Are You Too Tired During The Day?

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[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ1tpyp_aBg[/embedyt]

 

Do you need to improve your energy? If you feel like you have a hard time keeping your eyes open, it may have to do with one of your lifestyle habits. Dr. Kent Ferguson from Oliver Chiropractic Wellness Clinic discusses one way to improve your daily energy.

Oliver Chiropractic Wellness Clinic is one Edmonton’s finest health care clinics. We are excited for the opportunity to work with you in achieving your health goals. Our wellness clinic offers chiropractic, acupuncture, massage therapy and shockwave therapy services tailored to your meet your needs.

3 Benefits of Custom Orthotics

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Custom Orthotics in Edmonton

 

Custom orthotics are custom made insoles that fit into your shoe and provides support and corrective positioning for your feet. These helpful devices do more than just provide cushioning to aching feet. Here are 3 benefits of custom orthotics to consider.

 

 

  1. Reduced Pain Throughout the Body
    Feet are very important because they help to support the entire body, and if the delicate bones, muscles, joints, and tendons in the feet are misaligned, it can be very uncomfortable. Custom orthotics help to adjust a person’s natural standing position, so they reduce foot, knee, back, and hip pain. This assistance is very useful for people who have pain due to long periods of standing or walking.

 

  1. Increased Athletic Performance
    As feet pound on the hard ground, they can become damaged. Many runners and other athletes use custom orthotics to position and protect feet from injuries. When the feet are correctly aligned with orthotics, it is possible to move around with greater ease and safety.

 

  1. Prevention of Diabetes-Induced Damage
    The high blood sugar levels of patients with diabetes frequently damages the nerves in the feet, causing diabetic neuropathy. When diabetes patients cannot feel their feet, they tend to accidentally leave them in positions that can cause structural damage and strain throughout the body. Custom orthotics help to correctly position the feet prevent further problems from occurring.

 

Custom orthotics are a great way to support your feet and body  along with many other useful options. To further reduce joint and muscle pain with custom orthotics, call [sc name=”tel-ocwc”] to book an appointment at Oliver Chiropractic Wellness Clinic today.

Preventing Back to School Backpack Pain

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It’s that time of year again; time to get the kids ready and send them back to school. This includes a new backpack. Choosing the right backpack and using it correctly prevents injury and provides comfort while easily carrying school books and supplies.

The Right Backpack for Your Child

 

Carrying a backpack can cause pain and discomfort. The repeated strain can cause injury to the neck, back, and shoulders. In order to avoid injury, it’s important to choose a backpack that is the appropriate size for your child. You should look for backpacks with two, evenly-spaced, wide and padded straps. Finding one with a padded back and a waist strap will provide extra support and comfort for your child.

Keeping it Light

 

If your child carries a heavy load of books back and forth this year, you may want to consider buying them a backpack with wheels. This feature keeps the heavy weight off of their back and helps to prevent backpack-related injury. If they will be carrying a backpack, suggest that they carry some of their books in their arms to evenly balance out the weight. Remind your child to visit their locker regularly to exchange books instead of carrying their full load all day.

How to Prevent Injury

 

Be certain that your child always uses both shoulder straps. Tighten the straps to keep the backpack close to the back. A crossbody bag is another great option. Teach them to always place heavier items low and towards the center of the bag. Remind your child to never suffer through carrying the backpack if it is too heavy. They should pack only what they need into their backpack. Remind your child to always bend at the knees to properly lift the backpack.

If your child is complaining of back, neck, or shoulder pain it could be a sign that their backpack is too heavy or being carried improperly. If the pain continues or worsens you should seek treatment. Make them an appointment with Oliver Chiropractic Wellness Clinic by calling [sc name=”tel-ocwc”] today.

Why portion control matters in weight loss

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At the beginning of the year, you may have made weight loss one of your main goals. You probably even went ahead and bought clothes two sizes smaller, to serve as motivation for your weight loss goal.

