About Dr. Tanya Bindl, D.C. :

Dr. Bindl is originally from a small, rural town in WI.  She graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic and is now a practicing chiropractor in the beautiful state of Arizona.  Owning a small business is always a challenge, but one that is extremely rewarding.  She loves being active and healthy and is inspired by what she does and who she meets every single day.  She hopes to use this blog not only to share helpful tips to living a healthy lifestyle, but also to share the wonders of chiropractic care with her readers.

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“Clean eating” or “eating clean”.  It’s used all the time by people in the health industry and just by every day people trying to be healthier.  We are probably guilty of it too, maybe even on this very blog. “7 weeks with clean eating.  Go me!” says a facebook status.  The actual effort behind this status is awesome and applaud worthy.  Actually changing your diet so that you are eating healthier is wonderful.

However, the implications of the phrase “clean eating” is not.

If there is clean eating, then there is dirty eating.  The right way and the wrong way.  To say that you are eating clean implies that anyone who is not going through with the same diet is eating the wrong way.  There is a sort of judgement lurking behind the phrase, one that really shouldn’t be there.  There’s also the fact that calling certain foods dirty seems to demonize them more than necessary.  We all slip up and have the sweet that we don’t really need.  If we think of it as dirty food, as opposed to unhealthy, it seemingly makes it much more unforgivable.  It’s hard enough to forgive yourself for being human and slipping up anyway – why make it more difficult by associating it with such an adjective?

Also, it’s important to note that one piece of cake or a serving of chips are not going to immediately clog your arteries or dirty your body. True, they aren’t very healthy, simply because of high sugar/sodium content and the fact that they just are not nutrient dense.  The important thing really is moderation.  If you are someone who can cut out all processed foods, that is awesome.  But do so because you are trying to be more healthy… and not more clean.

What was wrong “eating healthy” or “healthy eating”?  There’s no judgment there. Let’s bring that back.  True it might just be words – but words are powerful and can truly effect how we see things and how we act.

By Tanya Bindl, DC

One of the most common questions surrounding chiropractic care: is it safe and effective for children?

Yes!  Chiropractic care is safe for everyone.  Chiropractors are trained and tested extensively. They learn how to adjust every age with proper techniques and these adjustments can help with both simple and complex ailments.

This is Elizabeth – isn’t she adorable?

Her mother brought her in for an adjustment due to the fact that she was constantly spitting up.

Dr. Bindl performed an adjustment and the patient’s mother saw improvement.

Here are ten more reasons you might want to consider chiropractic care to help your child.
1. To maximize your child’s neural plasticity (brain and nerve development).
2. To enhance your child’s overall health and wellbeing.
3. To strengthen immunity and reduce the incidence of colds, ear-aches and general illness.
4. To help with colic and Irritable Baby Syndrome.
5. To help with asthma, breathing difficulties and allergies.
6. To improve spinal posture.
7. To improve your child’s ability to concentrate.
8. To assist with behavioural disorders and enhance emotional wellbeing.
9. To help alleviate digestive problems.
10. To assist with bed-wetting and sleep issues.

At Bindl Chiropractic, the main interest is health.  And as exercise is a HUGE part of overall health, we like to be active and keep up with any new health stories.  In fact, we just read this article http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/women-running-into-trouble/ a few days ago, and we must admit that it made us think twice about our workout schedules.

We encourage you to read the article, but in case, you don’t have time – it basically breaks down the reasons  why steady pace exercise (in this case steady pace running) is not the best way to lose weight, and in some cases can even be a bit bad for you.  The author points out how women are told and prompted to run too much, and that it is presented to them as the key to stay slim when it in fact may do just the opposite.  Science is present in the article and definitely makes it all the more interesting.

I have run one half marathon – it was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but also one of the most beneficial.  Normally, I exercise only with the goal of maintaining my health, not really to lose weight.  My workouts tend to be varied, but steady pace running is still a part of them.  And I had to wonder if this article is real and applicable to myself.

The article itself sounds very logical and legitimate, but I am unsure of the actual results.  The coolest thing is that you can really use any machine or form of exercise (they encourage variety and imagination) so long as you following the varying intervals of intensity.  The different phases can be found here: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/ultimate-8-week-hiit-for-fat-burning-program.html.

I am curious to know if anyone else has tried this and how successful it was. Or do you think this article, about how too much steady pace running can be harmful, had merit? Please feel free to share comments!  I really look forward to hearing from you.  As always, thank you for reading.

