Low Testosterone

A Subtle Drop in Energy
Fatigue is a common effect of low testosterone. You might feel like you just don't have the energy that you're used to. Or you might be incredibly tired. But many other things can sap your energy, too, including normal aging and depression. Getting enough sleep may help raise your energy levels. Try to get at least 7 to 8 hours each night. See your doctor for more help with unusual fatigue.

Changes in Sex Life
A drop in your sex drive can be due to low Testosterone. So can erectile dysfunction. However, low testosterone alone is rarely the only reason for weaker and fewer erections. Other medical problems can be to blame, such as heart disease or diabetes. Check with your doctor. If you have low testosterone levels, your sex drive may get better with treatment.

Fuzzy Thinking
Low testosterone can hurt your mental focus and memory. You may forget what you planned to do and have trouble concentrating. This happens more often when testosterone levels are extremely low. To help, take steps to ease stress. Try meditation, yoga, exercise, or massage. The more stress hormones your body makes, the less testosterone it can make.

Changes in Mood
Low testosterone can get you down a little or to the point of depression. Some men really see a change in personality. Nothing seems to make them happy anymore and they don't want to do things they used to enjoy. When testosterone levels are back to normal, men often say they feel like themselves again.

Muscle Changes
Because testosterone helps build muscle, when it gets low, so does your muscle mass and strength. When you work out you don't see the results that you would normally expect from exercise. Regular exercise can help boost your testosterone levels. Be sure to work large groups of muscles when you exercise and do some weight lifting, too.

More Body Fat
Not only can you lose muscles with low testosterone, you can also gain fat. If you're not building muscle with the calories you take in and the physical activity you do, then your body turns the calories into fat. Eat a healthy diet. When you start to lose weight and extra body fat from dieting, you may lose some muscle. If you are overweight or obese, your body may make more testosterone as you lose weight. This will help you gain lost muscle mass.

Thinning Body Hair
Low testosterone can cause you to lose some facial hair, pubic hair, and hair on your arms and lower legs. But it doesn't usually affect the hair on your head. Yet, there's a link between testosterone therapy and male-pattern balding. Your doctor can talk to you about any side effects of testosterone treatment.

Loss of Bone Mass
Low testosterone has been linked to osteoporosis, a disease that weakens bones. But there are other causes of osteoporosis too, so check with your doctor. To keep your bones healthy, don't smoke, and cut back on alcohol. Also get regular exercise, including weight-bearing exercise.

Trouble Sleeping
When your testosterone levels are low, you might have trouble with insomnia and restlessness at night. To help get a good night's sleep, have a relaxing bedtime routine. Go to bed and wake up at the same time, even on weekends. Make your bedroom dark, quiet, and comfortable, and only use it for sleep and sex. Eliminate all light, especially BLUE.

Problems on the Job
Many of the effects of low testosterone are focus problems, mood issues, and low energy. All there can make it hard to stay on top of your game at work. If your work or home life has changed dramatically for the worse, a full medical checkup and blood test may find the cause. A blood test can show whether you have low testosterone levels. Caution regarding the numbers vs your age.

If you have low Testosterone, a healthy lifestyle change is important, along with any testosterone therapy your doctor might suggest.

Face Exercises To Help Tone and Tighten Your Face

An easy facial exercise instruction, that may help tone and tighten your face.

Leg Cramps

Most leg cramps select no certain age or gender. In ages under 45, there is doubt one has blockage of the arteries to the legs. However, everyone who has frequent recurrent leg cramps does deserve a medical examination.

Most leg cramps at night in people who do not have leg cramps in the daytime are not caused by poor circulation. They seem to be a reflex reaction. There are a number of things one can do for the common night leg cramps. One is to stretch the leg muscles thoroughly every night before going to bed.

Another is to wear warm long socks or even the bottoms of thermal underwear. The legs and feet cool off more than the rest of the body during sleep and that is one reason they are prone to cramps.

Your sleep position is important. Sleep on your side with one or two pillows tucked at the knee (my favorite), on your back with a pillow under the knees, or try sleeping with a covered board at the bottom of the bed so that your feet rest against it and your toes do not drop down. A major cause of muscle cramping is shortening of the muscle. With the toes pointed down the calf muscle is already in a contracted position and ready to cramp.

Afternoon Drowsiness

It is well known that ambient light can influence aspects of human physiology including brain function, circadian rhythm, heart rate, and hormone release. But most studies of this have focused on the effects of light during the night; few have examined the body's response to light during the day.

