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319 W. County Line Rd.,Ste 1 Hatboro, PA
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Andrew Agasar

Category: Health

chiropractors in warminster

What’s Your Wellness Score? 3 Reasons Why You Need to Know It

chiropractors in warminsterYou’re probably thinking my what?! What is a Wellness Score? It’s our new form of assessment here at Radiant Life Chiropractic. The Wellness Score is simple but it provides a lot of good, powerful information about your health. It takes into consideration many different health biomarkers and provides an easy-to-understand grading system. All of our current chiropractic assessments, including the Core Score and digital x-rays, will still be utilized, and additional health factors will be measured too. Practice members will receive a grade on an A to F scale (just like school report cards) for every individual biomarker and then an overall grade that represents their Wellness Score. It really is the one score that you can’t afford to fail. Failing in your health is a lot more serious than bringing home an F on a high school English assignment.

So why do you need to know your Wellness Score? Here are 3 main reasons:

  1. You will know the state of your health: It is vital to know where you stand regarding overall health. Some people don’t want to know what their weight is, how much body fat they have, how much their spine is degenerated, etc. However, is it better to be ignorant about an issue or be aware of it so you can address it head on? What gets measured gets addressed. The Wellness Score allows you to comprehensively evaluate your current health state.
  2. You will identify the areas that need the most improvement: There are many factors that are measured during the evaluation. Many people who come in with complaints like back pain or neck pain actually have lifestyle issues that are contributing to the aches and discomfort. After seeing your Wellness Score, you will have a better idea about how to attack any issue. For some people, it might be focusing on losing weight and becoming stronger in addition to undergoing chiropractic care. Other people may have issues with flexibility and mobility. The Wellness Score will highlight these areas of deficit.
  3. You can objectively track progress: The best part about this assessment is that you can use it to track your health progress. There is nothing better than going from a C up to an A. Not only does that mean your body is functioning better, but you will also be feeling much better. Our physiology doesn’t lie, so even if there are no symptoms yet, when there are signs of trouble, symptoms are usually close. Our goal is to make sure you not only feel better currently, but feel, and more importantly function, better in the future.

If you are in Hatboro, Horsham, Warminster or Warrington and aren’t satisfied with your health, then schedule an appointment to have your Wellness Score evaluated. Maybe you want to lose weight, have better energy, sleep better, or get rid of digestive issues-whatever it may be, it is good to know where your health stands and if there are any potential reasons for why you feel the way you do. Call today, take advantage of our Wellness Score special for July, and let us guide you on the road to true health!

Happy Independence Day: Freedom From Your Genes

You don’t have to be a prisoner of your genetics. I know I have talked about this topic before, but it is something that I am passionate about and think is worth repeating. Whether I am in or out of the office, I hear a lot of people blame their issues or the issues of others on genetics. They are overweight because it’s genetic. They have high blood pressure because it runs in the family. They have fill-in-the-blank disease or dysfunction because their genes determined that they would.

I believe this is such a disempowering thought process. It gives control of your life and your health state to your genes, which can’t be changed. It also may be a protective way of thinking because if it wasn’t the fault of your genes, then you would have to take responsibility for your actions. Either way, we have a lot more control of our health outcomes than we have been led to believe. Do our genes play a role in disease development? Absolutely, but not as much credit as we tend to give them. Genes may predispose us to certain diseases, but excluding a few exceptions, they don’t guarantee them.

Heart disease, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease are four of the top ten killers in this country. They actually account for nearly 60 percent of all deaths, but they are largely lifestyle diseases. Although you can’t change your genes, you can change how they are expressed. Epigenetics is the field of study that looks at how gene expression can be altered without changing the gene sequence itself.

You can think of it like this: your genes are the blueprint to a building. Blueprints can’t build themselves and create a building. They need a contractor to interpret the blueprint and construct the building. Your lifestyle is the contractor that will determine how your genes are expressed. So even if you want to blame your genes, then it is that much more important to live a healthy lifestyle. There’s no excuse. Eating a healthy diet, exercising, getting regular chiropractic care, meditating, getting massages, etc. can turn on or off certain genes and give you the best chance to express true health.

Starting this Independence Day, start taking action to create health instead of being a victim of your genes. We tend to behave our way into disease, so it would make sense that we need to behave our way out of them. If you are in the Hatboro, Horsham, Warminster or Warrington areas and don’t like your current health state, then let us help you on the journey back to health. Schedule a complimentary consultation to see how we can help!

chiropractors in warrington pa

You Didn’t Hurt Yourself While Sleeping. Here’s What’s Probably Causing That Pain…

chiropractors in warrington paThis weekend, I had the privilege of being involved in a community event at a local high school. We love to take part in these types of events to reach out to and help educate our Hatboro, Horsham, Warminster and Warrington communities. While at the event, an older gentleman came over to the booth and told me that he has recently been experiencing irritating lower back pain, but he said he didn’t do anything that caused it. He thought maybe he slept on it wrong. Just because you cannot pinpoint a specific incident does not mean that there wasn’t something that happened that is causing the pain.

