So where do we look to find hope amidst health declines statistics this sobering?

Knowing that the pursuit of happiness is so intimately tied to our health, it would make sense that we would be very interested in health.  Yet in light of the statistics we just looked at, to someone observing our culture from the outside it might seem like Americans today are really not all that interested in vitality.  Heck, judging by the statistics alone, we must either be the most apathetic people on the planet, or there is some massive outbreak we have yet to discover.  After all, Americans as a whole are not only the most obese nation in the world, even those who are not obese, often wrestle with aches and pains and the, “extra 10 pounds”, and find it next to impossible to maintain an ideal weight.  Why?

It’s pretty obvious that health declines of this proportion are not created in a vacuum.  They have to be coming from somewhere, but where?  Perhaps a good place to start searching for answers is by looking for assumptions we make about the ways things are.  The two easiest places to look are our cultural and our mindset.  Both of these are somewhat like what water is to a fish.  It’s all around us, and it’s not uncommon to have a hard time looking at our culture and mindset from an outside perspective.  Stepping outside it as best we can, through a brief look at relevant history can help us see how we’ve come to think a certain way.  Since the health declines we are talking about were not created in a vacuum it is safe to say that our current mindset toward health was not created in a vacuum either.  Our mindset developed from somewhere too.  It makes sense that if we are going to change our health, we might first need to take a look how we’ve come to think about health.

I submit to you that much of the way most Americans think about health today stems from thinking of a few hundred years ago to an era in history known as the “Enlightenment”.  The Enlightenment is known as the “Age of Reason”, and was marked by the belief that reason was the ultimate authority.  Through logic, that is to say, reducing complex problems to explainable variables, it was believed we could discern ultimate truth and explain most of the mysteries of life.  An overflowing confidence in reason developed because during this period of history science and technology were beginning to make exponential gains.  Science helped us develop an understanding of sanitation, gravity, physics, electricity, combustion, and countless other topics.  Concurrently, there was probably no invention more influential at shaping modern thinking about life in general, and health in particular, than the invention of the microscope.

Although it’s debated who should get credit for the invention of the microscope, it is not debated that it allowed us to begin to understand the natural world in ways we never had before.  Through the help of the microscope we came to realize that big things (us) are made up of smaller things (cells), and that other small things (microbes) can actually affect our health.  Thus, it made sense that the way to understand health was to study the small parts of what make us who we are.  As new discoveries were made that exposed just how complicated the natural world is, science began to fragment into more and more specific disciplines to help us uncover more about the natural world.  We shall soon discuss the ramifications this has for medical science and other areas of health.

Perhaps the simultaneously greatest and worst thing the microscope allowed to do was to expand our understanding of chemistry.  Chemistry helped us explain so many previously mysterious facets of nature; at the same time it also empowered human curiosity and our (more admittedly male) tendency toward conquering things.  In essence, chemistry allowed us to “tinker” with nature.  We realized we could create molecules that never existed before in all of history.  We realized we could create microscopic changes that had huge ramifications (see the atomic bomb).  In a sense, through chemistry, we could match wits with, and conquer, nature.  Since science was often effective at making the natural world appear to bend to our wishes we tended to develop a confidence, or perhaps an arrogance, that we knew better than nature and that science would show us how to make the world better.

During the Enlightenment, science made the subtle shift from being something that helped us understand and work with nature, to also being a tool to manipulate nature.  For good and bad, since science was often exceedingly effective at offering rational explanations to complex subjects, in so doing it was able to uproot many long held beliefs and traditions.  For instance, instead of disease being seen as a lack of favor with God, it could now be seen as a problem of microbes or chemical dysfunction—and we can attack those problems with science.  Instead of plants being seen whole entities they were now seen as carriers of chemical components that we can extract and manipulate.  The understanding of living things as biochemical organisms with chemistry that could be manipulated made it a short step to viewing living beings as little more than machines—something with swappable (or removable) parts and chemistry to be tinkered with.  For both good and bad, by giving logical explanations to what was a previously a mysterious phenomenon, and by opening the Pandora’s box of organic chemistry, science began shifting the public’s confidence away from various traditions and toward the scientific method as the only credible tool with which to approach nature.

