Americans walk significantly less than other cultures

There’s no use denying it: we are on a trend toward making walking obsolete. We drive, we bike, we segway, we sit; we work on our butts, relax on our butts, and commute on our butts, we eat on our butts; is there an activity that can’t be done on our butts anymore?

But this is not a problem to be taken lightly: imagine (or think about reality) that you are a deskbound worker who sits for the greater part of eight hours on the job each day. If you are awake for 16 hours, then this is 50% of your waking life that you are spent sitting. Here’s what that is doing to your body:

• Muscle degeneration: the core, the hips and lower body, the upper body and neck, all the important parts of your body suffer and will eventually start to cause pain. 
• Brain function lowers: circulation of blood and, consequently, oxygen to the brain is hampered.
• Digestion is affected: abdominal contents are compressed which slows down digestion and causes all kinds of untimely bodily discomfort!

This is before you even take posture into account!

Getting back to a walking-heavy lifestyle

Simply put, being sedentary is taking years off your life. It’s time to make a commitment to standing up and walking every once in a while; walking helps you manage weight, improve circulation, strengthen muscles and bones, boost your mood and improve the function of your brain! 

• Park your car further away
• Always take the stairs
• Walk across the office rather than sending an e-mail 
• Make your lunch hour sacred
• Take walks throughout the day, especially after lunch and dinner!

These are simple things that go un-thought of and stop us from walking! At Scorca Chiropractic Center, we support an anti-sedentary lifestyle. If you need help getting inspired to start walking more or help with healing the troubles brought on by hours spent sedentary, give our office in Fremont a call to schedule an appointment today! 

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C. 

Winter fatigue can be combated with a diet rich in energy. 

And let’s cut straight to it: soda and candy don’t provide you with enduring energy. They may provide you with a quick boost, but the body quickly processes simple carbohydrates, leaving you with low blood sugar and low energy. What you need is something to sustain and complex carbohydrates, of the kind found in grains, provide you with just that: clean-burning fuel to keep you pushing through the fatigue that is brought on by winter. 

Attention to proper nutrition and proper timing of eating makes a world of difference to your vitality.

Everyone has heard not to skip breakfast, but the pressure of time often leaves us shorthanded in the mornings. A coffee and croissant set a pretty poor tone for the rest of the day, so if you can wake up just a second earlier to consume a balanced breakfast (think oatmeal with fruit; toast with yogurt) you can start off on the right foot. Modern nutrition suggests that you distribute calorie consumption evenly across all meals, so you set the tone for the rest of the day with breakfast. 

A high energy diet includes: 

• Iron: a mineral that helps allocate oxygen to where it is needed by way of the red blood cells. Oxygen is essential for energy and many of us are chronically deficient in iron levels. 
• Vitamin D: for fighting off seasonal depression, D is important. But it is also hard to come by in winter. Add it in by consuming cold water fish such as salmon, which also happens to contain high levels of protein and omega-3 fatty acid. 
• A mix high in complex carbohydrates, medium in protein and low in fat and plenty of fruit and vegetable to provide you with all the micronutrients necessary to help you truly thrive. 

At Scorca Chiropractic, we help you fight through the fatigue of winter naturally

Diet is a cornerstone, but so is keeping your body fit so that you can stay active in the winter months. We help you keep your body in top physical form by providing you with chiropractic adjustment, of the kind that removes nerve impingement and boosts range of motion. Give our office in Fremont a call to schedule an appointment today.

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C. 

Why do I constantly feel tired and down during winter? 

It is an outcome of nature: the shorter hours of daylight and the dearth of sunlight combine to affect your sleeping and waking cycles. We produce more melatonin, which makes us feel sleepier (and even drowsier) than normal, which could be why you find yourself pining for bed earlier than normal. So the first step is to relax- it is happening to all of us, albeit on different scales. On the more extreme end is Seasonal Affective Disorder, a mood disorder that is thought to be experienced by up to 20% of the population. And to a certain extent, we probably all feel the sensation of winter tiredness- how it affects and shapes your life is determined by your response.

Things you can do to combat fatigue and keep energy up throughout winter

• Get out despite the cold and exercise: by getting you out in the sun, you can recoup some vitamin D and the endorphin release that comes with exercise helps increase happiness. 
• Consume vitamin D: this vitamin is harder to come by in winter, so we must add it in through the diet. Cold water fish and fortified dairy products are the best ways to do so. 
• Use diet- more on this in the future, but there are many energy giving foods that can provide you with a boost to get through the day. 
• Fight stress on all fronts: work in some relaxation to your everyday to keep stress at bay. 

Use our services at Scorca Chiropractic to boost vitality in the dead of winter

Many of the bullet points above can be aided and optimized by chiropractic treatment. By regulating the nervous system through chiropractic adjustment and addressing the physical manifestations of stress. we help your body find a semblance of stability despite the upheaval of the season. Give our office in Fremont a call to schedule an appointment today!

