"Ask the Doctor"

http://www.foodandthought.com/

Tuesday 6:30pm Ask The Doctor!

Please join us tomorrow at Food & Thought Organic Marketplace Courtyard at 6:30pm for a discussion on Unsolved Helath Problems & Hidden Food Allergies.

Bring your questions for a Q & A session to follow.

All in attendance will receive a certificate for a complimentary consultation with Dr. Hillis - invite your friends who are interested in Natural Health!

http://www.naplesnaturalhealth.com

To find out about our upcoming lectures visit our website or email jennifer at jennifer@naplespainrelief.com with your email address and/or mailing address and you will be kept up to date with upcoming events and health talks!

Wow it's Hot!

Just a quick note today to let you know that we've renamed our website! You will still be able to get to the site through www.NaplesPainRelief.com but from this point forward it will be www.NaplesNaturalHealth.com

Please send your friends to our site for valuable information and to download any of the subjects writen about on this blog. Hope to see you in the office soon! Email jennifer for a quick appointment jennifer@naplespainrelief.com or if you're interested in finding out more about the work I do and would like a consultation with me, she will arrange for that as well.

Since it IS so HOT outside here in South Florida, I picked up a few tips I thought I'd share for keeping cool AND keeping the electric bill cool also!

http://www.360financialliteracy.org/Financial+Topics/Personal+Finance/Articles/Financial+Basics/Summer+Saving+Tips.htm

Mid-Back Pain

MID-BACK PAIN DUE TO ANTERIOR THORACIC VERTEBRA
Taken From a Health Talk Given by Dr. Hillis


The patient with this problem comes in with severely acute pain in the mid-back area and very often the pain is so severe that it radiates out to the front, to the sternum, to the breast bone area. It can pierce through like a knife going through from the back to the front and it can be extremely distressing and alarming. The pain is so severe that the patient feels like something is horribly wrong and indeed, this patient is in so much pain that this is not a good situation. Thankfully there are ordinarily solutions for this problem and when we are able to determine that the cause is anterior or Thoracic vertebrae, we are able to offer great hope for relief. This is a condition where there has been a “buckling” of the mid-back, or the mid-thoracic spine, where the vertebra and ribs have buckled forward, the vertebra especially. The ribs are often “left behind” and “separate” from their usual abutment or smooth connection to the vertebrae.

This condition commonly affects people who work with arms overhead, such as a hairstylist, mechanics, certain housekeeping chores may bring this on, typists, therapists, construction workers. I have probably seen it most often and most severe amongst weight lifters who are doing bench pressing. When they are pressing heavy weight with their arms and shoulders, the spine buckles behind them, buckling the mid-back area forward. This buckling the spine causes the vertebrae to displace and when they do, they lose their juxtaposition, or natural positional relationship with the ribs that should be smoothly attached to the sides of the vertebra. These ribs that are attached to the vertebra are highly innervated because the rib cage protects our vital organs. By the primitive wisdom of the body, we have “alarm systems” that go off when something affects that area and so these rib heads, where they attach to the vertebra in the mid back, are very sensitive, and when they are displaced or pushed out of place, they will give off a tremendous amount of pain. The good note about this is that although the pain is quite debilitating and alarming, when properly treated, there is usually predictable relief by an effective chiropractic approach releasing that vertebra in just the right direction. This can be done in a pain-free manner greatly relieving the condition when performed by a chiropractor skilled in the appropriate method.

I would like to talk a little bit about some of the complications on these cases. Often mechanical issues will bring them on. Of course, it can come about suddenly from the impact of a rear-end car accident or some other trauma like that. It could be brought on by an assault, or a wrestling match, or when somebody has buckled back in surfing or in ways where somebody is thrown backwards and buckles their spine back, and may cause this problem to erupt. Sometimes these are known as “hyperextension injuries” to the thoracic spine.

There is a whole other area of concern sometimes in these cases. Actually the condition can be brought on and/or perpetuated by problems involving digestion, involving tension in and about the diaphragm, involving stress handling issues that settle in at the upper digestive region of the body and the diaphragm that anchors into and is innervated from the mid thoracic spine. In fact, it is considered quite classic for stomach problems, ulcers and other types of stomach distresses to be the direct cause of such flooding of nerve impulses into the mid-back area at specific vertebrae. Such as to “suck them forward” and pull them anterior or forward out of place, and this has to do with the abnormal nerve activity from the irritated stomach or upper digestive organs blasting through to the spine to relay up to the brain to tell the brain what is going on. In patients who have this type of tension or digestive distress, cramping of the diaphragm, tightening of the diaphragm, stress related or related digestive distress, reflux disorder that is uncontrolled – all of this can flood nerve impulses into that mid-back area. If these digestive conditions are not worked with and controlled, then the mid-thoracic area, which may well be greatly relieved by getting treatment, will constantly be recurring. So the need to do something effective about the causation of the problem cannot be underscored enough. So when there is a chronic recurring problem, these are some of the areas I look to the most. There are both soft tissue manipulations for the diaphragm and the digestive organs as well as nutritional approaches and changes in lifestyle and habits that can lead to improvement. The effective chiropractor will work with you on these complications and help you get out of pain and stay out of pain. This is part and parcel of the type of care that we offer at our office at Naples Pain Relief Center and I would like to welcome you to get more information on this topic at www.NaplesNaturalHealth.com

Problems Common to Runners & Joggers

Interview of Dr. Hillis by Kitt Walsh of A Way With Words


Thousands of Americans join the ranks of runners and joggers everyday. While this is one of the most convenient and least expensive forms of exercise available, running is not without its problems. An uneven surface, a random stone, an unseen puddle, or even a formerly sedentary lifestyle prior to this new enthusiasm, can al present hazards to a runner’s health.

“There may have been a slight trauma or injury to the lower extremities which never surfaced until the person started running,” says Dr. Daniel P. Hillis, a Chiropractic Physician trained in the treatment of just such injuries. “But once detected, many of these conditions can be successfully treated, without medication or surgery.”

One of the most common and often overlooked injuries which affect runners is Talus Alignment, which causes pain around the ankle area and may lead to a tightening of the font muscles of the leg, commonly known as “shin splints.” This condition is caused by overuse by a newcomer or by a veteran trying to push the envelope and gain those extra seconds. When the talus (the center bone between the leg and ankle) gets out of alignment, the muscles of the leg spasm in an attempt to stabilize the ankle. The spasms cause the pain. A chiropractic physician observes the deviation (The talus shifts inward or outward), performs Kinesiology testing and/or “motion palpation” – the art of examining structures in motion. The doctor can either then gently adjust the talus back into the correct position or, if the injury is too severe, use a mechanical adjusting instrument called an Activator, which puts out a one-pound recoil force to help realign the bone. Also diagnosed and treated in the same way is another common injury: Calcanus Deviation or heel displacement. The gently thrusting needed to realign the heel is usually never uncomfortable.

Tibial Tortional Misalignment or a twisting of the tibia (the large, weight-bearing bone between the knee and the ankle) occurs when the tibia is torqued to one side or the other. A chiropractic physician can diagnose this problem by taking the patient outside and asking them to walk, observing their gait and posture, and by Kinesiological stress tests. This condition is corrected by mobilization, a gently, repetitive twisting of the tibia until it assumes the correct position. This problem is usually resolved quickly.

Forward Hip Displacement is usually caused by overstretching the quadriceps, usually while warming up for a run. When a runner grasps their ankle and pulls it behind the back in an attempt to stretch the quads, they can inadvertently displace the hip bone a millimeter or more from its natural position in the socket. Simple but exact adjustive thrusts by the chiropractic physician exerting 3 - 8 pounds of pressure is usually all that’s necessary to realign, although sometimes a myofascial technique called spindle-cell work is necessary to help loosen muscles.

Two other common problems encountered by runners are Foot Pronation or collapsed arches and Foot Supination, where the muscles at the bottom of the foot shrivel and tighten, creating flattened or excessive arches. There are many techniques your chiropractor can use to correct these conditions and, in more chronic cases, orthotics inserts in your shoes frequently helps.

