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6207 Pecan Valley (210) 359-9100
Pecan Valley Chiropractic
Giving You "Back Your Life!"
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I've had low back pain
since I was 16 years old. The doctors gave me pain killers, but the pain was still there! I figured I was too young to not be able to put on my own shoes without PAIN.
Once I came to Pecan Valley Chiropractic
and began care I noticed a HUGE difference. I began exercises and my back strength increased. My back feels AWESOME!
I'm usually nervous to
go to any doctor's office but I actually looked forward togoing to Pecan Valley Chiropractic.
Tanya Gaitan
In Good Hands
A Free Monthly Newsletter For The Friends and Patients of:
Pecan Valley Chiropractic Center
“Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none. - Benjamin Franklin
The answers to these questions… and more… revealed in this month’s newsletter…
What If Deciding The Sex Of Your
Next Child Was As Simple As
Changing The Foods You Ate?”
Plus: Popular Energy Drinks Are Up To
10 Times Worse For Your Teeth Than Soda!!!
S
an Antonio – Can it be? Is it possible to decide whether you are going to have a boy or a girl simply based on the food you eat?
The answer may surprise you…
Science has known for a long, long, long time that male sperm determines a baby’s gender. Here’s how it works:
Chromosomes are long, stringy aggregates of genes that carry hereditary information. They are composed of DNA and proteins and are located within the nucleus of our cells. Chromosomes determine everything from hair color and eye color to gender. Whether you are a male or female depends on the presence or absence of certain chromosomes.
Human cells contain 23 pairs of chromosomes for a total of 46, two of which are sex chromosomes. The sex chromosomes are the X chromosome and the Y chromosome. The combination of these chromosomes determines whether you are male or female.
Here’s how: The female egg only has one kind of sex chromosome, the “X”… The male sperm carries either the “X” or the “Y” chromosome.
If the male’s “X” pairs with the female’s “X” – a female is produced. If the males “Y” pairs with the females “X” – a male is produced. In other words…“XX” is a female and “XY” is a male.
So what does all this have to do with the food you eat determining the gender of your baby?
Here’s what: A new study has shown that having a hearty appetite, eating potassium-rich foods including bananas, and not skipping breakfast all seem to raise the odds of having a boy!
This British study is the first to show a link (in humans) between a woman’s diet and whether she has a male or female child.
University of Exeter researcher Fiona Mathews, the study's lead author, said the findings also fit with fertility research showing that male embryos aren't likely to survive in lab cultures with low sugar levels. Skipping meals can result in low blood sugar levels.
Dr. Tarun Jain, fertility specialist at The University of Illinois at Chicago, said he was skeptical when he first heard about the research. But he said the study was well-done and merits follow-up study to see if the theory proves true.
It's not necessarily as far-fetched as it sounds. While men's sperm determines a baby's gender, it could be that certain nutrients or eating patterns make women's bodies more hospitable to sperm carrying the Y chromosome, Jain said.
"It's an interesting question. I'm not aware of anyone else looking at it in this manner," he said.
The Facts…
The study was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British medical journal.
The research involved about 700 first-time pregnant women in the United Kingdom who didn't know the sex of their fetuses. They were asked about their eating habits in the year before getting pregnant.
Among women with the highest calorie intake before pregnancy (but still within a normal, healthy range), 56 percent had boys, versus 45 percent of the women with the lowest calorie intake.
Women who ate at least one bowl of breakfast cereal daily were 87 percent more likely to have boys than those who ate no more than one bowlful per week. Cereal is a typical breakfast in Britain, and in the study, eating very little cereal was considered a possible sign of skipping breakfast, Mathews said.
Compared with the women who had girls, those who had boys ate an additional 300 milligrams of potassium daily on average, "which links quite nicely with the old wives' tale that if you eat bananas you'll have a boy," Mathews said.
She added, women who had boys also ate about 400 calories more daily than those who had girls, on average.
Don’t Overeat Or Starve Yourself!!!
But be careful. This is NOT advice to over eat or starve your self to try to have either a boy or girl.
Both are not healthy and can be harmful to both you and your baby.
In fact, the study results reflect women at opposite ends of a normal eating pattern, not those with extreme habits, Mathews said.
Professor Stuart West of the University of Edinburgh said the results echo research in some animals.
Since Boys Are Bigger…
And Dr. Michael Lu, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and public health at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the results "are certainly plausible from an evolutionary biology perspective." In other words, since boys tend to be bigger, it would make sense that it would take more calories to create them, Lu said.
In The End…We Still Don’t Know!
Still, Lu said a woman's diet before pregnancy may be a marker for other factors in their lives that could influence their baby's gender, including timing of intercourse.
"The bottom line is, we still don't know how to advise patients in how to make boys," he said. Now for something completely different but very important…
How Energy Drinks Destroy Your Teeth!
