Chiropractic Health Tips: The Power of Fish Oil

Dr. Hulsebus delves deeper into topics previously discussed, focusing on the importance of fish oil in maintaining neurological health. He explains the concept of subluxation and the role of chiropractors in addressing these issues. Dr. Hulsebus shares personal insights about the evolution of chiropractic care by comparing practices from his grandfather's time to the present. He highlights the critical nutritional deficiencies in today's diet, particularly the lack of omega-3 fatty acids due to changes in animal and fish farming practices. He emphasizes the benefits of supplementing with high-quality fish oil to combat neurological inflammation and improve overall health. The segment concludes with practical advice on selecting quality fish oil and encourages viewers to consult their chiropractors for personalized advice.

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Transcript

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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 Icehogs. Let's dive into it. Hello, Dr. Hulsebus again. So last week I did a video on New Year's resolutions. And I talked about several different things as a chiropractor I'm concerned about. Several of you shared a lot of those posts that I did. A lot of you had comments to make on some of the things I suggested. Wanted to know more information. So I'm going to do the next few videos here. And more in depth on each individual topic. Now as chiropractors, our main job is to adjust your spine to allow your nerves to come out and be healthier and happier. When you have one or two bones misaligned, that's called the subluxation. And when the subluxation happens, there's stress at this level. And wherever that nerve goes, that nerve believes your body's under stress, fight or flight, otherwise some of you have known it as. So as a chiropractor, our job is to find those spots, use our hands or whatever we need to use, and adjust the spine to help the spine move and function better, restore the motion. So that way the nerve supply can be better. So as chiropractors, we spend a lot of time with neurology. Looking at neurology, understanding neurology and how neurology functions. I was asked one time a question, because they found out my dad was a chiropractor and they found out my grandfather was a chiropractor. And the question I was asked was, Did you find that your grandfather got people better faster? This is by Dr. Chestnut. And I had to say yes. The stories I hear that Grandpa got people better really quick. And so Dr. Chestnut asked me, Did your grandfather have better technology than you do for finding these problems? And I said no, he took your x ray, it took three or four days for the x ray to dry. We have digital x rays, and Grandpa was probably the same when he first started. There was no thing as MRIs, so we can't even do advanced imaging. So I definitely had better technology than my grandfather did as far as studying the spine. For He asked me if my grandfather had a better education than me. And the answer was no. Grandpa went to school for 18 months back then at Palmer to get his license. And for me it was, I did my Bachelor's of Science and then I did my Doctor of Chiropractic, which was 10 35 hour trimesters. So no, I had a lot more education than my grandfather. Then he asked me, maybe your grandfather had a better working community with the medical field. And I said, no. No, they try to, they might not always, medical field refer me patients. They might not want to co care people with me. They might not see the value of what I do. But at grandpa's time, they tried to put him in jail. So at least they're not trying to come after me and put me in jail. So I do have a better working relationship with the medical community than my grandfather could have. So why did my patients take longer to get better than my grandfather's patients? Why did grandpa have faster success than I do? And so that's when we started diving into deficiencies that people have on why they can't recover or hold their adjustment like they used to be able to. And the number one thing that I tell patients to do if you want to do one thing to get better and healthier as far as supplements or diet is concerned, and that's add fish oil to your diet. Now, why fish oil? You might have heard a lot of different people talk about fish oil over the years. I take fish oil for my cholesterol. I take fish oil for my heart health. I take fish oil for my skin. I don't know. And then you'll meet a physician and say, hey, because this happens to me all the time. You'll meet a physician and say, hey, the research on taking fish oil to lower your cholesterol isn't very conclusive. Or, hey, the research on fish oil and heart health has not really been that studied too hard. And they're probably right, because they're asking the wrong question. Why do we take fish oil? Why do we have to supplement fish oil? Why can't we just have a good diet? Our nervous system needs six essential amino acids, right? And two of those we can't get from a meat source. We can only get, excuse me, from a plant source, we have to get it from a meat source. And what happens is, we get a lot of these omega 3s, these essential amino acids that our nervous system needs, from eating animals. Animals that eat grass and animals that eat algae, like fish. However, today, everything is farm raised. So when you go to buy fish, the majority of the fish you get, it'll say fresh Atlantic, because it's not, it's fresh from the Atlantic Ocean, but it's farm raised in the Atlantic Ocean. Or you get some, the beef and the pork that we get and the chicken that we get, they don't eat their natural diets anymore, they all eat corn in this country. So they go out and they put these giant pins in the ocean and they feed the fish corn. And I always tease that I've lived in Iowa and Illinois the majority of my life, and I've never seen a fish come out of the river and grab a ear of corn. They feed the corn to cows too, as we all know. That's why the corn in Illinois and Iowa, turns brown, and they get that and they grind it up, and that's what they feed to the cows. And the pigs we eat the pigs and the cows, and the fish don't eat what they're supposed to eat, but then we eat them, and then they like the nutrients they're supposed to get, and then we like the nutrients we're supposed to get. That's it. And so we can't get those