“The good news is that most people will be back in action quickly,” says Dr. Hillis. “The key is to speed up the healing process by paying attention to what your body is telling you and getting help for the problem before it becomes chronic and harder to treat.”

Dr. Hillis also recommends a new spin on the old admonition “See your doctor before beginning any exercise program.”

“I recommend getting a Runner’s Profile examination done before undertaking an exercise program involving running,” he says, citing an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Such an examination would also benefit the serious amateur and professional runner seeking performance enhancement. Walkers with problems may benefit from this profile also.

“People will study sporting equipment catalogues, subscribe to runner’s magazines and spend hundreds of dollars on their shoes,” Hillis says, “when what they really should be paying attention to is the structural alignment of their feet.”

More Practical Dietary Considerations

I have been practicing alternative health care over the last twenty-five plus years and I want to talk about some practical additional points beyond basic diet and just help the individual along who is trying to figure out what to eat and to comment on a variety of additional food items for consideration. There is no single recommendation here that is correct for everybody. These are general considerations for you to evaluate to see if it fits right for your diet and for you to discuss with your individual healthcare practitioner, myself, or some other person that you are working with. So we just wanted to cover a list of do’s, and don’ts and suggestions and possibilities for you to consider.

I will start out with the elimination list. It seems that there is a very strong growing movement urging the elimination of two major food groups from our diet that really should be taken into serious consideration. The list is just growing on some of the dangers in these foods and first, let me just warn you that some of these foods are considered sacred and of course, the first sacred cow is cow’s milk products. I will just generalize and say that probably most things you ever heard about dairy came from the American Dairy Council or from speakers who were somehow influenced by the research that was paid for by this industry, or directly paid for or affiliated with the dairy council, the dairy industry, or who receives stipends or support in one way or another from them. The frequency of disorders being aggravated, affected and caused by dairy products is increasing. I urge you to go on the internet and look up the literature in this area. The next sacred item is wheat! The two most important things that a person who is struggling with a chronic health problem could do for themselves may be elimination of wheat and dairy in the context of a healthy diet. The body of literature in the field of neurology as well as gastroenterology is growing rapidly with papers in mainstream journals around the world citing the damage done by certain grains, especially wheat, rye and corn. And this is again something about which there is an abundance of literature on the internet. I urge you to go there if you have any question about it but the elimination of dairy and wheat which could be a major step forward in someones overall health program.

Of further concern, we have refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, and junk food that everybody knows about in terms of the problems with excessive sweets. Pastas, remember, are wheat. Cakes are wheat and have to be considered as such. Most commercial breads are wheat. So these are foods that are very sacred to a lot of people, but nevertheless when eliminated can begin turning the health situation around. Of course, I shouldn’t need to mention candies in general and foods that you feel addicted to as foods that likely need to be eliminated. If you feel that this is the favorite kind of food that you like and that you could just not do without it, if you have what we refer to as a “craving” for a food, it may be the very thing that is undermining your health. That is a topic of a separate talk, the area of “allergic addiction” in food allergies. If you feel you are addicted to a food or if you don’t feel you are addicted to it and you don’t crave it because you actually have it every day, so there is no craving because you just have it constantly, then this may be a problem to you. The bowl of ice cream every night, the chocolate that you have to have every single day or several times a day, this can be the pattern of consumption that is the red flag to knowing that this is really something that may well be behind your problem and there are ways to followup on that to find out the extent to which is a food is truly damaging. But this is just a preliminary head-ups for you about what to look for in discovering your hidden allergic additions in your diet.

Many soy substitute products can be of concern; just calling that to your attention. The last thing I want to bring up is soy sauce and the reason I bring that up is that the first ingredient on virtually every bottle of soy sauce, would you believe, is wheat. If you are sensitive to wheat or wheat is a problem for you and you are using soy sauce, not even thinking that soy sauce would have wheat in it, you now know.

Switching topics now, I would like to talk about suggestions for desserts and condiments. There is a general rule of thumb in traditional macrobiotic circles that dairy should be reserved for use as a condiment or occasional dessert. And so under that category, one might consider something like yogurts for occasional consumption. Under that same heading would go certain custards and perhaps, on a rare occasion, imported cheeses, goat cheese rarely, sheep cheese rarely may be tolerated by some on an occasional basis. And keep in mind that we have Rice Dream and other substitutes that you can think about for use as desserts if cows products are a problem and you are looking for alternatives.

Moving along, I am just going to talk about sweeteners for a moment. I will talk about the use of occasional honey as a sweetener and in cooking and that this may be acceptable. On the other hand, I get concerned when I hear people talking about the benefits of honey and I see that they are consuming it at a pace that is rather rapid and going through jars of honey on an ongoing basis with the notion that they are feeding their health, when really it appears to be that this feeding the sweet tooth by using honey to satisfy unhandled blood sugar handling problems or as a way of stimulating the system. So honey used appropriately is acceptable, and it can also be abused. We have Stevia sweetener available now. It is a new product in the commercial marketplace, I believe another called Truvia and is available as packets and to my knowledge I am not aware of any downside to it unless you happen to have an individual sensitivity to it, it may be a very acceptable alternative to other sweeteners such as cane sugar packets and certainly we want to avoid aspartame and Splenda which have their own inherent problems. Again I urge you that if you are consuming these, that if you have been fooled by the sucralose name and thinking that it is a relatively benign product or if you don’t know much about aspartame, you want to go on the internet and look at some of the literature explaining why these may be so bad for you. I would certainly consider Stevia your sweetener of preference if you must have one. Again, the stevia sweetener I think is one of the best and easiest choices right now.

On a totally different topic, I would like to point out that for those of us who are not necessarily the most organically and naturally pure, but want to eat a healthy diet, the use of certain sauces that we usually would use on meat, can be used with certain vegetables and other places in cooking that you may appreciate. Actually if you read the label of Worcestershire sauce and A-1 Steak Sauce, you would be surprised at how clean the label really is in terms of the ingredients. So these are something if you want to move away from a purist point of view, could be part of a relatively clean diet to dress up the food.

Moving on, I just want to talk about mushrooms briefly. It can be a fabulously wonderful food, stimulating and protective to the immune system but there is some warning for those who may be sensitive to yeast or individually to mushroom itself. If these are not issues and you are sure of that, then we encourage you to use mushrooms. Use mushrooms that you are highly confident are suitable for eating. In other words, don’t go out and pick your own mushrooms unless you are truly an expert in the field. Of those that are available in the supermarkets and health food stores, you might want to consider looking at the ones that are not so anatomically perfect and symmetrical as some of the others and often these are richer in nutrients.

Again, another area I would like to talk about is that of having an iodine source. It is well established that there are “goiter belts” around the world. These are areas that medical science has defined as areas that are just endemically relatively deficient in iodine and many regions of the United States are that way. The more land-locked an area is, the more that will tend to be an issue, and an interesting caution on this is for those who are trying to eat healthier and perhaps are using sea salt is that most sea salt may not contain adequate iodine or sufficient iodine at all to provide an adequate daily source. In many areas of the world, sea vegetables like kelp and other seaweeds are used on a daily basis in the cooking process and, of course, this does not happen in much of the western world. So some sort of regular iodine source needs to be kept in mind especially in our world where we use so many chloride cleaning products and fluoride additives to toothpaste and in dental procedures and these chlorides and fluorides can actually, in a electro-chemical way, “beat out” iodine in its proper place in our thyroids and so having adequate iodine around to give it a chance to get in and fulfill its role in our health is very important. The use of kelp powder or other seaweed products on a regular basis can help in that area.

Going on to another topic, I would just like to mention something about butter and that is that butter is obviously from cows, it is a dairy product, however, the inherent difficulties with dairy products, in my experience and understanding, is generally associated with either the proteins or the carbohydrates of the dairy and not necessarily the fat. So the possibility of using a certain amount of butter remains open and reasonably plausible for some people and it can certainly be superior to other butter substitutes. The recent caution, however, that I became aware of and had not thought of previously, is that it is the fat layers of our body and it is fat in general in cows that is going to harbor most of the pesticides and other fat soluble poisons that will permeate and absorb into the fat and avoid the areas of the anatomical physiology that could be, if you will, washed out by water flow or fluid flow as opposed to being retained in fat layers. So when using butter, one really should go out of their way to pay the extra money to buy the organic butter so that you are assured that the butter is not coming laced with things that you wouldn’t want to see hidden biochemically as toxins. Use organic butter, if you are going to use some butter.

