New Years Goal and your Chiropractor

Ask the Chiropractor- Do you set New Years goals to improve your health.  Did you know a trip to the chiropractor can help you stay on track and aid in your success.  #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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- Hi, I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus, and welcome to another podcast of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask the Chiropractor is our little podcast that we do here, because often people have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, and they often ask the wrong person. Who is the wrong person? Anybody who's not a chiropractor. because only chiropractors know what chiropractors truly do. So if you have a question about chiropractic, I always recommend you ask a chiropractor. Your family doctor and other people have the best of intentions, but they really never studied chiropractic, and they shouldn't be considered to be an expert by any means. No more than you should ask the chiropractor questions about your teeth, because we're not dentists. We do not know teeth like dentists know teeth. So if you have a question about chiropractic, always ask the chiropractor. And that's what we're doing here today. Somebody had a question for me and so I come on here and I do my podcast and I try to answer the question, not only for that person but for everybody. And the question I was asked is, as the New Year's coming, if you're watching this live, we're recording this on January 2nd. With the New Year here, and I want to do New Year's resolutions, is there any reason I should come meet with you first or anything I should talk to the chiropractor before I start my New Year's resolutions? And again, we're assuming the New Year's resolutions are you want to be a healthier, better version of yourself. If you're looking to make more money next year, probably not ask the chiropractor, ask your financial planner. But if your resolutions are to become a healthier, better version of yourself, the chiropractor is a great place to start. Not the end all, be all, but a great place to start. Couple different reasons. The first reason, there's a lot of times we know your posture, we know where you're strong, we know we're your weak, we know where you're tight, we know where you'll loose based, and the way your spine behaves. And we can give you this knowledge, this information, and we can definitely share this information and knowledge with others. So first of all, if you're working with a coach, that's great, because working with a coach is a great way not to get hurt. I speak from experience. I used to go to the gym by myself all the time, and for the last 10, 12 years I've been working with a coach and they watch me, they make sure my technique is good and watch what I'm doing. It's often funny when they don't know what I do for a living and they start talking to me about neck health and stuff like that. I tend to add on. But for the rest of you, working with a coach is great to make sure your technique is right and stuff like that. So if you come to us and you say,"Hey, I'm gonna go work with a coach," a lot of times we ask your permission to call and talk to that coach about you, so we can give you help and give you guidance and help structure the way you're doing things. So what we do, a lot of times when we call up the coach and we're like, "Hey, we notice that they have a lot of problems with their hip flexors." Or, "Hey, we notice their trapezius muscles are always full of knots and really, really tight. Can you take an extra special caution in this area?" And then you'll end up getting better care and better everything, because we were able to talk& communicate with each other. So I'm a huge fan of working with your coaches, and working with people than doing it by yourself. Now for those of you that don't want to get a coach, you just went out and bought a piece of exercise equipment or you just joined a gym on your own, and you're gonna do your own thing, hey, that's better than doing nothing. Come talk to us, especially. Because we're gonna talk to you a lot about posture, things to consider when you lift weights and exercise ideas and suggestions. I mean, a simple one that we should all work on, is always sticking our chest out, so every time we pull into our bodies, we try to squeeze our shoulder blades together to keep our chest extended, but the same time keep our chin retracted as we go. That way we know we're not gonna damage ourself, because exercise done right is great. Conversely, exercise done poorly, not so great. So we wanna make sure that we're doing it right, getting the most bang for our buck. The other thing too I might tell you is, like, whenever you go and do a squat or a dead lift, they should always be embarrassing for the person behind you. That's what I tell everybody. You should try to stick your rear end out as far as you can and think about, you know, feel bad for the person standing behind you for the sight they're about the see. But that's the way we do it. We stick our rear end out as far as we can, we go down, we grab the bar and we come up. You're so much less likely to hurt yourself. And we also might want to change some of your exercises. If you have a really bad L1, L2, with hip flexors involved on one side, we might tell you to skip doing a lunge and do a step up on the box instead. This way you're less likely to hurt yourself. So our goal is not for you to go to the gym and hurt yourself and keep us really busy about two or three weeks into the year. Our goal is for everyone to do healthier, do better, and maybe give a little less work for us, because you won't be as injured and need us as much. Another thing a lot of people want to do at the start the year is they might want to start up a whole new vitamins and supplements and start cleansing their body and putting nutritions in. And again, as chiropractors we could help a lot with that. Here in our clinic we sell some supplements. We sell the ones I take every day. Everybody when they say that, "Hey, Dr. Hulsebus, I know you do lots of research, I know you read lots of books, and you get involved in the research studies. And I know that you would know the best one to take. So which one do you take?" And I get asked that question so many times. I finally decided to start carrying an inventory of the stuff I take. So the things I take every day are here available to you if you want them. But also if you don't want mine, you know, I think a Ford Chevy and Dodge truck can probably tow just about the same amount, so you don't have to get the ones I have. But come talk to me so I can tell you what I would look