I see this all the time.  We're now four weeks into the New Year, and you've been exercising more than you have in a long time.  You're skipping the drive-thru's and being strict about your diet.  However, when you're stepping on the scale, the numbers aren't budging in the direction that you need them to. So why are you not losing weight?  Here are the top 10 reasons you are not losing weight:

1. You haven't chosen the right diet
   With the thousands, if not millions, of potential diets out there, it's so easy to get overwhelmed and confused.  When choosing a 'diet', you need to make sure it revolves around real food, and not the processed homogenized crap served from a drive thru window or inner isles of a grocery store.  Protein meal replacement weight-loss shakes also are not real food.   The best clinical results I have seen in my office are from the ancestral based diets like the paleo or primal diets.
2. You're not drinking enough water
   You need to be drinking at least ½ your body wei
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I hate labels. Whether it be ones we put on ourselves or ones that we let other people define us by, they are ridiculous.   The diagnosis of ADD / ADHD is just another label that is being put on our children at alarming rates.  Conservatively, CDC estimates about 3.5 million or 9% of our school-aged children are being prescribed some form of medication for ADD/ADHD.  This is a terrifying epidemic bordering on the pandemic, especially when you consider the French only diagnose and label about .5% of their school-aged children.  The main reason for this difference is the criteria for diagnosis.  It’s not that the French have ridiculously restrictive symptoms with complex tests to be diagnosed, they just look at the cause of the disease.

What is ADD / ADHD?Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder in the US are classified as a neurological disorder where the patient or child has learning, focus, and attention problems with no underlying pathological cause.  In...

One of the most common question I'm asked when it comes to diet is why grass-fed beef is so much better for you than conventionally raised beef.

There are actually several reasons, but it all relates to how the animals are raised and fed.  So let's look at this in detail.

All cows are born and raised with their mothers, drinking milk and eating grass until they turn about one year.  It's after that first year, where their fate is determined.  As my friend, Matthew, over at Local Yocal in McKinney Texas says, the cows then either go off to “cow college” (feedlots or CAFO Confined Animal Feeding Operations), or they stay with their family and continue eating grass and living in the fields where they were born.

Conventionally raised (feedlot), grain-fed, beef is really a lot like the typical college experience.  There usually are a lot of drugs, consumption of pretty low-quality food, and exercise is more of an afterthought.  I know for me the college diet consisted of a couple of case...

A patient recently told me that they hated traveling, especially around the holidays and asked if there was any homeopathy that they could take to help with their travel-induced anxiety.

The good news is that homeopathy can work amazing well on a first-aid basis while traveling.

First, what is homeopathy?

The great power of homeopathy is in its ability to stimulate the inborn ability of your body to heal itself.  The homeopathic remedy is given based on what homeopaths call the “Law of Similars”, where a substance taken in excess causes symptoms in a healthy person.

The same remedy will cure those same symptoms in a sick person when given in dilution.  This can sound a bit foreign at first, but it is a similar thought process to the vaccine theory. Since homeopathy works off a set of symptoms and each remedy produces a very unique but often overlapping set of symptoms, picking the correct remedy can be very challenging.  

You should consult with a well-trained homeopathic physicia...

It is often debated if this quote was actually said by Thomas Edison.  The people over at Snopes tracked it down to an interview that Thomas Edison gave about what his predictions were for the future in 1902.  

This quote seems to be tailor-made for the chiropractic profession because it really hits the heart of what chiropractic should be!   Chiropractors should address the human frame and look to what might be causing the dysfunction of the spine and, to properly do this, we need to look to the diet. The interesting thing to me is that Edison was talking about diet even before Upton Sinclair wrote: “The Jungle” exposing much of the abuses in the processing of the food consumed then and today. 

And, the sad part to me, is that the modern processed food movement that has taken hold of our gastronomy is much more destructive to our health than in Sinclair’s time.  

The impressive part was that Edison knew even then that mass production and processing of food were screwing us up! C...

