That is one of my favourite songs of the holiday season but the past few days, it's been really true to life! It has been bitterly cold outside and for some of us it's an excuse to curl up with a cup of hot chocolate and a good movie. For others, this cold weather is wonderful because they get to ski, skate, snowboard or toboggan in the fallen snow. Unfortunately, there are  people for whom the cold weather is not fun at all because they feel achier and stiffer as the weather gets colder and damper.

We all know someone who is a human barometer who they can tell what kind of weather we are going to have simply by which joint is hurting! I have a dear friend who broke his ankle a few years ago, and he always knows if it’s going to rain, snow, or hail. Have you ever wondered why this happens? A possible reason is that your nervous system is meant to help you change according to the environment you're in.

When it’s hot, you sweat because the perspiration evaporates and cools you off. When it’s cold, you shiver because moving your body creates warmth. An injury, like a broken bone or a severe sprain, can affect that joint’s ability to adapt properly to temperature changes. Often, even after the injured joint is healed, the pain flares up during cold or damp weather. One thing to keep in mind is that the cold weather can affect you even if you haven't had a serious injury. Even seemingly minor neck or back pain can lead to increased pain in the winter.

So what can you do? Do you have to live with this every year when winter comes around?  Is the only solution  moving to the south?  There is another option! Getting chiropractic adjustments on a regular basis will keep your spine straight and get your nervous system healthy, which will help decrease your pain and your increased achiness in the cold. As your nervous system and joints get stronger, you won't notice the changes in weather as dramatically.

You may even start to enjoy winter—miracles can happen with chiropractic!

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Experts suggest that increasing daily vitamin D intake is the best way to raise your body's resistance to the flu this winter.  Vitamin D is naturally acquired through exposure of the skin to sunlight and, to a lesser extent, from food.

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Do you feel this way during the holidays? Like you want to cry?  Stressed and overwrought? Like Coco the cat*, we all have to do things that we don’t want to do, especially over the holidays.  That can lead to more stress and make happy times less so. It's hard to avoid stress but there are some things you can do to decrease it.

What?  Hard to believe that getting adjusted will help?  Getting chiropractic adjustments can make you more relaxed and at ease because adjustments help rebalance your nervous system. When your nervous system is balanced, you achieve a sense of calm that is deep and full.  It’s like your whole body and mind become peaceful and connected with each other.  Worries tend to melt away and problems don’t seem that big anymore.  All in a few minutes. It’s quite amazing actually.

Chiropractic can be a part of your holidays to help you get through the rush and actually enjoy the process! Now that would be really be a Christmas miracle!!

*BTW, this is my cat Coco.  She was not happy to play a reindeer but she was eager to eat the treats I offered her (which is what she was doing when this picture was taken—no part of her was harmed to take this photo, except for her pride).

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Autumn is a great time to refresh, recharge and renew.  For many people it's when they, once again, try to lose weight.

FACT: Over 90% of all conventional attempts at weight loss fail.

In my experience, the more drastic the diet, the harder it is to stick to it. I believe in a gradual approach to making changes in the diet. Making changes too quickly can be hard on the body and very difficult to maintain. My strategy for weight loss focuses on improving overall health and quality of life.

Here are the key points:

* Set Realistic Goals - While some people will lose 5 lbs in the first week, most of which is water, an average of 1-2 lbs per week is a healthy  amount of weight to lose. If it took months or years to put the weight on, it is unreasonable to expect to lose it all within a few weeks!

* Dietary Changes - Completely cutting out important foods such as protein, carbohydrates or fats is a common mistake. It is important to find the right balance of these foods and choose those which are unprocessed and unrefined. Introducing new, healthful foods into the diet is just as important as reducing the unhealthy ones.

* Detoxification - making sure your body can properly eliminate toxins is very important when trying to lose weight. Using specific herbs to cleanse the body can improve your metabolism and allow your liver and other organs to function more efficiently.

* Improve Digestion - An impaired digestive system will affect how well your body breaks down food and absorbs nutrients as well as how quickly it can eliminate toxins.

* Movement - Some form of physical activity is an important aspect of reaching and maintaining your healthy body weight. Find an activity you enjoy- whether it's playing a sport, taking a yoga class or simply walking.

* Raise Energy Levels - A person struggling with excess weight may also suffer from low energy levels. Ensure your body is receiving the proper nutrients to help you feel energized!

If you look at your "diet" as a temporary measure and plan to return to your old eating habits once the desired weight is achieved, you will likely fail. Maintaining weight loss requires a permanent lifestyle change. It's a life-long commitment to taking care of your body.

