Due to the overwhelming number of questions we receive every flu season, I wanted to share with everyone some important insights to think about. Enjoy!

1. Understand that the flu virus is not the ROOT CAUSE of the flu.

• We are exposed to viruses and bacteria every day of our lives. What primarily determines who gets sick is the state your IMMUNE FUNCTION.
• A famous study published in the New England Journal of Medicine exposed the study participants to the cold virus and then observed that only those who were "stressed" developed a cold!
• We talk about the flu as being SEASONAL, but viruses and bacteria do NOT only come around during the fall and winter months! What definitely IS seasonal during the winter in Canada is far more STRESSORS in our lifestyles such as poor diet, more sitting (spinal stress and subluxation), less exercise, and more emotional stress from the holidays. Stressors trigger stress hormones (among other adaptations) which DECREASE your immune function and make you more susceptible to the flu.

2. Educate yourself regarding FLU VACCINATIONS:

• We need to use scientifically valid data, and not emotion, to form an educated opinion regarding vaccination. There are a TON of sources telling you to get a flu shot, so I will provide you with some of the opposing arguments. I am not telling you what to do. I am just giving you some points to ponder! Ultimately it is your decision.

BENEFITS:

• I can not find any published peer-reviewed data telling us that the flu vaccines are EFFECTIVE. The data simply does not support claims that the seasonal flu vaccine significantly decreases the incidence of flu or complications from it. There has even been some admission that the vaccines DO NOT prevent the flu, and that they only GUESS correctly less than 30% of the time regarding which virus to vaccinate against.
• The health authorities justify recommending the vaccine by claiming it decreases the severity of flu and complications from it. But they often report RELATIVE risk reduction instead of ABSOLUTE risk reductions. You need to understand the difference. E.g. Out of 5000 people in a study group, there were 4 deaths in the unvaccinated group and 2 deaths in the vaccinated group. This relative difference is reported as a "50% reduction in deaths in those vaccinated versus not vaccinated". But this is an absolute difference of 2 in 5000 which is not remotely significant! Believe it or not, they DO report findings this way!
• And efficacy and effectiveness are NOT the same thing. Effectiveness means it has been shown, in the real world, with a prospective, randomly controlled, placebo trial to prevent the flu when a group is vaccinated and then directly exposed to the pathogen. I have not seen this done for the flu shot. If you have, send me a copy!

COSTS:

• I can not find published, peer-reviewed data showing that flu vaccines are SAFE over the long-term. A government vaccine brochure is not enough. The only way to prove safety is to track individuals over a longitudinal study and compare vaccinated to non-vaccinated populations. I have not seen this. If you have, please send me a copy.
• Check the vaccine ingredients for common toxins such as aluminum, mercury (one of the most toxic substances on earth), ethylene glycol, and formaldehyde. Do you know the long-term effects of these toxins? We DO know that toxins cause SUPPRESSION of your immune system.
• Remember that the vast majority of cases of the flu involve mild to moderate symptoms such as fever, nausea, vomiting, and malaise. Not pleasant, but not serious or risky.
• Even with H1N1, your chances of death as of Oct 17, 2009, were 0.0002% (the statistics showed 83 deaths in Canada associated with the virus). And, the majority of these deaths involved underlying conditions or secondary bacterial infections. So if you did not have an underlying illness, your chances would have been EVEN LESS. The chances of dying in a car accident on your way to get the H1N1 vaccine were FAR greater than from the virus itself. Interesting.

3. Here are some evidence-based, simple steps to keep you healthier not just during the winter but all year, and all life, long.

• Don't panic if you or a loved one gets the flu. Keep hydrated, stay home, eat intelligently and REST. If severe complications arise go to your medical doctor or a walk-in clinic.
• Take Vitamin D every day - this is absolutely one of the most evidence-based interventions available for reducing the incidence and severity of seasonal colds and flus. The data is very, very strong.
• Eat fresh, raw fruits and vegetables to ensure that your body is receiving sufficient daily micronutrient levels.
• Avoid refined sugar. Your immune cells require Vitamin C to work properly. However, glucose (sugar) and Vitamin C are almost identical, so glucose can attach to the receptors on your immune cells and BLOCK Vitamin C. The solution is NOT to take large amounts of synthetic Vitamin C supplements – the solution is to consume LESS refined sugar.
• Reduce your physical stress. Research shows that physical stressors like poor posture and vertebral subluxation complex increase stress hormones which can down regulate immune function. Research also shows that getting chiropractic adjustments can lower stress hormone levels and increase immune function! GET ADJUSTED REGULARLY! Schedule a check-up with us if you have not done so yet!
• Exercise regularly. Research shows this to increase your immune function.
• Reduce your emotional stress – learn a relaxation technique like meditation or mind quieting. Focus on solutions, and what is under your control. Think about what you are grateful for every day.

