Allergies

Allergies are a response from your body to things you breathe, eat or touch such as pollen, dust or dander. The symptoms that you experience are from the release of histamine. Histamine affects the following systems:

Respiratory – increased histamine can cause muscle constriction and affect breathing.

Liver – becomes weakened which causes its productivity to remove toxins to be hindered and the body’s response to invaders to be compromised.

Adrenals – if the body is stressed, cortisol is released to try and promote an anti-inflammatory environment. Long term stimulation of adrenals can lead to a host of other problems.

Immune system – to fight off invaders, the body will increase in IgE antibodies, which causes the blood vessels to dilate, the intruder to migrate further into the system and the system to react with more severe symptoms.

As you can see, the histamine response can be a vicious cycle. It breaks down the proper function of your nervous system and your immunity. This is the reason that you may have been introduced to a certain pollen before and never reacted, but introducing it this season has given you horrid allergic reactions – your nervous system is out of balance and sending histamine out improperly. Something has caused a shift in your threshold and now instead of being able to properly function, your immune system is on edge and overreacts to the slightest foreign substance.

Many people like to take allergy medicine to mask the symptoms. Pharmaceutical commercials tell us that histamine is the culprit and by covering up histamine, we are now able to breathe again and are totally healthy. To this, I ask, was your body in shortage of allergy pills before? Have you given your body what it was depleted in and now it is functioning fine? Or is it that the medicine/shots/inhalers are just keeping the symptoms covered up but leaving the real underlying problem at bay?

Here are alternative treatments:

· Get adjusted regularly! Chiropractic adjustments help shift your nervous system toward the parasympathetic state and away from stress mode. This gives your body a chance to increase its immunity. It also removes any interference in the immunity pathways so your body can heal more efficiently

· Make sure your lifestyle isn’t running you into the ground. Get rest, drink water, exercise, eat healthful foods! If you think one of the aforementioned things isn’t affecting your immunity, think again. Sometimes just changing those small things can make a big difference in the way we feel.

· Ask your chiropractor about the following supplements: homeopathic medications, essential fatty acids, probiotics, adrenal support and a good multivitamin with high anti-oxidants. One or more of your systems may be needing some extra support and taking a simple supplement until it can function on its own may be an easy fix.

Oh Geez

Tillie, who has always scratched the front door to tell us she needs to go outside, has recently learned that there are other doors besides the front door. Now, her favorite thing to do is go sit on the balcony. She scratches ALL DAY to go on the balcony and just sit. And then she will scratch to get back in. I think there are permanent scratches on the sliding glass door now. Oops.

If the bathroom or bedroom door is closed, she will scratch trying to get in. Even if the door is just a little cracked she will kick it in with her little paw. She is so HIGH MAINTENANCE. What a diva.

OUR TRIP TO THE BIG APPLE

CENTRAL PARK





Thank heavens I wore tennies!



GOING TO A CELTIC RESTAURANT FOR DINNER


The walls were decorated with old pictures of NYC.


WICKED ON BROADWAY





Wicked was phenomenal! Funny, entertaining, great story line. Must see!

TIMES SQUARE




The number of people in Times Square was astounding. It was overwhelming. I honestly felt like we were in a different country or something.


WORLD TRADE CENTER MEMORIAL
It was hard to make it through this. Being there made it even more real and it's hard not to have a personal connection to what happened. There is a fire station right next to the memorial. I honestly don't know how those guys go in and out of there everyday living over and over what happened. God bless each and every one of them.














THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN AND HELLO DELI



ROCKEFELLER CENTER



THE STATUE OF LIBERTY




RANDOM PICS

VACATIONS!

If you haven't noticed yet, Michael has been having to travel quite a bit more frequently these past few months. It's a downer when he leaves. :( It's fortunate, however that on certain trips I can tag along and see places we otherwise wouldn't have set aside time to visit. The next road trip Mike has to set out on is to New York City. He leaves a week from Saturday. He knew I was totally bummed that he was having to leave again, so he bought me a ticket to go with him and moved his flight up so we could spend the weekend there! Yay! I want to go to a play, Chinatown and Central Park. Fun times, People, fun times! I have such a wonderful husband and feel so blessed with our life. God amazes me.