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Over the last few years, I've developed quite the soft spot for Giant Pandas.  In the beginning it was mainly because of my logo and how my practice was identified; but as I've learned more about these animals, I've become really fond of them.  They embody so many great qualities: they are strong, smart, family oriented, loving. They can even be very human-like when taking care of their young.  My favourite story about pandas is about one mother bear who was having trouble looking after her cub.  Her caretakers decided to show her a video of another panda taking care of her cub properly. That's all it took!  After that, she had no problems being a mother to her cub. Amazing animals.

I was reminded of all this because today, the Toronto Sun website (www.torontosun.com) published photos released by the Shaanxi Rare Wildlife Breeding  and Research Centre in Zhouzhi County, China. They are of the mother panda named Lou Sheng watching over her twin cubs as they take their first steps.  It reminds me of how a human mother is with her baby - loving, gentle, supportive and playful.

I hope you will enjoy these pictures as much as I did.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2009/09/18/10980086.html

To help protect the species, Pande Family Wellness Centre adopts a Giant Panda every year through the World Wildlife Federation.  If you would like to learn more, please visit www.wwf.ca

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"What kind of pillow should I use?"
It's a common question that I hear from my patients. The answer depends on how you sleep. The proper pillow for your sleep position can prevent neck pain and even improve the quality of your rest.

So, do you sleep on your side or on your back?

If you're a side sleeper, the height of the pillow is important. If the pillow is too flat, your head will be tilted down and if it's too fluffy, it will be tilted up. Either can make you wake up with a kink in your neck. The perfect pillow will be thick enough to allow your head to be aligned with the rest of your body, without inclining it at an angle, like your head is when you are standing up.

If you mostly sleep on your back, then you want to make sure to provide support for your neck and the best pillow for that is a contour one. It will cradle the curvature of your spine so that your head is aligned with the rest of your body. When your neck is not supported, your muscles will continue to work throughout the night instead of resting and you may wake up feeling tired and achy. The contour pillows have a thin side and a thick side. When sleeping on your back, it may be more effective to use the thick side however, if you have a slighter body frame, the thinner side may be the best for you.

You'll notice that I haven't talked about stomach sleepers yet. From a chiropractic perspective, this is the least desirable way to sleep because it forces you to turn your head to one side or the other for a long period of time. This can cause neck pain, headaches and tense neck muscles. That said the best pillow for sleeping on your stomach, is actually no pillow at all! If you must have one, then get the flattest pillow you can find. This will prevent your neck from being propped up and turned at the same time.

A few simple changes in your sleeping habits could be the difference between waking up to a "good morning" or to a "pain in the neck"!

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The CNE (Canadian National Exhibition) opens this Friday in Toronto, Ontario. The CNE (or The Ex as it's also known) is a huge fair/amusement park that opens once a year at the end of August and to me, it always signals the winding down of summer.  It's been a long time since I've gone so I'm really looking forward going this Saturday.  The last time I went was in elementary school. The Board of Education used to give out free CNE passes at the end of the school year--does anyone else remember those?  I would take the TTC down to the Ex with my family and my best friend and we would talk excitedly about all the things we would do-all the exhibits we'd visit, the games we'd play, the treats we wanted to eat and the rides we wanted to go on!  The rides were so much fun! I loved Tilt-A-Whirl and bumper cars the best!

I still love those rides but now that I'm a chiropractor, I look at them from a different perspective. I now notice how much my head and neck whip around during the bumper cars and I can feel the bruises on my arms from being jostled around the Tilt-A-Whirl.  Sometimes I can even end up getting a headache or a stiff neck the next day. I guess it's true that children are able to bounce back (in this case, literally) better than adults. I miss the days when this was me too.

This time I'll have to make sure to make an appointment with my chiropractor so I can get adjusted a few days after I go on those rides this Saturday.  But it will be nice to feel like a kid again, if only for a little while!

What are your best memories of the CNE?

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Last weekend, a friend and I decided to go on a bike trip up to Caledon, ON. The forks of the Credit River to be precise. A lovely plan yes, but in practice it turned out to be a little more hard core than we had initially thought. You see, when I google mapped it, it was about 50-60 Km which would have been fine, but we went the looooong way! We biked through winding bike paths and lovely country roads that always seemed to be uphill... both ways, don't ask me how that works. Anyhow, I am not what you would call a road warrior; I commute in the city on my bike, but that, my friends, is a very different beast than spending nine hours (yes, nine) on a bike in one day.

