We know that the spine and body structure provides crucial information and signalling to the brain, day and night.  But mechanically, their health also determines the level of wear and tear throughout your body structure as a whole.  With chiropractic care, you can not only resolve certain spinal and body structure disturbances without the use of drugs and suregery, you can use it to maintain yourself at your best for long term body structure wellbeing.  Read more here. (This advertorial first appeared on 22 jan 2009).

Exercise is an extremely important component of maintaining health and wellbeing.  Nevertheless, if your body structure is experiencing pain, weakness or loss of mobility it may be a sign of compromised mechanical function or stability.  The ability of your spine and your body structure to deal successfully with weight and pressure may be greatly reduced.  If so, is the smart thing to do to load up your body structure with more stress and strain through exercises?  Maybe not.  Read more here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" on Jan 29, 2009).

New Zealand research recently suggested that the risk of childhood asthma can be dramatically increased by the child's use of paracetamol.  Regardless, health officials recommended that parents keep using the product.  This looks like another case of a treatment causing just as many problems in the body as it solves.  Luckily, there's another way to look at fever and discomfort, the main reasons people use paracetamol.  You might find that you can leave it happily locked away.  Read more here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Sept 2008).

Here are some simple strategies for watching what you eat...and how much of it you do...over the holiday season.  In fact, some of these tools are ones you can use all year round.  Read more here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Dec 2008).

For maximum health your brain needs glucose and oxygen.  Without a constant supply of these vital materials your brain function would immediately begin to decline...and since the brain is the "Captain of the Ship" this is bad news indeed!  But there is another vital thing the brain needs...a constant high quality supply of information.  The spine is a source of this feedback to the brain.  However, as demands on the brain increase, its ability to move and stabilise the spine decreases.  And when spinal health reduces, its signalling to the brain deteriorates.  A vicious cycle ensues. Looking after the spine can immediately begin to destress the brain and set things back on track.  Read more here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Dec 2008).

The spine is made up of many individual joints, each one continuously feeding nerve information to the brain, letting the brain now where the spine is, which direction it is moving, and what loads it is experiencing.  When this system works, the brain can co-ordinate the movement and strength of your body structure for maximum health.  That's chiropractic care.    Read more here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Nov 2008).

It seems like the "news" sometimes acts as just another advertising channel for selling drugs.  But when you actually examine how much clinical benefit a lot of people get from the "latest" drugs, the statistics are less than impressive or even misleading.  After all, a drug which halves the number of heart attacks seems like a very potent treatment.  Its an impressive number which could go in all the ads to catch your attention (or your doctor's attention).  But if your starting risk for having a heart attack is small to begin with the actual benefit from the drug is much much less.  When that is the case, a lot of people have to take the drug everyday for it to make any positive clinical difference in the community.  Read more here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Nov 2008).

Ongoing pain can place additional pressure on a person physically, mentally and socially.  Chiropractic care can help in many instances, but you also need to be aware of some of the issues yourself, and have a toolbox you can use for helping combat some of this pressure.  Pain and discomfort does not have to change the quality of your life for the worse.  Read more here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Nov 2008).

While the Government is busy spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on high profile health items and projects, the basics which are going to make the biggest difference to your health, wellbeing and longevity are often way way down the budgetary and priority list.  So its not surprising that no matter how much money or how many professionals we put into the health system, lots more always seems needed.  Read more here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Nov 2008).

The brain is the central processing centre for all information and activity in the body.  It relies on the quality of the information it gets from the spine and body structure to be able to do its job well.  If the spine is healthy the quality of the information going to the brain will be excellent.  If the spine is not healthy - then the ability of the brain to manage the functions of your body for better health will decline and brain stress will increase.  Discover the role of chiropractic care in good brain health here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Nov 2008).

Conventional medicine uses a process which requires the diagnosis of a disease or disorder before any real treatment can begin.  However, health problems are sometimes not that clear cut, and the drug or surgical treatment available unappealing.  In these gaps and grey areas, complementary and alternative medicine comes to the fore.  Read more here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Oct 2008).

