Jerry Rice Credits Chiropractic For Helping Him Stay in the Game.
While endorsements are fine and often scripted, I thought I’d post this video to illustrate that chiropractic care has entered a phase where it is widely accepted in the realm of the professional athlete. In my Portland, Oregon chiropractic clinic, Optimum Function, I treat a variety of athletes from the “weekend warrior” to the high-end, competitive triathlete, MMA fighter, snowboarder and more.
Being able to treat athletes and non-athletes in Portland, Oregon is a blessing; if you’re looking for a new chiropractor in Portland, Oregon or have never seen a chiropractor; contact me and I can help you make the decision on whether chiropractic can help. In addition, I also counsel my patient on their nutritional habits , perform body fat testing, evaluate lab work and more. For more information on my chiropractic clinic, Optimum Function, Click on the following link: Optimum Function: Portland, Oregon’s Premier Chiropractic and Nutrition Clinic featuring Dr. Tim Irving
Yours in Health, Tim Irving DC, MS, LMT, CKTP, GSTM cert, Nutritionist, Hypnotherapist Optimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St. ste. 215, Portland, OR, 97215 Optimum Function = Optimum Health
Yours in Health,Tim Irving DC, MS, LMTOptimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St. ste. 215, Portland, OR, 97215Optimum Function = Optimum Health
The FDA May Restrict Acetaminophen: Find Pain Relief, Naturally….
Well, every time we turn around drugs are being scrutinized, every now and then, our “beloved” over-the-counter drugs are touted as dangerous to our health. This has been and is the case with some of the most popular over-the-counter pain medications out there. Recently, the FDA may restrict the sale of Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol.
Click on the following link for more info: FDA May Restrict Acetaminophen
In fact, even Ibuprofen has its risks. Unfortunately, because these drugs are sold “over-the-counter”, (OTC) many people believe they are harmless.
Do you have alternatives for pain relief? This is a questions I am constantly asked; my answer is “Yes, in many cases, chiropractic care consisting of adjusting, Cold Laser, Kinesiotape, the Graston Technique, Percussion-assisted and manual soft-tissue techniques and more can often help to relieve pain as fast as the OTC drugs that many people “pop” like candy….. without the possible side-effect of liver damage or stomach/GI bleeding.
As an added measure, I use an acute phase packet of nutritional and herbal supplements that includes 3 days worth of pain relief and anti-inflammation without the nasty side-effects of OTC pain medications. For more information on why OTC pain medications are only to be used as a last resort, watch the video below.
Please contact me to discuss the various pain relief strategies I employ in my Portland, Oregon, Chiropractic and Nutrition clinic, Optimum Function.
Yours in Health,Tim Irving DC, MS, LMT, CKTP, GSTM cert., Nutritionist, Hypnotherapist
Optimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St., Portland, OR, 97214
Optimum Function = Optimum Health
Yours in Health,Tim Irving DC, MS, LMTOptimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St. ste. 215, Portland, OR, 97215Optimum Function = Optimum Health
Statin drugs, miracle drugs or unruly cholesterol “thugs”:
The most widely sold pharmaceutical drugs in the USA are cholesterol-Lowering drugs AKA, statins. In recent years, statins drugs sales accounted for a large monetary yield, over 12 billion dollars! (Click Here to read an article I wrote about this)
Yours in Health, Dr. Tim Irving Optimum Function Portland, Oregon www.OptFunction.com www.FunctionalDetox.com www.YourOptimumNutrition.com Yours in Health,Tim Irving DC, MS, LMTOptimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St. ste. 215, Portland, OR, 97215Optimum Function = Optimum HealthALERT: Fast Food and Decreased Exercise for a Month May Spell Destruction for your Liver.
Just 30 days of eating fast food combined with minimal exercise (walking less than 5000 steps in a day, the average person takes between 5000-7000 steps per day) is all it takes to impair liver function. The Liver is the “Master Chemist” of your body. Scientists reported this disturbing information in a study published in Gut, a peer review journal for health professionals and researchers in gastroenterology and hepatology. This information comes at a time when we are all a little strapped for money and fast food is convenient and inexpensive. To those of us in the healthcare and especially nutrition industry, this information comes as no surprise. I personally have seen a few cases of NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis); in the past, this liver condition was only seen in alcoholics.