New studies exposed participants to 21 minutes of bright white light in the morning. They became more alert, and brain images showed that regions of the brain involved with alertness and some cognitive processes became more active.

Those brain regions are also involved with attention and arousal regulation. This means that light exposure DOES affect performance and alertness at work.

Sitting inside a poorly lit office surrounded by incandescent or fluorescent lighting day and night starve your body of the unfiltered ultraviolet light that helps your body produce vitamin D. Full-spectrum light improves our health. More lumens the better!

The human race evolved under the sun, and for thousands of years lived in close harmony with its heat and light. Sunlight not only increases your energy and general well being, but it also helps:

• Lowers your cholesterol
• Teats multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis
• Prevent and treats cancer
• Lowers your blood pressure
• Increases the value of exercise
• Improves your body's ability to detoxify

See the light ... the bright natural light.

Sinus & Allergy Problems

Throughout Southern California people are suffering from sinus trouble (sinusitis). The majority believe the symptoms to be nothing more than a slight cold in the head that periodically worsens. They do not realize they are suffering from chronic SINUSITIS, nor do they realize how rapidly a chronic sinus condition can flare up and become serious.

Sinusitis is an inflammation of the mucous membrane lining one or more of the nasal sinuses. There are 8 sinuses; cavities in the cheekbones, forehead, and on either side of and behind the nose. The function of the sinuses is to aid in the all important pollution control of air entering the lungs. Even the sweetest country air contains dust particles, pollen and other impurities. City air is often filthy with soot and smog. During the few seconds it takes for air to be sucked into the lungs, the air must pass through an intricate maze of snares and traps. The body's system of "air conditioning" begins with the hair just inside the nostrils. These hairs strain out and move obvious particles of dust, flying insects, and other large particles of filth riding the air stream as it is sucked into the lungs. Heat from the rich blood supply in the nose warms the air on its journey to the lungs, but both the warming affect and the cleansing effect of the nasal passages are lost in breathing through the mouth. Since it is highly desirable to keep impurities out of the lungs, the importance of catching such impurities in the nose is apparent. It is essential to good health that the sinuses function properly. Usually the pain is dull and aching. It may become excruciating with excessive activity.

Sinusitis can be either chronic or acute. A tendency to head colds that hang on and on is a major symptom of chronic sinusitis. Pain is often less than in acute conditions and may be merely annoying, but unless corrected completely, chronic sinusitis may stay with the victim through the major symptoms come and go.

Patients with chronic sinus trouble are often astounded at how quickly relief comes with Chiropractic care without the use of drugs and/or operations. Give it a try .... it works!

Men Also Get Osteoporosis

With all the hype about osteoporosis in women and the ads for calcium you would think it was just a disease of women, but that is very wrong. About one in six men who live to extreme old age do have a hip fracture caused by osteoporosis. the figure is one in three for women in the same age group.

Bone loss in both sexes begins as soon as the skeleton is fully mature, which is some time after age 30. The menopause is simply an accelerated phase of bone loss. This gradual loss may never cause a man a problem if he dies before the age of 70. However, a small skeleton in either a male or female means that bone loss will become more critical earlier in life.

Testosterone in males has a similar effect on calcium and bone in men as estrogen does in women. Men tend to maintain normal testosterone levels until late in life, unless they have an illness or use alcohol to excess Studies show that in medical situations where there is a decreased testosterone level, there will also be bone loss.

It is really not known how to stop osteoporosis related to age. But it is known that cigarette smoking and alcohol both increase bone loss.

The best approach to the problem is to prevent bone loss through developing a good skeleton, with challenging exercise and proper nutrition, in the development years, and to avoid alcohol and cigarettes.

IRS PHONE SCAM

Telephone scam artist: ‘Americans are fools’

Fraudster posing as IRS official tries to scam a cop, who hassles him right back.

By KELLY PUENTE

   The con man was looking for a mark, but instead he got a cop.

   Damon Tucker, head investigator for the Major Fraud Unit in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, was checking voice messages on his personal cellphone when he heard a message a lot of us get – from a scam artist.

   Tucker called back the cheat for a chat.    “Actually you are calling the police,” Tucker told the man. “That’s the part that’s hilarious.”

   “You know what’s hilarious? You calling yourself ‘police’ ” the man replied. “That’s hilarious.”

   In a YouTube video released this week, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas warns of IRS telephone scams as Tax Day approaches.

