" of benefit. Chiropractic was used most frequently (74 percent of respondents) and had the highest success rate (66 percent reporting significant benefit).

Click here to read more.

References

"Study Suggests Chiropractic Reduces Health Care Costs, Need for Surgery." Dynamic Chiropractic, Aug. 26, 2009.
"Cost-Effective Care: The Evidence Mounts." Dynamic Chiropractic, Sept. 9, 2009.
"Consumer Reports Survey Rates DCs Higher Than MDs." Dynamic Chiropractic, May 20, 2009.
"How Chiropractic Helps the Insurance Industry." Dynamic Chiropractic, Dec. 2, 2009.
"Medicare Patients Give Chiropractic High Marks." Dynamic Chiropractic, March 26, 2010.
Kanodia AK, Legedza ATR, Davis RB, et al. Perceived benefit of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) for back pain: a national survey. J Am Board Fam Med 2010;23:354-62.

Athletes And Their Rituals - Sound Strategy or Simply Superstition ?

2010-08-16T07:56:00.009-05:00

Miami Beach Chiropractor - Sports Medicine - Dr. Todd Narson

As sports sports medicine physicians we get to see this all the time. Rituals athletes go through in the time leading up to & during a competition. Tiger Woods is well known for (amongst other things now) wearing a red shirt on the final day of competition. Baseball players put on their "rally caps" when trying to change their luck and start a batting rally. Other athletes make sure they wear their "special" underwear, socks, hats, shorts etc, etc, etc. Runners and other sports involving running, then it's all about the sneakers buying many pairs of the same sneakers just in case they change or discontinue the model. In general, athletes will go through a specific ritualistic routine - the same one each and every time.

Some of this may seem like head games or just psyching themselves out but maybe there's something to it.

This past weekend I was invited by the Miami Beach Rotary Club to be a part of their Sprint Triathlon Men's Relay Team and do the swimming leg of the competition. Since having done my first triathlon about a month earlier, I caught the "triathlon bug" so of course I was going to do it. The race went off without a hitch. This time I was a bit more aggressive in the water and cut my 1/4 mile time down by 45 seconds. The rest of the relay-tri team did pretty well as we ended up taking 1st place in the men's relay.

A few other friends were doing the triathlon that day and I met up with one as we were cheering on the other racers as they Finished. I had an interesting conversation that led me to believe there may be a very good reason for these rituals.

One of my good friends (let's call him Mike) a very experienced marathoner and triathlete came up to me after the race. Looking a bit more pale that I would have expected from an athlete with his experience and training I was surprised by what he told me next.

Mike told me something strange happened to him during this triathlon. He has done dozens of these and never had a problem until now. He came out of the swim just fine, transitioned into his bike and while on the bike he ripped open a Hammer Gel for some added fast acting and ready to use carbs to fuel his cycling. As he came back into the bike to run transition he felt very strange. Light headed, strange feeling in his chest as his heart was racing and he had no energy, almost feeling "sick". He said he felt like he had run out of gas. Had he not been such an experienced athlete I would have just thought it was lack of race prep & training or over exertion, poor hydration or maybe he just wasn't ready for the race. But this was a sprint triathlon and he was too experienced, so I started asking him what was different about this race.

We spoke for a few minutes about his training over the past couple weeks, his quality and quantity of sleep, his diet and nothing seemed to have changed. To me it sounded like how I feel if I happen to have a cup of regular coffee (except I also get jittery) including the crash after the caffeine wears off; and I told him so. Just then he said he took the hammer gel from the race "'goody bag" during the bike portion of the triathlon, telling me it was the Hammer Gel Espresso. Not thinking it was different from the other Hammer Gels he had taken in previous races, the Hammer Gel Espresso contains 50mg of caffeine. Mike didn't realize it and said he is sensitive to caffeine.

Some people who are sensitive to caffeine will experience:

Sleeplessness
Nervousness, jittery feelings
Irregular heartbeats
Upset stomach, acid reflux, etc.
Intestinal cramping or other muscle cramping
Diuretic effect, dehydration
Reference: http://www.ineedcoffee.com/07/caffeine/

None of which is what you want to feel before, during or even after training or a competition.

So now Mike knows one more component of his race ritual: Be careful of what you put in your mouth. Know your food, know your fuel. Amongst other things, now Mike is going to be reading labels more carefully because he knows how sensitive he is to caffeine and how it effects him during competition. Now he has one thing he needs to be ritualistic about - No Caffeine.

I used the Hammer Gel Vanilla during my previous race . I actually love the stuff and most of their gel fuels do not have caffeine. It worked well in my first triathlon but I knew to double check for caffeine or other stimulants. because the typical race "GU" sold out there does have caffeine and I know how that effects me so I specifically look out for it. I personally love Hammer's race nutrition and their philosophy behind how they make their products. Like anything else, some are good for some people and not for others. It's up to the athlete to know themselves and their needs. I found Hammer specifically because of their natural ingredients and a large selection of race fuels that do not contain caffeine or artificial anything.

A pre-race or pre-competition ritual in a case like this can be a very good thing. In the future it will keep Mike safe, healthy and competing at his best. The moral of this story is know yourself and your needs and make a routine that works for you.

If you have allergies or sensitivities you need to check and re-check the ingredients on the stuff you use. Know if it goes by other names. Are you on medications? Check with your physician or pharmacist if your medications have any interactions with your race nutrition BEFORE you run into problems.

Or, don't pay attention to your nutrition and give the local paramedics something to do at the race.

'nuff said.

Dr. T

_____________________________________

For those who are caffeine sensitive, here's a list from www.ineedcoffee.com that shows relative amounts of caffeine in various drinks:

How much caffeine is actually in coffee?

Unlike soft drinks or foods with set caffeine levels, there is no set concentration of caffeine in coffee. Different varieties of coffee beans contain different levels of caffeine. Arabica beans range from 1.2% to 1.8%, Robusta beans can reach as high as 2.4%, and some relatively non-commercial beans such as Excelsa (aka Chari) can have almost no caffeine at all, making them a perfect component for naturally low-caffeine coffee bean blends. Also, many processing factors can increase or decrease the amount of caffeine in coffee. See the table below to see a comparison of the amounts of caffeine in various type of coffee and other products.

Approximate caffeine levels in coffee and other products (for similar portions):

Robusta coffee (drip brewed)	140 - 200 mg caffeine per 6 ounce average cup
Arabica coffee (drip brewed)	75 - 130 mg average 6 ounce cup
Arabica/Excelsa blend coffee (drip brewed)	40 - 60 mg average 6 ounce cup
Espresso (typical serving)	30 - 50 mg average 1 ounce shot
Instant coffee	40 - 100 mg average 6 ounce cup
97% decaf coffee	3 - 6 mg caffeine per 6-7 ounces average cup
99.92% Euro decaf standard coffee	8 - 16 mg caffeine per 6-7 ounce average cup
Hot cocoa	10 - 15 mg caffeine per 6-7 ounce cup
Dark chocolate candy bar	50 - 100 mg caffeine per 6 ounce bar
Milk chocolate candy bar	30 - 50 mg caffeine per 6 ounce bar
Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew soda	20 - 26 mg caffeine per 6-7 ounce drink
Green tea (brewed)	12 - 30 mg per 6-7 ounce average cup
Black tea (brewed)	40 - 60 mg per 6-7 ounce average cup

Note: These are averages and do not reflect specific teas or chocolates, nor are they adjusted for brewing times, etc. They are presented here just as a rough comparative guide.) Sources: USFDA and Nat. Soft Drink Assoc.

___________________________________________________

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Guess Who Else Has a Sweet Tooth??? CANCER!!!

2010-08-13T08:33:00.004-05:00

Without the sugar, life would be sweeter...

Why?

Because reducing sugar in your diet could reduce your risk of cancer (as well as a host of other diseases and conditions). I've heard about this a lot over the past few years....apparently Cancer has an affinity for sugar. Fructose to be specific.

But you say you don't eat high fructose corn syrup, or (the even higher fructose content) Agave Nectar, you just use table sugar, brown sugar or organic turbinado, so you don't have to worry about the fructose....right?

Nope... that would be wrong.