In the study, the researchers took 18 healthy people (12 men, 6 women; known as the intervention group) and a matched control group (individuals who did not eat fast food and who walked more than 5000 steps per day). The subjects in the intervention group ate at least two meals at popular fast food restaurants each day and restricted their physical activity to not more than 5000 steps per day. Their mission was to increase their body weight by 5 – 15% by doubling their normal daily caloric intake and adopting a sedentary lifestyle for four weeks.
In order to monitor liver function, blood samples were taken at the beginning of the study and at regular intervals thereafter. One way to identify liver damage is to measure alanine aminotransferase (ALT), an enzyme in the liver. After only a single week on the fast food diet, ALT levels in the intervention group began to climb. ALT is not the only blood chemistry marker for liver function but it is the most specific in a baseline blood chemistry panel.
By the end of the four weeks, seventeen of the eighteen subjects had met their goal of increasing their body weight by 5 – 15%, with 5 of the eighteen subjects reaching the 15% mark. Thirteen of the study participants developed pathological ALT, which was evident in most subjects after the first week. Those in the control group did not experience any such increases.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that a sedentary lifestyle of fast food gluttony will rapidly lead to ill health. According to a Saint Louis University press release, it may be possible to reverse liver damage caused by such a lifestyle. The way to undo the damage to the liver and other vital organs is to adopt a healthy lifestyle and stop eating fast foods.
Brent Tetri, M.D., a professor of internal medicine at the Saint Louis University Liver Center and expert on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, conducted a similar experiment using mice. “There’s strong evidence now that a fast-food type of diet — high in fat and sugar, the kind of diet many Americans subsist on — can cause significant damage to your liver and have extremely serious consequences for your health,” he explains. “The good news,” he continues, “is that most people can undo this damage if they change their diet and they keep physically active. If they don’t, however, they are asking for trouble.”
In the study conducted by Dr. Tetri, mice were given a diet that was 40% fat and loaded with high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener commonly found in sodas, juices, and bottled sauces and dressings. The mice were also kept sedentary, emulating the lifestyle of many Americans. After four weeks, the mice displayed an increase in liver enzymes and the onset of glucose intolerance, known to be a marker for type II diabetes.
Dr. Tetri points out that while not all fast food necessarily causes liver damage, the problem is a diet containing too many calories with too much fat and sugar (typical in fast food meals consisting of burgers, fries and sodas). Tetri adds, “The fact we’re starting to see kids with liver disease should really be a wake-up call for anyone eating a diet high in fat and sugar and who’s not physically active.” He offers some encouragement to fast food junkies: “Even for those people with the worst kind of diets, it’s not too late to start exercising and eating right.”
If you’d like to have a very comprehensive blood chemistry panel run and evaluated using both the laboratory reference ranges and my optimal health reference ranges, or if you’d like more information on the 10,000 steps movement, call 503-866-9739 to schedule an appointment or email info@optfunction.com.
Yours In Health,
ALERT: Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Heart Disease
Another study touting the benefits and importance of the proper vitamin D levels was published in the June 9, 2008 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. The study found that low levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin-D (25[OH]D) were associated with a higher risk of having a heart attack
The authors note that in most populations studied, the rate of cardiovascular death is elevated at higher latitudes, increases during the winter months, and is lower at high altitudes. All of these conditions would suggest that cardiovascular death is directly related to low vitamin D levels.
While alternative explanations for these observations are possible, they point out that a variety of plausible biological mechanisms support a role for vitamin D in heart disease. For example, vitamin-D affects vascular smooth-muscle-cell proliferation, inflammation, vascular calcification, the renin-angiotensin system, and blood pressure; all of these can have profound affects on cardiovascular health
To look at this issue further, the authors examined Vitamin D levels in relation to risk of heart attack in 18,225 men who were enrolled in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS). The men were aged 40 to 75 years and were free of diagnosed cardiovascular disease at baseline.The results showed that men deficient in Vitamin D were found to be at increased risk for heart attack compared with those considered to be sufficient in Vitamin D.What is the range of vitamin D levels that were used? Well, below 30 ng/mL was considered to be deficient. In another blog, I will explain how I came to the range that I use for optimal Vitamin D status; that range is 50-100 ng/mL. Vitamin D staus can be easily measured in the blood as 25-hydroxyvitamin-D, because I am part of a lab co-op, this important blood marker will cost $45 including the lab draw through a Quest Diagnostics draw station. The lab interpretation with subsequent recommendation fee is normally $89 but I am offering it for $49 for Vitamin D only. This makes having your Vitamin D levels both important and affordable as there is no need to run the test more than once every 12 months unless you are very deficient.Call 503-866-9739 or email info@OptFunction.com today to schedule your vitamin D test today.
