TOP 7 WAYS TO GET COVID-19

It’s all about creating a hospitable environment for the virus and Id like to share my top tips…

1.    Eat highly processed foods, lots of cakes, sweets and chocolates and swill it down with lots of alcohol. Do not eat any fresh fruit, vegetables or cook for yourself. You will gain some weight and your malnourished body will welcome the virus with open (chubby) arms!

2.    Don’t get your spine adjusted. Reduce nerve flow to your immune system because you want your overall body function to be as compromised as possible.

3.    Read as much as you can about COVID-19 in order to increase your stress hormones such as cortisol. This is a great way to suppress immune function.

4.    Expose yourself to hazardous chemicals, including: 

·         Pesticides on your food

·         Parabens, synthetic colours, Phthalates, Triclosan, Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) / Sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) and Formaldehyde in your beauty products

·         Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in air fresheners

·         Phthalates, Perchloroethylene, Quarternary Ammonium Compounds, 2-Butoxyethanol, Chlorine and ammonia in your cleaning products

5.    Stay up late binging on Netflix and never go to sleep before midnight. It’s OK, you don’t have work tomorrow!

6.    AVOID Joe Wicks morning exercise or any other form of exercise at all costs because it has been shown to boost immunity. We’d recommend slobbing on the sofa every day instead.

7.    DO NOT go outside in to the sunlight. The vitamin D you’ll produce will not create a hospitable environment for the virus.

Obviously this is a little tongue in cheek, with an important message for us all. Never before has there been so much sickness in the history of humankind, yet we have more drugs and surgery than ever before.

Something has to change.

We have to change.

Spencer and myself have been promoting healthy lifestyle advice that’s logical for humans to thrive for many years.

If you’d like to know more about living a healthy lifestyle and what humans require to be healthy, then follow our groups on Facebook or get your copy of Spencer’s book Naturalogy.

NATURALOGY BOOK

Be well

Julia

X

Totally Indulgent Brownie Recipe ….. with no wheat and no dairy!

Many patients have requested the recipe for my gluten free and dairy free chocolate brownies ever since they made a brief appearance in the clinic, so I've finally got around to sharing it.

If you're trying to eat without wheat, gluten and dairy, and are missing the luxury of an occasional treat this could be the recipe for you. The gluten and dairy free supermarket products that are available are often loaded with additives and E numbers so ought to be avoided. Check the ingredients label the next time you're shopping and see how many of the items you would actually call 'food'!

Ingredients

400g Dark Chocolate 70 per cent cocoa solids. Check the label to make sure it’s dairy free. I use Green&Black’s organic
325g Coconut Oil Some oils taste of coconut which adds a nice extra flavour but if you’re not a fan, find one that doesn’t. We stock a very high quality tasteless organic oil in the clinic but it’s quite expensive so shop around. Trade Winds on Cole Street in Scunthorpe is a good place to try.
6 Whole Eggs and 2 Yolks
300g Caster Sugar  There’s no avoiding this really as they are sweet treats!
50g Cocoa Powder  Not drinking chocolate! It has milk in it and lots of extra sugar and additives.
80g Gluten Free Flour  Dove’s Farm gluten free plain flour works really well.

Method

• Heat the oven to 180C/fan160C/gas 4. Grease a shallow baking tin all over with some coconut oil, and line the base with greaseproof paper.
• Gently melt the chocolate and coconut oil in a bowl over a pan of simmering water until smooth, and then remove from the pan and allow to cool a little.
• Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and egg yolks with the sugar at high speed in a large bowl until they turn a little pale. This takes about 5 minutes or so.
• Gently fold the melted chocolate mix into the eggs, and then sieve the cocoa powder and flour into the bowl and fold it all together until evenly mixed.
• Pour into your prepared tin, and any leftover mix can go into individual bun cases as muffins!
• Bake in the oven for around 20-30 minutes dependant on the depth in the tin. The edges should be slightly risen and the top will crack. Remove once it looks done and allow to cool completely in the tin.
• Once cooled, turn out of the tin, cut into treat size pieces and enjoy!

