Ask the Chiropractor
Before starting your New Years Resolutions you might want to stop by the chiropractor. Dr Hulsebus share a few tips on how to start the process of improving your health for the new year. he also discusses the role your chiropractor can play in preventing injuries. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud
www.rockforddc.com
Ask the Chiropractor
Before starting your New Years Resolutions you might want to stop by the chiropractor. Dr Hulsebus share a few tips on how to start the process of improving your health for the new year. he also discusses the role your chiropractor can play in preventing injuries. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud
www.rockforddc.com
- Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here, and welcome to another edition of "Ask the Chiropractor.""Ask the Chiropractor" is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford Ice Hogs. Let's dive into it. Hello, Dr. Brent Hulsebus here, welcome to my podcast. Let's get started here, in another edition of "Ask the Chiropractor." So I'm recording this right now and it's being released a week between Christmas and New Year's here in North America. That typically means that a lot of us are going to start our New Year's resolution. And what's our New Year's resolution going to be? We're going to start exercising, we're going to start getting fit. And I want to talk to you a little bit about the role the chiropractor plays in that and how the chiropractor can help you have more success in trying to achieve this goal. So let's get started here talking about a couple of things. First, a lot of times, as a chiropractor, we have suggestions where to get started. A lot of people want to know about eating better, eating more right and a lot of people want to take a diet course or maybe sign up for a diet program. Let me give you the advice that I've been given many, many times. If you can't kill it or pick it, don't eat it. If it's not a natural food, if it has a label on it, it's probably not something you're supposed to eat. So if you really want to start off eating healthier, just switch over to stuff, like I said, you can either pick or kill yourself, like a chicken or vegetables or fruit, and just try to make the majority of everything you eat that. And on this advice, I always talk about a little phrase my dad taught me and my grandpa used to always say. Grandpa always said, "We can all be good Catholics, but we can't all be the Pope." (laughs) So I would... If three quarters of your plate now is going to be natural food, like I said, protein from animal sources, meats and stuff like that, and then lots of vegetables or fruit and maybe have a little extra something on the side, like some bread, that's a great starting point. So just get started on that. That's a great way to start your diet stuff, as far as everyone trying to do a crash diet. The harder you try to go in one direction, full speed, 90 degrees, the less successful most of us will be. Not all of us. We do have those fun cases of people that do great, but they're the minority, not the majority. So just try to find new ways to incorporate real food into your diet every day, every meal, and try to continue to eliminate more and more and more of the other stuff. One of my favorite thing are Lara bars, L-A-R-A bars. They're just made of dates and like a couple other ingredients, really simple stuff. You can easily read the ingredients on the list if you want to try to find yourself a healthy snack or something to try to get through the day. So that's a little bit about diet. I'd also recommend that you work on the muscle between your ears, the emotional stuff, that's really important. And I recommend finding new books to read. Finding a new book, make it your goal this year to read more books. Every successful person, every happy person I know does a lot of reading. And so I will advise you to do a lot more reading yourself. Find some new books to read. Just keep finding different ones. Go onto social media, ask your friends for book recommendations. They'll probably give you the book because they've already read the book and they don't need the book anymore. But go online and find some good books. And then I also recommend a few books about making yourself better. That's pretty much what I like to read. If you're here in Rockford, I do recommend stopping down by my friends at Movement Fitness. Coach Justin Kegley has a great book about making yourself a better version of yourself. And he has it right there for sale, a book he wrote a couple years ago. And we talked a little bit about nutrition in a previous podcast, too. He actually joined me in here. He's got a great book for student athletes, too, on nutrition. So stop by his place, take a look at that. I know I have links on that on my website. If you go to Rockford, D.C., R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com, you'll see Resources. Under Resources, you'll see a reading library. You click on