Stay tuned for more next post…

If you’ve spent much time looking at statistics you know they can be quite mind-numbing reading.  That said, once in a while they are absolutely compelling, especially when you comparing statistics looked at over the course of 100 years.  Looking back to 1900 and seeing the health trends it is amazing how different things were back then as compared to 100 years later.  Check out these numbers and see if you don’t agree.

In 1900

• 3% of all U.S. deaths were from cancer and breast cancer is virtually unheard of.
• Diabetes affects half of one percent (.5%) of the US population.
• Heart Disease is virtually unheard of (In 1930, 3000 people die of heart disease – Population 123 million)
• Asthma and auto-immune conditions are virtually non-existent
• No more than 20 cases of endometriosis have been reported worldwide (Herbert Benson Timeless Healing p. 279)

In 2000

• 20% of all U.S. deaths are from cancer and 1 in 3 women develop breast cancer
• Diabetes affects roughly 20% of the US population
• Heart Disease is the #1 cause of death. (In 1997, 727,000 people die of heart disease – Population 248 million.)
• 150 million people suffer from Auto-Immune diseases worldwide
• 20 percent of all women suffer from endometriosis

Just looking at this brief survey it’s obvious something has dramatic must have changed.   Being the nation of overachievers that we are you’d think we would rank better than 46^th in terms of life expectancy…but that’s exactly where we are according to a report in Newsweek.  I don’t know about you but being 46^th at anything, particularly my health is not an appealing idea to me.

“Ah” you say “but isn’t all this because we are living longer and have time to develop more diseases?”  Good guess but absolutely not.  Consider this:

Half a century worth of data collected on cancer by researchers at the University of Massachusetts concluded the following:

“From 1950 to 2001 the incidence of all types of cancer rose by 85%, and that was the age adjusted rate, which means the increase has nothing to do with people living longer. The fastest growing rate of cancer for any age group over the past two decades has been children, who cannot be accused of having smoked, or partied, or worked, or stressed themselves into a diseases state.”

In other words, something is drastically different so much so that the children of today are the first generation predicted to have a shorter life-expectancy than their parents.  All this begs the question “What the heck has happened in the last 110+ years that got us to this point?”  Well, searching for the answers to that is for the next few posts.  Stay tuned.

Christian’s First Book!

For the last year or more Christian has been working on his first book.  It’s not finished yet, but this spring he has decided to put parts of it into blog form and he welcomes any feedback you all have to help shape it into something even better.  He is still working on a title so if you have any good ideas pass them along.  The book is a reflection of our health journey over the last 8 years and how we came to be the health nuts that we are.  His writing will be equal parts philosophical as it is practical and will present you with what are probably some of the most well-argued and intelligent health strategies you will find anywhere.  This endeavor makes him think one person might really be able to make a difference.  Happy reading.

New Scheduling Software

We have finally moved into the 21^st century and gone paperless with our scheduling.  Soon we will be able to offer our clients the potential to go online and book and pay for services.   Stay tuned for more details.

Studio Rearrange

If you’ve not been in Studio C in the last couple weeks then you might not have seen our new more spacious set up.  Come check it out!

Spring Boot Camp

The next Boot Camp session start April 25^th and it’s finally time to go back outside.  Check out our website or call Nina (571.242.4775) for more details.  NEW TOYS: This spring will mark the first appearance of tractor tires and sledgehammers at our boot camp.  Can’t wait to show our campers some fun new exercises!

2 New Pilates Offerings

• Pilates in the Park: Come enjoy some springtime weather with an outdoor, not-too-early (9:00am) Saturday morning workout.  If you’ve never tried Pilates before now is your chance to do it for cheap—6 workouts for $100.
• Pilates Introductory Offer: Experience Pilates in all of its grandeur.  Try out the fancy Pilates machines and feel your muscles working like never before.  We are offering a 30-minute consultation and 3 hour long, private one-on-one Pilates sessions for only $150.   Offer good for this month only.  Call Heather today to set up a time.  571 309-9434.

