A 2010 Wayne State University research project examined the baseball cards photos of Major League players in 1952. The study found that the span of a player’s smile could actually predict the span of his life. Players who didn’t smile in their pictures lived an average of 72.9 years, while players with beaming smiles lived an average of 79.9 years.

A smile is one of the most basic, biologically uniform expressions of all humans. Paul Ekman (a leading expert on facial expressions) discovered that smiles are cross-cultural and have the same meaning around the world. In studies conducted in Papua New Guinea, Ekman found that members of the Fore Tribe who were completely disconnected from Western culture and were also known for their unusual cannibalism rituals attributed smiles to descriptions of situations in the same way that you and I would.

A study done in 2002 and another in 2011 at Uppsala University in Sweden confirmed that other people’s smiles actually suppress the control we usually have over our facial muscles, compelling us to smile. They also showed that it’s very difficult to frown when looking at someone who smiles. Why? Because smiling is contagious and we have a subconscious innate drive to smile when we see one. This occurs even among strangers when we have no intention to connect or affiliate with the other person.

Studies suggest that the act of smiling actually makes us feel better rather than smiling being merely a result of feeling good.

Smiling stimulates our brain’s reward mechanisms in a way that even chocolate, a well-regarded pleasure-inducer, cannot match. In a study conducted in the UK using an electromagnetic brain scan machine and heart-rate monitor to create “mood-boosting values” for various stimuli, British researchers found that one smile can provide the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2000 chocolate bars; they also found that smiling can be as stimulating as receiving up to $25,000 in cash. That’s 25 grand a smile!!

Unlike consuming lots of chocolate, lots of smiling can actually make you healthier. Smiling has documented therapeutic effects, and has been associated with: reduced stress hormone levels, increased health and mood enhancing hormone levels, and lowered blood pressure.

If that’s not enough, smiling also makes us look good in the eyes of others. A recent Penn State University study confirmed that when we smile we not only appear more likeable and courteous, but we’re actually perceived to be more competent.

So now we know that:

• When you smile, you look good and feel good.
• When others see you smile, they smile too.
• When others smile, they look good and feel good, too.

Perhaps this is why Mother Teresa said: “I will never understand all the good that a simple smile can accomplish.”

Happy New Year,

Dr. Vince Hassel

In other words, what if we start our day with thoughts of gratitude and only expected good things to happen. What if we see only the good in every person, and in every experience of the day? What if we see only the blessing in every situation?

How differently do you think the world would show up for us?

…Instead of expecting everything to go wrong today, expect it to go right.

…Instead of cursing the things that aren’t perfect in your life, be grateful for the things that are.

…Instead of stumbling in the darkness, be the one to light a candle.

The world truly is a beautiful place, when we’re able to see it that way. Each day we’re given countless opportunities to show up for good. Don’t you think today would be a good day to try it and see what happens?

No matter what shows up on the outside, be positive.

No matter what others tell you, keep the faith.

No matter your bank balance, your marital status, or your weight, know that you are a child of the Universe, and abundant blessing are waiting for you. You deserve to be happy. 

All you have to do is show up with a grateful attitude and watch what happens. It seems so simple, when in truth, it actually is.

Dr. Vince Hassel

Cardinal pitcher Jason Motte advocates chiropractic care

CARMICHAEL, Calif. – Nov. 3, 2011 – As the St. Louis Cardinals celebrate their 11th World Series title and the San Francisco Giants relive their 2010 championship, the Foundation for Chiropracitc Progress points to the role of chiropractic care in promoting faster recoveries, reduced risk of injury and enhanced on-field performance. Chiropractic team doctors Ralph Filson, D.C. of the Cardinals, and Michael Gazdar, D.C. of the San Francisco Giants, explain that regular chiropractic care provides baseball players with proper spinal function and balance to reduce the risk of spine-related injuries, enhance recovery time and improve overall performance.

Dr. Filson, who began providing care to the players in 1990 through its then manager, Joe Torre, Major League Baseball (MLB) legend, says, “Chiropractic care is always available to players of the Cardinals and the visiting team, it is utilized by many. With chiropractic care, players report that they feel better and have better endurance. Body mechanics are significantly improved, enabling better pitching, hitting and throwing.”