   To get his point across, Rackauckas shows a clip of Tucker’s exchange. The cheat had left a message saying that Tucker needed to call back to avoid the IRS filing a lawsuit.

   Such callers ask that money be sent to them, or try to ferret out personal information from victims.

   In the call, Tucker volleys with the man.

   “Do you have a script that they give you?” Tucker asks. “How do you guys rip off people from their money?”

   “It’s easy to rip off people – Americans are stupid,” the fraudster replies. “You don’t need a script. American are fools. Vegetables, we call them.”

   This fraudster, unfortunately, isn’t alone.

   IRS officials said they have noticed an increase in scam artists this year calling under the guise of verifying tax return information. IRS spokesman Raphael Tulino said criminals are especially aggressive during tax season.

   “There are so many ways the scammers are trying to reach out to people,” he said.

   In January, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said there had been 896,000 phone scams reported since October 2013, with more than 5,000 victims paying $26.5 million in all.

   The IRS recommends hanging up on scam artists and reporting the incident to the Tax Administration.

   In a Wednesday interview, Tucker, a longtime fraud investigator, said he decided to “con the con artists” and repeatedly called their number, giving fake names from movies until those on the other end told him to “stop calling us.”

   “I figured if I’m tying up their line, that’s time they won’t get to spend calling potential victims,” he said.

   Tucker said he spoke with the man heard in the video several times, and the man eventually became frustrated and hung up the phone.

   The District Attorney’s Office turned the case over to its Cyber Crimes Task Force, but Tucker said these types of cases are tough to investigate because the callers are usually in another country.

   To see the video, go to www.youtube.com/user/OrangeCountyDA.

Lack of Sleep Can Make You Fatter

From the American College of Physicians issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine comes a study that suggests that there is a correlation between lack of sleep and weight gain. Chief author, Dr. Eve Van Cauter, Professor of Medicine, University of Chicago, states, "If you do not run a sleep debt, you will be able to curb your appetite more easily and maintain or lose weight."

A full article on the original research on the FitCommerce.com website notes that sleep deprivation increases levels of a hunger hormone and decreases levels of a hormone that can make you feel full. These 2 factors lead to cravings for sweets, chips, and starchy fare like bread and pasta thus setting up the scenario for weight gain.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, An estimated 63% of American adults do not get the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night. They report that the average adult gets 6.9 hours of sleep on weeknights and 7.5 hours on weekends, for a daily average of 7 hours. The researchers point out that the decline in time spent sleeping correlates to the rise in obesity in the U.S. Statistics show that less than one-quarter of young American adults sleep eight to nine hours per night -- down from about 41 % in 1960.

The article notes that this scenario sets up a downward cycle. Not having enough sleep leads to weight gain, then weight gain and obesity leads to sleep difficulties that can affect the quality of sleep and therefore cause even more sleep loss and therefore more weight gain.

"You're not healthy, unless your sleep is healthy."

The Importance of X-rays

In examining your spinal x-rays, your chiropractor hopes to find a normal healthy spine. However, there are several major conditions which may show up on radiographs.

Fracture Or Dislocations
A fractured or dislocated vertebra may be the result of a recent accident or previous injuries. Fractures can also occur spontaneously, due to hereditary factors, nutritional deficiencies, or degenerative processes. Fractures and dislocations may cause misalignment of the vertebrae, pinched nerves, and associated health problems.

Congenital Deformity
It is estimated that at least one out of twenty people is born with a significant deformity of one or more vertebrae. Such deformities may alter the dynamics of the spinal column, resulting in misalignment, pinched nerves and a wide variety of health problems.

Pathology
Pathology is the structural and functional changes produced by disease. Some pathological changes, affecting spinal dynamics include infections, tumors, degeneration, and inflammatory conditions such as arthritis. The presence of these conditions may cause misalignment of the spine, producing nerve interference, resulting in additional health problems in those areas serviced directly or indirectly by the affected nerve.

Disc Problems
The spinal discs play an important role in keeping the spinal column precisely aligned and balanced. That's why disc problems such as ruptured discs, slipped discs, and disc degeneration can have considerable influence on vertebral alignment and the nerve root passageways.

Neurothlipsis
The pinching or irritation of a nerve is called neurothlipsis. Although pinching or irritation can be the result of such things as slipped discs, ruptured discs, tumors and bony arthritic growths, neurothlipsis of a nerve root most frequently occurs when a misaligned vertebra alters the shape of the opening in the spine (foramen) through which nerve roots pass. Neurothlipsis can cause pain or disease in all areas of the body supplied directly or indirectly by the branches of that nerve root. Correction of the misalignment, before any permanent damage occurs, usually results in correction of the health problems associated with the pinched nerve.

