What is more dreadful than not being able to fall asleep?

Getting comfortable feels impossible and your feet are restless; your brain is flickering through the day and won’t seem to switch off; even your eyes begin to feel weary and tight from keeping them closed while you can’t fall asleep. It is a helpless feeling that is nothing other than frustrating. If you deal with this on a regular basis, it is worth trying some easy and natural solutions for making the process easier. 

A few simple stretches to help you sleep

Rather than looking at your news feeds for an extra ten minutes before bed, try using these stretches to relax your body and release any lingering muscle tension. The focus here should be on slow movements and mindfulness- take deep, full belly breaths in and out during the stretches to nourish the cells of your body and brain with the oxygen they need to find some calm before bed.

• The Happy Baby: Life on your back, bring your knees up toward your chest and grab the inside edges of your feet with your hands, with palms facing out. Stretch your knees out to the sides then lower them down toward your armpits. Gently rock from side-to-side and hold for 10 breaths. 
• The Seated Side Bend: Sit, preferably on a pillow, with legs criss-crossed. Put your right hand on the floor to the side of your hip and extend your left arm up by your ear. Lean to the right keeping your butt on the floor. Hold 10 breaths, switch sides repeat. 
• Figure four: Lie on your back with legs extended. Cross your right leg over your left so that your right ankle rests on your left thigh. Clasp your left thigh from behind and pull your knee up toward your chest. Hold for 10 deep breaths then switch sides and repeat. 

We want to help you improve your sleep life

You’ll notice that a lot of these stretches target regions that accumulate tension throughout the day. The idea is that you are not only toning your muscles and increasing their flexibility, but also relaxing your body and putting it in a conducive shape for sleep. At Holmes Chiropractic, we believe that sleep is a key element of wellness and we want to help you get the sleep you deserve. If you are having trouble falling or staying asleep due to back pain or mechanical dysfunction, give our office in Houston a call to schedule an appointment today. 

Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C.

^Water is critical for keeping your body balanced. If you don’t like it plain, try adding a splash of flavor! 

How to balance out a diet heavy in junk

With an on-the-go lifestyle, maintaining a perfect diet can be flat out impossible. Constraints on our time force us to skip out on a full morning meal and pay visits to fast food joints at lunchtime; running errands have us running to the drive-thrus; worst of all are weekends, the time when we want our diets to be at their most relaxed. Eating all this processed food can leave us low on nutrition and subsequently make us feel low, so it is important to be proactive about fitting in some junk-fighting ingredients whenever you can!

Here are a list of ways to balance the damage that is caused by poor eating habits. 

• Fluids! Water is critical for flushing out the junk. Keeping yourself optimally hydrated (between 64-100 ounces of water a day) will help your body stay on top.
• Focus on anti-inflammatory: poor eating and processed foods are linked to a raise in inflammation which causes all kinds of havoc in the body. You can fight inflammation by consuming omega-3, whether in food or supplement form. Spices such as turmeric, cloves and ginger are other great sources of anti-inflammatory properties. 
• High-water and high-fiber foods to clean the gut: get ready for the vegetables, including artichokes, peas and spinach, and fruits, including strawberries, grapefruit and melon! 
• Focus on healthy starches: vegetables and grains are good sources of healthy starches, which are the opposite of the processed starch we are eating at the drive-thru; they actually have some health benefit for us! Whole grains including oatmeal, whole-wheat bread and pasta; legumes such as beans; and vegetables such as corn, squash and yams offer more health benefits for your dollar. 

Being honest about your diet

If you know you are going to eat junk-food at some point during the week (or more often), try to maintain a balance by choosing food and drink that supports your immune system at least as often. We can help you identify patterns in your life that leave you short on nutrition and turn them around into healthy choices.  At our office in Houston, we help your body with chiropractic adjustment and attention to muscle dysfunction to alleviate pain and make focusing on healthy choices all the easier! Give our office a call to schedule an appointment today. 

Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C. 

^Water is critical for keeping your body balanced. If you don’t like it plain, try adding a splash of flavor! 

How to balance out a diet heavy in junk

With an on-the-go lifestyle, maintaining a perfect diet can be flat out impossible. Constraints on our time force us to skip out on a full morning meal and pay visits to fast food joints at lunchtime; running errands have us running to the drive-thrus; worst of all are weekends, the time when we want our diets to be at their most relaxed. Eating all this processed food can leave us low on nutrition and subsequently make us feel low, so it is important to be proactive about fitting in some junk-fighting ingredients whenever you can!