If you have had, or currently have babies, one of the hardest most heart-wrenchingly painful things you can hear is your baby crying uncontrollably.

Especially when they wake up, and you are stumbling, blearily around the house trying to get them fed, hoping it's simply because they're hungry and not that they are constipated and not because they have colic!

Colic is one of the biggest complaints I hear from new moms.  Some patients say their pediatrician has recommended over the counter antacid medication (Zantac) for their colic-stricken baby. 

Before we dive too far into why I think this is stupid, we will talk a bit about what colic is and how to fix it. Colic is estimated to affect about 25% of children in this country.  The problem is that colic is just a primary label for a highly upset baby.  If your baby cries for more than 3 hours, three days a week for more than three weeks then they “have” colic. 

Basically, if your baby cries for prolonged periods of time, even if they...

Have you ever wondered where the term bombastic comes from? Paracelsus (Born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) was at the very least a very interesting man! 

He was so exuberant and arrogant that his name still has meaning today even if you have never heard of him.  And, he probably had some reason to be arrogant after all he has been credited as the father of toxicology, giving Zinc its name, and the terms “gas,” “chemistry” and “alcohol.” 

Paracelsus was a renowned physician, among other things, that felt the medical practices of his time were barbaric.  He felt that all diseases were the result of an imbalance between the body and nature.

Summing up his philosophy: “Because everything in the universe was interrelated, beneficial medical substances could be found in herbs, minerals and various chemical combinations thereof.

Paracelsus viewed the universe as one coherent organism pervaded by a uniting life-giving spirit, and this in its entirety, Man include...

I am sorry to tell you that, no, there is not any safe meal replacement shake, powder, or bar out there that I have ever found.   These "meal replacements" are highly processed and fractionated “foods” - if you can really call them that.  Also, in my experience, they're usually laced with heavy metals, food allergens, and artificial sweeteners.  

In 2010 Consumer Reports noted significant levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury in these powders.   In some of the powders, it was tested to be above the “safe” limits established by the pharmacopeia. 

Granted these are naturally occurring, but literally, those things will kill you, make you sick, and/or crazy! Even if you can find an absolutely pure protein that is tested to be free of heavy metals, these powders are still highly processed, fractionated proteins and during the processing, an isolated formation of MSG is produced. 

This formation of MSG causes a cascade of inflammation that most people don’t need in their lives!  I...

Often when a patient comes in, I adjust and change their diets by instructing the patient to eliminate grains and gluten. The next visit, usually within a week or two, they bounce into the office listing all the surprising and strange symptoms that brought them into the office initially have gone away!

These symptoms can be as broad ranging and far reach as a skin rash, or eczema, to severe and life-threatening autoimmune disorders like Multiple Sclerosis. There's a fascinating case where a man had severe neurological symptoms that mimicked ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), even had an MRI that had the same lesions on the brain that ALS has, after he removed gluten from his diet all his symptoms abated and the MRI Lesion cleared.

Gluten is a terrible little protein, and gluten intolerance or sensitivity can be life altering. Symptoms of Gluten Intolerance or Sensitivity:

My morning ritual usually starts with either a 5:15 am the alarm for Erin or myself to go to the gym, or a baby monitor going off sometime around 6:30 am.

On the mornings I don’t go to the gym I first make a run for the coffeemaker, get the kids out of bed and usually turn on the Today show or a music station. With the Today Show, we at least get an idea of how the weather is going to be for the day. I’ll be honest, commercial TV, and especially the Today Show, drive me nuts! The programming, commercials, and shows all have a decidedly medical slant. This week Today Show has been mainly medical with a concentration in pain management.

I had had to turn the TV off most mornings because I seriously considered throwing the remote through it when they were talking about treatments for low back pain, neck pain, and migraines. Today I was pleasantly surprised when they were profiling “alternative” treatments, like acupuncture, in a very positive light. They were even talking about needlele...