Spinal Distortion
There are several common types of spinal distortions and curvatures. Examples of potentially serious conditions are;  Scoliosis (lateral curvature of the spine), Kyphosis (hunchback), and Scheuermann's Disease (inflamed growth centers of the spine). Usually less serious causes of distortions include muscle spasms, and soft tissue contraction, etc. However, any of these types of spinal distortions can lead to spinal disease, nerve root irritation, and subsequent health problems.

Spinal Imbalance
The head is located at the top of the spinal column and is normally positioned and balanced directly over the sacrum, which is located at the base of the spinal column. If your head is not properly balanced over the sacrum, our doctor is alerted to look for such conditions as misalignment of the pelvis, a shot leg, muscle spasms, muscle imbalance, pinched nerves, etc. An imbalanced spine creates enormous stress and strain on spinal muscles and ligaments, which may lead to misalignment of the vertebrae, which in turn can result in pinched nerves and associated health problems. Such stressors may also make an individual more susceptible to spinal injury.

Abnormal Range Of Motion
The human spine is designed to bend, flex, and twist; and withstand substantial strain and stress. But, adhesions and fixations can restrict the normal range of motion, reduce the elasticity of supporting tissues, and impair local circulation. Conversely, ligaments and cartilage may be over-stretched or torn, permitting excessive range of motion. This can lead to inflammation and degeneration of the joints.

Both restricted and excessive ranges of motion may lead to increased pathology, vertebral misalignment, and impinged nerves, resulting in pain or disease in the affected areas.

"Radiographs are a discovery of disease, or a map of a healthy person - RULE IT OUT WHAT COULD BE!"

Feel up When Life is Getting You Down

With about 19 million Americans suffering from depression, and with prescriptions for drugs to treat the disorder having doubled over the last 10 years alone, the problem is only growing without real healthy answers from the medical community. The reason is that most people don't have the first clue about what's really giving us the blues.

Why do most people go through life never identifying the true source of their feelings?

As children, we were not encouraged to share our feelings, we were told to put on a happy face and ignore how we really felt. These unacknowledged, buried emotions are feelings within us that are very much alive and active. They are the cause of many diseases and dis-harmonies in the body. 

What are the three things anyone can do today to help lift their mood?

First, acknowledge that you feel blue or down. Place your hand on your chest, this is a major energy center called your heart chakra, and repeat the following three times, "even though I feel down and blue I deeply love and accept myself." 

Accepting yourself in this downer state is powerfully healing. It will honor your feelings and in that honoring allow the emotional energy to begin to release.

Second, once you have acknowledged how you feel, take some time to write out how you might have felt as a child. The following is an easy and effective technique to help you get to those deeper feelings.

Forgive yourself and others for how you feel.  Do this by placing your hand on your chest (your heart chakra again) while repeating statements like:

"I forgive myself for feeling down and blue, I am doing the best I know how."

"I forgive my younger self for feeling powerless and unheard, they were doing the best they knew how."

"I forgive my mom and dad, they did the best they knew how with the knowledge and resources they had."

Forgiveness is an important step in releasing downer feelings.  Even if you are not ready to completely feel forgiveness, doing this process plants seeds that propel you towards more wellness and happiness.

Tell yourself you are feeling better and better each day and you probably will.

Learn more powerful steps to clear the emotional baggage from your childhood.  Learn powerful techniques to heal the emotional issues from your childhood.

Hearing Loss and Cigarette Smoking

Cigarette smokers are much more likely to develop hearing loss than non-smokers, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The findings are from a 5 year study that involved nearly 4,000 people between the ages of 48 and 92 years old, with an average age of 66 years. About half were smokers.

The study found that smokers were about 70% more likely to have significant hearing loss than non-smokers. Ex-smokers were about 30% more likely to have a hearing loss. Non-smokers living with smokers were also at significantly higher risk for hearing loss. Based on these findings, perhaps one of the Surgeon General's warning s printed on cigarette packages should be:

"Warning: cigarette smoking may be harmful to your hearing."

Smoking has long been suspected as a factor contributing to hearing loss because it can restrict blood flow to the inner ear. The researchers also believe that the nicotine in cigarette smoke may damage the cells of the inner ear directly. Other factors that can affect hearing include exposure to noise, hypertension, aging, genetics and physical injury.

