3 Tips for a Back-Friendly Memorial Day

At Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center we provide education to our patients that will help them enjoy optimum health outside of our offices. Alongside chiropractic care, following the tips we list below will help you enjoy a healthy life, on holidays like Memorial Day and beyond!

1.) Engage Your Core

If you can paddleboard, this is a great activity that you can do on the lake. Swimming is also a great way to stay active over the holiday weekend.

2.) Hydrate

Staying hydrated is important for your body and your brain’s functionality. Being out in the sun and on the beach for long periods of time can seriously dehydrate you.

3.) Eat Healthy Foods

Instead of eating the traditional Memorial Day fare, why not opt for a healthy salad? Try to incorporate healthy greens and fruits in addition to the hot dogs and burgers.

After Memorial Day weekend, be sure to schedule your appointment with Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center to an adjustment — it’s the perfect companion to a healthy lifestyle.

A Primer on Corrective Exercise

Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center provides many additional wellness services beyond chiropractic care. Corrective exercises are one way to stay active in your recovery from injury or from correcting lifelong issues like bad posture or painful joints.

Below are a few benefits patients can expect from engaging in corrective exercises.

Pitfalls of Bad Form

Poor posture, poor movement, poor balance, and improper lifting techniques can all contribute to daily pain as well as increase your chances of experiencing an injury. Imbalances such as these can certainly cause excessive wear and tear in concentrated areas of the body. This can end up leading to chronic pain or various forms of injuries at work or at play. Chiropractic care and corrective exercise aim to alleviate bad form.

Corrective Exercises Benefits

Corrective exercise provides excellent self-care that is individualized for each patient. We can assist patients in outlining their exercise plans which are specially designed to achieve your personal goals. Personalized exercise plans can help correct irregularities in the body that may be a source of your pain. Our corrective exercises will assist you in spinal alignment and help relieve pain caused by displaced muscle and connective tissues.

Corrective exercise can even with your back pain, neck pain, and headaches. Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center will assist you in choosing an exercise plan specially designed to target your specific needs. Contact us today to schedule your one-on-one consultation!

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Foods and Beverages to Cut from Your Diet Immediately

The stuff we eat has a great impact on our wellness, this is true for health foods, but it’s also true for junk foods and unhealthy beverages that are more engineered for taste and creating lifelong loyalty than providing any sort of nutritional value.

Below, Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center goes over a few foods and beverages that you should cut from your diet immediately.

1.) Sweets

Try to limit your sweets. If you can cut them out of your diet altogether, even better! Processed sugars are horrible for your oral health and your overall health, causing inflammation, leading to diabetes and heart trouble. Try to use dark chocolate or fresh berries and honey as a substitute.

2.) Alcohol

Alcohol has zero nutritional value, causes hangovers, and is riddled with sugars. Many adult beverages are heavy in carbs and some are mixed with sugary beverages — all equal bad things for your health.

3.) Bagels

Bagels supply little nutritional value on their own. Sure, you can put healthy stuff on a bagel, but the bagel in itself is loaded with carbohydrates. Try to go with a low-carb option with lots of seeds.

4.) Pizza

This one might be the toughest, but pizza is also loaded with carbohydrates and is high in grease and the bad sort of fats. Try to limit your pizza intake, try to go with veggie-heavy options, and opt for the thinnest crust possible. Almond flour crusts are a great alternative.

5.) Sodas

Sodas are loaded in sugar and have been shown to increase your chances of becoming diabetic.

If you have any questions about how to optimize your diet or if you’re wondering how chiropractic care can play into your overall wellness routine, contact Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center today to schedule your consultation.

3 Tips to Achieve Better Sleep

Sleep is an important part of wellness, an opportunity for your body to rest, recharge and cleanse itself from the toxins of daily life. When we don’t get enough sleep we can reduce our overall effectiveness. Lack of sleep can affect your jobs, our ability to drive, not to mention reduce our quality of life in all aspects.

Below are a few ways to get better sleep every day.

1.) Stay Active

Try to do something active every day and make sure you exercise 3-5 per week. Even on your off days, try to engage in active recovery. We come from hunter/gatherer tribes, which means that our ancestors were used to getting something like 15,000 steps per day. If we’re not getting the right amount of activity, this can lead to anxiety and lack of quality sleep.

2.) Eat Well

Eating well and staying away from too much caffeine and sugary foods will ensure that you get better sleep and your body will run at a more optimum capacity.

3.) Meditate

We use the term “meditation” loosely. You might consider playing the guitar a meditation of sorts, even working on your car. Or, you might engage in more Buddhist-like meditation. Whatever you do to clear your mind and let your thoughts settle, you should try to do it for at least 10 minutes daily for better sleep and reduced anxiety.

Chiropractic care is also a great avenue to ensure your body and mind are working in harmony. Some patients even experience improved sleep, reduced anxiety, and reduced insomnia. Contact Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center if you think chiropractic care might be for you.

How to Engage in Active Recovery

When it comes to recovering after a workout or a strenuous week of work and exercise, it’s important to remember that we don’t necessarily have to be immobile on our “day’s off.” Athletes insist that one cannot overtrain, but one can under-recover.

Active recovery is a fairly new concept but is something that active people have been doing for centuries. All active recovery means is getting out and doing something light instead of binge-watching television. It’s a great way to push your body a little bit while giving it a rest and an opportunity to recover and bounce back for the next endeavor.