When typical table sugar (including brown sugar and turbinado sugar, organic or not, doesn't matter) hits your system, it's broken up into its 2 main components, (1) Fructose & (2) Glucose.

Glucose is the main fuel for our cells, but is use to (and supposed to) get it from vegetables and fruit. Our metabolism creates the glucose gradually from those raw materials when our body needs it. So yes, our bodies need glucose, but not directly from sugar.

And when the glucose is broken off from fructose, guess whose coming to dinner? Cancer!!

Cancer feeds off fructose! Want to make a bigger better tumor, feed it fructose.

Click here for a nice article that explains it in simple terms. It's worth the read and then take some time to rethink what you and your family eats on a daily basis.....

Now read the packages of your food and start to realize how much sugar is added to just about everything you eat.... even the rice your sushi is on.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Miami Beach Sports Chiropractor Gets A Spring Back In His Step at 45

2010-08-06T14:33:00.015-05:00

So at 44½ years old I decided to give myself an unconventional birthday present and do my first triathlon. The goal was to focus on getting in the best shape of my life by my 45th birthday (July 3rd). Since getting licensed in Florida in 1991, I have been one of the physicians in the medical tents at many triathlons over the years. I was always in awe over the triathletes and always wanted to do one but there was just one thing holding me back – Running.

I hated running. Now don’t get me wrong, I use to love to race my friends or hit a baseball and run around the bases. But running at any length was just not my thing. I’d get knee pain, hip pain and sometimes foot and ankle pain. I loved to bike and loved to swim, but running, just not for me.

In November of 2009 I was leading a group of 50 people through a 21-day nutrition detox & weight loss program and decided to kick my own detox and weight loss up a few notches and give running another chance. After a couple weeks on the detox program I was running (and quite happily) without any pain. But, being a sports physician, I knew it was just a matter of time. I’ve seen it in all my patients who were runners, eventually the miles and miles of pounding on their joints just take their toll. There’s a local orthopedic surgeon that loves runners because he said eventually, they’ll need either meniscus surgery or a total knee replacement. With that in mind, I began searching the internet for any new technologies that would help me run and train at a higher capacity and reduce the inevitable knee, hip or foot/ankle pain.

After a few days I stumbled onto a couple articles about a sneaker company that was only a few years old, called Spira Footwear. They created a technology called the “wavespring”. Spira’s wavesprings were in the heel and forefoot of their sneakers and the wavesprings give some tremendous benefit. The wavesprings reduce impact by 20%. This I thought was pretty substantial. If I could reduce the impact of my foot hitting the ground step after step, mile after mile, this would be a great way to help reduce the impact of running on my knees and hips – exactly what I was looking for. As an added benefit, testing performed at Michigan State University in 2001 showed that 87% - 96% of the energy is returned from the WaveSpring®. Ultimately, the Spira sneaker could reduce the impact forces on my body and return some energy back into my stride reducing the overall stress of my training. I had to try them.

I sent an email to the company and to my surprise, I got a return email from Andy Krafsur, Spira’s CEO. I told him about my little challenge to myself and my concerns with running & prolonged run training on my joints. I ended up getting 2 pairs: The Spira Del Sol and the Spira Competition. I started my training in March and was running 2-3 days per week, swimming two days per week and biking 2 days per week. One day I was stacking a running workout right after my cycling workout (what triathletes call a “brick” workout). I was a little casual during this time and would let my training succumb to my work and personal life”. But during the 3rd week of May I started kicking my training up a few notches. I began training at 5am so I can fit everything in, my workouts, my work and still have time to do my normal every day family stuff.

The training continued to intensify as the July 18th triathlon date got closer. With a 6 day per week training schedule, not one bit of knee, ankle, foot, hip or back pain. I was thrilled that I could keep up this level of intensity and not be plagued by those aches and pains from the past. I continued to up the intensity. My distances all increased in the swim, the bike and the run. My Saturday brick workouts were getting easier and my running after the bike transition more natural.

So finally the weekend was here. It was one heck of a weekend. As if the triathlon wasn’t enough, I was also attending a nutrition seminar about 60 minutes north in Del Rey, FL. Nee dless to say, I had a lot on my mind. I had been training in my Spira Del Sols throughout and then with 8 days out, I started with the Spira Competitions sneakers. I couldn’t believe how light these things were. When I 1st picked up the box, I truly doubted there was anything in the box it was so light. I did 3 runs on the sneakers as I tapered down that last week. I felt extremely comfortable in the Spira competition and decided to use them in the triathlon.

The day of the triathlon arrives and I woke up at 4:30am without an alarm. My bags and bike were already packed from the night before and I loaded the car up and hit the road. I stopped by my trainer Adam Cronin’s house at 5:15 and picked him up and off to Crandon Park we went. Arriving at 5:45am I went over and got my timing chip, then Adam took the large Sharpe and wrote my race numbers on my arms and legs. I took my bags and bike and entered the transition zone to set up my stuff and rack my bike. As I laid everything out, I took out my bright red Spira Competition sneakers and put them just off my towel. I put a couple puffs of baby powder in them and my cycling shoes, did a double check and then off to the beach where we start the race.

The walk to the beach at Crandon park is quite a distance. That meant more running for me from the swim transition into the bike. So 7am rolls around and the different waves start the race. Eventually the 44-49 wave comes around and we line up along the beach. The horn blows and it’s a mad rush into the water. Having trained 90% in a pool, the extra buoyancy of the salt water was a nice bonus. I got into my rhythm and to my surprise I actually passed a bunch of people on the swim. Keeping my eyes on the buoys I made it to the ¼ mile mark and began my exit. I ran out of the water and jogged to the transition area. Luckily it had rained earlier that morning so there were some puddles just before the transition. I ran through the puddles and it washed all the beach sand off my feet. I found my bike, strapped on my helmet, put on my socks and my pre-powdered cycling shoes and took off with my bike. The bike went smooth, the ride on Key Biscayne is absolutely beautiful as your just surrounded with blue bay and ocean water throughout the 1- mile ride. The ride was spectacular but uneventful. The only thing on my mind was the run. I re-entered Crandon Park and transitioned off my bike jogged with the bike back to the rack, off with the helmet and cycling shoes, on with my Spira Competition sneakers (pre-powdered of course), my running visor and my race belt and I ran out of the transition area.

Although I was extremely excited at this point to have made it though 2 of the 3 events, this was the one that weighed the most on my mind. I got into a rhythm and went for it. Step after step, stride after stride I ran. By this time it was started to get quite humid out. The run was nice though, running through the park, along the beach at one point then around the paved gigantic parking lots and all of a sudden I saw a sign that said ‘2’. I thought to myself, “where the heck did ‘1’ go? I ran right past it without even realizing. Suddenly, the run seemed a bit easier. I guess not seeing the 1 mile marker made me think I was still on mile 1. But now the excitement grew. I literally got a spring back in my step. The run course took us back toward the path along the beach where some friends were with their cameras. A short distance ahead I saw the 3-mile mark and I knew I was home free. I picked up the pace and heard the music playing at the finish line. At this point I didn’t even feel my feet, I just started running. I ran past the 3 mile marker and .1 mile to go, around the turn and crossed the finish line. I was handed a cold bottle of water and gulped it down. I felt incredible and knew I wanted more.

I have to say, after having done the swim and the bike, the run wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. My training, my nutrition and my spira sneakers got me across that finish line and I’m proud to say, I’m now a triathlete. Little did I know how addicting the entire triathlon thing is. Because as soon as I crossed the finish line, the last step of my first triathlon became my first step towards me 2nd triathlon.

Since completing my triathlon, several of my friends have been telling me their stories about the Spira shoes I recommended to them. One in particular is an incredible 65 year old man named Bill Hansen. Bill owns the largest catering company in Florida. He’s catered for 3 U.S. Presidents and the pope. He began running back in the late 1970’s and ran regularly until 2005 when he stopped due to constant knee pain. Bill has done triathlons and marathons and even after physical therapy, medications and surgery, he gave up running completely. I suggested he try a pair of spira sneakers with the wavespring technology. At the age 65 Bill is back on the road running again without any knee pain.