The last topic I would like to bring up is the use of kudzu or sometimes kuzu, you will see it labeled arrowroot commercially. This is the root of a plant and it is often used in processed cooking as a thickener. It is used in unprocessed cooking in the natural kitchen as a thickening agent also. It also can be made up as a tea for cleansing. It has adsorbant properties to it meaning that its surface area has an affinity for binding to other substances around it, much like activated charcoal does and it can be used as soothing tea for the intestinal tract and for a thickening when that is required in a distressed intestinal tract. You would mix a teaspoon of this in hot water and add a little sea salt to taste and drink it as you would a thick soup or tea. It can be a cleansing kind of beverage and also used for thickening in routine cooking and has some detoxification effect in that manner also.

With that, I have come to the end of my nutritional tidbits that I would like to give you for today and I hope this helps you think more about your diet with some of the additional choices you have and that it provides some thoughts that are not too limiting, and yet keep you within reasonable parameters to stay healthy.

Serious, Chronic & Persistent HEADACHES?

Serious, Chronic & Persistent HEADACHES?

A checklist for some of the most difficult cases! Have you had these evaluated?

1. VSA (Viscero-Somatic Reflex Nerve Analysis) – What’s that? A functional nerve exam to determine which nerves from which organs are sending overwhelming distress signals causing headache pain. (Neurologists are not trained to do this, only functional health care doctors do this, i.e., SOT or Applied Kinesiology trained doctors.)

2. 4-Point Cortisol Exam with AM & PM DHEA evaluation (a hormonal stress test)

3. Inflammation Indices – How much hidden inflammation are you carrying – blood test exams.

4. Neurotransmitter Testing – actual measurement of your serotonin, adrenalin, norepinephrine, dopamine, GABA and others. Improving neurotransmitter balance with proper amino acid therapy can be an important part of headache therapy – a must in migraines and chronic pain syndromes.

5. Blood Sugar Handling Stress Evaluation with blood tests including fasting insulin and triglyceride interpretation.

6. Craniofacial and TMJ Balance – a must screening for many headache sufferers.

What Diet is Best for You?

It's Tuesday! Hard to believe it's already the 2nd day of June! Hope it's a great day for you.

Today I want to talk about diets and which diet is best for you. I am going to start right out by saying that generally our position is that diets don’t work and that there is no real diet that is the right one for you and so that is our talk for today. Thank you for listening, have a good day. Actually, we do want to talk about it a little bit more than that. :)

There have been many diets out over the years from the vegetarian based, the Ornish type diets to the Dr. Atkins diet and each of these and many diets out there have good benefits to them but, as to which one is really the right one for a given individual, it is hard to say. There is controversy around each one of these diets more than there is agreement and there is enough information out there, I think, on the critiques and criticism of each and every one of these and the downsides and the upsides of each of these diets discussed in popular books and on the internet, so we will not repeat that information here. So that all having been said, one does need to adapt a healthy diet for their life. What is a person to do when they do not know all that much about eating and they would really like to do it right if somebody would only tell them what to eat. In trying to help individuals like this, I guess we give in a little bit and doctors like myself and I, who think in the arena of what is called functional health care or functional medicine, would agree that probably the one diet, if you want to call it a diet, that we can feel comfortable putting out there for people to take a look at is the Mediterranean diet. The Mediterranean diet goes something like this. It is salads with a lot of salmon, a lot of fish, with a lot of vegetables, green vegetables and salads and salmon and fish and vegetables, and salad and salmon and more salmon and then some more salmon. So, I think you get the idea. This diet may also include such items as spinach, olives, extra-virgin first cold pressed olive oil, and sea salt and these types of preparations. The research seems to bear out that people eating this type of diet do well with their health. There seems to be a prevalence of thriving health in these areas where this type of diet is eaten and if one wanted to give a model to somebody on how to eat, we might ask you to model after that. Again, some really need more guidance. Some, likely based on personality types, will demand a more specific dietary guideline.

And so we don’t encounter this that often, but if this is the case, I will give approval to the blood type diets and that is something that you can look in to. One of the books is called “Eat Right For Your Blood Type” and it will help you decide whether you are more of a natural vegetarian or a carnivore or omnivore, according to your blood type and you can pick up the books on this and read about it on your own and if that is the course you would like to follow, the majority of colleagues that I have met in the functional medicine world seem to agree that this is pretty reliable information and this would be something that you could feel comfortable following.

In moving on from there, some of the other highlights that I would like to emphasize is getting live food into your diet, especially of fruits and uncooked vegetables. In the area of fruits, we want to call your attention to the glycemic index and ask you to pick fruits from the 50% down level in glycemic index. Glycemic index has to do with the concentration or sugar load in that food and how rapidly the sugar is released into your system from the food and so items like berries, apples, pears, melons, grapes, citrus or a whole pomegranate, blueberries are often considered as more ideal fruits as per the glycemic index. Vegetables and salads should be emphasized heavily. Vegetables, uncooked, as many as possible and likely steamed for the others. Fish can be a valuable part of your diet. You might want to go on the internet and google “fish and mercury levels” and get a listing of which fish are safest and we would like to encourage you to be attentive to this one specific piece of information on salmon. You want to purchase the “wild” “Alaskan” or “Coho”, these are code words that food authorities have only allowed to be used in the case of truly wild salmon which have a healthier physiology and healthier distribution of natural fats in their body that are good for you.

Another very important area of emphasis is grains. We want to emphasize a very strong case for the elimination of wheat from most people’s diet. This is just a rapidly growing area of information. There is specific laboratory testing which can be done to see if this is even more of a serious consideration for you than just a hypothetical consideration. In general, the grains we would steer you toward, unless you are specifically sensitive to them, are buckwheat, flax, barley, oats, quinoa, and that would be about it.

We would like to encourage you in the area of nuts and seeds. Walnuts and almonds are particularly beneficial with high levels of healthy fats and other protective nutrients. Almonds, pecans, peanuts and sunflower seeds can also be considered and walnuts of course would be types of nut that are a good option.

In the area of meats, this an individual matter and probably needs to be worked out with a nutritional practitioner for the individual, but obviously you would want to avoid excessive beef intake, if not avoid beef altogether, and the other remaining choices are usually turkey, chicken, eggs, venison and duck, when prepared properly. You can chose from those and depending on your particular body type, whether you are a high inflammatory type or a low inflammatory type, you may want to eliminate these meats altogether for a period of time of lesser or greater duration.

The other area of concern is oils. The two to think most carefully about are olive oils, extra virgin, first cold pressed and extra virgin coconut oil can also be used as a wonderful cooking vehicle if you like the taste. It is somewhat “coconutty” in taste of course, but not as much as you would think. Regarding spices, you want to keep anti-inflammatory spices in the diet such as tumeric and ginger when appropriate and the use of sea salt and kelp powder could be very wonderful addition to your flavoring in your cooking. Salad dressings might be the extra virgin first cold pressed olive oils primarily and we would encourage you to read labels very carefully.

Lastly, just a reminder, that white potatoes are extremely high on the glycemic index and is something that many of you may want to avoid.

All of this above having been stated, if you have been tested for food allergies or sensitivities, of course, that would prevail and you would need to eliminate those foods.

Of course, there are many other problems that we could get into and we could discuss diet for hours. You can reach us for more information at telephone number 239-597-3929 and on the internet at www.NaplesPainRelief.com

Food Sensitivity Testing

Good Morning!

As you may know, I've practicing alternative health care over the last twenty-five plus years and we do a lot of functional health care testing in our office to help people get well from chronic conditions that they have been suffering from. In a variety of conditions, we will rely on information from food sensitivity and food allergy testing as part of our protocol for helping these individuals get well. These difficulties with food sensitivities can be found in the most obvious situations such as reflux disorders, digestive disorders, colitis and irritable bowel as well as in other less obvious situations where people may have hidden allergies that they are really not aware of, and these may be undermining their immune system and their energy levels such as in adrenal fatigue syndromes and in other chronic health problems where people are worn down over a long period of time and progress to more degenerative processes that spiral-down their health.

