Transitioning your child back to school

Any time there are changes in one's schedule, particular for children, there can be a lot of stress. Stress has been directly related not only to depression and anxiety, but also to ADD and ADHD (and other learning challenges), autoimmune disorders and chronic illness. By getting to the root and addressing the stressor (physical, chemical and/or emotional), we can help the children function easier and happier.

Here are a few tips to help the transition back to school much easier:

1. Start your regular school time routines now. Getting your child back to bed at their school-time bedtime is a great start. Their body will need to adjust to the earlier schedule and it's better to start before they actually have to start getting up earlier.

2. Start each day with a healthy breakfast. My favorite for my daughter is eggs with vegetables either chopped or shredded into the egg mixture. Eggs are the perfect protein and feed the brain the perfect food for learning. Use a "greens" product mixed with some fresh vegetables, high quality organic yogurt, fruit and blended for a great alternative. Mix it up with oatmeal one day per week.

3. Instead of ice cream for the afternoon snack, use Nature's Candy in the form of fruit to feed your child's sweet tooth. Avoid packaged foods that have chemicals and sugar that can cause your child to have the sugar highs and low and erratic behavior.

4. Make sure your child does not use any electronic equipment for at least 1 hour prior to bedtime. This will help him or her sleep much better. Using computers, playing video games, etc., activate the beta brain waves which are involved with our processing information. Prior to bedtime, we want to activate the alpha or meditative brain waves to encourage a great night's sleep. Try drinking a calming tea as part of your evening ritual and massage your child's feet and hands.

5. Make sure that stimulating toys are put away and consider painting your child's bedroom a calming color like a deep blue (for children that have difficulty sleeping).

How can Chiropractic help with Stress, ADD, ADHD, Insomnia, Depression, and more?

Chiropractic works by helping the nervous system to regulate itself properly. With the right type of adjustment for your child, it can help them be calmer and less stressed. Children are affected now more than ever by stress...too much homework, not enough play time to "process" information and get out that stored up energy. Sitting too much in class, not getting enough sleep are factors which stress out our children (and us). The right Chiropractic adjustment will help your child's nervous system work properly so the body can self-regulate the way it's designed to work.

For more information, contact us at 610-995-9355 or 267-462-4911 or visit our websites at
www.tarlowchiropractic.com or www.mBodyChiropractic.com.

Working through the Stressors of Live

Stress. Boy have things changed in my 54 years of life. It's no wonder there is more stress today and more people having their health challenged by it. Having a 9 year old daughter it gives me time to reflect how my life was when I was her age. While there was TV, there were only the major stations to choose from, so watching TV was not enticing. After school activities involved playing on the street or the backyard of our homes. Standardized tests didn't exist and school meant lots of dodge ball, PE, music and the arts (in addition to the academics). I don't remember getting caught in traffic to get anywhere. It was a time of discovery. Even as a teen and a young adult, free time was spent going to an occasional concert but mainly hanging out at parks, the beach and having lots of cookouts. Things were simpler then, both for adults and children. It felt like it was about connecting with nature and people, not electronic devices or feeling rushed to get to the next planned activity.

Now, it's an endless stream of after school activities for our children, the standardized tests (for No Child Left Behind), about 20 minutes of recess, homework that can take children an hour to complete...leaving no time for after school play, as well as dealing with illness which starts the stress cycle at a young age. These stressors could actually be the causing poor sleep which may lead to ADD and ADHD.

For adults, sitting in traffic for hours to get to work, working at a job that is unfulfilling, spending hours helping our children, or just working and dealing with "stuff" causes our stress. There is little time for us to take care of ourselves. The stress we feel as adults can also lead to insomnia, cause our hormones to get out of balance and cause other health problems. From personal experience, I know that chronic sleeplessness can lead to depression and anxiety. Taking sleep medicine is definitely not the answer.