In 2006, Dr. Filson was awarded a World Series ring for his role with the Cardinals, and was proud to play a similar role in the 2011 championship. He also treated David Eckstein, Most Valuable Player on the Cardinals 2006 World Series Team, citing the importance of chiropractic care in helping players to achieve optimal performance: “I am proud to have provided chiropractic care to the Cardinals for so many years, and gratified that chiropractic has contributed to the players’ optimal performance during every game. We are all excited about bringing home the 2011 World Series title.”

According to Dr. Gazdar, who began working with the San Francisco Giants in 2008, and was seen by millions celebrating at the pitcher’s mound with the players following the game-ending play that resulted in the Giants World Series title, “Chiropractic care was a significant factor in the San Francisco Giants 2010 victory. One of the Giants’ pitchers relied upon chiropractic adjustments for all of his pitching starts, and virtually every player benefited from chiropractic services.”

Both doctors express their enthusiasm for the inclusion of chiropractic care for virtually every team participating in professional sports, including golf, football, hockey, basketball and baseball.

Hassel Family Chiropractic has been an integral part of the peak performance of Olympic Gold Medalist, Shawn Johnson, and professional tri-athlete, TJ Tollakson. Make sure your athlete is well adjusted.

Dr. Vince Hassel
Hassel Family Chiropractic

These are functions of our conscious mind. Self-help books reveal how to improve our memory, increase our vocabulary or sharpen our mental acuity.

But there’s no book filled with tips about how to improve your heart’s response to adrenalin or how to enhance your lung’s ability to oxygenate blood! Why? Because these are just two examples of millions of functions your body controls and regulates with not a single conscious thought from you.

How does this relate to a headache, back pain or the crick in your neck?

Your body is designed to survive. Virtually every sign or symptom that we traditionally think of as an illness is merely your body’s best attempt at survival. No errors. Zero mistakes. When your body feels threatened, it responds in a variety of ways to get your attention. To encourage you to change. To teach a lesson. To tell you its capacity to accommodate or adapt to stress has been exhausted.

That’s amazing. Even radical. And to think, all of this is controlled and regulated by your nervous system—whose integrity and function for us is Job No. 1.

Get Adjusted,

Dr. Vince Hassel

It’s an odd world we live in, isn’t it?

• Deep in our soul, we totally understand that it’s completely counter-productive to be interrupted every few minutes.
  We hate it when others interrupt us when we’re trying to work, and yet as individuals we actually go out of our way to make sure that we interrupt ourselves every few seconds or minutes – through blackberries, iPhones, Droids, IMs, Text Messages, auto-checking of email, bouncing dock icons, bleeps, blips, Tweets and screen alerts.
• We open multiple browser windows and concoct and operate split-screen, dual-monitor, triple-monitor, quad-monitor with a dual Hemi – all under the false pretense that we are creating an environment for ourselves that will somehow make us more productive. Who are we fooling? Attention is finite. Multi-tasking does NOT make us as humans more productive. Studies show that multi-tasking actually has the opposite effect. It is counter-productive. We do things half-baked, not fully-baked. And yet we absofrickinlutely love being half-baked.
• Kids growing up these days are encouraged in job descriptions, in qualifications and by job recruiters to possess a “keen ability to multi-task”. Who are we fooling? Do you as a business owner really want to hire a kid who does things Half-Baked? And are we in a way setting the next generation – the ones who, you know, are like, growing up suckling from the combined teats of video games, SpongeBob, text-messaging, smart phones, Facebook and the Web – are we in a way setting them up to fail by asking for this as a skill?

Single-Tasking AKA Uni-Tasking is the New Black. You want to REALLY look smart at your job?

• Try turning OFF your blackberry and putting it in its holster during your next meeting, and actually looking into the eyes of those in the room who are speaking.
• Try leaving your laptop closed during an in-person conference meeting.
• Try turning OFF the auto-check function on your email program and manually check email twice a day, so that you actually have time to process and reply to the messages that came in first, before you turn the fire hose back on again. Or better yet, close your email program or Gmail browser window entirely and don’t open it again until it’s time to actually DO email.
• Try using ONE browser window/tab. You’ll suddenly find that, 3 hours earlier, you will easily remember why you went on the web in the first place today.
• Try really being present in the moment, and giving your full attention to whomever you’re with at that moment, whether it be your son or daughter, your wife or your cat or dog.
• Try focusing your attention on JUST ONE THING for 15-minute chunks of time. You’ll be amazed at what you can actually get done.