When it comes to losing weight, managing your dietary habits will likely have the greatest impact. One of the simplest things you can do is practice portion control. It’s been said time and again that weight-loss battles are won in the kitchen.

 Ways To Control Your Portions:

  • Do not skip your meals
    If you ate three meals in a day with a snack in between, you would significantly reduce your chances of overfeeding. Skipping a meal means that you may be more prone to indulge in a large meal to satisfy your hunger. Eating regularly also speeds up your metabolism, and you end up storing less fat. Start your day with a healthy breakfast. Consider a protein shake mixed with vegetables and fruit; or a boiled egg served with mixed vegetables and fruit. For snack time, a handful nuts or trail mix are great options that will allow you to eat your lunch and dinner in controlled quantities.
  • More Protein
    The quality of what you have on your plate makes all the difference. Complexcarbsand protein keep you fuller for longer. If your hunger pains are toned down, you are less likely to eat all the time. Additionally, proteins in your diet help to build muscle which increases your ability to lose those extra pounds. Excellent sources of protein include black beans, lentils, eggs, and lean cuts of meat.
  • Make Use of a Kitchen Scale
    You may be as guilty of trusting your eyes’ judgment as I am. Aren’t we all? While you may believe your eyes know what a half ounce of an ingredient looks like; there is the possibility of being inaccurate. In some cases greatly inaccurate. So it may be best to make use of a kitchen scale. When you weigh your food, you reduce the chances of overestimating the quantity. Now, I know this sounds tedious. Consider the fact that you may not use the scale all the time once you begin to better understand your portions. It’s a just a good place to start.

Weight loss may not be as difficult as we make it out to be. However, it only becomes easy when you become the master of the portion and quality of food that makes it to your plate. When you learn the art of curbing your cravings and eating less food, you gain control of your body.

Weight loss will require efforts in dietary habits, exercise and physical activity as well as removing self-limiting thoughts. At Oliver Chiropractic Wellness Clinic our services are aimed at supporting you in reaching your goals. Book an apointment at [sc name=”tel-ocwc”]

How Acupuncture Helps With Weight Loss

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Acupuncture is an ancient Asian technique that involves stimulating pressure points on the body using extremely thin needles. Acupuncture has been gaining in popularity throughout the world and is now even recommended by many mainstream medical professionals. While acupuncture is most commonly used for pain relief, it can also help people who want to lose weight.

How Acupuncture Assists With Weight Loss

Weight loss involves many factors, including your genetics, your eating habits and your level of activity. Your metabolism and hormonal activity also plays a part when it comes to your weight. Stimulating the right acupuncture points can have a beneficial effect on your metabolism. Acupuncture also releases endorphins, which helps you relax produces feelings of well being. This can make it easier to resist the temptation to eat fattening foods.

Typical Acupuncture Treatment for Weight Loss

An acupuncturist might insert needles that stimulate meridians affecting the stomach and digestive system. The ear is also frequently used in acupuncture. There are points on the ear that are related to both appetite and metabolism. Stimulating these points may help reduce your appetite while speeding up your metabolism. An acupuncturist who practices Chinese or other types of Asian medicine may also suggest certain herbs to aid with weight loss to complement the acupuncture treatments.

Acupuncture Must be Combined With Diet and Exercise

While acupuncture can assist with weight loss, it’s not a solution that will work all by itself. It’s also necessary to reduce your caloric intake and get regular exercise. Acupuncture, however, can make these tasks easier by reducing stress, stimulating your metabolism and helping to control your appetite. A good acupuncturist will suggest lifestyle changes to help you reach your weight loss goals.

Mainstream medicine is just beginning to understand the benefits of acupuncture for many health conditions. When used in conjunction with other methods, acupuncture can be an effective tool in your weight loss program. Acupuncture is a safe modality that has no dangerous side effects.