In practice, I've seen everything from chronic fatigue and illnesses, ADD/ADHD, anxiety, depression, sleeplessness and other severe health problems connected to stress. Autoimmune disorders are exacerbated stress. Even memory problems, behavioral problems, and hormonal imbalances will worsen. Many times it becomes a vicious cycle. You have a stressor (physical, emotional or chemical), your body or mind reacts in a certain way (high blood pressure/racing heart, thoughts running through your head), you might find yourself eating "comfort" food (which is usually not very healthy), you don't sleep well as a result. Suddenly, you find yourself spiraling down. You might have an anchor that can help you through, but internally, you are still stressed. You keep going because you have to. You might even tell yourself that you feel fine.

But deep inside, the stressors are there...lurking and creating havoc in your body. I know all about this. Since my injury in 2005, I've had a lot of stressors. Mainly physical and emotional. I'd talk myself out of feeling stress. Maybe get lost in Facebook or Glee. But that is not facing the stressor or working through it. Because of my own challenges with stress, it has become important for me to help others facing challenges.

I've worked with families that have a child with ADD or ADHD. I've seen the stress it causes the entire family. What about adults who are caregivers to loved ones with physical challenges? Or someone who has a difficult daily commute or does not feel fulfilled in their job. New parents have their own set of challenges trying to figure out what their baby needs. And teenagers, trying to figure out where they fit in in the world, where it will lead them and what their next steps should be. Stress is all around us and working through these stressors can be challenging.

This is why I focus my practice on helping people with stress. Helping adults and children with their stress truly changes lives. From seeing a student finding ease in their studies and sports activities, a child becoming more "social", a parent feeling more relaxed so that he or she can sleep better and feel "connected" to themselves to the adult trying to enjoy life more. I've seen this work both in my practice and in my own life. When my stress level is down I know I am a better parent and wife. When my daughter feels better then I feel better. It's about breaking these vicious cycles of life.

I do my work in several ways. First, I utilize the Stress Response Evaluation. This will help me to objectively identify how the stress is affecting you. It checks out your heart function, how you are breathing, your brain wave activity, skin conductance and temperature. This is important information as it tells me how long you've had stress and specifically how it has effected you.

With this information, it tells me what style of adjustment would benefit you the most. For instance, I typically use a Logan adjustment on someone with chronic stress. It relaxes the body and calms the mind to allow for a better night's sleep. This same adjustment will allow the nervous system to be balanced so your health will improve. People also tell me that with this adjustment, they find they are more patient with their children or colleagues at work. Amazing!

I can also determine if someone would benefit by a breathing exercise, if they need specific nutritional support or if they need new tools to deal with stressors. The SRE will also help me to guide you if you need to do a regular calming practices and even the type of workout that would most benefit them. For instance, someone with chronic stress might benefit more by a restorative yoga practice, to help build them up, rather than a hot yoga practice that will literally burn them out. This tool will even give me insight as to what challenges you on a physiological level (sounds or a cognitive challenge).

By combining this objective and subjective information, offering you choices to help you work through your stressors, and having healthy workshops (and webinars coming soon) available, you can determine how you want to proceed to resolving stress both for you and your family so you all lead happy and healthy lives. Give me a call. I'm happy to talk to you over the phone to answer any of your questions. Namaste, Dr. Nancy

Beating Insomnia, Stress and Depression

I am an expert on insomnia. I have to be as it is something I’ve been dealing with most of my life. As a child, I remember going weeks at a time with no sleep…tossing and turning and unable to settle. Finally, my mother would give me a half of valium. It would break the bad sleep cycle for a month or two or three, then it would repeat. It is no wonder that I was frequently ill with colds, sinus and bronchial infections as my immune system was compromised by the lack of good sleep.

Things did not get better as I got older, in fact they got worse. Instead of going through these cycles every two to three months, by the time I was 15, it would happen monthly. I got smarter too, or so I thought. Instead of asking my mother for the valium, I’d find some other pill that would put me to sleep in our medicine cabinet. After all, we had pills for every ill in our cabinets, and there were plenty of sleep inducing medicines. The illnesses got more frequent as I would miss at least one day of school per month.

