Enhance Your Health
Health Tip of the Week: Be Careful What You Eat
Sodium nitrite is a synthetic preservative added to meats like hot dogs and deli meat to help them maintain that nice pink color. The problem is, in the presence of heat — especially high heat — nitrites can combine with amines in processed meat to form nitrosamines, and these are carcinogenic.
Nitrosamines inflict cellular damage and have been linked to cancer, typically in your colon, bladder, stomach, or pancreas. The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment is currently considering listing nitrite in combination with amines as a known carcinogen.
Think twice before you buy that package of hot dogs and bacon. The good news is that more and more nitrate free brands are showing up on the market shelves including hot dogs and cold cuts. Look for all natural or uncured hot dogs, bacon and cold cuts.
Since we are speaking of hotdogs, here is more depressing news. You might not be aware of this, but nearly every time you eat bread in a restaurant or consume a hamburger or hotdog bun you are consuming bromide, an endocrine-disrupting chemical commonly used in flours.
The use of potassium bromate as an additive in commercial breads and baked goods has been a huge contributor to bromide overload in Western cultures. Bromated flour is “enriched” with potassium bromate. Commercial baking companies use it because it makes the dough more elastic and better able to stand up to bread hooks. However, Pepperidge Farms and other successful companies manage to use only unbromated flour without any of these so-called “structural problems.”
Studies have linked potassium bromate to kidney and nervous system damage, thyroid, gastrointestinal discomfort, and cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies potassium bromate as a possible carcinogen.
Potassium bromate is banned for food use in Canada, China, and the European Union (EU). Wow. Eating has become a scary thing. The bottom line is with a little diligence in the supermarket, reading labels, you can find food without these ingredients.
Thought for the Week
The average American gains close to one pound during the six-week period from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day. Sadly, most of us may be above average!
Pregnancy / Prenatal Chiropractic Care
More and more women are discovering the many benefits associated with chiropractic care in pregnancy. The most common complaint where women seek chiropractic care in pregnancy is for low back pain. 84% of patients receiving spinal manipulative therapy reported relief of back pain during pregnancy. There was significantly less likelihood of back labor when spinal adjustments were administered during pregnancy.
The chiropractor is an extremely important part of the prenatal, pregnancy health care team. Not only does the chiropractor perform adjustments to keep the pelvis in line, improve neural impulse flow to the reproductive organs and relax soft tissue ligaments that support the front of the pregnant abdomen, the obstetrically trained chiropractor is an all around pregnancy health care coach that can offer nutritional advice and exercise advise that can help the pregnant patient have a healthier pregnancy.