For questions, contact us at 613-841-9355 or visit www.hunterchiropractic.com

There can be no debate regarding the fact that lifestyle intervention must become the foundation of healthcare reform! Adopting a genetically congruent lifestyle is the only viable solution for wellness and prevention.

It saves lives, money, and healthcare!

For the 5 most expensive chronic illnesses (heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, prostate cancer, and breast cancer) THE RESEARCH IS CLEAR that addressing the lifestyle causes of these illnesses could save millions of lives and trillions of dollars!

The changes in physiology associated with chronic illness are not genetic or pathological; they are the effects of environmental stressors. Your health is the genetic expression of your environment. We have become convinced that we are somehow immune to the natural laws that have governed human existence for thousands of years.

In today’s modern lifestyle we have literally engineered movement out of our lives for the sake of efficiency and energy conservation. However, the one thing that we forgot is that our bodies are genetically hard-wired to move. Although our lifestyle has changed radically in the past thousand years, unfortunately our genes do not adapt that quickly. In fact, scientists tell us that our genes have not changed significantly for 40,000 years.

Think about it - that means you have the DNA of a hunter and gatherer. Every morning when you wake up, your DNA is expecting an environment from thousands of years ago. Your DNA is expecting that you will be exerting energy all day long. It is designed to walk 10 miles, carry awkward objects, climb hills, lift heavy objects while maintaining balance while enduring aerobic, anaerobic, and resistance stimulus all throughout your day.

Our genes today still require stimulus from exercise and proper posture in order to produce healthy physiology and biochemistry and without it we are literally deficient and sick!

Exercise is NOT optional. Exercise is an essential nutrient source.

We now have energy expenditure and sedentary living patterns that are completely deficient and toxic. Our movement patterns are incongruent with our genetic requirements for healthy cell function. The result is pandemic levels of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, depression, and every other chronic illness!

Change your life today by increasing your general overall amount of daily movement, adding daily aerobic expenditure and including resistance exercise into your daily routine. Just start moving, you don’t have to wait for the right time to begin, your cells are expecting it right now!

With you on your journey to a better, happier, and longer life,

Dr. Mark

One has to ask where the food pyramid / guide came from? Was it based on extensive research or was it influenced by industry lobbies? In what era of human history did cow’s milk become an essential part of the human species’ diet? Did our ancestors thousands of years ago have access to copious amounts of cereal grains and did it make up a majority of their diet? Could our modern diet be a contributing factor to why 80% of our workforce has a chronic illness?

If you want to have a chance at consuming an innate diet, congruent with your genetic requirements, you need to ask yourself these questions. Just think about it, if the four food groups are logical and genetically correct for the human species, pizza would be the perfect food (sounds too good to be true! – by the way beer is made from grain too isn’t it?). How simple life would be -pizza for breakfast, lunch, dinner!

Unfortunately these guidelines were never based on what your gene code requires for sufficiency and purity in terms of your dietary needs. GENE CODE determines what you require – not industry lobbies. Whether or not our dietary habits match these requirements determines our states of sufficiency/deficiency and purity/toxicity which determines our GENE EXPRESSION – our state of health or sickness.

Genetically we have not changed for tens of thousands of years, yet our lifestyle has changed almost beyond recognition. Genetically we still are hunters and gatherers requiring the environment that a hunter and gatherer lives/lived in. Western nations are now literally feedlots and there are few things more harmful to your family’s health than breakfast cereals, breads, and wheat pasta. Cereals and pasta are sugar (even if it is called a complex carbohydrate) and the only thing that matters is whether or not it is genetically compatible with your gene code.

Sound research shows that the human genome does not know what to do with dairy, grains, and refined sugar because our ancestors never consumed them. The fact is our ancestors would have had to expend more energy gathering the scarce amount of wild grains than they would have got from eating them – grains didn’t grow in big fields until the agricultural revolution! Would they have chased a wild animal around to get milk?

Did you know that we are the only animal species on earth that drinks another animal’s milk? And that we are the only animal species on earth that consumes milk after infancy? Did you know that humans are the only species on earth with osteoporosis (besides animals we domesticate)? And why is it that we have been told so adamantly that we need to drink milk? For calcium right? Well do you know that there is NOT a single study anywhere that shows that drinking milk increases bone density?

Still not convinced? Please go to www.wellnessandprevention.com and read Dr. Chestnuts newsletter entitled ‘The Myths of Calcium Supplementation and Dairy’. By the way, there are studies that show eating more fruits and vegetables, and getting calcium in the organic form you genetically require, will increase bone density. Ever wonder how elephant bones get so big and strong? Do they drink cow’s milk?

To eat innately for LIFE, humans are genetically designed to get our nutrients from free-range organic grass (not grain or soy) fed meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds and water. There is NOTHING magical about our physiology that allows us to eat toxic or deficient diets without severe health consequences. To learn more about the Innate Diet™, ask us about how to attend the next seminar series of the Innate Lifestyle™.