This process is called “Deliberate Simplification”.

Try it for a week, as a game. Make Single-Tasking your New Black. Trust me – it’s a lot harder than it sounds, but I have every confidence that you can pull it off for just one week.

The rules for this one-week challenge are simple, yet daunting:

1. You cannot do more than one thing at a time. This means you’re going to really, really have to choose very carefully what you give your full attention to.None of this eating while driving, no blackberry at the dinner table with the spouse (and yes, I’m afraid that also means no checking your blackberry while on the toilet…). If you’re going to make phone calls, make phone calls, but you must be present in the moment when speaking to the person on the other end and not surfing the sports scores on the web while saying “Uh-huh”.
2. If your job or project or task involves the use of a Web Browser or other software, when you’ve completed your task, you must close/quit/shutdown the application before opening the next one.
   
3. What’s that you say? Ah yes, Twitter and Tweetdeck, Facebook and RSS feeds.You can no longer monitor them all day long because doing so would violate Rule #1 above and also likely cause you to be fired from your job, unless that is your job. So what we’re going to do is schedule a chunk of time each day – an appointment with yourself so to speak, during which you’re going to give your undivided attention to social media or Twitter or Facebook or whatever your guilty pleasure is. I never said you had to go cold turkey…
4. You must be completely UNREACHABLE (AKA “DARK” AKA “OFF-THE-GRID”) for at least ONE HOUR each day, and it cannot be while you are sleeping.This means turning your phone’s power off completely. Not just the ringer. It can be more than an hour if you want, but hey – baby steps, right? Find something to focus on during this hour – go for a walk outside, create something at work, write a blog post, go get a massage, but whatever you do – give it your full attention. Email, voicemail, text messages – they’ll all be there when you’re done. Not to worry.
5. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you must be present in the moment, even if that moment is only 15 minutes long, before you shift your attention to doing something else. Look into the eyes of your spouse or children or co-workers when they speak to you. Practice active listening at meetings.

Use your calendar – or Google Calendar, as an aid to help you remember exactly what you should be focusing on at any given moment. This means you’re going to have to schedule time with yourself if you want that time.

If you have problems focusing, you’re not alone. There’s a Mac application that aids users in focusing for 15 minute chunks of time on one thing. If you’re being interrupted a lot by others, keep a sheet of paper nearby and jot down the types of interruptions. These days almost everything that interrupts us is self-induced and self-inflicted.

For the next five days, try mixing things up a bit and see how it works. You can always go back to checking email while on the toilet after these five days are up. Single-Tasking is the New Black. Less is in. Are you?

Dr. Vince Hassel

From The New York Times:

Dr. Mercer, a professor of biomechanics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was talking with a friend who runs an athletic shoe store. The friend told him that customers were coming in and requesting toning shoes, which are soft sneakers, often with a rocker-shaped sole, that promise to exercise and tighten muscles in the calves, thighs and buttocks…

Dr. Mercer’s study joins a small but growing body of science about toning shoes, much of which does not support the makers’ claims. A study conducted last year by exercise physiologists at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, for instance, found that muscle activation and calorie burning did not change whether people wore ordinary athletic shoes or any of three different models of toning shoes. “There is simply no evidence to support the claims that these shoes will help wearers exercise more intensely, burn more calories or improve muscle strength and tone,” the authors concluded.

I remember the commercial Michael Jordan did for Nike and the narration sums things up.  Jordan’s narration: “It’s not about the shoes. It’s about knowing where you’re going. Not forgetting where you started. It’s about having the courage to fail. Not breaking when you’re broken. Taking everything you’ve been given and making something better. It’s about work before glory. And what’s inside of you. It’s doing what they say you can’t. It’s not about the shoes. It’s about what you do in them. It’s about being who you were born to be.”