Here are a list of ways to balance the damage that is caused by poor eating habits. 

• Fluids! Water is critical for flushing out the junk. Keeping yourself optimally hydrated (between 64-100 ounces of water a day) will help your body stay on top.
• Focus on anti-inflammatory: poor eating and processed foods are linked to a raise in inflammation which causes all kinds of havoc in the body. You can fight inflammation by consuming omega-3, whether in food or supplement form. Spices such as turmeric, cloves and ginger are other great sources of anti-inflammatory properties. 
• High-water and high-fiber foods to clean the gut: get ready for the vegetables, including artichokes, peas and spinach, and fruits, including strawberries, grapefruit and melon! 
• Focus on healthy starches: vegetables and grains are good sources of healthy starches, which are the opposite of the processed starch we are eating at the drive-thru; they actually have some health benefit for us! Whole grains including oatmeal, whole-wheat bread and pasta; legumes such as beans; and vegetables such as corn, squash and yams offer more health benefits for your dollar. 

Being honest about your diet

If you know you are going to eat junk-food at some point during the week (or more often), try to maintain a balance by choosing food and drink that supports your immune system at least as often. We can help you identify patterns in your life that leave you short on nutrition and turn them around into healthy choices.  At our office in Houston, we help your body with chiropractic adjustment and attention to muscle dysfunction to alleviate pain and make focusing on healthy choices all the easier! Give our office a call to schedule an appointment today. 

Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C. 

Spring is right around the corner 

While new years is the time we make resolutions regarding our health, spring may be a better time to make a resolution that you can actually keep. As the winter passes, it is important to focus on getting our bodies out of the winter slump and into shape so that we can enjoy the colors of spring and the opportunities of summer.

Let’s focus on two important elements of a spring-season health plan:

Setting a goal is the best way to set yourself up for success in spring.

• Create a fitness goal and be realistic: fitness trackers say 10,000 steps a day but does that really apply to you? Perhaps 10,000 steps is above or below your threshold, but the essential idea is that you set a goal that will get you out in spring. And for people who don’t know where to start, walking is a great idea. 10,000 steps can be achieved in about 30 minutes of walking, so it can hardly hurt! 
• Find healthy food that you love: spring and summer are the seasons of abundance, especially when it comes to produce. I don’t think there’s a single person alive who can justifiably claim to hate fruit. Try shooting to eat 1-2 pieces of fruit per day and refine your fat-intake: focus on ditching bad fats and taking on the good ones. Cooking with coconut and olive oil in place of canola oil is a good place to start! 

How we will help you succeed in spring at Holmes Chiropractic

We support you feeling your best: to this end, we want to help you address long standing physical limitations so that you can focus on activities that make your happy. If you feel limited by chronic back pain, tight muscles and a body with little to no range of motion, we want to break you out of that mold. We will work with you to detect the true root of your body’s dysfunction and create a multi-dimensional wellness plan that will help you move on from the pain. Give our office in Houston a call to schedule an appointment today. 

Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C.

Feeling stiff as a board? It’s time to start unwinding your tight muscles.

If you are among the legion people who consider themselves, “inflexible,” let’s start doing something about that! Rather than lingering on the dangers of being inflexible (risk of injury from daily activities), let’s focus on the importance and purpose of flexibility. Flexibility is essential for performing everyday motions with ease and without injury: think about bending down, turning your neck or reaching for an object high on a shelf. While we take these motions for granted and perform them countless times a day, they will become more difficult if we let flexibility fall by the wayside.

Move more and move differently.

If you consider yourself, “inflexible,” remember that anyone can increase their flexibility given the right kind of stretching. All you need to know is where to start and with that we can help you. Here are some stretches we have come up with that will break you into a flexibility routine gently. 