Until next time, EAT WELL

Dr. Mark

Nutrition has become a very complex topic in recent years with the advent of so many weight loss/feel better/increase energy diet strategies.  Scientific research on health, however, has remained relatively constant.  “Built into our genes is a blueprint for optimal nutrition – a plan that spells out the foods that make us healthy, lean, and fit.”  Loren Cordain Ph.D. 2002.

The Mayo Clinic (2004) stated that current and past hunter-gatherer populations were found to be “healthy, fit, and largely free of the degenerative cardiovascular diseases common in modern societies.”   They went on to say that it is the MISMATCH between our modern diet & lifestyle with our Palaeolithic genes that is playing a substantial role in chronic illness.

Our genes have changed relatively little in the past 40,000 years (New England Journal of Medicine).   “The appearance of agriculture and domestication of animals some 10,000 years ago and the industrial revolution some 200 years ago introduced new dietary pressures for which no adaptation has been possible in such a short time span.”  (Asia Pacific J. of Clin. Nutr. 2004).

What this means is that the foods we started eating after we developed agriculture and industrial farming have been far too recent for our bodies to require them to be healthy.

The following diet and four required supplements satisfy all 10 of the characteristics that our ancestral diet provided, and still provides to this day:

Vine-ripened fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, free-range or wild meat/fish/eggs, and pure water.  4 supplements for environmental reasons:  pure fish oil (3rd party tested for toxins), plant-based probiotics, a whole-food multi-vitamin or home-made vegetable-juice, and vitamin D.  The sub-optimal (but still relatively healthy) foods include gluten/gliadin-free whole grains (e.g. rice, oats, etc.).

This diet provides your body with everything it needs to function properly, and keeps out toxins that force your body into adaptation.  It has a low glycaemic load, a proper omega6:omega3 ratio, trace nutrient sufficiency, alkalinity, potassium > sodium, high water-soluble fibre content, water purity, probiotic sufficiency, and reduced chemical toxins.  Wash your produce, buy local, and go organic if possible!

Start adding these foods.  Don’t deprive yourself of other thing until you stop craving them.  Watch what happens!   I can help.

E-mail me with questions using the email doctor link below.
-Dr. Mark Hunter B.Sc., Dip. S.I.M., D.C., C.C.W.P.

You have access to limitless information on which food choices you should be making to become healthier.  The struggle however exists in how to actually get yourself to make the better choices consistently!

You need a specific skill-set to change.  Simply trying to change your habitual behaviours has a very low success rate long-term.  Being motivated only lasts so long, and then you “fall off the wagon”.   Has this ever happened to you?

You see, your regular behaviours are ultimately CAUSED by the “wiring patterns (belief systems)” in your brain.  When you say to yourself “I love ice cream, and making a salad is too time-consuming”, you are revealing your current brain wiring.  You ultimately attribute more benefit than cost to eating ice cream, and not making a salad.  You attribute more pleasure than pain to eating the ice cream and skipping the salad.  As a result, this is what you are going to most often throughout your life!

Depriving yourself of what you get pleasure from, and forcing yourself to do something you dislike, goes directly against your genetic programming as a human.  You have to learn how to actually CHANGE what you like and dislike!  Research on neural plasticity have shown us that you can actually change the wiring (beliefs) in your brain.

The problem is NOT that you don’t understand which choice is healthier.  The problem is that you don’t REALLY understand, deep down, the devastation on your body, and effect on chronic illness development, of regularly eating the ice cream and not having the salad.  The research is very clear on this, and we all need to learn it.

Health is your greatest asset.  You MUST learn how to gradually “re-wire” your brain to associate “a longer, better, happier life, and reduced chance of every chronic illness” with eating the salad and not eating the ice cream.  This is ultimately a stronger source of pleasure to your body than instant gratification.  To change your brain, you have to regularly, consciously focus on this, for an extended period of time.  You can do it.  It works.  I can help.

E-mail me with questions using the email doctor link below.
-Dr. Mark Hunter B.Sc., Dip. S.I.M., D.C., C.C.W.P.

We all want to be healthy. There is no doubt in my mind about this.  But there is a severe lack of education in our country regarding what we actually have to do in order to BE HEALTHY!   This is a problem that has become my mission to help with.

Our current reality is that the path that most of us are on is not working, and will not work.

Just because you may feel “okay” right now, or you take a medication to address a symptom, this does NOT mean that you are healthy.   Chronic illness is largely a silent problem, and can develop for years before anything is found in your annual medical check-up.

Chronic illness is at PANDEMIC levels in North America. We have the sickest children, teenagers, adults, and elderly in the history of our species; in the history of ANY species. Chronic illness is the leading cause of death and suffering in North America, and over 80% of our workforce has one.  49% of the entire Canadian population has one.