Below are a few ways to engage in active recovery.

Do Light Yoga

Incorporating a light yoga routine into your days off will do wonders for your body and your recovery.

Go on a Hike!

Hiking is a great way to engage in active recovery. It’s low impact and in some steep slopes can still help you build leg muscle.

Visit Your Chiropractor

Visiting your local chiropractor is a great way to engage in active recovery. You’ll be giving your body a rest, to be sure, but you’ll also be giving your body and mind the host of benefits that come along with chiropractic care. If you’d like to learn more about how chiropractic can help you live a better, more active, more fulfilling life, contact Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center today.

Tips to Build a Healthy Back

When we hit the gym and engage in extracurricular activities, somehow the back, spine, and the entire core area of the body can get ignored. Have you ever seen a bicyclist with really built legs, but they seem a little soft around the midsection? It’s because that cyclist hasn’t been engaging their core as much as their supposed to.

Below we go over a few ways you can start to build a great foundation for your back and spine health through exercise and healthy living.

Hydrate Properly

Drink about half your body weight in ounces of water per day. This will help your body and brain function at an optimum level. There’s a reason why water is considered the building block of life!

Lift with Your Back in Mind

Make sure when you hit the gym you’re not solely focused on chest and arms. Instead, opt for a great back workout to better prepare your body for the daily grind.

See Your Chiropractor Often

Making sure to keep regular visits with your chiropractor in Milpitas, CA will ensure that you are doing everything you can to keep your back and your spine in line. Contact us today to schedule your one-on-one consultation at Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center. 

How to Make Spine Health a Priority

Have you ever heard the expression “you’re only as healthy as your spine”?

Chances are you have not, but it’s a popular phrase used in the chiropractic community. The truth is, your spine has a lot to say when it comes to the mind/body connection. When your spine is out of whack, so is your mobility, your cognitive function, your overall alertness, and your overall health.

Below are a few ways you can keep your spine health in mind on a daily basis.

1.) Keep Your Appointments with Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center

Chiropractic adjustments have been shown to be beneficial in maintaining your spine health. Chiropractic treatments can help reduce pain, reduce your chances of injury, and increase your mind and your body’s abilities.

2.) Stretch with Your Spine in Mind

Whether you do yoga or you just do your own thing stretching-wise, it’s important to make sure you’re stretching out your neck, back, and your spine. Look up specific yoga poses that target these specific areas to increase your spine health.

3.) Stay Hydrated

Think of water as the motor oil of your body. Your joints and especially your spine appreciate it. Drink about half your body weight in ounces per day.

If you have any additional questions about how you can take care of your back, neck, and spine, contact Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center today to schedule a visit.

5 Benefits of Massage Therapy in Milpitas, CA

Massage therapy has a whole slew of health benefits, some you might be fully aware of, others you might not be so privvy to, and that’s okay, because Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center is here to break down a few of the benefits that massage therapy brings to our patients.

Below we discuss a few ways massage therapy will help optimize your wellness — it’s one of the many drug-free, all-natural treatments we provide.

1. Eliminate Toxins

Massage therapy works by stimulating soft tissues of the body. MT also helps release your body’s toxins through both your blood and lymphatic systems. It’s a total cleansing experience!

2. Improve Your Overall Flexibility

Massage therapy has the added benefit of loosening and relaxing all of the muscles in your body. MT also helps the body achieve its full range of movement potential.

3. Improved Sleep

Massage therapy will help you seriously relax and bring your mood to a calm level. MT promotes a restful night of sleep.

4. Enhanced Immunity

Massage therapy will help stimulation the lymph nodes, which will re-charge your body’s own natural defense system.

5. Reduced Fatigue/Increased Awareness

Massage therapy has been shown to have mood-boosting qualities which will ultimately reduce your overall fatigue and increase your awareness, making you more alert in your waking life and more restful when you need to sleep.

If you have any additional questions about how massage therapy can benefit you, contact Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center today.

3 Ways to Make Yoga Part of Your Daily Routine

At Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center, we like to make suggestions to our patients about how they can live more active, healthy lifestyles outside of their chiropractic care visits with us. A big part of that is not only maintaining a healthy diet and rigorous exercise routine, but it also means engaging in the active recovery that helps our bodies function at their optimum capacity.

It just so happens that yoga is a fantastic activity that both serves as physical activity and an activity of recovery, stretching the body, especially where tightness and strain occur from the daily grind. Below we give a few ways you can incorporate yoga into your daily routine.

1.) Yoga at Work

It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting or standing more during the day, it’s perfectly fine to incorporate some stretching into your workday. Try to do it for a few minutes, three times during your workday, making sure to target your legs, hips, back, neck, and spine.

2.) Yoga While Standing in Line

It doesn’t matter if you’re standing in line at the grocery store or at the bank, you can incorporate a couple of yoga moves to break the monotony. Some may look at you strange, but who really cares? This is your wellness we’re talking about here.

3.) Make Yoga a Part of Your Active Recovery

If you’re an athlete or engage in particularly strenuous physical activity during the week, it’s likely you’ll want to take a day off from everything. But making yoga a part of your off day is a great way to stay active without putting any strain on your body. It’s also a great way to recharge from a hectic training regiment or a stressful work week.

If you have any additional questions about how you can make yoga a part of your daily practice, contact Family Chiropractic and Natural Healing Center today to learn more.