Health Podcast with Connie Sellecca: Secondhand Drinking; Shower For Sleep; Protect Your Memory

In this episode we feature:

An interview with spine specialist Dr. Kaliq Chang.

The effects of secondhand drinking.

The sleep benefits of showering.

Eat fish for better grades.

And more ways you can improve your health today! 

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Transcript

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Music. Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm Gib Gerard. We have for you another special intelligence for your health with Connie selika. Edition of the podcast. Our guest today is spine specialist, Dr Kalik Chang so you'll get all kinds of information about your spine in this episode. So here we go without further ado intelligence for your health with Connie Celica, want a better immune system, be more grateful. Research from UC Riverside found people who spent five minutes a day feeling grateful for a loved one saw a spike in immunoglobulin, a an antibody that fights off viruses. Even better, write a letter of appreciation, the research shows it will boost feelings of gratitude, even if you never send the letter, because just putting your thoughts on paper makes you feel more connected to the person, more humble and more likely to do good deeds for others. Patience is a virtue, and it can also save your life, because experts say impatient people are at a much higher risk of heart disease and hypertension than those who are more laid back. Psychologists call it time urgency, impatience or hurry sickness. It's a chronic sense of time pressure, and it's become an epidemic in North America, like the person who can't stop pushing the elevator button to hurry it up, or who gets exasperated when a Google search takes longer than three seconds. But we now know that time urgency impatience puts a huge strain on the heart. Constant impatience leads to irritability and anger and the daily rush and panic raises blood pressure. It also makes your brain react like every minute is an emergency, plus all that hurrying actually makes us less efficient and productive. We're slower mentally because the stress hormones in our bodies are pulling the blood away from our brains. So what's the antidote to hurry sickness? Slowing down? Try going somewhere silent for 10 minutes a day, skipping a few errands and going on a phone fast for at least an hour a day, instead of trying to fill up every second. We need to focus on making our days more fulfilling and meaningful. And that's how to combat hurry sickness coming up. We'll talk to spine specialist, Dr Kalik Chang, about a condition known as tech neck. It develops as a result of using electronic devices. And Dr Chang will explain exactly what's happening to cause pain in our necks. But first, when you're buying shoes, what's worse getting a pair that's a little too big or a little too small? Go big because our feet swell during the day and when we're active. And rehabilitation specialist Dr Nadia Sweden says two tight shoes can throw off your balance and stride because your toes will be too cramped to hit the ground properly. So go for the shoes that are a little too big, rather than a pair that are too small. Get ready to protect your brain from Alzheimer's. Neuroscientist Dr Kenneth Cossack has studied the habits that can boost our cognitive function. So try these tactics to protect your mind and memory as you age. First play games that activate your frontal lobe, like cards, chess, board games and puzzles. Dr Cossack says the frontal lobe of our brain is hit really hard by aging. It's the area that houses our memory and reasoning ability. But when you give it a workout with games that make you strategize and anticipate your opponent's moves, you'll protect your cognitive function. Another way to protect your brain. Take an acting class. Dr Cossack says learning lines and coordinating them with blocking, which is how you're supposed to move around the stage, is another powerful way to activate your frontal lobe, one more habit that can protect your brain power. Do something artistic, whether it's painting, sculpting or drawing. Dr Cossack says when we create art, we have to make spatial calculations, like how objects relate to each other in size and shape. We also have to pay attention to detail, and when the Mayo Clinic had 60 and 70 year olds take an art class, they formed new neural connections. Okay, listen to this. Make this mixture to have on hand. The next time a headache strikes, mix six drops of peppermint essential oil into one ounce of unscented lotion. Then, when you get a headache, massage that peppermint mixture into your temples, neck and forehead for a few minutes. According to the journal Phytomedicine, it calms a headache as effectively as taking 1000 milligrams of acetaminophen, and it works within five minutes. That's because the menthol in the mint oil stops muscle spasms and decreases inflammation and the massage. Soothes the nerves that send pain signals. Today, our special guest is Dr Kalik Chang. He's a board certified pain management specialist with the Atlantic Spine Center in New Jersey, and he says something he's been seeing on more MRIs in recent