I can’t say enough about Spira’s sneakers. They work and made this non-runner into someone who actually enjoys and appreciates running. I feel like a kid again!
A special thanks go out to the following:

Adam Cronin of Soma Fitness & Performance in South Beach for setting up my weight training routine and mapping out my 6 month plan to the triathlon

Shiloh Harper of Soma fitness & Performance in South Beach who evaluated and tweaked my swimming biomechanics

Jaime Rojas who further tweaked my swimming.

Armando Cruz of Cruz Country Fitness who added valuable knowledge to my approach to the triathlon, transitions and to my running.

Andy Krafsur, DJ Vickers and the rest of the Spira Footwear team who helped to take the shock and fear out of running with their incredible running sh oe technology.

Here's a picture I took with another guy who was in on the big secret. He ran in the bright yellow Spira Elite running shoes -------->

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine. And now....He's a Triathlete too! Dr. Narson is available for lectures in the areas of sports medicine and nutrition

Take This Simple Test & Know How YOU Should Eat

2010-07-10T12:50:00.003-05:00

By Miami Beach Chiropractor & Sports Injury Specialist, Dr. Todd Narson

What am I supposed to eat? ....is the most common question I get when I do nutritional consultations and lectures. Although the following are some very good basics, how would you know more specifically how YOU should be eating...

----------------------------------------------
The Basics.....

1. Cut out refined, man-made & processed carbohydrates (sugar, high fructose corn syrup, Agave nectar, fructose, sucrose, glucose, bread, white rice, pasta, etc)

2. Cut out all man made fats such as Trans fats (hydrogenated & partially hydrogenated oil) and the the trans fat's new and more evil cousin, Interesterified fat

3. drink plenty of water.

4. Eat fruit, not fruit juice

5. Eat veggies, lots of fresh and 80% raw.

6. Eat only clean natural sources of animal proteins (wild fish, free range organic poultry and grass-fed beef)

7. Exercise 5-7 days per week for at least 30 minutes.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Now that's well and good, but most people want something more specific. Something tailored just for them. How much do I eat? What foods? And in what ratios to each other? Etc...

Well, check out Dr. Mercola's new Nutritional Typing survey. Answer a series of questions about your diet and how you feel and get placed in one of 3 basic nutritional categories or nutritional "types". Depending on your physiology and how you react to foods, the type of food and the amounts of those foods will be different. From what Dr. Mercola says, it's pretty darn accurate, but you won't truly know until you try it yourself.

So, take this simple easy test and get more detailed insight as to how you should be eating...

'nuff said.

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He is 1 of 9 recognized chiropractic sports medicine specialists in the state of Florida and 1 of 225 in the United States. He is the current president of the Dade County Chiropractic Society and practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Will Extra Sleep Improve Athletic Performance?

2010-06-10T04:23:00.006-05:00

Miami Beach Chiropractor - Dr. Todd Narson

The Athletic Performance of Collegiate Football Players Improved By Extra Sleep
June 10, 2010

Getting extra sleep over an extended period of time improves athletic performance, alertness and mood, according to a research abstract presented Tuesday, June 8, 2010, in San Antonio, Texas, at SLEEP 2010, the 24th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC.

Results indicate that football players' sprint times improved significantly after seven to eight weeks of sleep extension. Average sprint time in the 20-yard shuttle improved from 4.71 seconds to 4.61 seconds, and the average 40-yard dash time decreased from 4.99 seconds to 4.89 seconds. Daytime sleepiness and fatigue also decreased significantly, while vigor scores significantly improved.

"Sleep duration may be an important consideration for an athlete's daily training regimen," said lead author Cheri Mah of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory in Stanford, Calif. "Furthermore, sleep extension also may contribute to minimizing the effects of accumulated sleep deprivation and thus could be a beneficial strategy for optimal performance."

The study involved seven healthy students on the Stanford University football team. Their ages ranged from 18 to 22 years, and they played a variety of positions on the team. Participants maintained their habitual sleep/wake schedule for two weeks at the beginning of the season to establish their baseline measures.

"These athletes began their competitive season with moderate levels of daytime sleepiness and fatigue," said Mah.

Then the participants extended their sleep for seven to eight weeks during the season, obtaining as much sleep as possible and aiming for a minimum of ten hours of sleep each night. The 20-yard shuttle and 40-yard dash drills, which are used to measure performance at the annual National Football League Scouting Combine, were conducted after every regular practice. The Profile of Mood States (POMS) was administered once a week to monitor changes in mood, and daytime sleepiness was assessed using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. Participants also completed daily sleep journals, and their daily sleep/wake activity was monitored by actigraphy.

"By substantially increasing sleep duration, athletes experienced a decrease in both daytime sleepiness and fatigue and increase in vigor towards the end of their season," said Mah.

The results support Mah's previous research at Stanford involving men and women who compete in other sports such as basketball, golf, cross country, and track and field. Last year at SLEEP 2009, she reported that five members of the women's tennis team had faster sprint times and better hitting accuracy after a period of sleep extension. At SLEEP 2008 she reported that sleep extension helped five members of the swim team swim faster, react quicker off the blocks, turn faster and increase their kick strokes.

Mah noted that although traditional athletic training regimens typically focus on multiple aspects of physical training, few prioritize adequate sleep as an important component. She offered these tips to help athletes improve their performance by maximizing their sleep:

Make sleep a part of your regular training regimen.
Extend nightly sleep for several weeks to reduce your sleep debt before competition.
Maintain a low sleep debt by obtaining a sufficient amount of nightly sleep (seven to eight hours for adults, nine or more hours for teens and young adults).
Keep a regular sleep-wake schedule, going to bed and waking up at the same times every day.
Take brief naps to obtain additional sleep during the day, especially if drowsy.

Reprinted from Medical News Today

Source:
Kathleen McCann
American Academy of Sleep Medicine
_______________________________________

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Interesterified Fat - A Fat Worse Than Trans Fat For The Next Generation

2010-05-30T07:33:00.011-05:00

Interesterified fat is a new ingredient you're gonna start to see on your ingredient lists, and please watch out for it. Being someone who's often talking about nutrition, sports medicine and health I'm usually engrossed in a variety of conversations at parties and yesterday was no exception. A friend came to me with a box of graham crackers and asked me about some new fat she'd never seen before. I read the ingredient list and there it was, a fat I had never seen before either. So I wake up this morning and to my amazement still remembering the name of the fat I plug the name into Google and start to read. To me it started to seem like this was the food industries new replacement for hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oil. A new form of fat reportedly equally as bad as trans fat. But, without some science, the alarmists out there could just be paranoid. Further investigation was needed.

So I went to the internet source of all things research - PubMed. Pub Med has the synopsis of most registered scientific research journals and if there's been research done, you'll at least find an abstract on PubMed, enough to give you a good idea and a good reference or two to further your research.

A n d s o I d i d...

It seems public education & awareness of trans fats are pressuring industry so much they have to "stick and move" and try to find some other alternative to strategically keep their products on the shelf longer and preserve those higher profit margins. You see, the more a company has to rotate their products in/out of a grocery store because of expiration dates, the less profit they make on those items. Understandably, any business owner would want to do the same thing. But with trans fats, hydrogenated/partially hydrogenated oils and the new Interesterified Fat, they are doing it at the expense of your health.

To get an Interesterified Fat, they "hydrogenate the oils fully. The oils become fully saturated and there are no trans fats left. But fully hydrogenated oil is hard and inedible. So the smart aleck scientists mix it with liquid oils and put it through other chemical processes to create a semi-solid grease like margarine and vegetable shortening"(1)

According to an article in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism entitled Stearic acid-rich interesterified fat and trans-rich fat raise the LDL/HDL ratio and plasma glucose relative to palm olein in humans by Sundram K, Karupaiah T, Hayes KC.; both interesterified fat and trans fat from partial hydrogenation were found to raise LDL and lower HDL cholesterol(2).

This means, food scientists have found a brand new way to raise your bad fat, lower your good fat and give you a greater chance at having a heart attack or stroke at a younger age. Once again proving my point that science is hard pressed to improve on something mother nature made.