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C. 

Using your body to train for strength.

When it comes to breaking into the fitness world, we find that one of the best places to start is in your own home with your own body weight. The gym is not for everyone, but fitness should be and, as creatures of comfort, humans benefit from exercises that are convenient. Squats, push-ups, planks are incredibly effective exercises that require zero equipment and can be done from the comfort of your living room. 

The benefits to be gained from body weight training.

• Conditioning the entire core
• Getting your heart rate up
• Burning calories
• Building muscle 

And most of the exercises require no extra input besides your body, a little time and the power of gravity. We can show you how squats and jump squats, jumping jacks and jumping lunges can be done in just minutes a day, to the benefit of your body and mind.

Keeping your fitness up in winter is critical

Cold weather can kill motivation. And for people who already avoid the gym out of principle, the winter months make it more difficult to get outdoor exercise. At Scorca Chiropractic Center, we want you to maintain fitness levels because a healthy body makes for a happy spirit. We can help you stay motivated and keep muscles loose and injury free in the face of colder temperatures. Give our office in Fremont a call to schedule an appointment today!

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C. 

Winter is a time to consolidate the gains of summer.

It’s a stark fact that we don’t get out as much in the darker, colder months of winter which means that, despite new years resolutions, it is not everyone’s favorite time of year for starting on new fitness goals.  Add to this that November-December are our favorite months for overeating and you’ll see that our summer bodies face a real winter threat. But winter offers a lot of opportunities for maintaining wellness, if only we choose to change our perspective on things.

Winter fitness is about getting creative.

• If you are going to be inside more, chances are you are going to be sitting more. It is a great time to focus on the littlest things which can make the biggest difference: posture and breathing are two great examples of this. 
• Planking: for establishing core stability and strength; to help make holding good posture easier; to ease lower back pain. With next to no movement, you can do all these things, 30 seconds at a time, 3-5 times a day. 
• Yoga: doesn’t take much space and your own living room can be a yoga studio which you can use to specifically target your weak and sore regions. 
• Turning your house into a fitness zone: stretch while everyone is hanging out around the Christmas tree, try a fitness DVD, make sure you are moving a lot!

Winter means less vitamin D

This is a vital vitamin which helps preserve the health of bones and you can totally get it from dietary sources! Fortified dairy products, egg yolks, fatty fish and mushrooms are all great sources of D. Life keeps moving in the winter time and it is important to keep up with the pace so that your body and mind don’t fall behind. For a little extra help, you can always count on your Fremont chiropractor so give us a call to schedule an appointment today. 

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C. 

 As a conductor of forces between the upper and lower body, a facilitator for movement of the legs, and as power points that are connected to a lot of muscle, the hips are the cornerstone of quality movement. This means that they also have a heavy hand in the development of injuries and conditions in the lower back and knees, because dysfunction in the hip joints (among the largest in the body) necessitates other regions such as the lower back to pick up the slack. We know that we should be lifting and rotating with the hips rather than the lower back, but how do we get back to a point where this kind of movement is second nature, as when we were children? 

Luckily, it’s not as difficult as it may seem and the sooner you start the better! What we face is a question of mobility and, more specifically, a lack thereof that is perpetuated by sit heavy lifestyles and repetitive forces that shorten our hip flexors and destabilize the lower back. At Scorca Chiropractic Center, we can help with a coordinated response that involves strengthening and stretching. For example, simple hip strengthening and stretching exercises reverse the tightening that occurs as you sit at work, decreasing your risk of injury from basic motions. 

• Bridges: arms at sides, feet on floors with knees bent. Press into heels, squeeze your glutes, exhale and lift hips off the floor establishing a straight line between knees and shoulders. Inhale and return to starting position.
• The classic butterfly: sit on the floor with back straight and soles of feet together in front of you, knees bent to the side. Pull your heels toward you while relaxing knees down to the floor. Hold 10-30 seconds and feel the stretch in the inner thighs and hips. 

Stretching requires only minutes out of every week and it can make a huge impact on range of motion and our experience with pain and stiffness that comes with age. For help on extracting your tight hip flexors from the clutches of a sit-heavy lifestyle give our office in Fremont a call and schedule an appointment today. 

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C. 

The mobility of your hips can make a big difference in how your lower back feels. In fact, athletes who seek to improve speed and strength may be selling themselves short if they don’t account for the range of motion in critical joints such as the hips, which can be used to produce a lot of power and should be used to initiate quite a bit of movement. The hips should be one of the primary agents involved in lifting; we lower to the object by squatting with the hips then lift by producing a forward thrust of the hips. Instead, most of us just bend over and lift, exposing the lower back to a potential calamity that leaves many people sore and stiff for weeks afterward. Because lifting and rotating are two unavoidable motions we do daily, the range of motion must be accounted for somewhere, and often the lower back, which is already trying to support the weight of the upper body, is called upon to compensate. 