There are three major ways of looking at food allergy outside of skin testing that I would like to address. Many people familiar with skin testing where many items are tested at once and this is a valid form of allergy testing and, in my opinion, should be reserved for those who have medically threatening conditions related to allergic responses where they may be at risk for anaphylaxis or closing up of the throat and disorders leading to compromise of the kidney and other grave medical conditions. Those are the kinds of patients that belong with a medical allergist. On the other hand, the vast majority of people with sensitivities and food allergies that are hidden from their awareness would likely be best served from the evaluation by a simple blood test, where your blood is drawn in the usual fashion and then reacted with, let’s say, a hundred different foods, to see whether or not certain reactions occur to the blood indicating that there is a problem with that food. So, in the area of food antibody testing, there is the classic IgE antibody assessment and the blood will be reacted with a number of foods and the laboratory will measure whether or not your blood has developed an antibody to the particular food substance and then measure how severe the antibody response is. The IgE food allergy assessment and IgE assessments in general, such as for other environmental elements like molds and trees, etc., that type of allergic response is more of an immediate response. Sometimes we call it an atopic response. An example would be the classic strawberry and hives reaction where you eat strawberries and some minutes later, you notice that you are developing hives. So these are the types of allergies that very often people would be well aware of and indeed, some authorities state that when somebody has an IgE allergy, that they are generally always aware of it. My experience has been different. There are actually many people who do have IgE allergies to foods and other inhalants and environmentals that are not aware of it, and so that is an important point to keep this in mind.
We do have testing for what we called “hidden allergies” and that would be IgG food allergies where a different type of antibody is produced by the food and this type of response can take anywhere from 72 hours up to a whole week to develop and so the impact on the body is delayed by the timing of the reaction in such a way that it is very hard to track. One cannot usually tell that the sweet potatoes that they were allergic to, that they had at dinner four days ago, is what is impacting their health and perhaps dragging down their energy levels at this point in time. So the finding of hidden food allergies can be a gold mine of value to the person who is suffering chronic health disorders in enabling them to get a hold of a list of foods that is pulling down their health quotient that they did not even know about, and that with that list, they are then equipped to eliminate those foods and avoid that “drag” on their physiology and help open up a new avenue towards healing and improved health.

The third area of food testing that I would like to talk about is leukocyte sensitivity testing and that is where we react your blood samples with the various foods that we are testing and we look to see what happens with the white blood cells. The white blood cells, the leukocytes swell in size, and they are rated as to a level of sensitivity; if they burst open they are considered severe reactions and these are rated for you. This is another form of testing in which we can detect foods that are offensive to your system, actually damaging your white blood cells which would signal alarm reactions in your body as it does in any form of allergic insult. This alarm mechanism is then distressing to the rest of your system and your body has to deal with this. If you are compromised in one area and you are fighting this hidden allergy at the same time, you are left with less reserve. Solving food sensitivities and food allergies can follow a process to recovery in a variety of chronic health conditions especially fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, chronic digestive problems, and often chronic headaches. There are many conditions in which this can be a very valuable tool.

If you would like to know more about these testing instruments and how to get tested, you can contact me, Dr. Dan Hillis, Chiropractic Physician in Naples, Florida, at 239-597-3929 or on the web at www.NaplesPainRelief.com

Chronic Digestive Problems

I have been working with comprehensive solutions to difficult health problems for my entire career and would like to talk today about chronic digestive problems. This is a very big topic. We could spend hours on this easily. We are just going to try and give you a few minutes of over-view and let you be aware of some alternatives for handling certain digestive problems that many people are unaware of.

Amongst the most common problems that have alternative solutions that they may not be aware of that we hear of so often today are reflux disorders, of nervous stomach-type problems and what sometimes people refer to as irritable bowel disorders, also, food sensitivities, problems with upper digestive issues including belching and bloating problems and especially the bowel problems. Often these problems treated in the mainstream medical world tend to not always resolve so well. Sometimes certain conditions, reflux disorders will actually stay under control as long as the person takes medication but when they come off the medications, their conditions often revert, signaling that they really haven’t gotten to the bottom cause of their problem. They have really been doing something to just relieve the symptoms and not getting at the underlying cause. On the TV commercials for these drugs, there is always that tag-on warning that you may still have ongoing disease in your gastrointestinal tract despite the relief that you get. If you listen carefully, you will hear that kind of warning.

On the other end of the digestive tract, we have the experience of people with intestinal and bowel problems and colitis who I hear of going to gastroenterologists over the years and having repeated “scopings,” and brief visits over-the-desk, and ongoing use of medications with not so satisfactory results. These people seem to go on with a lifetime of difficulties, a lifetime of struggle and while they may get some relief from some of the medications, it often carries a high price, especially if these are steroids which is often a fall-back drug when these people get in to more acute trouble. It often is a wonder to me that these individuals, in all the time that they have seen their doctors have not had any kind of functional health analysis of what is going on with their problems. They have not had comprehensive stool analyses, they have not had comprehensive evaluations of what is going on inside their intestinal tract, they have not had broad-spectrum microbiological evaluations, they have not been cultured for yeast, they have not had additional biochemical parameters for inflammation and digestive absorptive problems and immunological changes that can occur inside the intestinal tract. They have not had evaluation of the bio-markers that are available for evaluating the health of the cells lining the intestines and their exams are often limited to an evaluation for whether blood is present or not and for some of the more virulent bacteria which may cause obvious diarrheal disease only. There can be many other imbalances that can occur and a test called the Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis is often recommended for these patients in a setting like my office so that we can get a much better over-view of what is going on in their intestines. A sampling of some of the two most recent tests we have done revealed a marked overgrowth of “klebsiella pneumonia” causing an imbalance in flora along with a complete absence of bifidobacterium, one of the beneficial flora. Another study revealed a significant yeast overgrowth. There are many points of information that can be gained by appropriate functional health testing for individuals with chronic intestinal difficulties.

In terms of reflux disorders and in terms of intolerance in the upper digestive tract, many people are treated with drugs over the years and have never ever been tested for food sensitivities or food allergies. There are blood tests that can simply test for these problems and this is a whole other topic of discussion but these are tests that are done on a routine basis in a setting like this office. In addition, we check for soft tissue distortions, cramping of the diaphragm around the stomach, distortions in the soft tissues of the gallbladder and the ileocecal valve area which are frequent areas of disturbance that we find and are able to work with in a gentle corrective manner to help individuals overcome their problems. Again, taking a more functional health approach, a more in-depth look at various functions of the digestive tract and looking to see where the individual has gone out of balance and helping with that, as well as restoring the nerve supply to their digestive organs, is an approach that is very satisfying and has helped many people who have been suffering without better resolutions to their problems.

We would like to help you. If you or a loved one is suffering these types of problems, please feel free to contact me. I can be reached on the phone at 239-597-3929 and our web site is www.NaplesPainRelief.com and I would be happy to answer your questions.





Daniel P. Hillis, DC
Chiropractic Physician
Clinical Nutrition and Kinesiology
Chiropractic Cranial Care
Naples, Florida
www.NaplesPainRelief.com
Office: 239-597-3929

PLANTAR FASCIITIS

Today I am going to talk about plantar fasciitis. I just had this discussion with somebody at a health event the other day. The gentleman was a physical health educator and he explained how in his experience that the occurrence of plantar fasciitis amongst the athletically active health education teacher was an issue of “when” they would get and not “if” they would get it. He went on to explain that he had discovered the most efficient treatment for it that he knew of and was eager to share it with everybody, and essentially it involved wrapping his foot in ice packs for hours at a time. I would like to talk about this topic a little bit more because we do see plantar fasciitis fairly often in practice. We see patients from other medical offices where they have had treatment already and they may have had some partial relief and these individuals are still distressed with pain and quite relieved to come somewhere where they find that the problem can be dealt with directly and forth-rightly without drugs or surgery.