years are people developing bone spurs at the base of the neck. He says the protrusions are the result of people constantly hunching over their electronic devices, and since the structures can become very painful, I asked Dr Chang how they form. What we're talking about are degenerative change of the spine, and very commonly we would see these in older people or people that have genetics that cause their spine to age faster. But yeah, recently, in the last five years or so, seeing a lot more young people coming in with these issues in their neck. And the fun term that we use for that is tech neck and what, basically, what these horns are are bone spurs or bone growths, the way that the body responds in any joint, and this can happen in a hip, a knee or a shoulder, where there's a joint where there's bone and cartilage. The cartilage acts as a shock absorber and allows you know the joint to to manage impacts, but with wear and tear, with repeated trauma, the cartilage wears that and the bone sometimes can get inflamed, and bone spurs occur when, when those injuries or inflammation to cartilage or the bone, and instead of, say, growing more cartilage, the body responds by growing more bone in the area, I guess, to thinking that it's going to stabilize, what that means is the bone spurs themselves don't really do anything most of the time, but sometimes they grow in a way that they can impinge upon where the nerves come out of the spine, and that's when it becomes a problem. Today, we're talking to spine expert, Dr Kalik Chang, and he was just explaining how our constant hunching over electronic devices can cause trauma in our neck joints, triggering the growth of painful bone spurs. But he said bone spurs can grow in any joint. So I asked Dr Chang to share another common way people experience bone spurs. One of the most common injuries, even in young people, is a rotator cuff injury, most specifically the supraspinatus tendon. So so that is the to raise your arm from a resting position out to the side to 90 degrees. There is a specific tendon that's responsible for that motion, and that tendon glides underneath one of the bones in the shoulder called the acromion, and usually it's a nice, smooth bone, but with a repeated injury, wear and tear, inflammation, the tip of that bone actually starts to grow a spur or a horn and and then the tendon starts rubbing on that, and that's called impingement or impingement syndrome. And so so as as that process worsens and causes more inflammation, it it worsens, it's like a cycle that keeps happening. So that's something. That's another example of how a bone spur cat can really affect somebody. If you want your kids to grow up smart and do well in school, serve fish more often. University of Pennsylvania researchers study 500 kids aged nine to 12. The result, kids who ate fish twice a week had higher IQ scores than those who ate fish twice a month or less. And the more fish a child ate, the fewer sleep problems they had. The reason because the omega three fatty acids in fish boost sleep quality and are essential for overall brain health. Today's medical term strabismus, that's the eye condition that pommel horse guy Steven neterosik has. If that name doesn't sound familiar, he's the glasses wearing men's gymnast who helped Team USA win a bronze medal at the Paris Olympic Games. Strabismus is the medical term for being cross eyed, or having eyes that point in different directions. Typically, the brain sorts through information transmitted by each eye to create a unified visual picture and assess distance and depth. But when you have strabismus, there's misalignment between the eyes, and you can actually see two images instead of one, and that leads to sight issues like double vision, blurry vision and light sensitivity. Dr Dean cestari is Director of Adult strabismus care at Massachusetts, eye and ear. He says, For some people, one eye is always the one to turn in out, up or down. In others, the turned eye can alternate, and that's the case for Jim. Neterosic Babies can be born with strabismus, or it can develop later in life. Overall, an estimated two to 5% of the population has strabismus. It can also run in families, often a pair of prescription glasses can straighten vision, but in some cases, people may also need eye exercises, surgery, medications or patching, literally wearing an eye patch over one eye to strengthen the other. And that's today's medical term, strabismus, coming up. We'll hear more from spine expert, Dr Kalik Chang. He'll tell us the absolute worst sleep position for your back and neck and the best positions to sleep in but first, to boost your attention span, engage these two senses, your vision and hearing. Dr Terry Matlin is a psychotherapist who says our minds wander because we let our vision and hearing get distracted. So the next time you're in a meeting, for example, force yourself to look at who's speaking and take detailed notes, since that will keep your hearing engaged. You've heard of secondhand smoke, of course. But what about secondhand drinking? According to a new report in The Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs, the negative effects of alcohol impact, one in five people not