Delaney in the garden

Delaney working with her Grandpa, Al Thieme, in the garden learning where real food comes from. She's even doing a little barefoot grounding while she's at it.

She doesn't look too excited about it yet, but she will appreciate it later in life!

#barefootbaby #nofreerides

Sunlight, Vitamin D-3 and Seasonal Sickness

Fluctuating levels of sunlight are natural throughout year, but during the fall, winter and spring most people aren't getting nearly enough sunlight due to the lack of outdoor activity and decreased exposure to sunlight. 

Sunlight increases the amount of Vitamin D-3 produced inside your body. Vitamin D-3 is actually a hormone that plays many vital roles in our bodies, especially in regulating our immune system.

Flu season follows the cycle of the sun around the world. Meaning anywhere in the world where sunlight is the least seasonally people are getting sick. Research has shown that lack of Vitamin D-3 is one of the big reasons for this.

With fall right around the corner, now is the time to start thinking about how you are going to normalize your Vitamin D-3 levels. Most people benefit greatly from taking 2,000 IU to 5,000 IU per day. Getting your levels tested is the only way to know exactly where your levels are at. To test your Vitamin D levels, ask your doctor to request it in a blood test or order an at home test through Grassroots Health.

Seasonal Eating

Changing your eating patterns with the seasons just makes sense. Our bodies are much more in tune with the seasons than most people realize. More healthy carbohydrates during the summer with increased exercise and movement and more healthy protein during the winter with decreased daily movement. 

During the long winter months the carbohydrates that we typically live off of would have never been available. (Think blueberries growing in the middle of winter, not possible.)

During summer we are naturally moving more, this increase in energy expenditure just happens to go hand in hand with the increase in fruits and vegetables that are growing out of the ground. Coincidence? I think not. It's natural for us to crave and eat more carbohydrates throughout the summer.

During the winter months, decreasing the carbohydrate consumption and increasing healthy protein would be the best way to try to eat more naturally. The reduction in outdoor activity will decrease cravings and make it easier to follow a lower carbohydrate diet and a higher protein diet.

If you are doing intense exercise year round then you would want to eat your carbohydrates around the time you are doing increased amounts of exercise during the winter and limit them on days you aren't doing intense exercise.

Healthy Parents, Healthy Kids

"But my kids won't eat healthy foods." 

Oh really, does your 3 year old drive to the store to get their own junk food? 

The only way kids are going to eat healthy is if the parents eat healthy too. If you have a lot of snacks and junk food in the house then all your kids are going to want to eat is junk food. 

My 17 month old daughter eats almost anything that you put in front of her because she doesn't have any other options. We were on a trip recently and I gave her a tiny bite of chocolate ice cream, for the next 30 minutes all she did was ask for "more, more, more, more!"

If she saw us eating this sort of food around the house on a regular basis, then all she would want to eat would be junk food! But she sees us eating fresh fruits and vegetables, smoothies and other healthy foods so she wants to eat what we are eating.

I'm sure we will have our challenges with healthy eating, but we work hard to set a good example for her as much as possible.

If you want your kids to eat healthy, you need to lead the way and eat healthy too.

Off gassing: What is it and why should you care?

Everyone loves new stuff, carpet, furniture, flooring, paint, cars! 

Unfortunately, while making many new products chemicals are used and they stay in the product, especially the gases. For example when carpet is installed it can off gas chemicals for months after installation. (Think new carpet smell or new car smell) This might not seem like a big thing but long term it can cause many health problems. From allergies to headaches to digestive problems.

The biggest problem is with small children and dogs. When people are getting ready to have a baby they typically want to get new carpet and furniture. When the baby is born, where do they lay it? Right on the floor where the off gassing is the worst! As adults you might not notice the carpet smell, but if you get down on the ground it becomes a lot stronger.

When buying new stuff there are a few things you can do to help reduce this problem. Try to buy organic material that is made without using chemicals, have carpet installed or furniture brought before you are traveling somewhere so that it has a week to air out on it's own or even have your carpets cleaned with an organic detergent to help remove some of the chemicals.

Classroom hours of Doctors of Chiropractic vs Medical Doctors

I love when people say, "I don't believe in chiropractors." 

What? We aren't unicorns, we are doctors from a well established and researched profession and we have more classroom hours than MD's or DO's. 

Chiropractic has also been shown to be the most effective and cost efficient treatment for back pain in the world. 90% of people are going to experience severe back pain at some point in their lives. 

If you do have back pain hopefully you can sprinkle some fairy dust and a unicorn will appear to carry you to the our office.

Slow Movers Vs. Fast Movers

The energy demand someone has is dependent on their lifestyle and especially their exercise routine. Have you ever noticed that people who do yoga "slow movers" tend to gravitate towards a vegetarian type lifestyle and those who do high intensity exercise "fast movers" gravitate towards a more meat based diet? Many people think this is just the culture of yoga, be vegan, do yoga, wear Lululemon and drink coffee. But there is a lot more to the story!