According to the April 21, 2008 Birmingham News, a new study just published in Dental journals reveals that the high-caffeine, high-sugar beverages that are very popular amongst teens are 3 to 10 times worse for your teeth than colas.
A professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore Dental School soaked teeth in energy drinks, fitness water, sports drinks and other beverages for 14 days, measuring decay. According to reports in General Dentistry and other trade publications, lemonade and energy drinks did the most damage.
The professor, Dr. Anthony von Fraunhofer, found lemonade and energy drinks contain high levels of acids that can destroy enamel.
Dr. John Ruby, a professor in the dental school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has done research that reached similar conclusions.
Ruby measured the pH levels, or acidity, of dozens of beverages. Energy drinks have such high levels of acid that he recommends consumers not even allow them to touch their teeth. If you must drink them, he said, use a straw.
"Sip those all day, and you're not going to have any teeth left," he said.
Drink manufacturers put acid into beverages to balance the sweetness of the sugar. A can of Coke includes 10 teaspoons of sugar, for example, Ruby said. Put that much sugar in a cup of coffee, and "you'd be gagging," it would be so sweet, he said. The acid makes it palatable.
Maybe drinking plain old water isn’t so bad after all…
And don’t forget, if you ever have any questions or concerns about your health, talk to us. Contact us with your questions. We’re here to help, and don’t enjoy anything more than participating in your lifelong good health.
Inspirational Story Of The Month –
(Names And Details Have Been Changed To Protect Privacy.)
“How A College Dorm Room, A Computer, And A Stubborn Dream Created
The Nation’s Richest Man Under The Age Of 25…”
The Time: Sometime in 2004.
The Place: A Harvard University dorm room.
The Goal: To create a better way for students to communicate and get to know each other.
At least that’s what conventional wisdom says Mark Zuckerberg set out to do. But it seems like this “goal” and Mark’s “dream” were VASTLY different…Here’s why: It didn’t take Mark Zuckerberg long to attain the “goal” of having a way for his schoolmates to better connect with each other. In fact, in just two short years, the social networking website he created had gone WAY beyond the confines of his Harvard dorm room… not to mention the entire Harvard campus. Zuckerberg’s idea caught wild-fire and suddenly EVERY college student across the country wanted to be a part of the phenomenon.
Zuckerberg Became The Gatekeeper – Allowing Colleges
Across The Country Access To His Site – One By One
By mid-2006, Zuckerberg’s social networking site, Facebook.com, had 7 million members and he had raised a whopping $37.7 million from venture capitalists. Whether you know anything about Facebook or not – you probably don’t know this…Zuckerberg has much bigger plans for Facebook than for it to just be a college socializing website. He has a dream for it to supplant and surpass the giant Myspace and make Facebook the largest social network on the planet. He wants to become the next Google, a site that people of all ages would find useful in their daily lives. But in 2006, it wasn’t happening. He had quickly cornered the college market... then things stalled. He went from zero to 7 million members in the blink of an eye – but – reaching 8 million was a slow and painful climb. Considering Myspace had 100 million members, Facebook had a ways to go. And the worst part was: It looked like they had peaked. That’s when Yahoo came knocking. At that point in 2006, they offered Zuckerberg $1 billion in cash. Feeling the frustration… and pressure… he reluctantly verbally accepted the deal to sell Facebook to Yahoo. Then tragedy struck, at least for Yahoo. It announced it was projecting slower sales and earning growth and that its new advertising platform would be delayed. Its stock plummeted 22% overnight. Terry Semel, Yahoo’s CEO at the time, reacted by cutting his deal from $1 billion to $800 million. Zuckerberg walked away. Two months later, Semel reissued the original $1 billion offer. Zuckerberg still said no.
A 22-Year-Old Turned Down $1 Billion!!!!!
Can you imagine that? Geez!
Anyway, it turns out Zuckerberg wasn’t such a fool after all. Today, he is 23 and analysts think he could be the richest man under the age of 25, with a net worth of $1.5 billion. But more importantly is his DREAM. He has transformed his company from a second-tier social network to a full-fledged platform that organizes the entire Internet. As a result, Facebook is now the most buzzed-about company in Silicon Valley, and Zuckerberg is constantly compared to visionaries like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Even some of the tech industry's most legendary figures are genuflecting before Zuckerberg. In an entry on his blog, Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen called Facebook's transformation "an amazing achievement — one of the most significant milestones in the technology industry in this decade." Says Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, "I'm in awe." How is Facebook’s membership going? Well, now it's signing up nearly 1 million new users a week. By the end of last August, there were 36 million of them. And these aren't just the tweens or college kids you might suspect; the fastest-growing segment of Facebook users is over 35, a group that represents 11 percent of all site users. Total registrations have more than quadrupled over the previous year. The number of employees has tripled, as has revenue. And venture capitalists say that if Facebook were to go public today, investors would value it at more than $5 billion — five times what Yahoo had been prepared to pay. Seems like Mark Zuckerberg’s goals and dreams were a little different… don’t you think?