from drinking themselves, but from other people drinking. The report calls it a significant public health issue. For the study, nearly 9000 adults were asked whether they experienced any of the 10 types of harm caused by someone who had been drinking alcohol in the past year, and the damages included everything from traffic accidents to abuse, marital problems, property damage and financial issues. The two most common negative effects of second hand drinking are threats or harassment when broken down by gender. For women, the top negative effects due to someone else's drinking were harassment, family and marital problems or financial problems. For men after harassment, the most common type of harm from second hand drinking was related to car accidents, followed by property damage and vandalism. This report proves what we already suspected. Drinking affects more than just the person getting drunk, and that's second hand drinking. Okay, listen to this to radically reduce your stress, take your work out outside, according to the journal Social Science and medicine, walking, biking or jogging outside can help you feel 50% calmer than if you'd exercised indoors. That's because the changing scenery, sounds and smells are distractions that make it easier to forget your worries back with more health intelligence from Dr kalec Chang from the Atlantic Spine Center in New Jersey, and if you're experiencing more aches and pains since you've been working from home, Dr Chang says you are not alone, because for many remote workers, the home environment is not well suited for our back and neck. Yeah, well, one of the main differences that people face when they're at home working instead of in the office is at least in the office, they may have had a chance to have a proper desk, office chair, maybe even have good ergonomics monitor at a good height. However, for people who all of a sudden had to start working at home, suddenly they're working on a bed or a coffee table on a couch that's very soft, all these situations lead to somebody having a very sub optimal position. And so at any point, if you're not sitting up completely straight and balanced over your hips, that is stress in the low back. So anytime you're in a twisted position, if you're leaning forward a lot, if you're sitting cross legged Indian style, especially with the number of hours people sit in that position, it's gonna aggravate or cause back injuries, and I was just mentioning the back and this happens in the neck as well, especially if there's a monitor or a phone or a laptop that is lower than your eye level, the neck And the head naturally dip down into this stupid position that causes a lot of stress on the neck, back with more health intelligence from spine specialist Dr Kalik Chang, and according to the American Journal of managed care, more than two thirds of us struggle to sleep. So I asked Dr Chang to share the best and worst sleep positions for our bodies so we can all get better rest. Usually, the worst position that someone could sleep in is on their belly. Unfortunately, I know a lot of people do like to sleep on their belly, and the reason is the neck is forced to be in a non mutual position. And. Then oftentimes it also causes the low back to bend backwards or extend unnaturally. The goal of optimal positioning when you're sleeping is to have everything in as neutral a position as possible, so that typically would mean firmware or semi firm bed, and sometimes people, when they're lying on the back, need to place a pillow under their knees so that their back is not extended too much. Or if sleeping on the side, putting a pillow between the knees so that the pelvis is not twisted too much to one side, and also with side sleeping is making sure the neck is not in a non neutral position. It's very easy for the neck that we need bending, rotating one way or the other if you want your brain to work better. Exercise in the morning. Researchers at the University of Western Australia found adults doing moderate intensity workouts in the morning had sharper brains all day because morning exercise elevated a protein for eight hours called brain derived neurotropic growth factor, which helps neurons survive and thrive. So morning exercisers have a better concentration, attention span, decision making and short term memory. So if you need to be at your best mentally fit in a morning workout, more intelligence for your health. From spine specialist, Dr Kalik Chang, and since we're always talking about the benefits of walking on this show, and since a whopping 80% of us will experience back pain at some point, I asked Dr Chang why a simple walk is often the best prescription for our spine health. The main reason why walking is a minimum of the activity that we should be doing, especially for spine health, is because the discs in the spine don't have their own blood supply. There's no arteries or veins that go in and out of the disc. It's what we call an a vascular a vascular object. So the way that it actually gets nutrients is from absorbing through the bone. So it's a sponge, and it doesn't absorb or get rid of waste products just by sitting there, what you need is that gentle motion of walking, bending, flexing, relaxing, gentle