Spring.  It is finally here!  Winters chill is loosing its grip and the cherry blossoms are showing off their warmer version of winter white.  Spring is fresh.  The grass is vibrant, the sky is bright (after the April showers of course) and it is time to take a deep breath, remove a layer of knit and expose parched skin to the spring sunshine.  Something about this season, with all its new life and new beginnings urges us to clean—our homes, our closets, our pantry and for the sake of this article, our bodies!  Spring is the perfect time to do a cleanse.

So, how do we cleanse?  Well, your body is actually doing it right now sitting at your computer reading this article. It is a task at work as every cell in our bodies eliminates waste every moment of every day without us paying any attention to it.

So What’s the Point of a Cleanse?

If the idea of “doing a cleanse” conjures up images in your mind of sitting in a white towel, drinking herbal tonics and green seaweed sludge, perhaps I can give you a fresh perspective.  Taking the time to do a cleanse can look different for everyone depending on their current level of health and what they wish to get out of it.  The whole point of a cleanse is to first reduce the burden placed on our cleansing organs and second, to increase nutrition available so that the body can finally get to cleaning out toxins that were stored in times of overload.

Using the example of cleaning my own house, as a mom of two busy young kids I am about the task of cleaning all day long, yet if you were to pay me a surprise visit at any given time, you would most likely not describe my house as very clean. Once I have finished putting something away, there is another mess being created… constantly.  Now, if someone were to come along and say “Nina, allow me to take your kids to the park for 5 hours while you clean up your house” it would be a different story!  While not having to clean up after my sweet but messy kids my progress is accelerated, I could organize messes behind doors, put away the piles and address disarray in cupboards and drawers that have been, for the sake of more important tasks, hidden and ignored. …So, is anyone interested in that park date with my kids?

See, for some people, ‘doing a cleanse’ is all about consciously reducing the toxic burden to the body by simply eliminating the “messes” such as:

• Caffeine and stimulants
• Sugar
• Processed and non-organic foods with all their chemicals and additives
• Chewing gum
• Artificial sweeteners,
• MSG
• Regular or Diet soda
• Chemicals found in antiperspirant and petroleum based hygiene products

By simply giving your body a break from the constant ‘messes’, you remove a great burden from the bodies cleanse organs, allowing them to perform a deep cleaning.

So as you read the above paragraph, you may be thinking to yourself “Well, I’m not so bad: I never eat sugar, or non-organic foods, I use natural hygiene products, I never consume caffeine, or other drugs…” If that’s you, you are rare and we applaud you.  But let’s face it.  We live in DC—one of the most stressful cities in the world, where we have some of the dirtiest tap water in the country, and in our air we are surrounded by fire retardants, jet fuel, pesticides and other toxic chemicals…the list could go on.  So here is where the extra boost of nutrient-rich cleansing foods, drinks and practices can play a role in your “cleanse”:  So to put a practical face to all this talk about cleansing, here are some techniques I encourage you to integrate into your plan.

Food Related Cleansing Measures You Can Take:

1.     Greet your morning with a HUGE glass of water and an entire organic lemon squeezed into it. Highly alkalizing, your kidneys will thank you!

2.     Go on a brisk walk daily…we are talking at a speed that would be more comfortable as a jog. Really swing your arms and take long strides. Movement stimulates your lymphatic system.

3.     Replace your morning coffee with green tea. Coffee is acidic in the body, and unless it is organic, is doused with pesticides.

4.     Follow my recipe for making super juice once a day, and drink on an empty stomach: Something green (kale, chard, romaine, spinach, celery etc.), something from the ground (carrots, beets, ginger, turnips, sweet potato etc.) something citrus (orange, lemon, grapefruit, lime) and an apple.

5.     Drink Kombucha throughout the day, sip on 4 oz or so between meals.

6.     Make sure everything you eat is organic.  Everything.  This means going out to eat at most restaurants is a no-no while you’re on a cleanse. Also, make sure any animal products you consume have the organic label and are pastured or grass-fed. This will reduce your body’s toxic burden tremendously!

