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“All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

Medical Research Sheds Light On Hunger and Risk…

Never Make Decisions Hungry!

Fruit Flies Give You A Good Reason To

Eat Before Doing Important Things

Also this month:

• How Plate Size Affects How Much You Eat: Research shows how an “optical illusion” makes people eat more or less simply based on the size of the plate the food was served on. See if you are falling prey to this common problem…
• Is Yoga Good For Your Brain? Researchers report 20 minutes of Yoga stimulates brain function!
• Breast Feeding Creates Bigger Brains? MRI evidence shows breast feeding increases brain growth in babies!
• Years of Crucial Baby Nutrition: Why the first 1,000 days are so important and a can “haunt” your child for the rest of their life!

Houston – Have you heard of the term, hangry?  Even if you haven’t, I can almost guarantee you’ve experienced it. According to the Urban Dictionary, the definition of hangry is: “When you are so hungry your lack of food causes you to become angry.”

Here is hangry used in a sentence:  The service in this place stinks!  I ordered my food over an hour ago.  I’m starving and starting to get really hangry!

Come on.  You can admit it…

You’ve Been Hangry!

We all have, and hangry is not a good place to be.  Well, now research is showing how being hungry affects our decision making.

According to an article published by the Max Planck Society, hunger affects not only decision making, but also the perception of risk.

According to the article, “Hungry people are often difficult to deal with. A good meal can affect more than our mood, it can also influence our willingness to take risks. This phenomenon is also apparent across a very diverse range of species in the animal kingdom. Experiments conducted on the fruit fly, Drosophila, by scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have shown that hunger not only modifies behavior, but also changes pathways in the brain.”

Studies show that animals are willing to take much more risk depending on how hungry they are.  For example, an animal will only hunt dangerous prey when hungry.  If they are not hungry, they will try their luck getting a meal in a less hazardous way.

That seems pretty obvious, but here’s something that is NOT obvious… and even a little surprising.  One study found that hungry humans took significantly more financial risk than their well-fed colleagues.

One obvious lesson here is…

Never Make Financial

Decisions When You’re Hungry!

Of course, make sure your financial advisor and stock brokers are also well fed.  Maybe call them and make sure they have a good breakfast before they start their work day!  J

On a more serious note, it is obvious that blood chemistry is seriously affected by what and when you eat.  Your blood chemistry is extremely important when it comes to both your physical and mental health.

Hangry may seem funny, but when you are hungry, your body is not functioning optimally.

Your muscles and brain are not getting the nutrients they need.  Bad decisions and risk taking are just the tip of the iceberg. Not giving your body the nutrients it needs when it needs them can affect every organ and cell in your body.

Understand this:  If you want to GAIN WEIGHT, being “hangry” is one of the best ways to do it.

Why?  Because weight loss is best accomplished when you keep your blood sugar levels stabilized.  This can be accomplished by eating small portions of the correct foods multiple times throughout the day.  Often times, eating five or more small meals is ideal.

If you have reached the point when you feel hunger, then you are falling behind.  Hunger means your blood sugar levels have already dropped.  (Becoming “hangry” is a whole different level!)

But this does not mean you should eat as much as you want whenever you want.

The answer is to eat the right foods, at the right times, in the right portions.

Portion size is a BIG problem for most people.  But, believe it or not, you can be “tricked” into eating or drinking more  (or less) than you think you are.

Here is how:  You’ve heard the statement, “Everything is relative.”  Well, relative is a HUGE factor when it comes to how much you decide to eat.

There is something called the Delboef illusion.  This illusion occurs when people misjudge the size of identical circles when they are surrounded by larger circles of different sizes.

For example, people will think a circle is smaller if the circle surrounding it is huge and vice versa.

Researchers found that the same illusion applies to plates we eat our food on.

When the same portion of food is served on a very large plate, it seems like less food than when it is served on a small plate.

According to an article published by the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, “For example, in a study conducted at a health and fitness camp, campers who were given larger bowls served and consumed 16% more cereal than those given smaller bowls. Despite the fact that those campers were eating more, their estimates of their cereal consumption were 7% lower than the estimates of the group eating from the smaller bowls. This suggests that not only could large dinnerware cause us to serve and eat more, it can do so without us noticing and trick us into believing we have eaten less.”

The Cornell article also revealed how we can use this optical illusion to our favor.  Here is how:  Serve the vegetables and healthy foods many people do not like on large plates.  The large plate will make the portion look small and easier to eat.  On the contrary, serve bad foods, like desserts, on small plates to make the serving size look bigger.

Want To Stimulate Your Brain

In Just 20 Minutes?

A study recently published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health found that a 20-minute session of yoga improved participants’ speed and accuracy on two measures of brain function associated with the ability to focus and take in, retain, and use new information.  The study had 30 participants, and researchers said they performed significantly better immediately after the yoga practice than after moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise for the same amount of time.

              And don’t forget, if you ever have any questions or concerns about your health, talk to us. Contact us with your questions. We’re here to help and don’t enjoy anything more than participating in providing you natural pain relief.

Inspirational Story Of The Month

(Names And Details May Have Been Changed To Protect Privacy)

Man Celebrates 65th Birthday

By “Paying It Forward”

If you have seen the movie Pay It Forward, you have an idea what we are talking about.  If not, it doesn’t matter because the concept of “Paying it Forward” is much, much, much older than the movie that made it popular.

The concept can be dated back to 1841 when Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “In the order of nature, we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody.”

In 1916, Lily Hardy Hammond wrote, “You don’t pay love back; you pay it forward.”