pressure on the disc, and then relaxation of pressure from the disc. And it's this squeezing and UN squeezing that allows the waste products to come out and for the nutrients to come in. The Center for sleep medicine at Cornell University makes a good case for showering at night. It can help you sleep better if you time it just right. The main trick is to not start too late, because, as you know, body temperature plays a big role in regulating our body clock and the release of sleep hormones in the morning, our body temperature rises to wake us up and keeps rising until late afternoon to help us stay alert. Then right around your 3pm slump, body temperature starts to fall, and that cooling down triggers the release of melatonin, which builds until bedtime. But you can accelerate the cooling process by showering at night, because after a hot shower, the body will cool more rapidly. So when is the ideal time for a shower before bed? The experts at Cornell say it's an hour and a half before you want to hit the sack. That way, by the time you lie down, your body will be cooled and ready to sleep. Here's an email I received at Connie at intelligence for your health.com. It comes from CAMI master Cola, who writes, do we eat less in summer? Does heat kill our appetite? Cami, it is actually a myth that we eat less in hot weather. That's according to registered dietitian Joy Bauer. She says it's true that in hot weather, you're less likely to crave heavy, fatty comfort foods like mac and cheese, for example. The problem is that we generally replace one type of fatty food with others in the summer, so instead of mac and cheese, we eat more burgers, barbecue, ribs and ice cream. In other words, don't expect to lose weight just because it's hotter outside and you're sweating more because your caloric intake generally stays even from season to season. Thank you for your email. Cami. I hope this helps. Okay, listen to this. If you tend to wake up stuffy and headachy, it could be the bookcase in your bedroom, books, knick knacks and frame photos do collect dust, but books can also contribute to indoor mold, especially in humid climates. The fix put the bookshelf in another room so you're not inhaling allergens all night, and clean your floors and bookshelves weekly with a HEPA filter vacuum that will keep the allergens from. Spewing right back out of the machine into your living space. Sunglasses were invented to protect our eyes, but according to the journal cognition and emotion, sunglasses can also protect our mood. In a study, participants were surveyed before and after they took a walk on a bright, sunny day, generally speaking, those wearing sunglasses reported the happiest moods overall, while those who did not wear sunglasses were the most likely to report feeling irritated or angry after their walk. And surprisingly, that was true even if the participants without sunglasses started their walk in a positive mood. Researchers say it boils down to a concept we've talked about before called embodied cognition, that refers to how our body movements and expressions can dictate our mood and mindset. In this case, researchers say that if you don't wear sunglasses, you're more likely to squint in bright sun, and as far as your brain is concerned, squinting activates the same facial muscles as making an angry or irritated expression, and the longer you make a negative facial expression, the more likely your brain will be tricked into thinking you're unhappy, until you actually become unhappy, or You could just slip on a pair of sunglasses and turn your mood around back with more health intelligence from spine specialist, Dr Kalik Chang. If you'd like to know more about him or any of the latest spine treatments, check out Atlantic spine center.com and I asked Dr Chang something I've always wondered about spine health, what causes so many of us to shrink, I have and develop a hunch as we get older. So one of the main reasons why people lose height as they grow older is the degeneration of the discs within the spine. So part of that process is you lose the height of that disc. So that's one of the reasons, just the space between the vertebrae of the spine themselves are getting narrower with the wearing away of that disc cartilage. And then on top of that, if there are problems with bone density osteoporosis, bones can start to compress in the and then they compress in a wedge shape. And that's kind of where you start to get that hunchback look. If left unchecked, it can, it could continue that way. And so you have the combination of the disc, the cartilage in between the vertebrae wearing down, and then the vertebrae themselves, the bones, starting to crunch forward. That's it for our show today, our special intelligence for your health with Connie Selig, edition of the podcast, I'm Gib Gerard. Don't forget to rate comment and subscribe on Apple podcast. Spotify, wherever you get your podcast, it helps us out a lot. And also you can reach out to us on social media. All of our links are listed down in the show notes. We try to respond to every DM, every mention of the show, because ultimately, we do the show for you guys. So thank you so much for listening. You.