The truth is that we live in a world of cause and effect. Whether it is neck pain, back pain, headaches, fatigue, etc., this is the effect. However, there must be an underlying cause to these issues. This man’s account of his issue is very similar to many of the patients who come in to the office. Common reasons people give for their aches, pains and dysfunctions are things like “I slept on it wrong” or “I hurt it picking up the laundry basket” (you could also insert any other basic activity that people do countless times per year without incident).

What we tend to find out is that the issues are actually the result of some type of unresolved trauma in the patient’s life. These could be big traumas like a car accident, slip and fall, sports injury, etc. Even if the big trauma didn’t cause an immediately noticeable problem, it could have affected the alignment and overall function of the body, and over time, we can see issues arise. It is like driving a car that is out of alignment. Driving 10 miles might not cause any additional issues, but if you continue to drive for 1,000s of miles, you are probably going to see things start to break down.

Even more common than the big traumas are what we call micro or repetitive traumas. These are things like repetitive actions or repetitive postures, which have huge effects on the body. Many people are sitting for 8+ hours per day, eating poor inflammatory diets, and dealing with chronic emotional stresses. This is the perfect cocktail for body breakdown and resulting aches, pains and dysfunctions.

By asking the man a couple quick questions about his lifestyle, there were some things that popped up that made a little more sense to why he was possibly getting this low back pain. It probably wasn’t the way he slept or any basic activity he did that caused it. How many times had he slept the same way and didn’t experience anything? Most likely, he had exhausted his body and pushed it to the brink of malfunction. He probably could have done almost any activity or motion that would have pushed him over the edge and caused symptoms. This is why, in our office, we stress being proactive with your health. It is much better to prevent issues before they occur instead of trying to correct issues after the fact.

If you’d like to find out more about the state of your health or don’t know why you are experiencing certain aches or pains, call 215-259-5100 to schedule a complimentary consultation today! We’re excited to work with you to get things corrected and move you towards true health and wellness!

childrens chiropractor in warminster

Why You Should Take Your Child to a Chiropractor

childrens chiropractor in warminsterIf you think chiropractic is only for pain relief, then you probably won’t understand chiropractic for kids. However, chiropractic isn’t for pain. Chiropractic actually focuses on improving the function of the nervous system, since it is the system that controls and coordinates everything else going on in the body. If your nervous system is only functioning at 80%, then there is no way that the systems that are controlled by the nervous system (i.e. digestive, immune, respiratory, etc.) can function at any higher than 80%.

So what does that have to do with kids?

Well, it starts with the birthing process. The modern birthing process is not only difficult on moms, but also on the newborn babies. Dr. Godfrey Gutmann, a German medical doctor, conducted a study of over 1,000 newborns and found that over 80% of infants had suffered trauma to their cervical spine (neck region). Other studies have shown that 95% of infants have vertebral misalignments after birth. During birth, especially C-sections and births involving forceps or vacuum intervention, the head and neck of the newborn experiences a lot of stress, and this is where we tend to see areas of misalignment and nerve interference. Although an infant will not tell us they are experiencing pain, some of their symptoms may be the result of this birth-induced nerve interference. Common complaints include colic, reflux, digestive issues, and breastfeeding difficulties. Gentle adjustments, with the amount of force used to check the ripeness of a tomato, can help restore proper communication between the brain and body. When nervous system function is improved, often many of those complaints begin to improve as well.

As children get older, they experience additional physical traumas while crawling, walking and falling. These increase as kids become involved with sports and other activities, carry heavy backpacks, deal with poor posture, etc. Many children also deal with chemical traumas in the form of poor nutritional choices. These physical and chemical traumas constantly bombard the nervous system, so it is important for children to be checked by a chiropractor. Other symptoms that have responded well to neurologically-based chiropractic care are allergies, chronic ear infections, asthma, ADHD, and other sensory processing disorders. Chiropractors do not treat these symptoms, but it is amazing how the body responds when you look for the root cause of issues and aim to improve overall body function.

As the Twig is Bent, So Grows the Tree

At Radiant Life Chiropractic, we believe that to make a lasting impact on the health of our community, we need to start with the health of the youth. Healthy kids grow up to be healthy adults, and healthy adults make up healthy communities. We do not wait until we are 47 years old to see a dentist; we shouldn’t wait until we are older to see a chiropractor. It is much easier to stay well than to get well.