You want to “shape up” and get “tone”?  It’s not about the shoes.

Get Moving,

Dr. Vince Hassel

Adaptation
So many forms of stress threaten your balance: heat, cold, wind and rain; bacteria, viri, pollen, mold and fungi in the air; cancer cells, with their deranged genetic instructions that constantly arise within; pollution and chemicals; cuts, bumps and bruises; school,
work, marriage, babies, bills, a mortgage—and you must adapt to them all. For if you did not …… a hot summer day would boil your brain; a winter night would freeze you solid; every inhalation would bring massive infection; tumors would overwhelm you;
a small cut would drain all your blood. Without adaptation, your heart would continue pounding after a workout; alcohol and other drugs would never break down,
and you’d stay intoxicated for life; an adrenaline high or a moment’s anxiety would last a lifetime.  Thankfully, you usually adapt to life’s stresses because many mechanisms are built into you for this purpose. They’re as simple as shivering when cold and as elaborate as your immune system engulfing bacteria. They are as dramatic as an adrenaline rush
when confronting danger, or as ungraceful as gagging. They all say the same thing: Survive!  Survive changes in the weather; survive bacterial invasion; survive
pollution; survive emotional heartbreak; survive excitement; survive work; survive in the big city—and thrive!
Viewed from this perspective, symptoms such as fevers, chills, vomiting, fatigue, sneezing and pain—although unpleasant—aren’t bad; rather, they are signs that your body is struggling to regain health and balance. Nobel Prize winner Rene Dubos said it well:
“Good health is a process of continuous adaptation to the myriad microbes, irritants,
pressures and problems which daily challenge man”

Your Innate Intelligence

What does adaptation look like inside you? It’s thousands of different chemicals being balanced every second, millions of cells dying every second, millions being born every second and billions of nerves firing messages to every part of your body every second.
Your lunch is somehow turned into eye, muscle, heart, bone, skin and blood; damaged tissues are being repaired; blood vessel linings are being smoothed; germs and tumors
are being destroyed; and all the things that your cells produce are being monitored and balanced while you read a book, sleep or run a race.

What keeps track of all this activity?
A wondrous intelligence. As Lewis Thomas, M.D. writes in The Medusa and the Snail, “[There is] a kind of super intelligence that exists in each of us, infinitely smarter and
possessed of technical knowledge far beyond our present understanding.’’
This idea is echoed by Deepak Chopra, M.D., in Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: “Intelligence is present everywhere in our bodies… our own inner intelligence is far superior to any we can try to substitute from the outside.”
Chiropractic refers to your body’s organizational ability as its innate (inborn) intelligence. Your innate intelligence organizes your body into a complicated, living, adapting,
growing being—without it, you would be no more than a few dollars worth of chemicals.

Where Does Your Inner Wisdom Come From?
There is a part of your body that is especially intimate with your inner wisdom: your nervous system, composed of your brain, spinal cord and the billions of nerves that emerge from them. Your nervous system touches every nook and cranny of your body, and your body wisdom uses this vast communications system to organize your billions of parts into a healthy, adapting, living being.  True health or adaptation can only emerge when your innate intelligence can communicate without interference or “static.” A complete break in that communication results in death; a partial break results in a general deterioration of health—or “dis-ease”—you are less alive and less able to cope with life’s stresses. Eventually a dis-eased state turns into disease conditions.
This understanding is ancient—it has been the heart and soul of Empirical or Vitalistic healthcare for thousands of years and is the basic philosophical premise of natural healing systems including chiropractic, homeopathy, classical osteopathy, traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic (Indian) medicine.
Subluxations, a common, often painless condition, stress your structural system and nervous system and interfere with the proper flow of information and energy through
your body, causing a state of dis-ease.
Doctors of chiropractic spend years of training learning how to locate and correct your
subluxations, freeing your body from dis-ease and helping you better reconnect to your inner healer.

Reconnect,

Dr. Vince Hassel

If I were sun, I would light their day

If I were fire, I would warm them in cold

If I were rain, I would water their thirsty mouths

If I were air, I would fill their depleted lungs

If I were food, I would fuel their hungry bodies

I am none of these

Yet I am one unique person

Who must I be today to meet the need only I can?