The way you exercise causes your body to require and crave certain nutrients. When someone is doing high intensity exercise their body is going to need more protein for recovery, if they don't get protein for recovery then their body is going to break down their own muscles internally, which is not a good thing if you are trying to get into better shape! Because of this, people who are doing higher intensity exercise typically crave and do much better off of a higher protein diet. If you feed them salads and chia seeds all day long it's not going to give them the required nutrients they need for healing and recovery.

On the other hand, people who do yoga and move slow don't break down their muscle tissue as much and don't require as much protein so they gravitate towards a vegetarian type diet and less food in general.

If you have a lifestyle of high intensity type exercise with days of slower movements like yoga then you would want to alternate your eating patterns. In general eat more food on days you are working out with more intensity, especially right before and after your workout. And on days you are working out less or or with slower movements eat less food!

*Note, this picture isn't me. I would have a baby on one leg and a shih-tzu laying under me and toys scattered over ever inch of the floor.

Recipe: Watermelon Kale & Spinach Smoothie

Looking for a new smoothie recipe? Delaney loves watermelon, so she loved this smoothie with kale and spinach in it too.

See more smoothie recipes here: http://www.drkehres.com/search/label/shake%20recipes

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting is when someone is going longer periods of time than normal without eating food. 

Not long ago this was something humans did on a regular basis, if you had an unsuccessful day hunting/fishing/gathering food then you didn't eat! This allows your body to burn up all the readily available sugar/carbohydrates in your system and then switch over to burning fat and protein for energy. Most people have more than enough fat on their body to not worry about burning the protein/muscle on their body for energy.

Every night when you go to bed your body is going to be switching over to ketosis for a short period of time before you eat again in the morning. After you eat breakfast your body is now using carbohydrates for energy again given you ate something that has carbohydrates.

When your body switches over to ketosis during a fast it will first start to burn the extra fat stores on your body. The fat you store on your body actually has a purpose! It's there for times when there is no food around, but in this day and age there will always be food around so we just keep on storing it as fat.

Research has shown intermittent fasting to be very valuable from a weight loss standpoint and even potentially in different types of cancer treatment when done properly. Extra sugar is stored as fat on the body, and many forms of cancer use sugar as their main source of food, so it just makes sense!

You don't want to stay in a fasted state long term though because your metabolism will drop and cause other long term problems. just doing it for a day here and there is the best way. Plus if you do it long term you won't have the energy to work, workout or be active.

The best way to do any sort of fasting would be to do it on days where you aren't exercising or as active as normal. Try eating less food on your inactive days and don't eat right when you wake up in the morning or right before bed. Keep your meals to the middle of the day so the length of time between meals is the longest. The day before and after a fast you would want to go back to eating like you normally would.

Moving Barefoot

Moving naturally is something most people have completely lost the ability to do, especially with their feet. Most peoples feet are shaped like the shoes they wear on a regular basis and their ligaments, muscles and joints are adapted to their regular footwear, and not for the better. 

A lot of people know they have a problem but they don't know how to go about working with it or fixing it. Walking barefoot is the most natural thing to do but typically most people can't do it, at least right away or for very long. Some people may never be able to go back to wearing minimal footwear or walking barefoot for longer periods of time.

If you have been wearing shoes your whole life with a large heel and you instantly go to a minimal shoe with no heel odds are you are going to give yourself Achilles problems, plantar fascistic or even possibly fracture your foot. You have to make a very slow transition towards wearing minimal footwear.

The best way to go about doing this is to find a shoe that has a heel toe drop that is only 2-4 mm less than the shoe you are currently wearing. Wear these shoes for at least 6 months to a year without injury and then move down from there.

Runners Performance Store can easily help you find shoes that would fit this criteria.

Exercise

When I talk about exercise with people many of them will respond,"well I walk a lot at work or during the day." or "I go for a mile walk every night after dinner." And that's great!

But, to me walking is not a form of improvement exercise (unless you get out of breath within a minute), it's an essential movement that your body requires on a daily basis just to function properly (digestion, joints, neurological, anti-inflammatory). Everybody should be walking at least a few miles on a daily basis even before thinking about other exercise.

By Improvement exercise I mean an exercise that's going to help you lose weight, gain muscle and reach the goals that you want. Unless you are already in the perfect shape that you want to maintain, walking probably isn't the best EXERCISE for you, although you should still be doing it on a daily basis as an essential movement!

The two best improvement exercises for weight loss and muscle toning are going to be weight training and interval training. These two have been shown over and over to help people reach their weight loss and health goals.

Keep walking but add weight training and interval training to your routine!

Red Meat Health Myths

Red meat has been blamed for increasing saturated fat and heart disease, research has proved it wrong. Red meat has been blamed for increasing cholesterol, research has proved it wrong. Red meat has been blamed on different types of cancers, research has proved it wrong. What are they going to blame on red meat next?

There are cultures that live on red meat for almost every meal and have no heart disease, cancer or cholesterol problems, that alone should be enough evidence to prove that red meat isn't the cause of all these problems.

Historically how do you think most people made it through the winter season? There are no carbohydrates growing in the winter!

Note: there is a huge difference between grass fed and farm raised animals!