This is a matter of regaining what was lost: as children we have seemingly unlimited range of motion in our joints, but as we grow and enter the work force, more time is spent seated which shortens the hip flexors and weakens the glutes, compromising the integrity of the posterior muscle chain which includes the trapezius and posterior deltoids. What we want to do is start using this muscle chain, and the hip joints to generate power and perform rotation instead of the lower back and knees. 

At Scorca Chiropractic Center, we help by teaching the mechanics of the human body and how to use them so that weight and the forces we interact with throughout the day are born by the right muscles; no one muscle group or structure should be exposed to an inordinate amount of stress when the body is trained this way. Let’s make rotating and lifting with the lower back a thing of the past in your life and start relarning how to use your hips and posterior muscles to reduce pain in the lower back and live a happier, healthier life. 

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C. 

The classic plank has been the subject of significant buzz both in the gym and in pop culture over the last few years and for good reason: with very little movement, the plank targets every layer of the abdominal fascia, strengthening the core and increasing the flexibility of posterior muscle groups. At the same time, it can be used to reduce pain, particularly in the lower back. The plank and its many variations, are important for establishing the core as a stabilizing force, one which shares the burden of the upper body’s weight with the lower back, and contributes to good posture. Let’s look at the form of this chiropractor-approved movement: 

• Elbows directly under shoulders
• Wrists aligned with elbows
• Push your body upward and hold your chin close to your neck
• Pull your belly button in, contract your abdominals and squeeze your glutes and thigh muscles. 
• Hold 20-30 seconds, no longer is necessary if the form is correct. 
• Rest 1 minute, repeat 3-5 times per session. 

As with all exercise, it is important to note that good form is essential: you won’t be reaping the benefits of the movement unless you are doing it properly, and you could actually be training your muscles in a way that will leave them exposed to injury moving forward. At Scorca Chiropractic Center, we can help you implement a stretching and strengthening plan to great effect. 

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C. 

Junk food, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, in the opinion of this chiropractor. Essentially, you are paying for a bad deal that satiates your brain’s reward complex, while selling the long-term health of your body well-short. You are getting the most base inputs necessary to keep awake and alive, but nothing more; none of the nutrients that are necessary to feel good and prosper. In the process, you are leading your body down the road toward chronic inflammation, pain and disease. It’s time to put junk food on the back burner, in favor of foods that are real, and packed with the kind of inputs you need to heal your body, combat pain, improve mental performance and live longer! Here are some super foods that can be used to fight pain:

• Turmeric: relieves pain and fights stiffness and aches in joints. Helps the body with the health of tissues, fights joint inflammation and contributes to good nerve cell function. It’s a chiropractor’s dream ingredient. 
• Cherries: ease muscle pain, combat inflammation and inhibit pain enzymes. 
• Ginger: filled with anti-inflammatory properties that help people suffering from headaches and arthritis-related pain. 
• Cold-water fish: well known for their high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, fish such as salmon, sardines and herring are excellent for fighting inflammation and keeping the back healthy. 

Diet involves some of the most crucial choices you can make on a daily basis to influence greater health. It’s time to start seeking foods that heal you rather than set you back. For help on addressing the root causes of your physical limitations, give our office in Fremont a call to schedule an appointment today. 

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C. 

When we say the word, “relaxation,” what do we mean? You may think no stress, or picture yourself smiling and content, but what is actually happening in the body, and how do we make it happen? Besides being fun, relaxing is also crucial for keeping stress levels balanced, getting proper, restful sleep, improving mood and preventing disease. Chronically high levels of stress hormones can leave you spun out and at risk for certain health conditions and a weakened immune system. 

When we are relaxed: 

• Muscle tension is reduced
• Blood circulation to the body and, more importantly, the brain, improves, bringing nutrients and oxygen necessary for cells to refresh, respire and function properly. 
• Heart rate slows
• Breathing becomes slower, fuller and more regular. 

The question of how do we make it happen is complicated and detailed to the individual. Everyone has their own mix of inputs that makes them happy; the important part is to not ignore or neglect these factors. Letting the stresses of daily life dominate our lives often leads us to forget how to feel good and, while working hard is important, so is balancing the hard work with quality relaxation. “Good Relaxation,” is the kind that decreases the effects of stress to the brain and body and it can take practice. At Scorca Chiropractic Center, we can help you find the things in your life that truly help you relax and this may mean beginning by treating your body. Fixing pain is the quickest way to decrease stress and we can help you do just that! 

Dr. Francis Scorca, D.C.