Mental Attitude: A Positive Attitude Helps. Joint replacement patients who have a positive mindset prior to surgery are more likely to have better functional outcomes. Patients with poor pre-operative emotional health, poor coping skills, little social support and who are anxious are at risk for less functional improvement after total knee replacement. American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, 2011
Health Alert: On Your Knees! 10 million Americans suffer from knee osteoarthritis (OA). Due to obesity and symptomatic knee OA, Americans over the age of 50 will, in total, lose the equivalent of 86 million healthy years of life. Reducing obesity to the year 2000 levels would prevent 173,000 cases of coronary heart disease, 711,000 cases of diabetes and 270,000 total knee replacements. It would save 19.5 million years of life among US adults aged 50-84. Annals of Internal Medicine, February 2011
Diet: Can Cartoons Make Kids Eat Brussels Sprouts? Characters like Shrek, Donkey or Princess Fiona on food packaging, particularly cereals, can influence children to choose sugary items that provide little to no nutritional value. When there is no licensed cartoon character on the box, kids prefer a cereal whose name suggests healthy eating rather than sugar consumption. Annenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania, Feb 2011
Exercise: Walk It Off. Because exercise helps use up oxygen, it causes your body to burn stored fat. If you walk 4 miles a day, 4 times a week, you can burn 1,600 calories a week. If you don’t change your diet at all and walk that same distance for six months, you’ll lose about 12 pounds. Walk that same distance for a year and you’ll drop about 24 pounds! Mayo Clinic
Chiropractic: Take A Deep Breath. Breathing is a function most people do not associate with spinal health. A case published in the 1980s involved a 53-year-old man with a 20-year history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. More than 14 months after starting chiropractic care, the amount of air he was able to forcibly exhale in one complete breath (a measure called “forced vital capacity”) and the amount of air he could move in the first second of that complete breath (called “forced expiratory volume in one second”) had both improved substantially (1 liter and 0.3 liters, respectively). This case is part of a growing body of literature indicating that improved lung volumes often accompany improved spinal health through chiropractic care. Chiropractic Technique, 1991
Wellness/Prevention: Dance Your Way To Cancer Prevention. Exercise makes your body stronger. By choosing a fun workout, like dance classes, it’s easier to get the 30 minutes of daily exercise you need to maintain a healthy weight, which may reduce your chances for some types of cancer. University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, February 2011
Quote: “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

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