Plantar fasciitis is a condition where there is essentially a tightening of the muscular-like tissue at the bottom of the foot that runs back and forth from the front to the back of the foot, predominantly in the arch area of the foot and usually what we find is very tight bands of spasm that may have progressed to a worse form of spasm, called fibrotic spasm or fibrotic degenerative spasm, as well as a form of tendonitis where the plantar fascia fibers, the muscular-like fibers, are pulled from their origins and insertions from their front and back attachments to where they insert into the bones of the feet. We call this pulling “micro-avulsion”. This literally is a “yanking out of place” and involves micro-tears of the insertions of the plantar muscular fibers. They are actually often torn out of their attachments into the bony areas of the foot and this is often the beginning of spur formation in those areas, resulting in pinpoint pain, usually back toward the heel area. Invariably the person with plantar fasciitis does describe pain along the bottom of the foot, often worse when they try to stretch that foot and curiously, from my perspective, one of the common treatments for plantar fasciitis is stretching, which usually is torturous and aggravating to the condition. I guess I have seen this mostly from the podiatrists and physical therapists. The stretching of that musculature can bring people some temporary relief. Overall, I have not seen it be highly effective. The thought is apparently that since the musculature is tight, it should be stretched. It is my experience that this tightening, in most cases, is beyond stretching and that the stretching tends to cause a reactive defensive posturing of that musculature, tightening it up even more, and sometimes aggravating by increasing the pulling of the tendonous-like insertions and perhaps even bringing on greater propensity to ultimate spur formation. At worst, it just doesn’t seem to get the kind of result that people would expect. Instead, we generally recommend an approach that would involve loosening those muscular fibers and there are several different approaches that could be taken and one of them is called “spindle cell therapy” which is a highly specific kind of myofascial release technique that causes the muscular-like fibers of the plantar fascia to let go and relax down and loosen up in length and take some of the pull off of their insertions and allow for more flexibility without stretching therapy, so that when the individual does perform activities that lead to the natural stretching of the arch in order to function and move about, the stretching is well tolerated and not irritating.

Often orthotics are recommended for these individuals and again sometimes there is relief and this is highly variable. My thought about this is that the condition should undergo at least a certain amount of fundamental correction. It is not often that I find a foot/ankle complex free of other distortions when somebody has plantar fasciitis. We believe one of the causes of plantar fasciitis has to do with partial trapping of the nerve that feeds the plantar fascia through the ankle at what is called the tarsal tunnel, a tunnel-like opening like the carpal tunnel, at the ankle. There is a major nerve that runs through there and when it is pressed upon by misalignments of the ankle, it will cause tightening of the plantar fascia at one point and ultimately can lead to abnormal relaxation but nevertheless, abnormalities of responsiveness of the plantar fascia due to compromised nerve control. So one of the first things we look for is misalignments in the ankle and the heel and get these corrected and then take the approach of going toward the plantar fascia, relaxing it appropriately through specialized myofascial release techniques, and then we can teach the patient some home vibrational massage techniques and then it would be appropriate to move forward with orthotics for the rehabilitated foot so that they could be supported in their healthier position.

These problems are often left unhandled, and, often people don’t know of the choices that might be available in a chiropractic biomechanical setting and instead elect for procedures involving injections and sometimes, even surgery. If you are somebody who has had plantar fasciitis and would like to avoid injections and surgery and have not had a course of conservative care like I have described, I would certainly recommend that you find a chiropractor who is trained in this type of care and who can evaluate you and see if you are an appropriate candidate for that type of care and start you on a road to getting you better.

We would like to help you. If you or a loved one is suffering these types of problems, please feel free to contact me. I can be reached on the phone at 239-597-3929 and our web site is www.NaplesPainRelief.com and I would be happy to answer your questions.

Staying Focused Managing Your Child’s Autism

When you know something is not right with your child, and you’ve entered the diagnostic arena, get your diagnosis and get out soon. Get out of the diagnostic preoccupation game sooner than later. The traditional medical model would dictate the need for the ultimate and absolute diagnosis before anything at all could be done to actually begin the work of making improvements in the given situation. This does not have to be so. Take the diagnostics to a reasonable point and if you have the idea that your child falls somewhere on the autistic spectrum somewhere, do not get lost and lose time and energy that could be spent on assessing those parts of the puzzle about which something real and practical can be done. Many parents have wasted precious time while the young “impressionable”, “malleable”, “plastic” and potentially changeable brain and nervous system is allowed to “harden” it’s wires into deeper neurologic distortion.

My admonition is to quickly and rationally identify the sub-sets of the physiologic functions gone wrong, and deal with as many of these as possible, all at the same time.

One needs to cast a wide net of investigation over the possible physiologic parameters gone wrong in order to help the child that has definitely diagnosed or suspected autistic spectrum disorder.

There is a relative window of opportunity in most cases that generally involves getting onto a course of “functional” investigations and treatments sooner rather than later in your developing child. The child has to develop strategies for survival and coping in a world that is coming thru to that child’s brain in a rather distorted way. This forces the child to adapt strategies for relating to that environment as best as that child can adapt, under the distorted circumstances. If some of the distortions can be removed or improved upon, the child then has to adapt new strategies vs. the prior strategies that served him or her best previously. A trusted strategy now has to be surrendered to a new strategy. This process involves serious change. Change, by its very nature, whether for good or bad, is stressful to the already stressed nervous system. In short, get in there fast and furiously, (with both feet on the ground, nothing rash and crazy to be going on) and seize the earliest time to avoid the “hardening” of the plasticity of the brain and nervous system that you do have on your side. It’s only so plastic, although so plastic that hope is usually on your side and cautious optimism is very appropriate.

Once you pass the initial diagnostic phase, the “official pronouncement”, of the diagnosis or presumed diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder, then you are first facing the functional diagnostics of finding out what’s really wrong with your child, behind the label. You want investigation, testing, and treatment of your child, not your child’s new medical label, as if there is an aspirin available for the simple headache with predictable relief. Quite to the contrary, as most of those reading this already know, it seems like a lot less certain and known, than known and predictable. But, there are a variety of sources available now for a variety of types of help.
I will present here an initial list of tests and treatments that should be considered for your child. This is not an all-inclusive list at all, but meant to call attention to innovative methods that should not be overlooked. Fortunately, functional health investigations (also known as “functional medicine”) have made headway into more and more treatment networks for autistic spectrum children.

An initial checklist would include a neurotransmitter assay. This ordinarily involves a morning urine sample that is sent to a lab specializing in measuring neurotransmitters, such as NeuroScience Labs founded by Gottfried Kellerman, PhD. Dr. Kellerman is a brilliant and concerned biochemist of many years experience, specializing in neuroscience and neurotransmitter evaluations, and who lectures to doctors all around the nation on this topic. Measurements of neuroexcitatory neurotransmitters such as glutamate, epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine, PEA, histamine and others, as well as measurement f inhibitory neurotransmitters such as GABA, serotonin, taurine, and others, have provided invaluable information to guide doctors with the use of non-pharmaceutical amino acids in balancing neurotransmitters safely and efficiently. The whole area of neurotransmitter testing and amino acid therapy should be considered an essential component of a comprehensive approach to helping the child caught in the autistic spectrum problem.

The whole area of identification of food and environmental substance allergy, hidden allergy, and intolerances should be welcomed as a potential source of high yield information for helping your child. Food and inhalant panels for IgE (atopic, or short term reactants), IgG panels for foods and environmentals (delayed reaction antibody responses) and food and environmental substance intolerance panels (measuring the degree of white blood cell damage in the presence of various dietary and food additives and household chemical exposure) should be considered a mainstay in this area of evaluation. Dr. Russel Jaffee, MD, PhD, of NIH research fame, recently made his sophisticated food and environmental sensitivity testing available again. He is the developer of this “LRA by ELISA-ACT” method of testing. All these tests involve a single blood draw that is used to react with hundreds of possible offending substances, according to what is ordered. Testing options include foods, food additives, household chemicals, chlorine and fluoride, spices, trees, pets, molds, and others including antibiotics and other prescription medications to be tested for sensitivity. The panels are modified as logic and financial expenditure are considered.

