Natural Sports Medicine Blog: February 2012

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Yurbuds - Bringing New Inspiration To Your Training

By Miami Beach Chiropractor | Chiropractic Sports Medicine Specialist: Dr. Todd Narson

Although this blog post today isn't about a particular sports injury, rehab exercise, stretch or related nutrition...it is about something that helps my training-and I suspect your training too. Before I started training for triathlon I absolutely hated running. A friend agreed and said he found that running was much more tolerable when listening to his Ipod. I tried it and started to enjoy it just a tad more. But along with that came the annoying headphones. None of them seem to fit right. The ones that did seem to eventually become to uncomfortable or they didn't fit well and caused a loss of the dynamic range and depth of the music. Or, the sweat would ruin the earphone and I'd have to stop, tap it out and maybe it would work. Either way, the headphones would deliver so-so sound and would often irritate me through the remainder of my training.

Well, apparently Ironman athlete Seth Burgett had some problems with his earphones too. While training for the Ironman he would find that his ears hurt more than the rest of his body. This inspired him and to redesign the earphone and he ended up creating a better fitting ergonomic design. Form meets function with a design that avoids the nerve rich areas of the ear, delivers great sound and doesn't fall out. With that in mind, Yurbuds were born.

Yurbuds Ironman Inspire Pro - This Is What I Have!

Last month I was taping athletes at the ING Miami Marathon & Half Marathon. After taping about 200 athletes I took a much needed break to grab a bite to eat and walked around the expo hall. I passed this booth with some interesting looking red headphones and stopped to inquire. After speaking to a nice young lady for a couple minutes, she sized up my ear and pulled out a set of Yurbuds, plugged it into my Iphone and cranked the tunes. They sounded spectacular! Being a musician I really appreciate good sound, which is why I typically only listen with my Bose Quite Comforts at home; but these Yurbuds sounded amazing. I jumped around to see if I could shake them loose and they wouldn't budge. I whipped out my credit card and bought them on the spot.

Since then I continue to train for the Nautica South Beach Triathlon on April first. I'm running 6+ miles, biking 90-120 minutes and through it all, the Yurbuds deliver incredible sound and don't budge throughout the entire workout-sweat and all! And although I wear my yurbuds when riding my indoor bike trainer, I still don't wear any headphones when cycling on the road. I want to hear all cars and other road noises.

So if music drives you and inspires you when training, you've got to give these yurbuds a shot. I've had them for a month now and am very impressed with the sound, the quality and the design. They perform as expected. Don't you wish everything you purchased did the same?

To cover all bases, for those that use a headset to talk on their cellphone there's a version with a microphone as well.

It's a great product that keeps me rockin' through my workouts! You can check out yurbuds at www.yurbuds.com. Enjoy your music & your training.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness & Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Nutrition - Supplements - Balance; My thoughts

This morning, a former patient of mine forwarded to me some thoughts on a friend of hers that is a lacto-vegetarian. The friend had been taking Omega-3 flax oil and supplementing her diet with flax seed to get extra Omega 3. She had always had splits at the end of her nails and was interested in my thoughts on why-when she stopped taking the supplemental omega-3 did the nail splits go away. She attributed it to her fats being "out of balance" and her getting too much Omega 3 compared to the other fats in her diet...

I though the question brought up a very interesting topic, that of "nutritional balance".

Here are my thoughts...

Vitamin A and D deficiency, poor circulation, thyroid problems, hydrochloric acid deficiency, iron deficiency, calcium deficiency, protein deficiency have all been associated with split nail ends. However the broader point is that if you eat healthy and can get all you nutrients from nature, then you don't need supplementation at all. I think that's the point she's trying to make.

But most people; and I mean 99% of people - don't eat properly, nor do the plants or animals they eat. With meat animals raised in concentrated animal farming operations (CAFO), fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds grown with pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and more, our foods aren't really our foods. Additionally, most people take supplements for the wrong reasons. Most people will look at the obvious symptoms, not the whole body or the whole life style or know how to properly evaluate the whole problem.

When a doctor does a consultation, she or he starts with the symptoms then probes further. Any given symptoms can have many common conditions that cause that symptoms. So we probe and probe with our questions and when we examine, we examine all related systems.