In a nutshell, pay it forward is asking the beneficiary of a good deed to repay it to others instead of to the original benefactor.  In other words, passing on the good to the rest of the world, especially those who may not be in a position to pay YOU back or give ANYTHING to you in return.

That’s exactly what Doug Eaton decided to do for his 65th birthday.  As the story goes, he turned 65 on June 11, 2012.  He was looking for something to do, so he asked his friends on Facebook what he should do.  He got a whole bunch of suggestions.  Some were good.  Some were bad.  Many were ridiculous.  One was brilliant.

That suggestion was, “Why don’t you do 65 random acts of kindness?”  Eaton immediately knew that was the winner.

According to Yahoo: [Eaton spent] 65 minutes standing on the corner of NW 39th Street and May Avenue in Oklahoma City, handing out $5 bills to people who passed by. He told his Facebook friends that he handed out more than $375, but the response – and the amount of good cheer he shared – was priceless. From a distance, Eaton looked a bit like any other panhandler holding a sign at a street corner, but instead of a plea for money, his sign read: “I have a home… and a car… and a job. Do you need a few bucks for some coffee?”

As you can imagine, people who drove by were shocked.  Some just drove by shaking their heads.  Others told him, “God bless you.”  Many did not want to take his money.

Eaton posted on Facebook, “One obviously needy truck holding a family came around the second time after misunderstanding the first time to give ME $2 just to bless ME for what I was doing.  I took their money AND gave them a $5. We kind of traded blessings.”

A lot of people told him to give theirs to someone else.

But, Eaton did not invent this birthday act of kindness idea.  In 2010, Robyn Bomar turned 38 by doing 38 random acts of kindness.  Bomar wrote on her blog, “I planned out 38 things ahead of time, just in case, but really was praying for opportunities to present themselves throughout the day. My husband, three daughters, and my husband’s parents joined me in the most favorite birthday of my life!”

That day changed Bomar’s life and she started a website with an online community of people who celebrate their birthdays by paying it forward.  The website is www.thebdayproject.com.  Now you know what to do for your next birthday! J

We love helping our patients and their friends and relatives through their tough times and getting them feeling better!  We are here to help you stay feeling better and looking younger!  Don’t be a stranger.  You really can afford Chiropractic care! Don’t wait until you can no longer move!

Did You Know?…

10 Facts About Carrots

1. Carrots are 88% water.
2. The carrot primarily gets its characteristic and bright orange color from beta-carotene.
3. Carrots are rich in antioxidants and minerals.
4. Carrot greens are edible as a leafy vegetable, but are only occasionally eaten by humans.
5. Baby carrots are really just carrots that have been cut and peeled into uniform cylinders.
6. Growing carrot plants with tomato plants increases tomato production.
7. The carrot is one of the top-ten most economically important vegetables crops in the world.
8. Carrots can be stored for several months in the refrigerator or over winter in a moist, cool place.
9. Carrots are a member of the Umbelliferae family, which also includes celery, parsley, dill, cilantro, caraway, cumin, and the poisonous hemlock.
10. Eating too many carrots can cause a person’s skin to turn yellowish orange, especially on the palms or soles of the feet. This is called carotenemia. It is completely reversible once the consumption of carrots is reduced.

Tip Of The Month

Want The Best For Your Newborn?

Research Shows Breastfeeding Creates Bigger Brains –

Why What Your Baby Eats For The First 1,000 Days Is So Important!

Doctors, researchers, and parents have always wanted to know how much nutrition in early life affects adults later in life.  Can adults overcome poor nutrition in the first few months or years of life or are there consequences to starting off life eating sub-optimal food? Both epidemiological and animal studies have shown the risk of metabolic syndrome is significantly increased after exposure to suboptimum nutrition during crucial periods of development.  Metabolic syndrome is the name for a group of risk factors that raises your risk for heart disease and other health problems, such as diabetes and stroke.

What about IQ?  According to an article published in Neuroimage (May 28, 2013), “The prevailing consensus from large epidemiological studies posits that early exclusive breastfeeding is associated with improved measures of IQ and cognitive functioning in later childhood and adolescence. Prior morphometric brain imaging studies support these findings, revealing increased white matter and sub-cortical gray matter volume, and parietal lobe cortical thickness, associated with IQ in adolescents who were breastfed as infants compared to those who were exclusively formula-fed.” 

In other words, a majority of researchers believe (based on studies) that breastfed babies have higher IQs than babies who were given formula.  A new study from Brown University has found more evidence to the superiority of breastfeeding over formula. The study used MRIs to look at the brain growth in a sample of children under the age of four. The research found that by age two, babies who had been breastfed exclusively for at least three months had enhanced development in key parts of the brain compared to children who were fed formula exclusively or who were fed a combination of formula and breast milk. The research showed the extra growth was most pronounced in parts of the brain associated with language, emotional function, and cognition.

“We’re finding the difference [in white matter growth] is on the order of 20 to 30 percent, comparing the breastfed and the non-breastfed kids,” said the study’s lead researcher, Sean Dioni. PhD. “I think it’s astounding that you could have that much difference so early.” 

With everything researchers and doctors now know, breastfeeding is the clear choice if you want the best for your child both now and as an adult.

Remember, we’re always here to help your body heal

and maintain the pain free body you deserve.

This information is solely advisory, and should not be substituted for medical or chiropractic advice.  Any and all health care concerns, decisions, and actions must be done through the advice and counsel of a healthcare professional who is familiar with your updated medical history. We cannot be held responsible for actions you may take without a thorough exam or appropriate referral. If you have any further concerns or questions, please let us know.