the link to his books and it'll take you right there. And also, if you're looking for other good books, there's lots of good books there that I've read I highly recommend about health. And if you just go there again, click on them, it takes you right to Amazon, you can buy them right there. I try to make it as simple as possible. All right, now let's talk about the big one, the big one that gets involved. Everyone's going to start a new exercise program. I work out a couple times a week and I know I'm going to see a lot of new faces, and hopefully I see those faces for a long, long time, not just a couple of sessions. All too often, it's just a couple of sessions. So let's talk about how a trip to the chiropractor can make your New Year's resolution more successful. Well, the first thing I'll tell you is if you want to get more fit, more physical exercise, number one thing you can do, this is so easy, 30-minute walk a day. And I know a lot of us have these watches and these Fitbits and stuff like that to keep track of the number of steps we take, and that's fantastic. I want to see you try to take more steps. But it's not the same as going for a walk. But getting more steps is better than getting less steps. Don't misinterpret what I'm saying, it's still a victory. But I'd like to see everybody go for a 30-minute walk a day, minimum. And how do you do that? Well, you walk out your front door, you walk 15 minutes, you turn around and you walk back. It's a continuous 15-minute walk. That's how hard it has to be. Maybe find some coworkers, they're going to start going for a 30-minute walk every day at lunchtime. If you go back to my website and you click on Wellness, under Wellness, you'll see wellness notes. And if you scroll down, you'll see 30-minutes of walking. I actually have my computer here in front of me, I'm just going to click on it. And I have... This was a slideshow I presented somewhere and I took them, I turned them all into PDFs, you can just look at them. 91% of obesity and type two diabetes is prevented by 30 minutes of walking a day. 50% of all heart diseases is prevented by a 30-minute walk a day. You reduce your risk of stroke 25% to 30% by going for a 30-minute walk every day. Stroke deaths get cut in half by 30 minutes of walk a day. Reduced congestive heart disease deaths by 63%. I mean, I have so many slides here, it's just crazy, all about the different things here. And there's even a really cool one in here about cancer. If you're worried about cancer, there's information here about reduced risk of breast cancer by 60% by going for a 30 minute walk a day. Pancreatic cancer by 50% by going for a 30 minute walk a day. This is a really cool one. You reduce your chance of lung cancer, even in people who still to this day smoke, by 72%. A lot of times when I walk into the hockey games, I tell people, "Hey, you know what? You probably shouldn't be smoking, but if you're going to smoke, at least walk while you smoke, because it makes it a little better for you," because you see a lot of the people out there smoking. So I go ahead and go to my... I'm not going to read them all to you. You can go to my website, they're all there. The other reason you want to go to the chiropractor before you start exercising and starting this work program is because we are really good at taking x-rays of your spine, doing examinations, and figuring out where you're strong, where you're weak, where you're loose, and where you're tight. A lot of times people start an exercise program and they quit right away because they get hurt. Hey, I wanted to go to the gym, I just, I couldn't walk the next day, I was in so much pain. So going to chiropractor, we can help you focus in on target areas that you need to look at. Maybe you have really bad neck posture, maybe you have a really bad rotated L1, L2, creating problems in your SI joints. Maybe you have a hip flexor issue. Maybe you have some stabilization muscles issues. If you listened to my podcast in the past, you've heard me talk about all these different things. And so your chiropractor is really good at being able to hunt those down, find those for you, and give you targeted areas of focus. And maybe you're really concerned about, even with that information, you go to the gym and you don't know what to do. Well, your chiropractor probably knows people that can work with you. Here in Rockford, you heard me mention them a minute ago. I'm going to talk about Movement Fitness again. They're right down the road from us. We work with them all the time. Every Tuesday morning, I go in and give their coaches my two cents on the people that we are co-caring for. A lot of times, they'll see somebody over there, they think they could benefit from chiropractic care. And vice versa, I'll see somebody here who I think could benefit from working with them. And we sit down and compare notes every Tuesday. So when you're going to this place, you're going to get the benefit of both of our knowledge working together to help you achieve your goal. So with that being said, talk to your chiropractor, wherever you are. I guarantee your chiropractor knows somebody that you can work with, that they can work with you to help you achieve your goals very well. We've done some amazing things with some athletes here, we've done some amazing things with some adults, too. Not just high school athletes, but adults, too, who are trying to achieve a higher level of health. And for myself, why should you listen to me? Why should you care what I have to say? Well, I've been in practice for 22 years. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. I've been the Rockford Ice Hogs' team chiropractor for 20 seasons, now. I'm in my 20th season. I've taken care of CBA basketball, the Rockford Lightning. I've taking care of indoor soccer, the Rockford Rampage. I've taken care of multiple baseball teams here in Rockford. We are the preferred chiropractors of Rock Valley College Athletic Program. So we take care of lots and lots of college athletes. We work closely with the gym down the street. And I am a proud member now of the International Chiropractic Association's Sports and Wellness and Fitness Council. And I also am a proud member of the Pro Hockey Player Chiropractic Society. And my colleague here, Dr. Hays, he's actually on their board. So we do see our fair share of athletes. And in Rockford, or my city, we probably take care of more professional athletes than anywhere else. And Division One athletes, Division Two, Division Three athletes, high school varsity athletes, collegiate athletes. We've seen just about everything. And more importantly, number one athlete we take care of is the Weekend Warriors, those guys that play adult league hockey, those guys who play pickleball. Heck, we even opened a clinic inside the new indoor pickleball courts here in Rockford, to be right there for those players. So we've seen our fair share of athletic stuff. So if you are thinking about starting a New Year's resolution that includes working out and getting fit and getting exercise, I would highly implore you that you give us a call if you're in the Rockford area, because whatever you've got going on, the odds are we've been there, done that, and seen that. Not only that, but I always tease that I've been in practice for 22 years, but the clinic itself has been around now for 74 and nine-tenths of... (laughs) We're almost 75 years old. So between the knowledge that was passed down to me, that was passed down to the generation before me, there's very little in the chiropractic world that we have not come across or that I don't have the sources or references to achieve to find out the answers to your questions. The other places we've worked a lot with is Motivate Physical Therapy. We've been able to help some of our older athletes and some of our younger athletes with interesting problems, too. And we also work really closely with, in Rockford, OR Rest, they're an orthopedic rehab specialist, or a PT group. So if you really do have really bad damage or you've hurt yourself at an athletic event or trying to exercise, we can work with chiropractic and the physical therapists at the exact same time. Again, it's all about finding people who have partnerships and relationships to co-work together to help you achieve your goals. And that's one thing that our clinic prides itself on. So with all that being said, and all of my suggestions and my tips and my New Year's resolutions, a trip to the chiropractor before you start your New Year's resolution is highly, highly recommended. If you're in my area, the the majority of people who listen to this podcast are in Rockford, so if you're in this area and you want to come in and talk to us just for a consultation, our doors are always open. Whether it's myself, Dr. Dace or Dr. Hays, we'd all love to be able to meet you. Other than that, Happy New Year. I hope everyone achieves their goals for next year. I hope everyone has a great 2024 and beyond, in case I'm here this next year, because it's a topic that comes up every year. So if you have any questions for me, if you have a question for"Ask the Chiropractor," because always remember, if you have a question about chiropractic, always ask a chiropractor, because we are the only ones who truly know chiropractic. You've heard me talk about the strength conditioning coaches at Movement Fitness, my physical therapy friends at ORS and Motivate, and other friendships and partners we have. Why? Because I'm not an expert in physical therapy, they are. I'm not an expert in strength conditioning coaches, they are. And I'm going to get you to the best and the expert to ask the questions that only the expert in that field can answer, as I can for chiropractic. So go to my website, rockforddc.com, send me a message there, I'll be happy to get back to you. Maybe next week you'll be the question of the week. Other than that, like I said, happy New Year's everybody. Stay healthy, stay strong, talk to you next time.