Auntie Janet’s Creamy Salad Dressing Recipe

Another Recipe from my Auntie Janet – an alternative to store bought creamy dressings that have way to many chemicals and additives. This one is great over spinach and any type of salad you like a creamy dressing on.  If you are doing paleo/keto diets you can omit the sugar.  You can also use home made mayo which I think I posted a recipe to previously (really easy to make and stores well)

 Ingredients

Directions

Core stabilization is super important – in keeping with out theme here is exercise #2.  Please watch the video below click the words “Bird Dog ” that are underlined and a video screen will pop up.  This is the weird name of the exercise… once you get your legs going and it is easy for you, for an increased challenge add the opposite arm.  For an even more difficult exercise hold for 10 or more seconds in each posture.

Bird Dog

The important thing to know here is that one side will be harder to do than the other side.  You will want to cheat when raising one of your legs and drop your hip to achieve it.  This is because the gluteus medius is weak or not activated and this exercise helps us reactivate it.  This in turn also turns on the Transversus Abdominus muscle… that is all chiro speak for core stabilization.  These muscles, if strong, lead to more stable cores and less back pain.  So just do it already!

As always, if you have pain, stop.  If you have questions, please call me 🙂

Happy Stabilizing!

We go about life independent and strong and doing things for ourselves or on our own because we are supposed to be able to handle life.  But when life happens – and life is messy as we all know – we need to be able to ask for help and more importantly let people help us.

Here is what is going on with me.  Busy life as usual, practice, patients, home, husband, small child… and now a very sick parent.

My dad is in hospital for the past 10 days with a subdural hematoma.  A bleed between his skull and brain as a result of being on blood thinners and falling.  He alternates between semi coherent and conscious and unconscious, or confused.  He was better a week ago but I am told it goes like this. Up and down on the roller coaster of life we go.  So he will be in hospital for a while and then likely (hopefully) rehab and then who knows.  One day at a time. One day at a time.

Duirng this period I am trying to go to the hospital for a few hours per day and work and continue to do all the things I need to do to build my practice. But there are things I can’t do or don’t have energy for.  One of those things is my blog – I skipped the recipe this week (sorry).  But an amazing chiro woman warrior friend of mine came up with a solution. Ask for help.

I did this yesterday on facebook – I put it out there what had happened and I asked for help.  I said ‘I don’t know what I need but I need help. Please reach out.”  My friends immediately started calling, I got offers of babysitting and the casserole patrol has been activated (thank goodness).

I also got something I was surprised by – praise.  People telling me how strong I am and how proud they are of me for asking for help.  Lets not pull punches here, I am fiercely independent and generally want to do things on my own but I have learned recently the value of asking for help. Human beings are social creatures, we need our social networks for survival.  People genuinely want to help but first they need to know you need their help.  I read a study recently, or maybe actually it was a Ted talk, saying that the best predictor for longevity and health into old age was food social networks.

So, moral of the story – ask for help. People want to help you. It will be your turn to help some other time.  And round and round it goes.

In the coming weeks I will have guest bloggers and recipes from friends on my blog – some will be chiro friends but if you want to participate and send me something  to post please do at karenchiro@hotmail.com

All contributors will receive credit and if you have a website a link will be on my blog as well to your site. Google likes things like that anyways 🙂

And thank you, for all of your help and your readership. xoxo

Painful conditions in pregnant and new moms

Some of the things they don’t tell you when you are trying to get pregnant: babies can poop all the way up their back and get their necks dirty (aka: a pooplosion), hormone changes after birth can give you night sweats that soak your pyjamas and sheets, and pregnancy can cause all sorts of fun painful conditions – some of which may not disappear after birth. Oh ya, and even if they do, carrying baby, baby stuff, car seats and breast feeding can cause all sorts of other painful conditions.

Fab right?

I mean all you wanted to do was have this picture perfect pregnancy and teeny adorable little person to marvel at right? Now this pain crap is getting it the way.  Ok, so you go to the family doctor and (most of the time) they tell you to wait it out and it will go away.  But it doesn’t. Or it’s getting in the way of your marvelling time.  I’m writing this to tell you there is hope and lots you can do.  I’ll let you in on a secret – pain isn’t normal. It is your body trying to tell you something is wrong and you need to do something about it.  So in this post I will go over some common painful conditions of pregnancy, give you a couple tips you can do at home to help yourself and outline other things that you can go seek help for.