If our seeds, nuts, fruit and veggies grew in a natural (organic) environment and our meats ate their natural evolutionary diet and our water was pure, we'd all be better off.

I take Omega-3 fish oils simply in an attempt to bring the other fats into balance. You don't need extra Omega-3, you just need your fats in balance. Once you supplement something in an attempt to bring it into balance, once you achieve that balance, you stop. Otherwise the pendulum swings the other way and you're out of balance again.

The average intake of Omega-3 by our caveman ancestors 50,000-1 million years ago is estimated at about 3500-4000mg per day. And it was all dietary, not supplemental. Because they ate all organic/natural plants and meats and drank pure unpolluted water, all fats were in balance and all vitamins, minerals, enzymes and all the little nutrients we have yet to understand were all in balance with how they existed in nature and how our bodies adapted and developed the physiologic systems to metabolize them. Everything was in perfect balance. Back then, we as a species died at childbirth, or of infections or were killed by some of the foods we were hunting. Which is why the average age of a caveman was about 35. But when caveman did survive the odds life threw at us back then, they lived to a very ripe old age like that of today or even older - however the difference was they were vibrant and healthy, not decrepit like most "seasoned citizens" are today.

Once the agricultural age started and we stopped being nomadic (we traveled with our foods hunting and gathering seasonally)...but once we stopped being nomadic and started staying in one place and growing our foods, grains became a larger and larger part of our diets as did dairy. Then there was that sanitation thing too. Disease due to sanitation issues as well as adapting to grains started becoming a regular issue. Most people that write on the subject will tell you that this is when things like tooth decay, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancers started becoming prevalent. We started eating the same foods again and again and lost the variety in our diet of differing meats, fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds and lost the variety of nutrients they all provided. We started eating more and more grains which were devoid of a lot of the nutrients our bodies had adapted to over the previous millennia. Our bodies never had the opportunity to develop physiologic systems to process them and we then forced out bodies to do so.

Previously, grains were very inefficient foods for our nomadic life. They are small, couldn't be eaten raw and it took a lot of effort compared to picking berries or hunting to extract the energy from the foods needed to support life. Nowadays with big farm equipment it's easy to gather grains, process grains and cook grains. But think about life back when our genes were developing....It rarely happened. Researchers say only in times of desperation. Nowadays, most of us are eating a diet filled with desperation foods rather than the foods optimal for our health.

Our caveman ancestors physique was more comparable to the average modern day Olympic athlete than the "average Joe" citizen of the world today. If we continue to eat desperation food, we will certainly need to supplement our diets to give us just some of the nutrients our body needs. But if you adopt an ancestral diet containing the foods from which our genes developed, you'll need nothing more.

Yes, fats need to be in balance. As long as they are naturally occurring in our ancestral food sources are necessary for us (even saturated fat). What we don't need (and what is toxic to our bodies) are the man-made hydrogenated, partially hydrogenated and their new iteration: interesterified fats.

As Hippocrates said, "Let Food By Thy Medicine And Medicine Be Thy Food". Even he understood this as he himself lived much earlier in the agricultural age.

I wonder what Hippocrates would say today in the age of industrialized, processed, artificial, pasteurized, homogenized, "pesticized", genetically altered and engineered (and coming soon to a dinner table near you) -cloned foods???

I leave you with this one thought...As benign as water seems to all of us, drink to much and you get something called Hyponatremia - or water intoxication which can and does lead to death. Yes, even water needs to be in balance.

We need to be in balance with the food from which our bodies evolved.

Those are my thoughts on supplementation, healthful eating and balance.

'nuff said

Dr. Narson

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The Jif Omega-3 Peanut Butter Scam!

This is the kind of stuff that R-E-A-L-L-Y pisses me off!