And...guess what??? That's not all the good news. Fasting plasma glucose levels tested at the end of each test fat period revealed a significantly high value after interesterified fat intake, even more than with the partially hydrogenated oil tested. This stuff raises the amount of glucose (sugar) streaming through your blood, something found in ALL of the humans subjects tested(2). This means your triglycerides go higher too. Wooopee...you're getting closer to that heart attack...

So the news is out. Let me restate it plainly and right from the research (with my comment in red).

1. Both interesterified fat and trans fat from partial hydrogenation were found to raise LDL and lower HDL cholesterol(2). This means it raises your bad cholesterol and lowers your good cholesterol.

2. Fasting plasma glucose levels tested at the end of each test fat period revealed a significantly high value after interesterified fat intake. This means this new interesterified fat increases the sugar levels in your blood.

So consider this a public health warning: Interesterified Fats are as bad and possibly worse than trans fats. Stay away from them. There are no safe levels of ingesting trans fats and I'm telling you there's no safe level of consuming interesterified fats.

Now, for the political types out there:

Being a businessman myself, I'm all for profits. I'm not going to hide that. I mean, why else would you be in business? But, being a physician, I have to fully explain to each patient all the possible side effects of my treatments. I actually have a form that has all of the possible side effects on it that the patient has to read, sign and date. Then, after than, some patients ask me about them and we have a conversation based on those possibilities as it pertains to their particular case. AND...I'm still in business. So why is it we have to have yet another way to deceive the public that an ingredient in the "food like substances" they are selling is is bad for us? Why wont the government (the people supposedly out to protect us) make industry fully and openly inform us so we can make an educated decision for ourselves and our families? If there's an ingredient in a company's product that is harmful to the public, it should have a warning label - period! Let the public decide after that. After all, this is one main factor that drives supply and demand and is an integral part of capitalism! Industry can't be industry with out the consumer. I challenge industry to openly and honestly inform us of the ingredient in their products...and in plain ole' simple language.

Consider yourself informed and warned.

'nuff said

Dr. T

References
1. http://www.stop-trans-fat.com/interesterified-fat.html

2. Stearic acid-rich interesterified fat and trans-rich fat raise the LDL/HDL ratio and plasma glucose relative to palm olein in humans; Sundram K, Karupaiah T, Hayes KC. Nutrition & Metabolism 2007, 4:3 (15 January 2007)

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He is 1 of 230 chiropractic sports injury specialists in the United States and practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

A Critical Examination Of Blood Type Diets

2010-05-29T12:18:00.001-05:00

This is one of the most popular questions I get when I discuss nutrition and health. What do I think about "blood type diets". My answer is that it sounded interesting but I don't know if the science behind it is sound. Turns out, I was right. Blood type diets work for 44-62% of the people but for all the wrong reasons. When he ends up recommending to 44-62% of his readers is a paleo-diet. Unfortunately, his reasoning is all wrong because hot got his blood types wrong according to evolutionary science. Dr. Loren Cordain PhD explains it all as he examines this popular diet theory...

Enjoy the explanation.....

Dr. T

A Critical Examination Of Blood Type Diets
- by Loren Cordain, Ph.D., Professor

The History And Characterization Of Blood Type Diets

Blood type diets were first popularized by Peter D’Adamo, a naturopathic physician, in his best selling 1996 book, Eat Right 4 Your Type1. The inspiration for Dr. D’Adamo’s book came from subjective clinical impressions of his father, James D’Adamo; also a naturopathic physician who first proposed this concept in his book, One Man’s Food is Someone Else’s Poison 16 years earlier in 19802. As a member of Bastyr College’s first graduating class of naturopathic physicians in 1982, Peter became interested in attempting to validate his father’s subjective and personal observations from reviews of the scientific and medical literature – thus the fundamental reason for Peter writing his hugely successful diet book.

The underlying premise for Peter’s dietary ideas is that ABO blood type is the most important issue in determining healthful diets. He advocates separate diets for people with one of the four most common blood types (A, B, O or AB), and has further subdivided his dietary recommendations into three arbitrary ancestral categories: "African, Caucasian and Asian." Hence 12 subgroups (4 blood types x 3 ancestral categories) exist – each with differing dietary recommendations. Each blood type diet includes 16 food groups which are divided into three categories: 1) highly beneficial, 2) neutral and 3) avoid. For each of the 12 subgroups differing recommendations exist for the three food categories. If these nutritional recommendations sound somewhat complex to you, I had to re-read them about a dozen times to get the drift myself. Although I don’t want to get ahead of the game, for the observant reader, you may be curious to know how Dr. D’Adamo dreamed up this complex dietary system and if a long trail of experimental human clinical trials exist to support Peter’s recommendations? I, too, had to ask myself these same questions.

Before we get into the science or lack thereof of the blood type diet, I’ve got to flesh out a few more of the underlying concepts. Dr. D'Adamo believes that blood group O ("O for Old") was the earliest human blood type and that all humans at one time maintained this blood group before the subsequent evolutionary appearance of blood types A, B and AB (reference 1, pp. 6-13). Accordingly, Peter believes that people with the O blood type had ancestors who were skillful hunters and whose diets were high in meat and animal proteins. For modern people with the O blood type he advocates a high meat, low carbohydrate "hunter" diet, with virtually no wheat, few grains or legumes and limited dairy products. Do these dietary recommendations ring a bell for you, or sound vaguely familiar? Keep this thought in mind, as it may well explain the lasting popularity of Peter’s first book.

Peter now goes on to explain to us that blood group A ("A is for Agrarian") "appeared somewhere in Asia or the Middle East between 25,000 and 15,000 B.C." . . . and "allowed them to better tolerate and absorb cultivated grains and other agricultural products" (reference 1, p. 8). For type A’s, Dr. D’Adamo recommends a mainly vegetarian diet - the diet that he personally follows. However, more importantly he recommends that blood type A’s also avoid wheat and dairy (do these recommendations also sound familiar?) and replace meats with some "highly beneficial" fish and seafood – Hmm, lots of fresh fruits and veggies for type A’s, little wheat or dairy and fish instead of meat? Keep these recommendations in mind.

Peter next tells us that blood type B, "developed sometime between 10,000 and 15,000 B.C. in the area of the Himalayan highlands – now part of present-day Pakistan and India (reference 1, p. 10). Peter suggests that type B’s have evolved the most varied diet and can include both meats and dairy in their daily menu, but again should avoid wheat. Before we move on to the final blood type (AB) it should be noted that Dr. D’Adamo generally eschews highly processed foods (chips, pastries, candy, ice cream, snack food, fast food, etc.) for all blood groups – once again, does this not sound like another familiar dietary suggestion?

From Peter’s diagram on page 6 of his book, he indicates that blood type AB appeared first in humans sometime between 500 B.C. and 900 A.D. He characterizes "AB is for Modern" and states "Until ten or twelve centuries ago, there was no Type AB blood." (reference 1, p. 13). Peter indicates that AB’s are a conglomeration of type A and type B blood types, and consequently their diets should reflect a mixture of the recommendations he makes for these blood groups. AB’s are therefore advised to eat meats, seafood and dairy, and to once again avoid wheat.

The Reality And The Science Of Blood Type Diets

The reality of Dr. D’Adamo’s book, Eat Right 4 Your Type, is that it has overwhelmingly become one of the sustained, best selling diet books of the past two decades, and continues to sell well on Amazon and other retail outlets – 14 years after its initial release in 1996. Unfortunately, as I will shortly demonstrate, Dr. D’Adamo’s explanations for the health-promoting effects of his diet have little or nothing to do with ABO blood groups. His claims about the origins of human blood types and the dietary selective pressures which elicited the four common blood types are completely incorrect and have no basis in the current scientific literature. By critically examining the faulty concepts and evidence underlying this book, it becomes almost comical how Peter’s series of errors, incorrect assumptions and conclusions actually ended up with dietary recommendations that may have therapeutic value for about 60% or more of the world’s population. The paradoxical nature of this book (bad science, pretty good dietary recommendations) helps to explain its lasting commercial success.