Additional Cleansing Measures:

1.     Infrared Sauna: While infrared heat penetrates deeply into your tissues, your internal body heat rises and causes you to sweat. You can sit in the sauna for up to an hour, unlike a traditional sauna, which heats the air around you, this is a great way to burn through tons of calories and sweat out toxins.

2.     Ionic Foot Soak: the powerful benefit of negative ions to help your body fight free radicals can also rev up your body’s natural cleansing response.

3.     Epsom Salt Baths: Salts draw out impurities through the skin. Try adding 1 TBS of freshly grated ginger root to help draw toxins to the skin’s surface.

4.     Coffee Enemas: Yep, you read that right, (be brave) use fully leaded, room temperature organic coffee, enema style to improve the abilities of the liver and gallbladder to remove toxins and cancerous metabolic by-products by stimulating the flow of bile and increase blood supply to the intestines.

5.     Gallbladder Flush: specific recipes involving citrus fruits and expeller pressed oils consumed on an empty stomach first thing in the morning.

6.     Body brushing: Body brushes can be found at “The Body Shop” or online.  Before showering first take the brush and apply small strokes upward from your ankles to your neck.  This helps stimulate the lymphatic system.

7.     Deep breathing: Yoga, Pilates or any form of exercise to create deep breathing…we know a Personal Trainer or two who can help out with this one. J

A Word of Warning

Remember, cleansing requires a lot of energy from the body.  Also, the cleansing effect can make some people feel sick if toxins are shunted out of the cells and into the blood stream for removal too quickly. Headaches, tiredness, and nausea are an indication that you may be cleansing too aggressively and you may need to back off a bit.

I you feel a cleanse sounds like something you need to do, but you are not sure how to go about it, and would like a more specific plan created just for you at your current level of health, I would love to do a consultation with you!

Happy Spring Cleaning to All…Here’s to your Health and Wholeness,

Nina Elliot

For Those Who Want to Know…Here are the Three Systems Hard at Work Cleansing your Body Everyday: The Liver, Kidneys and Lymphatic System

Think about the fact that every bite of food you take ends broken down to microscopically small particles and pumped through your blood stream. Before it can get there, it is the task of these three main players to ensure only the stuff that needs to be in the blood arrives and any garbage takes a detour.

First, the liver, the largest gland in the body uses 12% of our total energy supply to function and its task is a big one.  Filtering out over 1½ quarts of blood per minute, including medications, vitamins, fats, toxins, sugar, dyes, colors, pesticides, preservatives and even high-fructose corn syrup gets the red light from him.

After initial inspection, this newly filtered blood from the liver is not quite ready to nourish your cells until the kidneys alkalize it.  The process of digesting protein (think stomach acid) is very acidic, and it is up to the kidneys to alkalize it.

Finally, anything left that has made it past the first two filters gets swept up into the lymphatic system (the bodies drainage system), attacked by the immune system and hauled out to the nearest exit.

Fitness: A Visit to the Muscle Mechanic

Just like our cars, sometimes our bodies need a tune-up. If you live with chronically tight muscles or achy joints, perhaps a muscle tune-up is just what you need. Muscle Activation Techniques is a non-invasive approach to addressing the stresses placed on our joints and muscles. It is a discipline like no other.

Just as one would go to car mechanic to fix various problems with their car, we also have need of specific ‘mechanics’ for our bodies from time to time.  When our bodies begin to break down, we have a long list of modalities and treatments available to us: chiropractic care, orthopedic care, neurology, acupuncture and many more.  When we have problems with our muscular system we also have many different techniques that deal with muscle issues.  One that distinguishes itself by understanding the mechanical influences of each muscle and the necessity of their interdependence on each other is Greg Roskopf’s “Muscle Activation Techniques.”

Muscle Activation Techniques (MAT) uses an in-depth understanding of mechanical principles of the muscular system to be able to address muscular imbalances in the human body.  It is these imbalances that lead to chronic and repetitive stress injuries.  The human body is by far the most complicated machine ever created; with over 700 muscles, and without specific training, it would be very difficult to know where to begin in assessing the cause of these imbalances.
Starting With a Question: Why Are Your Muscles Tight in the First Place?