for if I was at a store buying something. You know, I want certain things in my fish oil, certain things in my vitamin D3, certain things in my daily vitamin and certain things in my probiotics. So if you want to do those things, come see me. I'll help guide you in the right direction or ask your chiropractor if you're watching this somewhere else in the world, and we can give you advice on the good ones and the bad ones and what to look for and what to avoid. Unfortunately, not all of the products are to your best health. I mean, I see at the stores, they have Omega-3 and Omega-6s combined in one supplement. And I think this is awful, because we're trying to raise our Omega-3s and then conversely have our balance of sixes go down. But if you take them together, they just both go up and you don't change the ratio. So I'm not a big fan of the Omega-3s and sixes. But I'm a big fan of the threes. Just little advice like that that your chiropractic can help guide you into a world where maybe you're not familiar with. Another thing I thought that people want to do is start a new diet. Well, come see your chiropractor, because we study all these diets and we look at these different things. We look at the Mediterranean diet, we look at the paleo diet, we look at the carnivore diet. And really what my focus is, I look at all those and I see what they all exclude. Not so much what this one tells you to eat. This one tells you to eat more of this, eat more of that. But if you look at all the diets you can think of, there's certain things that they all say,"Don't do this." So we created a list of the don't do this and all those combined. And so you can do your paleo, you can do your carnivore, you can do your Mediterranean, because those all have a lot the same stuff in them. But they all agree, like, you shouldn't drink diet soda, you shouldn't eat candy bars. There's certain things they all agree on. And we'll go over those with you if you have questions on that. Just like the supplements in the diet, you can go back and look at some of my previous episodes. You'll see stuff of me talking much more in depth about that. If you have questions on those topics, go ahead and look at some of my previous episodes. But let's talk about the number one reason why you should go see a chiropractor before you start your exercise and your diet change and your New Year's resolution. Number one reason is muscle memory. What's muscle memory? Well, the first time I swing a golf club, it was really ugly. It was really robotic and rigid and very non-fluid, I would say. Well, as I started taking some lessons, I started swinging it more and more and more. It became more and more fluid, and I developed what you call muscle memory to make it real easy for me to swing it. And I don't have to go through the 14 steps in my head that my original golf instructor gave me. Now what happened to me was, it wasn't a very good golf swing. So if I want to get better with my golf swing, I have to go see a golf coach, a golf pro. And what does the golf pro do? The golf pro's gonna work on changing my muscle memory for my golf swing. So next time I swing the golf club, it'll be much prettier and the ball will travel better. It's a lot of work to change our muscle memories, for those of us who have taken golf lessons or any other type of baseball lessons or stuff like that. But that's muscle memory. So why do you see your chiropractor before you start exercise program? Well, let's get your spinal muscle memory the best it can be before you start something. So you go on with the best possible muscle memory you can have prior. Then when you go in and lift your weights, do your treadmills, do your recumbent bicycles, then what happens is you start to build on that memory, and hopefully it's a good memory, not bad muscle memory. That takes a long time to deprogram and remove. I tell my golfers today,"You can see me once before, or you can see me six times afterwards." Because if you go with a bad spine, you're gonna leave with a worse spine. If you go with a good spine, you leave with a good spine. How do I see this every day? I see this with the IceHogs every day. In the NHL, Rockford IceHogs. They're a division of the Chicago Blackhawks. We take care of their players. These guys are one phone call away from becoming Chicago Blackhawks NHL hockey stars. They see me before the game a lot more than they do after the game. They want to go in with the best muscle memory they can have. They have the loosest spine they can have and decrease the risk of injury, which is a huge thing. You don't want to get hurt when you're working out. You don't wanna get hurt when you're exercising, because then you won't do it, then you wait until 2024 before you start again. So you wanna avoid injury, making sure your spine's nice in line before you start. You want to get the good muscle memory. You don't wanna memorize horrible neck posture. I wanna memorize good neck posture. So if I get a chiropractic treatment adjustment before I go in, that adjustment will put me in line, make it ready to go, and I'll do that much better at the workout. And the workout will be better, and it'll help my good muscle memory. So seeing the chiropractor before, it's very, very a great idea for long-term solutions. And plus, we don't want to, like I said before. we don't want to see you two or three weeks into the year and I already have you starting to quit, because you're starting to have aches and pains and you want to feel better, and you actually feel worse and you tend to quit. So we want to help you achieve your goals. So I hope I answered some questions about the first of the year chiropractic stuff and I help your New Year's resolution do good. Again, I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus. I am a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I am the team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs. I'm a proud member of the Professional Hockey Player Chiropractic Society. I am the Illinois Regional Assemblyman for the International Chiropractic Association. I sit on the board of directors of the Illinois Prairie State Chiropractic Association, and I am an extremely proud alumni of Palmer College of Chiropractic. So next time, if you have a question you'd like me to answer, you want to shoot us a message, go ahead and do it. Wherever you're watching this or listening to this, there should be links for you. If not, go to my website, rockforddc. R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com, and you'll find us there. You can leave us a message, and maybe next week you'll be the question of the week. All right, everybody. Stay healthy, stay strong, and we're here for you. Thanks.