Yes, I'm a capitalist. I own and operate a small business (my practice) and I believe in the system. I'm all for a company producing a product and providing a service that the public wants or needs and makes a profit. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But what gets me upset is companies that lie, cheat, deceive and use trickery to sell their product. This is the case with Jif Omega-3 Peanut Butter. Is you can see on the display label, there in big bold letters on a green placard under the product name it says Omega-3. But now I want you to read what's not on the display label, but on the back panel that much of the public doesn't read:

JIF Omega 3 Peanut Butter Ingredients:
MADE FROM PEANUT BUTTER [ROASTED PEANUTS, SUGAR, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: MOLASSES, FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (RAPESEED AND SOYBEAN), MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SALT], ANCHOVY* AND SARDINE OIL*,TILAPIA GELATIN, TOCOPHEROLS AND CITRIC ACID (ANTIOXIDANTS). *A TASTELESS, ODORLESS SOURCE OF OMEGA-3 DHA AND EPA.

We all know by now that the order of ingredients gives us a hint of the amounts of a substance in the food. FULLY HYDROGENATED oil is the 3rd ingredient and the anchovy and sardine oil are towards the last. And let's not forget the sugar as ingredient #2. Is that really necessary? But for now, I digress...

I wonder why Jif didn't put a big RED placard on the front label Advertising FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL??? Yet they jumped over all those ingredients to advertise what little bit of Omega-3 is in their fraudulent peanut butter. Don't you think we'd want that kind of attention grabber? I wonder why not? I'll tell you....they know you wouldn't buy it. So they try to trick you instead.

Unfortunately for Jif, people like myself and other food renegades are educating our patients and the public. You can't hide behind your sneaky government rules and sneaky deals.

So, if you really are a choosy mom and you want to choose a peanut butter that doesn't have ingredients that will lead to heart attacks, high cholesterol and strokes....choose something other than Jif.

Ingredients in peanut butter should be simple. Something like this:

Ingredients: Peanuts, peanut oil.

Don't fall for this Omega-3 scam bait and switch scam. Hey.. People At Jif... I have NO PROBLEM with you putting Hydrogenated Oil in your products. Just give it equal opportunity on your main label so the public has equal opportunity to decide for themselves.

Choosy mom's may choose Jif, but Educated moms and dads will be choosing something better.

I wish you large corporate food giants would stop pissing me off.

'nuff said

Dr. T

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

1-Mile Swim Test of KT Tape Pro

So, we've all seen the Olympic beach volleyball players wearing that funky looking colorful tape on their shoulders and knees. You've probably seen it at local triathlons, marathons and other sporting events as well.

There are several companies out there but one in particular is making a special synthetic tape with a waterproof adhesive. KT Tape's KT Tape Pro has the same elasticity as the original tape but puts it on a more tough synthetic material and keeps it in place with a heat sensitive waterproof adhesive.

Many athletes use this tape to help in the correction of postural dysfunction, to aid the healing of an injury or to give a particular motion some extra assistance (physically and proprioceptively). The problem has always been, when the athlete starts sweating, the tape begins to lose its stickiness and peel off. So, I put this to the test.

I had the KT Tape applied to my shoulder on Saturday. The any hair was shaved and the skin was cleaned with rubbing alcohol. The tape was applied to help stabilize my right scapula (which is winged) and help assist the deltoids in abduction because they've really been working overtime in dealing with the winged scapula.

Anyway, since I had the tape put on, I had taken several showers, ran a 5k, went on a rowing machine (aka: Erg) and rowed 10,000 meters, took a long hot bath after rowing and then, on the 4th day, did a 1-mile swim test. As you can see from the video below, the tape held up very well. So if you are in the market for some good kinesiology tape, you can't beat the KT Tape Pro. It comes in rolls of pre-cut 10" strips and in a variety of really cool colors & black. For clinicians, it comes in a large uncut clinic roll that allows you to cut the lengths you need. KT Tape also has a cool desktop display dispensor for your office.

Check out the video of my 1-mile swim test. As I write this, I've also done another 10k run and showered twice more. It's still sticking and still has retained its resiliency and function.

So if you're looking for some extra support for your posture or need to correct some performance dysfunction or simply want to give your muscle and tendons some assistance through a particular movement - then KT Tape Pro is for you. It's a great quality product, reasonably priced and best of all, it looks really cool too!

On their web site you'll even find instructional videos for applying the tape for basic problems. Anything more complex and you'll want to consult with someone like me.

Read more about it at www.KTTape.com

'Nuff Said.

Dr. T