To learn more about how acupuncture can help with weight loss or to book a session, call Oliver Chiropractic Wellness Clinic at [sc name=”tel-ocwc”]

3 Ways To Stay Active – Choose One

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friends on bicycles

My goal as a family wellness chiropractor is to help my patients live a life full of energy and not be limited by pain. I’ve been in practice now for over 12 years and I can tell one thing. If my patient’s don’t actively stimulate their bodies with movement and exercise, they will have a harder time feeling better. There can be a large gap between wanting to be more active and actually being more active. Here are 3 solutions to consider. (Click here to watch video on 3 Ways To Stay Active)

1) HIRE A PERSONAL TRAINER

There’s a difference between how you believe you are standing and moving vs what you are actually doing. It’s difficult to understand the difference of what we are doing and what we think we’re doing without someone watching us. This is where a personal trainer becomes invaluable. Having someone who is trained to understand how your body should move with exercise can mean the difference between success and injury. Injuries increase the chances of you becoming less motivated because you don’t want to hurt yourself; which is valid because who wants to hurt themselves?

When it comes to personal training, you have options. If you are new to the gym, you may be able to find deals and packages for both personal training and gym membership. There’s typically some sort of promotion going on so shop around. You can hire a personal trainer and train at city or community gyms. This option may be a little cheaper than brand name gyms depending upon your use of the community or city gym. Also, community and city gyms may offer other amenities such as pools, tracks and child care that may be valuable to you.

Watch Video: OCWC presents Marked Improvement Personal Training:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j33bKR0jMXE

2) FITNESS CLASSES 

Fitness classes can be a great way to keep yourself on track. Maybe you join a class with your friends or co-workers. Maybe over the course of time you get to know some of people in your group fitness class. In either case there is a greater potential to be motivated and held accountable by the group. Whether that accountability is real or perceived doesn’t really matter as long as it keeps you on task towards your goal.

Fitness classes can be relatively inexpensive to purchase and there are many to choose from. You can try group spin, yoga, Pilates, Zumba, kettle bell, yoga/Pilate fusion, dance, barre, aqua aerobics classes and much more. Sometimes your existing gym membership allows you drop in on some of these classes which can be a great way to mix up your workouts.

Be sure to discuss any difficulties you have performing movements with your class instructor. In some cases you may need to consult a health care professional; to address any problems that may limit your enjoyment and positive progression with your choice of exercise class.

3) JUST DO IT

Just choose to be active and make decisions that will allow you to be more active. Yup it’s that easy. Well it isn’t but the self talk you have with yourself will make all the difference in the world.

Maybe you have a history of physical activity. Life and “responsibility” can sometimes dominate and push other healthy activities out of the way. If this is the case, finding the time can be the biggest challenge. So, decide to start small. Maybe you start by deciding to take a walk every morning, afternoon or evening. Maybe you would prefer to cycle or jog. Just start with one thing and decide to be consistent.

Sometimes you need to have serious conversations with yourself. Find out what you want from yourself or what you want to give yourself and use that as motivation. Don’t be afraid to talk out loud to yourself. You know “get out of bed and workout because……” or “go straight to the gym, fitness class or park because……”. For me, I tell myself that I can not be there for the people I love, enjoy the things I love if I don’t have my health. Now only you can fill in the blanks with something that means something to you. Good Luck.

Dr. Kent Ferguson
Oliver Chiropractic Wellness Clinic
www.ocwc.ca
[sc name=”tel-ocwc”]

 

 

Injury Prevention for Runners in Edmonton

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Injury Prevention for Runners How well you run and how enjoyable running is for you depends on how well you care for yourself. This includes what you eat, how you sleep, and all of your health habits. Clearly a strong stable body is key. Routine chiropractic care, before an injury happens, should be part of maintaining your running machine.

 

Any physical performance, including running, depends on the body being aligned for the best possible result. Everyone experiences misalignment over time simply through daily living. For a runner, the importance of these misalignments are magnified by the repetitive force applied through the feet and transmitted up the body. Additionally, running can train some groups of muscles more than counterbalancing muscles, which can cause further exacerbation of misalignments.