These are definitely not low calorie, but for anyone concerned about their health, or trying to avoid gluten and dairy products, they are a lovely indulgent but occasional sweet treat.

 

James is running the Marathon des Sables!

Oh dear, what have I let myself in for?

It all started with a documentary featuring James Cracknell who ran the Marathon Des Sables in 2010. I thought to myself if James Cracknell could do it then so can I!!

I then started looking into the race myself, the Marathon Des Sables is a race for only the brave and stupid, it entails a 150 mile running race across the Sahara Desert including many of those miles up and over sand dunes stretching across 6 days. Temperatures reach up to 50ºC with the possibility of encountering scorpions, snakes and desert spiders as big as a dinner plate. All of this with carrying all your supplies for the week including food a sleeping bag and medical kit in a backpack weighing up to 10kg.

Before I knew it I had applied and also dragged one of my unwitting friends along for company. The only difference is that him agreeing to come along involved a little more alcohol than my decision. We both applied in August 2011 and managed to get a charity place for the 28^th annual Marathon Des Sables in April 2013. Perfect I thought I have 18 months to prepare but it’s surprising how quickly time goes. I have been training hard to get up to normal marathon distance ready for the London Marathon this month, still a long way short of the amount of training I have ahead of me.

The hardest part so far has been dragging myself out of the warm house into freezing temperatures many times a week over the winter but hopefully as the weather starts to improve for the summer I can train in weather very slightly closer to the conditions I will face next year.

Let's Uncomplicate Health

Ever since the health of the nation began to slide, more and more work has been done by researchers and scientists to try to determine the reasons for our declining health. It seems that every week some new bit of information is published in the newspaper or heard on the news, and often it contradicts what was said last week on the same subject! This has happened so many times over the years that eventually most people stop hearing the advice that is given of this type as it all seems to blend into a confusing mish mash of noise. "What am I supposed to think now?" we ask ourselves. "I don't think they know what they're doing!" we cry.

So let's uncomplicate health and keep it simple. If you eat good things and avoid eating bad things, if you get some exercise and avoid sitting down all day, and if you keep a positive mental attitude and avoid negative thoughts or stress, you'll regain your health. After all, it's this kind of lifestyle that led to humans becoming the dominant species on the planet. The diseases we fear so much today were just never heard of. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimers, obesity etc were incredibly rare. And before you think to yourself, "Ah yes, but they're genetic diseases due to flaws in our genes" you need to understand that the genes of human beings have not changed significantly for over 40,000 years! We all have caveman genes, but cavemen never had our diseases! How can that be?

A few thousand years ago, long before anyone ever thought of mass producing artificially flavoured and over preserved items and then calling them 'food', we ate whatever was available in nature. This turned out to be lean wild animals (that had also led a natural life), fruits that grew on trees, plants and vegetables that grew out of the ground, and water that came from a crystal clear, unpolluted stream or river.

So that's the eating good things taken care of. Now for some exercise.  As you can imagine, there weren't so many gyms or sports shops around back then. But obviously hunting animals and foraging for fruits, nuts and vegetables was hard work. There would be lots of walking, probably carrying what you had already collected, mixed with crouching, lifting, stretching and maybe the occasional bought of running. This all led to us getting exercise and burning energy. We strengthened our muscles, and we got our hearts pumping. Sounds like a good workout to me!

So now we've taken some exercise, and eaten a natural diet. What about our mental attitude? Well, it turns out that as a species we are hard wired to care for each other and cooperate in groups and communities. It's currently thought that this was one of the main factors why we survived when other early 'human like' mammals didn't such as Neanderthals. We are happiest when we work together as a community towards a common goal, knowing that your neighbour will help you out when needed, and knowing that you will gladly give your time to support them in return.