First we got lost, then we got hungry and then we got dehydrated to the point that we had nothing left to sweat. We had to stop in Inglewood where a lovely lady named Blanche took pity on us (by this time the shops were all closed). She gave us water and we took some Arnica (a homeopathic remedy that has an affinity for helping damaged or overused tissues) for our bruised bottoms and sore muscles so that we could continue on our way. We got to the camp site and cooked dinner at 11 pm after doing one lap around the lake for good measure to make sure we had the best spot, (I believe the low blood sugar had limited our good decision making skills at that point), put up the tent and passed out. We both woke up the next morning expecting not to be able to move, but amazingly, we were fine! Trust me, this was no small miracle! Had we not taken the Arnica, I might still be stuck at the forks of the Credit River now! 

This was not to be the end of the miracle of homeopathy for this trip.  My friend was stung by a ferocious bee, right behind the knee (ouch) as we were taking down the tent. Catastrophe had struck! Can you imagine getting a bee sting right behind the knee, and then trying to bike back to the city? We had 82 Km to travel and my friend sarcastically said, 'Don't worry, it only shoots stabbing hot pain every time I peddle!'  Fortunately, I am the grown up version of a girl scout as well as being a homeopath so not only had I brought Arnica, but I also had my trusty homeopathic remedy kit. I don't leave town without it! It has saved my life and the lives of others in India (dysentery), Cameroon (malaria), Costa Rica (food poisoning) and Killarney (heat stroke)-but that is for another blog entry. I gave my friend a dose of Apis ( a remedy that can work well for bug bites and stings) and put an insta-ice pack on it, and no exaggeration, in five minutes the swelling was practically gone and she was ready to go.

As we rode back to the city, we were both pretty happy about what we had accomplished and I kept contemplating the 'what if' scenarios had I not given us the remedies.

Life is so much easier when there is something that can be used to help in almost all situations; to ease pain and create comfort, so that you don't feel restricted by having to play it safe because you might get sick or hurt. I know that no matter where I go or who I am with I can handle most things that come up with a single dose of a well chosen remedy (with the exception of broken bones of course). So the next time you go on vacation, or go camping, even the next time you go to the cottage, you might want to consider taking along a remedy kit along with the Band-Aids, nano particle free sunscreen and Deet free bug spray.

Happy Summer Everyone!

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Isn't it great that it's finally warm outside! And just in time for the first day of summer! 

You'll probably notice that with the warm weather comes your desire to be outside, exercising or doing activities around the city or your house.  Whatever activites you're doing, it's important to take care of your feet.

Over our lifetime we spend a lot of time on our feet. In fact, most of us walk an average of 6.5 km a day!   That’s more than 4 trips around the world in a lifetime!  Unfortunately, about 75% of us will suffer with some sort of foot pain at one point in our life which makes it hard to continue doing activities that we enjoy.

There are a few common causes for foot pain:

1. Plantar fasciitis- pain in the arch of the foot
2. Heel spurs- pain in the heels
3. Achilles Tendonitis-pain at the back of the foot and ankle

Some things you can do at home to decrease the pain are: 

1. Ice the area of pain
2. Stretch out the foot and calf muscles
3. Rest your feet

If the pain continues or starts to get worse, you may want to consider putting custom fitted orthotics in your shoes. 

The first thing to clear up is that custom fit orthotics are NOT the same as orthopedic shoes!  Orthotics are inserts that go inside your shoes to provide you with support for your foot.  There are different types of orthotics that fit into most types of shoes and there are also ones specifically geared towards certain sports, like skiing, golfing and tennis.  And if you’re looking for a sandal for the summer, there are styles of sandals that can have your custom fit orthotic built right into them.

So how do orthotics help?  Well, orthotics support the arch of your foot, prevent your ankle from rolling in or out and take the extra pressure off your knees, hips and lower back as you walk.  Pretty cool!  Without an orthotic to support the arch, your muscles and ligaments are forced to work overtime to lift the arch which causes your feet to work harder than necessary. When you wear orthotics regularly, the overworked muscles can relax and the weaker muscles will strengthen, providing you with more effective and efficient foot function. This lets you get through your day more easily and without pain. 

If you're not sure if orthotics are what you need, a consultation and a specialized examination will determine whether orthotics are the right solution for you.  So take a step in the right direction and find out if orthotics are right for you!

Enjoy the warm weather and we'll talk to you soon!

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Hi and welcome to the blog for Pande Family Wellness Centre! Whether you’re a current, future or past client or just a friend of PFWC, you are always welcome here! In these pages, you’ll learn health and wellness tips, be able to read some articles on health trends and hear about news from our centre.

Through this blog, you’ll have access to information from any one of our practitioners. If you have any questions that you’d like answered or topics you’d like addressed, you can post a comment below or if you’re feeling a little shy, email us directly!

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