Chronic illness rates have risen exponentially since 1900.  And during this same time period, our genes have remained unchanged, and prescription medication use has risen exponentially.  The ONLY thing that has changed in this time period is that we have seen DRASTIC changes in our lifestyle away from what we genetically require as a species.  These changes mirror the increases in chronic illness EXACTLY.

Science is pleading with us to understand that chronic illness is a LIFESTYLE ILLNESS, not a genetic problem.
Let me dismantle the 2 other most common myths for you.

#1:  We are NOT sick because we are living longer. The most rapid and significant increases in chronic illness are amongst children, teenagers, and middle-aged adults.

#2:  We are NOT simply detecting more illness and thus skewing the data regarding chronic illness incidence. Obesity alone, which is a causal factor in virtually every other chronic illness, has increased exponentially in just the last few decades.  Detecting obesity has never required advanced technology.  It requires a scale and perhaps a tool to measure body fat percentage or body mass index. These are not new.

The single greatest determinant of whether you will get sick or get well IS YOUR LIFESTYLE CHOICES.

Despite the science being so clear, less than 3% of current health care costs are allocated to prevention. Most of this 3% is allocated to diagnostic testing and prophylactic drug intervention.  71% of all visits to a general medical practitioner result in the prescription of drugs.  And less than 1% of health care costs are allocated for healthy lifestyle programs.

This is all despite a 2008 Congressional report estimating that up to 1/3 of health care expenditures result in ZERO BENEFIT.

Between 2002 and 2005 prescription rates FOR CHILDREN increased as follows:

• Cholesterol prescriptions up 15%
• ADHD prescriptions up 40%
• Asthma prescriptions up to 47%
• Type 2 Diabetes prescriptions up 148%

The scientific evidence is unequivocal.   Drugs and surgery NEVER HAVE and NEVER WILL prevent or cure lifestyle illnesses.

The lifestyle choices (how you eat, move, and think) you make each day DO matter, and they matter to a MUCH larger degree than you think.  That food you ate, those vegetables that you didn’t eat, that exercise you didn’t get, that poor movement of your spinal column, that thought process you allowed yourself to have, that way you communicated with your spouse, etc, etc.  It all adds up.

Make no mistake about it.  The lifestyle choices that YOU MAKE for YOU AND YOUR FAMILY will either save lives or cost lives.  There is no such thing as a consequence-free lifestyle choice. Stop settling for the average, which is very poor.  Stop thinking that health is the result of luck or genetics.  Become accurate.
Starting a healthy lifestyle is not all or nothing.  It does not require depriving yourself of what you love, or forcing yourself to do things that you dislike.  You can start with the small, easy things will move you closer towards your goal.

Doing nothing about what you are currently doing, is not an option. Learn what your body genetically requires, and learn the science of personal change.

Doing the right thing is possible, and I CAN HELP YOU!
-Dr. Mark Hunter B.Sc., Dip. S.I.M., D.C., C.C.W.P.

Why do so many people struggle when it comes to regularly eating well, exercising, and reducing stress?  You already know that doing these things is healthy, and there is no shortage of strategies out there offering you information about diet, exercise, and positive thinking.  So what causes us to start, sometimes succeed temporarily, and then fall off track so often?

Well, neuroscientists tell us that it is because these strategies are only treating the EFFECT, and not the CAUSE of your behaviours.  Your behaviours (which foods you choose, whether you exercise or not, how you react in stressful life situations, etc.) are largely the result of the PROGRAMMING in your subconscious brain that you have developed throughout your life!

We now know that this program can be changed over time, but you need to learn a specific skill-set to accomplish this.  This skill-set can literally mean the difference between optimal health and vitality versus chronic illness and disability.

Key #1 – Stop trying what doesn’t work!  If your strategy is to force yourself to do things you don’t like, and deprive yourself of things you love, your brain won’t be producing a chemical you CRAVE called dopamine (the feeling of pleasure).  Your body cannot do this sustainably (failure).  With the proper skill-set, you can (and have to) change what your brain anchors to releasing this natural chemical.

Key #2 – You DO have enough time, motivation, and energy to do this!  You may just believe that you don’t!   Most people never learn what the research is clearly showing about the ACTUAL degree that your lifestyle choices affect your current and future health.  It is FAR more than you may think.  You need to start understanding:  i) what has been clearly determined to be the diet, exercise, and thought patterns which are REQUIRED for you to experience optimal health; and ii)  what the TRUE consequences of living a different lifestyle are.

Chronic illness is not caused by bad genetics or bad luck.  It is caused by how your lifestyle choices and environment cause your genetics to be expressed.

You can do it.  It is not hard.  Contact me if you need help!
-Dr. Mark Hunter B.Sc., Dip. S.I.M., D.C., C.C.W.P.