We all know the story of the Pilgrims, a group of people escaping religious persecution in England because of their separatist views with the church.

These Pilgrims were able to secure passage on the Mayflower to begin the second, permanent English colony in the Americas.

Since this is Thanksgiving week, I thought I would take a moment and write about what was considered state-of-the-art healthcare at the time the Pilgrims were setting up their colony in Plymouth.

The state of healthcare at that time was interesting, especially in New England and the Plymouth Colony.  In fact, about 50% of the Plymouth colonists died within the first year in what is now Massachusetts.  There were very few doctors and, even if there had been doctors present, it is highly unlikely they would've been able to do much to save or slow down these deaths.

Pastors or politicians mostly provided what medical care was available.  These men were probably the best-educated people at that time; it would be nice ...

I feel like our healthy eating patterns can take a serious fall starting in October thanks to all the filled candy bowls leading up to Halloween.

It's always interesting to me that people only begin questioning how to stay healthy once Thanksgiving starts gearing up.  If you take a step back and look at it, the month of October will likely be spent eating incorrectly every day; Thanksgiving is a one to two day period filled with gluttonous punishment to our stomachs!

Nonetheless, we as Americans and celebrators of so much with food tend to look at Thanksgiving as our healthy living downfall.

So, how can you stay within your healthy eating options over Thanksgiving?  There's so much bread, stuffing, and sugar!  So many pies!  Your mom/wife's feelings will be hurt if you don't eat every last bite!

It can be especially difficult to eat properly when you're not in charge of what's being served.  You have to tread the waters carefully and make conscientious choices when it comes to fill...

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...

It has officially started!  The season of gluttony, late nights, early mornings and way too much sugar and stress.  Thanksgiving is a mere 4 weeks away and keeping true to the diet is next to impossible.  So, I thought that I would take the next couple of months and post paleo/primal meals that can help mitigate some of the damage done by the normal holiday staples.  Here are some of the better paleo holiday Thanksgiving side recipes I've prepared:

1.  Paleo Stuffing - I have never been much of a stuffing fan but this recipe is making me a bit of a convert!  It has all the great flavors of stuffing but none of the guilt if you are gluten or grain free eating.  I was really impressed with this meal and I can see it becoming a holiday staple at my house.    

2.  Paleo Sweet Potato Casserole - I really couldn’t tell the difference between non-paleo and this paleo casserole.  It really did taste amazing!      

3.  Paleo Green Bean Casserole - This makes a great substitute for t...

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...

Normally I pick a single blog post from someone's blog and share it here, however, when I ran across Evolvify I quickly noticed all the posts are excellent!  I could single out the post on Alpha Males,  or the predictors for being cheated on for women, but only if I also link to the predictors for being cheated on for men.

From Evolvify's About page: "The Paleo Diet Meets Paleo Psychology Humans evolved to have a few friends, play, eat, work (a little), love, play, and make love (and play). Humans did not evolve to sit in traffic, hang out at the gym, farm, have 2.7 million neighbors, or eat food that’s been pre-chewed by robots from a feeding trough. The modern world prevents us from maximum flourishing, but we can hack the hell out of it to fix that. The rapidly expanding paleo community is a reflection of, or reaction to, Western/American culture.

The bad thing about the paleo movement is the incessant and myopic focus on diet and exercise as if those are the beginning and end of ...

T'is the evening for ghouls, ghosts, goblins, and zombies to come out! What everyone forgets is that they don't go away the next day, in fact, in most cases, they're still around thanks to the sugar overload from those candy filled buckets. And we all know that what the kids don't eat gets taken to the office to torture our childless coworkers.

They're easy to recognize - dark circles, groaning, swollen bellies, occasionally candy-colored fingers from all the dye. The good news is these zombies will recover, unlike all the Hollywood zombies. Halloween and excess amounts of sugar go hand in hand, and they causes your body to produce lots of acid and acid equals lots of inflammation.

High inflammation can cause a person to have pain and stiffness, sleep poorly, increased allergies, and so on. If you find yourself or your children feeling sluggish after Halloween, candy overload is likely to blame. It takes about three days of near perfect diet to get your blood sugar back into some s...

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...