When muscles become chronically tight or even painful, MAT asks the question, “Why is it tight in the first place?”  Mechanically, it would not make sense that a tight muscle is a “weak” muscle.  Why?  Tightness in a muscle is a sign that that muscle is doing the work of some other muscle(s).  Muscles don’t tighten out of boredom.  They do so at the behest of the brain because of specific commands.  Rather than see tightness as an indicator of weakness, think of it as a symptom that a particular muscle is being overworked—carrying out the duty of protecting the body from going into a vulnerable range of motion.  In other words, a tight muscle is working harder because someone else is not able to pull its own share of the load.

But My Hamstrings Are Tight…Shouldn’t I Stretch Them?

A typical treatment for muscle tightness is to stretch or even massage out the tight tissue.  In light of the above, it would be important for one ask if it made sense to loosen the body’s protective mechanism.  Or maybe a better question would be “Have you noticed your hamstrings seem as tight as the last time you stretched them?”  If so, maybe they are tightening back up for a reason.  Perhaps it would help to think of it this way: Would you expect a mechanic to loosen the nuts and bolts to balance your cars alignment?  Or course not.  Doing so would lead to more dysfunction when you take our car back out on the road.  The same thought should exist with our bodies.

If the tight muscles are not the problem, the question can then shift to “where does the problem exist?”  That is a difficult question that is not easily answered.  There are many scenarios for why one area of the muscular system is tight and overworked.  An MAT specialist will be able to zoom in on these issues with precision through a very specific mechanical process and evaluation.

How Does an MAT Specialist Zoom in On the Problem?

Most people’s bodies are born structurally symmetrical.  That is to say the vast majority of the time our bones are shaped the same on each side of the body.  So when people move in asymmetrical patterns (as all of us do in some way) if it were not the bones that create asymmetries, the culprit we are left must be the tissue that moves the bones—the muscles.  A muscles job is to produce motion and control and stabilize joints.  If one or more muscles are tight, based on whatever stress exists, it follows logically that certain ranges of motion from one side to another will not be symmetrical when tested.  MAT uses specific range of motion evaluations of each joint to determine where these weak muscles exist.   Limitations in symmetry lead a MAT specialist to certain muscles that could be weak and causing the tightness in other areas.  Once the weak muscles are discovered and treated, the tight muscles are able to relax and perform their specific responsibility.  With the proper progression— treating muscles through MAT, and strengthening those same muscles, a joint can truly be functional when performance is required.

So, if you have ever experienced shoulder, back, hip, neck, leg, foot tightness, etc. from your workouts or day-to-day responsibilities it is important to start finding out where the cause of the problem exists.  The symptom of pain and tightness often exists simply because some muscle(s) have not done their job.  If symptoms are the only priority in treatment, the true root cause of the problem will never be addressed and the same chronic problems will occur and become amplified with age.  Just as one would not go to an ear, nose and throat doctor to perform surgery on the foot, it is important to go to a muscle specialist when there is a muscular issue in need of addressing.  An MAT specialist is a “Muscle Mechanic” capable of addressing the muscular imbalances that lead to your muscular dysfunctions.

If you’ve never tried it out, come see what you’re missing!  Call us to schedule a free consultation today.

By Jeremy Rucker

Hello All,

To get me into the writing habit, I’ve decided to start putting the rough draft of parts of my book into blog form with the hopes of getting some feedback to shape this venture into something better.  I am so excited to begin a written expression of the ideas I have been passing along in some form or other over the past several year.  Below is a rough introduction to what I hope will be a life-changing book, a book years ahead of its time, and a book that can help facilitate change not just in the small choices we make everyday, but I hope the ideas in this book reverberate so loudly with wisdom and common sense that it shakes the foundation of the way our society has come to think about health in the last two or more centuries.   It’s an admittedly grandiose goal, but I like a challenge.  Welcome to my writing journey.  I can’t wait to hear from you.