This cycle continued throughout my life. By the time I was in Chiropractic school, I was trying a variety of herbs. A friend suggested I try Skullcap, Valerian Root, Lemon Balm, Chamomille and Lavendar. While they all might have provided temporary relief, none of them gave me long term relief.

By my mid-30’s, depression was something I regularly dealt with. Was it because I was chronically fatigued or that I was creating havoc with my brain wave patterns between regular medicating myself and not every getting into a deep sleep? Despite having several “shrinks” tell me I should take anti-depressants, I knew that was not the answer. I needed to get to the cause. Fortunately, during a really horrible episode of depression, the psychologist I was working with at the time suggested I go off of sugar.

I was one of those closet cookie eaters. I would go weeks without eating cookies, then buy a bag and consume them in one sitting. It was not wonder that I thought I might be a manic-depressive. So, off the sugar I went. The goal was two weeks but I wound up going off it totally for 2 years. That includes when going out for dinner to make sure there was no sugar added to whatever meal I had ordered and checking the labels for anything packaged I brought home. It wasn’t easy, but it made such a huge difference in my life. Besides helping me with my depression, my sleeping improved.

Then in my early 40’s, I started having hot flashes and developed serious memory problems. I bumped into a massage therapist that had worked in my office for 3 months and while she looked familiar, had no idea who she was. My memory was really bad. Needless to say, my sleep was getting worse again. I would toss and turn for hours, and my depression started getting bad. I knew this was hormonal but this was an area that I was unfamiliar. So, I went into the Natural Pharmacy in town and spoke to one of the Pharmacists. He believed I had an overabundance of estrogen and recommended a natural progesterone cream.

The cream worked great and I started sleeping better again and I got pregnant! Things were looking up but I would have periods where my sleep would be compromised. From being a new mom and having a daughter who wanted to eat constantly to a serious injury that would not allow me to sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time for 3 years. I seemed to be destined to have horrible sleep patterns for the rest of my life and honestly, I was not sure how I would survive.

Then a year ago I had the opportunity to discover NeuroInfiniti. I learned about it from a colleague who was using it in his office. While my initial interest in the equipment was how I could learn about how a patient’s nervous system was affected by stress in a variety of areas and the information it would provide me as to how I could help them, there was something much bigger for me. I was able to see how my brain waves were affected by stress as well. Finally, I could understand why I had difficulty turning off my brain when I was trying to sleep. It was not a deficiency of sleeping pills, there was something very specifically going on with my theta and alpha waves. The theta waves are the brain waves that are active right before going to sleep and the alpha waves are those that are active when you are meditating. Both of these brain wave patterns were low compared to where they should be.

With this information I was able to determine a course of action for myself. Immediately, I started down that path and started sleeping better within 3 weeks than I have in my entire life. Deep sleep for 7 to 8 hours at a time every night is now the norm for me. I can close my eyes and be asleep within a minute. I understand why the other things I had tried gave me minimal results. While decreasing or eliminating sugar and getting my hormones balanced helped me sleep better, the reason why the problem still existed was because my brain wave patterns were a mess. While I still need to use progesterone cream occasionally and watch the sugar, getting my brain waves into a normal pattern was essential for a great night’s sleep. What I’ve learned through this experience is that there are many causes of poor sleep including pain, hormonal imbalance, and chemicals. And, what affect did taking sleep medicines all of those years have on my brain wave patterns? What I do know is if you have experienced insomnia for a while, most likely your brain wave patterns have been affected.

Last week I decided to have a re-evaluation using the NeuroInfiniti. I had another Stress Response Evaluation done and compared my results with the prior year. It was amazing to see the results and to  see how my brain wave patterns are now excellent.  For those that struggle with insomnia, rather than patching it up with sleeping pills or herbs, get a Stress Response Evaluation done and see if there is something amiss with your brain wave patterns. Then work with someone who can help you get  balance so you can start sleeping better AND start feeling great. Insomnia is terrible and can cause depression and illness. For new moms, it can cause decreased milk supply and in my opinion, post partum depression. Sleeping great equals happiness! Trust me, I know.