We love helping our patients and their friends and relatives through their tough times and getting them feeling better! We are here to help you stay feeling better and looking younger! Don't be a stranger. Call us, and we will assist you in putting together a customized maintenance plan. It's not a luxury anymore! With our low monthly payment plan, it's less expensive to maintain your good health! You really can afford Chiropractic care! Don't wait until you can no longer move!
Did You Know?... Did you know that your brain has around 100 billion nerve cells? It also has 1,000 billion other cells, which cover the nerve cells and the parts of the nerve cells, which form the links between one cell and another, feed them and keep them healthy. Your brain keeps on growing until you are about 20 years old. By then, the brain has made lots of links it no longer needs so it is able to shed many unwanted connections and still have billions of brain cells left to cope with whatever you may want to do. You can still make new connections even when you are 100 years old, so get Grandma going on the computer - she may not learn as fast as you but she can do it! The front of the human brain is larger than any other animal's, even the dinosaurs! The left side of your brain is usually better at problem solving, math and writing. The right side of the brain is creative and helps you to be good at art or music. The brain stores all sorts of things in memory, including facts and figures and all the smells, tastes and things you have seen, heard or touched. Your brain can also find things that you have remembered---like how to spell. Apart from making sure that you don’t injure your brain, you can also make sure that you help your brain by: ?Eating healthy food like fish and fresh vegetables. ?Exercising your brain by learning new things and trying to remember them. ?Getting plenty of sleep.
Tip Of The Month – Principles Of Green Living That Help The Planet And YOU!
The debate rages on. Some say we (human-kind) are responsible for global warming and the eventual and inevitable destruction of our planet. Others say this is pure hogwash. No matter where the real truth lies… living a “Green” life has its benefits. One is PRODUCTIVITY. So, whether you want to lend a helping hand to the planet, or just live a simpler, more productive life, these 6 Principles of Green Living are for YOU: 1. Simplicity -- More stuff means more complexity; more upkeep, more keeping track, more things to do. In global terms, it means more wasted resources. Some people try to atone for buying more stuff by buying "Green" stuff — bamboo potholders, handmade mail sorters, recycled project folders. Is it really “Green”?… to get that hand-woven hemp grocery bag from Bolivia to Wichita takes oil, to run the lights in the store takes oil, to feed the Bolivian who wove it takes oil, to grow the hemp takes oil, and so on. You’re putting a few cents into the Bolivian’s pockets, and that’s honorable, but it’s not saving the Earth. 2. Fairness -- Much of our consumption-driven market is based on unfairness. If everyone along the chain, from that Bolivian to the Wal-Mart worker, actually were paid what you’d expect, that hand-woven grocery bag would be out of most people’s price range. 3. Community -- If you’ve ever had the pleasure of attending a local farmer’s market, you’ve experienced something few of us do these days: an encounter with a part of your community, an actual living and breathing person, who made what you’re about to buy. There were some global resources used (even organic farmers use tractors, and they needed a truck to bring their stuff to market), but most of the labor and material involved came out of your local area. You have a relationship with this person, and with their land. Your land. 4. Sustainability -- A system is sustainable when the negative outputs of that system are accommodated and turned into positive outputs. Think about your working life — if you weren’t getting paid, would you work so hard? Your hard work — a negative thing — is converted into something positive — a paycheck. However, most of our global production is not sustainable. Waste products are dumped wherever space can be found, without regard to the consequences on local resources or populations. Workers are treated unfairly: they are exposed to noxious substances and dangerous working conditions, and they are not compensated enough to feed themselves, let alone build a thriving economy (some aren’t paid at all: there are some 30 million enslaved workers in the world today, more than at any time in human history). 5. Planning -- Planning means looking ahead towards a desired outcome; it also means thinking a little bit about the community that isn’t here yet and dealing fairly with them. The last century ran its course largely unplanned — something that today’s young adults are being forced to come to grips with. The decisions we make now will create the conditions our grandchildren and their grandchildren will have to deal with. 6. Transparency -- Planning, community, fairness, and ultimately sustainability require transparency. Most decisions these days are made behind closed doors. A Green society requires the active involvement of all its participants, and we can’t be actively involved if we don’t have access to all the information in play. What’s more, given the global magnitude of the world economy, we can’t ever be fully informed — which is why simplicity and community are so important. You can know quite a bit about the farmer at the farmer’s market who raised the chicken you’re about to eat.
Remember, we’re always here, using the miracle of Chiropractic to help your
body heal and maintain the health you deserve.
This information is solely advisory, and should not be substituted for medical or chiropractic advice. Any and all health care concerns, decisions, and actions must be done through the advice and counsel of a healthcare professional who is familiar with your updated medical history. We cannot be held responsible for actions you may take without a thorough exam or appropriate referral. If you have any further concerns or questions, please call our office at210-359-9100.