 

A negative loop can set in. Running may cause unbalanced development, which aggravates misalignments. Misalignments cause more underlying dysfunction. A lack of comfort causes the runner to shy away from helpful stretching. As this cycle continues, it is not uncommon for highly fit amateur runners to be fairly stiff and inflexible.

 

Chiropractors will start with an assessment. For a runner, this can be valuable in and of itself since it can provide guidance on muscular development. For example, many runners commonly experience posterior chain weakness. This is simply the muscles from the lower back through the calf on the back of the leg being less developed than the muscles in the front of the leg. This condition can lead to joint problems and for a serious amateur runner can result in decreased performance.

 

After an assessment, a chiropractor can develop a treatment and tune up plan. The goal of the plan will be coordinated with the patient. The goal can be to improve comfort, to correct a condition that may be leading to true dysfunction or even to improve performance. The key is that the patient is fully aware of what is happening with the body.

 

Running has great health benefits but can be stressful on the body. Regular chiropractic care can be an important tool to keep runners strong and in good health.

4 Ways To Gain More Energy

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There’s never enough time in the day and if there were, I wouldn’t have the energy to deal with it. Does this sound like you? Life’s busy!

For my wife and I, balancing between giving our kids all the love and attention they deserve, working, meal planning, day home, pre-school and once in a while having an adult conversation with each other can be a daunting task.  Needless to say we don’t have as many adult conversations as we would like. So what’s the solution?

Unfortunately there’s no one magic bullet answer to give. Although a lot of us share similar experiences of lacking energy at times; your lives are unique, your family is unique, and you yourself are unique.

The uniqueness of the individual sitting in front of me is one of the things I love about being a chiropractor. I know that the response my patient has with their treatment is greatly influenced by their unique lifestyles and experiences.

To gain more energy there are some general rules you can begin to follow. You can also tweak them a little to meet your specific needs. (Click here to watch 4 Ways to Gain Energy Video)

1) Stay hydrated

Ya, ya, ya you heard that one. Well it’s amazing how many of us  ignore this seemingly simple rule. The general rule of thumb, that you’ve all likely heard is to either drink eight 8oz glasses or 2 litres of water per day.

That’s a good place to start, but what if you’re not drinking anywhere near that? What do you do? Start very slowly by drinking small amounts of water and slowly increase your daily water intake over a few weeks.  This will allow your body to integrate the water you are drinking. Eventually drinking more water won’t feel like a chore and you won’t spend all night going to the bathroom.

2) Eat good food

This seems like a no brainer. The reality for most of the patients I see is that there seems to be less and less time during the day to eat well. The only way to successfully put good food into your family’s mouth is to a) buy good food b) have a plan to make good food. As the saying goes “plan to succeed or plan to fail”.

Consider meal planning 2x/week to decrease the time spent each day preparing food. You can also make larger meals that can be frozen in smaller or individual portions. Those frozen portions can be a game saver for busy weeks preventing you from using the drive through window. Successfully meal planning can help you control your portions which can help you control your waist line and energy levels

3) Get appropriate rest

Getting 8 hours of sleep per night can be easier said than done. That rules gets tossed out the window if you’re a shift worker, if your spouse is a shift worker, if you’re in school, if you have kids etc.  I think that it is important for people to get 7-9 hours of sleep, on average, per week.

Not every day of your week is created equal so the sleep that you get may vary on some days. It is crucial that you make up sleep  2-3 nights per week to help keep you fresh overall.

When you are sleeping, your body goes into rest and rebuild mode. Your nervous system is processing your days experiences, putting some experiences or information to long term memory and healing you up from whatever you’ve been up to during your waking hours.

4) Be Active

The human body – the vehicle that you are using to experience your world requires exercise and activity. You may have heard of the saying “you have to spend money to make money”.  The same concept holds true when it comes to having energy. You have to spend energy to have energy.  Now, I believe there are some parameters for your activity to classify as exercise.

  1. Activity must be balanced
  2. Activity must be performed with good form
  3. The activity must stress the body in a way that teaches it to do more
  4. The activity must be fun and enjoyable so that you’ll do it on a rainy, snowy day for free.