And now we are introduced to E-Cig Vapor, another nightmare in the making ...

STAY TUNED!

Bottled Water or Tap?

The bottled water industry has exploded in recent years, and enjoys annual sales of more than $100 billion worldwide. Americans paid $13 billion for bottled water in 2014.

According to Co-op America, "as much as 40 percent of bottled water is actually bottled tap water, sometimes with additional treatment, sometimes not." The number one (Aquafina) and two (Dasani) top-selling brands of bottled water in the U.S. both fall in the category of purified water. Dasani is sold by Coca-Cola, while Aquafina is a Pepsi product. As U.S. News & World Report explains, "Aquafina is municipal water from spots like Wichita, Kansas."

There is a trade off with everything we choose in life and with bottled water there are several. There is an environmental issue to consider and often surprisingly a quality issue. A considerable number of used water bottles end up as litter, where they can take several hundred years or more to biodegrade. 90% of water bottles end up as either garbage or litter, at a rate of more than 200 billion bottles per year. When some plastic bottles are incinerated along with other trash, as is the practice in many municipalities, toxic chlorine is released into the air while heavy metals deposit in the ash. If plastics are buried in landfills, not only do they take up valuable space but potentially toxic additives such as phthalates may leak into the groundwater. This problem could be avoided simply by recycling used bottles regularly.

As mentioned above, some studies indicate that bottled water may be no safer, or healthier than tap water in many countries while selling for up to 1000 times the price.

There have been studies that have shown higher risk of certain diseases when regularly consuming city tap water and this is not likely to change in the near future. One of the best recommendations, and perhaps the best solution, would be the use of a home charcoal and reverse osmosis water filtration which will leave your water pure and tasting great.

This is one of the most important health habits you could possibly maintain. Water is essential and if you don't get enough clean water you will suffer health problems. Your exclusive beverage should be water. Try to have at least eight glasses of water a day.

The simple way to calculate the amount of water most of us need is to drink one half your body weight in ounces of water. The average adult is 150 pounds which would be two and one half quarts of water.

The bottom line is that you are better off not drinking unfiltered tap water. Chlorine used in most municipal purification processes is a toxic chemical and should not be consumed in large quantities. Avoid distilled water as it has the wrong ionization, pH, polarization and oxidation potentials. It will also drain your body of minerals.

When using bottled water, avoid purchasing the one-gallon cloudy plastic (PVC) containers from your grocery store as they transfer far too many chemicals into the water. The five-gallon containers and the ones in the clear bottles (polyethylene) are a much better plastic and will not give the water a plastic taste. If you have a question about the purity of the water call the company selling it and get an "independent lab assessment" of water quality and stick with the companies that can provide this information.

"About a quarter of the bottled water sold in the U.S. actually is just tap water."

Just Another Day

Today is just another day, as it will be tomorrow and the next day from now on until life's door has closed.

What of interest is going on? In Oregon, citizens protesting are being arrested by the government; ISIS continues to be the Islamic demon, the worst of all evil entities; floods in the east and south are and will be raging havoc over the land; horrible criminals have escaped their captivity and are now on the run; politicians are acting like juveniles in a quest for narcissist glory. What a wonderful record to start the day in this so-called modern, enlightened age. We are told that man is God's masterpiece created in His own image. Then, pray tell, why does man do such things?

Why the floods? It can be accounted for. Natural causes produce natural results and subsequent events. Man built his town in a hazardous place and the rain fell in super abundance moving everything in its path which accounted for the disasters. But why the man-produced tragedies? Why do some men regard life so cheaply as to destroy his own kind without cause? No other animal does so; they may kill for food to eat, but not as a game with little purpose or reason.

Somewhere in the Bible a psalmist exclaimed, "What is man that thou art mindful of Him?" What indeed!

We must consider God the creator of the universe including the plants, the Milky Way, the moon and stars, and all forms of life. Man being supreme in nature also does wonders. Even God would be without meaning if it were not for man and his intellect. Yet what a question mark when we consider His shortcoming on so many occasions.

"Remember when charity was a virtue, and not an organization.?"

Trouble To Yourself

Are you too much trouble to yourself? Do you take yourself too seriously, or do you just drift along the easy way with little concern?

There are different ways to consider yourself. You may be motivated by personal pride or just by ordinary habits, doing things that arouse the interest of others, or out of curiosity concerning the way you have of doing things that have a bearing on other people's lives.