In light of this past weekend being Easter, we were quite inspired to write about one very fitting topic – the topic of overeating.

We are all guilty of it, especially on the holidays with so many of our holidays being centered around or celebrated with a large, bountiful feast.  Of course, it is quite clear that overeating happens on regular days too, as the obesity percentage of this country continues to rise at alarming rates, especially among children.

However, for today, we want to focus on overeating particularly on holidays.

The most important thing is that, although you are probably perfectly aware that you maybe ate a few more pieces of candy than you probably should have,  you still must not feel guilty.  The guilt, more than anything, is what drives us to do even more overeating further down the road.  We all have been there.  We realize that we may have had just a few peeps too many, and we immediately begin to berate ourselves for it.  There’s a self loathing that can creep up on you, and although it can happen quite involuntarily, we want to leave an encouraging message today that will dispel that lingering feeling.

Accept that it happened, maybe eat a lighter lunch the next day or add to your workout routine, and be aware so you can alter your behavior when the next holiday comes around, but do not psychologically punish yourself.

We hope everyone had a great holiday weekend.  And if you did happen to overeat (we admit that we did ourselves), remind yourself that it can happen, but that you will make more healthy decisions the next time around.  Don’t beat yourself up; you are still awesome.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

We all know that soda isn’t the best thing to drink.  But, after many recent studies, it’s safe to say that it is one of the worst health choices we can make.  Diet soda is not excluded, and it may even be worse.  Aspartame has not been well tested and is recognized only as “generally safe” by the FDA although it does appear to have a substantial link to cancer when analyzing data from multiple studies.  Regular soda is full of sugar and is cited with being one of the major contributors to the obesity problem that is grabbing a hold of this country.

You may or may not be aware of the recently proposed soda ban that Mayor Bloomberg is trying to put in to action in New York City.  The concept is rather simple: banning soda, or at the very least, limiting the large sizes, in effort to protect the health of the people.  However, it is controversial, the main reason being personal liberty.  Shouldn’t people have the right to choose whether or not to drink soda?  If they want to do something unhealthy, isn’t it ultimately their decision if they do so, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else?  There’s also the role of education, and how we can spread the word about just how terrible all soda truly is for you.

These questions are ones that need to be asked, but also ones that are a bit tricky to answer.   However, our area of expertise is not government policies, so we’d like to focus on why you should really try to limit your diet soda/regular soda intake.

1. Everything in moderation.   If you need a daily injection of diet coke, you may want to reconsider your choices.  And of course, this isn’t just limited to diet coke, but is applied to all types of soft drinks.  It does not provide any nutritional nourishment and may in fact harm you.  Drinking something every day, or feeling the need to do so, is not the best sign.  If you really enjoy soda, try to limit it to special occasions only.  It should not be something you are consuming every day.

2.  Studies have shown that soda, even diet soda, contributes to weight gain.

3. Dentists everywhere advise against drinking soda – heavy soda drinking is incredibly hard on your teeth.

4. Aspartame has been continuously linked to cancer.

5. There is also concern about the effect aspartame may have on the liver.  According to livestrong.com, there was a study published in “Food and Chemical Toxicology” in 2011.  It found that long-term aspartame consumption “may cause change the antioxidant status of the liver”.  Rats were given doses of aspartame-laced water. The researchers found that over a period of time, these rats had lower levels of glutathione, a chemical that helps the body use antioxidants to fight free radicals. However, according to the same source, “connections between these findings and liver damage or other specific consequences have not yet been established”.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/484327-does-aspartame-cause-liver-damage/#ixzz2NqlaIJvU

We are not sure how we feel about any ban anywhere, but we do want people to live healthier lives, and soda has no real nutritional value that can contribute to a healthy lifestyle.   We stress again that it should be in moderation, something indulged in as little as possible.  We hope you learned something new from this blog post today, as we tried to do our part to spread the word.

Thank you for reading.  Have a great rest of your Sunday!

While doing some research about what to write this blog post on, we stumbled upon a blog post from 2004 in which the author, with the purpose of saving people from health scams, wrote about the myth of subluxation.  The author also grossly generalized chiropractors, representing them in such a way where they all have the same beliefs and uphold the same techniques and philosophies.

Of course, one must always peruse the internet at one’s peril, but we were a bit disheartened to see this, even if it was back in 2004.  We can only hope that this blogger has changed their mind or perhaps has done more research on the matter.