Actual Origins of Human Blood Types

Peter’s suggestion that O is the original human blood type is incorrect. Studies in humans, chimpanzees and bonobos (a specific type of chimpanzee) show that alleles (different versions of genes) coding for the A blood type was actually the most ancient version of the ABO blood group, and was shared prior to the evolutionary split between chimpanzees and hominids five to six million years ago3-5. Hence, Peter’s suggestion that blood type A appeared 15,000 to 25,000 years B.C. in response to dietary changes brought about by the new foods (i.e. grains) of the agricultural revolution is not only incorrect, but off base by about five million years. Now, let’s play a little game of logic and apply the correct data to Peter’s reasoning that "the original ancestral human blood type should be eating a high protein meat based diet." Since type A is the actual ancestral human blood type (rather than O), if we use Peter’s logic then he - himself a type A - should not be following a vegetarian diet, but rather a high protein meat based diet. These kinds of games of logic - although fun to play - more importantly underscore the fundamental and incorrect assumptions upon which Peter’s book is based.

The next blood type that appeared in the human lineage was B - which split from A - about 3.5 million years ago3-5, not the recent 10,000 to 15,000 years B.C. origin that Peter has proposed. The O blood type split from A about 2.5 million years ago3-5 and consequently does not represent the oldest blood type as claimed by Peter. The only fact that Peter correctly deduced about the origin of human blood types was that AB was the youngest, but once again he completely missed the correct date, as it was actually about 260,000 years ago3 - not the mere 1,500 years ago that he has proposed.

So Peter has got all of his blood group origins messed up, his dates wrong, and the evolutionary splits incorrect. Why does this matter and how does it affect his dietary theories? To begin with, even if we were to believe in Peter’s underlying assumptions that diets should be prescribed upon blood types, he would have to completely revamp his original recommendations. Type A’s should be eating a high protein, meat-based diet rather than the vegetarian fare he suggests. But what about type O’s? With the correct evolutionary information, should they now be eating a vegetarian menu? And what about type B’s and type AB’s – what should they now be eating? Most telling of the logical failings of Peter’s blood type diet is the observation that all four of the major blood types had evolved almost 250,000 years before the coming of the Agricultural Revolution 10,000 years ago. Yet Peter would have us convinced that three of the four major blood groups only came into existence slightly before or after the Agricultural Revolution, and as a direct result from dietary selective pressures wrought by Neolithic food introductions.

So, why has Peter’s book become one of the best selling diet books in the past two decades? Because it works – but only for about 44-62% of the people who adopt it. Remember that for blood type O, Peter advocates a high meat, low carbohydrate "hunter" diet; with virtually no wheat, few grains or legumes and limited dairy products. If we look at the frequencies of the four major blood types for the entire world population, blood type O is by far the most frequently occurring version. It is found in 62% of all the world’s people, followed by A (21%), B (16%) and AB (1-3%)6. In the United States, the four blood type frequencies are O (44%), A (42%), B (10%) and AB (4%)7. So you can see that Peter has essentially advocated a diet similar to the Paleo Diet for between 44 and 62% of his readers. Quite simply, Peter’s diet works for about 44 to 62% of the people who adopt it – not because of their blood type, but because it emulates the same diet that natural selection has designed for us all.

References:

1. D'Adamo, P. with Whitney, C. Eat Right 4 your Type: The Individualized Diet Solution to Staying Healthy, Living Longer & Achieving Your Ideal Weight. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1996.
2. D’Adamo, J. One man's food--is someone else's poison. R. Marek Publisher, 1980.
3. Calafell F, Roubinet F, Ramírez-Soriano A, Saitou N, Bertranpetit J, Blancher A. Evolutionary dynamics of the human ABO gene. Hum Genet. 2008 Sep;124(2):123-35.
4. Saitou N, Yamamoto F. Evolution of primate ABO blood group genes and their homologous genes. Mol Biol Evol. 1997 Apr;14(4):399-411.
5. Lalueza-Fox C, Gigli E, de la Rasilla M, Fortea J, Rosas A, Bertranpetit J, Krause J. Genetic characterization of the ABO blood group in Neandertals. BMC Evol Biol. 2008 Dec 24;8:342.
6. Mourant AE, Kopec AC, Domaniewska-Sobczak K. The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups and other Polymorphisms. Oxford University Press, London, 1976, p. 6.
7. Stanford School of Medicine, Blood Center.

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Beef: The Real Truth

2010-05-26T17:03:00.001-05:00

So Beef is Beef right? I think not. Here's a great quick read on the basics. Don't let "them" tell you beef isn't good for you. It's the type of beef you eat that determines its true health value. Click on the link below and learn the truth....Eat Wild.

Eat Wild - Basics

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Why '0' Trans Fats On the Label Doesn't Mean '0' In The Food

2010-05-25T08:45:00.009-05:00

This is the stuff that really pisses me off… I go into the cupboard to get a box of taco shells because it’s “Taco Night” at my house and take out this box of “Whole Grain” taco shells. There’s even a little emphasis panel pointing out all of the whole grain goodness in the taco shells and specifically says “0 trans fats” with a check mark next to it (see back panel picture below). But because I’m just so un-trusting of the big food manufacturers I have to read the actual ingredient list and there, in the list were the trans fats…Using their alter-ego “Partially Hydrogenated (in this case) Soybean Oil”.

But the box clearly says “0 trans fats” you say…..how could “they” put trans fats in the food????

That’s because those wonderfully trustworthy people in Washington DC we call our government , allows anything below .50 grams of trans fats per serving to be labeled ‘0 trans fats’. So that literally means the food you eat that is labeled “0 trans fats” could have .49 grams per serving. In this case, 2 taco shells is 1 serving. Most every Mexican restaurant I’ve ever been to sells tacos in 3’s. Typically a real serving of tacos is 3. So that means you’ve exceeded the threshold for trans fats and are now above .50grams; but there one more problem. There’s no level of trans fat intake that is safe.

In 2002 a panel of experts from the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the only safe intake of trans fat is ‘zero.’ (click here & read it for yourself)

Let me re-state and emphasize that THERE IS NO SAFE LEVEL OF TRANS-FATS.

Because of government rules and regulations they’ve allowed these companies to boost their product’s shelf life by adding a little trans fats. Boosting shelf life increases profitability and that’s the bottom line. Your health-their profits. For years they fought the labeling of this stuff at all. So I’m here to ring the bells and play the part of Paul Revere for you…

NEVER TRUST THE ADVERTISING ON THE BOX OR PACKAGING…..
ALWAYS READ THE INGREDIENT LIST.....

IF IT SAYS HYDROGENATED –or- PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED (any) OIL THEN THE FOOD HAS TRANS-FATS AND THERE IS NO SAFE LEVEL OF TRANS FATS THAT CAN BE CONSUMED.

Take a look at the pictures I’ve provided. See how deceptive the advertising on the box is and then plainly see the Trans-Fats / Partially Hydrogenated Oils on the ingredient list.

I know It’s deceptive…..after all, this box made it into my house. Luckily it found it’s way to the garbage before it could damage my family.

Today, go through all of the things you feed to your children(and yourself). Mos packaged foods and baked foods have trans fats in them. For every product that says 0-trans fats but has partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated oil on the ingredient list, write down .49. When you’re finished, add them up and see just how many grams of heart attacks & strokes you’re feeding to your children. Because to the body, this stuff is like plastic. It sticks around, damages your arteries and when enough damage accumulates, well, let’s just hope you’re local emergency room can save you. Just as you consume little by little of this stuff, it damages you little by little....There's no escaping it. It's poison, not food.

‘nuff said

Dr. T

PS, just to make my political views clear... I believe in capitalism and truly feel every company has the right to make a profit. However, I would like to see the REAL TRUTH in advertising so I can make a truly informed decision about what I purchase for myself and my family. If you are a company that has to hide behind government regulations to mis-inform the public with your product labeling practices, then you deserve to go out of business because you are simply lying to us.

Why Doctors Hate Chiropractors: Is Chiropractic Care a Visionary Form of Health-Care Reform?

2010-05-24T17:01:00.002-05:00

Robert A. Hayden, DC, PhD
American Chiropractic Association

May 18, 2010

If you’ve ever complained of a terrifically sore neck or lingering back pain, I’ll bet someone suggested that you see a chiropractor. I visit my chiropractor when my recurrent neck pain flares up (as in, when I spend too many hours in front of my computer for too many days in a row), and I know lots of other people who see chiropractors, too. Now research is affirming the efficacy of chiropractic care for a number of conditions, and this trend may be further stoked by changes brought about by health-care reform.