What must I become to fill the void I alone can fill?

How much must I grow to move them toward their design?

I can only be me

But the me I choose

Need not remain as I am

I grow each day

Become better than I was

And by doing so

I move myself and others forward

To greater life and a greater world altogether

Today I choose

To live a better life

To improve others

By first improving myself.

Dr. Vince Hassel

Well, aparently I’m not alone… An article published in the Los Angles times in February of this year reviews the most recent research on anti-inflammatory medications (or NSAIDS) and their effects on athletes.

Following are exerpts of the article published February 14, 2011.  To read the article in its entirety, follow this link:  http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-0214-painkillers-backfire-20110214,0,3419327.story

People usually have good reasons for swallowing over-the-counter painkillers: They’re hurting.

But though the drugs often help, new research suggests that they sometimes do the opposite of what their users intended. That’s especially true for serious athletes, for whom pain — and painkillers — are regular companions.

In recent years, scientists have been studying runners competing in the Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile race through California’s Sierra Nevada mountains that involves more than 18,000 total feet of uphill climbing, more than 21,000 feet of downhill running and an average of 26 hours to complete. After some initial surveys, the researchers learned that 7 out of 10 of the runners regularly took ibuprofen — by far their drug of choice — during training. Many took up to three times the maximum daily dose to get through the pain of the race.

To learn whether the drug was doing the ultra-runners any good, the original plan was to randomly assign some to take ibuprofen and others to abstain during both training and racing, says lead author David Nieman, director of the Human Performance Lab at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. But use of the drug was so widespread and the runners felt so dependent on it that the medical board thought it would be unethical to ask them not to take it during training.

One of Nieman’s studies instead looked at more than 50 runners, all of whom took ibuprofen regularly leading up to the race. About half of the athletes took a 600 milligram dose of ibuprofen the day before the race and then 1,200 mg on race day — a 200 mg tablet about once every four hours. The other group of runners remained drug-free from the day before the race until a week later.

The researchers performed blood and urine tests. The results were striking.

After the race, runners who had taken ibuprofen showed signs of mild kidney impairment as well as mild endotoxemia, a potentially dangerous condition in which bacterial toxins present in the large intestine get into the bloodstream, Nieman and colleagues reported in 2006 in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity.

The drug also failed to help performance or recovery, the researchers reported in that paper and others. Both groups of runners reported equivalent amounts of pain during the race. Their times were the same. And afterward, their muscles were equally sore.

Most ironic, runners on ibuprofen actually had 50% more inflammation in their bodies after the race, even though athletes often choose to take the drug to fight inflammation.

Finally – the article goes on to suggest that based on the conclusions of the study, the authors go on to say that “there is no safe time for exercisers to take ibuprofen.”

REMEMBER – When it comes to getting healthy and staying healthy, exercise serves a vital role – but using medication often hampers your efforts and now is even being proven to CAUSE DAMAGE to your body.

Don’t make the prescription mistakes – just because it’s easy and commonly accepted, doesn’t make it right.  You know what your body needs – in order to stay healthy you must have proper alignment and nerve communication, both of which are achieved through regular chiropractic care.  If you are looking to start a new exercise program or want to make sure you are staying healthy naturally – give us a call at 224-1111.

In Health,

Ross J. DeBoer, DC

One of the distinctions we try to make is the difference between health care and sick care. Our culture has so abused the term “health” that it’s lost its meaning.

The mainstay of many television dramas is the heroic lifesaving that takes place in hospitals, with the underlying message that medicine saves lives. And it does. But it isn’t health care.

True, the fragility of life creates the theater necessary to hold the attention of viewers. But what’s missing from these fantasies is the fact that our so-called health care system is burdened by expensive, heroic measures delivered in the last six months or so of life. These procedures are often used to treat disease states caused by neglect or poor lifestyle choices.

I mention this because true health care isn’t heroic. Unless you consider getting adjusted on a regular basis heroic! Or eating a salad instead of a burger. Or climbing the stairs rather than pressing a button. Or drinking pure water instead of a sugary drink. But if you do, you’re a hero to me!