The main course the article seems to take is discrediting the basis of chiropractic care along with it’s founder, DD Palmer, and most specifically the idea of subluxations, which the author declares, are simply myths.

So what are subluxations?  The word itself was poorly chosen by DD Palmer to describe what he actually meant and what chiropractors today help with.  Palmer, who was a bit eccentric, used this word seemingly as a way to make chiropractic care stand apart from other philosophies.  Just like ballet has a million different terms for movements, the field of chiropractic study also has a different lingo from other medical fields.  However, this does not mean chiropractic is somehow inferior for aforementioned lingo.  To continue the metaphor above, ballet lingo may differ from the terms used in tap dance – still both are forms of dance.  Likewise, the chiropractic field lingo differs somewhat from terms a physician uses; yet both are still fields of medicine.  Now that we have established the wording may have been a bit off, what DD Palmer was referring to and what chiropractors today look for are misalignments of the spine or of any joint.  It’s not necessarily about the spine itself, but more so what that misalignment is doing to your nervous system.

If your spine is unaligned, the unaligned area can hamper the flow of your nervous system, disrupting what your body normally naturally does on its own.  This also can put more strain on the muscles surrounding the misaligned area, which often causes pain and tenderness.

By correcting the misalignment, a chiropractor is essentially getting rid of a road block for your central nervous system, allowing it to move at full speed; allowing it to do all it needs to do.

There have been many studies about the effectiveness of chiropractic care.  It had been scrutinized,  prodded, and very slowly accepted.  And while sublaxations may have been a poorly chosen word to describe what it is we look for, they are in no way a myth.

The author cites the idea of the innate as being utterly ridiculous.  DD Palmer chose this word to describe the body’s “spirit” – his actual wording is a little.. eccentric, yet again, but the body clearly has an innate ability to heal itself.  This is seen in the simplest of injuries and not a ridiculous conclusion.  You scrape your knee and a week later, the scrape is gone.   This is the innate spirit that Palmer was referring to and what chiropractors today try to help run smoothly.  Again, it all stems back to the nervous system.

There are many different ways and techniques to go about correcting the misalignments of the spine.  Each chiropractor is likely to vary, depending on who they are adjusting, what area they are adjusting,  and what accredited chiropractic institution they graduated from.  Chiropractors having varying views on the best techniques.   The author also alleged that all chiropractors are anti-immunization.   This also is untrue.  Some are, some aren’t; each have their reasons for believing whatever it is that they do (those reasons are also most likely quite varied.)

As stated before, we really hope the author of that post has looked in to chiropractic care a bit more, as opposed to basing an opinion about the entire world of chiropractic care on one instance.

Myth: BUSTED

Thanks for reading!

Firstly, fervent apologies for the late blog update.  Things have been stressful – or that is, more stressful than usual.

Bearing that in mind, I thought it would be a good time to break away from my more standard “myth busting” soap box and move to another, very fitting topic: stress.

We all go through it.  It’s just the way it is (things will never be the saaaaame).  Hopefully you got the Tupac reference.  If not, be woeful about your generation’s music.  Anyway, back to stress.  It can wreck havoc on many different facets of your body, but by now, I am sure you are aware of this.

Just to surmise:

• Stress is actually a very natural response and isn’t always negative.  The negative portion comes in to play when there is just too much of it.  Aristotle was really on to something when he said everything in moderation.  The negative side effects begin to come in to play when you have too much stress and no breaks at all. Aka system overload.
• Distress (the aptly named condition of having too much stress) can lead to elevated blood pressure
• Distress can also lead to head aches, nausea/stomach problems, and problems sleeping
• Many people suffering from being over-stressed know little about how to correct their problem and sometimes, without even realizing it, do the worst thing possible in effort to alleviate stress. For example, how many times have you heard or perhaps said the phrase  “I need to relax, let’s grab a drink”?  This is an allusion; just take it from GOB* (pictured below).  Alcohol and other substances give the appearance of lowering your stress level when instead they end up prolonging your stressed state

• 

To be honest, there are a lot of symptoms of stress, I just listed the most common; it is by no means an all inclusive list.  Stress can affect everyone differently.

So how do you effectively alleviate stress?  First step is to actually recognize that you ARE distressed.  This in itself is difficult and takes time to really get a hold of – you have to become more in tune to your body.