A great Canadian chiropractor by the name of Dr James Chestnut has summarised this as Eat Well, Move Well, Think Well^®. If you do these three things, you can’t help but Be Well! Now how uncomplicated is that?

It's really taking shape now!

Well, what a lot of progress has been made. The outline of the front of the building can really be seen now. The walls are up and the new window openings are in. Poor Gavin and Vicky have had their windows blocked up so aren't getting any sunlight at the moment, but that will all change once the new windows and roof lights go in.

It's shocking now to see the clinic like this as it looks like we're not open! It just looks like a building site. You wouldn't know that we're still helping hundreds and hundreds of people to get and stay well!

There will shortly be a big banner on the front of the building telling everyone that we are still open as usual and hopefully before too long we'll have the new roof timbers on. It's looking good!!

Is Chiropractic a treatment for pain relief?

Many of our patient’s first encounters with a chiropractor are as a result of hearing that chiropractic helped someone with back pain or headaches. They usually tell the same old story that nothing else had seemed to work, and they were fed up with the side effects of the pain killers they were taking, so they tried chiropractic as a last resort.

Many times the patient has a great response to care with us and says things like “I wish I’d found you years ago”, or “Why didn’t my Doctor send me to you?”

The strange thing is though, chiropractic was never designed to be a treatment for simple back pain or neck pain etc, as effective as it seems to be for those conditions. Chiropractic was originally devised as a treatment for improving the function of the nervous system which is why chiropractors are so focussed on your spine. The main function of the spine is to protect the spinal cord and this is clearly a very important part of the nervous system as it connects your brain with all of the tissues and organs of your body. However it is also a very delicate part of your body and any slight disturbances can affect its function in numerous ways.

 Your brain is constantly monitoring the status of your body, and makes millions of minor corrections every second to allow you to adapt to whatever situation you find yourself in. This could be something such as producing enough stomach acid to digest that meal you’ve just eaten, or increasing your heartbeat to allow you to run up a flight of stairs. It could also be something much more subtle such as altering the amount of a hormone produced in a cell, or healing a wound. To be able to do this, your brain needs to receive millions of accurate signals from your body, and then needs a way of getting those corrective signals back out to your body again. Obviously this is where your spinal cord and all your nerve tissue comes in. The tiny alterations that your brain is sending out need to get to the right location in your body in exactly the right form and at exactly the right time to ensure that your body is changed in exactly the right way. Otherwise things don’t quite work as they should!

The whole purpose of chiropractic care is to ensure that those signals that leave the brain get to the correct part of the body at the right time, in the same format and with the same intensity that was determined by your brain. Similarly, chiropractic aims to make sure that all the signals that go back up to the brain from your body arrive intact to make sure your brain has the best possible information to be able to keep making all of these corrections.

When your chiropractor checks your spine before deciding where you need an adjustment, they are looking for areas of the spine either not moving as they should, or out of alignment. These areas are called subluxations. Subluxations are thought to press on or stretch the nerves as they exit the spinal cord which then affects the critical signals going to and from the brain. What is going through your chiropractor’s mind when they then deliver those adjustments is not “This will help with the pain” as often the area they are adjusting doesn’t actually hurt yet. No, what they are thinking is “There is a subluxation here that is affecting the function of the nervous system and this adjustment will help improve that function”

It’s no coincidence that there can sometimes be some pain at the location of a subluxation, because pain is your body’s way of shouting at you to take some action! You could have had the problem for many years and been ignoring the early warning signs, before your body says “Enough is enough, I’m going to do something that will make you take notice!” It’s also no coincidence that when you do take some action and allow the chiropractor to adjust the areas that are subluxated your pain levels subside. But I hope you can see that this is just a side effect of your improved nervous system function because as you now know, chiropractic is not a treatment for pain!

The build moves on....

I can't believe how much progress is being made already. I've always been told that getting the building out of the ground is always the tricky part but it's flying up!

The first few rows of blocks appear from the ground!