For many complaints, including such varied and seemingly unrelated ones as headaches and digestive distress as well as back and neck problems, chiropractic care can often provide safe, effective and fast-working treatment -- and (unusual for natural therapies) most insurance plans cover it. However, many mainstream medical doctors aren’t fans. Their reasons aren’t always clear but seem to lie somewhere on the spectrum between being worried that chiropractic care is not safe and feeling threatened that good chiropractors may take away many of their patients.

The Time is Right

In a glass-is-half-full kind of way, today’s troubled health-care environment actually presents an opportunity for chiropractors to gain some long overdue respect -- at least that’s a hope that’s currently afloat in the chiropractic community, I heard from Robert A. Hayden, DC, PhD, spokesperson for the American Chiropractic Association. A critical-care nurse for 20 years before becoming a chiropractor himself, Dr. Hayden explained that the nation’s ongoing and pressing concern about health-care costs and treatment efficacy is a good backdrop against which to understand the many ways chiropractic care can help patients.

Why are doctors skeptical? Dr. Hayden told me that one of his regular patients is an orthopedic surgeon -- but another orthopedist in his community won’t accept patient referrals from Dr. Hayden, and a nearby hospital won’t perform MRI scans for his patients. He believes this lack of acceptance is fueled by the very fact that chiropractic does not involve drugs and can be an effective alternative to hospitalization and surgery, which makes it attractive to both patients and the bean counters of health-care costs. The fact that Medicare now covers some chiropractic services enhances its credibility but also adds weight to worries that this natural, less invasive and less expensive alternative will divert health-care dollars away from medical doctors and hospitals.

What Will It Take?

Key to the growing acceptance of chiropractic care is evidence-based research demonstrating that it is safe, clinically effective and cost-efficient. In the latest such effort, funded by The Foundation for Chiropractic Progress, Dr. Niteesh Choudry and colleagues reviewed existing literature on the efficacy of chiropractic. Their conclusion is that it works as well as or better than conventional modalities, including exercise programs, drug regimens and surgical intervention, for treating many forms of low back and neck pain, two of the most common medical complaints. Numerous other studies also support the effectiveness of chiropractic treatment for spine and neck issues in particular. For instance, a 2002 study of patients with nonspecific neck pain found that pain was reduced and function improved for 68.3% after seven weeks of chiropractic care, while the success rate for those in the care of general practitioners was only 36%. The patients of chiropractors missed work less frequently and needed less pain medication.

Can It Cause Stroke?

One very specific concern voiced by many medical doctors is that chiropractic neck manipulation has the potential to cause stroke, or -- if done improperly -- even death. The basis for this is a fairly rare and often undiagnosed condition in which the vertebral arteries in the neck are weakened, possibly by high levels of homocysteine. The fear is that in a vulnerable patient, twisting or stretching those arteries during a chiropractic manipulation could cause them to rupture.

To investigate whether this is a real danger, researchers at the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada) studied vertebral arteries from several recently deceased people and found that it would take nine times the force of a typical chiropractic adjustment to damage these arteries and mobilize plaque. In fact, according to Dr. Hayden, normal head and neck movement present a greater risk than chiropractic manipulation for the kind of weak arteries that are of concern. By that measure, it’s risky to have your hair washed in one of those beauty parlor sinks where you have to lean way back (there’s even a name for this one, "the beauty parlor stroke"), play sports or even to turn your head to complete a turn while driving.

The condition that puts people at risk for this problem is very rare, Dr. Hayden said, noting that the statistics don’t support the level of concern being expressed. He pointed out that chiropractic is so low-risk that practitioners’ malpractice insurance costs only about one-tenth what an MD has to pay -- around $1,300, on average, compared with $10,000 to $20,000 for general physicians.

The Trend Is Good...

Meanwhile though, patients are voting with their feet -- so maybe doctors should try to learn more about chiropractic care rather than stand in the way of progress. The number of chiropractic patients in this country doubled in the two decades from 1982 to 2002, and an estimated 10% of Americans have seen a chiropractor in the past year.

As for me, well, when my neck hurts, I visit my chiropractor... and I feel better. If you’re interested in exploring this form of alternative medical care, you can go to http://www.acatoday.org/search/memsearch.cfm to find an experienced, licensed practitioner in your area.

Written By:
Robert A. Hayden, DC, PhD
American Chiropractic Association

May 18, 2010

Special from Bottom Line's Daily Health News

Robert A. Hayden, DC, PhD, founder and director of Iris City Chiropractic Center, PC, Griffin, Georgia, and spokesperson for the American Chiropractic Association.

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Get Rid Of That Beer Belly Gut With Simple Abdominal Crunches & Sit Ups!!!

2010-05-21T08:38:00.004-05:00

Miami Beach Sports Chiropractor - Dr. Todd Narson
Yeah right-Sorry, it ain't gonna happen! I was in the gym this morning and it's always the same thing. The brand new gym member comes in, towel around their neck, gut is leading the way by about 2 feet and they go straight to the abdominal crunch machine. Let's please take a moment and dispel the myth, spot reducing only works for Board Certified Plastic Surgeons doing liposuction! It doesn't work with exercising in the gym.

If your diet has consisted of refined foods, pasta, breads (I don't care what type of bread), food & drinks with added sugar, starchy foods & fast foods for, let's say the past 5-10-15-20 years and you are tipping the scales, please don't come to the gym, jump on the abdominal crunch machine and thing in 2 weeks you will be sporting an 8-pack. (By the way, it's an 8-pack, not a 6-pack, 8 pack is your rectus abdominus, a 6-pack is your beer).

If you truly want that 8-pack or at least want to drop enough weight where you can once again double check your gender, then you need to do a few things consistently and set a long term goal.

(1) Change your diet. Eat real food. Veggies, fruit (primarily berries) and clean-lean-natural meats the serving size of which should be about the size and thickness of the palm of your hand.

(2) Exercise. At the very least, do a brisk walk for 30 minutes every day. It's a start and before you know it, you will want to increase your exercise naturally. Maybe bicycling, going to the gym or even hiring a personal trainer to guide you. Plan your workouts so you go to the gym already knowing what you're gonna do. Most people wander around and see what machine looks good. Personally, I like to work agonist/antagonists that act on a specific joint or joints with a short (less than a minute) rest in between. I start and finish with the stair-master doing 1-minute intervals. I break up my weights so that I do strength training, power training, aerobic capacity training (muscular endurance).

(3) Preparation. If you think ahead and prepare your foods for the up and coming few days, it's easier to make good decisions and stick to your plan.

(4) Mind-set. It always helps to stay focused on your goal. for me, I have a friend who is a hypnotist and I go to him specifically to help me with mental exercises and hypnotherapy to help me stay focused on the task at hand, reduce stress, maintain my good eating habits and so forth. Often a hypnotist will have CDs that you could download onto your iPod for daily use.

So to the new member, I'm glad you're in the gym. Welcome. Now, plan, focus and go for it.

Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

'nuff said

DocT

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Blackberry Thumb

2010-05-13T10:01:00.001-05:00

Blackberry thumb is an irritation of the opponsnes & adductor pollicis muscles and tendons at through the large pad at the base of the thumb. It is a rapidly growing condition as more people use thumb-operated gadgets such as Blackberries, iPhones, Nintendo, X-Box and PS Gaming systems.

Symptoms of Blackberry thumb

Pain: At the base of the thumb which may continue even when the thumb is not being used
Ache: In the thumb web space or base of thumb joint
Muscle tension: In the web space between the thumb and index finger

What causes Blackberry thumb?

The muscles and tendons of the thumb are quite strong but are not designed for the type of intense-repetitive activity associated with many of today's handheld communication devices. Muscle fatigue, excessive muscle tension & repetitive mis-use can cause pain, irritation & inflammation of the muscles & tendons resulting in pain with use and when the condition worsens, pain at rest. Basically, this condition is a tendonitis. If not corrected and resolved, it can turn into a long term chronic tendonosis.

What can I do about it?

