Anyone who has experienced a migraine can tell you just how horrific they can be. In high school, I used to get them and it felt like someone was dropping acid on my brain. I would have to lock myself in a room with the shades drawn and suffer through it, often to the point of vomiting. While there are many triggers to migraines, there are some easy dietary changes you can try that may influence it.
Read MoreWe were told it’s all about the right shoes. We were told shoes should give us more stability and have an arch. This was not based on science and has potentially led to harming our feet. Plantar fasciitis is a debilitating, knife-in-the-foot kind of pain. Instead of getting into the right shoes, maybe it’s getting out of the wrong shoes. As you’ll see, the approach to treating plantar fasciitis has been very wrong.
Read MoreA baker’s cyst, or popliteal cyst, is a collection of fluid behind the knee. It is benign, and often asymptomatic. If it gets severe enough, it can cause pressure on the local nerves and vasculature which will provoke pain and stiffness in the knee. It will usually be difficult to fully flex the knee.
Well it’s fantasy football season for me, which means I have my eye on the injury list. Some players get the unfortunate label of being “injury prone” which got me thinking. Is there such a thing? Does it depend on the position, how good the defense is, or is there something going on with the athlete? Is it a strength deficiency, movement error, or dumb luck?
Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or BPPV for short, is a debilitating condition that causes severe room-spinning dizziness with changes of head position. If you’ve heard of ‘crystals being loose in the ear’, this is BPPV. It is usually called ‘idiopathic BPPV’, which simply means we don’t know the cause. Head trauma can cause it, but for many patients that deal with this, they haven’t had any trauma. Some recent research has proposed that there is likely a dietary component of this condition in the form of changes in carbohydrate metabolism.
Read MoreWhen it comes to antioxidants, glutathione is the king of the jungle. It boosts metabolism, takes stress off the liver, supports the immune system, and protects the body from oxidative stress. It is composed of 3 amino acids, L-glutamine, glycine, and cysteine. Deficiency can lead to serious problems, but the good news is that we can get it through diet.
Read MoreThe body is pretty good at keeping an electrolyte to water balance, which is important for nerve conduction and muscle contraction. When you drink alcohol, you may notice that your urine turns clear, a sign that this balance has been disturbed. Here is how it works:
Read MoreIs intense exercise good for you? How about red wine? It’s good for the heart, right? How about fasting? Are ice baths good? Deadlifting is bad for your back, especially those Jefferson curls. When you look into the hormetic effect, you’ll see why there is so much confusion around these conversations.
Read MoreThere are many causes of room-spinning dizziness, so it’s important to identify other symptoms to be able to correctly diagnose the cause. Meniere’s disease is characterized by room-spinning dizziness provoked with head position change and can last hours to days. It can also be accompanied with hearing loss, a sense of fullness in the ears, and ringing in the ears.
Read MoreIf you’ve had a recent bacterial or viral infection, and then become dizzy, it may be due to labyrinthitis. The inner ear has a membranous labyrinth which can become inflamed. This will usually cause dizziness, nausea, vomiting, hearing loss, and ringing in the ears. The dizziness will usually be described as room spinning and can last for days.
Read MoreType 3 diabetes is a new (and not quite accepted yet) term to describe the effects that diabetes can have on the brain. It describes the progression of diabetes to Alzheimer’s disease. The correlation between diabetes and Alzheimer’s is well documented, and this blog will aim to describe the proposed mechanism.
Read MoreWhen I have a patient that wants to know what to do about their dizziness, the first thing I want them to do is describe how it feels without saying “dizzy”. Dizzy is a blanket description that can mean anything from lightheaded to room spinning dizziness. It may sound callus, but I always hope for room spinning dizziness.
Read MoreIf you have pain on the outside of your foot, it may be cuboid syndrome. This is often misdiagnosed and is not well understood, but we do know that it is common following an inversion sprain, or “rolling your ankle.
Read MoreNo. Stretching rarely solves a problem. We hear this all the time as, “you gotta do your stretches”. Or I have someone ask: “I have back pain, what stretches should I be doing”?
Got flat feet? I have news for you, you weren’t born with them. This is something that develops over time? Why? The short answer is: shoes. Shoes do the work for your feet, like a brace or cervical collar. The muscles that line the arch get to relax and overtime, get weak to the point where you can’t stand while maintaining an arch.
Read MoreWe are all familiar with how important it is to hydrate, and you’ve probably been told by a medical provider that you have to hydrate more. However, there is such a thing as too much. As with everything in the body, it’s all about balance.
Read MorePain plagues us all, but when should we be worried about it and when can we work through it? To answer that, we have to have a better understanding of what pain is.
Read MoreOk, I’m guilty of this too. I was doing the egg white omelettes with wheat toast and no butter back in the day. I thought I was doing it right. It’s sad to think of all those yolks I wasted.
Read MoreAs a child, I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia. I had the typical symptoms; I was tired, shaky, irritable, and would have brain fog. My parents were told to keep me away from sweets and for years, I didn’t have candy. I remember even having pancakes with syrup would cause severe nausea and I’d have to lay down. I never really understood that if I had low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), why would putting sugar in the system bother me? It would seem that would be the way to fix it.
We’ve been told for decades to eat less and move more. This is the caloric deficit paradigm, and I’d argue it’s not the best way to lose weight. Although it does work, it requires the tedious task of counting calories and leads to a lot of hunger. If our bodies were as basic as an automobile, it would make some sense. But we are much more complicated than a car. The good news is there is a better way that doesn’t require calorie counting.
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