For more information about the benefits of chiropractic care for kids, visit icpa4kids.org. As a member of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association (ICPA), Dr. Andrew stays up-to-date with pediatric and prenatal chiropractic topics and research. If you have children in the Hatboro, Horsham, Warrington or Warminster areas, call 215-259-5100 or click here today to schedule an appointment!

chiropractic care

Our Health Care System is Broken and You’re the Solution

chiropractic careHealth care is a big topic in this country. It was one of the main areas of debate during the recent presidential election, but the politicians can’t seem to agree on much. I don’t think we’ll ever have a perfect system, but I do know that what we’ve been doing for the last 25 years hasn’t worked. Chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes have dramatically increased, and this has increased our spending. In case you didn’t know, we spend over 3 trillion dollars on health care per year. For such a large number, you would assume we would have one of the best health care systems in the world. However, the World Health Organization ranked the United States as number 37. That made us just a little better than Slovenia, but not quite as good as Costa Rica. No offense to those countries, but if we are spending the most money per person per year on health care, then that’s unacceptable company. The main problem is that we aren’t attacking the real issue. We use the term “health care” even though it is more like “disease care.” Our system is a very reactive, emergency-based model. If you experience a crisis, then we have the technologies and capabilities to handle those situations, and that is amazing. However, our health care doesn’t truly help us produce health. It doesn’t really support proactive health measures like eating healthily and exercising. You can’t go to the local gym or grocery store and try to buy a membership or some organic vegetables with your health insurance card. Instead our health insurance tends to pay for expensive Band-Aids to mask symptoms. 95% of health care dollars are spent dealing with conditions and symptoms that are already present when it would be more beneficial to prevent those things from occurring in the first place.

It’s easy to want to blame the government or the health care industry for our current health care predicament, but Americans should look at themselves. Health care reform doesn’t start in Washington with government; it begins with our lifestyle. Unfortunately, most people don’t take any action to improve their health until they feel pain or suffer a crisis. If you think about it, many health issues are more progressed by the time someone feels pain. Heart attacks are often the first sign of heart disease, so it is better to be proactive and worry more about how your body is functioning instead of only worrying about how you feel. To truly take back control of our health, we need to eat better, move better, and think better. It goes back to the triad of health (or 3 T’s).

Chiropractic has been a proactive, preventative option that has produced some nice cost-saving results. One study followed 70,000 people, who utilized a chiropractor as their primary doctor, for 7 years. This group experienced 60% less hospital admissions, 59% less days in the hospital, 62% less outpatient surgeries, and 85% less spent on pharmaceuticals. Chiropractic in conjunction with positive lifestyle changes such as proper nutrition, exercise, and good mental health can transform the health of our communities.

At Radiant Life Chiropractic, our goal is to transform health by providing chiropractic care throughout Hatboro, Horsham, Warminster, and Warrington communities without the use of drugs or surgery. Call now to schedule a complimentary consultation and allow us to get you started on the road to true health!

healthy chiropractors

Curb Your (Sugar) Enthusiasm

America’s sugar addiction is real, and it is having a major impact on our health! On average, Americans consume 22 to 30 teaspoons of sugar per day. One 12-ounce soda contains 8 to 12 teaspoons. This adds up to be 80 to 150 pounds of sugar per year! It’s not surprising that the amount of sugar in our diets is so high. First, sugar tastes good. It may be toxic to our bodies, but it triggers the same reward center in the brain that many drugs do and drives us to crave more. Actually, there was a study that showed that Oreos were more addictive than both heroin and cocaine in mice, so don’t beat yourself up too badly the next time you want to eat the whole bag. No one said kicking the sugar habit was going to be easy! Another reason why we consume so much sugar is due to bad information from the past. The sugar industry unfortunately helped pin the heart disease issue in our country on fats. Since then, many people have vilified fats, including cholesterol and saturated fat, and promoted low-fat diets. Low-fat diets are often supplemented with increased carbohydrate intake. Many of the low-fat variety foods also substitute in sugar after removing fat to improve taste, leading to even higher sugar intakes. Thankfully, this trend has reversed recently, and people are embracing fats again.

healthy chiropractorsIn our bodies, sugar consumption (especially fructose) has many negative effects. Sugar is very inflammatory. It has been shown to trigger low-grade chronic inflammation. The inflammation is systemic, or present throughout the whole body too. Chronic inflammation is associated with every degenerative disorder. Through many different pathways, sugar causes our immune system to overwork and increases the production of immune mediator and free radical molecules. These chronic inflammatory reactions increase the chances for conditions such as:

  • Diabetes
  • Cardiovascular Disease
  • Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
  • Inflammatory Bowel Disease
  • Rheumatoid Arthritis
  • Depression
  • Headaches
  • Fatigue
  • Cognitive Impairment
  • Muscle Aches

As you can see, sugar intake can lead to many aches, pains and dysfunctions that we don’t want. Cutting out sugar and other refined carbohydrates from your diet is definitely not easy, but it is worthwhile. Start small if you need to so that it can become a lasting change. One patient started by simply not eating dessert after dinner anymore. In a week, he had lost 7 pounds and felt noticeably better! Avoiding soda and juice is a good idea too. They have tons of added sugar and spike your blood sugar quickly. Maintaining hydration and eating more quality protein, fat, and fiber will also help by keeping you feeling full.

The foods that we put into our bodies have a major impact on how well we feel and function. Sugar is toxic and causes nervous system inflammation, so take a step today to get it out of your diet. Try eliminating sugar for a week to see what changes you notice. If you have any questions, call us at 215-259-5100 or email us at info@getradiantlife.com!