Rest: Stop doing what makes it hurt. This important phase allows the body to start healing.
Ice: Applying an ice compresses helps to reduce inflammation, reduces the hypersensitivity of the associated nerves causing a reduction in pain. When applying ice, always apply a thin towel layer like a handkerchief on the skin first to protect the skin from an ice burn. In this area, 10-12 minutes of ice, 2-4 times per day should suffice, however check with your DC, MD, DO, ATC or PT for your specific needs.
Gentle stretching and massage: Reducing muscle tension will improve flexibility and resolve the achy sensation. Less muscle tension means less force on the tendons and less chance of developing tendonitis.
Balancing of muscle strength: Strengthening weak muscles and loosening tight muscles is crucial to achieving full recovery.
Commitment: It will take repetitive applications over the course of several days or several weeks for this condition to resolve. The more you continue to use your blackberry, the longer it will take to resolve. If it doesn’t resolve, go se your local sports chiropractor, athletic trainer or musculoskeletal medicine specialist such as an orthopedist or physiatrist.
CHRONIC CASES are best treated with a combination of the above along with Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization(IASTM).

What To Do About Those Old "Aches & Pains" That Keep Coming Back To Haunt

2010-05-11T11:13:00.003-05:00

Graston Technique, FAKTR-PM, SASTM, AYSTM I’m sure you remember falling off your bike as a kid. Maybe a little accident on the monkey bars or on the ball field. A bump on the head, a bruised knee, a pulled groin or strained hamstring or maybe a sprained ankle or a sore shoulder from a multitude of childhood horsing & playing around. You went home, mom or dad put on a cold compress and the next day or the day after you’re up and running around again like nothing ever happened.

Ahhhh; but something did happen. Your little bump, bruise, strain or sprain started a little process. Yes it’s your body’s natural healing process but its how we ignore the process that presents the problem. Mom or dad puts an ice pack (if you were lucky) or a heating pad on it for a day or two and then off to the races you go. It doesn’t really matter if you go to a doctor or therapist for treatment of your injury, it will heal on its own regardless. But that doesn’t mean it will heel properly or optimally. That’s where we (the doctors, trainers & therapists) come in.

So, you have some contusion (deep muscle bruise) or strained a muscle that now needs to be fixed. The healing process starts by removing the damaged tissues then when that’s done, it starts bring in the new materials to start rebuilding. Inflammation happens, hopefully it subsides on its own, typically it doesn’t. So you put on some ice, take some over the counter pain killer and you feel fine again. Trust me on this, you’re not fine. You can ignore the pain, the slight change in function and get on with your little life. But the healing process ensues. Eventually, the damaged tissue heals with scar tissue and you’re all patched up. Now, here in lies the problem.

Scar tissue isn’t as good as the original tissue. Just look at any old cut on your arms or hand, or that spot where you skinned your knees as a kid and you can easily see it. Scar tissue has a haphazard matrix of fibers whereas the original tissues matrix is organized. It’s organized based on the specific function of the tissue for both strength and resiliency. Have you ever seen a car that had bad body work done on it? It’s just like that. Most scar tissues (adhesions) are simply a bad “patch job”. If you’re lucky enough to realize what’s going on in the beginning, applying ice compresses, doing light stretching and very light resistance exercise can help scar tissue heal optimally. If you just brushed it off, took a few over the counter pain killers and ignored it, (like most of us); as you get to your mid 30s or 40s all of a sudden you start getting these aches and pain out of nowhere. Then you are forced to deal with it as that once childhood bump, bruise or strain, comes back to Haunt You.

The problem lies in the transition area between the scar tissue and “normal” tissue. It’s a zone of weakness that is prone to re-injury. It’s not that neat organized “normal” flexible tissue you used to have prior to that old injury, and it’s not that thick inflexible scar. It’s the transition somewhere in-between. And it’s weaker!

So, how do you get rid of it?

In the past, we never realized that scar tissue and adhesions from old injuries were such a problem. The conditions were attributed to “old age” (what I call a cop-out), arthritis or the doctor would say something like “you probably twisted yourself in your sleep” or something the like. The approach was typically physical therapy, ice compresses, or heat compresses or stretching or massage, joint mobilization, adjustments to the joints etc. Which, are all good treatments, but never really addressed the primary problem. Now, through a lot of trial and error and some published research, reducing scar tissue and adhesions from old injuries seems to be solving many of the problems people have been told they simply have to “live with”.

Once scar tissues have formed they are pretty darn durable. Which is usually as good thing. But many scars attach to more than just the injured part and therein lies the problem. Muscles, ligaments, connective tissue, fascia etc are all layered on top of one another and they slide & glide on top of each other. When one tissue gets injured, the “stuff” that becomes a scar to heal the area solidified while attaching to a bunch of different tissues in the area bonding them together. But they weren’t made to work together like that, they should work independently. This causes restriction and pain and sometimes it could take years for it to develop as the scars become more mature as the years pass. (Think about lifting your pants leg up while it sticks to your sock or stocking with static cling; or taking a band-aid off a cut while the little white pad sticks to the scab)

You can’t massage them away, some more aggressive stretching works in some cases but is mostly temporary. Typical therapies just never really did the trick. However, over the past 8-10 years a new technology has emerged that directly addresses scar tissues and adhesions at their source. With high density stainless steel soft tissue mobilization tools, doctors and athletic trainers using Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization(IASTM) have been able to detect both superficial and deep scars and adhesions, reduce and remove them and in combination with post IASTM treatment protocols, finally get rid of this nemesis that plagues us as we get older. I have great successes with rotator cuff problems, post surgical knees, chronic hip pain after hip replacement surgery, low back pain, TMJ disorders, neck pain deep contusions, ankle sprains, plantar fascitis just to name a few.

The IASTM technique has been wildly successful to the point where most Athletic Trainers for the NBA, NHL, NFL & MLB have become certified and use the techniques to treat their pro athletes. Sports medicine physicians, therapists and athletic trainers around the world are all learning this stuff now. Back in 2006, I had the privilege to travel to Cartegena Colombia to treat world class athletes along with some of my colleagues at the 2006 Central American & All Caribean Games; and after only a few days, those of us certified in IASTM techniques were getting a huge following amongst the athletes, their team physicians & trainers. Those physicians who weren’t certified, all inquired about signing up for the certification program. That's how powerful this is. Trust me, physicians are a skeptical bunch.

So, if your joints are starting to ache and you feel like you too are suffering from “old age”, maybe try a new approach. If you are an athlete and you feel things aren’t just right, maybe not like they use to be, then seek out a physician, therapist or trainer certified in IASTM and put those childhood bumps, strains and bruises back in the past where they belong.

More info on where to get IASTM instruments and education; click here

Healthfully yours

DocT

Woman Suffers Stroke After Sneeze

2010-04-28T07:49:00.004-05:00

Miami Beach Chiropractor & Sports Injury Specialist - Dr. Todd Narson

For decades now my profession (chiropractic) has been blamed by neurologist and anti-chiropractic groups for causing strokes after cervical spine manipulation. However research has proven otherwise with showing that the risk of stroke is between 1 in 1 million to as little as 1 in 5.85 million. Which is more than it occurs in the general population. According to the American Heart Association, in 2010, in the United States, 4.3 people per 100,000 suffered a stroke. That's 4 people out of 100,000 people - just regular folks simply walking around living life.

When you compare it to modern medicine; well, let me just quote the source and you read it for yourself:

"In 1998 a Canadian team of researchers, led by Dr. Bruce Pomeranz, found that 106,000 people die annually in the U.S. from properly prescribed medications. No "mistakes" were made here--these drugs were the right amounts, given to the right people, at the right time--and still ended up killing 106,000". Carolyn Dean, MD" Click here to read the full article

Statistically, going to a chiropractor reduces your chance of getting a stroke. But strokes have been triggered (more often it seems) from coughing, sneezing and even cases where people had a stroke as they had their hair washed at the hairdresser (called barber shop chair stroke). Interestingly, you don't see these "anti-chiropractic" and neurologist groups calling for people to stop sneezing, coughing and going to get their hair washed and cut.