The vacation that we've actually been planning for a little while now finally came together and I can't wait! We are going to Hawaii in May! Whoo-hoo! We had been debating on which island to stay at, bed & breakfast or resort, which activities to plan and it finally came together yesterday. It's going to be Freakin'. Awesome.

One of my patients told me that she read a survey that said that it's not the actual vacation that people enjoy so much as the anticipation of the vacation. I'm there, Folks. Anticipating. For. Awesomeness. :)

Austin

Michael is at a convention in Austin this week. I drove down with him Saturday after my patients and made a weekend out of it.

Saturday night we went to dinner at Iron Cactus and then went to listen to live music. I now truly understand why Austin is the live music capital of the world. It was impressive. What's odd is that Dallas has the exact same potential in Deep Ellum that is a big fail. I guess Dallas just doesn't have enough "weird" in its city limits to keep an artsy area like that going. We listened to a band made up of elderly men (seriously one guy was missing his teeth). At first, we didn't know what to expect. We just went somewhere without a cover hoping it would be good. When we saw the men shuffling their way up to the stage Mike whispered, "Let's stay for a few songs to be nice." When they started playing, they blew us away! We ended up staying until we just absolutely couldn't keep our eyes open because they were that awesome.

On Sunday, we drove out to the Inner Space Caverns. It's been years since I have been to any caverns and what a cool experience it is! We paid extra for a whole 20 minutes of "unpathed caves" where you get a flashlight and go back in the caves as far as you can without crawling to go under something. I wouldn't suggest anyone doing that. It was just a part of the cave with the lights off and they gave us a flashlight to wander around for a few minutes. But seeing the cave is such a cool experience. We saw plenty of little bats and they are surprisingly cute in person. :)

Mike had to start his conference on Sunday afternoon so I rested in the hotel room while he had to work. :P That night there was a little get together for his conference so I got to see some of his co-workers that I knew and meet others for the first time. And guess where the get together was? Iron Cactus! We were apparently destined to eat there. Good thing their food is awesome!

I had to catch a flight at 7:30 this morning. :( Mike drives back on Thursday. I'm grateful I got to spend some time with my hubby even if we can't be together for the next few days.

Why Would You Ever Waste Your Day Worrying?

I woke up today with a new sense of purpose. Isn't it funny how easily it can get lost? In all of the "what if's," "wish I had's," and "waiting on's" I sometimes forget that today is the now. Life is not the past or the future but the present.

This seems to be a practice that I'm not very good at. In the past I have so focused on when I graduate, when I have my own practice, when I get married, when we own a house, etc. etc. etc. and have forgotten that waking up with my pug snoring louder than any human, worrying that I won't have time to brush my hair before I fly out the door to the office and wondering if I'll have enough money at the end of the month to pay my bills is all part of life. Life that no doubt can be stressful, hateful and spiteful but joyous all the same! It's easy to say "life is what you make of it" and "change your attitude and it will change your life" but honestly, I don't feel this is 100% accurate. I do believe that sometimes we can wake up and put on a fake smile and make the day better with the "fake it to make it" attitude but sometimes we just have to wake up to the "Really, God, really?" of it all and enjoy the ride.

Today, I am learning to be grateful for the now. For the miraculous now. Stress, pain, suffering, all of it. Thank you Lord for the joy of pain, for the lessons to come and the knowledge to be able to acknowledge the what the heck of it all and still enjoy it.

Check Out The New Website!

Mike built a new website for the office and it looks ahh-mazing! It posts all of my health blogs on the homepage and has a search feature that will pull up any blog containing your search. Check it out and leave comments!

http://www.wholistichealingchiropractic.com