Introduction:

Health, Vitality, Quality of Life: There are few things as fundamental to our ability to pursue happiness as our physical well-being.  Put simply, if you don’t have your health, the rest of life is not much fun.  Since you only get one body to live in, your knowledge of it and determination to care for it will ultimately determine a large measure of the happiness you will, or will not enjoy.  In my line of work I’ve had the opportunity to meet people at very different ends of the health the spectrum.  I’ve met and talked with sickly people (young and old), exceptionally fit people (young and “old”), I’ve seen people lost in the hopelessness of illness and obesity, some bitter about life, and some in love with life, and one thing I can tell you that good health is precious.  It’s personal, and no one on the planet is uninterested in having it.  No one enjoys disease and dysfunction, yet either of these can happen to any of us if the situation is right.  In that light, discussing the topic of health puts us all on more of less the same level…the human level.  So maybe, in a quest to make the world a better place, coming to understand health, is a good place to start.

So, where do we start this quest?  I suppose there are lots of places we could start but I like a quote by the World Health Organization.  I think it summaries the modern quest for vitality quite well.  It says: “There are two obstacles to vibrant health and longevity: Ignorance and Complacency.” What may be most interesting about this quote is what they did not say.  Curiously they did not mention genetics, economic status, or lack of access to medical care as obstacles to vibrant health and longevity.  No, instead they mentioned the two things that we as individuals have the most control over: Our knowledge, and our attitude.  At least on this topic, ignorance is not bliss, and apathy leads us to an early demise. To be sure, there are other factors that affect our health besides these two, but it is our decision to educate ourselves and take personal responsibility that will ultimately build our health.  What wonderful news.

That said, if you’ve spent any time trying to build knowledge about health, you’ve probably found that there is a lot of confusing, conflicting, and sometimes downright wrong information on the subject.  In a world with so many competing voices, how do we know who or what to believe? It sure would be nice if we came out of the womb with an up-to-date, 100% accurate owner’s manual.  Since we don’t, perhaps the best place to start when seeking to build a solid foundation of knowledge is to learn a bit about the ways things were set up before we were born.  By zooming out and looking at health in its historical context perhaps we could find a bit of bedrock from which to make informed decisions.  Since every era of history has its challenges, maybe by finding out what challenges are unique to this era we could be better equipped to know who to listen to, and thus, how to live.

What I will attempt to do with this book, with a strong dose of humility, is to present you with what I hope will be seen as an instruction manual for how to live a vibrant life in this era of history, and in particular in a western culture.  The idea for this book developed over several years as part of my efforts to affect genuine change in my own life and that of my clients.  The knowledge presented in these pages is the hard won wisdom from years of study and thousands of hours working one-on-one with people. To summarize this book in one sentence would be to say that achieving vibrant health is rarely about finding a missing link, but rather it’s really all about synergy.

So, if you’ve ever been frustrated by a lack of results when it comes to making positive changes in your health, this book is for you.  If you’ve ever watched someone else get great results with a given health measure yet wondered why the same thing did little for you, this book will likely uncover what you’ve been missing.  If you are wrestling with a life-threatening condition, a chronic health challenge, a congenital or genetic challenge, or obesity, this book will supply ample amounts of hope.  If you simply have “a few extra pounds,” or a couple “parts” that don’t work as well as you’d like them to, or, if you are among those fortunate enough to currently enjoy great health, you will find this book can give you the confidence to navigate around most of the rampant illness of today.

Something you might like to know at the outset is that I am not attached to defending any particular institution or way of thinking.  My attachment is to you being empowered with knowledge, and I find this work to be endlessly rewarding and worth the effort.  The first three chapters of this work will be dedicated to coming to a solid understanding of the how we as a society have come to think about health, the reality of our current health situation and trends, and how we are currently seeking to deal with them.  The next seven (or so) chapters will be all about the hard won secrets of the healthiest people on the planet.  We will explore all the foundational components of great health and discuss how you can make any and all of them a part of your life.  So I hope you enjoy, and I look forward to hearing your stories.  Put on your thinking caps, but leave a hole in the top so you can keep an open mind.  Also, realize that health is a journey, a journey that is rarely linear.  A new part of your journey starts today.  Let’s begin.