HEALTH & WELLNESS
Time to feel good
Your important health questions, answered
How can I fix my posture?
Fixing your posture can be a simple task or a complicated one. Many people are taught by their parents to sit up straight or attempt to walk with their chest out and head up. While this may work for a few minutes, it causes your body to use an excessive amount of energy because you’ re consciously deciding to sit or walk a certain way. In
DR. MAZ addition, in most cases, people will revert to their
original faulty posture when no one’ s looking.
While having good posture seems to be a muscular issue, it is really more of a neurological phenomenon. This is also why bracing does not work. In fact, it will make the muscles weaker. Some chiropractic techniques are specifically designed for correcting posture in one treatment. One is called Advanced BioStructural Correction. Before leaving the doctor’ s office, a person can gain good posture after just one correction with no effort on their part.
Why can’ t I lose weight even though I eat healthfully?
Many people have difficulty losing unwanted belly fat. A common cause is food sensitivity— eating foods that are deemed healthy but may not be healthy for you. Certain foods can cause inflammation throughout your body without your knowing about it or being able to relate your symptoms to it. Over time, your adrenal glands start to secrete too much cortisol, which destabilizes your insulin and blood sugar levels and causes excessive belly fat. Thus, food sensitivities can lead to weight gain and a higher amount of body fat, both of which also promote inflammation and chronic conditions. But the goal isn’ t to lose weight to become healthy. You need to become healthy first, and then you will lose the weight and help your thyroid, diabetes, depression, fatigue, sleepless nights and so much more.
How can I have better sleep?
Multiple factors contribute to one’ s inability to sleep. In many cases, it is a functional problem, meaning the body is not doing what it is supposed to do during rest. As a result, it overworks and causes symptoms. Unfortunately, routine diagnostic studies do not reveal the true cause of these symptoms, so patients are diagnosed with conditions like sleep apnea and end up with a CPAP machine. Besides the obvious things that are taken into consideration where sleep is concerned( having a good contour pillow, a dark room, and peace and quiet), other not-so-obvious factors are commonly overlooked. One is TV and electronics. Unfortunately, many people are addicted to these things and watch TV or engage in“ connecting” on social media for hours before going to sleep. Some people actually fall asleep with the phone in their hand! As a result, the brain keeps going and they can’ t truly relax or they have trouble going to sleep or staying asleep. Besides eliminating electronics, try to sleep in complete darkness, or as close to it as possible. Even the tiniest bit of light in the room can disrupt your circadian rhythm and your pineal gland’ s production of melatonin, a hormone that helps control
your body’ s sleep and wake cycles. If you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, use the least amount of light as possible. As soon as you turn on that light, you will immediately cease all production of melatonin for that night. Get the TV out of the bedroom— or even out of the house completely. It is too stimulating to the brain and it negatively affects your pineal gland’ s ability to make melatonin. Also, avoid caffeine. Seems like a no-brainer, right? A recent study showed that caffeine is not processed efficiently in some people. These people can feel the effects long after drinking it. So a cup of coffee or tea in the afternoon will keep some people from falling asleep at night( I am one of them). Food processing and sensitivity is yet another factor. Many of my patients never thought to make the connection between food and sleep. If you are allergic or even sensitive to some foods, you may have nasal congestion, sneezing, watery eyes or a runny nose, all of which can lead to poor sleep and significant daytime sleepiness and fatigue.
Why do I feel fatigued, and why should I take medication if my blood work is normal?
Many patients have had blood testing that has caused more confusion by indicating false-positive or false-negative numbers. A false positive is when, for example, your thyroid markers are off and the cause may be that your liver is not functioning properly, but the doctor instinctively puts you on thyroid medication. A false negative is when you have a functional problem that does not show accurately in a simple blood test because the normal ranges are too broad. You have to be 80 percent sick to show positive on a blood test, and many times the symptoms will get related to another organ or system of the body. In addition, lab ranges are very broad. Functional ranges are narrower. So in many instances, you may show normal on a marker in your blood test but be outside of the functional range for what is causing your symptoms, especially with chronic conditions such as chronic fatigue, hypothyroidism, fibromyalgia and leaky gut syndrome. Unfortunately, many doctors also are mistakenly classifying a patient as normal when the patient is out of the functional range. As a result, the patient will become depressed and seek psychiatric medication or other unnecessary medications to control their“ normal” symptoms. Chronic functional problems include depression, anxiety, insomnia, fatigue, low sex drive, digestive issues, joint pain, thyroid, pancreas and hormonal imbalance. In many cases, multiple organs and systems of the body are involved and need to be addressed, preferably naturally.
Dr. Ali Mazandarani( Maz), DAAIM, BCIM, DC, CCRD, CCPCP, provides care at MedWell, a center for chronic conditions recovery with natural, drug-free methods. He has successfully helped thousands of patients using the“ Maz Method,” an individualized program developed after years of collaborative research amongst himself and his colleagues. The center is located in Midland Park, Bergen County, New Jersey. You can reach the center at 201-848-8000 or www. FixMeUp123. com.
80 NEW JERSEY COPS ■ APRIL 2017