• Spinal twist: Lay supine with legs straight. Inhale and bring your left knee up toward your chest. Exhale and lower your left knee across your body. Extend your left arm and let your neck turn left so you are looking back over your shoulder. Hold 30 seconds, repeat on the other side. 
• Upper shoulder stretch: Reverse the effects of sitting at a desk while sitting or standing. Use a towel for this one, placing it over your left shoulder. Grab the top of the towel with your right hand and the bottom with your left creating tension on the towel. Pull up with your left hand to stretch the shoulder. Hold 10 seconds, switch hands and repeat. 
• The chest stretch: stand up as straight as possible with feet hip-width apart. Straighten your arms out like wings and raise them high and then lower them over the back of your shoulders while squeezing the shoulder blades together. Return your arms in front of your body and repeat, each time lowering the arms toward shoulder level. 

Stretching could be the most important thing that is not a part of your routine.

By keeping our muscles pliant and flexible, we can reverse much of the damage inherent with poor posture and sedentary lifestyles and keep ourselves independent into old age. Let’s work together to start breaking you out of that stiff mold and restoring flexibility to your life today!

Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C. 

Workplace and computer screen headaches

Staring at computer screens is a primary occupation for many people nowadays and, whether it be for work or pleasure, this can take a toll on our bodies and brains. Though it feels second nature for many, interacting with screens is anything but straightforward- there are many unconscious bodily and neurological processes that take place which can leave us vulnerable to headaches. Here are a few ways that computers can cause headaches:

• Eye strain: because text is so small, we have to keep our computer screen at a reasonable distance, which is closer than our eyes are comfortable with for resting. Our eyes are struggling to keep focus at a point so close and this can cause fatigue and headache. 
• Lighting of the work environment: a brightly lit office and improperly adjusted monitor creates an excessively bright environment that can be hard for our eyes to bear.

Your computer screen can be a headache trigger

Before choosing to blame your headaches on computer screens outright, it is important to consider other factors including posture, caffeine intake, overall stress level at work, diet and level of exercise- there is a good chance that your headache is a manifestation of a combination of all these factors.

However, if the computer screen is a common trigger, here are a few ways to prevent the onset of computer-related headaches: 

• Take a break once per hour. Focus on activities that are completely unrelated to the monitor.
• Try not to let your eyes refocus too often. Shifting between referring to the paper on your desk and the computer screen forces your eyes to refocus often and leaves them vulnerable to strain.
• Turn down the overhead lights, adjust the brightness and contrast settings on your monitor. 
• Create a good ergonomic environment: this includes monitor settings as well as posture- you want to make your office as easy on body and brain as possible. 

These tips are easy enough in theory, but we want to know: can you be disciplined enough to put them into practice? They will surely go a long way toward helping prevent headaches related to computer screens. However, chronic headaches are not normal- there could be an underlying problem such as subluxation or muscle tension that is contributing further to regular headaches. At our office in Houston, we can help detect the true cause of your headaches and start a path of healing that will reduce their grip on your life. 

Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C.

^Hans the human is holding his head forward

Tight muscles that are holding your head forward

With forward head posture, we often see the muscles in the front of the neck become overextended, while those in the back are short and tight. This is a characteristic picture of muscular imbalance in the head, neck and shoulders and it sets up an unstable support for your head! Let’s focus on two sets of paired muscles that are frequently noted for their tightness in people who have FHP: the sub-occipitals and sternocleidomastoid.

• The sub-occipitals are located in the back of the head and connect the head to the top of the spine- these are small muscles with a direct connection to the spinal cord. Tightness in this region has the potential to create muscular dysfunction and pain. 
• The sternocleidomastoid connects from the middle of the throat to behind the ear and is responsible for flexion of the neck, and is innervated by the accessory nerve. This muscle can be clearly seen when you rotate your head to the side. 

The way to begin reversing forward head posture is by releasing tight neck muscles

The occipital release:

• Lie flat on your back 
• Use a tennis ball or foam roller and place it under your neck, right at the base of the skull.
• Turn your head and roll over the different muscles for about 5 minutes. 

Releasing the sternocleidomastoid

• Turn your head to the side and locate the muscle. 
• Use your fingers to gently massage the muscles; don’t dig your fingers too deep
• Roll the muscle with your fingers
• Repeat on the other side. 

These techniques should instigate a noticeable relief in tightness of the neck. After releasing the neck from tightness and improving your experience with pain, we can start strengthening the muscles that will help keep your head atop your spine where it belongs. 

Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C.

Forward Head Posture (FHP) is allegorical to our society’s constant looking to the future.