Yours in Health, Dr. Tim Irving DC, LMT, Nutritionist Optimum Function 819 SE Morrison St. Suite 230 Portland, Oregon, 97214 www.OptFunction.com www.FunctionalDetox.com www.YourOptimumNutrition.comYours in Health,Tim Irving DC, MS, LMTOptimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St. ste. 215, Portland, OR, 97215Optimum Function = Optimum HealthReference:Giovannucci E, Liu Y, Hollis BW, Rimm EB. 25-hydroxyvitamin D and risk of myocardial infarction in men. A prospective study. Arch Intern Med. 2008;168:1174-1180.
Can Insufficient Vitamin D Cause Pain?
It clearly can. One study showed that 93% of persons 10-65 years of age who were admitted to a hospital emergency department with muscle aches and bone pain–and who had a wide variety of diagnoses, including Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and depression, were deficient in vitamin D.1A second study confirmed a strong correlation between low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) levels in the blood and higher rates and longer duration of generalized bone and/or muscle aches and pains.2 A third study looked at chronic pain patients at a tertiary care pain clinic. They documented that those patients with serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels </=20 ng/mL used almost twice as much morphine, were on opioid medications almost twice as long and generally were in more pain then those with higher vitamin D levels.3 Understanding the what led to, what triggered and what’s perpetuating pain is one of the most important things a clinician can do to help their patients. That’s one of the reasons I have put together so many exciting programs.
Click Here to learn about those programs
Yours in Health, Dr. Tim Irving DC, LMT, Nutritionist Optimum Function, Portland, Oregon www.OptFunction.com www.FunctionalDetox.com www.YourOptimumNutrition.comYours in Health,Tim Irving DC, MS, LMTOptimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St. ste. 215, Portland, OR, 97215Optimum Function = Optimum Health1. Holick MF. Vitamin D deficiency. N Engl J Med. Jul 19 2007;357(3):266-281.
2. Erkal MZ, Wilde J, Bilgin Y, et al. High prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, secondary hyperparathyroidism and generalized bone pain in Turkish immigrants in Germany: identification of risk factors. Osteoporos Int. 2006;17(8):1133-1140.
3. Turner MK, Hooten WM, Schmidt JE, Kerkvliet JL, Townsend CO, Bruce BK. Prevalence and Clinical Correlates of Vitamin D Inadequacy among Patients with Chronic Pain. Pain Med. Mar 11 2008.
Are Your Fat Cells Happy: Health has much more to do with happy fat cells than how much total fat you have
Fat cells or adipocytes are MUCH more than “bags filled with fat” (lipids). Recent research has shown that fat cells send out signals to the rest of the cells in your body when they are “happy” and a whole new set of signals when they are “unhappy”.
What makes a fat cell “happy” or “unhappy”?
Well, the internal (intracellular) and external (extracellular) environment that the adipocyte exists in has everything to do with it. If the adipocyte is overfilled with lipids (fat) and/or it is surrounded by inflammatory chemicals, that cell will be “unhappy”.
“Happy” fat cells release signals to many cells in your body, most notably those in the muscles, liver, brain, and pancrease, that help to increase insulin sensitivity and create an anti-inflammatory effect. Insulin is a hormone needed for proper sugar metabolism and decreased sensitivity to it is associated with diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular problems. Inflammation, not coincidentally, is indicated in all these too and also general aches and pains from muscles and joints.
One of the signals sent out by a “happy” fat cell that has just recently been discovered is called adiponectin. When adiponectin is released to important cells in your body, those cells retain their sensitivity to insulin and are protected from adverse inflammation. (not all inflammation is adverse)
Three of the signals sent out by “unhappy” adipocytes are: Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF alpha), C-reactive protein (CRP), and resistin. These signals create insulin resistance (this is bad), and increase adverse inflammation in the cells they communicate with. These signals unfavorably alter the function of these cells (liver, brain, muscles and pancreas) leading to things like obesity, metabolic syndrome, heart problems, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, muscle wasting and muscle weakness.
So, body “fatness” is not directly related to health but fat cell “hapiness” IS. You can be overweight and be healthy as long as your adipocytes are “happy” (although there is a limit to how overweight you can be is you have a lifestyle that keeps your fat cells “happy”); and you can have a skinny person with “unhappy” fat cells who is vastly unhealthy.
How can I figure out if your fat cells are “happy” or not?