Another test often comes into consideration when there are many allergies or sensitivities or simply when an overview of the condition identifies gastrointestinal involvements that the practitioner chooses not to ignore as presumed unrelated, until investigated. Practitioners who are not acutely aware of the “gut-brain connection” may, not consider some symptoms such as chronic bloating or excessive gas, worthy of further evaluation. There are many interactions that go on in the intestinal tract that influence the brain and central nervous system function. An interesting point of information that helps illuminate gut-brain interrelatedness would be the fact that approximately 94% of the serotonin driven nerve pathways are in the gastrointestinal tract and only 4% in the brain. This seems opposite of what many would intuitively think but remains an interesting fact.

Investigation of the intestinal health picture with a Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis, as is available through Genova Labs and Doctor’s Data Labs, can be a very productive lab test in providing information regarding function gone wrong in the intestine that can be directly insulting to the immune and nervous system functions.

The Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis provides upwards of at least 50 tests of function covering a wide are of enzymatic, microbiologic and immune markers. It is probably the most clinically efficacious way of determining whether there actually is an overgrowth of yeast/candida species by scientific culture and sensitivity testing as well as direct microscopic evaluations. In this manner, unnecessary speculation regarding yeast issues can be turned into an objective laboratory question. The experienced clinician knows how to logically resolve the often belabored “yeast question” into a factual yes or no matter with sensitivity testing to guide rational treatment when indicated. Other tests of “commensal” bacterial overgrowth, leading to “dysbiosis” that may adversely affect function can be tested and likely corrected. Measurement of pro-biotic bacteria by direct culture and measurement is performed and is often an issue where there has been past antibiotic exposure of significance. When these problems are found they should be treated and not left unattended.

In this limited checklist of important evaluations, lastly, but possibly most important, and least often pursued is the “structural-functional” examination of the cranium for “cranial distortion patterns” by a doctor trained in craniopathic analysis and treatment. This field is generally limited to doctors trained in “craniopathy” or “cranial manipulation” from training backgrounds in Sacro Occipital Technique, post-doctoral training programs in “Cranial Technique”, or from appropriately trained practitioners in Applied Kinesiology post doctoral programs, or by a similarly trained cranial osteopath.

The purpose of this form of cranial evaluation and treatment is to provide for normalization of the structural influences on proper cerebrospinal fluid flow by specific corrections of the cranial mechanisms that allow for normal living motion in the mechanisms that propel the nutritive and electrolyte properties of the cerebrospinal fluid to bathe all of the central nervous system. This helps improve and restore the natural rhythmic and pulsatile movement of the brain and cord structures that pump fluid up and down through the brain. Disorders here can block the ability of your child to fully process other informational training and corrections being used.

Other tests and investigations and considerations for a simple blood test of red blood cells for heavy metal content which may be a useful first screen for mercury and related issues to help weigh relevance in a given case.

The organic acids profile has been described by the famous Sidney Baker, MD, Yale Child Study Pediatrician, as a urine test that can be likened to examining your automobile exhaust to see how the engine is working. There are over forty metabolites of major fundamental metabolic pathways in the body that are measured to see if looking “backwards through the biochemical systems, if we can see something gone wrong in a fundamental area of human biochemical performance, that would likely go unnoticed otherwise. As a non-invasive comprehensive urine study, it’s an invaluable tool in a complete investigation.

It is hoped that this partial checklist for the functional evaluation and care of a child with suspected autistic spectrum disorder serves as a worthy primer and inspires parents to mobilize and work hard to continue to be faithful to providing the very best possible care for their children.



Daniel P. Hillis, DC
Chiropractic Physician
Clinical Nutrition and Kinesiology
Chiropractic Cranial Care
Naples, Florida
www.NaplesPainRelief.com
Office: 239-597-3929

Memorial Day Weekend

http://www.usmemorialday.org/act.html

"Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic." -- General Logan - May 5, 1868

We need to remember with sincere respect those who paid the price for our freedoms; we need to keep in sacred remembrance those who died serving their country. We need to never let them be forgotten. However, over the years the original meaning and spirit of Memorial Day has faded from the public consciousness.

http://www.usmemorialday.org/act.html

What Diet is Best for YOU?

I have been practicing utilizing nutrition and metabolics for over twenty-five years and today we are going to talk about diets and which diet is best for you. I am going to start right out by saying that generally our position is that diets don’t work and that there is no real diet that is the right one for you and so that is our talk for today. Thank you for listening, have a good day. Actually, we do want to talk about it a little bit more than that.

There have been many diets out over the years from the vegetarian based, the Ornish type diets to the Dr. Atkins diet and each of these and many diets out there have good benefits to them but, as to which one is really the right one for a given individual, it is hard to say. There is controversy around each one of these diets more than there is agreement and there is enough information out there, I think, on the critiques and criticism of each and every one of these and the downsides and the upsides of each of these diets discussed in popular books and on the internet, so we will not repeat that information here. So that all having been said, one does need to adapt a healthy diet for their life. What is a person to do when they do not know all that much about eating and they would really like to do it right if somebody would only tell them what to eat. In trying to help individuals like this, I guess we give in a little bit and doctors like myself and I, who think in the arena of what is called functional health care or functional medicine, would agree that probably the one diet, if you want to call it a diet, that we can feel comfortable putting out there for people to take a look at is the Mediterranean diet. The Mediterranean diet goes something like this. It is salads with a lot of salmon, a lot of fish, with a lot of vegetables, green vegetables and salads and salmon and fish and vegetables, and salad and salmon and more salmon and then some more salmon. So, I think you get the idea. This diet may also include such items as spinach, olives, extra-virgin first cold pressed olive oil, and sea salt and these types of preparations. The research seems to bear out that people eating this type of diet do well with their health. There seems to be a prevalence of thriving health in these areas where this type of diet is eaten and if one wanted to give a model to somebody on how to eat, we might ask you to model after that. Again, some really need more guidance. Some, likely based on personality types, will demand a more specific dietary guideline.

And so we don’t encounter this that often, but if this is the case, I will give approval to the blood type diets and that is something that you can look in to. One of the books is called “Eat Right For Your Blood Type” and it will help you decide whether you are more of a natural vegetarian or a carnivore or omnivore, according to your blood type and you can pick up the books on this and read about it on your own and if that is the course you would like to follow, the majority of colleagues that I have met in the functional medicine world seem to agree that this is pretty reliable information and this would be something that you could feel comfortable following.

In moving on from there, some of the other highlights that I would like to emphasize is getting live food into your diet, especially of fruits and uncooked vegetables. In the area of fruits, we want to call your attention to the glycemic index and ask you to pick fruits from the 50% down level in glycemic index. Glycemic index has to do with the concentration or sugar load in that food and how rapidly the sugar is released into your system from the food and so items like berries, apples, pears, melons, grapes, citrus or a whole pomegranate, blueberries are often considered as more ideal fruits as per the glycemic index. Vegetables and salads should be emphasized heavily. Vegetables, uncooked, as many as possible and likely steamed for the others. Fish can be a valuable part of your diet. You might want to go on the internet and google “fish and mercury levels” and get a listing of which fish are safest and we would like to encourage you to be attentive to this one specific piece of information on salmon. You want to purchase the “wild” “Alaskan” or “Coho”, these are code words that food authorities have only allowed to be used in the case of truly wild salmon which have a healthier physiology and healthier distribution of natural fats in their body that are good for you.

Another very important area of emphasis is grains. We want to emphasize a very strong case for the elimination of wheat from most people’s diet. This is just a rapidly growing area of information. There is specific laboratory testing which can be done to see if this is even more of a serious consideration for you than just a hypothetical consideration. In general, the grains we would steer you toward, unless you are specifically sensitive to them, are buckwheat, flax, barley, oats, quinoa, and that would be about it.

We would like to encourage you in the area of nuts and seeds. Walnuts and almonds are particularly beneficial with high levels of healthy fats and other protective nutrients. Almonds, pecans, peanuts and sunflower seeds can also be considered and walnuts of course would be types of nut that are a good option.

In the area of meats, this an individual matter and probably needs to be worked out with a nutritional practitioner for the individual, but obviously you would want to avoid excessive beef intake, if not avoid beef altogether, and the other remaining choices are usually turkey, chicken, eggs, venison and duck, when prepared properly. You can chose from those and depending on your particular body type, whether you are a high inflammatory type or a low inflammatory type, you may want to eliminate these meats altogether for a period of time of lesser or greater duration.