Again, these are 4 general rules to follow. There is certainly space to make these rules fit your own unique lifestyle.  So in your quest for more energy, maybe choose 1 rule per week to work on.  Remember to start slowly and if you stumble it’s okay.

Dr. Kent Ferguson
Chiropractor
Oliver Chiropractic Wellness Clinic
www.ocwc.ca
780-455-2112

Acupuncture to Release Pain in Edmonton

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Just about everyone has dealt with pain in their back at some point in time. Whether it be because of an injury or because of sleeping on a bad mattress, back pain can leave you incapable of doing the things you enjoy. Everything that you want to do is put on hold. Acupuncture can be an effective treatment for your back pain, especially when other treatments have not worked.

A Simple Release for Everyday Pain

Instead of dealing with pain on a daily basis, you can get the release you need with acupuncture. This simple, yet effective, procedure will provide you with lasting results that allow you to get back to doing the things you love. Acupuncture treatment doesn’t take much of your time, but the results are well worth the effort. In fact, many people find acupuncture treatments to be relaxing.

Exploring How the Process Works

You get to lie down on the table while the acupuncturist inserts tiny needles at specific points on your body. For most people, they don’t even feel the needles being inserted. Some have even been known to fall asleep on the table. The needles are inserted at certain pressure points to help release the pain and pressure in your joints and muscles. All you have to do is lie there and enjoy having the pain melt away. It really doesn’t get any better than that.

 

Acupuncture Extends Beyond Back Pain

Acupuncture takes things beyond just back pain. It can help with digestive orders, immune system problems, hormonal issues and much more. Just about anything that aches in your body can be treated with the help of acupuncture. Depending on where the problem lies, the needles will be inserted into different areas of the body to address the problem.

Don’t Delay in Scheduling Your Appointment

Instead of struggling with pain and discomfort, you can turn to Oliver Chiropractic Wellness Clinic to schedule your appointment and begin the path to health and healing. Call [sc name=”tel-ocwc”] today to discuss your needs with one of the licensed professionals.

Acupuncture for Anxiety in Edmonton

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Anxiety disorders can develop for a number of reasons. The origin of Generalized Anxiety Disorder or panic disorder can be stress related, or it can be due to chemical imbalances associated with a developing health issue. While anxiety medication is helpful as a coping tool, it is not without some risk. If you have recently been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, considering acupuncture as part of your treatment is a good idea. Here are some of the reasons why.

How Acupuncture Works

Acupuncture is based on the understanding that health requires a proper emotional and physical balance in the body. The energy field of the body is in perfect sync when nothing interferes with that energy flow. Illness comes about when some sort of blockage takes place. The best way to deal with the situation is remove the block and restore the proper flow.

Acupuncture does this by using thin needles at various points in the body known as meridians. Inserting the needles at points understood to relate to the mind and the nervous system removes whatever is preventing the body from healing. As this relates to anxiety disorders, the treatments restore the energy flow needed to produce as reasonable amount of neurotransmitters and calm the mind.

What to Expect During the First Treatment

Many patients who seek acupuncture as a way to treat anxiety find that the mind racing associated with the condition begins to calm during the first session. The needles cause no discomfort while the calm and controlled atmosphere provides a sense of peace that anxiety sufferers find hard to achieve. This benefit alone makes the sessions worth the time and effort.

 How About Later?

As the sessions continue, the patient notices that the periods of feeling calm and back to normal last for a longer period of time. It is easier to return to places where panic attacks occurred and find that they do not happen again.

As first one and then another place is reclaimed as being what anxiety sufferers call safe places, the fear of an attack occurring begins to fade. What was reduced to a limited existence by the anxiety is suddenly a much larger world with nothing to fear and everything to look forward to enjoying.

If you are living with anxiety in Edmonton, contact the Oliver Chiropractic Wellness Clinic today by calling [sc name=”tel-ocwc”]. With the right combination of treatments, you’ll soon be on the way to feeling normal again.