There is always something you can do. That is tip one. Ok? Lets go…

Lower Back Pain

This can happen during pre and post partum periods and can be for a host of reasons – from sacroiliac joints that are too mobile because of the increased hormone Relaxin in your body during pregnancy, to round ligament pain, and muscle spasms, lower back pain is probably the most common painful complaint during pregnancy and post partum periods. Luckily there is lots you can do but what you do depends on your diagnosis. If you know that your sacroiliac joints are too mobile – this one happened to me during pregnancy to the point I had trouble rolling over in bed and getting up (not a great place to be as a chiropractor treating patients) – one thing you can do is seek out a pregnancy support belt.  This one saved me during pregnancy but don’t rush out and buy one unless you are sure this is your diagnosis.  One thing I try on patients in the office before getting them a belt is belly taping with kinesiotape.  Kinesiotape is that stuff you see on the summer Olympic athletes (think beach volley ball) for injuries – it is a great tool for tons of stuff and can help support pregnant bellies and backs too.  In general, lower back pain of pregnancy is fairly easy to treat but it is important to find a practitioner who has experience and is comfortable treating pregnant mamas.  Personally in my practice I do lots of deep tissue release, muscle work and possibly chiropractic adjustments to sort these problems out in both pre and post partum periods. Lots of research has been done to show that chiropractic care is one of the most effective forms of treatment for lower back pain in general as well as lower back pain in the pre and post natal periods.

Tailbone Pain

This can happen during pregnancy and is likely due to ligament strain on the coccyx (or tailbone) from the extra weight being carried by Mom. Ok, usually family docs say they don’t know why this occurs and it will go away after birth.  Sometimes tailbone pain starts after or during birth – this is likely due to strain on the ligaments attaching the tailbone to the base of the spine from the baby moving or even pushing.  Again the MDs generally say it will go away on its own. Sometimes it does.  But sometimes it doesn’t. I have heard of patients who have had this for years after the birth of the baby and some who even go for cortisone injections in the region years later because they are so desperate to find a solution. Tailbone pain is fairly easy to treat for a manual practitioner who has experience with it – suffice it to say we have to get the ligaments to relax which can be done with some specific release techniques.  They aren’t always the most comfortable during treatment but are really effective.  It really breaks my heart that people live with this one for years without knowing what to do. If you suffer with this one please don’t leave it – the longer you do the longer it will take to treat and get it to go away. Something you can do in the meantime (while dialing the phone and calling to make an appointment with someone to get yourself treated) is to buy a donut shaped pillow (also called an invalid ring or hemorrhoid pillow) – as you can imagine sitting with this condition is not a fun thing.  The donut pillow can relieve some of the pressure with sitting.  I have seen them online for about $25.

Upper back pain during pregnancy or breast feeding

Have you ever had back pain in your upper back sort of to one side right near your shoulder blade? Do you feel like you need to just have someone push on that spot or lean against the corner of a door frame to relieve the pain?  Ya so that is rib pain. Yes you have ribs up there.  The rib cage goes from your collar bone all the way to where you can feel them near your stomach and wrap from front to back.  When you breathe in your ribs are supposed to swing gently up, and when you breathe out they swing gently down a bit – like a bucket handle.  During pregnancy, and even more commonly during breast feeding or even just with carrying the new baby (generally with one hand), the ribs can get stuck and stop doing this. That causes inflammation and angry muscles.  You can even get pain travelling around to the front of your chest or down your arm due to this pain.  Some people end up in the ER because the pain can be so intense that they think they are having a heart attack. This one is super painful but also easy to treat with muscle work and chiropractic adjustments.  I love helping people with this one because I suffer from it myself so I know how it feels and what to do to get it to stop. Again I will advise you to treat it sooner than later because the longer you leave it the harder it is to get the problem solved (but it is still solvable I swear).  A tip, especially if you are having trouble sleeping because of this pain is to do what I call the towel trick.  Take a small hand towel and roll it up like a skinny snake lengthwise.  Place this on the floor or bed and lay on it placing it between your spine and your shoulder blade on the side of pain.  Only lay on it for up to 5 minutes and do not fall asleep on it as it will irritate your back further! This should settle your muscles down a little bit but won’t totally solve the problem.  It should get you sleeping though.

I hope these tips helped – Please do seek treatment if you have a painful condition – like I said it is you body telling you that something is up and needs attention – but not to fear there is always hope!

This text has been posted at TorontoNewMom.com please check out their blog its great!