The other area of concern is oils. The two to think most carefully about are olive oils, extra virgin, first cold pressed and extra virgin coconut oil can also be used as a wonderful cooking vehicle if you like the taste. It is somewhat “coconutty” in taste of course, but not as much as you would think. Regarding spices, you want to keep anti-inflammatory spices in the diet such as tumeric and ginger when appropriate and the use of sea salt and kelp powder could be very wonderful addition to your flavoring in your cooking. Salad dressings might be the extra virgin first cold pressed olive oils primarily and we would encourage you to read labels very carefully.

Lastly, just a reminder, that white potatoes are extremely high on the glycemic index and is something that many of you may want to avoid.

All of this above having been stated, if you have been tested for food allergies or sensitivities, of course, that would prevail and you would need to eliminate those foods.

Of course, there are many other problems that we could get into and we could discuss diet for hours. You can reach us for more information at telephone number 239-597-3929 and on the internet at www.NaplesPainRelief.com

Women, Fibromyalgia & Their Hormones!

Women, Fibromyalgia, and Their
Hormones!

One of the keys to understanding Fibromyalgia is finally realizing that if you have Fibromyalgia treated, the best you usually ever get is some temporary relief, with a lot of disappointment. Fibromyalgia is a disorder like arthritis, that, in time to come, we will come to realize that each of the entities are actually numerous, quite separate disorders, banded together under one name at this time while doctors figure out the true underlying causes. Fibromyalgia is a serious disorder that impairs many women’s lives, impairing their ability to manage their family, their career, their children and their favorite interests, as they would really like to. Instead they face a daily fight for survival for a “normal life”, preoccupied with barely getting through the day, or worse yet, varieties of incapacitation, fatigue, mood-swings, pain, despair and often depression from dealing with this condition with no real solutions…so far.

In recent articles I’ve brought attention to the various sub-types of fibromyalgia including Adrenal Fibromyalgia, Blood Sugar Handling Fibromyalgia and Inflammatory Fibromyalgia as well as other forms. Glandular Fibromyalgia is a sub-type, or a “Brand of Fibromyalgia” which often brings on a more global form of fibromyalgia after it initiates a process of glandular imbalances and subsequent physiologic depletetions that lead to the generalized bodily aches and pains, fatigue, and tender points that are unrelenting.

The history of a woman with glandular Fibromyalgia can begin in several ways. Amongst the more common onsets in younger women are hormonal imbalances, often with progesterone deficiencies that lead to recurring bouts of profuse bleeding and overly excessive cramping. Often, as the number of days and severity of the bleeding gets longer, and the exhaustion of the cramping continues, a generalized physiological depletion syndrome sets in that pulls in the neuromuscular system causing classic fibromyalgia symptoms. Another scenario amongst younger women are those who give birth to three and four infants in rapid succession, without sufficient extended family support, time for recovery and replenishment of their bodies, and in some cases going back to work either in or out of the home. Failure to provide adequate support for the post-birthing mother, a relatively recently increased phenomena in our society, helps set the stage for deeper ongoing depletion of those reserves that would have been protective against the various stressors that lead to the common fibromyalgia symptoms.

There are many ways in which women in our society are systematically overworked and “undernourished”, too numerous to cover in this article, but sufficient to be the initial trigger of a series of physically depleting and exhausting events that leads to specific functional decline and results in conditions like fibromyalgia.

The next most common onset of fibromyalgia associated with hormonal imbalance likely occurs in the peri-menopausal and menopausal women. A significant number of women, when given a careful case history, will recount the initial onset of their fibromyalgia symptoms to be exactly concurrent with the onset of their menopause and or a hysterectomy. Recent years have brought about an increased resolve to address the hormonal imbalances of women in this period of their lives. Nevertheless, the average intelligent woman and especially including those with fibromyalgia are having great difficulty deciphering the conflicting advice given by many doctors. Often this advice is well intended but without good evidence-based science behind it. Worse yet, much of this advice is given as generalizations about what is good for a person without doing specific and individualized laboratory analysis. The mix of information out there could understandably make you feel crazy and cause you to just want to give up. The importance of the appropriate laboratory measurements of female hormones, at specific times in the month, as well as a wider consideration of the connection between dietary fats/cholesterol and stress hormones and their subsequent connection to both the male and female hormones essential for female health has not been sufficiently explained to most women. This area has unfortunately been virtually disregarded for women with fibromyalgia.

In summary, there is no single cure for fibromyalgia and indeed there are numerous sub-types which require discernment and highly specific treatment in order to reasonably expect optimistic outcomes. For those who have been trying to treat it with “magic bullets” like certain advertised prescription drugs, and with symptom-suppressing pain, tranquilizing, and anti-depressant drugs, that may do nothing for the underlying causes. Traditional standards of good medical practice generally result in only the most obvious laboratory investigations (blood and urine tests) to be conducted in most fibromyalgia patients. Sufficient care for this multifaceted condition must include the “casting of a wide net” in the “detective-work” that has to go into the laboratory investigation that will successfully determine the sub-type of fibromyalgia that you may have and how to treat it in a way that has promising outcomes.

Fibromyalgia comes under many different “Brand Names”. What Brand of Fibromyalgia do You Have??

Knowing what’s really wrong, down to the root-level of the cause of your particular “Brand of Fibromyalgia” or fibromyalgia sub-type, can make all the difference for your success and health and avoiding unnecessary suffering.

You may contact the author at his office:Pain Relief Center, PA
Dr. Daniel P. Hillis, DC 239-597-3929

For an appointment with Dr. Hillis to discuss the issues of female hormone balance and fibromyalgia, as well as the various “Brands of Fibromyalgia”, and what the solutions for effective care would be, call Jennifer at the office at 239-597-3929.

Solving the Clinical Mystery

Solving the Clinical Mystery
By Kitt Walsh

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence.
It biases the judgment… Sherlock Holmes

Like literature’s most famous detective, Dr. Daniel P. Hillis loves a mystery. Describing himself as naturally inquisitive, the Naples-based Chiropractic Physician finds solving persistent health problems for his patients a welcome challenge, particularly when other doctors have been unsuccessful.

“I don’t believe in the ‘throwing-up-my-hands’ type of medicine,” says Hillis. “I persist in solving the case until we have an answer or we know the reason why we don’t.”

Getting to the bottom of puzzling cases is Hillis’ passion and, like all successful sleuths, his success lies in stringing together clues.

“I begin by asking questions – lots of questions – you have to be a good listener,” says Hillis. “By hearing a patient’s story, I can determine many seemingly unrelated things which affect their health.”

Whether the patient is in emotional distress, may be suffering from a metabolic disorder or has taken a recent fall, all answers add another piece to the puzzle. When strung together, these clues can point the way to a solution.

“Too often, doctors don’t take the time to listen to a patient, Hillis explains, “so hidden health problems remain hidden. I take my time to get a complete picture.”

Hillis had another goal in mind when he began his studies in the health field. As a student at City College in New York, he decided to become a researcher in pharmacology, but after spending time with a graduate student in that specialty, Hillis changed his mind. “It was very lonely work,” he recalls. “I discovered I wanted to work with people, not mice.”

He made the switch to the study of Chiropractic, attending the Columbia Institute of Chiropractic, graduating as a Doctor of Chiropractic (DC). As part of his training, Hillis studied nutrition as a vital component in the fight against illness.

“I was an avid follower of Dr. Carlton Fredericks and Dr. Robert Atkins, two pioneers in the field of nutritional support,” says Hillis.

He incorporated such holistic ideas into his practice when he hung out his own shingle in Ft. Lee, NJ in 1976, after working for one year at the Feit Clinic in New York, a complementary medicine practice specializing in natural medicine therapeutics for degenerative diseases. “I had many patients who exhibited general malaise, fatigue or stress. Their symptoms either presented at the spine or were more constitutional.” Explains Hillis. “For example, the patient could be ‘short-circuiting’ from their nervous system being under stress. That stress sends signals through an organ, such as their adrenal gland. When the adrenal gland is stressed, the nerves from that gland will send signals which show up in the spine. Such signals indicate that there’s trouble afoot.”
Hillis discovered that such stress is often caused by food allergies.