The second step varies on who the individual actually is, although I definitely recommend working out, getting more sleep, finding a quiet place to meditate, and drinking lots of water.  As a stress eater myself, I also try to watch out  for that huge problem.  I think it’s one of the hardest things to realize – that is, whether or not you are eating because you are actually hungry or because you are stressed out – but drinking more water has helped a lot.  When I am stressed out and craving something terrible for me in regards to nutrition, I drink a glass of water before I eat.  More often than not, after the glass of water and the time it takes to drink said glass of water, I reconsider my craving/am no longer craving it.  It’s all about evaluating your impulses and knowing that you are stressed out.

I do want to include, as I am a chiropractor and this is a chiropractic blog, that getting adjustments can help remove tension on the nerves which control the muscles. When tension is removed the nerves can function properly which will help relax the muscles.  Of course, this is not the only way, as I have listed many above.  And most importantly, the real key is to identify what is causing the stress in your life and remove it.  And if it can’t be removed (job, school, family, friends, etc) then you must learn how to manage it.

Thank you for reading!

*GOB – An Arrested Development reference.  I just couldn’t help it.

 

With the unusual drop in temperatures around the Phoenix area, I am sure many of you have been forced to workout inside  – maybe even a treadmill.  Some people adore treadmills while others… not so much.  Either way, placing either a towel, magazine, piece of paper, or even a book over the screen of a treadmill can really help your workout.  It helps not only the mental side of your workout, but by blocking out those numbers, you instantly become more focused on your actual workout, your actual body as opposed to the numbers and stats.  It’s just a little something that I have noticed that can make a big difference.  Some of you may already do this, but for those of you who are dreading your treadmill workouts, I thought I would bring this little trick to light.

Have a wonderful weekend and thank you for reading!

Myth:  You Can Adjust Yourself.

You crane your neck and hear a crack.  It sounds much like the type of sound you would hear at the chiropractor… did you just adjust your neck yourself?  The simple answer: no.  In fact, if you are capable of “popping” or “cracking” certain areas of your body or spine, is a clear indication that underlying problems exist.

Now for the more detailed answer.  Chiropractors call the “crack” that is made by moving, twisting, turning, etc. a release.  If you actually pay attention to the feeling of the release and compare it to how you feel after an actual chiropractic adjustment, you will notice that the release has much less impact, is much more shallow-feeling.  The release may feel good initially, but fades quickly, whereas an actual chiropractic adjustment administered by a professional is a very different story.  You feel better for longer and the impact is felt at a deeper level.  There is a difference you can feel between a release and an adjustment.

There is also the fact that what happens during a release is entirely different from what happens when an adjustment is made.  For example, when you press on your knuckles, they will often emit a loud cracking sound. The sound is simply a result of gases in the joints being released.  That is really all that is going on.  The angle and approach of how you press down on your knuckles is random and is not a specific motion with a specific purpose.  The cracking sound itself, as far as research is concerned, does not have any therapeutic benefit whatsoever.  More importantly, when your neck pops or cracks, it is more often than not the segments or vertebrae either below or above the true problem area that are moving.  The segment or vertebrae which are truly in need of a correction stay still.  This puts those segments or vertebrae around the true problem at risk of becoming hypermobile, which can later lead to several instability issues.  This is why many chiropractors will advise you against purposely trying to “crack” certain joints, most notably your neck.

Chiropractic adjustments not only address the real, true problem segments or vertebrae, but adjustments also have therapeutic benefits.  The therapeutic benefits are a direct result of the high velocity and low amplitude stretch of proprioceptive musculature that surrounds the joint.  Therefore, an adjustment is needed – a specific movement administered by a trained and knowledgeable professional – in order for there to be any real, lasting benefit. Simply craning your neck or cracking your knuckles will not result in the same benefits or feeling of a chiropractor’s adjustment.  An adjustment has a purpose and doesn’t just release joint gas – it also corrects a misalignment of joints or of the spine and does indeed stretch the propioceptive musculature surrounding joints.

Myth: BUSTED!

Thanks for reading!

I wanted to take the time to share some exciting news with all of you.  I will be expanding the reach of my chiropractic care to another location in Scottsdale, in addition to my current practice in Ahwatukee.

The new location:

ProFormance Health

8402 East Shae Blvd, Suite 103

Scottsdale, AZ

Phone number: 480-659-0087

Again, I will split my time between both locations.  I am so excited about this addition and cannot wait to begin this coming Monday.

Have a wonderful weekend!