omega 6s from the meat sources we used to get. Now, my grandfather's time, they could. And they did. They didn't have omega 3 deficiencies back then, because they were eating better quality food than we'd eat. Now that we know these animals are deficient of omega 3s and we go to eat them, we are deprived of omega 3s. Now, omega 6s come from eating the grains. So our omega 6 levels are astronomically high. The problem is, you're supposed to have, for every one omega 6, you're supposed to have two omega 3s. And so we're dominant omega 6s. We get a lot of omega 6s in all the stuff that we eat. But we get no 3s. So we're over toxic with omega 6s and deficient in omega 3s, which puts our nervous system into a state of hyper inflammation. So in other words, it's easier to go in the fight and fight. It's easier for your nervous system not to work properly because it's toxic, it's chronically inflamed because it's deficient in the Omega 3s and it needs to survive. When people ask me what can I do to be a better chiropractic patient or get better as a chiropractor, the number one thing I tell them to do is start taking Omega 3s. Now, where did your Omega 3s come from? Because that's another question. pole gamut, right? Okay, I need to take omega 3s. Now, what do I do? A lot of people will do flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil is okay. It's got four of the six amino acids. But again, flaxseed is not a fish or an animal. It's a plant. So it lacks two of the essentials that we desperately need. So I'm a big fan of eating fish oil. Cod liver oil, those are all fine. I'm not a big fan of krill oil. Krill oil is actually fine for you to take, but as far as like the oceans are concerned, it's not good that we start harvesting all that because, when you hear about the the animals and the fish out there needing their food, they eat the krill. So if we take the krill, they can't eat the krill. But what we do As we take Omega 3 fish oils, they usually come from small fish like sardines, herring, fish with a really short life span that reproduce readily. That, it's easy to get a couple thousand sardines really quick. Taking it from them is not nearly as detrimental as taking it from other places. I'm a big fan of the fish oil. Now, Do you have good fish oil or bad fish oil? How do you know? Cut it open and smell it. If it smells rancid, it's probably bad fish oil. If it smells okay, then it's probably good fish oil. I had an intern one time, she told me if you cut it open and dump it on styrofoam, if it dissolves the styrofoam, it's not pure. It's got other stuff in there. If it doesn't dissolve the styrofoam, it's good. And let's be honest, if you're just getting those horrible belches later, the burping later, and then you get that awful fish taste in your head, you're not getting a good quality fish oil. You're going to get what you pay for with the fish oil. So I have some here at the office I take and the reason I sell them here in the office is for the simple fact that my patients didn't want to hunt it down and find it. Talk to your chiropractor about a good quality fish oil. I tell them what they can get at the local stores too. They don't have to buy it from me. I'm not recommending it for that reason. I'm just recommending it cause we need it. So I will tell them where to go buy at the store and I'll tell them I got some here if they just want me to do the work for them. So either way, whatever they want to do. So a huge fan of fish oil. And I like to keep mine in the fridge. I feel like they just taste a little bit better. I don't think mine tastes bad, but I think it could taste better, so I do it that way. And I do about two tablespoons a day. So that's my diet of those. And I can tell you that, I don't know if I'm better or worse for it, because I don't have identical twin not doing it, so I don't have a double blind random control study, and that's because that would be impossible. But I'm a huge fan of it. The research all shows if you're going to do one thing, dude, that's the thing to do. Michael Pullman has written all kinds of books about this, the theory of everything. It just comes down to why we're all sick, why we're so inflamed. It's our omega 3 deficiencies, and there's just tons and tons of research on this. So when my doctor tells me, omega 3s don't really do that much heart health, it shows. Or they say, omega 3 fish oil doesn't really lower your cholesterol. I'm not taking it to lower my cholesterol. I'm not taking it to lower my Or help my heart health, I'm taking it for the simple fact that if I don't take it, my neurological system will be systemically inflamed, which will make every autoimmune issue worse. So I take it to decrease the likelihood of me developing autoimmune issues and it'll decrease my overall neurological inflammation. Should that lower my cholesterol, which if you lower your stress it does. Should that make my heart healthier? If you lower your stress it does, then so be it. So they ask the wrong, they're just answering to the wrong question. Maybe what they're saying is true. If you're taking it just for that, probably doesn't. But if you're taking it to lower your overall inflammation in your nervous system, it's fantastic. So if you find that you've got chronic neurological issues that don't seem to get better, I recommend starting with the fish oil. If you're not sure if you should take a fish oil or not, ask your chiropractor. A lot of times, like I said, the medical doctors are looking at things a little differently than we look at things. They look at the individual, what it does to this to this, of the overall package. So check with your chiropractor. Ask them whether or not they should do it, and ask your chiropractor for a good source to get them. Alright, so there's one of those topics I promised I'd talk about. So like I said, a lot of you had a lot of comments about the fish oil. last week so I wanted to dive into a little bit deeper. That's the whole title of this podcast, right? Ask the chiropractor. So if you have a question about something I said or about chiropractic in general, the only person qualified to answer that is a chiropractor. Medical doctors don't study chiropractic. Dentists don't study chiropractic. Optometrists don't study chiropractic. Only chiropractors study chiropractic. So go ahead and leave a comment or a message below and maybe next week I'll get back and I'll answer your question. Thanks