We are at a point in time where our technology, for all its insistence that it optimizes our health, can also do us a great deal of harm. FHP itself has been around for a long time, more commonly known as “reading neck,” but it is taking on a new importance today; computers of all sizes have our rapt attention throughout the day and FHP is a natural result of this interaction.

When our brains are so involved, the same thing happens as when you are in the midst of a stimulating conversation, you lean in. But instead of your whole body, it is just your head moving forward toward the screen. Now quantify the amount of time you spend engaged with a phone, tablet or laptop and you begin to see the scope of the problem

A matter of pressure on the neck

As your head inches forward, it is leaving its true center of gravity: studies suggest that the spine is put under pressure by another 10 pounds per inch your head leans forward. At our office in Houston, we often treat people who are carrying their heads between 2-3 inches forward of their spine. You can perform a simple check using a wall test to determine whether you may have FHP: 

• Align your heels at shoulder width and press your buttocks against the wall.
• In this position, your shoulder blades should also be touching the wall. 
• Is the back of your head touching the wall? 
• If not, you most likely have FHP

However this is nothing to fear; many people today are walking around with their heads at least mildly forward. 

How we help at Holmes Chiropractic

Carrying your head forward all the time is likely to cause damage to vertebrae and muscles, especially those of the neck. We approach FHP with a mix of postural analysis, chiropractic adjustment, targeted stretching and strengthening of the neck muscles and improvement of daily habits to effect a change in the way you carry your head!

Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C. 

This is aimed at you, college students!

How many minutes have you spent tinkering with a pillow pile until it feels just right for you to lean back against the wall or headboard to watch a show in bed?

For many people, this defines the penultimate phase of their day: struggling to find comfort to watch a show or read until you fall asleep. Unfortunately, trying to read, write or conduct work from the computer in bed is one of the most ruinous things you can do for posture and your body. Nothing about it sets you up for success (unless you have an ergonomic set-up)- there is no real support and very few positions lend themselves to comfort without stressing the back. 

The pillow propping game

Picture yourself, pinned against the wall with a few pillows to support your lower back and a clear picture emerges of:

• Poor curvature and an imbalanced spinal column.
• Your neck bent at an aggressive angle
• No lumbar support 
• Pain

But people will persist with this because bed is comfortable. So whether you are working from bed regularly or just trying to find comfort for recreation, keep a few tips in mind. 

Let’s make this a little less painful: these tips will help prevent many of the bad effects inherent in the half-reclined, half-propped position that we seek. 

• Use a pillow to prop your computer, keeping the monitor at eye level, and avoid over-flexing your neck.
• Put a pillow under your legs and behind the lumbar to create something approaching neutral posture. 
• Stop using your bed for working! The bed is no replacement for an office chair and your brain will start to associate bed with work (and worse, pain!). 

Above all, listen to your body. Get up regularly to break the monotony of sitting in your bed and stretch if you feel tightness occurring. 

Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C. 

 

Is this your idea of a quick snack? 

Sugar is fuel 

And for all intents and purposes, carbohydrates are sugar! When the body is fed glucose through food, it signals for insulin to be released which helps cells in the uptake and absorption of glucose; this glucose is then used to power your cells and contributes to a noticeable boost in energy and performance. But here’s the catch: it’s a balancing act. 

• Low blood sugar: when blood sugar levels dip below normal, symptoms such as shakiness and light-headedness set it. This is that “hangry” feeling that most of us are familiar with. 
• A “sugar crash:” on the opposite end of the spectrum, consuming an excessive amount of carbs spikes blood sugar levels and causes a rapid release of insulin and rapid uptake of glucose. The end result: an extreme feeling of fatigue; the dreaded sugar crash. 

Energy levels are primarily determined by food

We can see that we need sugar in the right amount so how do we stay balanced? We want to focus on consuming the carbs your body needs for fuel, along with protein and healthy fats to keep us sustained. If we can do it naturally, then all the better. 

• Avoid refined sugars and saturated fats
• Create a healthy blend of carbohydrate, protein and fat. 
• 150-200 calories 

Snacks are a useful way to keep blood sugar from dipping low in between meals. Here are some wholesome snack ideas:

• Peanut butter and banana
• Quinoa
• Trail mix
• Yogurt and granola 

Food is medicine and it can be made portable! At Holmes Chiropractic, we want to help you redefine, “simple eating,” to move away from processed snacks and into something more wholesome. We think it will change the way you feel throughout the day. 

Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C.