Visualize if you will, a ragged hillbilly watching a man at a tourist court making use of a comb and brush, a toothbrush and nail file, and a whisk broom and shoe polish. The hillbilly boy finally, as he scratched his head, asked, "Hey Mister, are you always that much trouble to yourself?"

How much trouble are you to yourself? It is wise to have concern about appearance, all the while knowing there is a time and/or place for all things. Try to look your best on all occasions without too much public display. Be of service to others in a helpful manner without becoming subject to criticism.

Your body is "fearfully and wonderfully made" the Bible tells us; so you do not need to exercise too much trouble about yourself.

Have you thought of how wonderful your body really is? You become hungry and your appetite calls for food. You supply food of various kinds according to your taste. At once, the chemistry of your body begins to prepare the food for immediate use, exercising little thought on your part. In the process of time, common food is converted into flesh and bones, hair, skin, and nails; including blood, lymph glands, organs, and nerves with NO real trouble to yourself. It's nature's way of doing things, simple as that.

Be good to yourself without being too personal and others will love you as much as you love yourself.

Pain In The Forecast

Obviously, the most accurate method of predicting storms is to see how full the waiting room is. But why do some people seem to be able to predict coming rains based on their aches and pains?

It's true that many people with back pain, neck pain or other joint complaints are often surprisingly accurate in predicting when storms are approaching, and believe it or not, there is some validity to their weather forecasting abilities.

The phenomenon is nothing new. As early as the 5th century B.C., Hippocrates suggested many illnesses were related to changes in the weather. Since then, a number of musculoskeletal disorders have been identified as being especially sensitive to changing weather conditions, including osteoarthritis, tension headaches, back pain and fibromyalgia.

A variety of meteorologic factors have been suggested as the culprit, including temperature, precipitation, humidity, thunderstorms and increased ionization of the air. But while reliable conclusions about the link between weather and musculoskeletal pain have yet to be established due to the lack of controlled studies, most research points to the lowered atmospheric barometric pressure that often precedes storms and other weather changes.

In one of the first empirical studies on the effect of weather on joint pain, published in 2010 by the International Journal of Biometeorology, researchers established a direct connection between low barometric pressure, inflammation and joint pain in rats. For the study, scientists artificially produced a state of chronic inflammation in the feet of lab rats, mimicking the clinical features of neuropathic pain in humans. When the rats were placed in a low-pressure environment, they exhibited signs of exacerbated foot joint pain not seen in their control counterparts.

Additional research has demonstrated the same phenomenon occurs in humans. For instance, a 2002 study from the Journal of Spinal Disorders and Techniques concluded that "back pain may be aggravated by atmosphere depression in patients with lumbar disc disease." And a 2007 study from the American Journal of Medicine determined that "changes in barometric pressure are independently associated with osteoarthritis knee pain severity."

Various mechanisms have been proposed to account for this relationship, but the most likely explanation involves the expansion of fluid in swollen joints following fluctuations in barometric pressure. Inflammation due to dysfunction, disease or injury will lead to swelling in and surrounding a joint. Because materials of varying densities are affected differently by pressure changes, drops in barometric pressure expand this extra fluid more than the muscle, ligaments and connective tissue that make up the joint capsule, stretching sensitized tissues and activating a nociceptive (pain) response.

A good illustration for the layperson is a balloon in a barometric chamber. If the pressure outside the balloon drops, the air on the inside expands and stretches the walls of the balloon. When the same happens to a swollen joint, the expansion stretches soft tissue, irritates nerve endings and causes pain.

It's important to note that this contraction and expansion of excess fluid in joints is happening on such a small scale that it cannot be quantified by any scientific means and the process is therefore entirely theoretical. But whatever the mechanism, the takeaway is that some degree of inflammation must already exist, whether we are aware of it or not, for barometric pressure changes to lead to joint pain. Weather changes can't cause pain by themselves; they can only exacerbate inflammation that's already there. After all, not everyone experiences pain when a storm is brewing, and those who do don't experience pain in every joint.

It really drives home what chiropractors have been saying for decades: The absence of pain isn't the same as good health! So while there's validity to the idea of "aches and pains mean coming rains," anticipation of weather changes shouldn't interfere with patients' motivation to decrease underlying inflammation with the things they actually can control. Sunny days ahead are no substitution for proper exercise, good diet and supplementation, and regular chiropractic care.