At Optimum Function, I utilize blood chemistry markers as my first line of investigation. Markers like:
- High sensitivity C-reactive protein (should be below 0.9)
- Glycosylated hemoglobin (should be below 5.5%)
- Triglycerides should not be more than half of the total cholesterol number
- HDL cholesterol (should be below 40 in men and 50 in women)
- Triglyceride to HDL ratio (should be less than 4:1)
- Liver enzymes should not be elevated above the laboratory range
In addition to these baseline markers, I may look at the levels of your apolipoproteins, these markers are proving to be incredible for monitoring the state of your fat cells and cholesterol in general. I will also ake your blood pressure which should be below 120/80.
You will notice here that I don’t mention blood sugar. That’s not because it is not an important marker but by the time it is affected, your fat cells have been “unhappy” for a while and disease may have begun. I really encourage my patients to investigate all of this BEFORE your blood sugar is affected.
To find out more about my FBC2000 program which entails looking into your current blood chemistry, relating it to your current health status, contrasting that with your desired health status and coming up with a plan to get there…..click here
Yours in Health,Tim Irving DC, MS, LMTOptimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St. ste. 215, Portland, OR, 97215Optimum Function = Optimum HealthBack pain and gastrointestinal problems commonly related….
A study published in The Clinical Journal of Pain in it’s March/April, 2008 issue links back pain to gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms. This Australian study analyzed data from 38.050 women of different ages who had varying GI symptoms ranging from constipation, hemorrhoids, diarrhea and other bowel problems.
The results showed that with an increase of back pain frequency from “rarely” to “sometimes” to “often”, there was a direct increase in GI symptoms. While the study did not evaluate the cause for this link, it does seem to be strong. Clinically, I have found this to be the case.
Are chiropractors treating GI symptoms with adjustments? Some may make this claim. I would like to point out that some or maybe even many of our back pain patients, especially women, may have concomitant GI problems that are going undetected and maybe even untreated.
At Optimum Function, I have made it my goal to always take this into consideration. This is one of the main reasons that I have spend the time and effort to receive post-graduate training in functional medicine and nutrition and have come up with functional medicine and nutritional programs.
To learn more about these programs, click here
To learn more about my manual medicine programs, click here
Yours in Health, Dr. Tim Irving DC, LMT, Nutritionist Optimum Function 819 SE Morrison St. Suite 230 Portland, OR, 97214 www.OptFunction.com www.FunctionalDetox.com www.YourOptimumNutrition.com Reference: Smith MD, et al. The Clinical Journal of Pain. March/April 2008; Vol. 24, Iss. 3, pp. 199-203 Yours in Health,Tim Irving DC, MS, LMTOptimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St. ste. 215, Portland, OR, 97215Optimum Function = Optimum HealthHeartburn: It’s not about your heart and usually not about too much acid either. (video)
Heartburn is often mistakenly labelled as GERD or gastroesophageal reflux disorder (or disease). For some time now, HCL or hydrochloric acid has been falsely deemed the culprit. Clinically, I, and many other functional medicine doctors have found that patients with heartburn often have too little HCL, this is known as hypochlorhydria. HCL is needed for proper digestion of proteins, absorption of critical nutrients like vitamin B12 and Zinc and is also needed to signal the pancreas to secrete its enzymes that are necessary for the further breakdown and absorption of fats, proteins and carbohydrates.
At Optimum Function in Portland, Oregon, I have put together a series of functional medicine programs that investigate and treat functional conditions like “heartburn” through nutritional and natural avenues of treatment. Click Here to find out more
I recently participated in a 5 month functional medicine program created by doctors Dicken Weatherby and Ron Grisanti. There was a lot of clinical discussion on this topic and Dr. Weatherby has put together an excellent video explaining why heartburn is often mistakenly associated with too much stomach acid.
Here it is:
Enjoy!Yours in Health,
Dr. Tim Irving
www.OptFunction.com
www.FunctionalDetox.com
www.YourOptimumNutrition.com Yours in Health,Tim Irving DC, MS, LMTOptimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St. ste. 215, Portland, OR, 97215Optimum Function = Optimum Health
Optimum Function and Dr. Tim Irving are Moving to the East Side of Portland
Patients, I will send you an email illustrating some of the changes in scheduling etc. The new number is 503-866-9739.
Yours in Health, Dr. Tim Irving www.OptFunction.com www.FunctionalDetox.com www.YourOptimumNutrition.com Yours in Health,Tim Irving DC, MS, LMTOptimum Function: 819 SE Morrison St. ste. 215, Portland, OR, 97215Optimum Function = Optimum Health