The Source Newsletter
Empower. Educate. Elevate
Oakland Pride is THIS SUNDAY!!
Alive Chiropractic @ Oakland Pride 2013!!
If you have anyone special you want to send our way- have them stop by our booth and check out some of the deals we have to offer.
Sunday, Sep 1, 2013, 11:00 AM
Franklin St & 19th St Oakland, CA 94612
Change Agent of the Week: Richie Israel
While visiting "The Vulcan" in Oakland, the Source Kiro's had the opportunity to meet and receive a reading from the infamous Richie Israel. Richie is currently a Oakland-based designer and artist who has recently invented an inspiring new card game called MIND:MIRROR.
MIND:MIRROR is a card game designed to challenge and question a person's reality by intimately confronting it with a deeper set of conditions, that will reaffirm, open and encourage a potential state of being, for a transformative collaboration between the card-reciever's existence and what is outside of their knowledge. MIND:MIRROR is an interactive, therapeutic adventure and constructive voyage into the creative mind.
MIND:MIRROR can be played in person, by telephone, or by mail/email delivery.
To request to play, contact Richie >>>cityofpapermagicians@gmail.com
Sitting Is The New Smoking by Lance von Stade
“Sitting is being crippled.” -African Proverb(1)
With packed calendars, full email inboxes, and lengthy ‘to-do’ lists, we are constantly “Go, Go, Go…” or are we? It has been speculated that the average American spends more than half of their waking hours sitting down (2). This may seem insignificant to many people, perhaps even to those sitting down to read this article. However, there was once a time when smoking cigarettes without regard to adverse health effects was commonplace in the USA and the mention of any “puffing” frequency would not have batted an eye. Today, research across the globe is exposing the adverse health effects of prolonged sitting and it turns out that ‘butts’ are not the only things sitting and smoking have in common. While adverse health effects may come as no surprise, the addictive qualities of physical inactivity and the social acceptance and prevalence despite the existence of contraindicative research are mountains that anti-smoking campaigns have had to climb for over fifty years.
“Sitting is the new smoking,” said Anup Kanodia, MD, Researcher and Physician at the Center for Personalized Health at the Ohio State University Medical Center, in a May 25, 2013 L.A. Times article (2). He made the claim citing an October 2012 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (3) that compared sitting and smoking. More specifically, the study compared their respective affects on lifespan. According to the study, it is estimated that smokers take eleven minutes off their lifespan with each cigarette smoked. This has come to be expected after decades of research and marketing by anti-smoking campaigns. However, the study also showed that for each hour spent sitting, watching television, twenty-two minutes is taken from the end of a lifespan. Perhaps the victims on the popular T.V. show, True Blood, are not the only ones getting the life sucked out of them during that hour.
We all know and love that moment that awaits us at the end of the day; that moment when we get home, set down our keys, walk to our favorite sofa or recliner and succumb to the gravitational forces we have been opposing all day. The ecstatic feeling that rushes throughout the body allowing muscles to relax and stress to evaporate. What if that feeling, neurotransmitters and all, was addictive? According to the peer-reviewed journal, Obesity, physical inactivity in young people is a predictor of obesity and favors the development of a self-perpetuating vicious circle of obesity and physical inactivity (4). Therefore, it is important that the public be aware of the risks of prolonged sitting in order to prevent themselves from entering what could become a cycle of weight gain and physical inactivity which only leads to more adverse health effects. It has been shown that obesity increases the risk of a number of health conditions including hypertension, adverse lipid concentrations, and type 2 diabetes (5).
An eye opening study published in the Journal of Diabetolgia in November 2012 analyzed the results of eighteen studies with close to 800,000 total participants. A comparison of those who spent the most time sitting with those who spent the least time, researchers found an increase in the risk of diabetes (112%), cardiovascular events (147%), death from cardiovascular causes (90%), and death from all causes (49%) (6).