Chiropractic care focusses on the connection between the brain, the spine and the rest of the body structure.  This connection is so important that looking after your spine now will be well worth your while, not just today, but for the long term .  Waiting until things begin to breakdown irretrievably is not a good move.  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Oct 2008).

How is it possible that drugs, like antidepressants, which have been "proven" and "approved" for widespread sale might be no better for you than an inert sugar pill?  The power of placebo raises its ugly head again, and frequently annoys drug company shareholders.  Bottom line: your body is a smart, self healing mechanism.  Sometimes it needs help from the outside.  And lots of times it doesn't.  Read more here . (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Oct 2008).

A large proportion of the benefit from any treatment, whether it is medical care or complementary and alternative care like chiropractic, comes from the so-called "placebo effect".  This effect seems to come from the body's increased ability to heal itself when the mind and beliefs becomes involved.  It also means that a lot of treatments may actually be less effective than you thought, even drugs and surgery...read more here .  (This pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Sept 2008).

Most instances of chest pain and discomfort are not related to heart trouble.  Rather, the function of the spine, ribs and nearby nerve structures plays a key role.  This is why you should choose chiropractic care.  (pdf first appeared in "The Star" in Sept 2008).

Overstress from physical, emotional or other lifestyle causes can drain the ability of your adrenal glands to keep you going.  If this is the case, feeling tired and run down, finding it terrifyingly hard to get out of bed in the mornings, and possibly other symptoms starting to appear is a typical process.  Decompress, take time out and do something about it by learning more here (first printed in The Star, Sept 2008).

First printed in "The Star" in May 2008, Tat's write up on the Government approved Gardasil HPV ("anti-cervical cancer" vaccine) is still relevant.  Essentially: the health risk that this vaccine addresses is low to begin with - cervical cancer is a very minor cause of death amongst women (e.g. compared to the numbers affected by other cancers or even motor vehicle accidents).  This vaccine has not been shown in any clinical trial to prevent any deaths at all over the long term (10+ years); these benefits have been calculated by assumption filled computer models, and not by observing actual teenagers who have been vaccinated as they move into their 30's and 40's.  Cervical cancer can actually be very effectively detected and treated but that relies on women being disciplined about receiving smear tests. So worst of all - it is a strong possibility that young women who receive this vaccine will become more complacent about getting their smear tests, therefore increasing their overall risk, not decreasing it.  If you are generally cautious about the use of drugs/vaccinations and their long term impact on your body's health and function then this vaccine is a great one to avoid.  Read the pdf here.

If you feel healthy, chiropractic care can offer you two major benefits. Firstly it can detect and resolve minor dysfunctions in your spinal and body structure mechanics before they predispose you to injury and unnecessary wear and tear. Secondly, the stimulation of the chiropractic adjustment encourages good information flow between your body structure and the brain. And with good information, the brain can co-ordinate and produce good responses from your other body systems to keep you healthier for longer. To read more, download Tat's .pdf as it appeared in The Star, Dunedin's weekly community paper.

When it comes to the body, it's true that everything is interconnected in some way.  But when it comes to the way the spine and the spinal nerves of the neck affect the health of your elbow, wrist and hand, that connection is direct.  Spinal nerves from the lower half of the neck weave under the collarbone into the arm to give you maximum strength and sensation around your elbow, wrist and hand.  If that's where you're experiencing health problems, the root cause may be somewhere other than where you are experiencing the symptoms: your spine.  Click here to read more from Tat's advertorial in The Star, Dunedin's weekly community paper (.pdf format).

When you fill your car up with petrol, you are filling it up with energy that you can use to go places.  Similarly, the food we eat provides us with energy that our bodies can use.  However, to think that the kilojoules or the calories in the food that we eat becomes usable straight away is oversimplifying matters.  Just having the raw fuel - even if it is of the best quality - doesn't necessarly mean that you can extract and use its energy, as Tat Loo writes about here .