One patient had traveled doctor to doctor with a repetitive laryngeal spasm, commonly know as a “tic” of the throat muscles. No one seemed able to help and Hillis was the man’s last resort. While listening to the patient’s history, Hillis discovered that the man had grown up on a dairy farm and drank a gallon of milk a day. The doctor then conducted a careful spinal nerve evaluation, a comprehensive food allergy, blood, intercellular mineral and vitamin tests and determined that, not only was the patient allergic to milk, the oddly enough, was deficient in calcium, causing nerve irritability.

“Within one week of beginning non-dairy calcium supplements and removing milk from his diet, his symptoms were completely gone and he could hold an adjustment better,” says Hillis.

A careful assembled case history is not the only weapon in Hillis’ arsenal.

“I conduct a thorough physical exam, including a comprehensive examination of the surface of the body which includes nerve tracing,” he explains. “For instance, if the musculature in the pad of the palm near the thumb become hard, fibrous and tender, it may be a sign of trouble with the nerve pathways that are related to sugar-handling stress. Blood sugar and glucose tolerance tests may be needed to further confirm the diagnosis.

The findings are incorporated with all the other clues and the patient’s care is managed around the entire body of evidence.”

Dr. Hillis utilizes a blend of Applied Kinesiology and Sacro Occipital Technique (SOT) as his chiropractic methods of choice in guiding him through very exacting adjustive sessions with his patients. After a careful spinal, cranial and extremity exam, the information obtained from the muscular system helps him understand how the patient’s nervous system is interacting with both their internal and external environments. “A patient can be chiropractically adjusted hundreds of times, but the adjustment will not ‘stick’ until the underlying cause for their condition is discovered.” says Dr. Daniel P. Hillis, DC. “That’s why the physical examination tailored to the individual, it is so important. A ‘canned exam’ can result in a physician overlooking a treasure cove of clues.”

Such careful investigation of the spine, extremities and cranium, when combined with the knowledge gained form the case history and nutritional information, fills in the pieces of the health puzzle.

Dr. Hillis’ dogged approach offers help to everyone from professional athletes and weekend golfers to ballet dancers to infants.

“My patients understand the value of good health and are motivated to get well,” says Hillis. “Solving the clinical mystery is an enjoyable challenge and helping people heal is a distinct privilege.”

Kitt Walsh, freelance writer
with A Way With Words

Female Hormone Evaluation

FEMALE HORMONE EVALUATION
Taken From a Health Talk Given by Dr. Hillis


I am a chiropractic physician and have been practicing functional health care, nutrition and supplementation, for over twenty-five years and I just want to have a very brief introduction to the topic of female health hormone evaluation.

There are many health problems requiring evaluation of female hormones. These are stress related problems, premenstrual problems, menopausal problems, fatigue and energy problems. They come in a wide variety of possibilities of why we might be looking at female hormones and the purpose of this talk is to just a very brief evaluation of one of the ways of going about it that is most efficient for most people based on my experience. The usual way that we like to measure a woman’s hormones, if she is still menstruating, is to measure them on day 21 of her cycle. Assuming the cycle is reasonably regular, it is approximately day 21 that she will have a greatest rise of progesterone and estrogen simultaneously. The rise in estrogen is actually greater at the mid cycle but at day 21 there is also a significant rise and it gives us a window of opportunity to catch the hormone levels on one day and see if they are actually peaking in a manner that is expected. If we see really flat levels of one or the other or both, we know that it is something that we might want to correlate more carefully with other clinical information that is available, her history and her symptoms and the rest of her life issues that she presents. It is with this method correlated with a good female hormone history of development and ongoing events during her life, that we gain insight into the characteristics of the development and outcome of adequate or inadequate levels of the hormones that can then be correlated with laboratory work, and then put together in a way that brings about a plan for helping support this individual.

The most common problems that we see might be premenstrual issues where there is often estrogen excesses or progesterone deficiencies and these may be accompanied by excessive bleeding and heavy cramping where the administration of natural progesterone may bring about a very rewarding change in symptoms and help the woman out greatly.

I do urge women who are having these types of problems to go to two web sites. One, they can go to is mine, where they can find articles on this topic – www.NaplesPainRelief.com and also to Dr. Lee’s web site. If you google Dr. Lee and Progesterone, you will find that there is a family practice physician, Dr. Lee from California, who spent his life dedicated to making woman more aware of the problems that they can get in to if their progesterone levels are low and not taking care by utilizing natural progesterone.

The other area where we are able to help with greatly is with measurement of the hormones in the post-menopausal women, especially those who are on hormone replacement and who are not doing well. This approach would not be a day 21 study, but taking a look at her hormone levels may be useful when we see that they are quite flat even though they are supplementing with some type of replacement. The antedote for these women is often a natural replacement and a certain percentage of women are highly successful with that. We can control symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal dryness. These are three key signs of estrogen depletion in post-menopausal women. If the post-menopausal woman were subject, while they were menstruating, to excessive bleeding and excessive cramping, this may be a historical sign that they were running low progesterone all along. Often, even if they are on hormone replacement, some of these women are only being given estrogen replacement and not progesterone, and they therefore may need to support this area. Even when they are being supported with progesterone, very often it is actually not progesterone but progestinin, the synthetic form, and this may be considered less desirable than the natural progesterone for most women. Just to clarify, these protocols are for the otherwise relatively healthy individual who is not in the midst of a particular medical crisis where high dose pharmacologics may be necessary in an emergent situation. But for the woman who wants to improve her life and is having difficulties with some of the symptoms that I just mentioned, sometimes mood issues, energy/fatigue issues, getting these hormones measured and rebalanced may make the difference.

That having been said, I will say that probably all women who are post-menopausal can be helped without even going into the blood testing and simply using their historical information along with metabolic questionnaires, along with in my case, the use of Applied Kinesiological analysis, and what we call “viscerosomatic feedback information” where we can monitor the responsiveness to supplements via the nervous system. This is an important aspect of care in our office that offers an important benefit for women by giving the practitioner more feedback for greater confidence that what is being done for the woman is indeed on correct course for them individually.

In general, it should be borne in mind that the hormones we call the female hormones are actually derived from the fat stores, or the fat that is available in the body for hormone production. The first fat that is used to be transformed into hormones is cholesterol! We want to take a look at the availability of healthy fats for that individual and their diet. Are they getting adequate healthy fat to convert into female and male hormone? And above and beyond that, it should be understood that the estrogens and testosterones are hormones that are made down-stream from the adrenal stress hormones. Adrenal stress hormones, such as natural cortisol, help us handle the stress of the environment that we are in. If we are under undue stress and the body’s alarm mechanisms are going off, our adrenal gland is working extra hard to deal with the overwhelming stress that we are under. The raw material that is necessary for hormone production is cholesterol, and therefore we need adequate healthy levels of cholesterol and can be hurt by radical low fat diets.

Another consideration regarding hormone production is that if there is an excessive demand on the stress handling hormone cortisol, it can rob the material needed for adequate sex hormone production. Also, if there is a greater demand for the sex hormone, it my “siphon-off” or compromise our levels of stress handling hormone cortisol. Therefore when evaluating female hormone balance, adrenal hormone status as well as healthy blood fat supplies need to be evaluated and correlated!

So all this needs to be taken in to account in evaluating the woman and it is not necessarily going to be sufficient to simply measure and replace female hormones without taking these other issues into account. A comprehensive view of the hormonal system should be taken into account when getting in to the area of hormone support, whether it be natural or synthetic in order to help keep the woman healthy and safe.

This is Dr. Dan Hillis in Naples, Florida, chiropractic physician practicing nutritional strategies for over twenty-five years. I would love to help you further with your problems. If there is something that you may need more information about, feel to contact me at 239-597-3929 or on the web at www.NaplesPainRelief.com

Ask The Doctor! - For Goodness Sake, Bonita Springs, FL - AmericanTowns.com

Ask The Doctor! - For Goodness Sake, Bonita Springs, FL - AmericanTowns.com

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