The challenge we face as a society in overcoming this obe-‘SIT’-y epidemic is not a lack of information or a lack of awareness. The true challenges we face are similar to those who saw the writing on the wall when smoking was first linked to lung cancer in 1950. It took over fifty years for every indoor public place to be smoke-free in California despite the evidence. Today, when we are at work, in class, at the movies, and most other places we are hard pressed to find the option to stand and move throughout our day while still completing the necessary tasks to maintain our current lifestyles. The following are suggestions of how to counteract the lack of options for sitting in our current society in hope that every hour we stand instead of sit is twenty-two minutes we can spend playing with our grandchildren:
The goal is not complete avoidance, but conscious moderation. Be aware of how long you have been sitting by setting reminders on your phone before expected long periods of “butt-in-chair” time.
Frequent breaks from sitting have been shown to have better influence on blood sugar and insulin levels following a meal (post-prandial glycemia and insulinemia) (7).
Check out different designs of standing desks; see my favorite: www.myupdesk.com
Turn a sitting desk into a makeshift standing desk by placing the chair on the desktop and placing your laptop or book on the chair.
On airplanes, feel free to go to the area near the bathrooms and perform lunges, stretches, or full on workouts any time you’re free to move about the cabin. Other passengers get cabin fever and often want to join in.
Waiting rooms everywhere are often packed wall-to-wall with hip flexor shortening, paraspinal-inhibiting chairs. Find out the expected wait time and inform the receptionist that you will return from a walk in just under that amount of time.
Standing in classrooms, at conferences, and in line at the DMV often places one in the far back corners and away from the ideal audio and visual experience of the venue, not to mention can be uncomfortable since our bodies are now more adapted to recline than to perform the exhausting balancing act of standing vertically. However, exercising the option to stand not only gets easier the more often it is done (I speak from experience), but the act elucidates how many possibilities there are to prevent the shapes of our bodies from evolving into the shape of a La-Z-Boy recliner. We do have the choice!. Isn’t time we stand up for ourselves?
1 Ford, D.Y., “Reversing Underachievement Among Gifted Black Students, 2nd Ed.” Prufrock Press, Waco, TX: 2011.
2 Ravn, Karen. “Don’t Just Sit There. Really” LA Times. May 25, 2013,
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/25/health/la-he-dont-sit-20130525 Accessed July 26, 2013.
3 Veerman, J.L., “Television Viewing Time and Reduced Life Expectancy: a Life Table Analysis”. Br J Sports Med 2012;46:927-930
doi10.1136/bjsports-2011-085662. http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/46/13/927.short. Accessed July 26, 2013.
4 Pietilainen, KH, et al., “Physical inactivity and obesity: a vicious circle.” Obesity. 2008 Feb; 16(2):409-14. Doi: 10.1038/oby.2007.72.:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18239652. Accessed July 27th, 2013.
5 National Institutes of Health. Clinical Guidelines on the Identificaiton, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults –
The Evidence Report. Obes Res 6(Suppl 2):51S-209S.
6 Wilmot, E.G. “Sedentary Time in Adults and the Association with Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease and Death: Systematic Review and
Meta Analysis.” Diabetolgia. Nov; 55(11):2895-2905 (2012). http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00125-012-2677-z.
Accessed July 27, 2013.
7 Peddie, M.C., et al., “Breaking Prolonged Sitting Reduces Postprandial Glycemia in Healthy, Normal-Weight Adults: a randomized
crossover trial.” Am J Clin Nutr. Aug; 98(2): 358-66 (2013). doi: 10.3945/ajcn.112.051763. Epub 2013 Jun 26.
8 Flegal KM, et al. Prevalence and Trends in Obesity Among US Adults, 1999-2008. JAMA 303(3):235-41. 2010.
9 Ogden, et al. Prevalence of High Body Mass Index in US Children and Adolescents, 2007-2008. JAMA 303(3):242-9. 2010.
10 Cerny, T., “Anti-nicotine vaccination: Where are we?”. Recent Results Cancer Res. 2005; 166:167-75.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15648190. Accessed July 26, 2013.
11 Levin ML, et al. “Cancer and tobacco smoking.” JAMA. 1950;143:336–338.
The Source @ Alive Chiropractic
Email: thesourcechiropractic@gmail.com
Website: alivechiropractic.net
Location: 4157 Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, CA
Phone: 9512940614
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Twitter: @thesourcechiro