The following is the link to the article. After you read the article, read the comments as there is someone that describes the same thing happened to her but from a cough.

http://cbs13.com/watercooler/stroke.sneeze.natomas.2.1658276.html

In light of the June 2009 report to congress on the effectiveness of chiropractic for back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain and hip pain where chiropractic was 61% effective and medicine was merely 12% effective, I'm not so sure if I was a neurologist or anti-chiropractic advocate that I'd be pointing fingers. Because more and more evidence points to the safety and effectiveness of chiropractic care. Just like we've been saying for, ehh...about 100+ years

For those still in disbelief, here's a link to my blog on the 2009 report to congress and I even provide a link for you to download the actual report yourself.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Runners: Are Your Running Shoes Right For Your Feet?

2010-04-27T09:29:00.007-05:00

Miami Beach Sports Chiropractor - Dr. Todd Narson

I get approached by my patients who are avid runners every week regarding their running shoes. Some of them absolutely love their running shoes, some can't seem to find the right one. Before you can find the right shoe, you need to know what kind of foot you have and how it behaves under the stress of running and walking. Here's a great article by Athletic Trainer - Elizabeth Quinn that examines various foot types and how to pick the best running shoes for your foot.

Oh, for those of you who may have stopped running because of ankle, knee, hip or back pain, please go check out www.spirafootwear.com they make running and walking (and a couple basic dress shoes) that have springs in the heels and forfoot. The springs absorb some of the shock as your heel strikes and returns some of the energy back into your stride as you "toe off". Taking that bit of shock out of the running equation has made the difference for some athletes between sitting on the side lines and getting back out on the road.

For many of my back and knee pain patients who aren't runners, the Spira running shoes made enough of a difference to where they could simply stand, walk and go back to work. If you would like to try the Spira running shoes out, email me and I'll send you a promotional code that will give you a nice discount on their on-line store.

Now it's time for me to hit the road....

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Back Pain Relief - Chiropractic Care More Effective Than Medicine & Surgery - A Report To Congress Says...

2010-04-16T12:37:00.007-05:00

Chiropractor Miami Beach - Todd Narson, DC, DACBSP

On June 16, 2009 the Report to Congress on the Evaluation of the Demonstration of coverage of chiropractic Services Under Medicare; was submitted. A survey was conducted of 3,464 people seeking chiropractic care for pain and/or difficulty walking due to back pain (78%), neck pain (50%), Hip Pain (38%) and shoulder pain (32%). Symptoms were described as either "severe" or "very severe" and in 2/3 of the people, their symptoms "interfered considerably" in their usual daily activities. The most frequent type of treatment they received was (1) chiropractic manipulation (aka: adjustments) and (2) various physical therapy modalities like EMS, ultrasound, ice and heat.

Of the 3,464 people surveyed, 71% (2,459) responded to the survey.

There were 2 groups considered under this report & survey:

1. Those who received ANY treatment for neuro-musculo-skeletal (NMS) diagnosis

2. Those who received CHIROPRACTIC treatment for a NMS diagnosis.

Of the 2, 459 people that responded, the following are the results:

Benefits of Treatment & Satisfaction of Care:

60% of the respondents (1,476 people) received “complete” or “a lot” of symptomatic relief from chiropractic care
87% reported a satisfaction rating of ‘8’ or higher on a scale of 0-10 (where 0=no improvement and 10=complete improvement). 56% indicated a perfect score of ‘10’.
Chiropractic care was felt to be easily accessible & 95% of the people didn’t wait more than 1 week for an appointment.
A similarly, a high percent of the people surveyed reported that the chiropractors listened carefully & spent sufficient time with them

Prior Treatment for the Same Problem From “Other” Health Care Professionals

Other treatment given included

Pain pills (58%)
Pain Injections (30%)
A combination of Pain pills & pain injections (22%)
Surgery (12%)

Those reporting “moderate” or “complete” relief from treatment by “other” health care professionals = 11%. (yes, that's only 11%)

SUMMARY & MY OPINION

With 60% of the people reporting “complete” and “a lot” of relief of their symptoms and nearly 90% reporting 8, 9 and 10 out of 10 levels of improvement (where 0 is no improvement and 10 is complete improvement), it is clear that chiropractic is very effective as compared with medical treatment for the same conditions. Comparatively, treatment by pain medications (pills, injections or both) and surgey only resulted in 11% of the people finding satisfactory relief.

Chiropractic is clearly validated as an effective form of treatment for those with neuro-musculo-skeletal conditions such as back pain, neck pain, hip pain and shoulder pain. It’s time that the medical profession opens their arms and welcomes chiropractic physicians as partners in the treatment of these conditions for the mutual benefit of the patient.

Egos aside, once organic disease is ruled out, ALL neuromusculoskeletal based back pain, neck pain, shoulder and hip pain patients should be referred first for chiropractic evaluation and care. This report to congress clearly shows this as an emerging standard of care and integrated approach would clearly benefit the patient the most.

Here's a link to the original report to congress.

http://www.acatoday.org/pdf/demo_report.pdf

‘nuff said

Dr. Todd Narson

Diplomate, American Chiropractic Board of Sports Physicians

Lefty Golfer Phil Mickelson Celebrates Master's Win

2010-04-12T07:47:00.005-05:00

Miami Beach Chiropractor - Dr. Todd Narson,

Phil Mickelson pulls off a big win at The Masters and the lefties of the world celebrate.

Why being a lefty golfer is considered such a taboo I don't know. I've never understood it. From a bio-mechanical standpoint, it doesn't make sense that there are any fewer lefty golfers in the world than there are 'lefties" in a normal population. Last time I golfed, we had an entire foursome of lefties. For once, I didn't look like the guy with the weird club in the group photo.

My grandfather, Benjamin Narson taught me how to play baseball. He always taught me both lefty (which was my natural inclination) and right handed. I got pretty good at both. My grandfather was amazing. He'd use a baseball bat like a tennis racket & hit anything that was thrown at him. Yes, backhand with a baseball bat, balls thrown in the dirt, etc...

Now as an adult, I play golf and do so as a lefty because it feels more natural. The 99.8% of the time playing baseball, I batted left handed. But for some reason, when I went to my first driving range, I was told "because you play baseball left handed, you should play golf right handed because your left hand is your lead hand in golf and would give you more control"..... All I could say was....."Huh?"

Because I know stupidity (and a chance to prove it) when I see it, I asked him "then why aren't all those who played baseball right handed playing golf left handed? It only makes sense according to your reasoning..... Obviously the question stumped him. The real answer is, most people are right handed and therefore, most places don't have much of a selection left handed golf equipment. Secondarily, I've heard many golf pro's couldn't figure out how to teach a lefty student. Which had to be more "B.S." because you simply mirror your golf pro with your stance, your grip and your swing. Just like many golf pro's tell you to go home and practice in front of a mirror....well, a right handed pro teaching a left student simply stands across from one another and functions as a "live mirror". c'mon, let's think a little outside the box....

The fact of the matter is, you play golf with a left or right handed approach because of natural feel. Trying to change something from natural to unnatural doesn't make sense in any sport, unless it's causing the athlete physical harm or their 'natural way' is hindering their performance. Let's face it, many of us learned bad mistakes and continue to perpetuate them in our current sports and this is what needs correcting. Not someone's left or right handedness.

But the fundamentals of playing a sports left handed or right handed should be left up to the individual and their own natural inclination. And for all those golf pros and coaches that make up some bio-mechanical 'B.S.' about why golf should be played right handed and not left - it's time to wake up and smell the fertilizer.

I hope this 3rd Masters win (on top of all other career wins) for Phil Mickelson puts to rest the myth that Lefties aren't real golfers.

Lefty golfer's of the world rejoice!

Congrats to Phil & his family for showing us the complete package. Professional success & a successful family life. Standing by your wife and she goes through cancer treatment. Maybe Phil should run for President.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

Bagels or Bacon? The Metabolic Breakfast

2010-04-07T13:12:00.003-05:00

Bagels or Bacon? The Metabolic Breakfast

Posted using ShareThis

Bagels or Bacon? The Metabolic Breakfast

2010-04-07T13:12:00.001-05:00

Bagels or Bacon? The Metabolic Breakfast

Posted using ShareThis